Alpha One (Shadow Agents #1)(32)
Author: Cynthia Eden

Because I want you. He’d had a taste before, and it had just left him craving more. Their time was limited. He knew that. As soon as the nightmare ended, Juliana would walk away and not look back.

Why couldn’t he have her just once more? Before the real world ripped them apart. He needed more memories to get him through the dark and bloody nights that would come.

When he was in hell, her memory got him through the fire.

But he pushed back the flames and said, “I thought you needed to know…Ben McLintock is missing.” Syd had called with the news just a few minutes before.

“Missing?”

“Uniforms were on him, stationed at his house.” Because anyone who’d worked so closely with the senator was getting extra attention from the government and the cops. “But it looks like he slipped away.” Or rather, deliberately ditched the eyes on him and vanished.

She shook her head. “Ben? Ben ran away?”

Innocent men don’t run. Logan bit the words back and tried to keep his gaze on her face. He shouldn’t have to say the words, anyway. Juliana would know the truth.

And sure enough, he saw the painful truth sink in for her. “The car bomb. You said…someone would have needed access to this house. The limo was here.”

Ben had been there. The guy had been given 24/7 access to everything the senator had.

Juliana’s hands lifted and she clutched the towel closer to her body. “You think…you think he set the car bomb.” Not a question.

“It’s a possibility.” One that Sydney was following up on with the authorities.

“He always seemed so nice.” Her words were dazed.

“Nice men can make perfect killers.” Because the nice veneer was so convincing. A way to fool others so you could get close.

He realized he was staring at the tops of her br**sts. Logan cleared his throat. “We’ll find him.” The guy had either run on his own…or Guerrero had him. But either way, Logan’s team was tracking him now. Ben McLintock wasn’t going to just vanish. They wouldn’t let him.

He pulled in a breath and caught the scent of vanilla. The scent drifted from the open bathroom door. From Juliana. A sweet but sensual scent.

Logan spun around and headed for the door. “Get some sleep.” He sure as hell wouldn’t. He’d be thinking about her—what should have been.

“Logan.” Her voice stopped him at the door. His hand had lifted, and he fisted his fingers before slowly turning back to face her.

Juliana hadn’t moved from her spot just outside the bathroom. More steam drifted around her. Her skin gleamed, so smooth, so soft.

“You still look at me—” her chin lifted “—like you want—”

“To eat you alive.” Yeah, he knew how he looked. Starving. But Juliana had always made him that way. Desperate for what he wanted, for what he’d taken before.

Her hands were still at the top of the towel. “In Mexico, you told me that if I offered myself to you again…”

He couldn’t think about that night right then. Being close to her after all those years—he’d gone more than a little crazy.

“You said you’d take me,” she finished.

Logan didn’t speak.

“But I’ve changed my mind.”

His whole body had turned to stone.

“I’ve thought about what I want. What I don’t want.”

He couldn’t hear this.

“I know we don’t have forever. I know you’ll go back to—to wherever the next battle is, and I’ll go back to Biloxi when this is all over.”

Biloxi. Her home on the beach. He’d seen it before. After a battle that had taken two of his best friends. When he’d been broken and weak, he’d had to find her.

So he’d gone to her beach. He’d watched her from a distance, gotten stronger just from seeing her.

But he’d stayed in the shadows. After all, that was where he belonged.

“We don’t have forever,” Juliana said again, the words husky, “but we do have now.”

He took a step toward her and shook his head. No way had he just heard her say—

“But I’m not offering.”

Son of a—

“This time, I’m taking.” She dropped the towel. His mouth dried up. “I want you, and right now, I don’t care about the past or the future. Now—now is all that matters to me.”

She was all that mattered to him. Logan was already across the room. His hands were on her, greedy for the feel of her flesh. He pulled her against him, pressed his mouth to hers, thrust his tongue past her lips and tasted the paradise that waited.

The bed was steps away—steps that he didn’t remember taking. But they were falling, tumbling back, and he had her beneath him on the mattress.

He’d woken from hot, desperate dreams of her for years, and part of him wondered…just a dream?

Then her nails bit into his back. Her legs slid over his hips and she pulled him closer.

No dream ever felt this good.

His mouth was still on hers because he had to keep tasting her. His hands were stroking her body because he needed to feel her silken flesh.

But she wasn’t just lying passive beneath him. Her body arched against him, and Juliana caught the hem of his shirt—and then she yanked the shirt off him.

Their lips broke apart and the shirt went flying. A wild smile pulled at his lips. Only Juliana. She was always—

His.

He caressed the pert curve of her breast. The nipple was tight, flushed pink, and when he put his lips on her, she whispered his name.

And scored her nails down his back.

He should go slowly. Learn her body again, remember every inch.

But her scent was driving him out of his mind. She was pulling him closer. She was all he could feel. All he could breathe.

Everything.

He yanked down the zipper of his jeans. Found protection for them, then he positioned his aroused length at the delicate entrance of her sex.

Logan caught her hands and pushed them back against the mattress. Their fingers threaded together, their gazes locked.

The years fell away.

The only girl I ever loved.

“Logan…” She whispered his name. “I’ve missed you,” she confessed.

Then there was nothing else but her.

Logan pushed into her moist, hot core, driving deep and steady, fighting to hold on to his control when he just wanted to take and take and take. But he had to show her pleasure. He had to make sure she went as wild as he did.

Her legs wrapped around him. No hesitation. No fear.