Page 34 of Sublime Target

He stared at her for a long while, and Clarissa wondered if she’d crossed some invisible line.

He reached out.

She flinched involuntarily.

But all he did was take the umbrella from her, gently prising it from her clenched arms, forcing her to relax them.

It was only then that she realized how tense she’d been.

“I can easily do that. But first, you have to agree to something.”

“Oh?” She could hardly believe her voice came out so smooth; almost sultry-like.

Inside, she was fucking jelly.

“Pass the time with me again—outside of your official duties.”

Pass the time?

She blinked once, twice, her brain protesting the unbelievability of it all until the penny inevitably dropped. “You mean like… a date?”

“I understand you humans sometimes call it that, yes.”

“Oh, uh, I…” She smoothed down the front of her suit jacket, which had mostly escaped getting stained with pink paint. “I honestly wasn’t expecting this, but I…”

“You don’t have to give me an answer straight away. Just consider it.”

“No, it’s all right,” Clarissa replied, a wild, heady feeling coursing through her. “I’ll take you up on that.”

It was so easy, wasn’t it?

To say yes.

Even when the one asking was a powerful ex-commander with a tendency to jump off the side of skyscrapers and fire plasma guns into the air without warning.

Dangerous.

Unpredictable.

Unknown.

But in spite of all that he was, not once had he made her feel unsafe, and he’d never forced or pressured her to do anything she didn’t want to.

Actually, when all was said and done, he was quite the gentleman.

And she was dying to know what he really looked like under that mysterious mask of his.

FOURTEEN

He was so close to ripping away the protective barrier.

The mask, the armor, the thought that he needed to be cautious because she might not be the one for him…

He was on the verge of ripping it all away.

When had he ever been the cautious type?

He was the sort to rush headlong into battle, guns blazing, with little care for what lay in wait.

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