Page 60 of A Shot at Love
“Want me to do the other one?” she asked before she gave into the urge to jump up and wrap those throbbing thighs around his waist.
It took him a moment before he replied, “I’m good, thanks.”
Gemma took a mental step, and a few physical ones, back as he removed the second gauze.
“You got some sleep, then?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Feel better?” He reached out for the gauze she still held. She dropped it into his hand, careful not to touch him because she didn’t know how she’d react if she actually did, and then he tossed both over his shoulder and into a trash pail.
“Yes.”
It was his turn to nod. “Let me grab a shower and then I’ll see about dinner.”
“Let me help,” she said. When his eyebrows shot up his forehead, she realized how he might have misinterpreted her meaning. “With dinner, I mean. Cooking. You’ve…you’ve been doing everything. All the cooking, and such. I want to help. And I can cook. You know who my sister is, after all. I know my way around a kitchen. Even an unfamiliar one.”
She came slamming to halt. She never babbled, so why did just having this man look at her with a question in his eyes cause her to turn into a nonstop chatterbox?
Taking a deep breath, she counted to three, then said slowly, enunciating each word clearly, “You go have a shower. I’ll make dinner. Deal?”
He bent over, grabbed his gun from its resting spot on the floor, said “Deal,” and then moved by her and into the house.
Once she was alone, Gemma flattened a hand over her shaking abdomen and took in a deep, slow breath. There was no sane reason the thought of Ky naked and standing in the shower, lathered in soap and essence of, well, man, should make her knees goes soft and her thighs tremble.
But when she passed the closed bathroom door on her way to the kitchen and heard the shower kick in, they did just that.
Bad knees.
*
Ky was starting to realize the benefits of a brutally cold shower. Not only did it cool off the total body swelter his workout had heated him with, but it helped tamp down the lust raging through him.
Walking around in almost a full state of arousal for hours on end was starting to take a toll on his body and his nerves.
From the moment Ky’d watched Gemma hit all her targets like a sharpshooter, to the hours he’d spent with her in the woods, watching her work, his body had been on hyper alert.
Taking an hour to try and sweat off his ravenous desires, he’d almost gotten his body back to normal when he saw her watching him, her camera poised. The workout may have calmed him for the moment, but the sight of her in the garage had him hard and pulsing in an instant again.
This is insane.
He was charged with keeping her safe from a madman. He couldn’t do that if every time he looked at her all he could envision was what color those beautiful eyes would turn to when she came; what her skin would taste like as he ran his tongue over every inch of it; the noises she’d make when she fell apart in his hands.
Insanity. Lusting after a woman who didn’t even like him and only tolerated his company because she had no other choice.
With her brother-in-law, the other agents, even with Jon, Gemma had smiled and spoken to them as if they were old friends. With him, she continued to be reserved and quiet, nervous and unsure, all traits he didn’t think she usually possessed.
He wasn’t naive by any sense of the word—he knew when a woman liked him, desired him, wanted to be in his company.
Gemma Laine gave no indication she felt any of those things. In fact, she’d been peeved he hadn’t let her go off on her own to wander through the woods. She may have yielded to his demand to go with her, but he knew she hadn’t been happy about it. They’d walked for hours with barely a few sentences said between them.
It was obvious his desire was one sided, which was probably a good thing since he had a job to do. If his ego was a little bruised because of it, well, he’d just need to live with it.
Ky toweled off, dressed, and checked his gun before inserting it back into his shoulder holster. He needed to remember why they were hiding out here. He had to keep his mind alert and focused, his guard up, to make sure nothing happened to either of them. He had to do his job, no matter what was going on in his mind.
