Page 74 of The Blonde Identity

Her lips parted and, so help him, if she said one of those innocent little comments about knees and sucking he was going to explode.

“I... I remember.”

“This won’t be like that. Because I’m betting you’ve got nothing but a pair of skimpy panties on underneath that T-shirt, don’t you? Something made for a honeymoon. Something made to rip right off a woman’s body, and I’ll do it. I’ll drop to my knees and do it right now and I won’t get up until I’m good and ready.”

Her chest rose and fell, and he couldn’t help himself, he let his gaze linger on the sweet little peaks that were protruding out of that damp shirt.

“So I’m going to tell you one thing, Zoe, and I need you to listen to me, baby. Can you do that?”

Numbly, she nodded.

“Good girl.” He put both hands on her hips, the better to either lift her or push her away. He didn’t know which one would haunt him for the rest of his life but he was absolutely certain that one would.

“Now you have two options. I can put you on this counter and do all the things that I just said plus a hell of a lot more. Or you can go back to bed and get a good night’s sleep, and in the morning we can both act—” He couldn’t help himself; he leaned closer and brushed his lips over hers once. Twice. And when her tongue peeked out the third time he almost lost it. It took every bit of his training and every ounce of his will to pull back. “In the morning we’ll both act like this was a dream. Okay?”

His hands were kneading and her hips were moving and neither of them were even really aware of it by that point. Muscle memory. It’s a powerful thing.

“So what do you say, lady?” Hands drifted lower, pulling her tight against the weight of his arousal. “What do you say?”

She closed her eyes and whispered, “Close the door.”

Chapter Forty-Six

Her

Zoe didn’t know how long she laid there, looking at the fire, feeling the rise and fall of Sawyer’s chest beneath her cheek and marveling at how soft his skin was. Because, seriously, his skin was really, really soft, which made no sense whatsoever for such a hard man who had probably never owned a skincare product in his life.

But she couldn’t keep her fingers from running through the light dusting of hair on his chest, over the ridges of the muscles.

Exhaustion wrapped around her, pressing her down. But she also felt like she might float away. Both. At the same time. She didn’t try to understand it. She just wanted it to last. Because, for the first time since she woke up on the snowy ground, Zoe didn’t care about her past or her memories. She didn’t want to know who she’d been or what she’d done or all the ways she’d almost died.

She just wanted this. She just wanted now. She just wanted him.

So she laid there, trying not to fall asleep because she wanted the night to last as long as possible. She wanted it to last forever.

She was just starting to calculate how much soup and vodka they’d need to never leave the mountain when she heard—

“My mother was a genius.” Sawyer’s voice was barely louder than the crackling of the fire and somehow Zoe knew not to ask any questions. “If she’d been a man, she probably would have been recruited by NASA, Harvard, MIT . . . But she ended up at this tiny university no one cared about, researching the electromagnetic spectrum. She was so far ahead of her time—so far out of their league—that the men in her department tried to deny her tenure because theycouldn’t even comprehend what she was doing. Cell towers. Satellites.Signal Intelligence...” He spat out the last two words like they were bitter.

“Her work changed everything. But the men around her never understood that. Until, one day, she met a man who did. He was handsome and charming and he told her she was beautiful... He showed an interest in her work and told her she was brilliant... He told her all the right things. Because my mother was a genius...” He drew a haggard breath. “And my father was a spy.”

Zoe’s first instinct was to bolt upright and ask a million questions, but Sawyer pressed a kiss to the top of her head and traced circles on her back and, somehow, she knew the story wasn’t over.

“I saw him once a year.Here.” He gestured to the dark and dusty cabin. “He won this place playing cards in Monte Carlo, so it was never on any records. Which meant it was safe. For him. For me.” His fingers were in her hair then, a soft and gentle sweep that made her eyelids heavy. “It was the only place he ever let me call him Dad.”

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to make you go someplace you hate.”

He shifted until they were lying face-to-face, his hand a warm weight on her hip.

“That’s the worst part. When I was a kid, Ilovedit. I couldn’t wait to come back. I used to think that, someday, I’d stay forever and never have to leave. Someday Mom would come too. Someday we’d be a family, but...”

She heard the words he didn’t say:spies don’t get a happy ending. And a little voice in the back of her mind whispered,but maybe they could?

“As I got older, I figured he was just some jerk who used my mother and threw her away. But I was wrong, I found out later. He used her for sex, sure. But, mostly, he used her for secrets.” He looked into the fire, unable to face her as he finished, “And what she got was me.”

Zoe wanted to tell him there were worse things to end up with. She wanted to say his story wasn’t over yet. She wanted to crawlthrough time and tell that little boy he wasn’t just some spy’s collateral damage—he was hers now. And she wasn’t giving him up without a fight.

“Mom died when I was nineteen. Car accident,” he added numbly. “I was so fucking alone. But a few months later I got a call. Evidently, my test scores impressed certain people and I fit a certain profile—had a certain set of skills. Turns out there was a reason my deadbeat dad paid for me to take martial arts and learn archery and do summer exchange programs abroad. By the time I found out what he was, it was too late to change what I am.”

---