A chill of icy fear must have sliced through her bloodstream from the way she visibly shivered. Good. She needed to be afraid. Fear would keep her safe-and away from him.
“What will happen if you don’t stop this cell?”
He looked away, unwilling to impart on Rachel just how dire the circumstances were. The information he possessed could cause a national panic, or even worse, national paralysis. He wanted her safe, but he didn’t want her holing up in some desert bunker, afraid to walk outside. Afraid to breathe. Afraid to live.
“You don’t want to know. The bottom line is that the Agency has known for months that your work is legit. You’re free and clear of this whole mess. I can’t make the same mistake twice and keep you involved. After tonight, we can’t see each other again.”
She barely blinked. “Any idea yet who tampered with my graphics?”
The way her eyes narrowed, Roman knew she was ignoring the emotional fallout of what he’d said by focusing on the threat at hand. His respect for her rose a notch. Even if he had been at liberty to share a suspect’s name with her, which he didn’t even have, he would not have answered her question. He’d learned over the last seventy-two hours that Rachel Marlowe was not only beautiful, creative, interesting and sexy, but she was also determined, clever and stubborn as hell. He could imagine her taking serious umbrage to the fact that some terrorist sympathizer had used her work to spread a potentially lethal message-and judging by how she’d contacted him, he imagined she might do something reckless like pursuing the matter on her own.
“The investigation hasn’t turned up that information yet.”
Her chin dipped in a lost, little nod. She was processing what he was saying, but the brutal truth wasn’t going down easily.
“And the fact that you continued to be with me, intimately, all this time, that had nothing to do with your orders from this Agency of yours?”
He pressed his lips together and shook his head. “I caught all kinds of shit when they found out,” he confessed. “And you know what? It was worth it. You were worth it.”
Their gazes locked, and he hoped like hell she could read the truth in his eyes, because as unaccustomed as he was to spilling information to an unauthorized source, he wasn’t sure he could say out loud what he felt so strongly in his body-and possibly, even his heart.
She slammed to her feet, her hands slapping decisively against her thighs. “All right, then!” she announced before she rounded the coffee table, looked him straight in the eye and reached out with her hand.
He didn’t touch her, but flicking his gaze between her hand and her eyes did the job of telling her he didn’t know what she intended for him to do with that hand if he took it. Give her a platonic shake, thank her for cooperating with the United States government and then send her on her merry way?
Her hand dropped a little. “Thank you for telling me the whole truth.”
He arched a brow. “You didn’t get the whole truth.”
She stared at him quizzically. “What part did you leave out?”
At this point, he knew what to do with her hand. He grabbed it and used her arm to reel her in as close as two people possibly could be with their clothes still on-a detail he hoped to rectify momentarily. With his chest flush against hers and her suddenly accelerated heartbeat egging him on, he pressed his lips just beside hers and whispered, “The part where I tell you I can’t live without you.”
CHAPTER NINE
HE KISSED HER WITH SUCH a rough, desperate intensity that all questions, protests and logical reasons why she should deny herself another taste of him disappeared. He’d confessed all to her, including the fact that although he’d initiated his pursuit of her for his case, he’d actually jeopardized his investigation by staying with her. He’d admitted how he’d been drawn to her with the same force that had kept her enthralled, a man she’d known so little about-and most of what she had known had been a lie.
But clearly, she no longer cared. She wanted him. Here. Now. Because possibly, this was all they’d ever have.
Clothes melted away with the fire burning between them. The dimming sunlight against the sheer curtained window marked the dwindling time that they had to say goodbye, spurring him to lift her fully and completely against him, pressing her skin as tightly against his as he possibly could. She needed his heat to brand her, mark her, imprint her with the indelible passion that belonged to them alone. After tonight, she’d likely never see him again. There would be no more sneaking, no more bucking the rules. His job injected inescapable danger into his life, risk that had spilled into hers that morning on the sidewalk. She knew the thought of her paying the price for his choices sickened him. He was that kind of man.
So he’d say goodbye. But he’d make it count.
Roman lured her to the bedroom, her hand cupped softly in his, and watched her eyes turn glossy with the kind of anticipation and fear and need that he’d never seen in her before. Then again, he’d never much stopped to look, had he? They’d been too enraptured, too enslaved to lust and sexual pleasure to truly know each other.
Of course, there was the matter that if she’d known who he was then, she would have kicked him to the curb. Or at least, out her door.
But now she knew. And she’d stayed.
Roman couldn’t waste another moment. His first taste, taken with his lips across her neck, jacked his adrenaline to dangerous levels. His heart pounded, his blood surged, his muscles tightened, all from a simple kiss. She kissed him back, hard, lacing her tongue with his, spearing her hands into his hair and tugging gently, oh-so-subtly urging him to their usual frenetic and ravenous pace.
He smiled as he trailed his kisses higher-behind her ear, along her chin, to the tip of her nose, his hands solid on the sides of her cheeks.
With a frustrated sigh, she pushed him away, her eyes blazing.
“You act as if we have forever,” she complained.
“No,” he corrected her, “but we do have all night.”
She glanced toward the door, as if someone might rush in at any moment and interrupt. “You don’t know that for sure,” she said, her voice cracking with uncertainty.
There wasn’t a lot Roman seemed to know anymore, but he did know they would not be interrupted. Domino had not only agreed to lend him her suite, but she’d promised to keep an eye out until morning when she had to leave on another assignment. He wasn’t sure he trusted the covert operative, but oddly, his ex-lover hadn’t objected to his proposal that they buck the system and raise a finger at the rules so he could have one more night with Rachel. He’d even caught a glimmer of rebellion in her blue eyes-the source unknown. But he’d had no trouble using her newfound defiance to his advantage. She owed him.
“Trust me, Rachel.”
She licked her lips. Her tiny movement caused a painful tightening in his groin. His sex, thick and straining for her touch, ached as blood rushed downward. Her fingers danced across the bare skin of his hips, taunting him, zapping his brain so that he wondered, momentarily, why he wasn’t inside her yet.
“You’ve never asked me to trust you before, Roman.”
He skimmed his hands across her shoulders and down her back, yearning to clutch her buttocks and press her tight to him, but knowing he had to wait, draw this out, make this last.
“How could I?”
“Because you weren’t who you were pretending to be.”
He succumbed to temptation and laid his hands possessively over her backside. “I was when we made love.”