Not standing here, aching for her, his gut clenched with such need that he felt as though the agony were rocking through him, the denial fucking killing him.
She was barefoot, dressed in a black silk gown that dropped to her ankles, the tiny straps barely holding it up over her full breasts. She made him so damned hard his dick felt like iron.
She made him so damned hungry for a taste of her that he actually ached with it. His balls tightened painfully and his cock throbbed in demand. A demand that he go to her, that he touch her, that he take her to his bed and just fuck her. Fuck her until the hellish hunger burning inside him was sated, and the clawing need eased.
Instead, he forced himself to simply stand there, to do no more than watch her.
She stared around the room, her gaze touching on the silent computers, the darkened maps, the blank expanse of screen where satellite images had once been displayed.
And she looked lost. She looked as though she didn’t know where to turn, or where to go now that this part of her life was over.
Elite Operations One was done. The last agent had fulfilled the eight-year contract he’d signed. Several had been under twelve-year contracts, but they were finished now as well. Five men had gone their own way to live their lives in the sheltering hearts of the women who had ultimately saved them.
And where the hell did that leave him? Where did that leave Tehya?
She had dedicated six years to the Elite Operations. Pulled in at the age of twenty-four because of her contacts overseas, her practical knowledge of communications, she had eventually been given the code name Enigma. She’d been a last-minute hire, a decision made more by the agents than by Jordan, and she had immediately completed a team that hadn’t known they weren’t whole.
If it had been left up to him, she would have never wasted those tender years of her life within this mountain. She wouldn’t have wasted her life staring at computers, or immersing herself in the lives and the missions that had been played out beyond the steel and cement walls surrounding them now.
She should have been living. She should have gone to college, married, and had a house full of babies instead of hiding on the secretive, secure base of Elite Operations One.
As he watched her, she pushed her fingers through the long, heavy strands of red-gold hair that fell to her hips. He rarely saw it unbound anymore. For years she’d kept it in a tight plait, or a ponytail.
Had she worn it loose during the past years as she did tonight, then he wondered if he could have kept his hands off her for so damned long.
That hair tempted, it teased, it dared. And Jordan wasn’t a man that could turn his back on a dare.
In the six years she had worked with the Elite Ops, he’d done his best to stay the hell away from her, but he couldn’t deny she had made herself an integral part of the unit.
Tehya was the backbone of the communications center, along with Kira Richards. She had also acted as his personal assistant, and he’d be damned if he could think of anyone who could have fulfilled that job nearly as well.
It was Tehya who kept the files intact, mission information flowing, his coffee hot and plentiful, and his dick spike hard.
It was hard now. His balls tight and throbbing, his muscles tense with the effort to stay the hell away from her, to ignore the silent invitation he saw in her eyes too often.
It was an invitation he wouldn’t see any longer after the sun rose on a new day. She would be heading out, leaving the base to begin a life of her own. To learn how to simply be Teylor Johnson, a woman who had spent her life working in the back offices of a central database company. One of those nameless, faceless drones that other workers rarely if ever saw, but whom they depended upon for the various files and information she was responsible for. This was her new identity, the safety net Jordan had created for her.
She would be out of his life though. And hell if he knew how to handle that thought.
As he stood watching, Jordan’s fingers clenched when she turned, her lush hair moving in a wave of silk that tempted his fingers to tangle in the long, rioting curls.
Those long strands swayed around her as she slowly shook her head and sighed. A slow, heavy sound of regret before she turned and left the dimly lit room, unaware he that he was observing her, unaware of the hunger that tightened his expression.
There had only been a few times he had ever come truly close to Tehya. She had gone covert with him several times because of her ability to hack her way into any system and her overseas connections. During those times they had been forced into close proximity, so close that more than once they had been forced to share a bed.
Needless to say, he hadn’t slept much on those missions. And he wouldn’t be sleeping tonight, knowing they were alone, and he could have her.
She made him fuck hungry. He lived in a hellacious haze of lust at times, so damned hot for her it was all he could do to keep his cock in his pants.
He was haunted by fantasies of her naked, her eyes dazed with lust, her face flushed, as he teased and tempted and sated the lust that he knew would explode between them. Imagining her creamy flesh flush, her eyes dilate and darken. Her hips arching, pussy saturated with her juices, swollen and clenched tight, as he worked his dick inside her.
His nostrils flared at the fantasy he couldn’t ignore as the heavy steel door below slid open. It closed behind her as she passed through it, heading for the resident suites farther up the mountain.
The communications room was on the deepest level of the base. Ten stories beneath the mountain above them, heavily secured and completely hidden.
Residential suites were located just a single story beneath ground level, each set of rooms outfitted with a bedroom, bathroom, and small sitting and meal preparation area. The Elite Ops agents were well taken care of. They were the heart and soul of the nongovernment, nonmilitary, secretive group of undercover operatives. Operatives who were now gone with the exception of himself and Tehya.
Jordan had seen each operative off with a sense of envy that even he couldn’t deny. Despite his determination to remain single and to remain a doting uncle, brother, and son, he’d been envious of the lives his men had waiting for them. The wives, the children. The freedom to laugh and to love.