Blake waited on Kara to exit her car before grabbing his duffle and exiting his own, the timing meant to ensure she didn’t have the chance to drive away while he was outside his vehicle. Once she walking toward her trunk, he joined her and took her briefcase.

Surprise flashed in her eyes, like she didn’t expect him to be a gentleman, and he had reason not to be with her, without question, but manners were inbred by his military father. “So you can’t hit me with it,” Blake explained, his hand brushing hers, the connection sending a jolt of pure lust rocketing through his blood.

She shivered and hugged herself, and he knew she wasn’t reacting to the cool evening air floating off the nearby ocean, but to the instant heat simmering between them. “I’d have thought you’d be more likely to hit me with it.”

“Never hit a woman,” Blake assured her, his nostrils flaring with the soft, familiar feminine scent of her he’d been dreaming of for a week now. “Spanked a few, but—”

“Way too much information,” she said, holding up her hands and looking appalled.

“I’m pretty sure you have a creative enough imagination to figure it out on your own anyway.” But the truth was, despite the hot night they’d spent together, there was an innocent quality about her that defied how sizzling she’d been in bed with him. Not innocent, but…something. He doubted seriously she’d gone to any of the many places he had in the past two years. He motioned her toward the elevator. “Let’s go have that chat we need to have.”

“You know everything there is to know,” she insisted, falling into step with him.

“I doubt that,” he commented dryly.

Her brow crinkled. “You doubt and assume too much.”

He almost choked on the irony of that statement. “Only when I have reasons and you’ve given me more reasons in a week than most do in a lifetime.”

She punched the elevator button. “Or you’re so cynical that you see things that aren’t there.”

He stared down at her, thinking how petite she was, how delicate and easily hurt she appeared. How in need of protection. That’s what made woman such weapons. They made a man forget they could pull a trigger just as easily as he could. “We’re both working for Mendez and you think I’m too cynical?”

She bit her bottom lip. He wanted to bite that bottom lip. He wanted to lick it and her. He was going to lick it and her. “I suppose you do have a point there,” she conceded.