The Cinderella Mission (Family Secrets #1)(47)
Author: Catherine Mann

Ethan crooked a finger in her necklace and twisted the chain around his finger. He’d known the minute he peeled those leggings down and off, the second he’d laid eyes on her dragon and slid his body into hers, that he’d taken away any choices. He’d crossed a line and there wasn’t any going back.

Marrying Kelly. He let the image churn in his head but couldn’t make the edges of the picture come cleanly together. Never could, a large part of why he’d never pursued her, because Kelly was undoubtedly the marrying kind. He couldn’t picture what kind of future they would have and that bothered him—almost as much as the thought of letting her go.

Which was no longer an option. He knew damned well his aunt had spoiled him as a kid. Sharing had never been his strong suit, and he found now that there wasn’t a chance in hell he could share this woman with any other man.

He was her first, and he damned well intended to be her last.

Which meant marrying her.

Ethan tugged her forward and kissed her with a familiarity that scared the hell out of him after only knowing her body twice. He untwined the chain and found the warm comfort of her hip beneath the sheet. “What would you have done if I hadn’t had a condom with me in the greenhouse? Would you have sent me on my way?”

“No.” She feathered her fingers over the bruise on his arm from the mine, then his injured shoulder blade, finally along the faint remains of the scratch from his near miss with a bullet in Gastonia. “I would have told you to follow me inside and we would have used the box in my room.”

He pulled her hand away and kissed her palm as if that could erase her brush with the danger of his world. Hers, too.

He booted that thought out of his bed. Out of their bed. “Or we could have come straight to my place.”

She swept her hair out of her face, revealing full, well-kissed lips. “Why don’t you ever come into the house?”

“I do.” He’d never be able to look at her hair swinging across her face again without thinking of sex. Incredible sex. The best sex of his life, with a virgin, no less. “What about when Jake and Matt came to dinner?”

She shook her head. “We ate by the pool. And I don’t consider a glassed-in pool area a part of the house. Or the gym. I can’t think of a single time you’ve stepped into the house since I arrived. Were you afraid I would jump you and drag you off to my boudoir?”

Her hand traveled southward.

He stopped her a second shy of her target and brought her hand up to his mouth. “Soon. Give me ten more minutes to recover.”

And to get his head back together before this twenty-four-year-old, used-to-be-virgin flipped his world any more. He needed to find a fit for those edges. Soon. He couldn’t do that with her hands on him and his body five seconds away from making a lie of his claim to need ten minutes. He rolled from the bed to his feet and pulled on his boxers. “Let’s get something to eat.”

Kelly dragged a sheet behind her and wrapped it around her naked body. “Why don’t you come into the house?”

A pit bull in gray satin.

He ignored her question and charged down the stairs, the computers from the loft above emitting a halo glow throughout the darkened apartment.

Her light tread followed. “Have you been staying away from the house because of me?”

“No.” His feet padded across the chilly tile. “I don’t spend much time there. It’s not me. Too formal.” Too many memories. “I feel like I need to put on a damned tie every time I walk through the door.”

“Was that your parents’ house?”

He nodded, already searching for a way to change the subject. “Aunt Eugenie and I had a talk.”

Well, hell. That didn’t do much for changing the subject. He yanked open the refrigerator, the light knifing through the dim room.

“About what?” Kelly dropped to a chair at the table.

He dug out a box of Chicago-style deep-dish pizza and dropped it on the table. He’d developed an addiction to the stuff in college and could use something to keep his hands busy until his mind engaged again. “About when my parents died.”

“And?”

Telling her wouldn’t jeopardize anything, and he didn’t relish having his head ripped off again for keeping secrets. He’d explain what he could and try not to sweat the rest. “She used to do what we do.” He reached into the freezer, where Kelly’s ice cream had taken up residence in his kitchen the past two weeks. “Occupationally.”

“No way!” Her grip loosened on the sheet.

His traitorous eyes homed in on the hint of dusky pink peeking from the sheet. “Uh-huh.”

He turned to fish out a spoon before he caved to the temptation to crawl back in bed with her.

Not yet. Not until he reestablished some boundaries. While feasting on pizza instead of Kelly, he told her the rest of what his aunt had shared.

Kelly swirled her spoon in the carton of rocky road ice cream. “So someone’s still out there, responsible for issuing the order.”

“If what she believes is true, then yes.” He pitched the pizza crust back in the box. “And I believe her.”

“Me, too.” Her leg extended under the table, her foot caressing up and down his calf. “Questioning could rain down fire on your head.”

“It could.” He captured her foot and anchored it to his thigh. “I’ll talk to Hatch in a couple of days.”

“I’d like to help.”

“Let me see what I’m dealing with first.”

She toed his stomach.

“Ouch! That hurt, damn it.”

“It was supposed to.”

She dropped her foot to the ground, pinning him a look that rivaled her dragon’s glare. “I know you tried to get Hatch to pull me off this case again.”

Ethan closed the pizza box, stalling. Not that it helped him find a safer answer. “Did he talk to you?”

“No. It wasn’t tough to figure out.” She hitched her sheet higher with a dignity worthy of any Grecian goddess. “Why can’t you see I don’t need to be protected? You’ve had a chance to follow your dreams. I want to follow mine, too, and I think I’ve made a damned good start for twenty-four years old.”

“Yes, you have—”

“Don’t placate me,” his pit bull in satin continued. “I may not be the most savvy agent in the DC area, but I’m holding my own. I’m advancing. I’m meeting the world on my terms and I won’t let you take that away from me. My parents dictated what I did for years. I won’t let anyone do the same again.”