Their gazes stayed locked until Sawyer growled his release. Only then did Harley close her eyes when he bent his head to kiss her again, his warm lips moving slowly over one of her ears.
“You have the most beautiful green glow to your eyes when you let yourself go,” he whispered. “And your fangs are the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
She was too exhausted to truly register what any of that even meant, simply lying there in Sawyer’s bed, breathing in his scent from the pillow she somehow found under her head. It struck her as a little odd that her nose seemed to be working so well at the moment. Picking up a scent on something as simple as a pillow was usually beyond her. But she dismissed that as unimportant as she watched Sawyer move to turn out the light, then slip back into bed and under the blanket with her.
How she’d gotten under those covers remained a mystery, but as Harley felt Sawyer’s warm body spoon up behind her, she decided it was unimportant as well. Instead, she wiggled back into him, latched on to the arm he’d wrapped around her, and dropped off into the most relaxing sleep of her life.
Chapter 15
“So, I guess you and Harley are a thing now?” Rory said from where he sat on the other side of the table, the words deceptively casual.
Sawyer snapped his head up, sure he’d heard wrong. Which could be true. Admittedly, he hadn’t been paying attention to his teammate. He and Rory were in the support team’s makeshift safe house/hospital conference room waiting for Weatherford to call in from London for what was bound to be a horribly painful video teleconference. He fully expected his boss to fire him this morning. Or order him back to headquarters for interrogation. He wasn’t sure which would be worse. And when his head hadn’t been spiraling with those thoughts, it had been filled with ones involving a certain female werewolf and a night like he’d never experienced. Leaving a naked, beautiful Harley in bed to come over here with Rory so they could talk to their boss had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done.
Bloody hell. It was like Rory had read his damn mind.
“Harley and me?” he murmured, figuring if he repeated the question, it would give him time to think of something better to say.
“Yeah, you and Harley.” The corner of Rory’s mouth tilted up in a smile. “You know, the woman you slept with last night?”
Sawyer stared, fumbling to collect his thoughts. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Harley and I—”
“Seriously, mate?” Rory lifted a brow. “I saw Harley coming out of the bathroom last night. She was wearing one of your shirts and walked straight into your room. It’s not hard to figure out what’s going on.”
For a moment, Sawyer considered trying to come up with something that would explain everything Rory had seen but decided against it. It wasn’t like he had anything to hide. He supposed he was so used to covering up his secrets that lying to his teammates had become instinctive.
“I’m not sure if we’re a thing, but yeah, Harley and I slept together,” he admitted. “Is that a problem for you?”
Rory chuckled. “It’s not a problem for me. Though I get the feeling if you and Harley are sleeping together, it’s definitely a thing.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because she doesn’t strike me as someone who does this kind of thing lightly,” Rory said. “Now that I think about it, you’ve never been one to jump into bed with a woman on a whim, either. I’m guessing this means something to both of you.”
That wasn’t the response Sawyer had expected. Of all his teammates, Rory was the one most likely to shag a girl he’d met whenever they had some downtime on a mission, so he expected his friend to rag on him, not come at him with something this real.
Sawyer rested an ankle on the opposite knee, swiveling back and forth in his chair a little. “It means something to me at least. But I know how complicated the situation is, so I’m trying not to read more into it than might be possible.”
Rory seemed to consider that for a moment, eyes appraising. “Do you want there to be more to it? If things weren’t complicated, would you want a long-term relationship with Harley?”
Sawyer felt like he was looking at his teammate through a new lens. Had Rory always been this perceptive? If so, why hadn’t Sawyer ever noticed?
Then again, Rory had hidden that his sister was a supernatural, so maybe his friend was even better at hiding his true self than Sawyer was.
Back to Rory’s question. It was the same one Sawyer had asked himself that morning as he lay in bed with Harley draped across his chest, fast asleep. Sliding a finger through her hair to gently brush it away from her face, he’d daydreamed about what it would be like to wake up with her in his arms every morning. The notion made something well up in his chest in a sensation so powerful and overwhelming it scared him a little. The only thing that scared him more was the idea of such a future never coming to pass at all.
“If Harley and I were simply two normal people in a normal world, then yes, I’d want to take things with her as far as they’d take us,” he said slowly. “But you and I both know we aren’t two normal people and that the world we live in is about as far from normal as you can get. She’s STAT and I’m MI6. There’s no way a relationship could ever work.”
Sawyer’s inner wolf howled at the thought.
Rory shrugged. “Coming from someone whose sister can melt a car when she gets angry, I can say without a doubt that normal is overrated. Stop worrying about the details and focus on the fact that you and Harley are perfect together. Don’t mess that up because the logistics seem too hard to deal with.”
His friend was right, and his inner wolf knew it. His human side—while on board with the idea of seeing Harley wherever and whenever he had to—wasn’t sure how to make it happen. Damn, why couldn’t things ever be simple?
“At the risk of sounding like a complete prat, any idea how to make it work when we won’t even be in the same part of the world most of the time?”
Rory’s mouth twitched. “I’m no werewolf, so I don’t know exactly how a werewolf should handle it, but I’d start by telling Harley how you feel and see if she’s as open to the idea of seeing each other after this mission is over as you are.”
That sounded incredibly reasonable—and more than a little terrifying. They’d slept together for the first time last night, and now he was supposed to ask her if she thought there might be a future for them? She’d probably think he was off his trolley. He was about to tell Rory as much when a flicker from the big computer monitor STAT’s support team had set up on a rolling cart caught his attention.
A lead weight settled in the pit of Sawyer’s stomach as Weatherford came on-screen. The branch chief was seated at his desk in his office and Sawyer could see part of a tapestry on the wall behind the branch chief. Sawyer half expected to see Erin and Elliott standing to either side of Weatherford, but they were nowhere in sight. That didn’t mean they weren’t in the room and hadn’t already told MI6 about him.