We started the long walk toward the elevator.
Blaire’s shorter legs were pumping as she worked to keep up with me. “Did you know that there is a phobia for people who fear dolls?”
“I don’t have a phobia.”
“They say we all find dolls creepy because our brains can’t handle fake faces.”
“I’m not scared of dolls.”
“There is a whole subgenre of movies that involve evil dolls—which must be terrifying for people who have this particular fear.”
We made eye contact, and it was all I could do not to laugh. I worked to remain impassive. “What do you want me to say?”
“The truth.”
We made it to the elevator, and our eyes remained locked as we both pretended this was just another day and just another conversation. I could feel him out there, watching us. How many seconds of life did I have left?
“The truth is, I can’t stand old shit.”
She looked mystified. “What does that even mean?”
“Like, antique stuff—really old furniture and old clothing—I don’t like it.”
Somehow, we were now on the elevator. I couldn’t believe we had made it this far.
“Lucy isn’t old.”
“Old enough.”
She spoke slowly, her expression deadpan. “What if I told you that I love antique shopping? What if that was my passion?”
I almost laughed. “It hurts that you’re mocking my inner fears.”
“What if every Saturday morning I want to tour around old estate sales?”
We were now moving toward the taxi. I put my arm protectively around her shoulder, wondering if it would be the last time. “I’ll wait in the car while you shop.”
She smiled up at me as I opened the taxi door for her. “You are almost selling yourself as someone who has patience.”
“In you get.”
I stood and watched as she scrambled in, and I braced myself for the start of my dirt nap. But it didn’t come. And then we were in the cab, driving back to our hotel.
None of this was making sense. What were they waiting for? We had what they wanted. They must have known their window of opportunity was closing.
I hadn’t thought past getting off the ship, so, with only time to kill until our flight left for Vancouver, we returned to the hotel we had just checked out of. The only hotel room available was the one we had just vacated. The only difference was that housekeeping had come and cleaned the room.
Blaire sat down on the bed and smoothed out the fabric of the duvet. “I don’t suppose you’re going to let me go to the pool.”
I was standing at the window, behind the shade, watching the street below. “We’re going to stay in this room all day until we leave for our flight tonight.”
“Are we safe in here?”
“Yes.”
“How safe?”
I shrugged. “Quite safe. Our vulnerability will be when we head to the airport.”
She smiled and leaned back on the bed. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
My cock snapped to attention at her blatant suggestion. “I need to stay vigilant.”
She gave me a smile. “I thought you just said we were quite safe here.”
I forced myself to look out the window. “Stay focused, Blaire.”
Blaire’s idea of staying focused was to order us room service and then flip between the two English channels on the TV repeatedly. But when she started walking toward the door with the ice bucket, I moved to block her.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Getting ice.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
I let out a long breath. “I’ll get it for you.”
Her eyes widened. “You think someone is in our hallway?”
“You really need this ice?”
“I don’t need it.”
From her perspective, I could see how it looked like I took everything too far. Then again, I had been convinced someone would kill us at the docks, and nothing had happened. “Give me the bucket. And don’t answer this door. No matter what.”
I stood in the hallway and listened. I could hear nothing. I walked to the ice room and was reluctant to step out of sight of our room, but I made short work of filling the bucket.
Nothing had moved.
When I let myself back into the room, I handed her the ice and then watched through the peephole for any unusual movement.
She didn’t speak, but she did watch me with a concerned look.
“I’m not paranoid, okay?”
“I know,” she said softly. “Okay.”
Two hours later, I stood at the window and watched Blaire. She was lying in the bed, sleeping on her stomach. She had gone to bed wearing only a tank top and a pair of underwear, but sometime during her nap she had gotten hot and kicked off the covers.
Instead of watching out the window, I was watching her, trying to commit every single detail to memory. I had been so sure that our untimely end would come this afternoon. The fact that it hadn’t told me I still hadn’t put all the pieces together. I wasn’t correctly predicting the enemy’s actions.
Why had Blaire’s grandfather hidden a USB drive on a ship destined for the Middle East? Someone badly wanted to get their hands on the information that was on it. I had no doubt that Blaire’s grandfather had known the risk of involving his granddaughter, so why had he knowingly put her in danger?
Why had the captain been so nervous? Why hadn’t we been ambushed yet? Yesterday’s fight at the market had predicted a much different day. Who was the sniper working for? And what did any of this have to do with Beirut?
My head hurt from trying to fit all the missing pieces together. I hated missions where I was operating blind. That’s when things went wrong and people got killed. It made me feel like were living on borrowed time.
God, she was so beautiful. Unable to resist the vision before me, I took off my T-shirt and crawled onto the bed. I wasn’t going to touch her, but I wanted to be close enough that I could really study her.
She sleepily smiled at me when I lay beside her. I just wanted to take in all of her. That cute little smile. The length of her eyelashes and the shape of her delicate, feminine neck.
“Are you just going to lie there and watch me?”
“Yes.”
She got onto all fours and did this cute little stretch with her spine. “I can’t wait to get back to yoga.”
It wasn’t hard to imagine her walking out of an exclusive yoga studio carrying an expensive tea latte. “You do yoga?”
She reached with her hand over her head in a move that pulled her tank top tight against her breasts. “I’m terrible at it, but when I stop doing it, my body protests.”
I couldn’t seem to pull my gaze away from her breasts. Her nipples were hard and pushing through the thin fabric. In an attempt to create some sort of boundary between us, if only to keep my hands off her, I said, “We live different lives.”
She stopped stretching and sat back on her haunches. She was trying to figure out where I was coming from. “Not that different.”
If only she knew how badly I wanted to keep her close to me. “Different enough.”
Her mouth tightened, which told me she was about to take a stand on the issue. She reached out and, without ceremony, grabbed a handful of my hard cock through my pants. I grunted as she squeezed it tight.
I grabbed her wrist, but she didn’t let go. Next thing I knew, I was moving her hand up and down my cock.
Only when her other hand reached forward to undo my pants did I release her hand. She pulled my hard dick out of my pants and her small hand gently explored it. When she started stroking, hot desire washed over me. I seemed incapable of doing anything but watching her through half-closed eyes.
I grunted when she started this little rhythmic squeeze thing, but just when it was getting good, she stopped. She inched forward, and only when she started lowering her face did I fully realize her intentions. I was shocked in a frozen, fascinated way—she didn’t strike me as someone who readily gave head.
When her mouth was about an inch away from my pounding member, she gave me a self-conscious smile. “I’m not super experienced doing this.”
I let out a pent-up breath. I knew I should be telling her to stop, but all I managed to say was, “You’re doing good so far.”
I damn near came off the bed when she slowly started to suck me off. Her mouth was a combination of warmth, wet and inexperience, which for some reason had me counting backwards. When she started to pump her mouth on my cock and looked up at me with those green eyes, I had to actively concentrate not to blow my load.
Holy fuck, she was a turn-on. I barely lasted another minute before I had to reach down and slowly extract her from my cock. My concern was how much I wanted to come into her mouth. If we kept going, that would shortly become an inevitability.
She looked slightly mortified. “I did it wrong.”
“Not true.”
“You stopped me before I even got started.”
I decided to just be honest with her. “I got too close to coming.”
She sounded incredulous. “I don’t believe you.”
She needed to be distracted. I reached out to grab her, but she skittishly moved away.
“I’m in charge today.”
Curious about what that would look like, I decided to play along. “Okay. That’s fair.”
She swung her leg over me, straddling me. I started to work at taking off her tank top when she pushed aside her panties and, without warning, impaled herself on me.
My entire body bucked in response to the intense sensations of my bare cock being sheathed in warm, wet pussy. She held on like a champion.
I put my hands on her hips, but she grabbed them and placed them above my head. “Keep those there.”
I didn’t know if I should laugh or be turned on by her demands. They were so arbitrary, since she couldn’t physically make me do anything, but I found myself complying anyway.
“Are you going to talk dirty too?” I asked her.
She bit her lip as she slowly started to circle her hips. “That’s your department.”
“We have departments now?”
She smiled wickedly. “We do when I’m in charge.”
I would have laughed if I weren’t so enthralled with the sensation of her tight little pussy pumping on my cock. She was making moves that I could only describe as mind-blowing.
And then she got a look on her face and stopped moving.
I might possibly die from blue balls. I managed to speak. “You should keep going.”
“I really like it when you talk all hot and sexy during sex, but I can only speak the truth.”
I fought my need to buck up into her. “The truth is good.”
She looked conflicted. “I need to tell you the truth. My truth.”
“Which is?”
She put both hands flat on my chest and looked me deep in the eyes. “I meant it when I said I didn’t want to say goodbye to you.”
The sex was forgotten as I got pulled into this conversation. She wanted to try and have a relationship. “Oh.”
“Do you want to say goodbye to me?”
It would never work, but not because I didn’t want it. “No, but we’re different.”
“We’re not that different.”
“Different enough.”
You would think this conversation would kill my hard-on, but I wasn’t sure my cock had ever been harder. She sat on top of me, not moving, and my cock was like a missile buried deep inside of her.
“The thing is…” She looked at me shyly. “I have feelings for you.”
Her words were my undoing.
“Oh god,” I gritted out as I jackknifed up, wrapped my arms around her, and roughly held her tight while I selfishly thrust once, twice, three times into her, releasing all of me into her depths with a roar.
God help me. I buried my face in her neck, inhaling her scent. “I owe you an orgasm.”
She put my face in her hands and brought her forehead to mine so she could look into my soul. “Does that mean you’ll give us a chance?”
I knew at the core of my being that this woman would be my undoing. I knew if I allowed her to get too close, she would eventually break me. I think I’d always known that about her. But it was too late to protect myself. I was unable to resist her. “I’m definitely thinking about it.”
Her smile was more beautiful than a thousand sunsets.
I didn’t understand the tight feeling in my chest, but it felt so good it hurt. I flipped her onto her back and kissed her deep. “Time for me to redeem myself after that embarrassing start.”
She put her hands around my neck. “Did you really like my blow job?”
“I loved your blow job.”
“I can do it better, I know I can.”
“I doubt it. That was damn close to perfection.”
“What time does our plane leave?”
“We have six hours.”
“I think it’s your turn to be in charge.”
I made a point of pinning her arms down above her head. I brought my lips to hers so when I spoke, I spoke against her mouth. “Where do you want to go on our first date?”
