Chapter 7

Tristan’s smile froze in place and only years of practice at performing difficult ops under enormous pressure allowed him to answer without divulging how deep that arrow had struck.

“Hasn’t happened yet,” he lied and nodded at the TV, praying she didn’t notice his heart was still racing but for a different reason than before. “Maybe we should see if there’s something on that we can both stand to watch while we wait for someone to figure out we’re missing.”

Cassidy didn’t even bother to glance at the TV, choosing to skewer him with her far-too-perceptive gaze. “Really? Not once have you met a woman and thought, this is the one I can imagine sticking with?”

Non. Pas une fois. Because he knew better than to dream of the impossible and it wasn’t in the cards for a woman to stick around. His own mother hadn’t. Why would any other woman when the one who should have loved him the best hadn’t found him worth it?

And if he never gave one a chance to prove him right, he never had to deal with the heartache.

“Do you know what my specialty was in the Navy?” He didn’t wait for her to shake her head before answering his own question. “Fire. Specifically using it to destroy whatever target was handed to me by my XO. Sorry, my commanding officer. You know what’s great about fire? It’s efficient. There’s no recovery afterwards. Whatever I set on fire burns up and is just…gone. Poof. That’s the only way to fly.”

“I feel like that story was supposed to tell me something important, but all I’m getting out of it is that you like to play with matches,” she said with a saucy arch to her eyebrow that should have riled his temper but didn’t because he’d spent a good long while studying Cassidy as they talked.

She had a smart mouth and good sense of humor that he’d somehow come to appreciate. It made a huge difference when interacting with her if he took a deep breath and stopped assuming her first intent had been to insult him. “No matches needed. I carry—carried—flint. All I needed was a knife or even a heavy piece of metal to get a spark. You should note that’s how I handle my love life too. Spark, lots of flames, then it’s all gone. Always.”

Best she understand that now. That was part of his MO with women too—ensure they realized there were no future Mrs. Marchande auditions happening and the items that were on the menu would be both pleasurable and quick-natured. Though he hadn’t expected to have to tell Cassidy since his end goal in romancing her wasn’t to get her into his arms.

There’d been a moment while he’d held her hand over his heart that he’d had to force himself to keep from pulling her into a kiss. Wow did she get him worked up. An unforeseen byproduct of this plan he’d concocted, unfortunately.

“That’s…sad,” she murmured and he did a double take.

“No, it’s not. It’s—” What was it? Essential? Non-negotiable? Both and yet it seemed cold all at once. Lonely. “A fact of life.”

“But it doesn’t have to be.” Her melty eyes found his and held, refusing to let him slide his gaze away. “Burning everything to the point of no recovery is not the natural order of things in relationships, only buildings and, like, forests and stuff, though I get that you’d like the efficiency of fire, that you’d be proud of a skill that allows you to complete your mission in such a permanent way, but with people, things are supposed to last and be good and…”

She trailed off and cocked her head so expectantly, he couldn’t help but ask. “What?”

“You’ve interrupted me every other time I’ve launched into a long-winded explanation. Why not this time?”

I didn’t want you to stop. The answer was right there on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t vocalize it. That would give away far too much about his internal state, which had grown messy before he’d realized it. What she’d been describing was nowhere on his radar but hearing it laid out like that…it had called up the lines of his prediction without any help on his part. Was this what Serenity had meant by emotional adjustments?

“Did I? Sorry,” he apologized lightly.

“No. You shouldn’t be sorry,” she countered, her foot fairly vibrating with motion as she jiggled it nervously, like the hummingbird’s wings he’d always associated with her. “I have a hard time articulating my thoughts. Most people let me ramble on forever until it grows awkward, but you have this unique ability to sense when I’m at that point where I need to stop talking. I—never mind.”

Her cheeks grew rosy and that’s when she glanced away. Not so fast. He cupped her jaw and guided her face up so he could see it, solely because he’d been enjoying the myriad expressions darting through her depths. “That’s the first time I’ve ever been told that my inability to keep my mouth shut is a positive.”

She laughed unexpectedly and it felt nice to be touching her at the same time.

“You’ve also stuck to English.” That’s when her face took on a glow that caught him in the throat. “I kept waiting for you to go back on your word. But you never did.”

A smile came to his lips automatically. “I can readily report that it’s been somewhat difficult to restrain myself, but I have been actively trying.”

“That means something to me,” she confessed quietly and he couldn’t stop his thumb from brushing across her jaw where he still held it.

The temperature in the room shot up about a thousand degrees as he watched her expression heat and he contemplated how easy it would be to lean forward and capture her mouth with his.

But he didn’t. This wasn’t the precursor to an activity that was admittedly well suited to a private location where they had zero chance of being interrupted. No matter how much he found himself wishing otherwise. Surprisingly.

He dropped his hand. While he had no intention of taking advantage of the closed—and locked—door, he could still move forward in his quest to romance her into agreeing to give him a job by pressing some of the buttons she’d unveiled.

“Seems like you can stop talking on your own just fine,” he told her. “You don’t need me sticking my two cents in.”

“Only when you distract me other ways,” she muttered and took advantage of the lack of his palm on her face to avoid meeting his gaze.

There was more here that he hadn’t gleaned from the conversation thus far, more to her story that somehow tied together her tendency to ramble and the reasons she didn’t like him speaking French, or she wouldn’t have brought up both in such rapid succession. “Why does it bother you when you get a little wordy?”

“It doesn’t.”

Said way too defensively for it to be the truth. “I like it when you tell me what’s on your mind.”

“You do?” That seemed to be news to her judging by the slight dazed look in her eyes that he could now see because that had gotten her to glance up at him again.

Yes. Cassidy unguarded worked for him on many levels. She was so much easier to read when she was like this. So much easier to be sucked into her.

“You weren’t wrong earlier. I pick my timing on purpose and interrupt you when it seems like you need to breathe or take a moment to think about what you’re trying to say. But it’s never to shut you up.”

“My mind doesn’t process information the way a normal person’s does,” she said and then shook her head, firming her lips together as if she regretted speaking. Her foot started shaking again, jiggling in time to some internal beat.

Cassidy playing the part of a clam did not work and wouldn’t serve any purpose. Plus, he didn’t like her being embarrassed about anything when there was no reason for her to be.

“Who are these ‘normal’ people you speak of?” he asked nonchalantly with a small chuckle. “Everyone I know has something a little off about them.”

“You don’t.” She crossed her arms as if trying to disappear into the couch cushion and his heart turned over as he watched her misery grow.

There was no mistaking this was a difficult conversation for her. But why? She obviously thought there was some shame in these minor quirks, none of which called for the lines that had been etched into her face.

“Other than the fact that I’ve spent my adult life destroying everything in my path? There’s plenty off about me.”

Probably he shouldn’t have offered that up for inspection again, but he had the distinct sense she was at a place where only raw vulnerability would cut it. He could deal with that on his side if that made her feel better about whatever was bothering her. That was his job here and so far, he’d sucked at it.

“But you do that because you want to. You have control over it. I don’t.”

“You do so,” he pointed out, more than happy to steer the conversation away from his own weaknesses, no matter how pretty of a picture she’d just painted of them. “You told me that you have trouble articulating your thoughts but you’re doing exactly that with me right now. Most people who can’t say what’s on their minds don’t talk at all. Instead, you choose to tell me every single word that comes into your head, no censor. That’s a great thing.”

“I spend a lot of time regretting what I say. Usually when I’m talking to you.” Her brief flash of a smile warmed him. “I never thought of it any other way until now.”

Neither had he, nor would he have if she hadn’t brought it up. Honestly, her tendency to have no filter around him had been one of the things that had annoyed him the most. But now that he knew she had some measure of sensitivity over it, and certainly didn’t enjoy the fact that she sometimes spoke without thinking, everything had shifted.

“So you’re telling me you’re not a smart aleck on purpose, you were just born that way?” he teased and when her smile didn’t slip, he knew they’d definitely turned a corner.

“Someone has to rein in your enormous ego,” she told him saucily. “It might as well be me.”

“Hey, when you have all this going on—” He waved at his midsection in a perfect mirror of how she’d done it earlier. “You can’t help it.”

She rolled her eyes which made him grin. Score one for the maestro des femmes. She’d forgotten to feel bad about how she ran off at the mouth sometimes and he’d also managed to steer the conversation away from how closely he’d been paying attention to her. The last thing he needed was a discussion on why he’d been trying so hard not to speak French.

Mostly because he wasn’t sure he had the answer himself any longer.

“You’re not what I expected,” she said with a small frown as she swept him with an evaluating once-over. “You know, now that we’re stuck here and having a real conversation. You’re not nearly as obnoxious as all the other times we’ve been within shouting distance.”

Score two for him, then. “I could say the same. When you put down that stick and forget to beat me over the head with it, I tend to not claw back.”

A look of pure comprehension dawned on her face a second before she bopped herself in the head with her own fist. “Is that what was happening? You were only responding to me and all the mean things I was saying?”

Well, when she put it that way, it sounded petty. But also true. No wonder West had constantly told him he was acting like a five-year-old. “I guess I owe you an apology.”

“You shouldn’t apologize to me. I’m the one who clawed first.” Her lips turned up in a contrite smile. “So I’m sorry. Let’s start over.”

She stuck her hand out for him to shake as if they’d just met for the first time and he was so taken in by the conciliatory gesture that he didn’t hesitate to comply, slipping his palm into hers with enthusiasm.

The contact sparked. Instantly. It was nearly poetic.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m Tristan. You are?”

That made her laugh, and he was again struck by how much he liked touching her while she did that, liked the feel of his whole hand vibrating along with the musical notes.

“Cassidy. But you can call me Cass. Everyone does,” she said with a shrug as if it wasn’t important.

But it was to him because he’d worked hard to deserve that level of familiarity. “It would be my pleasure. Cass.”

He punctuated that with a brief lift of her knuckles to his lips. Habit. And he realized his mistake the moment their flesh touched. The spark between them caught fire. Their gazes tangled and held. A world of unfathomable emotions unfurled in his chest, all of which he should shut down right now, but it was impossible to stuff something so big back into oblivion.

She was totally unexpected too, funny and sarcastic. She intrigued him so much more than she should, especially when he was trying to charm her solely so he could avoid being Hardy’s fire boy.

Except that wasn’t even on his mind at the moment. Only her. Somehow, she’d charmed him instead of the other way around.

Neither of them moved, or at least he didn’t register any conscious shift but all at once, there was almost no space between them, and it wouldn’t take but the slightest tilt of his head to bring their mouths together.

If she’d been any other woman, he would have. Ages ago. He didn’t though, didn’t even so much as change the angle of his neck an iota.

But she did, closing the gap instantly, and there was no force on earth that could stop him from responding as her lips fitted to his in a kiss that rocked him to the core. The kiss unfolded in a way Tristan had never imagined was possible, not with anyone. Usually he controlled every aspect of the moment, but he couldn’t do anything but hang on for the ride as she utterly slayed him, tearing him apart even as she put him back together again.

That was supposed to be his job.

When she pulled back after a very short few seconds, his first reaction was to drag her back into place so he could keep exploring whatever was happening between them. He liked it, liked the way she made him feel, liked that she dug underneath his skin with seemingly no effort at all.

Cassidy killed that notion with a firm hand to his chest, her fingers rising and falling along with his rib cage as he struggled to slow down his breathing.

“I’m not going to apologize for that,” she murmured. “I wanted to know what it felt like to be kissed by a man who looks like you.”

“How did I do?” he asked casually as he scrambled to reel in a totally inappropriate pang that dug into his gut painfully.

So, what was she saying—that kiss had been an experiment? His lips were still tingling from the electricity and his psyche was trying to sort out why the kiss had felt so different than any in his history. In short, it had affected him. But her? All fun and games, apparently.

“Amazing.” She sighed lustily. “It was everything I expected from someone with your experience.”

That heaped salt into the wound, especially since he hadn’t done a blessed thing to earn such praise. She’d been in control of that kiss from the first second, not that he had a measure of pride in that fact. “You, um, kissed me you know. Totally blindsided me, by the way.”

“Oh?” She seemed pleased by that for some reason. “Imagine that. I was just going along with the vibe. Surely you must be used to women throwing themselves at you.”

“Uh, no. Actually, I’m not.” And that was the honest truth.

Sure, women flirted with him, but he always had a handle on the circumstances. The atmosphere. The lighting and a hundred other aspects of romance. Maybe he’d been in situations where the woman had moved first but he’d been leading up to it, encouraging her to take that leap for hours prior to.

This? Totally unexpected. Just like Cassidy.

He’d messed up. Plain and simple. Trying to romance Cassidy into laying down her arms had backfired on him. But he still couldn’t quite get a handle on how…

“Well, like I said. Not sorry.”

She hummed a little, souring his mood even further, though he couldn’t fathom why he was so out of sorts over what had clearly been a pleasurable experience for her. What more could he aspire to than to be a participant in a successful experiment for a woman who’d wanted to be kissed?

More.

Whatever the definition of more was, he wanted that. Worse, the experiment seemed to be over, which was also sticking in his craw. Why hadn’t had gotten a turn to do a little experimenting of his own? All he’d needed was five more minutes to work through that kiss. Long enough to gain a measure of control over the situation. He was the one with the experience for crying out loud. He should have kissed her, not the other way around.

“Nobody asked you to apologize,” he informed her gruffly, thoroughly annoyed with himself for being such a whiner about something that should be both pleasurable and not a big deal.

“Well, I realize I’m not your usual bag of tricks,” she said with a shrug, ducking her head as if she couldn’t quite hold the weight of it with her neck anymore. “You must be used to women who have a lot more fire.”

“That’s why you’re apologizing? Because you think you’re not a woman who can bring the fire?”

She made a face that shouldn’t have been as endearing as it was. “I might be from Backwoods, Texas but I’m not an idiot. Not only am I not Girl on Fire, I’m barely Girl on Simmer.”

“This is not The Hunger Games,” he informed her, though why he had to was beyond him.

“There you go again being unexpected. I didn’t think you’d get that reference.”

Somehow, he didn’t think she’d appreciate hearing how he’d taken a date to see the movie. But he could certainly correct one of the misunderstandings on the table at the moment.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Cass. First of all, I can honestly say from pretty much the moment I met you, there has been zero room in my head for another woman so it would be impossible for me to compare you with one. And second, third and fourth, you have plenty of fire. Like enough to burn up this entire shelter. Don’t apologize for something that isn’t fact and worse, is only your perception of how I see you.” The stunned look on her face brought him up short. “What?”

“I like it when you call me Cass,” she murmured. “You really haven’t thought about another women since we met?”

Had he said that? “No. That’s not what I meant. I—” Need to shut up now.

A mystifying little smile graced her lips, nonetheless. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to attack you again. I shouldn’t have done that in the first place, and I’ll probably regret it.”

Now she was just talking nonsense and by this time, his ego had taken so many hits, he scarcely recognized it. “Why would you regret it? I don’t.”

“Well, of course not. You’re you.” She twirled her fingers in his direction in what had become shorthand for indicating that he had all that going on—though, come to think of it, he still wasn’t entirely clear which of his assets she most appreciated. “You don’t think anything of kissing a woman and it’s certainly not an event of note. It’s a little different for me, considering that was my seventh kiss ever.”

“Like ever? In life?” The number boggled his mind, which was still half occupied by the fact that she seemed to think he went around randomly kissing women. “What is wrong with the men around here? You’re a beautiful person with an interesting perspective. You’re bold, funny and beautiful. You should have men lining up to kiss you.”

“You said I was beautiful twice.”

“I did not.” Maybe he had. Who knew? She’d hardly given him a chance to catch his breath, let alone allow him the opportunity to figure out if he was coming or going. Automatically, he muttered a curse and shot her an apologetic glance because there was a good chance it had been in French. “What does it matter? The point is you are, and I shouldn’t be the only one telling you.”

Something altogether breathtaking stole over her face as she blinked up at him and the cloak of awareness that had been draped over his shoulders since he’d entered the room grew snugger.

Why was he still sitting on the couch in the line of fire anyway?

“No one’s ever called me bold before,” she confessed and of all the things to pick out of his speech to comment on, that one surprised him the most.

“No one’s ever kissed me before,” he told flatly. “Only you. What is that but bold? Contrary to popular opinion expressed recently in this shelter, I’m not a dog. I might flirt with a few women here and there, but when it comes to the ones I choose to get close to, I’m fairly discriminating.”

Mostly because he had to be sure he hooked up with women who would both benefit from his attention and also be fully okay with moving on eventually.

“You could have stopped it,” she pointed out in a completely accurate statement that piqued his temper like nothing else she’d said in the whole of their acquaintance. “But you didn’t.”

“Because I didn’t want to stop, Cassidy,” he almost shouted, loath to check his frustration at the door when he had no way of burning off his mad otherwise. “I still don’t. I’d kiss you again in a heartbeat if I had the slightest clue whether you opened that Pandora’s Box because you’re actually into me or it was the result of some kind of dare. For all I know, you’re working on a merit badge that requires you to take advantage of a poor, lonely man—”

Her mouth landed on his with such force that he nearly swallowed his tongue. The kiss exploded with passion that he would have sworn had died inside him back in Syria. But here it was, being stoked to white-hot levels by none other than Cassidy Calloway, who might well devour him whole if he let her.

He had a mind to. Because wow did she make him feel things that definitely did not have cute, fuzzy, innocent labels. Her hands gripped his shoulders with a strength that communicated her own reaction, which drove him even higher.

His fingers tangled in her hair as he tilted her head to take it deeper, but she’d already beaten him to the punch, plunging him into a firestorm of sensation that could only be quenched one way. And judging by the heat being generated between them, there was a better than average chance she was of the same mind.

Perfect. He could use a good round of blazing through this attraction, especially if it burned out before the night was through. That would fit in with his plans flawlessly.

“Cass,” he growled as he dragged his mouth from hers. “I need to know the ground rules here.”

She froze and scrambled from his arms, the exact opposite of the response he’d been angling for. “Sorry! Sorry. I got carried away. You’re the most amazing kisser and I just couldn’t stop myself from experiencing it again and of course you got the wrong idea because well, let’s be honest, I was kind of all over you and gah, you just have the best shoulders—”

“Breathe.” He doused the raging inferno inside with regret and no small amount of effort. Twice now she’d shut him down. Was he that much of a glutton for punishment? “I have no ideas about anything except the ones you give me. If you say stop, we stop. Period.”

She nodded gratefully. “That’s really appreciated since I’m the one who started it. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“You’re clearly drunk on your own boldness,” he teased her even as he clamped down on an unexpected spike of disappointment that she couldn’t just admit she liked him.

And he wanted to hear her say that all at once. That he wasn’t just an experiment or readily available so of course he’d be on board with whatever sensual activities she could dream up. He wanted her to confess she’d chosen him above any other. That he was the better man.

What was he supposed to do with that?

That’s when the lock clicked, and the door swung open. From the outside. The face of Hudson Rafferty, his teammate and the person he least wanted to see right now, popped into the opening.

“They’re here,” Rafferty called over his shoulder without a drop of fanfare and then shook the keys in his hand at Tristan for emphasis. “These might be helpful next time.”

The man was a stone-faced statue under the direst of circumstances, a trait Tristan had long admired since his own passions tended to run pretty hot without much help. At the moment, however, he wasn’t a huge fan of Rafferty’s dry sarcasm.

“No kidding, Sherlock,” Tristan said and bulleted off the couch more to separate himself from Cassidy Calloway and the confusing things she’d stirred up inside him than because they’d finally been rescued. “How did you find us?”

Rafferty shrugged and held the door open for them both as they scrambled to exit. “Matter of simple deduction.”

Ha. There’d probably been a thousand calculations in that conclusion, but Rafferty’s brain didn’t work like other humans’. He’d probably crunched through whatever logic had led him here in moments. Not that he’d share any of it unless pressed under oath. Rafferty took “man of few words” to extreme levels.

“Thank you,” Cassidy told Rafferty earnestly. “The quarters had become a little tight.”

“I’ll bet,” Rafferty said with a glance at Tristan. “I expected a few more claw marks.”

Those were on the inside, something that Tristan wouldn’t be sharing with anyone.

“Cass!” Aria rushed forward to hug her friend, blocking the stairway. Not that it would have mattered. The rest of Tristan’s teammates crowded into the narrow opening at the top, each vying for a front row seat as they peered down into the shelter to see what was unfolding.

Tristan sighed. They’d dragged everyone away from the party, obviously. He’d never hear the end of it from West and Hardy, but he couldn’t fathom enduring that right now. All he wanted to do was escape the questions in everyone’s gazes and shut down for a few hours in his room.

If he couldn’t burn out this inconvenient and clearly one-sided attraction he’d developed for Cassidy, then he was in for a long, exhausting ride.