Just one night.
She slipped her hands up his T-shirt and he grunted when she rolled her thumbs over his nipples. He clutched her tighter, his hands up her shirt, pushing up her sports bra. She didn’t have big boobs, but they were sensitive and she gasped when his hands cupped them. Squeezed. Rubbed.
Their kiss started hot and passionate and only got hotter. She held his face, put her hands behind his head, devoured him like she’d been wanting to for months. She didn’t want to wait ... hadn’t she waited long enough? By his response, he wanted her just as badly. She was reaching into his sweatpants when he grabbed her wrist and pulled it out.
“Stop,” he said, catching his breath.
“I don’t want to go slow the first time. Maybe the second time.” She smiled and kissed him again.
He moaned. “No.”
She leaned up. He was holding her wrist so tight it hurt.
“Matt—”
“Not like this.”
“Matt, I’m okay. Jim and I were over the minute he told me it was okay to skim money from drug busts. I just didn’t know it until tonight.”
“Not on the rebound. You’ll regret it.”
“Don’t tell me how I’ll feel.”
Rebound? She wasn’t on the rebound. She wasn’t a love struck teenager. She didn’t regret her decisions. She certainly wasn’t going to regret having sex with Matt Elliott. Why did he think he could read her mind? If he could, he’d know that she’d wanted to get her hands on him for quite some time.
Yet, he’d effectively killed the mood.
She climbed off of him and walked away.
“Don’t go. Please, Alex—talk to me.”
“I have nothing to say.” She picked up the paced. She didn’t want to look at him.
He followed her. “Alex, I like you so much—”
“Yeah. We’re friends. I get it.”
“No, it’s not that.”
“Stop, Matt. You’re right. I’m an emotional wreck.” Except at that moment she felt only numb. She finally reached the front door. Not even a minute had passed, but it felt like eternity.
“Don’t leave.”
But she’d already slammed the door.
Chapter Seven
Alex walked through the security at the Capitol building. Good news: they had her check her weapon with the CHP office. Bad news: she saw half a dozen ways to breech the security system.
She was looking for flaws, but so were the bad guys. She remembered, several years ago, when a woman came in with a gun strapped to the underside of a baby stroller. Now, strollers had to be rolled through a separate security unit, but the system wasn’t perfect. She saw a wheelchair given only a cursory inspection. Bad guys knew how to take weapons apart and camouflage the pieces. But truth be told, it was certainly easier to take a shot at someone at a public hotel than to try to enter the capitol with a knife or gun.
If it was her, she’d wait in the park until Hart came by. After all, yesterday he’d walked to the hotel.
She took a few moments to walk around the ground floor of the Capitol with the staff and tourists. She checked out the historic building, then went upstairs where tourists weren’t ostensibly allowed. No one stopped or questioned her. Not that it would matter to the LG who had a first floor office, but it still highlighted potential problems. There were security cameras in corners and outside elevators and staircases, but here were ways to get around them.
Her stitches itched until she could no longer ignore the discomfort. She found a bathroom, took off her blazer and scratched frantically around the edges of the bandage. The pain wasn’t bad, more like a dull ache. She’d taken a couple of non-prescription Tylenol when she first got up, and took two more now.
When Alex finally fell to sleep last night—after three in the morning—she slept like a rock before her alarm woke her at 6:30. She showered, fueled up on caffeine and her grandmother’s homemade blueberry muffins, and intended to call Matt Elliott to say no, she wasn’t going to be a spy. She didn’t even really know what he wanted her to do – befriend Travis Hart? Ask him on a date? Ask to be his personal bodyguard?
Her father hadn’t given her any direction, either—which was also troublesome. For all her complaints about her dad, his advice was usually right on the money. When she talked to him this morning before he left for court, he’d simply said, “Alexandra, you’ll do the right thing.”