Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(35)

She swallowed, glancing at the locked door. Would he start to wonder what she was doing in here that was taking her so long? Would she be able to face him immediately after, as if nothing had happened?

Look at that. You imagined a bit of a future again.

She gripped the panels of her bathrobe closed with one hand and went to the bedroom door.

In her small apartment, she only had to open it to see him. He still stood at the window, back to her. A strong silhouette. Tall. Straight shoulders. Lean hips. Darkness against light, a stranger. At this angle, she couldn’t even see his freckles.

“Jake,” she said, very low.

He turned. She loved how quiet he was. How smoothly and silently he moved, as if he had no need to make noise to impact the world. He didn’t have any of that cocky, show-offiness to him that Chase and Ian both radiated. And he felt more powerful for it.

And, God, she loved his freckles.

She smoothed her hands over her bathrobe nervously, and her nipples ached against the rub of the terry cloth.

“Do you, ah—would you, ah—” She gestured to indicate her body.

He stood still in the window. All dark silhouette, impossible to read his face.

Frustrated at her lack of courage—how could it be harder to say this out loud the second time?—she loosed the sash of her bathrobe.

The panels fell slightly open, what must be a line of exposure right up the center of her pelvis to the hollow of her throat.

He said nothing. Still in silhouette. Still impossible to read.

Embarrassment caught up with her, sweeping up her in a wave, and she clutched the panels closed again, stepping back into her bedroom.

He moved away from the window.

And with one long, prowling step came after her.





Chapter 10


When he clicked the door shut behind him, Lina stood still in front of him, her breath shortening until her whole body felt too tight. Now she could see him as more than a male shape. Now he was a person again, kissed all over in freckles, the sun a nymphomaniac and he her obsession of choice.

The sun had kissed him right up to his lower row of eyelashes, and over his eyelids, and down the hard curve of his biceps and the sinews of his forearms. The sun had clearly been completely invasive and inappropriate with him and done things she shouldn’t have done.

Lina was pretty sure people with freckles were supposed to be cute and snub-nosed or something, but in Jake’s case that would be like thinking a hunting lion was cute because it had a fluffy mane. He wasn’t cute at all. He was sexy as hell. And he held her eyes as he reached behind him and locked the door.

She couldn’t swallow. Her whole body felt tight with anticipation. Future. The next second, when he touches me. The moment when he lowers me back on that bed.

Guards outside. Nothing can touch us here. Except each other.

She closed her eyes, her head tilting back and her lips parting.

But he didn’t touch her.

She peeked between her lashes, long, black lashes, better for hiding her gaze than his. But then, he hid everything he was thinking and feeling behind a very difficult to read face.

“You, too, this time,” she whispered suddenly. “Not just…me. You, too.”

“Just because you choose to let me have your body doesn’t mean you get to say what I do with mine,” he said evenly.

Oh. That sounded…oddly like something she might have to say to a man. Her eyebrows pleated a little, although she couldn’t quite figure out why his words made her uncomfortable. What man did not leap at the fantasy of a strange woman opening her bathrobe to him and stepping back into her bedroom to invite him to follow?

Weren’t all men supposed to leap at that?

“If you don’t want to—” She tightened her hold on her bathrobe.

“Yeah, I know.” That faint, clipped edge to his voice. “You’ll find someone else.”

Well…yeah. She might. Someone big and strong, who wouldn’t ask questions and who would just let her focus on sex.

She’d find somebody. Maybe not as strong and sexy as him, but it was just for mindless, oblivion sex. It wasn’t like she was looking for a guy she could spend her life with. She might not even have a life to spend. She’d nearly run out of all life a week ago.

It was a big city. She could probably find somebody she could make do with.

Her mouth drooped as she tried to imagine it, though. All the imaginings made her skin crawl a little, left a bad taste in her mouth. “Not as sexy as you,” she said honestly.

His eyebrows went up a little, and one corner of his lips quirked, just slightly. “Well, that’s something.”

She raised a hand and placed it carefully, fingers spread, on his chest. Wow. Hot and strong and resilient. “You know that, don’t you? How sexy you are?”

“Feel free to tell me more about it,” he said and reached behind him to—

Oh. That was a gun. That he was setting on her dresser. It sat dully there, cold and real.

He set something else there.

That was a knife. Sheathed.

He glanced at her, then pulled off the loose, open shirt he had been wearing that helped conceal that gun and tossed it over both weapons, so they were hidden in a fall of cloth.

She felt very cold again, and she didn’t think she wanted to do this after all.