Chapter 7: Against the Terms

Brennan stood very still in the hall.

"Lena. The terms."

"I remember the terms."

"Separate bedrooms. No touching unless somebody's watching."

"Somebody is watching," I said.

He looked around the empty hall, then back at me.

"Who?"

"You."

I stepped up to him and put my palm flat on his chest, over his shirt, over the black tie.

His heart was going hard enough to feel through the cloth.

"Tell me to stop," I said. "I'll stop. I'll go up to the guest room and we'll never talk about it."

He did not tell me to stop.

His hands came up and closed around my wrists, and for one second I thought he would push me away.

Instead he pulled me against him and kissed me.

It was nothing like the church.

It was hungry and rough, and I made a sound into his mouth that I would have denied under oath.

"Terms, Mrs. Corrigan," he said against my lips. "You're breaking them."

"Then fire me."

He laughed, low and unsteady, and picked me up.

I wrapped my legs around his waist.

He carried me up the stairs and past the guest room to the big bedroom at the end of the hall.

He had changed the sheets. They were white and clean.

He set me on the edge of the bed and stood between my knees with his hands on my thighs, shaking.

"I've thought about this for fourteen months," he said. "I need you to know that, even if you don't believe it."

"I don't," I said. "Take your jacket off."

He took it off. His tie went next, then his shirt, one button at a time because his fingers wouldn't work faster.

His chest was broader than I remembered. He had a new scar low on his ribs I did not know about.

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