I saw the look in his eyes then, the moment he said those words. Dread. Like I was the harbinger of death. Saddest thing…is that I was. After 13 confirmed kills and no failures in five months, I had a reputation building. Other agents knew about me. I was Graham's enforcer, his wild card, as I'd heard whispered when other people thought I couldn't hear. I added another layer to any mission, so no matter how badly things appeared in the field, Graham still came out smelling like a rose. I had my suspicions that this was true all along…this mission solidified it for me.

"My orders were only for Temmer," I told him, keeping my voice as neutral as possible.

"But the order was open-ended, wasn't it?" Bryce countered. "He ordered you to investigate first. Don't think he wouldn't have added me…in a heartbeat…if you told him what he wanted to hear." His eyes widened. "Or that he will…just not yet."

His words rang true, truer than I wanted to admit to myself. "If you're innocent…not working with Temmer, then why be concerned?" I asked him.

"Temmer turned," Bryce insisted, raising his voice slightly for emphasis. "The DNI is already all over Graham's ass, Walker. And it's only going to get worse if anything he already sold to the Iranians gets out. He's suspicious of me because Temmer killed Knowles…when he could have killed us both."

"Why didn't he kill you both?" I asked him, still trying to decide if I believed everything he was telling me. Despite how far removed from my childhood, chronologically speaking, I was at this point, it is never far from me, even now. I had faith in my skills. I followed my gut…which was telling me he was telling the truth, not trying to backpedal his way out of a jam.

"Because I was able to talk my way out of it. I convinced him that I didn't know Knowles was CIA. He bought it," he told me. "But Graham…he wasn't sure. He set me up to take the fall…with you as his insurance policy."

"So Temmer can ID you, is that the short version of your story?" I asked him, pushing him backward farther into the shadows now that I realized just standing next to him could compromise my cover.

"He can," Bryce told me. "I was trying to isolate him when I noticed you."

"You picked me out, just like that?" I asked him pointedly, concerned that somehow my cover, which had never been an issue up to now, had been compromised. And, worse, that it could have been all along and I had only just been lucky so far.

"Relax," he said, smirking at me. It was annoying, almost condescending the way he did it. Like it was just shy of a pat on my head. "I saw you checking for exits and spotting the security cameras. No one else would have even noticed. And, I'm sure you were doing it for a long time before I noticed."

"What happens after you isolate him?" I asked him.

"I can get access to the information, copy it, and then destroy his data. I bet Graham was just plotting…thinking that we would cross paths, in search of the same target. Maybe even hoping you'd kill me in the process, and take the data back to him. It seems like what he wanted all along, don't you think?" Bryce told me. It struck me then…that as much as I was relying on my gut, so was he. He was telling me a lot of information with almost no provocation. He trusted me. It was bizarre, understanding at that moment. All my life I had been convincing other people to trust me, for duplicity's sake. Had anyone ever trusted me, simply because I was trustworthy?

Looking back now, I think that was part of my initial attraction to him. The fact that he trusted me. Weird and inexplicable, but closer to the truth than any other explanation. The relationship between Bryce and me was complicated, but if I think about it, the death knell of that same relationship was the loss of that trust. Not when he went rogue, or I thought that he went rogue, but when he didn't trust me enough to tell me the truth about all of that. More of that later, though.

"I already told you, my target is Temmer," I told him again.

"You've never killed someone extra, because they were in the way?" Bryce asked me.

He was an agent too, and I remember thinking he would have also passed a Red Test like I had. He spoke about it like it was nothing, like he was talking about making a phone call. I wondered if he had suffered afterwards, the way that I had, or if doing this kind of work was his dream and nothing fazed him at all. He seemed suave, debonair, and sure of himself in a way I had never encountered before. I felt as if he were looking straight through me, that he could see the layers of blood on my hands that I could only see when I closed my eyes at night. Regardless, even if we hadn't lived exactly the same experience, he understood. He trusted me and he understood my life…at least the largest part of it anyway.

"Almost, once," I told him hesitantly. "The target was fucking a prostitute. Fortunately for her, he didn't last that long." I said it nonchalantly…as nonchalantly as he had spoken about killing people. It never occurred to me to be embarrassed talking like that in front of him.

He smirked again, eying me up and down. It could have been licentious, in fact I thought at first that it was…but…something about it made me hesitate, just for a second. His eyes lingered and that was when I realized it. He was admiring my frame, studying me like someone would look at a painting in a museum. "Tell it like it is, Walker," he teased, as if he had known me forever.

He snapped out of whatever spell he had been under while his eyes graced my curves. "Will you help me?" he asked.

"Help you what?" I quickly retorted.

He sighed, frustrated that he had to explain. Was he that used to people just doing what he said? I wondered. The line between confidence and arrogance was very thin, and often blurred. I was still trying to determine where along that line he was standing.

"Look, Sarah," he started urgently. I bristled at the use of my first name like that. Graham never called me that…even some of the CATs never called me that. When I thought long enough, only two people had ever called me by my first name…and one of them was dead. "There's something else going on here. I was stalling a bit, trying to figure it out. I was taking the risk of being caught…both by the target and by Graham. If you take him out, I'll never know."

"What do you mean?" I asked, waiting for more information.

"The one conversation I had with Temmer, before he killed Knowles, led me to believe there is another double agent involved. Someone who has almost unrestricted access to our nuclear codes. Temmer is getting the information from someone," Bryce told me.

It made sense, and I suddenly wondered why that part of the story had never occurred to me. Except that I was trained to not think about anything else but my orders. Turned agent, selling information, neutralized. End of my need to know. Only, I began to see, here for the first time, there was more at work, more things that I didn't know. What was real, what was a fabrication, or a deliberate deception–I had no way of knowing. He knew I was listening, that I had his attention, so he continued.

"Help me find the second agent. I tracked him here using digital tags placed on Temmer's phone. I was headed for Temmer, hoping he would lead me to him somehow," Bryce told me.

"I just make up my own mission as I go? Is that what you want me to do?" I asked him.

"Look, Sarah," he said again. He was a spy, I thought testily. Could he not see how irritated he was making me, saying my name that way? "I know Graham keeps you on a tight leash, but we have some autonomy in the field, especially when we work as a team."

My blood boiled. I slapped him across his face, surprised by my own anger and my inability to rein it in. My nostrils flared as my breathing became ragged. I could see the red handprint on his cheek, as he kept his face turned at the angle it had shifted after my blow. "Did I hit a nerve?" he asked, slowly running his hand across the reddened skin on his cheek.

"Call me Sarah again…and I'll make sure I do next time," I growled coldly. It wasn't the only thing he had said that had irritated me, and not why I struck him. But it was what I said out loud to him. I didn't bring up his "short leash" comment…in the end, because he had struck a nerve…and he was right. It was the plain truth of the statement that had irked me so badly.

"I'm sorry," he said, straightening his shoulders and standing his full height, which put him almost eye level with me. That close to the blue in his eyes, I knew he was telling the truth. He wasn't being flippant. He regretted upsetting me.

"But I'll help you," I told him. It was the same feeling I had when I had decided to go after Carina in Pakistan. Making a split decision between orders and what was right. If there was another double agent selling U.S. nuclear secrets, and there was a chance that person would go free because Graham was worried about how bad it looked for him to have two double agents cross him, I was going to do whatever I could to stop it…before Graham ordered me to do something else. "What's your plan?" I asked.

"Temmer knows what I look like. He has no idea who you are. Distract him…and I'll tranq him. We can interrogate him offsite," Bryce told me.

I wasn't all that keen on the interrogation part, but I could distract him better than anyone I knew. But that was how a team worked, right? A real, functioning team…not the dysfunctional association that the CATs had been for me. We each had our strengths and used them in tandem to achieve the goal in the best way possible.

I resumed my attack, everything I had planned before Bryce had distracted me. I moved back into the main rotunda, spotting Temmer as he stopped a waitress and grabbed a glass of champagne. He pounded it in one gulping swallow and sent her back with empty glass, quickly snatching another from her tray before she departed. I needed to add to that warmth the alcohol would have left burning on his insides.

I moved quickly, then slowed down when I was in his sights. I leaned forward to grab an hor d'oeuvre from a separate tray, angling myself so my cleavage was straight in front of him. I watched his eyes dip, then stay on my chest even as I looked at his face. "Absolutely…delicious," I said, gently and intentionally licking my finger after I popped the spinach puff into my mouth. It tasted terrible, bland and pasty, but I never let that show, fighting the urge to shiver as I swallowed it down. My voice was higher pitched, and I made sure I was batting my eyelashes.

"I don't believe we've been introduced," he said lasciviously, reaching for my hand and pulling it to his mouth. He kissed the back of my hand, very European of him, but somehow repugnantly. The tip of his tongue darted out between his lips. Licking my hand? I thought. He kept eye contact with me while he did it, even as his eyes continued to dip to my barely contained cleavage.

"Sarah," I told him, layering my voice, adding a false breathiness.

"A beautiful name for a beautiful woman," he said seductively. "My name is Josiah." He looked over my shoulder, and glanced quickly around the room. "Are you here with someone?" he asked.

"No," I almost pouted. "My date canceled at the last minute. He knows how much I hate these work things, too."

"What kind of fool stands up a gorgeous specimen like you?" he tsked. He hadn't let go of my hand. In fact, he tucked it in his arm, like I had been here all along with him. He actually called me a specimen. Did real women fall for stupid lines like that? I thought. "How about we join forces, hmm?" he asked, smiling a wolf's smile at me. "You make all the other men jealous of me…and I can keep the rest of them from bothering you because you are here alone."

I giggled like a little girl and smiled like a bubble headed blonde. I channeled my best Amy. It worked. He asked me to dance, and we did. He was clumsy and stepped on my feet more than he didn't. I kept smiling, even though his shoes crushed my toes in my already uncomfortable heels. When the music died down, I asked him if there was some place we could go to talk that was quieter. He walked me back towards the hallway where I knew Bryce was waiting.

The second we were in the shadows, he was an octopus. His hands were everywhere, and he backed me against the wall underneath a large painting. He moved for my mouth, but I turned my head and felt his lips make contact with my neck. One hand was on my ass, pinching, while the other was unzipping the back of my dress. Where the hell was Bryce? I thought. The left spaghetti strap on my dress slid down over my shoulder the farther down he unfastened the zipper. I felt the cool breeze harden my left nipple, the only clue I had that my dress was sliding off me. Temmer's mouth was buried between my breasts when Bryce shot him with the tranq gun.

I reached for him, trying to keep his body from thudding as it would hit the floor. His weight sliding down me pulled the dress even further. I scooped the loosely hanging fabric, but not before Bryce saw both of my breasts exposed to the open air. He looked away so fast I almost wasn't sure he had seen in the first place, but the telltale blush that colored him from his neck to his hairline was unmistakable. I turned, and before I realized it, I felt him reaching to zip my dress back up. For the briefest of moments, I felt his fingers, hot and burning, against the skin on my back. My body's reaction to the faintest of touches surprised me.

We were both bending down to pull Temmer's unconscious form along the tile floor in the hallway. He spoke sotto voce to me, his eyes shifted slightly away. "I'm sorry. I wasn't ogling. I couldn't help it," he explained.

"I know," I told him, the thought almost absent from my mind at this point.

"I also couldn't help noticing how beautiful you are. File that wherever you'd like. I'm just saying," he added quickly.

I ignored it, not sure how I should have responded anyway. There were two kinds of beauty, as described, and in my experience. Most people commented on the version of me that was the product of the CIA, a temptress assassin. The way Bryce said that…it reminded me of the way Sam had mentioned my beauty to me. At this point in my life, it was either one or the other. The way Chuck said it to me was a third kind, the rarest kind, the kind that no one but him ever saw. It was never just about my physical appearance, but all the way through to my soul. Somehow my brain sorted Bryce's words into the second category, so much so that I was waiting for him to comment on whether or not he thought I was lonely. Fortunately, he was much more focused on the mission than that or I think I would have slapped him again.

We were able to drag Temmer out through the service entrance, Bryce commenting haphazardly about him not being able to hold his liquor. We stuffed him in the trunk of Bryce's car. He drove a very expensive convertible sports car. I had never been in a car like that, and being in the front seat, at night, with the wind whipping through my hair was exhilarating. He drove insanely fast, over 160 kilometers per hour, which was equivalent to 100 miles per hour in the U.S. I watched him out of the corner of my eye while he drove.

I remember thinking he thought he was James Bond when he was driving. I felt my whole body press into the seat as he accelerated, zipping around corners and hugging the road expertly. There were moments when I almost felt like raising my hands up into the air to feel the breeze, but I refrained, trying very hard to stay focused on the task at hand.

We ended up in an old tenement building, a rented room on the first floor of a boarding house. It was obvious as we went inside that Bryce was using this as his base. He had cases of surveillance equipment, weapons, and communication apparatus crammed into the small space, all neatly arranged and organized.

Bryce tied him to a chair, binding his wrists and his ankles. He told me to keep watch in the hallway, to make sure we weren't followed. The building was deserted with almost no cars even passing on the road, and none but his in the parking lot. It occurred to me that he wanted to interrogate Temmer alone, as his original plan didn't involve me in any way, and I was harder to explain and a distraction. He only told me later that part of it was also just wanting me to not see the brutality of what he was doing…government sanctioned torture. Not that he thought I was a wilting flower or anything. I was, after all, The Ice Queen…Graham's Wild Card Enforcer. Watching Bryce threaten to burn a hole through Temmer's hand was child's play compared to what I had seen happen…by my own hand. It was because of the attraction he felt for me, even at this point, even when he was literally the last thing I was thinking about like that during this time.

He eventually got used to violence with me at his side, but here, like this, the very first time, he was torn and uncomfortable. I heard Temmer screaming through the door, though the words he was saying weren't intelligible. It was almost worse, I think, hearing it and not seeing it. It left me to imagine what Bryce was doing. Knowing that the end of that torture would come as death by my hand made the pictures worse. It took Bryce 30 minutes to get the information he needed.

Bryce emerged and shut the door quietly. He was still wearing his tuxedo. "Linus Gustafson," Bryce muttered to me. "He's a company scientist working out of D.C. He's here in Lisbon. He was due to meet with Temmer tomorrow morning. We show up instead and get access to his information by any means necessary."

Bryce stopped talking, but his gaze stayed fixed on me, quietly communicating that Temmer's usefulness had come to an end. I knew what that meant. "Have you verified what he told you?" I asked him.

"Affirmative," Bryce said, his voice clipped. He opened his palm and flashed me what he was holding–a tiny flash drive. He would have checked it once Temmer gave it up, wherever it was that he had been hiding it.

I pulled the gun out of the holster attached to my upper thigh. Bryce was trying not to look at the full view of my leg as I swept the skirt of my evening gown out of the way. I cocked the gun and entered the flat through the door. Bryce followed me inside and shut it behind me.

Temmer was slumped in the chair, so bloodied and battered that if I hadn't known it was him, I wouldn't have recognized him. His clothing was bloody as well, burned in some places. My eyes widened and I resisted the urge to gasp out loud when I saw a knife driven through his left hand, pinning his hand to the arm of the chair. A fountain of blood was running from his downturned palm onto the floor and collecting into a puddle. Temmer was weeping.

All 13 of the people I had assassinated for the CIA had been peacefully unaware that their demise was impending until I was right there, the instant before I shot them. I was an assassin, but not a torturer, at least not yet in my career. Seeing Temmer this way was unnerving…even for the Ice Queen. I couldn't understand everything he was saying–his lips were so swollen he couldn't enunciate the words well. I do know he was pleading with me not to kill him…which was also a first for me.

I could hear Bryce breathing behind me, anxious, probably fearing the potential for discovery if we didn't hurry. No one had ever watched me do my work either. No matter how anxious he may have been, Bryce remained silent and let me do what I needed to do in my own way. I raised my gun and pointed it at Temmer's forehead. His pleading became hysterical. I needed to calm myself inside. I told myself this man, as pathetic as he looked now, was selling nuclear secrets to Iran. Potentially giving radical terrorists access to nuclear weapons that could be used on innocent people. People he had once sworn to protect as an officer in the CIA. Graham sent me here to remove that threat forever.

But he was a person, albeit a fumbling, self-important man who made many mistakes…and probably regretted them all at this moment. Maybe not for the lives he may have had a hand in ending, far removed from his actions now…but for the end of his own. Did he wish he had time to atone? Make amends for his crimes?

Those thoughts were making me hesitate. I summoned the storm, the icy blast of wind that froze my emotions. It was as if I could feel the hesitation harden as it froze…and then it was gone. I aimed again and fired the bullet straight into his forehead.

It was clean, with a small caliber firearm, contained inside his skull, leaving his head intact. His eyes froze open, the smoking end of my gun the last thing he ever saw in this life.

I turned away, tucking the gun back into the holster, feeling it almost burn my skin, as I realized too late that I should have let it cool before doing so. I had a lot of small burn marks on my skin from recently fired guns, though. I think it almost became a habit…needing to wound myself in a small way after I had taken a life. I even thought this time…my bullet put an end to the pain Bryce torturing him was causing. It was probably more mercy than he deserved. But my job was done.

Bryce was staring at me, and I was hesitating, not wanting to look up at him. When I finally did, I was surprised. He had a strange look on his face, one I was not expecting. Sympathy…or maybe empathy…mixed with understanding. As awful as I felt, and as cold as I needed to make myself inside so I wouldn't feel, I also felt understood…for probably the first time in my life. Sam had come close, but never shared any of that common ground with me while he was still alive.

"Can you wait to contact Graham? At least until we investigate tomorrow?" he asked me.

I nodded. "We'll figure the rest of this out together," I told him. He smiled, a radiant, almost movie-star quality smile. He certainly was attractive, I thought. It had been a while since I had even met someone I was attracted to, even a little bit. Working alone had left me utterly solitary…with just my vibrator for company at night.

"Are you staying at the Four Seasons?" he asked me. It was the most expensive hotel in Lisbon, and he was assuming. I nodded. "I am too. I'm surprised I didn't notice you were there. You're quite…memorable, Agent Walker."

His voice was rich like velvet, smooth and caressing with his sultry flattery. Maybe a normal girl would have thought he was coming on strong, or was laying it on a little too thick. But I wasn't a normal girl, and I never had been. He was obviously attracted to me. I had seen it enough in others, despite the fact that I had never done anything other than acknowledge it with anyone unless I was drunk or high. Acknowledging it was all I could do with my feelings encased in ice the way I had left them, for my own protection.

Bryce arranged the CIA cleaners for the tenement room. They repaired and disposed of the body in record time, dressed as members of the fire department. Pretty standard procedure, something I had done as well. It was utterly strange, thinking about how many scenes like that had occurred in plain sight and no one had ever been any wiser.

It was the ride back to the hotel, in Bryce's sports car, that actually started the ice inside me melting. He was chatty, even though we didn't talk about anything substantial, no deep personal revelations or pronunciations. He was funny. I found myself laughing, even giggling, something I couldn't even remember having done with authenticity in a very long time.

I spoke fluent Portuguese, which seemed to impress him as we walked into the hotel together. "Not even an accent, Walker. You're amazing, do you know that?" he said, with this starry-eyed look that confused me. The tone of his voice was more than flirty or teasing. He was almost breathless.

We had turned down a dark hallway on the way to the elevator, and at well past midnight, there was no one else around. As we passed the last square of light as it reflected on the floor, I felt him reach his arm around my waist, pulling me against him as he stopped walking. He turned a half turn, spinning me and pinning me against the wall, and he kissed me.

There was no slow burn there, just a fiery, deep, passionate kiss the likes of which I had never experienced, or even dreamed about. Both of his hands were on my cheeks, holding my head, tilting my head to give him better access as he thrust his tongue into my mouth. He tasted like alcohol and coffee…and something that I will only say was Bryce, any time I ever kissed him. His body was pressed up against mine, molded against me, and I could feel every line of him through the thin satin of my evening gown. I could feel his arousal pressing against my upper thigh.

The sensation of kissing him was lighting me on fire, and I could feel it pulling at my insides. The last time I had sex, that I could remember, had been over five years ago. He slid one hand down the side of my neck and brushed it across my shoulder, sliding the strap down until it dangled against my triceps. I moaned when I felt his hand glide across my collarbone, trailing on my skin until he had my breast in his palm. I could feel my pulse between my legs as he massaged me until my nipple went erect against his hand.

He pulled his mouth away from mine, bending and pressing his lips to my breast as he moved his hand away. The way that felt was new, and so erotic it made my mind go blank. He alternated suckling my nipple with his lips and flicking it with his tongue until I was humming like a guitar string. "So beautiful," I heard him whisper in between contact with my skin.

He was so hard against me…and I wanted him so much it hurt. I wasn't drunk or high, but I was as close to losing control as I had ever been when I was sober. I reached for his pants, pulling at the button, sliding my hand downward towards his hardness. When my hand touched his skin, when I held his cock firmly in my hand, he opened his eyes and looked at me. "Sarah," he whispered, sending a shiver across my skin and down my spine. It had bothered me before, but here, it was positively arousing. "You want…this?" he asked, sounding like he was straining to breathe. I was stroking him with my hand, rough and jerky movements beneath the restriction of his waistband.

With my other hand, I hit the button on the elevator, thinking afterward that I hoped no one was on their way out or we were completely exposed. Fortunately, the door slid open with a soft ding and it was empty. We stumbled, falling backwards into the elevator. He reached behind him and pressed the buttons that closed the door and locked us inside. Fifteen floors.

I was still holding him, but with my other hand I undid his pants and they slid down, freeing him. He was pulling my dress up to my waist, gathering it in his hands. I was wearing just a thong, so he had easy access. I felt the warmth of his cock against me, sliding my thong to the side as he slid against my wet folds. He reached behind me, grasping both of my hamstrings to brace himself, and hold me still. I groaned when I felt him slide inside me, burning hot and smooth.

It was reckless and crazy…and intoxicating. He didn't use protection, and I didn't care. We were fucking in an elevator in a public building, and I didn't care. The desperately crazy situation only worked me up harder and faster. It was fast and furious, vigorous thrusting that I returned with wild abandon. We were in a hurry, in danger of being observed, and I was frantic for release. I thrust forward and then down, tilting my pelvis back and forth in a steady rhythm that achieved orgasm quickly. I bowed my head against his shoulder as my entire body shuddered with pleasure. After so long, it felt so good, better than I had remembered that could feel. "That felt good, huh?" he whispered, panting and out of breath, never breaking the stride of his thrusting.

I felt him come inside me just as the lights on the wall switched from 12 to 14. He groaned, almost like it was painful to pull out of me. I leaned against the wall to steady myself while he straightened his pants. I yanked my skirt down over my hips the second the elevator came to a stop. Fortunately, no one was in the hallway outside, for the inside of the elevator reeked of sex.

We sort of stumbled down the hallway, almost as if we were drunk. "That was fucking amazing," he gushed, smiling, still slightly out of breath.

I felt strange, out of my own body again. Was I turning into Carina? Bryce had just watched me kill someone, and then fucked me two hours later in an elevator. I had listened to him torture someone for 30 minutes straight, and then fucked him two hours later in an elevator. "I'm not…I mean I don't…I…" I clamped my mouth shut, afraid of what words would spill out.

"Regrets?" he asked plainly.

"No," I replied quickly. "Not at all. I wanted to do that. I needed to do that…"

"You don't have to justify yourself to me," he said. "We're adults."

"I know. I just don't normally…fuck strangers in elevators. At least I don't anymore," I added, blushing after the words came out.

"Turning over a new leaf?" he teased, smirking.

"Do you know who Carina Miller is?" I asked him. I wondered, since he knew who I was. It wasn't that far from my mind wondering if Carina had fucked him at some point in the past.

"By reputation only," he laughed. I wasn't sure how to take that.

"We were on a spy team a few years ago. Drinking and drugs and sex…with no idea how many…people," I added, still unsure about how much Carina and I did together after I'd blacked out. "Fortunately for me, I tested clean and I stopped letting myself be so compromised." Until now, I thought, but didn't say.

"If she was in bed with you, participating, couldn't you ask her the number?" he asked, still smirking. He was amused, I realized, wondering at his reaction.

"I don't want to know it," I confessed to him. "Because I don't remember any of it."

"And you don't want to remember any of it," he said, not asking, telling. He shocked me, because he was exactly right, only I just realized it right at that moment. "Because of whoever it was before?" That was a genuine question.

"My training partner at the Farm," I told him, again amazed at my own candor. Bryce was very easy to talk to, especially someone like me, who hated talking at all. "He died about four years ago."

"I'm sorry," he said sincerely.

Did I sound sad? Heartbroken? I wasn't, and I knew it. All of it, the entire conversation was weird. "It wasn't like that…not like you're thinking. We weren't close."

"Not emotionally then. Just physically," he offered brashly. My silence was my answer. "You just wanted it to be more?" Another genuine question.

"How could there be more?" I answered, wondering why my voice was quivering. "We're spies."

Did it have to be? I heard in my head, in Sam's voice, after I had first told him I knew I would always be alone.

"What if there was something in between?" he asked me, stopping his forward motion down the hall as he turned to me. His eyes were so expressive, like deep blue pools of emotion. It was mesmerizing…and troubling.

"You don't know me. You just fucked a stranger in an elevator," I challenged him.

"I just had sex…with the most beautiful woman I've ever met," he replied, with a deep, sonorously sexy voice that gave me goosebumps. "Her name is Sarah and she's a spy. She has utterly captivated me…fascinated me. And I want more."

"Do you say that to all the girls you fuck?" I retorted, trying to sound angry, wondering why there was a hurt tone in my voice.

"Sarah, please, that's not–"

"Holy shit, are you going to argue with me about that?" I snapped. "You were acting like Mr. Super Spy James Bond. How many now that you've added me?" Why was I so angry? I was forcing him into a box, because the way he was reacting to me was upsetting me.

He reached for my face, caressed my cheek even as I stiffened at the touch. "That wasn't my intention. Adding a hatch mark on my belt. You…got under my skin. But I got under yours too. You turned me on…and you…wanted me." I had. He was right. Even as I looked away, I could remember what it had felt like, feeling him thrusting into me against the wall in the elevator.

"Get some sleep. Tomorrow's going to be a busy day," he said, suddenly all business. Flipping on a dime again, he pulled my face close to him and kissed me again, gently this time, running his tongue over my lower lip but withdrawing before I opened my mouth in response.

I went into my room, hurrying to shut the door, breathless and confused. Emotions battered me on the inside, every which way, and I couldn't summon the blizzard to turn them off. I paced for a while, then took a shower. I was edgy, even though I had just had sex for the first time in a long while. I initiated the sexual encounter, after a passionate kiss, because I was attracted to him. I decided. This was different from anything else I had ever experienced, but I had no idea what it meant, or what to do about it.

What if there was something in between?

I laid awake, unable to sleep despite the known need for it. Bryce was still running through my mind when he knocked on my hotel room door at three in the morning…and showed me what that "in between" actually meant.