Page 82 of Shadow Dance

“Oh, right.” Leaning into me, she rests her forehead on my chest.

Stroking her hair, I pick up my phone and recheck everyone’s locations. Cal, Griff and Mac are all in San Francisco, close to the North Beach area.They’ve gotta be meeting Feretti. It’s so, so tempting to just take Maeve right here, bend her over the couch and fuck her until she forgets everybody but me, but I can’t. It doesn’t matter that I sweep the property incessantly for bugs and cams, that I track Cal, that I have outside intel letting me know what other leads in the investigation have uncovered. It’s too risky.

Maeve is so close to getting away from here, and so am I. I’m an adult. I can control myself, even if my dick is trying its best to poke a hole through my joggers.

“Is there something you’ve wanted to do around here that you haven’t been able to?” I ask. “Now’s the time to do it.”

Her arms wrap tighter as she presses her body against mine. She can probably feel my racing heart, among other things.

“Maeve,” I warn, closing my eyes as her hair tickles my chin.

“I just want to be with you.”

Fuck.Why does she have to be like this? She has no idea how hard it is to not completely cave to her.

She rises to her toes, kissing my jaw, and I can feel her siren’s call threatening to pull me under. Gripping her arms, I gently push her back. “Let’s go for a drive. Get tacos or something.”

“Tacos work,” she says, tossing her hair back. Suddenly her mask is back in place, the one she used to wear when I first began driving for her. It’s unsettling how easily she can slide it on. “I’ll go change.”

“You guys have been togethera long time, huh?” I ask as we coast down the hill. “Am I the only other guy you’ve been with besides Cal?”

“Yeah. I went out with other people sometimes when we took breaks,” she replies. “But I didn’t sleep with them.”

I nod, adjusting the heat because it’s cold today.

“I don’t know why. I know he’s been with other women,” she goes on. “I guess I wasn’t ready for things to end until now.”

“Understandable.”

“For a long time I wondered when it started going downhill, because he wasn’t always like this, but in retrospect I can see the signs.”

“Hindsight’s always twenty/twenty,” I say.

“What about you?” she asks. A wash of sunlight beams through the windshield, making her dark hair gleam.

“What about me?”

“I want all the gory details of your past relationships,” she teases.

I laugh, tossing her a glance. “There haven’t been that many in the past few years. This lifestyle doesn’t exactly encourage stability.”

“I’ve noticed,” she says dryly. “Well, who was your first kiss?”

I raise my eyebrows. “Oh, we’re going way back.”

“All the way.”

“Sheila Mendoza in the eighth grade. Had a huge crush on her,” I reveal. “I kissed her when a bunch of us were out trick-or-treating.”

“What did she look like?”

“Long, black hair.” I smirk, tugging one of her curls. “Big brown eyes. Freckles.”

“Was she your first girlfriend?”

“No, that was Clara Howell a few years later. She was cute, but a little crazy.”

Maeve leans toward me, intrigued. “Why, what did she do?”

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