Page 7 of Russian Rescue

Her gaze dropped to my crotch.

“A lot.”

My grin widened. Yeah... I wasn’t the same scrawny kid anymore, and Piper liked what she saw.

CHAPTER THREE

Piper

––––––––

I struggled to keep my slack jaw shut as I stood in front of Pretty Boy... or, as he’d accurately been trying to get us to call him, Incredibly Handsome Man.

Jesus. Even that was an understatement. Stupidly Gorgeous Man was more accurate.

The man standing in front of me wasn’t the scrawny kid with the shaggy brown hair who’d walked into the conference room almost a decade ago. That guy had looked like he played Dungeons and Dragons in the basement with his friends and hadn’t ever seen a boob in real life. This guy looked like he spent hours a day at the gym with the muscular lines cutting through his abs, tapering down to a “V” that disappeared beneath his black boxer briefs. This guy looked like women threw their boobs in his face for a chance to climb him like a tree... and the thought of him with other women unsettled me in a strange way.

He waggled his eyebrows. “Huh? Not bad, right?”

His pec muscles flexed again, and my mouth went dry as I snuck another peek down at the body making my stomach do cartwheels. He wasn’t bulky or beefy but lean and cut like an athlete. A swimmer’s body, and I remembered now how he often referenced going out surfing. With his chin-length sandy-brown hair, fit swimmer’s body and suntanned skin, he fit the part of a surfer completely. And apparently, surfing did a body good because the way his six-pack flexed with his chuckle made it pop even more than it already had.

And that thing he was packing in those drawers?

Damn.

My earpiece crackled, and I snapped out of my frozen stance.

You’re on a mission, Piper. Shut your mouth and get your shit together.

“Piper? You okay?” Marcus asked into my earpiece.

“Yeah. Eyes on target,” I responded. “He’s okay.”

“Thank God,” Knox breathed. “Tell Pretty Boy I say hi.”

I’ll tell Incredibly Gorgeous Man that, I thought, but instead answered, “Roger that.”

“Is that Knox and Marcus? Are they here?” Wes asked. His bright blue eyes searched mine, and I struggled again to process the beauty of the man before me.

I’d seen his face on the video screen a thousand times, and over the years I’d noticed his angular jaw widening as he’d aged and filled out. Sure, I’d noticed his pretty eyes and the perfect, straight nose and full lips... the features that had gotten him dubbed Pretty Boy. But the video screen didn’t do any justice to the depth and color of the ocean eyes staring back at me or the strong jaw wrapped in a week’s worth of stubble.

There wasn’t anything pretty about Wes now.

Downright sexy still didn’t cover it.

Wes was fucking hot.

“Uh, yeah... it’s them,” I struggled out, still trying to get ahold of the senses his mostly naked appearance stole from me.

“Are they here?” Wes asked.

I nodded. “Marcus is on the roof preparing our exit strategy, and Knox is at the plane just out of the city, waiting to extract us.”

“Hell, yeah. I knew you guys would come for me.” He smiled, and his perfect white teeth only did more to drill into my mind that the boy who’d had a crush on me for a decade had turned into a man worthy of a reciprocal crush from myself.

“You need me yet?” Marcus asked into my earpiece. “Or should I stay up here and set up for extraction?”

“So far, so good,” I responded. “I think I can get him up there safely solo. But if shit goes south, I’ll let you know. Just get the harnesses and ropes ready. I’m moving him now.”