When she started to slick down the sweatpants, he made a sound low in his throat and reached for her, folding her close and rocking her in his arms, his naked chest against her breasts.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
“I understand.”
“You understand what?”
“That you want me, but you think that making love with me is wrong, so you were trying to…scare me off by acting…tough.”
He answered with a low laugh. “Yeah.”
“I’m not going to back off.”
“And you think we’re safe here?”
“You think so.”
When he started to say something else, she raised her face again and brought her lips to his once more, trying to tell him with the kiss that this was the right thing to do.
They swayed together in the center of the room, both of them unsteady on their feet, maybe from the gentle rocking of the boat.
He scooped her up in his arms, carried her to the bed, and stood looking down at her before joining her on the horizontal surface.
She pressed her face to his shoulder and opened her lips, wanting to taste him.
“Weren’t you taught that nice girls don’t end up in bed with a man unless they’re married to him?” he asked in a gruff voice.
She’d been thinking that same thing earlier. Now she said, “Nice girls don’t steal secrets from the company where they work.”
“You didn’t steal from the company.”
“That’s a technicality. And it was the wrong thing to say, anyway. I want to think about how you’re making me feel, not what I did at S&D.”
“How am I making you feel?”
She considered the answer. “Like all my nerve endings are on fire. Like I want more, but I don’t exactly know how to ask for what I want.” She swallowed. “Or maybe I do.”
Shocked by her own boldness, she reached for one of his hands and placed it over her breast.
The light pressure against her taut nipple made her breath catch. It caught again when he began to move his hand, cupping her roundness and stroking against the puckered peak.
No one had ever touched her like that, and she wasn’t prepared for how wonderful it felt or for the dart of heat that shot downward through her body and found her center.
“Oh.”
He rolled toward her, using both hands now, inscribing circles around her taut nipples, drawing closer and closer to their edges, making her tingle with anticipation. As he did it, he watched her face, and the intimacy was almost more than she could bear. She might have turned her face away, but this was Shane touching her, and she wanted to focus on the man as well as the sensations.
The effect on her was incredible, and when he took her nipples between his thumbs and fingers, tugging and twisting gently, the heat ratcheted up beyond imagining.
She kept her gaze on him as he lifted one hand, stroking the hair back from her face before lowering his head, taking one distended nipple in his mouth, and sucking on her as he continued to play with its mate.
She could barely catch her breath as the incredible arousal spread through her. Then he slipped his hand inside the waistband of her sweatpants, stroking downward through the triangle of dark hair at the juncture of her legs and into the folds of her most intimate flesh.
She had dreamed of him touching her there, but the reality almost took her breath away as his hand traveled a sure path to her vagina. He dipped inside and circled with his finger. When he brought it up again to her clit, she involuntarily rocked her hips.
Her eyes had closed, and she heard him whisper in her ear, “Look at me.”
When she did, he asked, “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”
“Can’t you tell?” she asked in a shaky voice.
“I want to hear you say it.”
“I want to make love with you.”
“Even though you’ve never done it before?”
She felt her face heat. “How do you know?”
“I can tell. Answer me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You’re asking too many questions.”
“I’m trying to make sure I’m not taking advantage of you.”
Long ago, she’d heard her brother talking with his friends. Using their whispered conversation as a guide, she reached out and cupped her hand over the rigid flesh at the front of Shane’s pants.
He sucked in a sharp breath as she pressed her palm against him, then grasped him through the knit fabric.
With a muttered curse, he raised over her and tugged her sweatpants down and off, before doing the same with his.
Then he reached for her, folding her close and pressing his body to hers. She thought he would plunge inside her then. Instead, he moved against her, stroking her with his penis the way he had stroked her with his hand, increasing her arousal to a point where she knew she was going to fly into a million pieces.
Orgasm grabbed her, rocked through her. And as she felt herself coming back to earth, he changed the angle of his body, thrusting inside her.
There was a moment of pain, but it was over quickly. She clung to him, feeling his strong thrusts before he went rigid above her, calling out as he joined her in ecstasy.
He was still for several long seconds, then rolled to the side, taking her with him.
She nestled against him, hardly able to believe what they had done.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Better than all right.”
“Did I hurt you?”
“Only a little,” she whispered. She was thinking that he had known exactly what he was doing. But she kept the words locked behind her lips.
He held her, stroking back her dark hair and trailing his lips against her cheek, and she loved this part, too. The part that came after making love. She drifted on her feeling of contentment for a few more minutes, until she felt him ease away. “You should sleep.”
“What about you?”
“I should keep watch.”
“I thought you set up an alarm.”
“Yeah, but I want to make sure nobody sneaks up on the boat.”
She wanted to keep him with her, but he climbed out of bed, and she felt a sudden chill as the warmth of his body left her.
“You should put your clothes on,” he said. “In case we have to make a quick getaway.”
She nodded, thinking that making love with him had been glorious. Beyond anything she could have imagined. He’d made her forget about the bad guys who were after them and about her brother. He’d made her forget about everything but the two of them making love. Now he was back to business. And maybe that was the right thing to do, from his point of view. Or was he trying to distance himself from her? Not only physical distance but emotional distance. Or maybe he really was concerned about keeping watch.
When he turned away to pull on his sweatpants, she picked her borrowed clothing up from the floor and pulled on the T-shirt before the sweatpants.
Then she walked stiffly out of the room and down the hall to the small bathroom.
Jerome Weller waited for news from the team that had gone out to take care of Gallagher and Reyes. He wanted Gallagher dead, especially after the confrontation at his apartment. But he needed Reyes alive because he had to find out what she’d done with the information from S&D. Of course, that left plenty of room for screwups.
When the phone finally rang, he looked at the caller ID, then snatched up the receiver. “Did you get them?”
There was a hesitation on the other end of the line.
“Jesus Christ. Spit it out.”
“They got away.”
“How?”
He listened to a jumbled account of how they’d taken a boat and then faked out the pursuers.