He arched a brow. “Jennifer appears to think you do.”
“Maybe she simply thinks you’re trouble,” she said.
“Then maybe you should run,” he suggested.
Run. That darn word again. “I don’t run.”
“Then why’d you leave New York?”
Now he was making her mad. “Why’d you leave the Army?”
He stared at her and chuckled. “I had my reasons.”
“And so did I.”
His lips twitched. “Copy that. Then I guess we understand each other.”
Understand each other? “I doubt that.”
“No?” he asked. “Highly improbable.”
“Because of your delicate sensibilities,” he teased.
She leaned forward and pointed. “Don’t push me,” she chided.
He leaned forward, close. “Can’t help myself.” His eyes twinkled with mischief. Sexy, wonderful mischief that made her feel more alive and turned-on than she had in a very long time.
A few seconds ticked by. Gray and white shadows swirled with passing reflections. It occurred to her she wanted to kiss him. Her. Kiss. Him. Not the other way around. If they held their positions much longer, he’d kiss her and then she’d never know if she had the courage to go first.
She leaned back and crossed her arms again. He mimicked her position, arms in front of his broad, gorgeous chest. Silence ensued as did an outright stare-off. Sexual tension inked a path from him to her. Or maybe it was her to him because everything about the man, from his demanding personality to the scar she had just located right above his top lip—that really full, sexy lip—did a number on her. Proven by the damp tingling feeling in the V of her body. A sensation she found downright unnerving, considering the man was several arm lengths away.
She wanted to forget everything with Ryan and just experience him. To let go. But how could she after the political attachment that had come with Marco, through him? Ryan, who had kissed her. Ryan, who she wanted to kiss her again. Ryan, who she’d considered dangerous because he excited her, scared her, made her want to toe some invisible line that felt erotic and daring.
Yet, she’d never considered he could have a political agenda, or that he might sell her out to someone who did. He seemed too true-blue for that. Still…
“Do you vote, Ryan?”
“Call me paranoid,” he said, “but it seemed a bad idea to vote for, or against, anyone who might later be assigning me a death mission.”
The last thing she’d call Ryan was paranoid. Or safe. Was he teasing her again? “Soldiers get secret ballots like the rest of us.”
“I wasn’t just a soldier,” he said. “In fact, for all practical purposes, I didn’t exist. If I went on a mission and didn’t come back, I just didn’t come back.”
“Are you saying you were afraid to vote?”
“Careful now,” he warned in a teasing voice. “Us tough-guy soldiers take issue with being called afraid. Besides, most of the time, I was so deep inside enemy territory, I couldn’t be found if you wanted to hand me a ballot. Only a few people knew of my missions.”
“A person can’t just disappear,” she said softly. “Your family would miss you. They’d ask questions.”
His lashes lowered to half-veil, a split second of heavy silence falling before he replied, “The Army was my family.”
Translation. He was alone. As in, no parents to drive him crazy, but still love him insanely, as hers did. No matter how she tried to escape her family’s craziness, the insane-love part was never in doubt and always comforting.
A million questions flew through her mind, but she settled for, “Yet, you left.”
“Like I said,” he replied, “I had my reasons.”
Suddenly, he moved, and he was leaning over her, his arms framing either side of her shoulders. “Ask me the question that’s on your mind. The real one. Not something you say because you’re on the spot.”
She inhaled a sharp breath, laced with the spicy, warm scent of him, his mouth close. His kiss a promise she wanted to make reality. And she didn’t play coy. She hated coy. She liked straightforward. She liked direct. She liked what you see is what you get. And she needed to know if that was what Ryan was going to give her. So she asked the question he wanted to hear, the question she most wanted answered. “What do you want from me, Ryan?”
“You,” he said. “Just you.”
The claim, spoken in his deep baritone voice, de livered raw sensuality. A shiver raced down her spine, and it was all she could do not to pull his mouth to hers but…the driver. She squeezed her eyes shut as she accepted the part of her life that relocating could not change. She hated that she cared about gossip, hated that even with a man like Ryan so close she could taste him, she remembered how easily a third party could spread rumors, how easily those rumors could become poison to a political career like her father’s. Sabrina ached to feel free.