Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(27)

“Shh.” His hand eased its firm hold on her nape and stroked there, gentling her. As if he was soothing someone very traumatized. Which, okay, maybe he was. “Shh.”

She took deep, shuddering breaths, but the stroking on her nape got through to her, easing her down almost to a place where she could be bent over a counter, debauched by a near stranger, whom she had asked to do this to her.

“It's my body, too.” His voice was very even as he petted from her nape down her back in sweet, soothing pleasure. “And maybe this is as much as I chose to have it used today.”

Her eyes opened. Her eyebrows crinkled together.

“Plus, I don't have anything.” His voice was still so neutral. This whole time. “Do you?”

Her eyes widened. Then closed tight. She shook her head against the counter and pressed her hand over her face.

She didn't know why it mattered so much. She was on the pill, and diseases could only happen to people who believed in the future.

And it still didn't uncurl before her, that future, not farther than this counter.

But he must have a future. Didn’t he? Even though a man like him lived on the edge of death all the time? How embarrassing to have this role in his future. Oh, hell, he wouldn't—“Please don't tell Chase.”

And then Vi would know, and the guys when she brought them desserts, and—

Embarrassment had a future, too, interestingly enough. Embarrassment was another way of being alive.

“You sure as hell don't think much of me, do you?” A faint edge slipped into his neutral voice. He stepped back from her.

She kept her face covered.

She could feel him watching her, but he hadn't come and that meant she was the only one exposed here. It wasn’t fair.

Behind her, he took a deep breath and let it audibly out. “I’ve got to go now,” he said finally.

She pressed her hand down harder on her face.

Callused fingers touched, just lightly, the nape of her neck. A stroke like tenderness.

And then he left.

She peeled her hand from her face to watch his back as the door closed on it. Straight shoulders, that prowling, lean grace of his movements gone stiff.

And just for a moment, she wondered if she should have gone with her first instinct—the one to curl up on his lap and beg him to hold her tight.





Chapter 8


“I still say she’s just using him for sex.” Ian’s voice. Jake checked just short of the door. Their team had been pulled from covert ops after Jake and Chase had had their covers blown the week before. Now they had been assigned to pursue a goal of greater cooperation between nations and their team had been set up in the barracks in the RAID garrison in Bièvres. Which meant they were living in an actual castle. On nearly forty hectares of graceful grounds like you saw in fairy tales, in a pretty little town of more of the same, forty minutes from the heart of Paris. One of these days, Jake hoped this deployment got unclassified and he could show his mom the photos. It was one hell of a long way from their little failed mining town in West Virginia.

“Don’t break his heart by telling him that.” Mark’s voice.

“He shouldn’t be getting in so far over his head in the first place,” Ian said. “I mean, come on. They’ve barely met. Why is his heart on the line?”

Fuck you, Ian.

“Because she’s a hot blonde in leather who threw knives at him? You know Chase.”

Oh. Jake drew a slow breath and stepped into the doorway.

“He’s acting like an idiot,” Ian said summarily. “Hot sex does not a relationship make.”

Yeah. No kidding.

“It’s not like there’s anything else,” Jake said, rather flatly. Ian and Mark were working on their gear, and Jake moved to his bunk to pull out his. They were going out tonight. In the wake of the latest terrorist attack attempt, RAID and GIGN and BRI, France’s internal counter-terrorist units, were conducting sweeping raids. Their team was accompanying RAID on tonight’s raid, a symbolic gesture with real world consequences. It was an opportunity to cooperate and to better understand French operations and the challenges the French faced conducting raids like this among their own citizens. But the three of them were symbols who carried guns and wore their plates.

Mark said nothing in answer to that, checking his weapons. Not much to say to such a depressing statement, really. He started to slide on the dust cap automatically, then stopped. In verdant France, dust wasn’t nearly the same problem.

“Who would want anything else?” Ian said. “Come on. Our choice of hot women, all the time, just like that?” He snapped his fingers. “Who wants to settle down?”

Mark lifted his gaze from his Sig and looked at Ian a moment. Jake focused on checking over his H&K. Neither called Ian on it. Bravado was bravado. An inexcusable sign of weakness in a combat situation, but in emotional situations…well, a man handled the emotional shithole this job made of their lives the best he could.

It was easy enough to find sex. Hell, it was just like that afternoon. Hot sex just dropped into their laps. Women couldn’t even look at them without thinking how fun they would be for a quick encounter, no strings and no tomorrow.

Jake gazed with grim intensity at his rifle, determined not to show anything on his face.