Seal of Honor(53)

Instead, he brushed back a lock of her hair. “Sleep.”

“Hmm.” Her eyes fluttered shut and a second later, she was gone.

Wishing he were that pillow she cuddled so close and cursing himself for the unprofessionalism of that thought, he sat on the edge of the mattress and watched her for a long time. Her braid had loosened, spilling pale golden brown hair over the paler gold blankets. Her eyes moved restlessly behind their lids, and every once in a while she made a small sound of protest and hugged the pillow tighter. He reached out, traced the curve of her cheek with one finger, and she settled again with a soft sigh.

Ah, hell.

He started to remove the pillow from her grip and caught a whiff of himself. Whew. He couldn’t subject her to that stench. Shower first, then sleep—with Audrey tucked safely in his arms for a couple hours.

Sleeping together like that wasn’t unprofessional, right?





Chapter Fourteen

When the bed sank and Gabe’s muscular arm slid under her, Audrey woke. His skin was still warm and dewy from a shower, and he’d shaved. His hard jaw felt baby smooth as he nuzzled her ear. He pulled her close, his natural male spice and some kind of flowery soap scent enveloping her. Yum. She wanted to bury her nose in his shoulder and breathe in nothing else, but that would require moving, and she was quite comfortable now that he was in bed with her.

Except for the blooming ache between her thighs.

She smiled without opening her eyes. “You smell like a garden.”

He grunted. “It’s the shampoo. Some girly designer shit. I had no choice.”

And he sounded really unhappy about that. Audrey stifled a laugh in the pillow, sure he wouldn’t appreciate it. “It’s nice.”

“I’ll be sure to order a bottle,” he said, deadpan.

She huffed out a breath in exasperation. “Do you ever get sick of being so sarcastic?”

“Do you ever get sick of being so contrary?”

She elbowed him in the gut—and, ow! About like jamming her elbow into a block of stone. But she still heard a satisfactory umph in reply. “I am not contrary.”

“Bullshit.”

“Hey!” She moved to elbow him again, but he caught it and in one deft move had her on her back, pinned to the mattress with a big hand on each arm and one thick leg locked over both of hers.

With his pelvis pressed to her hip, she’d have to be a dolt not to recognize the bulge she felt there as anything less than carnal male interest. About freaking time. Despite their increasingly dicey situation, or perhaps because of it, she’d been dying for an opportunity to get her hands on him again. And this time, he wasn’t going to talk her out of doing what she wanted to do to him.

“Stop. Hitting. Me,” he said through his teeth.

Why? He needed to get hit every once in a while to remind him he was no superhero. But saying that aloud wouldn’t improve her chances of getting him naked in the next five minutes, so she gave her most innocent smile instead. “Okay. How about I do this?”

With her arm still in his grip she couldn’t move her hand far, but managed to wiggle it close enough to his crotch to cup him through his jeans. Pity he’d put the things back on after his shower.

No, on second thought, it wasn’t. Now she’d have the great pleasure of stripping them off him.

The way he reacted to her touch, you’d think she prodded his family jewels with a branding iron. He jerked away and rolled to a sitting position on the side of the bed, his back to her. And what an amazing back, a perfect V of muscle that made her mouth water. She wondered if he’d flee in terror if she licked her way down the indentation of his spine.

Hmm. Only one way to find out.

Audrey crawled across the bed and placed an open-mouthed kiss on the back of his neck. On a groan, his head dropped forward. She took that as encouragement and experimentally ran her tongue along his spine, pausing long enough to give him a love bite on the elaborate tattoo covering his shoulder blade.

“Audrey, Jesus. Stop. We can’t—”

“That’s not what you said last night. Or this morning.”

“I was trying to comfort you, give you something to focus on besides the guerillas and what they might do to us. That’s all.”

Oh, that hurt. But only for a second, because no way would he respond like this if that really was all.

“Liar.” She shook her head and scooted off the bed to kneel on the floor in front of him. He gritted his teeth so hard a muscle jumped in his cheek and the fingers of one hand kept clenching and unclenching.

Good. She wanted him riled up. She wanted him to lose control. She just plain old wanted him. And she knew he wanted her, because the evidence was right there in that massive erection. So why did he keep fighting it, the stupid man?