She stepped closer and saw that he wanted to take a step back. But he wouldn’t. The man was too stubborn for his own good. “Yes, but a nineteen-year-old genius can sometimes be wise beyond her years.”
She put her hand on his chest, felt that it was still solid. She expected nothing less. Her hand rested over his heart and she could feel the even beat of it. Bump, bump.
“Stop it.”
But he didn’t remove her hand, and he didn’t step back.
“I don’t know what it was, Q. The chemistry, the timing or just you and me. But I was different for you. And you know it. That’s why it hurt me so much when it was over. I wonder, did it hurt for you, too?”
He didn’t answer, but she could feel the muscles under her hand tightening and, beneath her palm, his pulse picked up speed.
“Did you miss me after I was gone?” she pressed. She’d forgotten-no, not forgotten-had blocked out the memory of his overwhelming size. She’d blocked out how good it felt to stand this close to him, to feel the heat from his body and know that here, in this position, she was safe from everything except him.
“What did you really think when you saw me in Carlo?” she whispered. As she tilted her head up, her lips brushed against his jaw.
Then with the lightning-fast speed she was accustomed to he pounced. He dropped his head and took her mouth. The rush of heat and pure sex stunned her. She’d had sex before him-a teaching assistant at Harvard who had gotten off on the idea of screwing a genius-and she’d had a handful of lovers since. But nothing had ever compared to Q. There was an intensity about him physically and mentally that lent itself to sex. His tongue plunged beyond her lips in a heady rhythm. And she met his ardor with equal force. This was what it was supposed to be about, she thought drowsily.
There were those who needed to romanticize sex because, for so many, it was just an act. A few minutes of rubbing bodies together that resulted in a pleasurable feeling. But the real thing didn’t need flowers or sweet words or explanations. It was a connection that transcended words and left only the physical.
This had no name. No rules. No boundaries. This was where she and Q lived. She had missed this place.
His body moved and, as smooth as Ginger Rogers, she glided gracefully with him. With his mouth still attached to hers, his left leg moved forward. Her right leg moved back. His right leg pressed into her thigh. Her bottom hit the bed with a bounce. He leaned over and she surrendered eagerly to his size, his strength and the exhilaration of what it meant to be with a man as powerful as him.
“I missed you,” she whispered into his ear. It galled her to admit such a truth, but she couldn’t hold it back.
“Shh,” he ordered.
He pressed her body into the bed. His chest pinned hers and his hands held her wrists to the mattress. For an interminable amount of time, he held his mouth just above hers. She tried to reach for him, but he pulled back and she remembered that this was part of it, too, the fight for control. Her strength matched against his.
Finally, he bent down so that his tongue teased hers. And again the fire was lit. A hundred times over. As soon as they had a taste of one another they couldn’t stand
He released one of her wrists and his hand followed a path until he was cupping her swollen breast. She heard him growl and knew that he was frustrated by the barrier of clothes. For that matter so was she. It had been too long for them to take this slow. The liquid heat pooling between her legs needed to be satisfied quickly. The only thought racing through her mind was fast. She wanted him inside her, pounding hard and fast and deep. She needed to feel that connection now and she didn’t want to wait for the time it took to mess with bras or belts.
With her free hand she reached down and cupped the heavy erection that was urgently pressing against the confines of his pants.
“Wait,” he muttered.
“No waiting,” she whispered and struggled to reach for his belt.
He reached down, grabbed her hand and again pressed it to the bed. She wanted to howl, her frustration was so keen.
“Damn it, Q.”
He looked into her eyes and she could see the fog of desire in the cold gray irises. He wanted her. Desperately. She knew it deep inside. But he was holding back. He always had, except for that one night when she had caught him off guard.
Sadly, she shook her head. “Why won’t you trust me enough to let go? Just once.”
“Is that what this is about? You want me to trust you?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
His eyes stayed pinned on hers for a moment, then asked, “You think you can seduce me into going after Kahsan?”
It was as if he’d hit her. Only she’d been hit by him before so knew for a fact that this hurt worse. He thought she was using him. That’s how deep his suspicion of her went. The fact that he was right, that on some level she was using him, didn’t enter into it. Because for a few minutes, she hadn’t been playing.
“Get off me.”
When he didn’t move fast enough, she shifted her leg that was pressed between his thighs and pushed her knee to his groin. “You really don’t want to test me right now,” she threatened.
He rolled off her and stood next to the bed and she rolled to the other side.
“You’re right,” she lied as she straightened her sweater. “Cheap trick, I suppose. A woman’s wiles and all that.” She moved toward the window. Looking outside she saw only what she had seen before-cars passing by at high speeds.
“Sabrina…”
She wouldn’t look at him. “If sex won’t work to convince you that now is our best opportunity to go after Kahsan, what will?” She hadn’t been thinking about Kahsan at all. Not the second that Quinlan’s mouth touched hers.
That was wrong. Sabrina could see how wrong that was.
She’d been given this mission to accomplish. She’d taken it on as her personal crusade to right the wrong she’d let happen for the past ten years. Letting a man tied to her past distract her from that was criminal. And she knew it.
“I told you. I have orders. And maybe… I still don’t understand what’s driving you to do this.”
“You mean you don’t believe me when I tell you I want a chance to catch a bad guy,” she clarified, her voice tight as she tried to keep the anger at bay. “Fine. You want some other motivation other than the fact that you and I both know this man is evil incarnate? How about I’m searching for approval? You read my psych profile. My father didn’t pay enough attention to me so I’m forever seeking out male attention and recognition, blah, blah, blah.”
“You’re telling me you’re doing this for your father?” His skepticism was obvious.
She didn’t care. Time was running out. He was either going to be with her or he wasn’t. She needed to know that now. But before he would commit he needed a reason. Briefly, she contemplated telling him the truth. Problem was there was no reason to think that he would believe she’d been chosen for this assignment any more than he believed she had volunteered for it.
“Dad, Arnold, you. Pick one.” She watched his face but his expression remained unchanged. “Still not buying it, huh.”
Rather than answer her, he looked away. “The agents will be here soon.”
“Super. Let me ask you something. Do you know how long it took Arnold to develop the encryption code that you guys decided to use on the satellite data?”
There was a sudden silence in the room as she waited for him to remember how long Arnold had worked as an outside contractor to the agency. When he didn’t answer, she knew that she had made her point.
“Twelve years,” she said. “He’d started tinkering with it when I first met him. Twelve years of development and testing until it was foolproof. It had to be in order to be chosen as the method of security for the isotope project.”
“What’s your point?”
“I’m good, Q. Maybe the best. But I wasn’t exaggerating before when I told you that it could take me months to break his code. Possibly even years. We lost track of that cell that was in this country. They’re gone. And the
