16. Lyric
CHAPTER 16
LYRIC
The morning after always sucks.
That was one of my mother’s favorite lessons—usually muttered while popping aspirin and chasing it with a little hair of the dog.
She was wrong about a lot, but she was right about this.
I turned the shower as hot as I could stand it, hoping the scalding water would wash away the feeling of Flynn’s hands on my skin, his mouth on my neck. Every inch of my body ached—a delicious, bone deep soreness that came from being thoroughly, gloriously fucked.
I closed my eyes, letting the water cascade over me, and tried to forget the look on Flynn’s face when I’d called last night a mistake. The hurt that had flashed through those amber eyes before he’d masked it with anger.
It wasn’t a lie, exactly. It had been a mistake. Just not for the reasons he thought.
The mistake wasn’t the sex. The sex had been mind-blowing—raw and primal and exactly what I’d needed. The mistake was letting myself feel something beyond the physical release. The mistake was the way my chest had tightened when I’d woken up to find him watching me with something dangerously close to tenderness.
The mistake was wanting more.
Men like Flynn Shepherd were temporary by design. They were human wrecking balls, destroying everything in their path, and leaving behind nothing but rubble. My entire career was built on maintaining control, on never giving anyone power over me.
One night with Flynn had already cracked my carefully constructed walls. A second night would shatter them completely.
I couldn’t let that happen. Not when we were knee-deep in a mission that could cost lives if I lost focus. Not when I still had to face Moreau and secure Sentinel. Not when my place on this team was hanging by a thread.
I stepped out of the shower and wrapped myself in a towel, the steam following me in a cloud as I walked back into the bedroom, steeling myself for a fight.
Flynn was gone.
I should have felt relieved. Instead, something hollow opened up in my chest.
No. I’d done the right thing. The only thing. Anything else would’ve been reckless and dangerous. Sloppy.
I toweled myself off roughly, trying to scrub away the memories of his hands on me, his mouth, the way he’d looked at me like I was something precious instead of just another body. Another conquest.
But the ghost of him lingered everywhere—in the faint scent of his cologne that clung to the rumpled sheets, in the throb between my thighs that reminded me with every step that I’d let him in. That I’d begged for him.
“Stupid,” I muttered, yanking a brush through my wet hair harder than necessary, ripping through the tangles. “So fucking stupid.”
My reflection stared back at me from the vanity’s mirror, lips still slightly swollen, a faint bruise blooming on the side of my breast where his mouth had nipped and sucked.
Heat flushed my skin at the memory and pooled between my legs.
Ugh. I threw down the brush in exasperation with myself and told my traitorous reflection, “No.”
I couldn’t afford to care about Flynn Shepherd. I couldn’t afford to care about anyone.
Focus on the mission. Nothing else matters.
I dressed in a black Tom Ford jumpsuit with a deep-V that plunged nearly to my navel and a wide belt cinched at my waist with a gold buckle. I slid matching chunky gold bracelets onto my wrists and strapped on heels sharp enough to kill. Finally, I dealt with my hair, twisting it into a severe chignon with not a hair out of place.
No one looking at me would see the woman who shattered in Flynn Shepherd’s arms last night.
They’d see cold, untouchable Elisa Deveraux.
And that was exactly who I needed to be right now because beneath my carefully constructed exterior, I was unraveling fast.