Page 112 of A Shot at Love
She swallowed them back, looked up at him and said, “You’re going to tell me that since this case is done, and I’m no longer in any kind of danger, that, well…”
Gemma sighed, all the fight going out of her. “I’m trying to tell you I understand. We were in a dangerous situation, adrenaline gets flowing, emotions and urges get acted upon…”
He continued to stare at her with confusion on his face.
Did he really not understand what she was saying?
“We slept together, Ky. We used each other to get through a bad time. To give us each a little comfort, a little diversion. But it’s over now and we can get back to our lives. Back to the way things were…before.”
“You think I used you for comfort? For sex? Because you were, what? Available?”
She nodded, as one single tear broke loose and slipped down her cheek. Gemma cursed her weakness.
“I’m saying we both used each other. And then it all got to be too much, between us,” she said. “I realize that. You were just doing your job, trying to keep me safe. Everything you did, everything you said, was because you were doing your job. I was the one who, well, made it go further than it should have.”
Saying it out loud made it sound so real, so final.
“Gemma, look at me.”
She did.
“In all the time we’ve spent together, through everything, the shootings, the running, everything, do you really think that I would have made love to you if I didn’t want to? That you basically forced me into it?”
“N-no. That’s not what I’m saying.”
“It’s what you implied when you said you let the situation between us get out of hand.”
“I did. If you remember, I was the one who came to your room, not the other way around. I started this…this…thing, between us. I made the first move, not you.”
“Only because I thought you couldn’t stand to be in the same room as me.”
“What?”
“From the moment we met, you were pissed off at me and didn’t hide it. At the safe house it was worse. You were all sweetness and light to Jon but when you looked at me I felt like you wanted to squash me under your shoe like an annoying bug.”
Gemma had the grace to blush, knowing how true his words were.
“Believe me,” he said, his mouth quirking up in one corner, “if I’d known what you were thinking, what you wanted, I would have been in your bed after the first time we grappled together in the basement.”
She blinked. Several times. “You would have?”
He laughed. “Baby, I was so hard when you were on top of me, even an ice cold shower couldn’t calm me down.”
“Really?”
With one tug on her hand she was in his lap. “Yes, really.” He cupped her cheeks and leaned in to kiss her.
How had she lasted five days without this? Without his touch? Without his kiss?
Ky pulled away and stared hard at her face. “The minute you turned around on that street corner and I saw you the first time, I wanted you. That’s never happened before.”
She traced his bottom lip with her fingertip.
He sucked it into his mouth. Then he circled her wrist and pulled it out, biting gently down on the pad.
Gemma was glad she was sitting because she lost all feeling in her legs from her thighs down.
“The night you came to my room I’d been trying to work, but all I kept thinking about was that kiss in the kitchen.”
“It was all I could think about, too. That’s why I went to you. I wanted more.”
He laid his forehead against hers. “Thank God you did.”
Gemma nuzzled his jaw and set her head down on his shoulder. “I thought you didn’t want to see me any more now that everything was resolved. You didn’t call, or text. Nothing. Not one word since I got home.”
A breath pushed passed his lips, slow and deep. “I apologize for that. The truth is, aside from being tied up twenty hours a day for the past five days with every government alphabet agency imaginable, I knew if I called you I’d never be able to finish what needed to be done. All I’d want to do was come to you and forget everything else. So I kept going, sat through every tedious, long, maddening meeting and interview I had to. I slept on the couch in my office at the FBI for the past four nights.”
