Chapter Four #4
His eyes lifted from his hands to my face without moving anything else, and for one horrible second, we stayed exactly like that, him kneeling between the line of my legs with two fingers tucked beneath my bikini and me trying very hard to pretend my breathing had not changed.
“Problem?” he asked.
The word came muffled through the mask, low and irritatingly calm.
“Y-your hands are cold.”
His eyes narrowed.
“They’re not.”
I hated that he was right.
He looked back down and adjusted the clip by a fraction, his knuckles brushing the exposed skin just above my hip bone.
The movement was precise enough that I should have been able to treat it like any other piece of mission prep.
Wolf wasn’t touching me like a man trying to get a reaction.
He was touching me like he had no reaction at all, and my body was just being an absolute fucking traitor about it.
He flattened the wire along my side with the backs of his fingers. His hand passed over bare skin beneath my ribs and stopped just short of the lower edge of the bikini top as I raised my arm for him.
“Higher.”
I lifted my arm higher and immediately felt the bikini top shift with it, exposing the lower curve of my breast to the cooler air. Wolf’s eyes flicked there once. Just once. Then back to the transmitter in his hand. The single glance made me more self-conscious than staring would have.
“Turn.”
I carefully turned my back to him while he held the wire, and the space between us disappeared until the front of his body was nearly against my back.
His mask hovered beside my shoulder, close enough that I could hear each slow breath filtering through the fabric, steady and controlled in a way that made me suddenly far too aware of my own.
The smell of him was stronger at this distance. Clean soap first, the same dry woodiness beneath it, then the faint trace of cigarette smoke that seemed permanently worked into his clothes no matter how recently he had showered.
I tried to focus on anything else. Wolf leaned forward and the front of his tactical belt pressed against the back of my hip with enough pressure for me to feel the rigid edge of the buckle and the heavier equipment clipped along it through the thin fabric of the bikini.
My breath caught.
His hand paused against my waist and for half a second, neither of us moved. My attention dropped toward his belt and Wolf’s voice came beside my ear.
“Hold still.”
“I am.”
“You moved.”
“Your belt is in my ass,” I hissed.
The silence behind me lasted exactly long enough to make me regret having a mouth.
“Then stop backing into it.”
Heat climbed straight up my neck.
“I wasn’t.”
“Mercer.”
“Fine.”
His fingers returned to the wire at my side as though we had not just had that conversation, and I stared straight ahead while he worked. The problem was that now I could feel every single place he touched me.
At last, Wolf withdrew his hand, stepped back and straightened out so completely that I almost wondered whether I had imagined this entire thing.
“Turn back around.”
He checked the microphone near the bikini strap without touching more skin than necessary and handed the receiver confirmation to Raven.
“Audio?”
Raven cleared his throat. “Clean.”
Wolf looked at me.
“Rules.”
I reached for the cover-up.
“Public areas only.”
“Keep going.”
I slid one arm into the linen shirt. “No upper floor. No interior private rooms. I don’t cross the hedge line below the cabanas. If Raven loses audio, I move into open space.”
Wolf waited.
I put my other arm through and let the cover-up fall around me.
“If you say extract, I leave.”
“Immediately.”
“Yes, Dad.”
Raven looked down so fast I almost laughed.
Wolf stepped closer.
“Don’t call me that again.”
The answer was quiet enough that the stupidest part of my brain immediately wondered whether there were other things he preferred being called. I buttoned the cover-up before my face could communicate that thought too.
“Anything else?”
“Kade appears, you confirm and stay inside the cover. You do not follow him somewhere we can’t support. Bellandi touches you, flirts with you or gets close, you let the cover dictate your response instead of getting offended.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Very generous of you.”
“It’s the job you argued for.”
“I know.”
His gaze dropped briefly to the place beneath the linen where the transmitter sat against my hip.
“You feel the unit shift or loosen, don’t start digging around for it in front of people. Go to the bathroom and tell Raven.”
“I can manage a bikini.”
“You couldn’t manage a shower curtain three days ago.”
“Did you just make a joke?”
Wolf’s expression went flat again.
“Vehicle in five.”
He turned away.
I looked at Raven. “He did.”
Raven unplugged one cable and began packing his field kit. “I heard nothing.”
“Coward.”
“Survivor.”
I checked the cover-up once more, picked up the small bag that belonged to Mia Morgan and followed Wolf toward the garage.
His large steps moved ahead of me, steady as ever. The black tactical belt sat low around his hips with the webbing folded where I had seen it during training. The hardware gave one last quiet click when he reached for the door.
Three days earlier, he had decided I would never belong in the field. Now he was opening the garage so I could walk into the first place ARC had reached before Cerberus emptied it.
He still didn’t trust me.
Fine.
I had a party to attend.