Page 42 of Special Ops Seduction

“Of course I know myself,” he gritted out.

“You know how to punish yourself,” Bethan replied, and what struck him most was that she didn’t sound as if she were trying to hurt him. Or even slap at him. Her voice was entirely too matter-of-fact for that, and it made his ribs hurt. “You know how to make yourself pay. It’s your life’s work, clearly. But whatever debt you think you have left, after all this time, don’t you think you’ve already paid it?”

She didn’t wait for him to answer. Instead, she walked away, back into the bedroom, taking all of her warmth, nakedness, and fire with her.

And worse, the hope he hadn’t known he’d had until it was gone.

Eleven

She wasn’t surprised at Jonas’s behavior. But that didn’t make it any easier to deal with.

Bethan took a very long shower, and when she emerged, her character was firmly in place. The character she was playing had not succumbed to a long-term attraction with a man she knew better than to touch. The character had certainly not let herself get emotional, because if anything, she was even more locked down and compartmentalized than usual.

That was the best way to survive pretty much anything. She knew that, no matter what character she was playing.

When she came back into the living room, Jonas’s dark gaze met hers with all the force of a sonic boom. Bethan wondered if she’d broken something, so determined was she to keep her expression bland. As if nothing had happened.

Because she had no idea how else to keep going.

“Ready to get back to work?” he asked, and she allowed a small part of her brain to process the fact that Jonas Crowwas actually doing the provoking for a change, rather than standing about doing an impression of a granite slab of stoicism. But the rest of her flatly refused to be provoked.

“There’s actually no wedding event tonight,” she said in reply. “That means it’s an excellent time to rendezvous with the rest of the team.”

“Terrific.”

And with that brisk exchange, they both settled down with their tablets to compile all the information they had so far.

“There’s still no sign of the Sowandes in Montreal,” Bethan said at one point, after a long phone call with Oz back in Alaska. “Blue is on the ground there, trying to shake some trees, but there’s no love.”

“The only reasonable conclusion is that someone got their hands on him, took him and his sister to a laboratory somewhere, and are currently making him put his research into practice.” Jonas’s tone was dark, but it was hard to tell if that was just him or if he was deliberately directing all that darkness her way. She told herself she didn’t care. “It follows that it’s the kind of laboratory that was built deliberately to be hard to find.”

“We should meet our final candidate tomorrow.” Bethan frowned at the schematics of the Montreal safe house she’d been studying, as if what had happened there would simply pop up on her screen like those old videos, if she stared long enough. “But maybe we should take a moment to think about what we’re going to do if he doesn’t fit.”

“Oz hasn’t been able to dig up anything on him,” Jonas said, sitting back. He almost looked relaxed, which Bethan found... surprisingly infuriating.

Because it was one thing to understand, on whatever level, that this man simply could not deal with her unless it was about work. Or sex, apparently. But after actually having sex with him—something she’d never thought would happen and which had actually been far, far morespectacular than she’d imagined it could be all these years—it turned out that she felt a whole lot less forgiving of his issues than before.

Still, she would rather die than crack where he could see it.

“Nothing outside the available résumé,” she agreed. “Dominic Carter, which is almost certainly not his real name according to Oz, has every second of every day thoroughly alibied. Almost as if he expects he might be called to account for it at any time.”

“Suspicious in itself.”

“Sure. Then again, he’s the CEO of one of the slickest private military companies in the world. His people regularly trick governments into giving them lucrative defense contracts and are rumored to like a little regime change of an afternoon. Keeping his hands clean is probably just everyday best practices.”

Jonas studied her for a moment, and she did not react to that dark gaze of his. Externally.

“Why doesn’t Oz think Dominic Carter is his real name?” he asked.

Her shrug felt as if someone else were doing it with her body. “He said he had a feeling.”

“Oz’s feelings usually turn out to be facts.”

“That they do,” she agreed, maybe too brightly, then cursed herself. But there was nothing to do but immerse herself in her reading until Jonas finally went to take his own shower.

It wasn’t until she heard the water running that Bethan let out a long, hard breath.

She thought she’d acquitted herself as well as could be expected, after her long shower, of entirely too much raw reaction, which she’d decided to keep to herself. But Bethan had never slept with a man she worked with before. She couldn’t think of a single time she’d even been tempted. She’d always been far too focused on the job. On what shewanted to prove, maybe. And she was far too aware of the ways sex could bring a woman down in her chosen profession. Not the man she slept with, of course. Just the woman.

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