The Espionage Effect(10)
By the time the fourth stitch had been made, he finally answered, tone low. “Because it’s the color your cheeks turn when I look at you.”
I blinked, pausing before pressing the needle in for the final stitch.
When I eventually found my voice, it dropped to a whisper, “I blush because of the way you look at me.” After a slow exhale, I swept the needle in and out a final time.
“How do I look at you?”
I pulled my hand away, suddenly very conscious of my slight contact against his hot skin. While trying to formulate an answer, I pulled the thread taut and examined the stitches. Then I began to knot the end, satisfied the wound was as closed as it could possibly get.
Refusing to avoid his question any longer, I stared at the back of his bent head while facing the truth head on. “You look at me like you want to take my clothes off.”
After a brief pause, he glanced at me over his shoulder. “I do.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. There it was. My opportunity. The man attracted me, no doubt about it with the way my body reacted to him, how my mind blanked out in his presence. And having a wild fling was a smaller part of what my impromptu vacation was all about. Go somewhere I’d never been before. Have incredible sex with a man I’d never see again.
I knew nothing about him. Other than he’d been shot at. Not exactly a glowing résumé. Nervous, I voiced my concern from the opposite perspective. “You know nothing about me.”
“Not a requirement.” Intent edged his low tone.
Boys. I thought back to the word he’d used earlier. He was right. The few I’d ever been with had been inexperienced boys. Of the three times I’d had actual intercourse, two had been during my senior year in high school: once with a fellow chess club member, once with a fourth-period AP Physics classmate. Both events had been mutual experimentation, to verify the mechanics of everything we’d read and heard: foreplay, increased arousal, coitus, and orgasm for both participants.
College brought the third boy. However, then, I’d recklessly decided to step outside the parameters. Far from sober at a frat party Anna had dragged me to, I allowed myself to be led into a bedroom with one of the football players who’d been staring at me. Exactly six minutes later, after no foreplay, much grunting, and an orgasm for only one participant, the disappointing experience practically ended before it began.
The stranger in front of me? Did things to my insides with a mere look.
“Alec Marquez.” He shifted, facing toward the decorative tiles that spanned the wall from tub to ceiling.
“I’m sorry. What?” Snapped back to the moment, I stared at the knotted end of my suture work. Then I glanced at his metal Field Cocktail case, but didn’t recall seeing a pair scissors.
“My name. Alejandro Marquez. But everyone calls me Alec.” His full name rolled off his tongue with a slight Spanish accent.
Distracted by undefinable tension in the air between us, I returned to the task at hand and a small dilemma. I hadn’t packed cuticle scissors. No idea if Anna had. I continued to hold the needle, reasoning through limited options. I wasn’t about to ask him if he had the knife I’d seen strapped to his calf earlier on the beach. The suture thread, although strong, also had a silken fragile quality to it. Teeth it is.
Recognizing that we’d begun to exchange conventional pleasantries, I played my accepted role in the conversation. “I’m Devin Hill. My roommate, Anna, calls me Dev.”
“Devin. I like that name.”
Annd…the way he said my name, with that hint of accent and a lowered voice, sounded sinful.
Flustered, I pursed my lips and blew out a hard breath. Better to get the inevitable over with. Holding the thread taut, I pinched above the knot with my fingers. Then I lowered my face toward his shoulder and clamped my front teeth onto the thread about an inch and a half above the knot. It took a few tries of scraping the edges of my incisors together, but I finally broke the thread.
“There.” I backed away, distancing myself from the overwhelming effects of the shirtless temptation in front of me.
“Exactly.” He straightened back to upright, then reached over his shoulder and brushed a fingertip over the stitched wound.
I stood there confused, unsure how his response applied to my one-word statement that indicated I’d finished my repair job.
When he turned, we locked gazes. Heat sparked in those almost-black eyes, and…something more. I couldn’t quite place what flickered there. Hesitation? Hope? Everything about him exuded confidence; so it definitely wasn’t doubt.
“Now we know more about each other than even remotely required for sex.”
Oh. We were back to the whole clothes-off thing. And really, with the way his stare penetrated me on every level, I already felt stark naked in front of him.
“Right.” Nervous to the point my hands began to shake, I spun around and fled toward the darkness of the bedroom, walking beyond the reach of the bathroom light, down the steps and into the sitting room.
Seconds later, the air stirred behind me. The heat of his breath coasted over my shoulder. A shiver tremored through me.
He didn’t touch me. But his raw heat warmed my back even with the minuscule distance of airspace remaining between us. The gentle fog of his slow exhalation traveled along my exposed neck, up to my ear. “We don’t have to do anything. Only if you want to.”