Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Are you okay?” Griffin softly asked, the sound of the bedroom door of Carter’s jet closing behind him. Savanna had excused herself to the bedroom to change her clothes and catch her breath for a second or two. To process everything that had happened tonight. And the fact that Nick wasn’t a bad guy. Not anymore, at least.
She slowly turned, still clutching her shirt to her chest that she’d been about to pull on when Griffin slipped inside. He was still wearing his white dress shirt and black pants, but he’d lost a few buttons, the bow tie, and the jacket. Still devilishly handsome.
“The door wasn’t locked. What if it’d been someone else who’d walked in here?” His voice had taken on that deep tone she craved.
“Then I guess they would have seen me in my bra. I don’t see what the big deal is,” she casually tossed out, not sure why she was playing with fire.
The growly man standing before her was the same alpha male she’d encountered on the dance floor earlier. The one who’d lost his mind at the sight of another man dancing with her. His possessiveness had been a contradiction to what he’d said before they left Santorini, but the way he’d kissed her for their “cover story” had been anything but fake. He’d delivered something different in that heated kiss in the hall . . . acceptance .
Acceptance that he could no more fight the pull between them than he could fight gravity.
Savanna set the shirt on the bed, allowing him to take in the sight of her wearing only jeans and the pink lace bra. Her nipples strained against the lace, begging for Griffin’s touch.
“You love to sass me, don’t you?” He pushed away from the door and closed the small bit of space between them. Dipping his gaze to her chest, he reached up and pulled one bra cup down to palm her breast. The touch of his strong warm hand on her breast stoked that fire he’d started and had her releasing a shaky exhale.
“It’s not my fault you bring it out of me,” she whispered, lifting her chin.
“Is that right? So I’m the only one who gets to see this side of you?” He slid his free hand around her hip and smacked her ass just hard enough to draw out a gasp. She pushed back against his palm, craving that mix of pain and pleasure that only he could give her. Had that desire always been inside her, just lying dormant until Griffin came along and woke it up? Whatever the reason, she didn’t want to go back to the old Savanna.
“Well, you were, but I was under the impression you were done with me.”
He stilled his hand caressing her ass as if remembering what he’d said to her back in Greece. “I don’t think I can quit you, Sugar.”
She closed her eyes, and when his hand slid around to the zipper of her jeans, she set her forehead against his chest. “You can’t?” she asked, wanting to make sure she hadn’t heard him wrong.
Instead of answering her question, he quickly used both hands to yank her panties and jeans down to her ankles, and she squealed in surprise.
Now on his knees, he buried his fingers into the flesh of her thighs and looked up at her with those deep brown eyes. “A DEVGRU team has been dispatched to go after the terrorist Stefanos presold the Elysium Project to,” he casually shared the news before sliding his tongue along her clit.
“Oh?” she breathed out.
“Mm-hm.” He added more pressure with his tongue, and were they really doing this?
Of course, for a minute back at Stefanos’s estate, she’d thought Griffin might take her against that wall. The heat between them had been off the charts.
“I guess we’re lucky Stefanos is so afraid of that terrorist he sold the project to that he easily squawked and gave up his name in an effort to save himself,” he added between gentle licks.
The man was torturing her. Job talk followed by long sweeps of his gifted tongue. Why did it arouse her even more? He was a devil playing a game of cat-and-mouse with her.
“Tell me more,” she demanded, gripping his shoulders as he plunged two fingers inside her tight walls, and she stifled a loud, breathy moan.
“There’s a team of FBI agents watching the engineer, so if he tries to make a run for it before we save Sydney, they’ll stop him.”
In. Out. He moved his fingers in a slow rhythm as his tongue danced over her sensitive skin as if he hadn’t just shared something important.
“And we can’t send people to get to Sydney ahead of time?” she asked before biting her bottom lip so she didn’t cry out.
As crazy as it seemed, she needed this moment with him possibly more than the promise of a tomorrow. Because she knew in her heart that he’d give her that, too, when he was ready. When he’d worked through whatever baggage he’d been carrying around for years. And she knew a thing or two about baggage. So, she’d give this man time to figure things out if he needed it.
“Nick says they won’t be able to find the location without him, and he trusts Sydney to protect herself until we’re there,” he said, mumbling against her abdomen and punctuating it with a nip of his teeth.
“Griffin,” she hissed.
“Don’t move,” he commanded, which was downright impossible, but the deep, authoritative order had her body scorching hot. “Good girl,” he said a few intense seconds later, followed by, “You can come now.”
And she released so flipping hard that her toes curled and her mind officially powered off.
What just happened?
Griffin slowly kissed his way up to her breasts, rising to his feet as he did so, and placed a final, chaste kiss on her forehead. “What are you doing to me?” He grinned and shook his head.
“To you, huh?” Her legs were so wobbly she nearly collapsed into his arms as she found her breath again.
“You’ve cast some type of spell on me, I swear.”
“Oh yeah?” She lifted a brow. “I’ve bewitched you?”
“That’s an understatement.”
She swallowed and lifted her chin. “But the real answer is that I belong to you, remember?”
He cupped her chin and drew her in for a kiss but stopped when someone knocked.
At least the knock came post -orgasm.
“You ready? Nick’s hoping to talk to you,” Jesse called out through the door.
“Be right out,” she told Jesse as Griffin eased his face away from hers. “We’ll talk after.”
“After Nick?”
He picked up her shirt as she fixed her jeans back in place. “After Sydney is safe.”
Once her shirt was on, he opened the door, and they went out to where Nick sat.
There was a gauze bandage wrapped around his head, and his eye was still swollen shut, but he was sitting upright and looked a little better. Painkillers and plenty of water seemed to have helped.
Savanna sat opposite Nick, and Griffin assumed the seat alongside her. She wanted to hold his hand, to seek comfort from his touch, but she set her palms on her jeaned thighs instead to try and get through the conversation with a man her late husband had never been able to forgive. Looking at him was like looking at Marcus, though, and it wasn’t easy.
The rest of Griffin’s team, as well as Jesse, sat near the cockpit, most likely to give Savanna some space.
“How’d you start working with MI6?” Griffin spoke up when it was clear her words were still stuck somewhere between Is this really happening and What the hell is going on?
“It’s not like that.” Nick set the water bottle on the empty seat beside him. “Interpol arrested me in 2014 while I was breaking into the vault of a private home to steal a rare artifact. They cut me a deal, help them out, and no prison time.”
“Help them how?” she whispered, leaning forward a bit, her knees nearly touching Nick’s.
“Go undercover?” Griffin asked him, and Nick nodded.
“They wanted me to use my skills to infiltrate various criminal enterprises and feed them information. But one of the agents also said something to me that struck me. And they clearly did their homework on me before making me the deal.”
“What?” Savanna’s voice cracked that time.
“He said this could be my chance to earn back my brother’s trust. To do the right thing. In 2014, Marcus was still alive. The agent knew my brother had been in the military, and they somehow also knew we’d lost contact over the years. I wasn’t sure if I could do the right thing, to be honest. I didn’t trust myself, but I decided to try. Better than doing time, I decided. And if I could do it, maybe I could prove to Marcus that I wasn’t such a bad guy. I really wanted to try for him.” And now it was his voice breaking.
Nick’s one good eye closed, and Savanna was doing her best not to cup her mouth and cry.
“He died before I had a chance to let him know I was doing good.” Nick slowly opened his eye again, and an unexpected tear escaped. “I’ve been on loan to various agencies around the world since. And this past year, with MI6.”
Tears rolled down Savanna’s cheeks, and she was unable to stop them from falling. She noticed Griffin watching her from the corner of his eye.
“My cover’s blown now, so I don’t know if they’ll throw me in jail since I can’t be of use to them anymore. Not that it matters, I guess.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Savanna spoke up as if she could ever truly do anything about that, but she’d try. A.J. had pull with the President, and Gray’s dad was Secretary of Defense. Surely, she could get him some sort of immunity, get-out-of-jail card. “But where’d the money you’ve been sending me come from? It was from you, right?” she asked when Nick remained quiet. “Was that from your old, um, work?”
“No, I knew you’d never want dirty money. And my brother would roll over in his grave if I did that,” he remarked. “They seized everything I had when I started working for the agencies. After Marcus died, though, I renegotiated the deal. I requested ten thousand to be set aside every month for you, or I wouldn’t help anymore.”
Wow.
“From Interpol to MI6 and so on.” Nick nodded. “It’s clean. Don’t feel guilty you spent it.”
“She didn’t,” Griffin told him.
“What? Why not?” Nick leaned back in his seat. “Oh, because you assumed . . .” He didn’t need to finish that line of thought. Looking at her now, he had to know she was like Marcus, and she’d never spend money she believed had come from an illegal source.
“Thank you for trying to take care of me.” She reached for Nick’s hand and lightly squeezed it.
“I wish Marcus could have seen that I’d changed.” Nick kept hold of her hand as he looked up at her.
Savanna turned to look out the window of the jet, and a fluttery sensation filled her chest. “Oh, I think he knows.”