Page 5 of Kane (Ghost Ops #4)

The tension in Daphne’s chest eased a fraction as she got in the car and started it up.

All was normal—and kooky—in Sutton’s Creek.

Colleen was still chanting and turning circles when Daphne drove out of the lot.

Now that was a woman who wasn’t afraid of anything.

Demons in the wardrobe, aliens in the night sky, mysterious things that went bump in the night.

Daphne shook her head. Maybe she should go for a reading, get a crystal or two for protection. The thought made her laugh.

By the time she reached the range, her heart was lighter and she could breathe again.

She went to the back door and rang the bell since it wouldn’t be unlocked this early. A few seconds later, the door opened and Kane stood there. Shirtless.

Daphne’s tongue got in the way of speech for a long moment. When she found her voice, she resorted to sarcasm.

“Damn, Kane, you turning the range into your bachelor pad now? Do I need to worry about used condoms and lube lying around? Should I get a tetanus shot first?”

Kane only gave her an exaggerated frown as he stepped back so she could walk inside. “Very funny. I’m working out. Not a lady in sight. Except for you, but you don’t count.”

Now why did that hurt? “No, I definitely count. I’ve got all the right bits and everything. Just saw ’em this morning in the shower.”

Kane locked the door and frowned harder. “Don’t want to talk about your bits, kid.”

Kid. As if she were a child. He did that sometimes and it annoyed the ever-loving piss out of her.

“Listen, dude. Twenty-three is not a kid.”

She wished she’d had Kenny make her older instead of younger. But he’d told her she wouldn’t pass for older and that would cause people to ask questions. Better to go with younger.

He’d been right, of course. Kenny was someone she’d met while running The Diamond Queen.

He was an expert at creating new identification and the backgrounds to go with it.

He wasn’t on the O’Malley payroll, and he liked her because she’d gotten his baby sister out of a bad situation a couple of months before she’d needed to leave town.

He’d never set foot in her club, so there was no obvious connection between them.

That was the only way she would have asked him to help her.

“Twenty-three is a kid to me. I’m ancient compared to you.”

He didn’t look ancient. He looked delicious. Kane was the very definition of ripped. Glistening muscles that flowed like a river over rock whenever he moved. He had scars, which surprised her. One in particular, a round puckered scar in his side, caught her attention.

“Have you been shot?”

He glanced down and then back at her, eyes intense. “How’d you know?”

Daphne folded her arms and shrugged. “It’s round. I assumed.”

“Yeah, got shot years ago when I was still a young Army grunt. It healed, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

He turned away from her and headed toward the room where they kept the gym equipment.

She didn’t know why, but she followed him, stopping in the doorway while he went over to the bench where he had an array of dumbbells lying on the floor.

He sat and picked one up, curled it eight times while she slouched against the door jamb and pretended to be uninterested.

“Why’re you here so early anyway?” he asked.

“Couldn’t sleep any longer.”

Or at all , but she wasn’t telling him that.

“You went home early last night.”

“I was tired. When I got in bed with a book and started reading, I woke up more than I would’ve liked.”

He eyed her as he transferred the weight to his other hand. “What kind of book this time?”

“A thriller.”

“Huh.”

“You don’t like to read?”

“Who said that?”

“Well, you haven’t exactly started talking books with me, so I figured you didn’t read much.”

“I read. Just don’t have a lot of time for it. I like Jack Reacher. Alex Cross. Walt Longmire. Dudes like that.”

“Detectives and badasses.”

“Yep. I need action. Romance is too boring.”

Daphne arched an eyebrow. “Oh, I don’t know. They’ve got action. Different kind of action. More fun, less deadly.”

He finished his set and dropped the weight. “Did Trigg read those things with you?”

“None of your business,” she said with a tight smile. “But you might want to try it with one of your dates sometime. Might learn something new.”

He grabbed the towel he’d lain on the bench and wiped it across his brow. “Yeah, got no problem in that department, so I don’t think so.”

Daphne had a vision of pushing him back on that bench, straddling his lap, and letting him show her what he was capable of. Not that she’d do it. She was too much of a coward to even try.

But, damn, it’d been a long time since she’d had any kind of activity down there that wasn’t her own fingers. The Besties didn’t talk about sex when Nikki was around, but when she wasn’t, whoa. They didn’t go into detail, but it was clear those women were satisfied. Seriously satisfied.

“I’ll take your word on it,” she said. “Unless you want to demonstrate? I’m in a bit of a dry spell at the moment.”

Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Where had that come from?

Kane stared at her. Hard. The air between them crackled, or maybe it was her imagination. Maybe he was disgusted with her. Or the idea made him sick and he was trying to think how to respond.

“Don’t say shit like that,” he finally growled.

“Why not? Does it bother you?”

“Yeah, it fucking bothers me.”

She didn’t know what devil got into her brain as she sauntered toward the bench.

Maybe it was the conversation with the Besties last night where they’d asked her why she didn’t just grab Kane by his sexy collar and plant a kiss on his utterly sexy lips.

She’d insisted she had no thoughts of doing any such thing, that he wasn’t her type, yet here she was.

There was a part of her somewhere—up on the ceiling, maybe—staring down at her and telling her this was a very bad idea.

Unless she wanted to embarrass herself so badly she’d never recover her dignity. A very real possibility if she didn’t stop what she was doing.

Kane tilted his head back as she approached. His nostrils flared as she stopped in front of him, close enough to touch him if she reached out. She wasn’t that brave, though.

Still, she bent at the waist, lowered her torso until her face was on a level with his. Until he could see down her shirt if he looked?—

And he looked because his gaze darted there before fixing on her face again. It almost made her smile.

He wasn’t immune to her, no matter how much he insisted on treating her like his annoying little sister.

“What are you doing?” His voice was strangled. She could smell the sweat on him, the iron from the weights he’d been lifting.

She moved her face closer to his. He didn’t flinch, didn’t back away. She had a wild thought to kiss him. To do what the Besties told her and take charge.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Rory had said. “He says ew, no, I don’t think of you that way? Newsflash, Daph, that man is hot for you no matter how hard he tries to pretend he isn’t.”

Daphne didn’t kiss him, though. What if Rory was wrong?

Instead she dropped her gaze down his chest, those ridged abs, the waistband of his shorts—and the hint of a hard-on that was beginning to show.

Shock—and longing—blazed a path through her nerve endings. Still wasn’t enough to make her take action, though. But the devil in her brain? That one had things to say.

“Listen up, Kane. I. Am. Not. A. Child. I’m a woman. I’ve had sex. Lots of sex. I know how to suck your dick so good you’d see stars. Stop calling me kid , stop infantilizing me, and I won’t make you uncomfortable anymore, ’kay?”

His eyes widened a fraction, his gaze settling on her mouth. Tension vibrated in the air between them. Her heart hammered. Hot embarrassment sizzled into her the longer the silence stretched.

Daphne straightened, her face heated as she whirled, intent on going to the front desk and burying herself in work for a while. Kane’s hand closed around her wrist, stopping her. She turned, watched him rise like a mountain from the ocean floor.

His face was a study in contrasts. He looked confused, pained, and angry at the same time. And like he was probably thinking about his dick in her mouth. It ought to thrill her she’d gotten through his indifference, and yet she had the feeling she’d poked the bear.

“I’ll repeat, don’t say shit like that to me.

You work here, you’re under our protection.

I don’t fuck around with people I care about, you feel me?

I have meaningless sex with faceless women because that’s who I am.

You don’t want a piece of me because I’ve got nothing to give.

You get what I’m saying, sweetheart, or do I need to say it a different way? ”

Shame crawled through her. She jerked her wrist from his grip. “I heard you, Kane. I’m not a child or an idiot. And who the hell said I wanted a piece of you, huh? Maybe meaningless sex is all I’m capable of, too. You ever think of that?”

She saw the doubt flare in his eyes.

“No, of course you didn’t. Because I’m a woman—excuse me, a kid —and females don’t think that way. We’re all looking for a ring and a house, right? We couldn’t possibly want a hard dick and a hot tongue to take us to heaven, could we?”

His nostrils flared. Dark emotion colored his expression. But he didn’t say a word, didn’t apologize, didn’t do one thing to make her believe her feelings mattered.

“Go fuck yourself, Kane.”

This time when she turned and stalked away, he didn’t stop her.