Page 71 of Beyond the Rules
“No, of course not. Each of you is different. But I want you to know. I likeyou,too.”
There. I’d finallysaidit.
He angled his head and challenged me with his stare. “I’m not sure that you’d like me that much if you reallyknewme.”
I opened my mouth and closed it. “What’s that supposedtomean?”
“I think you know whatImean.”
The fire in his eyes went straight to my pussy, a flame that promised to burn andconsume.
He glanced at his watch again. “Time’s up. Gottogo.”
I hesitated. “Can I text you orsomething?”
“You can’ttextme.”
My shoulders slumped. He didn’t want to hearfromme.
“I didn’t mean it like that.” He tucked his fingers under my chin and tilted up my face, until I met his stare again. “I’m going to be off-grid for a while, but you may be able to WhatsApp me. I can’t promise I’ll get the messages and if I do, I won’t be able to reply right away, but maybe we can connectsomehow.”
“I’ll try ifyoutry.”
“Deal.” He opened the truck’s door and after getting in, shut the door, turned on the engine and clicked on hisseatbelt.
The grind of the garage door opening startled me. It lifted up as if commanded by fate’s invisible hand. The world loomed beyond it, waiting to extract Zar from the safety of our house and deliver him to the dangers of a cruel, brutal reality. The fear. It sliced through me like an icyblade.
A vision of Daniel on the day he left for his last mission flashed in my mind. I’d driven him to the airport. He looked dashing in his desert fatigues, strong, cocky, indestructible as he got his gear out of my car, hugged me goodbye and walked confidently into the world he’d chosen to make hismarkin.
The next time I saw Daniel he was in Germany, rigged in a hospital bed by a tangle of tubes and wires. He was in a coma and his legs were gone. Had I known, I would’ve never driven him to the airport that day. I would’ve trapped him in my embrace and held on to himforever.
Desperation swelled in my belly, a pervasive, paralyzing fear that Zar might not come back, that this was the last time I’d ever see him. As the truck started to back up, I surged forward and banged my fist against his window. The tires screeched to a stop. The window whirled down and he leaned out, resting his brawny forearm on the sill. His voice broke through my heart’s din, drumming in myears. “Nina?”
I reached out and ran my hand down his tanned, powerful forearm and over the thick veins upraised on the back of his hands. I traced each vein, imagining I was reading his body’s map, his life’s destiny, forcing myself to contemplate a happy ending for him andforme.
I dipped two fingers beneath his wrists and felt his pulse, trying to memorize his heart’s rhythm, steady, booming, a little fast. I trailed my index over each one of his fingers, thick, blunt-tipped fingers, some scorched at the tips by virtue of his own hot, dangerousflame.
“Nina, what is it?” His voice broke the trance, soft, reverent, as if he knew how I was feeling and wanted to soothe me with his tone’s preciousgentleness.
I blinked off the tears and forced a teasing grin to my face. “Aren’t you gonna kiss me beforeyougo?”
He froze and, for a moment, I think he considered doing just that. Then his fingers tightened on the wheel and his face set into a furious grin. “Hell no,noway.”
His reaction irked me. “Why thehellnot?”
“You don’t know, do you?” He let out a bitter cackle. “If I kiss you right now, there will be no holding back. I’d have to kiss you for hours on end, just to get my fill. After that, I’d have to fuck you so long and hard you’d be walking crooked for a while. I wouldn’t be able to stop, which means I’d have to break my word to some people who matter to me. So no, I’m not kissing you right now. I don’t have that kind of control anymore. But I’ll ask you this: Take care of the guys. And think long and hard about whether you want to get with me when I get back. Because now you know what to expect, if you ever say yestome.”
And with that, Balthazar Flint stomped on the accelerator, drove in reverse out of the garage and screeched out of the driveway, leaving me standing there, afraid to wave goodbye, wet, needy, and achinginside.
Chapter19
Aiden
Nina took off her glasses and squeezed the bridge of her nose before she put them back on and shifted her gaze between my screen and Tanner’s. In the week since Zar had left, the three of us had parked our asses in the bunker for at least fifteen hours a day. We’d made some progress along the way but, taking into consideration the long hours we’d put in, our productivity ratiosucked.
The good news was that we had the run of Dimayev’s servers. Nina had taken us back in without a hitch. We’d also managed to obtain a warrant for his cell records. Credit Josh Lane with that one. I’d run every number in Dimayev’s contact history in the hopes of finding a connection with Calamity. But so far,nothing.
I worried about Nina. In her hacker mode, she was a work beast. The girl could infiltrate, program and reprogram Putin’s girlfriend’s vibrator with her eyes closed and her hands tied behind her back. But right now, she’d been staring at the screen fortoolong.