Chapter 160
[ 534 words ]
Chapter 160:
The logical, disciplined military commander in his brain screamed at him to stop. Touching her now would destroy the tiny, fragile piece of trust she had just shown him on the street. The vow he had made to her—the promise not to touch her without her consent—pressed against his conscience like a brand.
But then the memory of Julian’s text message flared in his mind like a lit match.
Jealousy clawed at the walls of his restraint, demanding entry.
He lowered his head, stopping a breath away from her mouth. He didn’t close the distance. He hovered there, trembling with the effort of holding himself back, his breath washing over her lips in uneven, ragged waves.
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Caroline shifted slightly beneath him, still deep in sleep. Her brow furrowed, and her fingers curled loosely into the silk sheets.
Jarrod squeezed his eyes shut. The war inside him was absolute. Every predatory instinct screamed at him to take what was his. But the memory of her tears on the pillow—the sound of her broken whimper—held him in place like an iron chain.
Slowly, inch by agonizing inch, he pulled back.
He straightened up, his left hand releasing the mattress. He stood at the edge of the bed, breathing hard, his body shaking with the sheer force of the control he had just exerted over himself.
He looked down at her one last time, his gray eyes dark with a hunger that would not be satisfied tonight.
Then he turned, walked to the doorway, and pulled the bedroom door nearly shut behind him, leaving only a crack of light spilling through from the hallway.
The severe lack of oxygen snapped Caroline’s brain out of the sleep cycle in a fraction of a second. Her eyes flew open.
The first thing she saw was Jarrod’s face, inches from hers. The first thing she felt was his tongue, aggressively plundering her mouth and stealing her breath.
Before her conscious mind could process the situation, her CIA field training took over. Her nervous system classified the heavy weight pinning her down as a Level-One lethal threat.
Caroline’s gray eyes turned instantly to ice.
She violently jerked her head to the side, breaking the kiss. In the exact same millisecond, she drove her right knee upward with sharp, precise force, aiming directly for his solar plexus.
Jarrod was drowning in lust, but years of surviving black-ops ambushes had hardwired his reflexes.
He sensed the shift in her muscle tension a microsecond before the strike. He threw his entire upper body backward, twisting his hips violently to the left.
Her knee missed his vital organs by an inch. But the sheer, terrifying velocity of her leg grazed the outside of his thigh. The impact knocked his center of gravity completely off.
Jarrod stumbled backward and crashed hard onto the thick carpet beside the bed.
Caroline didn’t stop. She sprang up from the mattress like a feral cat. She scrambled to the far side of the massive bed, putting distance between them.
She dropped instantly into a flawless, textbook close-quarters combat stance. Her fists were raised to protect her face, her weight perfectly balanced on the balls of her feet. Her chest heaved, her lips were swollen red, and her eyes burned with pure, murderous intent.
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