Page 41 of Special Ops Seduction

And worse, if he wasn’t mistaken, concerned. For him.

“After all,” she continued softly, “if you weren’t beating yourself up about something, holding yourself to the highest standard, and denying yourself anything that might bring you comfort, would you even be alive?”

He ignored the buzzing in his head, cutting through it the way he did all extraneous noise—with his very own personal windchill. “You don’t actually know anything about me, Bethan. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that.”

“I don’t have to have personally experienced a scary night of near-death and intimacy to know how determined you are to set yourself apart from everyone else, Jonas,” she replied, seeming notably unaffected by the arctic blast he was aiming her way. “We work together, in case you forgot. I see it with my very own eyes, right there in front of me, every single day.”

“The fact that we work together is another reason this was a mistake.”

She shrugged. “It didn’t feel like a mistake to me.”

“What do you want?” he demanded then. “What do you think is going to happen here? Because I can tell you right now, it won’t.”

“It isn’t about what I want.” And there was a bit more emotion in her voice then. Jonas couldn’t decide if that pleased him or if it made him loathe himself all the more. “When has what I want ever had anything to do with what you do?”

That shouldn’t have stung, but it did.

He remained, still and unassailable, because that was what he knew. That was what had saved him, more than once, long before he’d enlisted. “I know you think you have some ownership over me, or some insight, because you saved my life. But here’s a newsflash. I would have been perfectly happy if you hadn’t. If you’d left me there with the rest.”

And the look on her face almost killed him. Because Bethan looked as if she wanted to get up from where she sat, come over, and hold him the way she had that long, terrible night. Worse, her eyes were getting that glassy look again, and he didn’t think he could handle it.

“Do you really think that’s a newsflash?” she asked softly.

But he couldn’t take that on board. “Maybe this was always going to happen. Maybe you really don’t think it was a mistake. Either way, it’s still just sex. It’s not unusual for the pressures of a mission to get to people.”

“Really? Oddly, I’ve always been able to control myself in the past. Are you saying you haven’t?”

He knew the look he was giving her then was filthy. “This isn’t any run-of-the-mill operation. Your family is involved. It’s no wonder emotions are heightened.”

“Because I’m definitely the person in this room suffering from heightened emotions.”

“It’s not going to happen again,” he told her, all command and fury.

But it was Bethan, who still hadn’t seemed to notice that she was absolutely stark naked. She... stretched. She lifted one arm over her head, then the other, and arched a little bit, too. And when she was done, she rose to her feet in an easy manner that made his throat go dry.

“Okay,” she said.

“I mean it. We’re human.” Technically. “One mistake is allowed.”

“Human. Got it.”

When she sauntered toward him, he stiffened, sure thatshe was going to launch herself at him. Whether to kiss him or strike him, he couldn’t say.

Instead she only smiled, stepped around him, and swept her clothes up off the floor. He couldn’t even say it was a particularly seductive movement. She just did it, then carried on. Heading, he realized after a moment, for the master bedroom.

“I’m going to need you to acknowledge—”

But when she turned, gazing back at him over her shoulder, his words failed him.

“Acknowledge what?” she asked, lightly enough, though he didn’t mistake the edge in her voice. “That you’re freaking out?”

“I do not freak out.”

“Maybe you’re in character, then. And your character is having a panic attack. Whatever. I’m sure you’re right. I don’t know you at all.” And he could see that same edge in her gaze. “But do you?”

“That’s a stupid question.”

“If you say so.”

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