If only that scowl didn’t make me want to nail all kinds of other things in the process.
11
Falcon
We spent the rest of the evening going over what we’d learned. King was particularly bothered by the alarm connectors on the outside of the tunnel door as well as the heavy reaction by the security personnel at the door. I wasn’t sure what Elek meant by alarming against escape from the house as well as entry, but I was fairly sure the extra muscle on site had something to do with the recent art acquisition.
If there was a more nefarious reason, then we were in trouble.
So far the bugs had picked up nothing but Hungarian, and while King knew more than I’d expected, he didn’t know enough to translate everything we were picking up. Which meant we had to stream it back to our techs at home and have a translation team report back anything useful.
But it wasn’t for lack of trying on King’s part. He was downright obsessed with listening in on the off chance he could pick up something critical. Hours after everyone else had gone to bed, he was still sitting hunched over the large wooden table with the headset on and the laptop in front of him open to a translation search engine.
“Come to bed,” I said before realizing how it sounded. I’d gotten out of the shower and dressed in sleep pants and an old T-shirt before wandering back to the kitchen for some water.
King looked up and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I can’t stop thinking there’s more to this we don’t know about.” When he brought his hands back down to his lap, I noticed just how tired he looked. Inky blotches lined his eyes, and his hair was every which way, which I was learning was fairly usual for this late hour.
He looked edible.
“We can’t figure it all out in one day. You need sleep. You were up late last night, remember?”
The corner of King’s lip quirked up. “You’d make a good papa bear. Anyone ever told you that?”
I couldn’t decide if that was a comment about my sexuality, my age, or my body hair.
“Relax,” he said with a soft laugh. “I just meant you’re protective. You look out for your team.” He stood and stretched, revealing that tantalizing strip of skin above his waistband that had always been a weak spot of mine.
I tried not to look.
I failed.
King caught me staring. “Like what you see, Papa Bear?”
“Don’t call me that, pup.”
More deep laughter. It vibrated straight to my groin.
“You’re not that old,” he challenged. “Fifty-five… sixty tops.”
I took a step toward him and glared down at him where he still sat at the table. “Insubordinate punk. I’ll have you know I’m thirty-eight. Not that much older than your twenty-eight.”
“You sure you don’t have grandkids yet? Only someone sprinkled a fair amount of salt in your pepper.” He reached up and ruffled my short hair.
I couldn’t hold back my own laughter. “You’re a brat.”
“I prefer the term comedian.”
“A troublemaker,” I added.
“A moniker I can neither deny nor shake. Not sure I’d want to, if I’m being honest.”
His hand was still in my hair, only it had slowed until his touch was more of a caress. My breathing did the opposite, speeding up until I expected him to call me on it.
“Come to bed,” I repeated. This time my voice sounded strange to my ears. King’s pupils widened, the shining darkness taking over the speckled green of his irises.
Fuck. Fuck. This was a bad idea. I could not… we could not go down this path.
“Make me.”
His words were so soft, I would have missed them if I hadn’t been staring at his plush mouth. My dick throbbed, tenting toward him in the soft fabric.
I teetered on the edge. All I would have to do is turn around and walk away, peeling my shirt over my head to send him the message I would give him what he wanted in the privacy of our bedroom. But there was still a niggling voice in my head chanting master manipulator over and over again. Did it matter? What was a quick bout of hot sex between consenting adults? A fuck wasn’t the same thing as a relationship, or, hell, even a date.
It was just a fuck. A way to burn off stress on a mission.
Right?
King’s fingers tightened on my scalp and began to pull my head closer. The small promise of aggression was like tossing fuel on a spark. I was going to let him do this. My eyes moved to his mouth in time to see his teeth scrape hard against his bottom lips.
I wanted to kiss them better. And then I wanted to scrape my own teeth across them so I could do it all over again.