Page 62 of Seal of Honor
He gave Audrey a light squeeze. “Liam’s a dangerous man. He’s extremely well-trained and very unstable. Watch your back around him tonight, okay? He might try to hurt you.”
She flinched. “What? Why? I don’t know him. I had nothing to do with what happened between the two of you. Why would he want to hurt me?”
“Because you’re mine.”
Her eyes lifted to his, filled with a soft something that looked a lot like hope. “Am I?” she whispered. “Yours?”
Jesus Christ, he wanted her to be in the worst possible way. It wasn’t professional; it crossed every line of honor he’d ever drawn for himself, but there it was.
Still. Now was not the time to fight an emotional battle with himself. Now was the time to focus. She couldn’t be his if either of them wound up dead.
“Liam thinks you are, and that’s all that matters.” He knew the instant the words left his tongue that it was the wrong answer. The hope in her eyes faded to disappointment, though she looked away quickly to hide the reaction.
“I, um, should shower before dinner.” She pulled out of his embrace and scooted to the edge of the bed, trailing that pale gold sheet behind her to the bathroom.
Gabe let her go. Hurting her feelings hadn’t been his intention, but that was exactly what he’d done, and he felt powerless to fix it without admitting things he couldn’t afford to admit yet.
He hated feeling powerless.
Cursing, he pushed to his feet and strode toward the bathroom door but paused before barging inside. Muscling his way in when he knew damn good and well she wanted privacy would be rude. He could almost hear her scolding him for his lack of manners, so he dropped his hand away from the doorknob and raised it to knock instead.
“Audrey?”
The shower turned on, but she didn’t reply.
Gabe sighed and rapped his forehead lightly on the door, once, twice, which did nothing to help his headache or the blooming ache in his chest that made it hard to breathe.
“You are mine,” he muttered into the wood, although he knew it was a little too little, a little too late.
* * *
Am I? Yours?
Ugh. She might as well have spilled her heart out to him with those three words, and it went completely over his head.
Gabe was such a thick-skulled alpha male.
Okay, so that wasn’t entirely fair. He was focused on keeping them safe, getting them free, and finding Bryson. He had a lot more on his mind than their budding intimacy. Really, she should, too, but even thoughts of Bryson couldn’t keep her from reliving this afternoon in vivid detail as she soaped herself. She ached in all the most delicious places, her breasts plump and tender from Gabe’s affections, her thighs shaky, her core all but rubbed raw from the friction of his thrusts, and it felt wonderful.
She wanted more.
So much more.
She just had to convince Gabe he wanted the same.
Feeling better, Audrey shut off the water, reached for a towel, and noticed the dress she was supposed to wear hanging from a hook on the back of the bathroom door. She’d left it in the other room, so Gabe must have put it there sometime while she was showering. She never heard the door open, but knowing Gabe, she wouldn’t have. For a big man, he moved with eerily light feet.
The silk, plum-colored cocktail dress clung to her in all the right places, with a plunging V neckline that showed a tantalizing glimpse of cleavage. It wasn’t even close to her style, but how disturbing was it that Mena had so accurately guessed her size? She had to fight the urge to rip the awful thing off, shred it into expensive, itty-bitty scraps, and flush it down the toilet.
She left her hair down to air-dry and hoped the heavy mass covered some cleavage. In her everyday life, she liked wearing as few clothes as possible and had no problem with flashing a little skin—but not with men like Mena and Liam around. No thanks.
She opened the bathroom door and spotted Gabe staring out the balcony windows at the sunset. Or at least she thought it was the sunset he watched with such unwavering intensity. Either that, or he was scoping Mena’s security set-up.
Sadly, that was more likely.
All Gabriel Bristow saw when he looked at a sunset was a tactical advantage or disadvantage. He wasn’t the type to take a minute to admire the world’s natural beauty, to soak in a pretty moment. She’d have to change that.
Gabe made such a striking picture standing there in the dying sunlight, dressed in a tux with his bowtie undone around his neck and a fatigued expression of pure concentration on his face, that she wished for her paints. She let her eyes roam over his hard body, committing every detail to memory so she could transfer it to canvas as soon as she got back to work. His military-erect posture, feet braced apart, hands folded behind his back. The way the sunlight set sparks of gold and red off his dark hair. The play of light and shadow over his features. His caged intensity, pitiless focus. She’d capture him in acrylic with stark lines and dramatic contrasts and call it The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday.
