Page 44 of Special Ops Seduction

Some years, better than she wanted.

“I doubt you’re the only one who feels that way,” she said after a moment. “We might have grown up in different worlds, but the army felt a lot more comfortable to me than this place ever did. I understand it’s not the same.”

“Do you?” His dark gaze seemed to intensify. “You’re not the only one who remembers that night, Bethan. The difference between us is that I might have saved you from a burning truck, but I never would have tried to soothe you. I never would have nurtured you in any way. I would have accomplished the task and then moved on to another fight. Because I don’t isolate myself for my own protection. I doit for everyone around me. None of you need to know how empty it is inside. None of you can handle it.”

“That’s an interesting take,” she said quietly, her eyes on his as if this were a challenge. When all she wanted to do was go to him. Touch him. Convince him, somehow, that his heart was right there inside his chest where she’d felt it pounding earlier. “Because the story going around Fool’s Cove is that you went off into the Alaskan interior to get up close and personal with how empty you are. Until Isaac and Templeton dragged you back.”

“You all want that to be meaningful.” Jonas actually laughed then. Not one of his fake laughs. But not because he thought anything was funny, either, clearly. Because the laugh sounded as bleak as he did. “What I’m trying to tell you is that it makes no difference to me. Dancing with my weapon in the cabin alone, or here with you after all these years. It’s all the same thing. I don’t have what you do inside. I don’t feel things the way you do. And no, before you ask, I never will.”

Bethan had to bite her tongue so hard she tasted copper to keep from arguing with him. She made herself stand. She smoothed out the front of yet another dress she was wearing—this one, happily, less flouncy than the last—and kept her smile polite. Engaged, but not sympathetic.

Anything but sympathetic.

“If that’s true, then what do you care if we have sex again?” she asked. Mildly. She could have been asking the time. “We could have sex all the time if you don’t feel anything. Because if you’re empty inside, why would it be a problem for you?”

Fidgety Jonas was gone then. And in his place was the one she knew best. So still, so deadly, that part of her thought that if he so much as blinked she would take it like a bullet to the chest.

Accordingly, she smiled more broadly. “It’s a reasonable question.”

“I’m not protecting me, Bethan.”

“Oh, right. Got it. You’re being noble on my behalf. Protecting me from all the girlie feelings that might have their way with me. Because, obviously, one taste of Jonas Crow and my world will never be the same.”

She watched, fascinated as ever, as that muscle in his cheek pulsed.

“In my experience,” he said in that deadly way of his, “you are almost certain to get emotional. I won’t.”

“How many Army Rangers have you slept with?”

“I’m telling you my experiences. With women. Regardless of their profession.”

“So, zero, then. And of the Army Rangers you know, how many of them are prone to outbursts of uncontrollable emotion?”

“The fact that you’re offended by this is proving my point, Bethan.”

“You’ve worked with me in two completely different roles, neither of which, as far as I’m aware, involved a whole lot of emotional breakdowns on my part. If anything, I would say you’re the one who’s having emotional difficulties here.”

“Great,” he bit out. “That’s not you. Crisis averted.”

She made a meal out of shrugging carelessly. “Again, Jonas. You’re going to great lengths to convince me that you don’t feel anything, but you also were quick to tell me that this could never, ever happen again, because... reasons. You’ll understand if I’m not convinced that you’re the most reliable narrator.”

What exactly are you trying to do here?she asked herself.Do you really want to throw yourself into a physical relationship with a coworker? Even if it’s Jonas.

Her heart was beating so hard in her neck that it took everything she had not to press her fingers against it, which would show him far too much about what she was hiding.

Especially if it’s Jonas, that voice continued, darkly. Do you really think you can handle him?

Maybe that was why she was pushing. Because she knew she couldn’t, but she also knew she was in no danger of finding out.

And meanwhile, she was so busy compartmentalizing everything that had happened this afternoon that if she thought about it, she was sure she would be unable to contain her reaction. That strange flashback. Sex with Jonas. And then the story he’d told her, that would’ve broken her heart into pieces if she let it. That would, she knew, the moment she was alone.

All of this and she was standing in her parents’ house in Santa Barbara, with more family shenanigans looming ahead of her, no matter how she assured herself that what mattered was the mission. That might be true, but it was still Ellen’s wedding.

She shoved each part into its own cordoned-off area inside her, made sure the walls were standing high, and locked the doors up tight.

And when Jonas did nothing but stare back at her, still, steel, and as approachable as a wicked knife, she inclined her head toward the door.

“After you,” she said, taking pride in how calm she sounded. “Unless you’d rather stay here and continue to pretend you’re not the one having a breakdown.”

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