Between two years in a fire house and as many tours as a Ranger, decent sleep was one of those things that Kellan had pretty much written off. He wasn’t a robot—of course he needed (and got) a few hours here and there. But considering he’d spent his night on a rush of endorphins topped off with incendiary sex, managing even the slightest bit of shuteye was a complete fucking no-go.
Especially since his partner for both parts of the evening was curled up in his arms.
Kellan scooped in a breath, watching the very first strains of daylight color the room from the windows behind him. For the thousandth time, he catalogued the events of the past six hours in his head—watching Isabella’s uncut determination as she brazened her way past security at the Metropolitan, then again as she fast-talked her way past DuPree to get out the door. The certainty in her eyes as she’d told Kellan to invite her upstairs. The seductive fierceness that gave way to the tremble beneath it before rebuilding into even hotter intensity as she’d screamed his name and made him scream hers.
And for the thousandth time, he was shocked down to his balls that she’d agreed to stay.
Not that he hadn’t put effort in trying to convince her. With Isabella’s arm’s length, I-don’t-date attitude, Kellan had known that even asking her to go down the hall to his way more comfortable queen-sized bed would likely make her balk. But despite her initial bid to race out his door mere minutes after they’d finished having sex, he’d seen the vulnerability in her eyes when he’d asked her to stay, and felt the tension leave her body when he’d pulled her in close to hold her as she fell asleep.
So what was Isabella hiding beneath all that armor?
As if her stalwart defenses had somehow honed in on the question filling his brain, she stirred beside him. “Mmm.” Her drowsy murmur lasted for only a fraction before she stilled. “Walker?”
Easy. If sticking around after sex wasn’t her thing, chances were, morning-after conversations were pretty far from her repertoire. “Were you expecting someone else?” he asked.
Isabella let go of a laugh, and bingo, mission accomplished. “Of course not. I thought you might be asleep.”
“Nope.”
“What time is it?”
Kellan eyeballed the degree of muted daylight now beginning to creep over the wall in front of them in earnest. “Just shy of six, I’d guess.”
She turned her chin in obvious surprise, her hair rustling over the bare skin of her shoulder. “Did you sleep at all?”
“A little.” He’d closed his eyes. For now it would have to serve. “You slept.”
After a pause, she said, “Yeah, but I really should get up.”
He didn’t tighten the arm he’d slung around her over the navy blue fleece blanket keeping them covered, but he also didn’t move to let her up. “It’s Saturday. You’re not meeting Angel until nine, right?”
“Right.” The response came out with a heavy flavor of what does that have to do with anything, making Kellan’s pulse flash faster through his veins. The smart thing to do would be to cram all these weird feelings back into their boxes and let Isabella be on her merry way.
But fuck it. He was never going to get past her armor if he didn’t earn his way in. “So give me five more minutes.”
She tilted her hips, just enough to brush her ass over his morning hard-on. “If I’m remembering correctly, you take longer than five minutes.”
Okay, so his brain wasn’t the only part of him that was wide awake and standing at attention. But come on. He might be aiming at decency, but Isabella was still hot, not to mention pressed up against him and oh-so-naked.
Kellan sucked in a breath, channeling all his willpower into a redirect despite his cock’s raging protest. “And if I’m remembering correctly, you don’t hate when I do. But that’s actually not why I wanted the time.”
“Oh? What could possibly be better?”
“Tell me something about you.”
“What?” Isabella’s entire body tensed against his, her shoulder blades on his chest, her back on his belly. Kellan knew he could retract what he’d said. He could take back the words and she’d walk out the door and he’d put everything he’d felt over the last couple of weeks back into their allotted spaces, hidden away. If he took it back, Isabella would pretend she’d never heard him ask.
But he had asked. And as crazy and impulsive and as dangerous as it was, Kellan didn’t want to take it back.
He wanted more.
“Tell me something about you,” he repeated, and she shook her head in a quick back and forth.
“I told you the other night, I’m not good at this.”
Nope. He’d come this far. No sense in scaling back now. “Yes you are. Look, I’ll even go first again. My favorite color is blue.”