The Espionage Effect(16)

When the intensity subsided, he lifted his mouth and stared at me with a satisfied expression.

Well, damn. That made two of us.

I blew out a controlled breath, mind still dazed, body still reeling.

The next moments flew by in a blur as he yanked the bedcoverings over me, answered the door while shielding me from view, signed the ticket, then closed the door before settling a large tray onto the center of the bed. Five dishes covered every square inch of the tray, some overlapping others. The burger platter loaded with fries competed with a massive chef’s salad. But neither was to be outdone by a rosemary roasted half chicken, Bolognese spaghetti, or the full lobster tail.

“Wow. Hungry?” I asked.

The look he leveled at me sizzled every nerve ending to back to life. “You have no idea.”

I blew out a hard breath. “Agreed.”

Because as satisfied as he’d made me, I’d never been more filled with stark want in my life.





When I woke, the remnants of an exhausting dream kept a sticky hold on me. Heavy eyelids prevented me from taking in my surroundings too quickly. After several minutes of opening then shutting my eyes, two slow yawns, and one lazy stretch, awareness of someone else in the room pricked at my senses, and I finally pushed myself upright.

Alec. I inhaled his scent before I spotted his silhouette across the room.

At some point, he’d turned off the bathroom lights, swathing the room in darkness once again. Only a dim blue-white glow that emanated from beside him cast light into the suite.

He sat at the large desk. His features, focused in concentration, were bathed in the soft illumination from a penlight affixed in some way to the top corner of an open laptop. As I couldn’t recall any baggage thrown over the balcony with his unorthodox means of arrival, the laptop had to be Anna’s.

Curious, I pushed off the bed. My bare feet landed toe first onto the cool floor tiles. I padded closer in silence, not wanting to distract him.

“You slept like the dead.” His comment came without inflection of judgment, merely statement of fact. And he didn’t move from his studious position. Nor did he attempt to hide what he was looking at.

My pulse accelerated as I smoothed my hands down the thin cotton tank top and boxer shorts I still wore, my thoughts drifting over the reasons I’d slept so soundly. “I suppose orgasmic endorphins followed by a meal heavy in carbs and fat will do it.”

At that, he swung his gaze my way, arching one of his brows. “Orgasmic endorphins?”

I paused. The toes of my right foot slid just over the edge of the first step that led down to the sitting area. I curled them down over, rooting myself as I swayed under his sudden scrutiny.

Even in the dim light, I could see the heat in his gaze. I certainly felt it, my skin beginning to warm from the second his attention had shifted toward me. “Well, actually, many chemicals accompany orgasm: endorphins, dopamine, testosterone, norepinephrine, serotonin...oxytocin.”

The muscles at one corner of his mouth twitched, tugging his lips into a sinful smirk as his gaze drifted a few inches lower. “That sexy mouth of yours keeps spouting intellectual factoids. I keep wondering what it’ll take to render you speechless.”

My mind froze. “Speechless?”

A full smile now played at his lips. “Oh, yes. I’m taking it as a personal challenge to blow your mind to the point you cannot describe an event that happens between us with mere words.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say. Couldn’t fathom it. Then, I began to want it…

“See. You get the idea. We’ll leave it there for a while.”

Why? To let the anticipation build? Already, my heart rate quickened, my breath shallowed, my…mind analyzing the possibilities of orgasmic chemicals once again.

He turned back toward the desk with an unaffected expression, carefully smoothing his hands over a large, thin paper he’d spread across the surface—as if he hadn’t just dropped a nuclear bomb between us and set the timer for detonation.

With a soft snort, I shook my head and eased my feet down the two tiled steps. If he could ignore the sparking chemistry between us in favor for something clearly more important to him at the moment, then so could I.

And right now, the mysterious man before me held my rapt attention. “What are you studying?”

“Blueprints.”

I hovered behind him, mere inches from his bare shoulders, able to feel the heat radiating from his skin. On a heavy blink, I sucked in a deep breath. Focus.

When I opened my eyes, I leaned forward only enough to take in more of the white paper that had blue lines bisecting across it. “Of a house.”

His head bobbed down once. “Down the beach from here.”

A second page lay canted beneath it, corners askew. “What’s the other sheet?”

He peeled back the floorplan layout to reveal a page bearing many more lines, arrows, and a few fine-printed paragraph blocks in the margins. “Mechanical schematics.”

As he revealed the second page in its entirety, I leaned to the left to get a complete view, then bent closer to examine the handful of paragraphs. When he released the top page to drop back down, the vellum paper settled with a soft crinkle. I rested a hand on the corner of the desk, and in as nonchalant of a manner as I could pull off, scanned the entire image from top to bottom.