enough to send five civilians who had been walking by to their graves and strong enough to send his car tumbling end over end until it landed upside down.
His body was nothing more than a mass of black, purple and yellow bruises.
And his head hurt.
A knock on the door surprised him. Only his immediate superior knew he was in the country. No. Someone else would know, too, by the movement in the apartment directly above her.
“Go away,” he mumbled. She didn’t hear him.
He heard a few clicks and then the door was open. Sabrina walked into the room and closed the door behind her.
“It was open.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
She held up a tiny tool that he recognized as standard lock-picking equipment. “I’m getting pretty good with this thing.”
“Go away, Bri,” he muttered, but again she didn’t hear.
“I heard you moving around,” she said, pointing to the ceiling. “Usually, you stop by to say hello. How come all the lights are out?”
She reached for a switch on the wall next to the door and the living room was suddenly illuminated. He heard her gasp and figured she got a good look at his face.
“What happened?”
He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to see in his mind the bodies of his men, who were positioned at the front entrance of the building, flying through the air on the way to their death.
On some level she must have understood that because she didn’t ask him the question again. Instead, she walked to his kitchen and found a glass in the cupboard and added some ice cubes. He could hear the tinkle of the cubes hitting the bottom of the glass and for some reason the sound was comforting. Then she walked over to the Jack Daniel’s bottle on the counter and poured herself a shot over the rocks.
“You’re too damn young to be drinking.”
“I’m going to be twenty next month,” she said in answer. She came back into the living room and pulled the ottoman up close to him. “Relax, it’s not like I drink all the time.”
“Bad habits can be a hindrance. They should be avoided.”
“You’re drinking.”
“Yeah.” He was too tired to fight.
“Besides, in this case I’m only doing it because you look like you can use some company.”
“I don’t look that way at all,” he countered. He couldn’t possibly look that way when all he wanted was to be left alone.
“No, you do. I look a little harder than most.”
He met her eyes then, such a vivid green, wiser than her years. Not smart. Wise. That had happened in the past four years she’d been part of the program. Somehow she’d gone from being a brilliant kid to a wise and brilliant woman.
When the hell had that happened, he wondered. It didn’t matter. It was done.
Between her fresh face and that wickedly smart brain, she was going to make a hell of an operative. Suddenly his insides clenched as the thought of seeing her body flying through the air occurred to him.
“You know they’re talking about graduating you.”
“I know,” she said and took a sip of her drink. Then made a face. “How do you swallow this stuff? Yuck. I’ll stick to light beer, thank you.” She put the glass aside on the floor.
He would have smiled, if he’d had the energy or the inclination. At the very moment he was becoming sentimental about her growing up, he was reminded how young she still was. Still in so many ways a kid. And in so many ways…not.
His eyes fell to the gray T-shirt she wore, and he could see that her small high breasts were unfettered. She’d matched the cotton shirt with a pair of jeans that emphasized her long legs, but he could see that she hadn’t bothered with shoes. Just a pair of white ankle socks that, for some reason, he found incredibly sexy.
Yeah, he thought. She was sexy. Previously, anytime the idea had crept into his brain he’d squashed it like an intruding spider. But tonight he ached, everywhere, and his head was starting to become a little fuzzy from the alcohol.
And his girl was sitting in front of him with her perky smile and white ankle socks.
So he let it happen. He let himself react to her as he’d never allowed himself to do before. What would it hurt? It wasn’t as though he would make a move. It wasn’t as though she would even know what a move was at her age. A few harmless fantasies played out in his head and a few not so harmless ones, too, as she rambled on about the next phase of her career.
“I really want to be out in the field, but I’m getting some pressure from Arnold to stay and work with him. It’s not like I don’t care about his projects, but I really think I can do more out there. You know?”
Her lips on his chest. His fingers in her hair pushing her mouth lower and lower until she was taking his erection deep into her soft, wet…
“Q? You still alive?”
“Huh?”
“You were staring at my mouth.”
He shook his head a little in an attempt to remove the buzzing he couldn’t seem to shake. “No, I wasn’t.” He tossed back the rest of his drink and Sabrina had handed him her discarded glass. It was dangerous. He knew it was dangerous, but his whole life was dangerous. He took another sip, then another until it was all gone. He set the glass aside.
“You should go.”
She shook her head and a curl bounced across her cheek. Without thinking he reached out and let the tendril circle his finger like a cat’s tail might curl around its master’s leg. She should have pulled away, but instead he saw her lean forward, her hands now resting on his thighs.
“I think you want me to stay,” she told him, even as her hands stroked higher up his thighs.
He reached down and captured her wrists, pinning them in place. “You don’t want to do this. Not tonight.”
“Why not tonight?”
He leaned his head back on the chair so he wouldn’t have to look at her face. The face that had been part of his life for so long and had somehow imprinted itself on his brain so that he could picture it at the oddest times. Like when he thought he was going to die.
“I can’t fight you. Not tonight.”
“You’re always fighting, Q. Why don’t you stop fighting for a little while?”
Her trapped hands moved beneath his grip, her fingers squeezing his legs with enough pressure to make him forget every ache in his body but one.
His brain railed at him. His common sense told him to get the hell out of the chair, but his body…it betrayed him. Quinlan opened his mouth and shut it. Then he opened it again as the only thought left spilled out.
“I can’t.”
Her hand escaped his prison and found the center of him where he was hard. He glanced down at his lap, his erection obvious through his jeans. He hadn’t realized. Hadn’t known that she could see his reaction to her. It would have been embarrassing if the sight of her touching him hadn’t been such a turn-on.
“I think you can,” she whispered to him softly. Then she was moving into his lap, gently shifting her weight onto his leg, and placing soft kisses over the bruises on his cheek.
She felt so good. So damn right in his arms. But he couldn’t let this happen. For so long he hadn’t let it. Again, he stopped her, this time by cupping her face in his hands.
“You don’t understand,” he whispered, even as his hips flexed a little to bring his erection into contact with her thigh.
But rather than shy away from the embrace she seemed to snuggle deeper into his body. “I understand more than you think,” she told him. “I understand more than you do. Let go, Q. All you have to do is let go.”
Her mouth found his and, before he could react, her tongue was inside, stroking his with an urgency that masked any inexperience. Let go, she said. He wanted to do that. He wanted to let go and crawl deep inside her
