The Unseen Enemy Series

Chapter 196

Late that night, Kat was lying in bed, every inch of her body aware that Jim was out on the sofa-bed in the living room. He was less than twenty feet away, just on the other side of that door and down the hallway. She couldn’t see him or hear him, but dear God… she could feel him.

They had gone to Jim’s apartment after a late dinner, and she’d waited while he’d packed a bag. She’d been to Jim’s a few times before, but she had never really looked around. This time, though, she tried to take in as many details about this rough, tender, infuriating man as possible.

The apartment was small, almost as small as hers. As a cash-in-hand hairdresser who set aside almost everything she earned in her ‘emergency fund’, Kat was pretty strapped for disposable cash a lot of the time, and she wondered if Jim was too. Odd that Dean would pay him so little, but then again, Kat had no idea what a fair rate for tattoo artists in Denver could possibly be. So maybe Jim lived in a tiny place because he was a single guy, and he saw no point in wasting money on a larger apartment.

Anyway, from the looks of it, the man spent every penny he had on books. They were jammed onto a couple of cheap bookshelves, and piled high on every available surface. God, he even had books on his kitchen counters and neatly lined up under his bedroom window. She peeked at a few of the titles, and was amused to see the range of topics: mystery, action, contemporary literature, some horror. She even spotted a few military romance books, and she grinned at that.

Maybe he’s reliving his days as a Ranger, reading about bad-ass military heroes saving damsels-in-distress in a war zone?

Then it occurred to her that Jim was, in effect, playing heroic bad-ass to her distressed damsel right at that moment, and she sighed.

“What’s up?” Jim asked as he emerged from his immaculately clean bedroom. “You OK?”

“Yeah, sure,” she said. “You finished packing?”

“Almost.”

Jim walked over to the largest bookshelf, reached under it and pulled out a large metal box. Kat watched as he unlocked it, flipped it open to reveal a handgun. She gasped and Jim glanced up at her.

“You OK with this?” he said.

“Uh… I guess so. I mean… I think so.”

He studied her. “You don’t want me to bring it, I won’t.”

“No, it’s OK.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Sorry. It just took me by surprise.”

He stood again and tucked the gun into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back. Kat was shocked to find a jolt kick her in the stomach as he did that.

Fuck. I find that weirdly sexy. Holy s**t… just sign me up for the lead female role in a military romance, huh?

“OK.” He glanced around. “I think I’m good. Let’s go.”

They had spent the rest of the evening on her sofa watching a movie. It wasn’t the world’s biggest sofa, so despite the fact that Kat was practically climbing the arm at her end, she and Jim were touching a bit. It made her tense, but not necessarily in a bad way. She wasn’t sure what she felt, to be honest.

And now here she was, alone in her bed, wishing that she had the guts to get up, open her bedroom door, and climb onto the sofa-bed with Jim. Or maybe invite him to join her in her own bed. Either way, she’d curl right up against that huge, solid body and raise her mouth to his. She knew his lips would be soft and gentle, his kisses hard and demanding, and God knows, she’d give him anything he demanded of her. Her p***y got wet at the thought, and she turned her face into pillow to muffle her groan of desire.

Oh, Christ. Enough. Don’t make this whole thing more complicated than it already is.

Out on the sofa, Jim’s body was fighting the urge to go blasting through Kat’s door and gather her up into his arms. He wanted her under him, wrapped around him, whispering his name as he thrust inside her. He’d make love to her slow and gentle and long, make sure that she loved every second of it. At the thought of her breathy sighs, his whole body tensed up: his c**k was now rock-hard and he tried to reason with it, to no great success. He wanted her; he’d wanted her for so long, but he was sure that men and s*x were not even remotely on her radar.

After what that guy did to her, she’d never let me near her. I’m sure of it.

They both turned over in their respective beds, trying to ignore what they thought and felt. That night, they had dreams about each other, wild, hot dreams in which they made love over and over again. In the morning, Kat woke up with a cry on her lips as her body jerked in a near-orgasm, and Jim woke up harder than he’d been the night before. He pressed his erection into the sofa beneath him, wished that it was Kat under him. He buried his face in the pillow, took deep breaths, waited for his c**k to calm the hell down.

When Kat felt her face return to its normal color, she came out into the living room area. Jim had just gotten his body back under control, and so he managed a semi-normal morning greeting. Still… over their coffee, they had a very hard time meeting each other’s eyes.