Page 27 of Baby One Last Time
I ran one finger down the side of his cheek, over his stubbled face. His breath hitched and the pulse in his throat hammered, but he shook his head. I sighed and dropped my hand. Well, hell, if he was going to be a boy scout about it, I’d have to behave. Unless this was another game. A taunting, teasing play.
“If you’re not interested right now,” I said, and sighed again, this time pointedly, “I can leave. But you will be missing out.” I unbuttoned my shirt. It fell open, revealing my black-lace bra with a front clasp.
His eyes were fixed on my bra, then on my fingers as I twisted the clasp and bared my breasts. He sucked in his breath and let out a small groan. I stepped a few inches closer so all he had to do was tilt his head up to take one hard, ready nipple into his mouth. I licked my own lips in anticipation.
“Cynthia,” he whispered, his voice tight. “We can’t do this.” He reached for me, but instead of tracing his fingers over my nipples, he pulled my shirt closed. “Yes, I said that before and didn’t stick to it. But this time I mean it.”
“You really are going to play the saint this afternoon.”
Frowning, I reclasped my bra and buttoned my shirt. I considered calling him a few choice names and storming out of the SCIF so he’d spend the rest of the day thinking of ways to make up for rejecting me. But a man can say no, too, and even though Derek had never said it to me before, I had to respect it. Besides, we weren’t wild animals. Our lizard brains, which understood each other so well, didn’t rule us. We could wait.
I bent and whispered in his ear. “Tonight, then.” I ran my tongue over his hammering pulse in his throat. The familiar taste of him and his desperate moan left me throbbing and wet. “What time should I come to your room?”
He met my heated gaze with hooded eyes. He stood and grasped my shoulders. A frisson of electricity shot through me. He sucked in his breath again. He’d felt it, too.
I bit my lower lip, anticipating his hot, wet kiss. But instead, he shook his head. That didn’t make sense. My hormones calmed down to a low roar and I remembered. He was playing the good boy, waiting until later, even though it might kill us both.
“What time?” I pressed the length of my body to his. He was hot skin and ripped muscles and hard dick, and I nearly melted into a hormone-soaked puddle.
“Cynth,” he whispered, his voice heavy with lust. My sex clenched in response. “We can’t. Not now. Not tonight. Not...” He shook his head and stepped back with his hands on my shoulders, holding me in place.
I reached for him, stretched my hand out to press my palm to his chest. But stopped. His face was granite. Beautiful and chiseled, but cold.
“You don’t want me,” I said.
“It’s not that. You read my face. You know it’s not that. But look at where we are.” He lifted one hand to indicate the SCIF and all that it represented. “The rules haven’t changed.”
I nodded, understanding dawning. It wasn’t like me to be so slow on the uptake. That’s what Derek did to me. Muddled my mind. Threw me off my game. But rejection sobered me. There was a hierarchy of importance in his world, and I was nowhere near the top. And why should I be? We’d both had a great time together, but we hadn’t made any promises. He’d never told me how he felt about me, and I hadn’t made assumptions. Much.
“You’re a company man, through and through,” I said. “And company policy is no fucking your colleagues. And that’s what we are to each other, right? Colleagues. Got it.” I stalked to the door.
“Cynthia, don’t put words in my mouth. You know you’re more than that.” He closed the distance between us and turned me around to face him, my back to the metal door. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Don’t lose faith in me. I need you to trust me. There are things I can’t tell you, not yet. But soon.” He kissed my jaw. “Trust me,” he whispered into my ear.
Trust him? He’d switched from supernova hot last night to deep-space frigid today. Like last week. And last August. As long as we were agents of HEAT, that was the way it would always be between us, until he eventually shut me out of his life completely. And I’d be damned if I was going to let a screw-up with him push me out of the company again. This time, I would walk away with a little bit of my pride and a much better shot at a continuing career.
“You’re right,” I said. “Not about trusting you. That would make me an idiot. But about following the rules.” I pushed him away from me, which wouldn’t have worked if he’d wanted to stay in place, but he stepped back.
“Last night was a mistake,” I said.
He shook his head.
“It was one last mind-blowing fuck,” I continued. “Now we’ve got it out of our systems.”
Derek clenched his jaw. “Don’t say that, Cynth. There’s a lot more going on here than you know.”
I’d sensed that since the day he’d stepped back into my life. The second part of last night’s mission had been to extract information about what, exactly, that was, but I’d gotten blissfully lost in the first part of my mission and had run out of time.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Then tell me. I know you’re keeping secrets from me. If you want me to trust you, tell me what they are.”
“That’s not the way trust works.”
“Then call it trust but verify,” I said. “That’s the way it works betweenus,after...” I wanted to finish the sentence, to add that he’d left me so easily and had thrived in my absence. But that would only make me look more pathetic, which wouldn’t be an easy trick, considering what a colossal ass I’d already made of myself, throwing myself at a man who didn’t want me.
“Give me a couple of weeks, Cynth,” he said. “When this mission’s over—”
“When this mission’s over, will we be partners again?” It was what I wanted from HEAT and what I needed from him. To have Derek at my back again in every fight. “Tell me all of this is leading to us being back on the same team.”
He was good at hiding his intentions and emotions from me, but not perfect. I read thenoin his eyes a split second before he shook his head. “I can’t tell you yet, but I promise, what itiswill be worth the wait.”
