Oh God. Oh
God! OH GOD!
She’d
actually blurted out to Warner how beautiful she thinks he is. WHAT WAS WRONG
WITH HER? Why, oh why, couldn’t she for once stay quiet? Keep her secrets to
herself, like a long forgotten book, gathering dust on a high shelf in a
darkened corner of a closed-off library? Secrets had power and once you let
them go… They do not lose power.
Someone
else gets it.
“Juliette,
love… Please stop!” His voice trailed after her, so perfect and beautiful and
sure of itself. She wanted to fall asleep to it, she wanted to wake up to it,
she wanted to be completely enveloped by it.
But she
also wanted a hole to die in.
First she’d
spent a good half an hour watching the way his body moved as he bench-pressed.
The outlines of his body, the valleys and mountains of his toned muscles, the
golden glow of his skin. Then, Kenji had caught her ogling their colleague and
that was the first time that day that Juliette had wished for a hole to die in.
Second time
had been in the elevator on their way to get ready. He’d spoken to her in that
way he always did, as if she was the only thing that mattered in the world to
him, yet he was just going through the specs of their mission. Juliette had
tripped (TRIPPED!) on the way out and fallen into his arms, planting an open
mouth kiss on his chest. Sure, he had a tailored shirt on, a tailored to
perfection (she had to thank the tailor for their talent, oh yes), but she’d
still kissed his chest.
A. Damned.
Kiss. On. His. Chest.
Where was a
hole when she needed one?
And third
time had been five minutes ago, during that deadly tango.
Out of all
the things their mission handler had suggested the two to do in order to
mingle, dancing the tango had been the worst. And exactly the one chosen.
By.
Kenji.
After
dying, Juliette would gladly kill Kenji.
Body to
body, cheek to cheek, Juliette’s heart was not a heart. It was a drum. It was a
battery of drums. A world
of drums. Drum drum drum drum drum! Drum! Drum! She was a professional, yet her heart
flickered between beating and dying, beating and dying, beating and dying.
And Aaron
Warner, her partner… Who she had hated at first, who had replaced her estranged
former partner and lover, who had turned her world upside down with just one
smile and a perfect pair of dimples… He’d looked as calm as the sea on a
windless day.
She was
dying.
And he was
thriving.
And then…
her mouth had done something stupid, something so incredibly stupid… “You’re so
beautiful…”
