“Forget it. I shouldn’t have said anything,” I muttered, stalking away from her to sit on the couch.

I’d been waiting for her to come home for an hour, had been worried about her. Especially when I’d read Capital Confessions. We had bigger battles to fight than whether she went on a date with some guy.

I expected my reaction to calm her down, figured she was pissed that I was jealous, but it almost seemed to have the opposite effect, as though everything I said was somehow wrong and only making her angrier.

Fuck.

She muttered something that sounded a lot like, asshole, under her breath.

“Do you actually have intel to share or did you just come here to check up on me?” Kate asked, following me into the living room.

“I came because I saw your name in Capital Confessions.”

Her chin jerked, her gaze defiant. “So what?”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Exactly what it looks like.”

“We talked about this. You promised to stay away from your father.”

“Actually, I didn’t. You promised you would come back. I never answered you when you asked me to stay away from him.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. She was driving me fucking crazy. She’d been stubborn as a kid, but this— She’d listened to me before; she hadn’t just run off and put herself in danger without thinking about the consequences. She hadn’t danced on the edge like this.

“You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“I’ve heard that one before.”

“And yet you don’t fucking listen.”

“What do you want me to say? You want this to be over, we have to get to the heart of this. It starts and ends with our fathers. You know that. It’s not a coincidence that someone sent me those files. We can dance around it, but I have a much better chance of resolving this if I can get access to my father’s office. He wouldn’t keep them at work; there would be too many opportunities for someone to find them. They’re in his office at home. I know it.”

God, it was almost worse that she had a plan. I knew exactly where she was going with this, and given the level of skills we’d seen before, how she thought she stood a chance going up against her father’s machine I’d never know.

“Tell me you aren’t breaking into his office.”

“It’s not your call to make.”

“Jesus, Kate, do you think I’m just going to stand by and watch you get yourself killed? Don’t tell me it isn’t my call to make. My unit paid the price for all of this. My father’s name is tied up in this. Don’t act as if you can just go off like some kind of vigilante.”

“Like you did when you left me and went to Afghanistan without telling me? When you snuck out in the middle of the fucking night?”

“Is that what this is about? Are you punishing me because I won’t give you what you want?”

“Your arrogance is really unbelievable. This isn’t all about you. I’m a big girl and I’ve got this. I’ve been handling my father for over a year now, chipping away at his reputation. I did all of that on my own.”

“You leaked information to a gossip site. Not exactly a covert operation.”

I didn’t want her anywhere near her father or mine; didn’t want her investigating any of this. That was why I’d gone to Afghanistan. If someone’s life was going to be on the line, I wanted it to be mine. Not hers.

I took a deep breath, trying to get my temper under control.

“Look, I didn’t come back to fight with you. I saw the mention in Capital Confessions and I became concerned. After I finished my business in Afghanistan, I came back to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m fine.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. Our definitions of “fine” varied drastically.

“How did it go?” Kate asked, changing the subject. “Did you find what you’re looking for?”

“Maybe. I’m meeting with a contact here in D.C. tomorrow. I’ll see if it pans out.”

Her eyes narrowed. “If you’re supposed to be dead, how do you have all of these connections?”

“It’s hard work staying alive. I needed people I could count on. Needed money. They don’t know me as Matt Ryan. They think I’m just a guy for hire.”

“Like a mercenary?”

I swallowed, hating how close she was to the truth. I’d been proud of my work in the military, of all we’d tried to accomplish. There was no honor in what I did now.

“Something like that. You tend to end up with a specialized skill set when you’re Special Forces, and I needed money to buy a new life.”

She was silent for a moment and I wondered if she’d finally come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t the boy she’d loved and he was never coming back. Did she see the blood on my hands now?

I closed my eyes, sitting down on the edge of her couch, resting my head in my hands, my elbows propped on my knees. It was hard enough to fight myself, impossible to fight her.

Maybe there were people in your life you just couldn’t shake, no matter how hard you tried. I’d loved her so long that it had become a habit I didn’t know how to break. So yeah, every fucking version of me, killer, soldier, or pampered prince loved her. At this point, I might as well rip my heart out of my chest and lay it at her feet next to my balls.

“What do you want from me?”

I was tired. So fucking tired. Tired of running, tired of fighting her. Tired of living my life like I was dead anyway.

It was nearly a minute before she spoke.

“I want you to admit that there’s something between us. That we aren’t over. That we’ll never be over. I want you to fight for me. For us.”

I got up from the sofa, suddenly needing to move.

Except she didn’t let me. As with everything, she got in my face, taking the distance I tried to put between us and shredding it before my eyes.

She might have been a few inches over five feet, but she fucking terrified me.

“What do you want?” I asked, defeat dragging my body down.

She kept coming, until her arms were around my neck, her body pressed against mine. I could feel her tits against my chest, her nipples tight. My hands came down around her waist, hauling her toward me even as I told myself not to fucking move.

She pulled my head down, rising on her toes, and then her lips found mine and everything exploded.

Chapter Ten

Senator Reynolds and James Ryan were seen in a heated exchange at the Hay-Adams Hotel. Is there trouble in political paradise?

—Capital Confessions blog

Kate

We crashed into each other, our mouths connecting on a sigh that slipped from my lips. I’d stolen this kiss from him and somehow I couldn’t find it in me to feel sorry about it. At all.

Despite the times we’d been together since he was back, this was different. He’d made me come, had run his hands over my body, and yet we hadn’t kissed. And despite the fact that we’d kissed hundreds of times before, this kiss was something new. Those kisses had been sweet, sexy, romantic. This kiss was all-consuming. While my mind struggled to accept that the man standing before me wasn’t quite the boy I’d loved, my body couldn’t forget it.

His mouth was unyielding, the soft lips I’d spent my teens kissing now taut with something I was afraid to name. Matt didn’t kiss me like he used to, like he was a boy in love with a girl. He kissed me like a man living on borrowed time, as though he didn’t have the luxury of finesse or sweetness, didn’t have room for love, as though he’d fling my feelings back in my face if he could. He kissed me like he couldn’t not kiss me, even as he tried to fight it, frustration and anger pouring out of him and into my body like a flash flood.

When Blair had first told me she had feelings for Gray, I’d thought she was crazy for getting involved with a guy who carried so much baggage. I’d forgotten what this was like¸ how love could twist you up and hollow you out. That it could make you crazy and reckless and send you careening toward heartbreak.