Page 43 of Special Ops Seduction

She’dlaughedat the idea that she could ever be so dumb.

And yet she hadn’t simplylet this happenwith Jonas. She’d enthusiastically participated. She’d practically done it herself.

The crazy part was that she didn’t regret it.

There was no shame. No self-recrimination. She found he was increasingly more on her nerves, but maybe that was only to be expected. She certainly wasn’t beating herself up about it.

Her entire body was still buzzing. She felt raw and deeply sated, as if she’d just had an intense, deep-tissue massage. She wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep, blissfully. If she were a cat, she would’ve been purring.

And the grumpier and grimmer he got, the giddier she felt inside.

Try as he might, he wasn’t going to get her to think it was meaningless. Or anything but a natural progression that would have occurred a whole lot earlier if he hadn’t first ordered her away from the hospital in Germany, or second, literally gone out of his way to avoid ever being alone with her like this since she’d turned up in Alaska.

She was turning that over in her head when he came out of the shower, dressed as Fake Jonas and looking as shut down as she’d ever seen him.

Which was to say, typical Jonas.

“Why did you volunteer for this?” she asked him.

Without really meaning to.Oh well.

That dark, unreadable gaze burned where it touched now. “It was obvious that you were going to need a date. It was obviously the best and most effective way to have two team members infiltrate this situation.”

“Agreed. But why didyouvolunteer?”

She thought she saw something flicker on thatbeautifully cold face. “Volunteering to put myself in the line of fire is my life’s work, Bethan.”

“In the line of fire, sure. But this?” She lifted her chin to indicate the two of them. “You’ve been avoiding being alone with me in any significant way since you woke up in Germany and refused to see me. So what changed?”

“I thought we agreed we were back to work,” he retorted darkly. “Or let me rephrase that. I don’t have any interest in further personal conversations.”

“Tough.”

He sighed, then settled his hands on his hips. Both of those things were so unlike him that Bethan almost laughed. Because Jonas didn’t fidget unless he was in character or trying to throw someone off their game. He was very, very still. Preternaturally still, in fact. It was one of his defining characteristics.

“I’m going to go ahead and nip this in the bud,” he told her.

She shouldn’t have been smiling. “Is there a bud to nip? That’s news to me.”

“I have nothing to give,” he said, so calmly and with such precise chill that it made her stomach hurt.

Because she had no doubt that he meant that. Fully. From the very depths of his battered, dark soul.

And it made her want to cry. For him.

“I didn’t grow up like this,” he said, his voice cool. “Like you. I would hardly call what happened to megrowing upat all, except I came out on the other side of it and I was no longer a child.”

“Jonas,” she began. “If this is about my parents’ house or my sister’s wedding, you should remember that I did basic training like any other—”

“It’s not that I come from a different social class,” he said, cutting her off—but again, without the slightest bit of heat or temper, as if all of this was a boring dictionary entry that he hadn’t bothered to read aloud before. “I’mtalking about a different world. My father was an abusive drunk who had a soft spot for narcotics, and those were his good days. My mother was a junkie. My little sister was born addicted to heroin and OD’d when she was sixteen. There were rumors of an older brother they surrendered to the foster system, but they only talked about him when they were wasted. We lived in cars. Tents. Or we squatted in structures I wouldn’t bother to call houses.”

She found she was holding her breath.

“My sister was three years younger than me,” Jonas said. “I wouldn’t say my parents cared about us, but they fed us occasionally because we were useful. People are more likely to give their spare change to a couple of kids. I joined the navy the day I turned eighteen because I wanted to go to war. Not because I wanted to do good, Bethan. Not like the rest of you. I wanted to go to war because it felt safer.”

He said all of that in the same matter-of-fact way, but his gaze registered the bleakness of what he was telling her.

Bethan wanted to contradict him. To argue. But she knew that if she did, he would somehow twist it and take it as confirmation of everything he was saying. Because he could believe whatever he wished, but she did know him. Better than he thought.

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