Page 10 of Agency
No matter how long, I could tell, just as I’d suspected, that he was certainly more than interesting enough for one night.
He shifted in his seat, and pressed his face into my hair. He breathed as deep of me as I had been of him.
Morgan mumbled something into my hair that might have been Monaco, or…
Holy…
I pulled back a little, looked up into his glittering green eyes, fell into the depths of those gemstones even as I tried to search them for some clue as to how he’d known where I bought this amber.
And then I saw what I was looking for. A certain steeliness, hidden far, far down within his gaze. A kind of resolve and intensity most people, mostnormalpeople, didn’t have and would never attain. Oh was that gaze exciting and enticing, too. The kind of gaze that made your knees weak and stomach flutter.
But then, realization clicked in my head, and my heart began to race from a mixture of fear, adrenaline, and the knowledge that I shouldn’t be sitting here with him.
Because this guy wasn’t just some average veteran, was he? Just some POG fobbit that had never left the wire?
Oh shit.
He was an operator, or at least he had been. Because, unless he’d been spending the years after his service jet-setting around the bazaars of North Africa, I didn’t see how else he could have picked out the scent of my perfume as being from Morocco.
Now, the question was… what did he see in my eyes, even as he set his beer aside and touched callused, condensation-dampened fingers to my chin? Did he see past my fake name as he lifted my eyes to his? My fake past in Florida? My fake career in marketing? Could he possibly see through to the real me, buried so deep and under so many layers of falsehood that even I had trouble keeping track of all my different identities?
Or did he only see the desire as my mouth tilted and I considered meeting his?
“You really are perfect,” he said, his voice softer than satin on skin, so that only my ears would ever the breathy words passing those oh-so-soft-looking lips. “Gorgeous, intelligent, sexy…”
Heart now hammering, I became all too aware of what the rest of my body was doing. One part of my mind screamed that I needed to get out of there, just to keep my career intact and my anonymity un-breached. Another, though, screamed the exact opposite. That this man right here would be more than just interesting enough to keep my attention for the night. He might, instead, be a one-in-a-million diamond in the rough that I might never get tired of.
If, of course, he never found out my real profession… My real past…
Because who could a love a woman who had worked my job? Who could love a woman who had been with as many men as I had?
My hand went up to his. Felt how firm, strong, and determined they were. Felt the way they trembled with the kind of desire I knew we both felt.
I swallowed hard as my eyes glanced down his face, settled on that full mouth. No… No, he might find me out if I stayed here in this booth with him. Would definitely find me out if I followed my body’s screaming, maddening, insistent advice and dragged him back to the elevator and took him with me up to my room.
“Morgan, I can’t…”
A flicker of doubt and something like desire thwarted passed through the deep green of his eyes like twin ocean Leviathans swimming beneath the surface of unfathomable depths, and he began to pull back.
Just as he did, though, I caught something familiar out of the corner of my eye, and I glanced towards the bar. There. One of the men I recognized as working security for tomorrow night’s client. Same shaved head, same craggy brow, same lantern jaw.
My hammering heart, which had been racing like a bullet train or drag racer, seemed to slam into a brick wall as the bodyguard glanced our direction, lingered for a fraction of a second on Morgan’s and my booth. He’d never seen me before, so I wasn’t worried about his recognizing me tonight.
No, not tonight. My worry was more about tomorrow, and his remembering where I might have been staying while I was in town to visit his boss.
After all, what could be more memorable than a redhead in a tight LBD getting up from a back booth and, both shamefaced and frustrated, quickly walking by as her stymied lover looked after her in confusion? Or, even worse, what if Morgan did something that seemed out of his character, even from my brief time knowing him, and decided to make a scene? Or come after me to find out what he’d done wrong?
No. No, I needed to hide my face. And I needed to hide my face fast.
So, I leaned forward and did what I really wanted to do anyways, consequences of being discovered be damned.
I leaned forward, and I kissed Morgan.
Even as he stiffened in surprise at my sudden change of attitude, I kept my lips on his. Even as he pulled back in a moment of surprised hesitancy, I reached up and wrapped long-nailed fingers around to the nape of his neck, teasingly stroked them over the shortly trimmed hair there.
And, oh yes, those lips were as soft and full as I’d imagined. And, oh yes, he tasted exactly as I’d hoped, with that sharp astringent of the earlier vodka and the deep, musty hops and malt of his beer. Especially as he overcame his initial shock and began to press his mouth back, to let his hands go exactly where they wanted.
With eyes closed and my body pressing to Morgan’s, my worry about his former career, and what that might mean for my false identity, dissolved. With my mouth opening to his beer-tinged tongue and his fingers tangling in my hair, even my concerns about the bodyguard at the bar seemed to disappear like morning fog before the rising sun. Left in their place was nothing but the sound of soft jazz, and the feel of rough fingers tangled in my hair and pulling me deeper and deeper into this intense embrace.
