by C. J. Miller
Massaging her breasts with his right hand, he slid his left hand lower to the top of her pants. He shimmied them down her thighs, and she kicked them off.
“Tell me if I do anything you don’t like.” Hooking his thumbs in the sides of her panties, he pulled them off and tossed them out of the way.
She unsnapped her bra, and it joined her clothes on the floor. She was absolutely bare before him, and he took a moment to drink in her beauty.
His pants had to stay on. They were unzipped, but he needed the physical barrier. He could too easily forget, climb on top of her, and shove inside her. Lust was making him forget the rules.
He reached between her legs, but she was holding her knees together. He parted her thighs with a nudge of his hand. “Open for me.”
She did and he moved her legs further, spreading her feet to the edges of the bed. He blew across her and then slid a finger inside her. She grabbed his hand and gasped.
“That feels so good,” she said.
He moved his finger in and out and then added another. Two fingers were enough. He could try for three, but it might hurt her. “You are so tight.”
“Griffin, I need you to hold me.”
He’d give her whatever she needed. The preciousness of what they were doing wasn’t lost on him. She wasn’t a relationship-weary operative with dozens of experiences with men.
He shifted to slide next to her, cradling her against him, propping himself on his elbow so he could look at her. Adding his thumb to the motion between her thighs, he moved in small circles, pressing lightly and watching her face to gauge her reaction.
She closed her eyes and lifted her hips, as if seeking more. The bliss written on her face and the soft moans from her throat made it almost too tempting for him to remove his pants and slide inside her.
The fit would be unbelievably tight, but she wanted him. Griffin marshaled his control. He couldn’t cross that line with her. They had a professional relationship. They weren’t a couple. With his hand inside her, however, this was a contrary thought. Even as he recognized that, he couldn’t stop.
She was close to finishing, and he wanted to be the first man to give her an orgasm with his hand. Her breath came in quicker pants and she was pressing hard against his fingers. If they were having sex, this is when she would urge him to move harder and faster, and he would willingly oblige.
She trembled around him, making the most sensual noises, and then stilled, looking at him, astonished.
He removed his fingers from her slowly. She hadn’t said anything, and he had the impression he might have done something wrong. He hadn’t done this with another woman and had it not lead to sex. He was ready for another round. He ignored the impulse to take this further.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“You. Only you.”
She blushed and moved closer to him. “Will you sleep here?”
On a single bed? They’d be pressed together all night, and he liked his space. It would be uncomfortable. He felt the word no on his tongue, but decided against denying her. A little discomfort to please her was worth it.
* * *
Kit couldn’t sleep. Griffin was behind her, his heavy arm around her, his breath light in her hair.
She wanted to have sex with him again. She wanted him to work that same magic with his hands. But she didn’t know how to ask him. She pressed her rear end against him and his hand came to her hip. “Sleep.”
She wiggled more. “I don’t want to sleep.”
He growled. “You want sleep. You’ll regret it in the morning.”
“I know what I will and won’t regret. I will not regret anything I do with you.”
He groaned. “You’re killing me.”
In the best way, right? Could she break him down? She was surprised he had allowed their physical relationship to progress as far as it had after so many rejections. “I want to try some things.”
“My clothes stay on until you define what things.”
“You already took off your shirt,” Kit said.
“For you.”
“I’m naked,” Kit said. She wasn’t self-conscious about it, which surprised her. She had never been naked with a man, over the internet or in person.
“I know,” he said.
She felt increasingly comfortable telling him what she wanted. “I think we should have sex. We basically already have.”
“We have not basically done anything. There are lines.”
“We’ve blurred those lines. Please don’t make me beg.” She would plead with him to be reasonable or try other methods. She wasn’t entirely sure what had changed his mind earlier, but she wanted the key to unlock his attention and affection.
“My intention isn’t to make you beg. I want you to go to sleep.”
If they were on the computer, she would say something blatantly sexual and see if he took the bait. Would that work in person?
“What’s the sexiest outfit you’ve seen a woman wear?” Why didn’t that sound hot?
“Nothing. I prefer a woman wearing nothing.”
She was wearing nothing. “You’re not a lingerie person?”
Griffin sighed. “Lingerie gets in the way.”
Wearing lingerie was out, and he wasn’t sounding like he was any more in the mood. She had thought Griffin would be an all-night-long man. Was she wrong? Was it her?
“Can I see your tattoos?” she asked.
“It’s dark,” he said. He sounded grumpy.
She’d try one more time. “Do you have any sexual fantasies?”
He rose from the bed in one swift motion. She was so close to the edge of it, she almost fell out.
“Kit, I don’t know what you are trying to do to me, but I am trying to be a stand-up guy. I’m trying to preserve your virginity so when this is over, you can have an actual relationship with a man who cares about you and have sex for the first time with him and have it be meaningful to both of you.”
Questions about what he said ping-ponged through her head. “What do you mean, ‘when this is over’?” She didn’t bother trying to hide her hurt. Didn’t what they were doing mean anything to him? She wasn’t expecting a diamond ring, but was he saying she was nothing to him?
“When I am no longer responsible for you, this will be over,” he said.
Responsible for her, like he was her babysitter? “What do you mean by ‘actual relationship’?”
“I mean, you should be someone’s girlfriend. Be with someone who treats you how you want to be treated.” He jammed his hand through his hair and looked away from her. Emotion played across his face briefly before his expression turned stoic.
Kit felt silly. She had assigned meaning to what they had done, but it hadn’t meant anything to him. He wasn’t a friend, let alone a lover. He wasn’t in her life for long. She had intellectually known that, known that he would leave, but she had pictured exchanging texts and staying in touch.
“Why not you?” she asked.
“I don’t understand the question.” He sounded exhausted, and she wished she had gone to sleep when he had encouraged her to.
“Why aren’t you interested in being with me?”
It was hard to see his face with only a dim light on in the room. “It’s not about what I’m interested in. I’ve explained this before.”
“Your responsibilities,” she said, bitterness rising inside her. Every man she had been interested in had a reason why he couldn’t be with her. It was pathetic to line them up, a long list of failures and misunderstandings and embarrassment for her.
“Right, my responsibilities.”
He wasn’t trying to make her feel better. He didn’t care enough to bother to lie. He lay on the empty bed. End of discussion.
The bed was
still warm from where he had been. Kit would not cry. It was too quiet and he would hear her. Giving him that power over her was unacceptable.
For the hundredth time since meeting Griffin, Kit wished they had computers between them to communicate. Talking in person hurt more. In person was much harder. That connection felt more real and intense, and yet she wasn’t sure if it was genuine at all.
Chapter 10
Griffin didn’t take sleeping with Kit lightly. She would grow more attached to him. From the first time he had helped her escape the assassins looking for her, she had clung to him more than she should. He knew the power that he had over her, and he’d abused it. His hands did not belong on her.
The coward’s option was to call Connor, explain he couldn’t continue to guard her and have someone else assigned to protect her. Doing that would hurt her. She wouldn’t understand. She would shut down. What could he do? He’d known letting their relationship escalate would bring trouble, and he’d allowed it.
He slept for several hours and woke to the sound of her crying. It would have hurt less if she had stuck a knife in his back.
He had made her cry. He wasn’t an egomaniac. This situation brought a great deal of stress. She had witnessed murders, had been taken from her home and had faced off against cyberfriends who had turned out to be something other than the people she knew online. Her emotions weren’t centered on him, but her tears were most definitely about him.
Griffin didn’t deal well with crying women. He didn’t know how to handle them. Since his wife had died, most of his relationships were in the field, with women who were as career-focused as he was, who were hard around the edges, who were looking to sleep with someone for sport and stress relief, women who didn’t invest emotionally in a one-time deal.
“Please, please don’t cry,” he said.
She sniffed but said nothing.
“Kit, talk to me.”
“What do you want me to say?” she asked, anger sharp in her tone.
What did he want her to say? Tell him she was fine and give him the salve he needed for his guilt? She felt how she did because of his actions. He had to take responsibility for that. “Tell me what I can do to make this right.” He couldn’t go back in time and undo it, but he could try to explain, and maybe she would understand.
“My sister is a supermodel. Do you know how many men she has dated?” Kit asked. Raw pain echoed in her voice.
“I’m guessing a lot.”
“My brother is a big financier. Do you know how many women he has dated?”
Again, his answer was the same. “A number of them.”
“And me, the supergeek with secrets. How many men have I dated?”
Counting the loser from the conference? She had said she’d had one significant relationship, but surely she had had other boyfriends. “A few.”
“No, just the one, the man who humiliated me at Gamer Con. Do you know how that makes me feel?”
Not good. “He was an ass.”
“Maybe. But he was the only man who was willing to date me.”
They were walking on dicey territory. “Not everyone needs to date dozens of people.”
“How many women have you dated?”
Dated? Very few. Slept with? More than he liked to admit. “Some.”
“Some isn’t one,” she said. “When I was eight, my father told me that one day a man would fall in love with me for who I was. He told me I was beautiful, but it would take a special man to see it. He didn’t have that conversation with my sister. His words made me happy at the time, but now I feel like a loser. My father recognized I was ugly and awkward. I was plenty smart. But look where that led. I’ve been hunted and used and tossed away.”
“Stop, Kit. I don’t want to hear this.” He couldn’t stand to hear her talk about herself this way. Her perception was skewed.
She went silent.
“I want you to listen, and I want you to listen hard. I don’t care if you were an awkward teenager or didn’t have a boyfriend in college or feel like a hag next to your sister. Those things are in the past and your sister is a supermodel, so don’t set some impossible standard.”
“She’s beautiful,” Kit said.
“She’s a praying mantis with a pretty face. I wouldn’t want to be with her because I would probably break her brittle legs.”
“She has to be thin,” Kit said.
“Forget about that. Let me tell you about the now, because you seem incapable of seeing it for yourself. You are a smart and capable woman who is very, very talented. You are one of the foremost computer experts in the world—so much so that the United States government hired someone to stay with you around the clock. And babe, I don’t work cheap. They put a high value on you and your brain and your thoughts.
“You are a sweet woman. You give people the benefit of the doubt, like with Swish or whatever the hell his name is, and Lawrence and Zoya. Not many people who have been through what you have would keep wearing their rose-colored glasses. You know what you are protecting our country from because you had to counter it. It’s an ugly, hateful world out there.
“Last, but not insignificant, is how you look. You are beautiful. I’m not talking about on the inside or in some ‘every person is unique’ way. I’m talking about me, walking around with a hard-on since I met you because I find you that attractive. I’m talking about nearly having to put ice in my pants the night you were drugged, because I wanted to sleep with you and take care of you how only a man could have. I think about what I want to do to you and almost all of it involves showing you how much I want you. It’s not that I’m a caveman who can’t control myself. It’s you doing this to me. It’s you, under my skin, tempting me, making me wish we were together under other circumstances, because then I would make it clear to you how much I want you.”
“Griffin—”
He was hot and horny and angry. “I’m not finished.” Now that he was going, he couldn’t stop until she heard it all. “I’m glad other men are too stupid and too dense to find a way into your pants because that means that I’ve got you to myself. I don’t like to share. Does it drive me crazy to know that after me, there will be some man who will make you deliriously happy? Of course it does. I’ll be half tempted most of my life to look you up and find the guy you’re with so I can punch him in the gut because he gets to keep you in his bed and do whatever he wants to you. I want to be that man, but I won’t be. I’m married to this job, and this job is unrelenting. I can’t be the man you deserve for anything longer than a night.
“So please stop knocking yourself around and thinking something is wrong with you. You are perfect how you are.”
Kit said nothing. Long moments passed.
“Is it my turn to talk?” she asked.
He nodded though she could not see him. “Yes.” It had felt good to get that off his chest.
She crossed the room to him. “Thank you for saying those things. Thank you for staying with me through this. Thank you for being a man who is honorable and sexy and smart and loyal. This is the most unromantic situation in the world. When I’ve thought about my first time with a man, I’ve thought about sheets and roses and food because those were the only things clear to me. But now I know that what’s more important is the man and how he makes me feel.
“You make me feel desirable and sexy and beautiful. If that means that I only get a night, then fine, but it will be a great night because I know you, and you mean something to me. You started something when you found me, and you will finish it.”
A prediction of future things. “That sounded like a command.”
“It was,” she said. “I’m not a bossy woman, but I like to have my way.”
“I won’t take your virginity.”
She sighed. “Okay. But you will sleep beside me t
onight.”
He couldn’t stand her hurting. Against his better judgment, he pulled her into bed next to him. She maneuvered herself to sleep in the crook of his arms.
* * *
“I have a question for you,” Griffin said, sitting across from Kit while she was working on her computer. “How do you feel about secret military bases?”
Kit frowned. “Not the type of question I was hoping you’d ask. I spent too much time living on a secret base. I won’t go back.”
Griffin had bad news then. “The government wants us at a secret military base to secure part of the Locker and to plan the countermeasures to shut down Incognito.”
A counterattack from a secure military facility with full ground, sea and air support was best.
“No,” Kit said.
“You agreed to help,” Griffin said.
“I agreed to help, not to spend another year of my life on a secret military base with too many rules and no freedom,” Kit said.
“I am not sure we have a choice. You can’t go back to your life. Incognito knows who you are, and they are looking for you.”
“When I agreed to work on the Locker five years ago, it was part ego, trying to prove that I was a good computer engineer, the best hacker. But now, I’ve spent most of my adult life tied to a computer, and I want something else. I want something more. I’ve done my duty. It’s someone else’s turn to protect the cybersecurity of the United States.”
Griffin wouldn’t let it go. “It’s not the same facility where you worked before.”
Kit wrapped her arms around her midsection. “How would it be any different?”
“I’ll be with you.”
Kit met his gaze. “While that does make me feel better, it doesn’t address the core issue.”
“Which is?”
“I’d be walking into the same trap I walked into with the Locker. National security and what’s best for the country are great. Except I gave what I could and I’m tapped out.”
“While we’ve been looking for computer scientists to help, so has the government. They’re assembling a team.”
“If I am hiding on a military base for the next one or two or five years, that’s a problem for me. I have plans.”
