Page 9 of After the Spy Seduces

And why, for God’s sake, did he ache to kiss her? Her. Theworstwoman in the world to long to taste.

Like a siren sensing the effect she had on him, she shifted closer, and near enough that her lavender scent wafted over him like a cloud. She placed her palm on his chest. Right over his startled heart.

“Do you have any idea at all where my brother is?” Her whispered entreaty twined uncomfortably around his spine, because the only answers he could give would wound her. “If he’s safe and unhurt?”

“No.”

As if recognizing that for the lie it was, she searched his face, but she wouldn’t find any answers there. He was too good to let his secrets escape so easily. Not even to a beautiful angel wrapped in the moonlit fog. “Would you tell me if you did?”

“No.”Thatwas the brutal truth.

Her frustration flared for one unguarded moment. “But youhaveto tell me.” Her fingers clutched pleadingly at his waistcoat. “Don’t you see? I’m the only one who can help him.”

He tightened his jaw. Her pleas of mercy for her brother grated. So did the realization that she was only touching him because of that murderous bastard. “Maybe he doesn’t deserve to be helped.”

She stiffened. “My brother is an innocent victim.”

“Your brother is anything but innocent.”

Her hand dropped away, and the loss of her touch chilled him. “So you think I’m lying?”

He folded his arms across his chest, to keep from grabbing her and shaking sense into her. Or kissing her. At that moment, given the anger and yearning warring inside him, the result would be a toss-up. “I think you’re in over your head.”

Her eyes iced over. “Actually, Mr. Carlisle, I don’t really care what you think of me.”

“You should.” He was deadly serious. Did she really have no idea how much danger she’d put herself into tonight? To sneak off in disguise without telling anyone, to meet foreign operatives and exchange documents— She was damned lucky that he’d been there to save her. “Right now I’m the only thing standing between you and the gallows for treason.”

Her face turned ghostly white in the shadows.Good.

Calling what she’d done treason was a grand exaggeration. But if it took that threat to convince her to keep herself from danger, then so be it. God only knew what might happen if she tried to rescue Morgan again. He couldn’t bear to have another death bloodying his hands.

“I am nota traitor. I would never…” Her voice faded away as softly as the mists lingering around them and ended in a hard swallow. She whispered so breathlessly that he had to lean in to hear, “But I did, didn’t I?” Her hand went to her chest, as if needing a physical reminder to keep breathing. “Dear God…”

“So what Ithink, Miss Morgan,” he said, lowering his head until their eyes were even, his mouth so close to hers that he could feel the warmth of her nervous breath skittering across his lips, “is that you love your brother and would go to any lengths to ensure his safety. You even put yourself into danger tonight to save him.” Removing his right glove and letting it drop to the ground, he murmured, “Very brave of you.”

Also damnably foolish. But he knew better than to utter that thought aloud. After all, if he was going to be slapped, he might as well make it worthwhile. So he audaciously brushed his bare knuckles across her smooth cheek to soothe her fears.

In truth, though, he simply couldn’t resist touching her.

“But I wasn’t successful.” She trembled as he dared to stroke his thumb over her bottom lip, yet she didn’t push his hand away. A low thrill of triumph warmed through him when she faintly turned her face to nuzzle his palm. “They still have Garrett.”

If he had any sense in him, he’d simply walk away right now and return to his work with the Home Office, work he’d been seriously neglecting of late. He’d let her brother’s role in all this play out and let her discover on her own what her brother had really been doing. His head knew it. The instinct in his gut was certain of it.

Instead, against all reason, he heard himself proposing the exact thing he shouldn’t—“I can help you find out what happened to him.”

The same expression of stunned disbelief gripped her beautiful face that he was certain was also flitting across his at his momentary lapse of sanity. The lapse that put ten years of secrecy in jeopardy because he’d just offered to let her get close to him.Veryclose.

“You said it was dangerous.” She pulled in a ragged breath when he gently angled her face up toward his, anticipating the kiss he so very much wanted to give her. “Why would you help me?”

His mouth hovered only a hairsbreadth from hers. “Because I think you’re in danger.” The harsh truth followed. “And I couldn’t bear to see you get hurt.”

He lowered his lips to hers—

“AndIthink you’re not at all what you seem.”

His head jerked back. He stared down at her, stunned.

Impossible. She didn’t know that he worked for the Home Office. Couldn’t possibly have known. Yet surprise electrified him.