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Morning sunlight streamed in through the windows, falling across the tattoo between his well-muscled shoulder blades. He faced away from her, one arm draped up over the pillow and falling down off the head of the bed. His hair was messy, little curls fluffing up here and there, and his breathing was slow and even, but showing signs of waking.
Auggie Anderson finally made a move.
Almost three years since she'd first met him, and from day one she'd known that behind the techie-geek façade and the witty rhetoric, Auggie was a player. He once said he knew a girl was hot simply by the way men spoke to her, but it went both ways; women talked to Auggie like he'd been around the block a few times. Maybe it was the blind guy mystique, but he reeled them in, in and out of the office. And for the most part Annie'd been okay with it; they were just office buddies after all, and who was she to dictate who he spent his nights with?
It was when he'd settled on one that she'd felt the ugly little squirm of envy, disguised the first time under the disbelief that he was fucking the reporter whose mission it was to smear everything they did, that he could possibly be the leak. The second time the jealousy didn't disguise itself at all; he'd intended to marry Parker. That had been buying a ring and chasing her around the world level of commitment, from a guy who had the casual one-night-stand routine down to a science. A guy like Auggie just didn't go off the market easily.
Which was why this morning was a bit nerve wracking, to say the least. He stirred, his head turning in her direction now, but pushed his face back into the pillow, eyes still closed. She smiled impulsively, biting her lip as she reached over to draw a finger lightly down the muscle of his arm. His eyes fluttered as he took in a deep, waking breath, paused and sniffed again at the pillow, a sleepy hum of recognition rumbling from his throat. His arm came down, hand searching slowly across the linen, until she caught it with her own. "Morning," she said, hardly a whisper, but he smiled and opened his eyes.
"Morning," he replied, his voice also low, like a secret. He laced their fingers together on the mattress between them. "Is it awkward?"
She exhaled a breath of amusement. "Don't know yet."
He let go of her fingers, turned to his side and then to his back, yawning and then stretching the full length of his body. His arms hung off the head of her bed, and his toes poked out from under the covers at its foot. She watched the flex and stretch of his torso, shivering a little at the memory of touching all that skin for the first time last night. Physical attraction she could compartmentalize. The nice, neat little box where she'd filed away details like how well he'd kept up that soldier's physique and the way he smelled wasn't supposed to be tossed into the larger box with the way his self-deprecating humor made her laugh and how his voice in her ear kept her calm in sticky situations and how he was one of few men in her life she trusted implicitly. This was blurring the lines between work and personal life, and it hadn't been so very long since the last time she'd struggled with it.
He tucked his hands behind his head, eyes turned to her rafters though he didn't see them. "So..."
That made her smile again. "So..."
They both laughed. He turned back on his side, hand reaching out again. She met his palm with her own, letting him take it and scoot closer, hitching up onto one elbow. He pulled her hand close, pressing a gentle kiss just to the tips of her fingers, then the heel of her hand. She could see anxious thoughts turning over in his head before he spoke. "I meant to say some things before we just..." he murmured a bit sheepishly.
She cocked an eyebrow. "Important things, face to face?"
He took a breath, remembering his own words to her, from months ago now. His eyebrows furrowed in suspicion, as if catching her in a lie. "What was with the coy act? Last night?"
"Coy act?"
"You are one of the sharpest tacks in the box, Walker," he accused, his fingers slipping down to her wrist, circling it gently before following it down to her elbow. "You had to know I was trying to..."
She grinned, playing along, "You were trying to what?"
He actually rolled his eyes, which made her laugh out loud. He shook his head, "In Amsterdam, all the bullshit I said about my Sergeant's advice... how you asked why I kept asking if you and Eyal were..."
She took a deep breath herself, closing her eyes. He wasn't exactly subtle, no, and she wasn't as dense as she played up sometimes. It wasn't even that she didn't want this to happen, even though it scared her a bit. She'd just wondered how long it would take for Auggie Anderson, womanizer extraordinaire, to make a pass. She'd hedged her bets on a week into the job after that thick little quip about inter-agency dating, so when it didn't happen, she'd shrugged and stuck him in the coworker compartment. Later on, he'd moved up to being a friend, a good friend, her best friend. And for the most part he'd stayed resolutely there as other things evolved, when she'd moved to Lena's division and he'd taken Jai's job, and then there had been Parker and Simon, driving spikes into their abilities to communicate. Things had gotten complicated, and it had driven them apart somehow.
She looked over at the steamer trunk key on its chain, curled up on a corner of her bedside table. Auggie had taken it off of her last night, when he'd found it hanging directly over the scars of the bullet wounds on her chest. She remembered the way his deft fingers touched it, parsing out its shape, gently lifting the chain over her head. She'd let him without a fight, though she felt horribly guilty about it. And Auggie—a hundred times more perceptive than most men with the use of all of their senses—hadn't missed the sharp inhale she gave as it left her skin, and his fingers had come back to trace the worry of her brow. But he didn't press the point, and she knew he had questions she'd have to answer eventually.
"Annie?" his voice brought her back to this morning. His hand traced up her arm and shoulder, along her collarbones and neck to cup her face, not unlike they had then. This was moving dangerously close to becoming awkward, and she didn't want that. She wanted Auggie, and had for awhile, no matter how complicated it was.
Scooting into his side, she traced her hands over his chest and up to his face, mirroring the way he'd done it. She closed her eyes, letting her fingers define him.
His thumb passed lightly over her eyelid, and a rumbled laugh hummed in his throat. He knew what she was up to. He lay back to the pillows with a smile in his voice. "Look all you want."
She did, keeping her eyes closed as she felt the angles of his jaw and cheekbones, his fine, narrow nose, the soft feather of his eyelashes and brows, how he pursed his lips to kiss her fingers as they outlined his mouth. Surprisingly, she found she could recognize all those things as Auggie's face without her eyesight, as if her mind had built a three dimensional image of him.
"I can hear you thinking," he smiled, his palms gently sliding up and down her arms.
She bit her lip at her own silly curiosity. "What do I look like to you?"
He arched his brows, countering, "What do I look like to you?"
"You look like you, but I already know what you look like," she countered, "It's an unfair advantage."
"Is it?" he switched their positions, rolling her to her back and sitting up beside her, finding her hand to hold. Considering the intensity of last night, she was surprised how he was still keeping his hands—essentially his eyes—to himself this morning. He smiled, "When you first came to the DPD, Stu gave me the rundown."
"Oh, did he," she snorted, rolling her eyes.
"He told me you're blonde and brown-eyed, that you look like a cheerleader and you've got a smile like Julia Roberts. And the ladies in the office say you've got killer fashion sense, and that you spend a lot of money on those shoes."
"I do, and they're worth it," she defended hotly. "I was never a cheerleader, though. Never had time for that with all my classes."
"I love a girl with brains," He shook his head with a smile, "But you know, none of those things even matter to me anymore." Letting go of her hand, his fingertips found the outside of her hip, tracing the curve of it slowly up her side as he closed his own eyes. "To me, you look strong, confident... and sometimes vulnerable. Which is when you call me." She breathed a laugh because that was true enough, on so many missions.
His thumb stopped under her breast, just tracing the swell beneath it, making her shiver as his fingers found the scars again, and he frowned. "You look stubborn and determined. And reckless." He caressed up to her neck and over her chin to cup her cheek, his thumb brushing at her lips. "You look like laughter and kisses, and sassing back at Joan and happy hour at Allen's."
She giggled, and held her grin as he traced over it, tilting his head at what he found. "Dimples? Ooh." She bit his thumb gently for that.
He drew his hand slowly back down her center, between her breasts and over the scars. His fingers went feather light as they circled her belly button and down, his hand coming to rest just short of dangerous. His voice dropped low and his eyes closed, "You look like heat and rhythm and noise."
"Tease," she bit her lip.
He sighed, crawling over her and tilting down to find her mouth and kiss it before he tucked his face into her neck. "If I'm honest, I wish like hell I could see, because if you look half as amazing as you've been in my head all this time, it would be enough."
Touched, she brought her arms over his back, holding him close and loving his weight. All this time? "What took you so long?"
He lifted up, laughing, and his gaze locked on her eyes in that odd, fleeting way it did by chance, giving the illusion he was looking right at her. "What do you mean?"
She smirked, "I've watched you go home with a different woman practically every week since I've known you. You woo the baristas into giving you freebies just because it inflates your ego."
He had the grace to look guilty about that, settling on his elbows over her. "But never one Annie Walker."
"Why not?"
"Maybe because you aren't the sort of girl who falls for that shit so easily." His expression grew serious as his fingers stroked her face. "You made it pretty clear from the beginning that you aren't a one-night sort of girl. It's intimidating."
She blinked at that surprise, "So why now?"
He exhaled, letting his forehead touch hers. "Because I kept missing all my chances," He slipped one hand back down to cover the scars on her chest, his brows furrowing, "I've lost so many things that mean a lot to me because of my own stupid mistakes, Annie. I can't keep doing that."
Nearly feeling her own heart pounding under his hand, she pulled him down to kiss him hard, needing to feel all of him again.
But he pulled back up, eyebrows gathering with a big grin. "Wait, what do you mean what took me so long? How long have you wanted this?"
She felt herself blushing, taking a deep breath under his weight. "I... I don't even know, really. On and off, I've just thought we were... I guess we both missed our chances."
"So why didn't you ever make a move?"
She laughed, thinking back on the last few years. So much of what she did depended on calling the shots herself, being the pursuer, whether cultivating an asset, following a lead or just buttering up some some crook for intel. "Sometimes I get tired of doing the chasing. I guess maybe I wanted to be caught."
"I would have thought you'd be tired of getting caught after this year," he said, even as his arms and body caged her in.
She wrapped her hands around his biceps, winding one leg around his thigh, "Depends on who catches me."