It was a freedom Tehya hadn’t sought out, though each year he had lived in fear that she would, wondering if he could let her go when she made the request.
Hell, letting her go now was something he was finding impossible to do. He was the reason she was still here. He had kept her busy, kept her working, ensuring she had been delayed and the last to leave. Ensuring he didn’t have to release his grip on her until the very last possible second before the new team moved in to take over the base.
And why had he kept her there? He’d avoided her this entire, final week. He’d watched her from afar, jacked off at night when the fucking lust was close to breaking his control, and kept telling himself he could let her go.
And still, he was fighting it. Still, he was trying to find ways to hold her here when he knew he had finally run out of time.
Shaking his head at the futility of the hunger tearing at his control, he pushed his hands into the pockets of his pants and finished his final inspection before leaving himself.
The next morning would see him walking away from the base, perhaps for the last time.
He had the option of returning and heading the new team, with the new commander working as his second in command. Killian Reece had no problems with Jordan assuming command of the base and operations.
It was a decision he had less than a month to make. He could go another twelve years or he could back off, find a place for himself within the world as a civilian and find a life.
The only problem was, he couldn’t imagine life outside this mountain, without Tehya running his life to some extent. Without her tormenting him with her pert smile and sassy-as-hell comebacks that made his dick harder than hell with the need to fuck her into submission.
Son of a bitch.
He shifted the hardened length of his cock as he stepped into the elevator at the end of the steel and iron walkway and pushed the button for the residential level. The thought of her leaving had that need ripping through him with a force that damned near cramped his dick. He had the urge to go to her, to jerk her to him, lift her, wrap those incredible legs around his hips and pound into her.
She would walk out those doors when morning came and he intended to ensure he never crossed her path again. But God help him, would he make it through the night without pouring himself into her?
He doubted it.
He had every intention of going straight to his own suite, he assured himself. Every intention of ensuring he didn’t tempt himself further where Tehya was concerned.
Instead, he found himself at her door. Dick hard, pulse pounding, his body tense, unrelenting, in the pure addictivelike hunger pouring through his body.
He hadn’t told her good-bye. It would hurt her if he didn’t say something before she left in the morning. He couldn’t do that to her.
He couldn’t do it to himself.
Pressing his finger to the button that would announce his presence, he waited. Rather than her voice coming over the small intercom, the metal door slid open instead.
And there she stood.
The black silk flowed over her full breasts. The long red-gold hair spilled around the creamy perfection of her face.
She was thirty years old, but she barely looked twenty-five.
Vivid emerald-green eyes watched him warily, but the nipples beneath that silk hardened, peaked, and pressed against the material as though reaching for the hungry depths of his mouth.
Damn, he should have gone straight to his own suite. He should have never stopped.
He was going to do exactly what he had told himself he wouldn’t do.
He was going to fuck her.
“Jordan.” His name was a caress on her lips. The soft, sultry sound was filled with an aching huskiness, a question, a hint of hope.
“Are you packed?”
That wasn’t what he wanted to say. He wanted to reach out and rip that damned gown off her body, push her back into the room and thrust into the sweet, hot depths of her pussy.
Damn, she would be tight. She hadn’t had a lover in the six years she had been with the unit. He knew she hadn’t. He’d kept such close surveillance on her that he would have known the second she had so much as entertained the thought.
She’d given her life to the Elite Operations, and what did she have to show for it? She had no family, no friends, no connections or roots. He was throwing her to the wolves and Jordan knew it.