Page 68 of Code Name: Scorpio

“I don’t know what to hold on to,” she whispered. “Everything is mixed up. The cover and the real thing and what I feel about you and what happened out there. I can’t tell where one ends and the other starts.”

He looked at her face. The tears. The honesty. The woman who’d called him princess over coffee and sat at his feet in front of criminals and was now asking him what was real.

“Then hold on to this.” He kissed her.

Soft. Slow. His hands still on her face, his thumbs on her cheekbones, his mouth finding hers with nothing behind it except wanting to be there with her. No authority. No performance. Just him, asking.

He pulled back. Her eyes were open, searching his face.

Maybe that hadn’t been such a good idea, not what she wanted. Understandable. He started to ease back, giving her space. But her hand came up to the back of his neck, and she pulled him back down to her.

There was nothing soft about this kiss.

She kissed him like she was trying to climb inside him. Fingers in his hair, mouth demanding, her whole body pressing forward, and whatever careful distance he’d been trying to maintain caught fire. She pressed against him, chest to chest, pulling at him like the space between them was something she needed to destroy.

He made a sound against her mouth that was embarrassing and raw, and he didn’t care. She kissed him harder. Her fingers found the hem of his shirt and pulled upward, and he broke the kiss long enough for her to drag it over his head.

Her hands on his bare chest made him shudder, a full-body response to skin against skin that he couldn’t have controlled if he’d tried.

Four years. It had been four years since anyone had put their hands on him like this. Like they wanted to.

“Cassie. We don’t have to⁠—”

“I know.” Her voice was steady. Certain. “I want to.”

“I… I haven’t been with anyone in a long time.” His voice cracked on the last word. Smooth. Very smooth, Sutton. “I might not…”

“I don’t care.”

She kissed him again and her hands went to his belt, and his brain stopped forming objections because his body had already made the decision. Once he was undressed, he helped her pull her shirt over her head. Her skin underneath was pale and warm, and when he ran his hands down her sides, she shivered and pressed closer.

He shouldn’t be doing this. He didn’t deserve this. She was too good for him. She was too brave for this place. She had no idea what he’d done before she knew him, and if she had, she’d never let him touch her.

She pulled off her plain white bra and put his hand on her breast, and every reason he shouldn’t be doing this went quiet.

Not gone. Just quiet. Apparently his self-hatred needed a framework just like her brain did not to spiral, and that framework was her skin and her mouth and the sound she made when his thumb moved across her beaded nipple.

He didn’t deserve this, but he was going to take it anyway. God forgive him, he was going to take it anyway.

She pushed him backward onto the bed. He went. She climbed on top of him, settled her weight on his hips, looked down at him, and inverted the entire evening.

Hours ago, she’d been on the floor at his feet because he told her to be there. Now, she was above him because she’d put herself there. The reversal hit him somewhere deep and permanent, and his hands went to her hips and held on.

She leaned down and kissed him and her hips rolled against him and the sound he made was not something he’d ever made before. She smiled against his mouth.

“You like that, princess?”

Jesus Christ. This woman was going to kill him. “Yeah. Yeah, I like that.”

His hands were shaking when he reached over the side of the bed for his bag on the floor. He’d packed condoms back at headquarters, standard ops kit, the same way he packed everything, with the discipline of a man who planned for every contingency.

He’d carried one for four years without ever coming close to needing it. His fingers fumbled inside the pocket. For a second, he couldn’t find them and something close to panic hit him, and then they were there.

She took it from his hand. Her fingers were steadier than his, which was humbling and perfect. She rolled it on with a focus and precision so Cassandra that it made him bite his lip to keep from laughing or cursing, he wasn’t sure which.

Then she sank onto him, and every thought he’d ever had about anything emptied out of his head.

She was warm. Warm and tight and alive and around him and he couldn’t breathe. He gripped her hips and pressed his head back into the pillow, and he held on because the alternative was falling apart completely.