Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(39)

That was nice. That he eased the tension out of her.

Given that his entire life had been devoted to keeping people safe, it was nice to see it work in person. Mostly in person he only got to see the people his presence terrorized. Break into a compound in the middle of the night, covered in weapons and night goggles, to arrest all the men in the place, and you tended to terrorize. Somehow, at nineteen when he’d signed up, he’d thought he would only scare bad guys. And that bad guys weren’t really human.

Lina’s gaze settled on his bare torso. He tightened his muscles subtly to try to leave a lasting impression.

She managed to get that last bit of panic stuffed down into the tight spot in her middle where she must keep it—he knew it well—and her mouth eased. “I love your skin,” she said, stretching out her hand to rest on his belly.

A little twitch ran through his body at the touch—the first one he had allowed—but otherwise he managed to keep himself pretty steady. “I like yours, too.” He traced her shoulder again, the smooth gold. Resilient skin. Skin that could handle a beating from the sun.

His own skin kept mentioning to him, You know I was designed for a rainy, northern island, right? Why the hell do you keep taking me to the Middle East?

“Has anybody ever tried to kiss every single one of your freckles?” she asked, spreading her fingers against him, her eyes tracing him in fascination.

The shock of that thought tightened his whole body. Oh, shit, this was not going to end well for him. “There must be a million.” He tried to make his voice dismissive. Casual. We’re just hooking up for sex. That kind of casual.

A sparkle of sensual mischief in her eyes that just slipped right between the folds of his towel and grabbed him down there like he’d never taken the edge off in the shower. “I bet I’ve placed a million sea salt flakes precisely in my life. I’m pretty patient and thorough.”

Hell. The helplessly hungry vision of that lithe, strong body and that pretty heart face curling up close to him, slowly, thoroughly pressing kisses to every millimeter of his body. She carved her demons out of ice and fought them with a chainsaw. She turned them into sugar and made them do what she wanted. How was he supposed to withstand her?

Her fingers shifted over his skin, and he looked down at them against his flat belly as she gently pressed one of his darker freckles and then another and another.

Oh, hell. This is why you should have gone. Before she started messing you up even worse.

“They’re so intangible,” she murmured, fascinated. “I love how they don’t have any texture at all beyond smooth skin. It’s like I’m trying to catch moonlight.”

Whereas he’d always expected her skin to be smooth. Gold and warm under his hands. And it had been.

“Knowing me, I probably could freckle just from moonlight,” he said ruefully.

She laughed, curling closer to him on the bed, the bathrobe slipping a little on her body. “I think the sun is obsessed with you. She’s got some pathological need to keep touching you.” Her eyes met his, wry and self-deprecating. “Kind of like me.”

Another shock through his whole body. He found it hard to breathe again. Damn it, his initial instincts to tighten his ab muscles against a sucker punch whenever she approached had been spot on. “Obsessed with me?”

“Surely you noticed?” Still self-deprecating.

“I thought you said anybody would do.”

She winced, and her body tightened a little in on itself, her hand falling back to the comforter.

Idiot. But—“Well,” he challenged, overriding his own brain telling him to shut up, “wouldn’t they?”

She rolled away from him, pulling her knees up, her face growing stubborn. And a little desperate.

Oh, shit, shut up, Jake. It’s not her fault. You of all people should understand.

You could understand someone’s actions and still suffer from them, though. Especially if you were an idiot.

Her eyebrows started to crinkle together. She rolled suddenly back in his direction to search his face. “You hate it?”

He probably should have a rule that when he was hurt and desperately sexually frustrated he just kept his damn mouth shut. He looked down at the comforter, running his thumb over it, planning on keeping his damn mouth shut. “Yes,” he heard himself say.

Her eyebrows knit more deeply. “But…why didn’t you say no?”

He gave a minute shrug of one shoulder. “I might have a tiny case of hero-worship.” Tiny, yeah, right.

She pulled back, her face crumpling in utter bafflement. “On me?”

That pissed him off. He met her eyes. “Yeah, on you. What, did you even look at yourself in the mirror just now?”

Her lips parted. She flushed and gripped the bathrobe to make sure it was covering her. “That’s not heroism.”

“Yeah,” he said, increasingly pissed. “It is.” He grabbed her hand, where the spots of healing skin showed from the cold burns she had received punching a terrorist after her nitrogen soaked his sweatshirt. “Someone—a family member—tried to kill you and the people you love. And in response, you’re seizing life with both hands. Driving death away. That’s heroism.”

Not to mention fighting terrorists with a damn bucket of liquid nitrogen and her own body. No body armor, nothing but flesh and bone.