Page 44 of Decoding Morse

“The body armor is heavy,” I said.

She let out a strangled sound. Outrage colored her cheeks, telling me I should have kept my goddamn mouth closed and not engaged, but seeing her like this made me want to fix the problem.

“You’re wearing well over ten pounds of gear.”

“Yep.”

The hard “P” she added to the word should have encouraged me to drop the subject, but I couldn’t.

“I can hack into their system and change the number to whatever you want. Just say the word.”

She stared at me.

I swallowed, wishing I could take it back. That wasn’t the type of shit normal people said, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. Some sick, twisted part of me wanted to be real with Amelia… to see what she thought of the man I’d become.

“I…. No. I don’t want to talk about my weight.” Her voice shook as she fumbled with the cut that marked her as mine, struggling to remove it.

“Here. Let me help you with that.”

Without thinking, I crossed the distance and wedged myself between her knees, reaching for the cut. A startled gasp drew my attention to her face, now inches from my chest. I realized my mistake as the seductive scent of sunshine and rainbows sucker-punched me for having the audacity to slide into her magnetic field. I tried to step back, but now that I was here… this goddamn close… her pull was way too powerful to resist.

Her gaze dragged up my body, but she looked away before reaching my eyes, and fuck if that didn’t destroy me. She’d always had a thing about eye contact, and her unwillingness to meet my gaze now spoke volumes about her headspace. I bit back a curse. She swallowed. I took hold of her cut before she could refuse my help, sliding it over her shoulders while trying to avoid getting high off her scent. It had been one thing to help her don the gear in the club’s entry hall, where Tap and Hound were likely scrutinizing our every move from the security room like the nosey bastards they were. But this…. We were utterly alone, and removing her layers was proving to be surprisingly intimate.Her breath hitched when I unzipped her rain jacket, and I knew she’d gotten caught up in our proximity, too.

“The doctor will likely need to see your spine,” I reasoned, my voice rough like I’d gargled with gravel.

She nodded, and I tugged her jacket sleeves down one arm and then the other, knowing this much exposure was dangerous but unable to do a damn thing about it. She was a computer virus specifically designed to infect and fuck up my system. I’d gotten too close, she’d gained access, and now she methodically invaded my hard drive. She would destroy me, but there was no way to stop it or minimize the damage. I needed to interact. I had to fix her code. To undo whatever damage that motherfucking scale had inflicted.

“I know you own mirrors,” I said, setting the jacket on top of the cut behind her and eyeing the exposed body armor. “You should look into one sometime and see how fucking beautiful you are.”

She blinked. “I… I know perfectly well what I look like.”

“Then why do you care about something as insignificant as your weight?”

“I….” She swallowed. “I don’t really want to talk about that with you. Or anyone, for that matter. I appreciate your efforts to boost my confidence, or whatever this is, but no?—”

“Dammit, woman, you’re driving me out of my mind.” I hadn’t meant to admit as much out loud, but it was the truth, and there was no taking it back. Watching her on a screen every day had been a necessary purgatory. Sleeping down the hall every night had turned out to be the sixth dimension of hell. “Having you on the back of my bike with your arms wrapped around me and your hands inches from my….”

I forced myself to stop talking before I dug myself in deeper. Her hand stilled on the side zipper of her body armor, and her gaze finally crashed into mine. A question—or possibly a denial—formed on her soft, supple lips. She still wasn’t convinced. Wondering how she could doubt herself, I leaned back and let my appreciation show as my gaze gobbled up every curve of her body, enjoying the hell out of the view. Her cheeks reddened, but when she didn’t push me away, I slid my fingers beneath hers. Taking control of the zipper, I slowly lowered it to her hip before tackling the opposite side. I pulled the front flap over her head and reached past her to set it on the examination table, bringing our faces way too damn close.

“W-what are you doing?”

Her breath caressed my cheek like warm satin, forcing me to close my eyes and battle the urge to reach for her. If I had a white flag, I’d wave it and beg for mercy because no thoughts of baseball could save me now. Ted’s wife was depending on me to keep her safe, and all I wanted to do was push her back onto that table and worship every inch of her body with my tongue, showing her exactly how little numbers on a goddamn scale mattered.

No, asshole, back the fuck up. She’s not for you.

Making one last-ditch effort to do the right thing, I stepped back, but my gaze snagged on her big hazel eyes. Enormous and dilated, it was impossible to distinguish her pupils from her irises.

“Jesus, Angel.” She wasn’t supposed to want me, too. How was I supposed to resist her now? “You don’t even know what you do to me. Nobody has ever measured up to you.”

Stop talking, idiot.

The tip of a small, pink tongue darted between her lips and swept across the seam, obliterating what was left of my restraint. I ducked as she raised her chin to meet me. Our lips crashed together. She let out a gasp, and I froze, afraid I’d misread the situation, but before I could analyze the sound, arms wrapped around me and tugged me closer. Her back arched, pressingthose perfect tits against my chest. Needing her even closer, I snaked my arms around her torso, settling my hands against the small of her back to pull her into me, deepening the kiss. Her lips parted, and I plundered her mouth, determined to bathe my tongue in her taste. She moaned, and the sound shot straight to my cock, which tried its damnedest to split the seams of my zipper to get to her.

Never in my life had I wanted anything as bad as I wanted to be inside Amelia.

Soft hands burrowed their way past my layers of clothing to press against the bare skin of my back, only adding fuel to the fire raging between us. Assured of her interest, I pressed into her, lowering her back on the examination table.

Two quick knocks on the door brought me back to my senses. Recalling where we were, I sprang away from Amelia and crossed half the room in one giant step, putting all the distance I could between us. Cursing the interruption, even while thanking my lucky stars for it, I planted my ass in the chair and tried not to watch the way her chest heaved from her labored breathing. What the fuck had I been thinking to go after her like that?

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