Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(34)

And f*ck everyone who grouped the victims of terrorism and its perpetrators together just because it was easier than seeing individual people.

“I haven’t lied to you at all,” Jake said evenly.

She turned back and just looked at him.

“I haven’t,” he repeated, holding her eyes.

“I’m safe?”

He was silent a long moment. His expression grew serious, a little grim. Even talking about this made him look more lethal, and he prowled to the windows, checking the street and rooftops. “You’re as safe as we can make you, barring relocation and a change of identity.”

“No.” She held up her hand. “I’m one of the top pastry chefs in France, and heading higher, and I’m not turning into something else.” A victim. The cousin of a terrorist. The media symbol of Arab Woman Who Wasn’t a Terrorist, as if that was some freaking fluke. Or even just, what, some relocated anonymous baker in a friendly little village. She was Lina Farah, top pastry chef. Her place was the one she had earned, and she was not giving that up. “I worked my butt off to be who I am.”

And if she needed to work harder to stay who she was…well, then, she would just work harder.

Be braver.

Jake turned from the window. The late summer light fell on his freckles as he gazed at her, and she could almost imagine that light kissing his skin, the first little romantic overture in the conception of another freckle. She could imagine that light kissing him all over, obsessively in love with his skin and his body and goo-goo-ga-ga over all their freckle children.

“Trust me,” he said. “I understand that your reputation and your career are more important to you than your life.”

“Because yours are, too,” she realized slowly. A heavy sinking sensation in her middle. Wow. It felt a lot…harder to swallow, on this side. The fact that he would sacrifice his life to his reputation.

What does your reputation matter? she wanted to yell at him suddenly. Next to your life?

But she of all people should understand. Even to be safe, even to live, she could not give up what made her alive. The heart and purpose of who she was.

“Oh.” She stared at him.

He gazed back, hazel eyes level.

She flushed up to her forehead suddenly and remembered that she was only wearing a bathrobe, her hair a tangled, sopping mess.

“I need to get dressed.” She took a step back.

“Yeah.” His tone flattened subtly. He turned to study the street again. “If you want to.”

The way he looked at a street was different from the way she looked at it, even when she was struggling under a wave of paranoia. He knew where to look, for one. Up, down, high, low, at every window. Scanning them all, automatically, as if he didn’t even know anymore how to just glance at a view. He had to check for the flicker on a rifle, the suspicious movement, the person with bulky clothing or a backpack that might hide a bomb.

She bit the inside of her lip.

He didn’t look back at her as she hurried into her room. She knew because she did look back. At the straight, strong shoulders, the quiet, the sense of danger.

She locked her bedroom door, which she’d started doing ever since the attack. She locked every door she could lock between her and someone bursting in.

Then she stood there for a second, wondering if he had heard the click and if so, how it had made him feel.

Like she trusted him to use him for sex, but didn’t trust him not to force his way into her bedroom?

What if he did come into her bedroom…

She picked up her comb and ran it through her hair.

What if she hadn’t locked the door? What if he came behind her now and took the bottom of the bathrobe and lifted it up to squeeze the dripping ends of her hair gently dry? What if that exposed her bare butt to him and he nestled his body up against her back and gently began to rub the terry bathrobe against her body, drying the moisture that still clung to her skin.

Her nipples peaked against the terry.

What if he pulled the panels of the bathrobe apart, to expose those nipples, right here, standing behind her so he could watch her in the mirror, so she could watch herself, still so perfectly alive and human, and he…

She closed her eyes.

Her hands snuck up to rub the terry against her breasts.

No one caught her at it. And it felt so much better than fear.

Silently, carefully, as if someone might hear a brush of cloth and guess what she was doing, she slid her fingers under the panels of terry and touched her bare nipples. Beaded tight. She savored the shape of herself there a moment, the sensations that shot through her body, that made her hungry and sleepily wistful, tighter there and softer and lusher other places.

What if he rubbed his big hand down over her belly, rubbing terry against her, until he cupped between her thighs. What if he stirred that terry cloth against her over and over, his hand so much bigger and warmer than hers was, it would make that life-center of her body feel so much more encompassed and secure and eager…

What if he parted the folds of the bathrobe, gentle and firm, and—

She caught what she was doing—it was the dissatisfying smallness and tentativeness of her own hand, compared to the one she was imagining. Her eyes flew open as she yanked her hand away to grip her comb again. She stared at her dilated eyes in the mirror.

Now she was aroused, though. She wanted more. She didn’t want to stop halfway.