Alpha One (Shadow Agents 1)

He pulled in a breath and caught the scent of vanilla. The scent drifted from the open bathroom door. From Juliana. A sweet but sensual scent.

Logan spun around and headed for the door. “Get some sleep.” He sure as hell wouldn’t. He’d be thinking about her—what should have been.

“Logan.” Her voice stopped him at the door. His hand had lifted, and he fisted his fingers before slowly turning back to face her.

Juliana hadn’t moved from her spot just outside the bathroom. More steam drifted around her. Her skin gleamed, so smooth, so soft.

“You still look at me—” her chin lifted “—like you want—”

“To eat you alive.” Yeah, he knew how he looked. Starving. But Juliana had always made him that way. Desperate for what he wanted, for what he’d taken before.

Her hands were still at the top of the towel. “In Mexico, you told me that if I offered myself to you again...”

He couldn’t think about that night right then. Being close to her after all those years—he’d gone more than a little crazy.

“You said you’d take me,” she finished.

Logan didn’t speak.

“But I’ve changed my mind.”

His whole body had turned to stone.

“I’ve thought about what I want. What I don’t want.”

He couldn’t hear this.

“I know we don’t have forever. I know you’ll go back to—to wherever the next battle is, and I’ll go back to Biloxi when this is all over.”

Biloxi. Her home on the beach. He’d seen it before. After a battle that had taken two of his best friends. When he’d been broken and weak, he’d had to find her.

So he’d gone to her beach. He’d watched her from a distance, gotten stronger just from seeing her.

But he’d stayed in the shadows. After all, that was where he belonged.

“We don’t have forever,” Juliana said again, the words husky, “but we do have now.”

He took a step toward her and shook his head. No way had he just heard her say—

“But I’m not offering.”

Son of a—

“This time, I’m taking.” She dropped the towel. His mouth dried up. “I want you, and right now, I don’t care about the past or the future. Now—now is all that matters to me.”

She was all that mattered to him. Logan was already across the room. His hands were on her, greedy for the feel of her flesh. He pulled her against him, pressed his mouth to hers, thrust his tongue past her lips and tasted the paradise that waited.

The bed was steps away—steps that he didn’t remember taking. But they were falling, tumbling back, and he had her beneath him on the mattress.

He’d woken from hot, desperate dreams of her for years, and part of him wondered...just a dream?

Then her nails bit into his back. Her legs slid over his hips and she pulled him closer.

No dream ever felt this good.

His mouth was still on hers because he had to keep tasting her. His hands were stroking her body because he needed to feel her silken flesh.

But she wasn’t just lying passive beneath him. Her body arched against him, and Juliana caught the hem of his shirt—and then she yanked the shirt off him.