Page 160 of Tangled Like Us

I look back at her when I do. “I hope you know that you’re a strong person, Jane. I don’t think you hear it enough from people who aren’t your family.”

She has her knuckles to her lips, an overwhelmed smile forming. “I suppose I don’t because that felt…really nice.” She swallows hard, eyes reddening. “Can you stay a little longer?”

I check my watch. Nineteen hundred hours. Too early in the night. I should go back to security’s townhouse soon—fuck it.

“I can stay.” With a stringent stride, I head to the door and lock it. Just so Farrow and Maximoff can’t storm inside and catch me holding her.

Jane watches me yank off my boots. “When did you know you wanted to be in the military?”

I set my shoes near her nightstand. Closest to the bed in case I need to jam my feet into them and move out. “I was adamant that I’d enlist around twelve, thirteen. Banks, not so much.”

“How come?” she wonders.

I explain how my brother wasn’t sure he wanted to follow me. “We were going through a period where we felt like we had to have different interests in order for people to treat us like separate individuals.”

Banks is the one who plays basketball.

Thatcher is the one who plays football.

Really, Banks hated basketball. Couldn’t make a free throw if our grandma’s life depended on it. He was good at football like me, and then in high school when we both joined the team, it becamewho’s better at football?

I take off my holstered gun. “It just took him a while to accept that he wanted to enlist in the Marine Corps too, and that was okay.” It doesn’t make us the same person.

I place my weapon on the nightstand. I’m about to move closer, but Jane suddenly says something that I don’t hear often from people outside my family.

“You have immensely different personalities to me.”

I stare at her firmly. A breath stuck in my chest. Wanting to know more, and I don’t have to ask. She’s already telling me.

“You’re logical. You take charge of situations, and you’re very disciplined and regimented. I think that Banks has more of a creative-brain. He also seems more apt to go with the flow than shoulder what you carry. There’s more, of course. I think people are dreadfully complex creatures.”

I nod slowly, stunned. That was really accurate.

She tips her head in thought. “You remind me of Moffy—but that’snotwhy I’m attracted to you.” She speaks quickly, hands raised. “It’s just an observation. You both share some of the same qualities. Like how you shoulder responsibility and your stoicism—” Jane cuts herself off when I climb onto the bed and take her hands in mine, holding her burning cheek.

“I know what you meant, honey.” I think Maximoff Hale is a better man than I’ll ever be. He’s compassionate in ways that I struggle to outwardly show. But I love my country and I love my family and her family andher, and I’ve put my life on the line to protect all of them.

Her lips are a breath from mine, and my hand descends the length of her leg. I pull her further down the bed, our noses brushing while I stay close.

The air around us has a pulse. My blood pumping with each heavy beat, and our eyes dive deeper. Grasping something crucial, something critical that neither of us is saying yet.

A feeling.

An emotion, and I shouldn’t touch it. Shouldn’t near it.

Bearing my weight on my forearm, I hover over Jane. My large frame shielding her, our legs woven, our lips skimming like a hot breath over the surface of a steaming lake.

Her small hands roam my cut muscles, then linger on my ass.

I whisper against her lips, “My cock isn’t going in your pussy yet, Jane.”

Her breath shallows. “Yes…not yet.” But our carnal eyes want deeper physically. I tuck her against my build, and I sink my shoulders back into the pink duvet. My head on the pillow.

She nestles into the crook of my arm while I hold her. Her warm freckled cheek on my chest, she eyes the radio on my waistband and the cord that runs to my earpiece.

Comms are still on. An SFA argument is still in my ear, regular background noise in my life. Just like camera clicking and paparazzi screaming are hers. “I can’t turn off comms until I get word about Nate,” I explain to Jane.

Her lips rise, but just for a moment. “Do you think of the night often…the one where Farrow caught…” She takes a measured breath and looks up at me, resting her chin on her arm. Which is across my chest. Her voice softens to a whisper. “Where he caught Nate destroying Moffy’s room?”