He stepped closer, his chest mere inches from her breasts, heat radiating from his torso, thighs, and pelvis, and slid his hand under her ponytail to grip her nape. Sparks danced between her thighs and in her nipples, made her lips tingle. Her entire body felt alive with a desire as ancient as the landscape surrounding them.
His eyes were dark, his breathing slow and measured. He was holding himself back, she realized, his body wordlessly communicating the language of desire, and restraint. How he knew she wanted that before she knew it herself was still a mystery to her, but this moment wasn’t about questions and answers, taking things apart and slotting them into a task list on a project plan. It was about the bow of his mouth, thin and elegant, hidden in an increasingly thick stubble.
She went on tiptoe and skated her fingers across the seam, luxuriating in the plush lower lip. Fingers paused at the corner of his mouth, she kissed him, soft and sweet, lips closed, feeling his mouth with her lips and fingers at the same time, brushing her mouth against his in almost imperceptible movements. When his lips didn’t part, she applied a hint of pressure with her fingers, drawing the soft flesh down, then licking inside. Teeth, the sensitive interior of his lower lip, a nip that finally parted his teeth on a gasp. With the tip of her index finger she stroked his tongue, then the edge of his teeth. His eyes were heavy-lidded and saturated with a dark promise when he bit down on her finger, licked the tip, then used the firm grip on the back of her neck to draw her back up on tiptoe.
She’d never felt so alive. Impressions bombarded her senses, colors and smells, the faint chatter of tourists hurrying to the exit, German, Japanese, French. Between her thighs heat grew molten.
He bent his head just enough to kiss her, keeping the pressure light, tantalizing, acknowledging the spell they wove without breaking it. If someone looked in, they were kissing. Nothing more. One hand rested on his hip. He had a thumb hooked through his backpack’s shoulder strap. No one could see the charged particles of desire vibrating in the air between them. They couldn’t see her hard nipples, or his erection pushing against his zipper and just barely brushing her belly.
His lips grew hot and soft, coaxing her to open to him, to take the thrust of his tongue stroking hers. She exhaled softly and opened wider, suspended in time, in the air charged with magic. It felt like forever.
“Rose,” he whispered. Her name sounded like a prayer, or a plea. “Rose.”
“… after we find Rose.” She heard her grandmother’s voice.
She stepped back, caught her hair on the roses’ leaves and thorns, then stared at him, wide-eyed. In her world, there was no “forever,” just little boxes of time sectioned into hours, days, weeks. “Forever” was a meaningless concept. “Right here, Grannie,” she called, twitching her hair free.
Keenan bent over, found her hair elastic in the grass, and handed it to her. “Go out first,” he said, and put his hands on his hips. “I need a minute.”
Based on the bulge in his cargo pants, he certainly did. Her body quaked, remembering the hot stretch that slid so deliciously close to pain and back again. She wanted him inside her, now, not hours from now.
“What’s in there?” Grannie asked when she emerged.
“These were all shops, I think,” Rose said vaguely. She felt stunned, hot, flushed, blinking in the sunlight suddenly at odds with the tension throbbing inside her. Her thoughts spun, jerked. It wasn’t supposed to feel like this. She wasn’t supposed to like this, want this, much less get it from a man who lived on the other side of the world, a man it was entirely possible her brother would dismember and dissolve in lye if he found out what had happened between them.
The thought made her laugh. As if she’d ever have reason to tell Jack what happened. This wasn’t real life. It wasn’t part of her plan. Keenan had no interest in being ordinary, in coming home, much less in white picket fences. Jack would never need to know what happened.
*
By the time his boner subsided, Rose and Grannie were two hundred yards in front, heading for the rows of stalls just outside the site’s exit. He shifted his pack higher on his shoulder and followed at a measured pace designed to keep his steps, breath, and thoughts under control.
He’d never felt more wild. Dangerous. On edge. God help him if Jack found out. He’d done long-term missions behind enemy lines, crept into compounds and caves, killed, and left, all without waking a sleeping household. But not a single mission, not even the one that went tits up at the end, felt as dangerous as what he was doing with Rose. There was obvious danger, and then there was this uncharted territory, off the map, outside time and space.
Ignoring the vendor’s stalls, he unlocked the Land Rover and opened the windows to air out the warm interior. One hip perched on the driver’s seat, he entered the carpet museum and factory’s address into the GPS. A small restaurant next door came highly recommended. Lunch, a presentation at the factory, then the drive to Troy.