Page 7 of Pride
I know who you are.
She should be surprised that he’d pieced together her true identity, but she wasn’t. She’d been waiting for this moment for a long time. To be honest, she’d thought it would have happened sooner. Still… she pondered the situation. He’d only just now confronted her. Why? Why wait two months, and why do it now while she was in his office in the middle of the night? Maybe he was guessing. Maybe he didn’t know as much as she thought.
“Who I really am?” She feigned ignorance. May as well see how far she could push him. The man hadn’t even asked why she was in after midnight. Perhaps his injury had unhinged him, and then she’d have to kill him after all. She’d have to kill his entire family.
A tightness banded around her chest, but she lifted her chin and prepared herself.
Never taking his golden eyes from her, he glided through the office like a shark until he rounded his marble desk and stopped before her.
“What are you doing?” she asked cautiously.
His raw, masculine scent preceded him. It warmed her insides.Dangerous. She frowned and rolled the high back leather chair between them as alarm bells went off in her mind.
He looked at the chair. His eyes were extra wild tonight and at odds with his groomed hair, tailored suit, and manicured nails. Well, the nails on the one hand she could see. The other hand was tucked neatly into the pocket of his pants. Had it regenerated already?
Caught staring, tension thickened in the air. Gold flecks in his eyes flashed like lightning and, without releasing his hold of her gaze, he deliberately rolled the chair to the side before returning his hand to his pocket.
He was nonchalance wrapped in Armani, but she was no fool. Those broad shoulders were made for power. That tongue for lashing. She’d felt the brunt of his fists against her face, against her ribs, and her ego. She’d winced from her desk just outside this office every time he fired an incompetent executive.
“Come closer,” he decreed, his voice like liquid heat, flowing places his scent had already warmed.
That was when things went a little haywire. The Alice who’d served countless missions as a Sinner, as an assassin, seductress, and master manipulator on foreign soil and on their own, should have lifted her chin and met his demand with one of her own. She should have picked up that letter opener and pushed it to his carotid. But this Alice, the one who’d been working under this bossy man for years and was secretly in love with him, said nothing. Instead of making an excuse and salvaging her cover, shedidnothing. No, scratch that. She stepped forward as though her feet had a mind of their own.
Now only an inch from the man, Alice noticed little things about him. The scar beneath his chin where no beard grew. The flare of his nostrils as he took in her scent. The soft curve of his wide lips as they stretched into a smug smile. He was the lion who caught the mouse, and she found… she found she almost didn’t care that she was about to be consumed because his thick, manly aroma coaxed her into believing she needed him as much as air.
Somewhere in the distance, through the fog of his arousing scent, her alarm bells smothered.
This is wrong.
He would chew her up and spit her out. Why didn’t she care? Why did her mind keep traveling to the need building inside her body, to her desire to run fingers over that beard, to rub herself all over him and bathe in that delicious smell? Obsessive thoughts about his lips ran on repeat in her mind.
“Tell me the truth, Alice,” he whispered, studying her intently. “Tell me.”
She felt sweaty, hot and prickly, so she trailed her fingers along her collar bone. Parker’s eyes tracked every inch of movement and went darker than the night.
“The truth,” he demanded, and leaned closer.
Heat flared between their bodies. They weren’t touching, but he was close, so close electricity skipped along her skin, sparking sensation. She would burst if he didn’t touch her soon.
“The truth is I want you to touch me,” she blurted and fell into him. Palming his solid chest through the smooth fabric, she became lost in the tactile sensations. He hissed in a breath, surprised, but it only made her want to touch him more. A moan slipped out of her mouth as she soaked up his raw masculinity, imagining what he’d look like beneath the fabric. It was a familiar fantasy, and one she was yet to prove right. Hard ridges. Defined abdominals. Maybe a small trail of hair leading down. Skin golden and tanned from countless hours of rock climbing shirtless in the desert. She’d seen the pictures. There was one on his desk beside them.
Her inhibitions went out the window. “God, you smell so good.”
Parker was a mountain of fortitude, and it struck every feminine chord in Alice’s body.Wanted. That small memory singing for her baby to care about her. For her man toonlycare about her and nothing else. It brought to life urges she didn’t even know she had. All she could think of, wanted, was to tear his clothes from his body and ravish the man.
“Stop.” Parker tried to swat Alice, but she was insatiable. “Alice, stop.”
“Not until we’re on the floor naked.” Her lips searched for his. Puckered.
“Shit.” He backed up, holding her back with his good hand. “It wasn’t supposed to work this way. You’re not supposed to be—Christ, Alice. Stop.”
She followed him as he back peddled and hit the glass window overlooking the city, the one she’d just cleaned.Don’t care,she thought.Don’t even care.
Somewhere, part of her knew this was odd behavior. She would never launch herself onto the arrogant, egomaniacal man, not even if she was purposefully trying to seduce him. That involved finesse. This was raw, crazy teenager, throw-your-inhibitions-out-the-window urgency. Alice knew how to do her job, and this wasn’t it. Regardless, she tugged on his burgundy tie and brought his mouth slamming onto hers. When their lips met, they stilled. A second, maybe two, and then they both groaned submissively from somewhere deep in their chests.
He tasted sublime. Male, sweet, salty and a hint of that burning single malt whiskey and sinful promises between the sheets. She knew exactly what she’d get from him when they made it that far—pure heavenly bliss. He must have felt the same, because he fisted her hair and held her still while he deepened their kiss. Only for a moment. A dreamy few seconds. Then he snarled and yanked her back. Pain spiked in her scalp, and every hormone in her body released.
Haze-filled golden eyes met hers.
