Chapter 6 #2
His lips leave my mouth, travel to my ear. “Either grope me now, or I’m copping a feel of your breasts.”
Holy … What the fuck?
When his hand slides up from my waist, I immediately loop my arms around his neck, fingers threading into his dark hair.
I lift up on tiptoe, lean into his kiss, meet his passion with my own, and lose myself in the heat building between us.
This is what I’ve fantasized about—being claimed by a warrior, dominated by a man strong enough to simply take what he wants.
And he wants me to grope him.
Sure. I can do that.
I shift my hands down, over his shoulders, around his waist, lower still. Hands splayed against his ass, I yank him against me. At least that was my plan. He’s immovable, which means I fall into him and press right against the hard, rigid length of his arousal.
A soft moan escapes my throat, and the sound snaps me back to reality like a bucket of cold water.
Oh God. What am I doing?
I’ve just thrown myself into kissing a man I barely know, in broad daylight, on a public street, while people are trying to kill me. The realization hits me like a physical blow, and I try to pull back, but his hand at the back of my head keeps me exactly where he wants me.
“Don’t pull away. That’s an order.” His rough command sends liquid heat straight through my core, making my knees go weak and my heart flutter against my ribs.
“I’m going to touch your breasts. I have to sell this.
” The authoritative tone liquefies me from the inside out, and I find myself melting against him instead of resisting.
He spins me slightly until my back hits the car, then leans over me, his body pressing flush against mine.
There’s no mistaking his arousal now—the hard length of him pressed against my stomach—but he doesn’t seem to care about discretion.
He just keeps kissing me, pulling me closer, as if this is about much more than keeping me alive. Then his hand cups my breast.
Those seconds stretch into an eternity of being held against Cooper’s chest, feeling his strength and warmth, breathing in his scent. When he finally releases me, I feel cold and strangely bereft.
“Clear.” He steps back, professional distance returning like a wall between us. “Car. Now.”
He opens the door for me. The gesture is so perfectly gentlemanly that it creates a jarring contrast with the warrior who just claimed my mouth like he owned it.
He waits while I settle into the seat, then closes the door quietly, as if he hadn’t just kissed me senseless against the side of the vehicle.
As he walks around to the driver’s side, I catch him glancing at my lips through the windshield.
That kiss affected him as much as it did me.
He pauses at the driver’s door and makes a subtle adjustment to his trousers, apparently unfazed by the evidence of his arousal.
The casual way he handles his body’s response only reinforces how different he is from every other man I’ve known.
The car settles and shifts with his weight as he slides into the driver’s seat. The interior feels like sanctuary after the exposure of walking across campus.
“Where are we going?”
“Safe house. Virginia.”
“How far?”
“Hour. Maybe ninety minutes with traffic.”
An hour trapped in a car with a man who just kissed me senseless as a tactical maneuver. A man whose touch makes me forget every rational thought, whose voice makes me want to obey without question, whose presence makes me feel simultaneously safer and more vulnerable than I’ve ever been.
This is going to be a very long drive.
“Cooper?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you. For getting me out of there safely.”
His eyes meet mine for just a moment. “Job’s not done yet.”
I should say something about the kiss. The words hover on my tongue, desperate to escape, but what exactly would I say? Did you feel what I felt back there? Was that real or just tactics? Because I’m pretty sure my knees are still weak from the way you commanded me not to pull away.
But what if I’m reading too much into it?
What if those kisses were purely professional—just another tool in his tactical arsenal? Except … He was aroused. Unmistakably, obviously aroused.
Men can’t fake that kind of physical response, can they?
And the way he looked at my lips afterward, the adjustment he made to his trousers without any embarrassment—that seemed personal, not professional.
Then again, maybe physical arousal doesn’t mean anything to a man like Cooper. Maybe it’s just biology, a natural response to kissing any attractive woman, regardless of any emotional involvement.
Maybe I’m overthinking this entire situation because I’ve never experienced anything as intense as his mouth claiming mine.
The silence stretches between us, thick with unspoken questions and the lingering heat of what happened against that car.
I want to know what he’s thinking, what those kisses meant to him, whether this is just another day at the office or something more.
But asking feels too vulnerable, too revealing of how completely he’s affected me.
Something fundamental shifted during that kiss, something that goes far beyond professional protection. The question is whether Cooper felt it too, or if I’m reading too much into what was purely a survival tactic.
Whatever this is between us, whatever started in that cold tunnel and exploded during that kiss, it’s only going to get more complicated.
And somehow, despite the danger and uncertainty, I’m looking forward to finding out exactly how complicated it can get.