Page 93 of Stolen By the Billionaire
“I’m briefing you on the operation.”
“But when is the operation going to start?”
“Soon.”
Later, Blaze packed a duffel bag with some clothes, toiletries, and his civilian operational readiness kit, and he grabbed a second bag for Sarah.
But there was nothing to pack in it for their evac to NYC.
That was not optimal. A lack of materiel was not optimal combat readiness.
She needed some clothes.
In the second guest bedroom, the one with the traitorous sliding glass door the intruders had breached, Blaze was sorting through spare clothes folded in a dresser.
Outside, the summer sun sparkled on the pool and the darker azure of Lake Michigan as it climbed the sky.
Sarah was trying on the clothes in the en suite bathroom. The dark blue or black shirts ranged in size from men’s medium to ones with several Xs on the tags, all crisply folded to the same sized squares in the drawers.
She called through the doorway, “When will we get there?”
He found medium-sized sweatpants in dark blue. “Depends on when we leave. Try these pants.”
He wadded and tossed the knit sweatpants in a no-look basketball pass through the doorway.
Brushing sounds from within the bathroom as Sarah tried the sweatpants on. “I can roll up the legs. These will do me.”
He would—
No. Those thoughts were banished. They were contrary to the mission. “Try this tee shirt.”
More shuffling. More brushing of presumably cotton fabric on her bare skin while she was mere feet away from him.
It took longer for her to reply. “It’s big, like it’s hanging off my shoulder.”
He stared at the white paint on the wall above the dresser. “Are you decent?”
“Yes.”
He pivoted and leaned through the bathroom doorway.
She was leaning with one hip against the counter, the oversized sweatpants and tee draped on her body like a kid playing in her parents’ closet.
Her jeans and navy-blue tee shirt were crumpled on the floor beside her leg.
She’d removed her clothes right there in the bathroom while he’d been standing just around the corner. He’d known it, but here was evidence that she’d been nearly naked right there.
A tiny bud of pink lace peeked from the gaping collar of the men’s medium tee shirt she wore.
He’d deliberately ignored her clothes he’d tossed in the washing machine the night before, studiously examining the white-painted wall behind the machine while his hands had grasped her denim jeans, that soft tee shirt, the white cotton panties, and the pink lace of her bra.
Even while folding them to crisp regulation neatness, he had sent his mind elsewhere, as alertly disassociated as if he were sitting in forward base, resting while waiting for a missile attack.
Except for the bra.
Blaze didn’t know how to fold a bra to regulation standards, so he’d had to improvise and place it on top where the pretty little thing wouldn’t be crushed.
And now, it was on her skin, on her softest skin, on the rounds of her breasts that he’d carefully tied with kinbaku ropes the night before when he couldn’t breathe from wanting his hands and his mouth and his body on her.
