That is what was different this time.
When they’d been separated the first time, everything had been turned on its head. The woman he wanted to see every day and every night had disappeared. Then his job had been taken from him. He’d been accused of being a traitor, not just to his country, but to his unit as well.
He’d understood, to a point, the way the others had cut him out of their lives. Even the accusation of the charges leveled against someone in the Special Forces was a black eye for the military.
And no military man wanted to be friends with ‘the traitor.’
She said she’d been ordered to turn in the report naming him and he believed her.
Knowing that she’d then turned right back around and discovered the real traitor had been a shock to him, but it had also confirmed what he’d been feeling. That the connection between them hadn’t disappeared.
That there was still something binding them together.
That was probably the closest thing he had to her ‘Spidey’ sense of something wrong. He’d listen to that. It was her instinct, just like the one that told him in the field that he had someone staring at the back of his head.
Cygny stepped into view as she pulled on her panties for the day. Silk. Ivory. The perfect counterpoint to her skin.
When she reached for her bra and shrugged it on, he felt himself harden, pressing painfully against his zipper.
Heaven help him when she grasped the two sides of the clasp and pulled the cups of her bra together, the way her breasts filled them only made him harder.
“Fuck me.”
Cygny lifted her head and looked up at him with a smile. “Later, if you’re lucky.”
He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but apparently she brought it out in him.
The hunger.
The need.
The love.
Leo willed himself to settle down, but it seemed impossible until a sound cooled his ardor like a splash of ice-cold water.
A knock at the door.
Cygny heard it and stepped into the doorway. “I just need a minute.”
Leo shook his head. She’d need more than a minute.
Unlike her normal loose and comfortable clothes. The situation of their assignment called for more sophisticated garments and the number of buttons on her blouse for the day would take her a few minutes at the least.
He waved her back inside. “I’ll see what they want, finish getting ready.”
She rolled her eyes at him and stepped back inside, nudging the door closed with her foot.
Leo got up and didn’t try to hide the adjustment he needed to make. No one was watching.
When he reached the door, another set of knocks sounded and put him a little on edge.
He took hold of the knob and pulled the door open.
Standing in the hall was Helena, the seller’s assistant. She looked tense and upset. There was something in the way she looked that reminded him of Cygny.
The thought bothered him, but what she said cut even deeper.
“You need to leave.”
Her words were abrupt and the hand she reached out with and locked on his arm felt like steel.
“Didn’t you hear me? Leave.”
His gaze was fixed on her, but she looked down one end of the hallway and then the other. “Why? What about the auction?”
She lifted her face to look at him and he saw something dark in her eyes.
Something disturbed.
“It’s not going to happen.”
It didn’t sound like a warning. It sounded like a promise.
“What are you saying?”
When she didn’t immediately answer, he stepped back, intending to call Cygny out so that they could both talk to her, but Helena’s grip on his arm felt like a vise.
“No.” She shook her head. “We don’t have time to bring her with us.”
Leo reached for her hand and started to pry her fingers away. “I’m not leaving without her.”
Helena changed her tune a moment later. Her fingers loosened on his arm. “You’re not hearing what I’m saying. Three of us walking around will only attract too much attention. Two of us,” she shrugged and gestured to her outfit, “won’t attract as much. I kind of look like her, don’t I?”
He didn’t say a word to that question. Where Cygny was curves and soft contours, Helena was angles and thin limbs. There might have been a similarity in coloring but that was as far as the likeness went.
“I’ll show you the way to get out of here and then you can come back for her.”
She removed her hand from him completely and took a few steps away, gesturing for him to follow. “It’s the only way you’re going to get out before-”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Before what?”
She shivered from head to toe. “You don’t want to find out.”
* * *