She rolled her eyes. “There can’t be a next time.”
The lift doors opened onto their floor.
Elizabeth walked quickly down the hallway toward her room, Quinn beside her. “I don’t want to risk our friendship, and I don’t want to lose my job.”
“Why did you do it?”
She swiped her keycard, but it didn’t work.
Lilibet was flustered, so she was.
Quinn took the card, turned it around, and swiped it for her. “Why, Lilibet?”
She opened the door. “Can we please not talk about this in the hallway?”
Both of their cell phones buzzed, proof that their surveillance cameras worked.
Quinn walked over to the device and turned it off. “I’m listenin’.”
She sank onto the sofa, ran her fingers through her hair. “I was embarrassed, and you were so …smug.”
“And your solution was to throw yourself into my arms and kiss me? I should be smug more often.”
Her cheeks flushed pink. “What do you want me to say?”
“Admit that you’re attracted to me, just as I’m attracted to you.”
She shot to her feet. “Okay, fine! I’m attracted to you. I think you’re hot. I’d love to rip your clothes off and fuck your brains out. Everything about you turns me on—all those muscles, that sexy accent, your red hair. Are you satisfied now?”
“Aye.” Quinn had never seen Elizabeth so rattled before—and he liked it. He liked what she’d just admitted, too. He plopped onto the sofa, folded his arms behind his head, a grin on his face. “Well, now that’s out in the open.”
She wanted to rip his clothes off and fuck his brains out, did she? She was pure gaggin’ for it, and so was he.
“It doesn’t change anything, Quinn. I know what happens when you get involved with a coworker. I won’t go through that again.”
7
Elizabeth didn’t know what was worse—her mortification over what she’d admitted just now or the unsatisfied ache inside her. She had kissed Quinn, and he was right. Shehadliked it.
The taste of him. The press of his lips on hers. His hard body. The feel of his arms around her. She couldn’t remember a kiss that had affected her so intensely, setting her body on fire, making her want to get him naked right then and there.
It can’t happen again.
She tried to move on, ignoring both her embarrassment—and the fact that she was now distractingly horny. “Where did we leave off?”
Quinn stood, walked over to her, concern on his face. “Did somethin’ happen at the Agency?”
Shit.
She’d said too much, and now he was curious. She sat again, resigned to telling him. “In my second year with the Agency, I started dating a fellow analyst, a jerk named Jason. I knew pretty quickly that it wouldn’t work out and ended it. He was unhappy with that and came close to getting me fired.”
She’d given him a simple answer and hoped that was enough.
Quinn sat in the armchair across from her, his concern now an angry frown. “What did he do, this fuckin’ gobshite?”
She knew that look. She had aroused Quinn’s protective side, the one that had brought him to the brink of violence more than once at the Pony Express when a man had been rude to her or grabbed her butt. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“It matters to me.”