Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(70)

Yeah. Keiko, whose cell phone number she still knew by heart, even after six months in solitary confinement. “Good old Keiko,” he echoed. “So. Was he your boyfriend?”

That startled a smile onto her face. “I’m talking about terrorist bombs, and you want to know about my ex-boyfriends?”

Miles shrugged. “Call me shallow.”

She convulsed. For an awful moment, he thought she was sobbing. Then he realized it was silent laughter. “Right,” she choked out. “You, shallow. If you must know, yes. He was my boyfriend. For a little while.” She dropped her hands, eyes demurely fixed on the comforter in front of her. “It fizzled out. But we stayed friends.”

“Fizzled?” He stared at her, his mind blank. It just was not a word he could associate in any way with the naked woman curled up on that bed. Her gorgeous eyes, her perfect tits, her swirling cape of hair, her slender legs. She was perfect. Everything about her pulled him like a tractor beam. Her smell scrambled his brain at twenty paces.

“Fizzled how?” he demanded.

She waved, vaguely. “It happens,” she said. “If I knew how it happened, maybe it wouldn’t happen to me so fast.”

“I don’t get how any man wouldn’t kill to be with you.”

With that gut-clenching hindsight that so often afflicted him, the words stuck him as stalker creepy. But he couldn’t take them back.

He clamped down on the urge to backpedal, and just waited, teeth clenched, for the fallout.

Her eyes skittered shyly away. “I, um . . . don’t usually inspire such violent throes of emotion in men.”

“Get used to it,” he said.

This time she did meet his eyes. The silence between them was charged, buzzing with meaning. He was attuned to her every breath. Her scent fogged his brain. Yanked him toward her.

He walked to the bed, and stood, staring down at her. She cleared her throat, eyes darting down over his body.

“Keiko is gay,” she said. “He came out senior year. He’s with this new guy now. Franz. A dancer. A Norse god type. Full of muscles.”

Miles let out a slow breath. “Ah. I see.”

“Just, you know. To give you a little context. For the fizzling.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that. It was tying my brain in knots,” he told her. She clearly was trying not to smile, so he ventured to continue. “Great. I wish them all the best. Go, Keiko and Franz. Tear it up, boys.”

She snorted into her hands again. “I can’t believe I’m laughing right now,” she whispered.

“I love it,” he said. “I love it when you laugh.”

She gave him a look that made a lump swell into his throat. “Thank you. For loving that. I really . . . it means a lot to me.”

Then he was really in danger of starting to cry, which was so very not on his agenda for the evening, so he did the hard thing. Which was to smash a hammer down onto the tender moment before it f*cked him up.

“You might have put Keiko in a tight place,” he said. “The police are going to be real focused on him. Even from across the ocean.”

The smile faded, and he mourned it, sharply. “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry about that. I’ll try to—”

“No, you won’t,” he said. “You aren’t doing jack shit right now. You’re running for your life. You can’t help him.”

She flattened her lips to a bloodless line. “I know. I’m sorry to do this to Keiko. But hundreds of people will survive who might have died.”

“If there actually is a bomb,” he said, hating himself for it.

Her eyes flashed. “You think I’m lying?”

“Never,” he said hastily. “I think you’ve been locked in a hole for six months and forcibly injected with shitloads of a very powerful drug. That’s what I think.”

“Ah,” she said. “So. I’m crazy, then.”

“No, Lara.” He sat down on the bed. “I think that you’re f*cking amazing. You put me to shame. It’s incredible to me that you’re focusing on helping a bunch of strangers in a train station, after what you’ve been through. I am a pathetic, self-absorbed, jerk-off dickhead compared to you. All I ever think about is poor little me.”

“It’s not such a big deal.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself. “All they have to do is look for the bag. If there’s no bomb, all they’ve lost is some time. It’s an inconvenience. A stupid bummer of a bomb scare. Worth the risk. Totally worth it.”

“As you command.” He lifted his hand to her lips. “You save the world, and I’ll be your body servant and lady’s maid while you do it.”

“Oh, stop it,” she said, crabbily. “I don’t like being manipulated.”

He kissed her knuckles, one by one. “How about worshipped?”

She snatched her hand away, and swatted him on the chest with it. He caught her hand, by reflex, and held it there, over his heart.

Her pulse stuttered, raced. His chest felt so hot, with her hand flattened over it. Hot and soft, like something was turning in there, stretching. Unfurling.

The buzz of hot awareness built and built. So close to just seizing her, just letting that hot prod of lust spur him on and bear her down onto the bed. He was slavering to spread her open, tease another lake of hot, slippery lube out of her sweet flower of a * before mounting up for a hard, juicy ride into explosive oblivion. And she was so there with him. He saw it, felt it, smelled it. Lips rosy and parted, nipples tight and peaked, eyes dilated, glowing. Oh. Yes.