Page 50 of Broken Trust
Their gazes held for too many heartbeats to keep track of, especially when hers was fluttering in her chest.
“I need to sleep.” She took a step around him, and his long fingers shot out and lashed around her wrist. Gentle. So damn gentle that tears prickled in her eyes.
He ran his fingertip over her pulse point, and the corner of his lips tipped at finding her pulse tripping so fast. “Sleep with me tonight.”
It wasn’t a request. It came out as a rasp that strummed every nerve in her body.
Her throat ached on words that would sting and hurt him the way he’d hurt her.
But the way he was looking at her made all of them die in her throat.
She felt herself nodding.
Was she walking into another heartbreak…or into the one place she’d always belonged?
ELEVEN
Mason wasn’t good with words. Never had been. He could infiltrate a bunker in under thirty seconds or field strip his weapon in the dark, but ask him to string together a sentence about feelings and he’d rather take a bullet.
But this…Elin standing in his bathroom doorway, wearing nothing but his T-shirt, hair still damp from the shower, looking at him like maybe she didn’t hate him after all…this he could work with.
“You gonna just stand there?” There was a teasing note in her voice but also uncertainty, as if she wasn’t quite sure she belonged.
In three strides, he crossed the room. Thinking was what got him tongue-tied and stupid. Acting was better. Doing was better.
He closed his hands around her waist, thumbs slipping beneath the hem of the shirt to find her bare skin underneath, andChrist, she was soft. Warm. Real in a way that made his chest tight.
“Liam.” The way she said his name—just his name, nothing else—sounded like a question and an answer all at once.
He captured her lips, pouring all the things he couldn’t put into words into the press of his mouth against hers.
He’d always known Elin was important to him. But somewhere between her showing up and now, she’d become the most important thing in his world.
That scared the hell out of him.
But it didn’t scare him enough to stop.
As he angled his head and swept his tongue along hers, she made a small noise, curling her fingers into his shirt. He walked her backward until her shoulders hit the doorframe.
Immediately, he broke the kiss, bracing one hand above her head and anchoring a hand on her waist.
“Okay?” he managed, pulling back just enough to check her eyes.
“More than okay.” Then she was pulling him back down, kissing him with an urgency that matched the thunder of his pulse.
His control, never his strong suit when it came to her, started to fray. He wanted to take his time, to memorize every inch of her, to make sure she understood what she meant to him. But she was tugging at his shirt, nails scraping lightly against his stomach as she pulled it up, and his brain short-circuited.
He stepped back just long enough to yank the garment over his head. The way she looked at him—eyes hooded and hungry and soft all at once—made him think maybe they could make this work after all.
She reached for him, tracing the line of his jaw down his throat to his chest where old scars intersected with newer ones—a roadmap of every mission, every close call.
Her touch felt like a brand, and he committed every detail of this moment to memory—the way lamplight caught in her hair, the flush spreading across her cheeks and the rapid flutter of her pulse visible at her throat.
He caught her hand, brought it to his lips and pressed a kiss to her palm. Her breath hitched. Such a small thing to make her react like that, but he filed it away, greedy for every response he could draw from her.
“Come here,” he said, low and hoarse, guiding her away from the doorframe and toward the bed.
She came willingly and didn’t hesitate to scoot backward across the mattress.
