Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 145803 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145803 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
She glanced at him over her shoulder and knew immediately it was a mistake to look at him. He was too close. His eyes too dark brown and focused on her with that look he reserved only for her. Her heart skipped a beat and her body reacted.
“You need to go away,” she whispered. “Stand across the room. Or better yet, in the other room.”
He bent his head the scant two inches to touch his lips against her ear. “Why do I need to do that, Snowflake?”
“You know why. I can’t think straight when you’re around.”
“You aren’t thinking straight unless I am around,” he corrected, his breath warm in her ear, his lips sliding against the sensitive skin. “The minute I leave you alone for any length of time, you start overthinking things.”
Goose bumps rose in reaction. His knuckles slid up and down her back. She couldn’t help herself. She leaned into his fist. It was true that she overthought everything. There was no question about it.
Zale managed to guide her away from the others as Gage urged the doctor toward the front door. Raine and Harlow escorted the two men out, chatting away with them.
Zale threaded his fingers through Vienna’s and walked her through the kitchen and out the door to the backyard so they could have privacy.
“I missed you last night. I gave you the space you asked for, Vienna, but it wasn’t easy. Being with a man like me is never going to be like the relationships your friends have. Even after I retire, it won’t be the same. Our life will always be different, and hopefully you’ll be okay with that.”
“I do want a partnership, Zale. I want communication. I don’t like being left in the dark. I know that when you go off on your missions or whatever you call it now, you can’t exactly give me details, but there should be a way to let me know you’re alive if I need to know. You talk to Sam. That means you can set up a way to talk to me.”
He remained silent, but his fingers went to the nape of her neck, stroking, kneading, easing the tension out of her.
Vienna decided she might as well take the plunge and tell him the real issue. “And maybe I haven’t caught you in an outright lie, but you certainly aren’t telling me the entire truth. That doesn’t make me trust you. In a relationship where you’re going to be gone for weeks, maybe months, without communication, I have to be able to trust you implicitly. I have to be able to believe everything you say to me. I have to come first, and that means you don’t go behind my back with half-truths that your buddies understand but I don’t.”
Zale continued to remain silent, allowing her to express her concerns for their relationship. Or was that what he was doing? That was the problem. She didn’t know. When she looked at his face, it was impossible to read him.
“Is that what you’re afraid of, Vienna? That my friends know things you don’t?”
His voice was so quiet, velvet soft. His hand never stopped that gentle glide down her back. She knew she should stop him. It was seduction at its worst. Not open. Not sexual. But intimate, tying them together in a way that twisted him deeper around her bones until he was branded there.
“Is that what your takeaway is from what I just told you, Zale? Do you really believe that I’d worry you would tell all your buddies things you don’t tell me? I’m not sixteen years old and in a schoolyard. I don’t look at you and your friends standing by your cars whispering together. You don’t get to reduce what I’m afraid of to something that small-minded.”
“I’m sorry if you took what I said that way. In this case, Rainier is privy to certain aspects of our missions that I can’t disclose to anyone else, no matter how much I might want to. I’m not always going to be at liberty to tell you the things you might want to know, Vienna, and you have to be able to live with that. Most of the time, I work alone. Sam has the ability to read code we use. I’ll do my best to get permission to teach it to you, but because often what is said on those loops is classified, the answer is most likely going to be no.”
“I don’t want to be on a loop where everyone can hear what is said. I just want the ability to communicate in case of an emergency. What if I’m pregnant and I go into labor early? There’s a problem with the baby? With me? Wouldn’t you want to know?”
Mostly, she would want to know if he was injured. Shot. Stabbed. She saw the scars on his body. On Rainier’s. Those were very real.