Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“I think I’d feel safer if you came with me.”
Seth’s balls tightened. Just because she wanted him to go with her didn’t mean she wanted sex. She had a lot on her mind with the break-in, and she’d feel safer if he was there. That’s all it was.
But damn, sitting outside the bathroom door and imagining her in the shower, her fingers gliding over her skin, was going to be the end of him.
When he didn’t move, Callie held out a hand. He stared at it. Lifted his gaze to hers. She was smiling, but the smile was starting to fade. Like maybe her confidence was taking a beating.
Still, he had to know.
“Let me be sure I understand you. You want me to go with you so you feel safer. Where do you want me? In the bathroom with you or waiting in the hall?”
Her eyes widened slightly. Then she giggled. Flipping giggled. He didn’t know why that sound got to him, but it did. Cute. Just like her.
He’d told her his darkest secret, the thing that woke him up at night, knowing in his gut she’d look at him in horror. Instead, she’d held him close and told him he was a good person. She’d turned him inside out with those words.
Now she was cracking his chest open with her giggle.
He didn’t know what it meant, but he wanted more of it.
“I don’t think you can do what I have in mind if you wait in the hall. As for where I want you, well, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to explain that part.”
Ah, now he got it. The surge of blood to his dick would have made him lightheaded if he’d been standing.
Well, maybe not really, but it was an impressive surge.
He got to his feet and took her hand. He felt the tremor in her fingers, and he tugged her toward him, wrapped her in his arms.
“You don’t have to do this, Callie. I’m not going anywhere, whether we have sex or not.”
Her fingers curled into his shirt. “I know. I want to. It’s been a long time for me. I’m not somebody who falls into bed easily, and honestly this feels so fast my head’s spinning. But I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to regret that I didn’t take this chance when I had it.”
“You’ll still have the chance next week. Next month.”
She shook her head, her grip on him tightening. “No. I need this now. You.” Her gaze dropped to his chest. “I feel like if we don’t do this, something bad will happen.”
“Callie,” he said, his throat tight. “That’s not a good reason.”
She tugged on his shirt, a growl in her throat. “Look here, mister, you promised me some licking of parts. You promised it today if I still wanted it, and I’m cashing in. I want to take a shower, I want you to go with me, and I want to run my hands over your body. I want to feel your dick inside me, and I want some earth-shattering orgasms because I spent a lot of time thinking about it in that bookstore last night. When I wasn’t thinking about murdery people coming after me, that is. Sexy times with you was my reward for going through the hell of waiting for somebody who wasn’t Mikhail to show up and stab me with a poisoned umbrella. If I’m going back to the lab tomorrow, I’m going with a smile on my face and an ache between my legs because I’ve had too much hot sex with my hot bodyguard.”
He wanted to laugh and throw her on the nearest mattress at the same time. Strip her naked, bury his face between her legs, and make her scream his name. Fucking hell, this woman turned him on.
Kane was wrong that he hadn’t hooked up with anyone since they’d moved to Alabama. There was a woman from Huntsville he’d gone out with a few times. Once they’d had sex, she’d started talking about weddings in an offhand way. He’d noped out of that situation pretty quick.
And maybe he’d nope out of this one if Callie mentioned white dresses and summer weddings, but he couldn’t imagine it. Not with the way he wanted her.
She was the last woman he’d ever thought he’d get naked with, simply because of the situation and her involvement in the Athena Project—and his prior belief that she was the most likely person to be their leak—but now she was the only one he wanted.
In four fucking days. He didn’t understand it, at all, but that’s where he was. His emotions, because he did have them contrary to his team’s belief, were caught up in her.
Her sweet vulnerability. Her love for her sister. The way she’d melted for Luna the instant she’d started petting her. Her fucking scraps of paper and her tweezers and her damn reading journals bursting at the seams from all the shit she glued in there. Her feminine bedroom with the pink roses everywhere. It was fucking girly nirvana, and it ought to give him hives, but it was hers and he wanted, more than anything, to make love to her on that bed. To be buried in her, listening to her moans and sighs, feeling her body wrapped around his as they came apart together.
“Well?” she demanded when he didn’t speak or move toward the bathroom. He heard the doubt in her voice, the vulnerability. The fear that he was about to tell her no, it was a mistake, he hadn’t meant a word of what he’d said to her last night.
So he did the only thing he could do. He hooked an arm behind her knees and lifted her in his arms. She wrapped hers around his neck as he started for the bathroom.
“So this is a yes?” She still sounded vulnerable, uncertain, despite the fact he was carrying her. Like she thought he was going to deposit her in the bathroom and pull the door closed with him standing in the hallway, being noble and self-sacrificing.
Fuck no, he wasn’t going to be noble.
He carried her into the bathroom and set her on her feet while pulling her wrinkled T-shirt over her head at the same time. “It’s a yes,” he growled.
And then he kissed her.