My name is Noah, dammit.
With care and more regret than he’d believed possible, he slowly brought her back down to earth. He ached for her and there was little doubt in his mind he would’ve had sex with her, but hearing another man’s name on her lips was simply wrong.
She believed he was someone else. The lie he’d perpetrated went against everything he believed in, and now he regretted what he’d done.
When she learned the truth, she’d hate him. Period. He knew enough about women to know that much. Women didn’t take too kindly to being deceived, especially when it came to intimacy. She’d kick him to the curb for sure, which would be no less than he deserved.
He kissed her inner thigh, then rose up and leaned over her to place a kiss on her abdomen. He ran his hands up her legs and over her hips, hating himself. His job required him to continue the ruse, to keep pretending he was the pharmaceutical company whistleblower. “Fidelity. Bravery. Integrity.” The FBI’s motto. What he wanted to know was where was the integrity in lying to Alyssa?
He couldn’t blame his job for the lies he was letting her believe. But his job hadn’t given him permission to have sex with her; he’d chosen to do that himself. As far as she knew, Noah Temple hadn’t been kissing her, Charles Rolston had—and it pissed him the hell off.
Regret ran deep when he stood and walked away from Alyssa. He grabbed up his pants and stepped back into them, then scooped up his shirt off the floor.
He didn’t want to look at her, but when she sat up, he found himself watching her. She looked uncomfortable, awkward and he hated himself for putting her in this situation.
“Where are you going?” she asked him. Her tone held a combination of caution and concern, and added to the guilt already eating away at him.
He shrugged into his shirt, then grabbed the towel off the dresser to hand to her. “I need some air,” he said because he didn’t have a better answer for her.
He shoved his hand through his hair. What the hell have I done?
She stood and fastened the towel back in place. “Chas? Is everything okay?”
No. Everything was far from okay, and judging by the hurt look on her face, she knew it, too. But he refused to tell her another lie, so he avoided the subject altogether. “Look, why don’t you get dressed and we’ll go grab a bite to eat,” he suggested. He swiped his BlackBerry from the nightstand, then walked out onto the balcony to give her some privacy while she dressed.
His body continued to ache for her, but he ignored his need for her and powered up his BlackBerry instead. Within a minute, he had a signal and found several text messages waiting for him. He quickly scrolled through them, and felt a surge of relief when he spied one from his SSA: MAINTAIN STATUS QUO. PRECAUTION ONLY GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES. SUBJECT TESTIFIES TOMORROW. IN USM CUSTODY.
Not what he wanted to hear, but at least he did have some answers and an end game. Too bad his exit strategy was nonexistent. Still, as he’d suspected, Rolston was indeed in the custody of the U.S. Marshals, which more than likely meant the weasel had made a deal.
Dammit.
He’d spent weeks investigating and building a strong case against Rolston based on the SEC’s allegations of insider trading. And now the bastard was going to walk? It hardly seemed fair, but then he did understand the federal prosecutor had much bigger fish to fry by bringing criminal negligence charges against the men in charge at Bastian Pharmaceuticals.
Like any law enforcement officer, his job was to protect and serve. And if that meant letting a smoking hot mess of a bodyguard believe she was doing her job, then that’s exactly what he would do.
Even if it killed him.
CHAPTER 6
Alyssa didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or throw something—directly at Chas’s stupid head. She also didn’t know what she’d done to make him walk away from her right in the middle of having sex.
Almost having sex, she amended. But what they’d been doing up to that point had been pretty damned fantastic.
At least the rat bastard had satisfied her, quite nicely, too, thank you very much. A couple of times, in fact, before he’d gotten cold feet, turned chicken or just lost his ever-lovin’ mind.
Whatever his reason for abrupto interruptus, it had better be good. He’d just given her the best orgasm—ever—and she’d been more than anxious to return the favor. Who the hell walked away from that?
Oh, yeah. Chas did.
Her second time around in the shower, she took a cool one, then dressed quickly in a pair of jeans and a lightweight, gauzy ruffled yellow tank. Surprisingly, she did have an appetite—strictly for food, however. No way was she putting herself out there like that again only to have him reject her the way he’d done.
“Who does that?” she asked her reflection as she applied a swipe of mascara over her lashes.
Maybe the question she should be asking was why he’d suddenly changed his mind. Had she done something wrong? She really didn’t have a clue. What switch on his libido had she inadvertently flipped?
After she twisted her hair up and secured it with a claw-clip, she applied a little more mascara and some lip gloss. The latter she did for her own wounded ego and not for the jerk who’d left her wanting more.
“Idiot,” she muttered as she slipped her feet into a sturdier pair of huarache sandals rather than her usual flip-flops in case they had to make a run for it again.