Page 115 of Savage

“Fuuuck. ” My head fell back on the couch. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“Definitely not. Especially now that I found you.” He kissed his way up to my ear. “I spent hours searching for you online. Wondering who the man in the alley was that night… Who the man was in my bed… In me. Were you ever going to tell me?”

“I did one better than that. I showed you.”

Cooper rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“I don’t know,” I said, running my hands down his hips to grip his ass. “You seemed pretty infatuated with this Lachlan guy. How could he compete?”

“Infatuated, huh? Is that what you think I am?” He raised a brow, daring me to answer.

I held his chin between my fingers, bringing his mouth toward mine. “It’s what I know you are. But you’re missing the point.”

“No, I’m not,” Cooper said, leaning in for a kiss. “I think, deep down, I knew. I had to. I don’t just go falling for men left and right, you know.”

“No?” I murmured, caught up in the heady look he was giving me.

“The only two guys I’d looked twice at in forever and they happen to be the same man. I think that’s a pretty clearindication I have a type.” He wound his arms around my neck and whispered over my lips, “And it’s you.”

But before his mouth crashed down on mine, he leaned back suddenly and reached for the glove, then grabbed my hand and slipped it on me.

As I flexed and smirked at him, he winked.

“Now it’s you.”

I shook my head, not sure he was really ready for all that entailed, but I wasn’t going to talk him out of it. Instead, I shut him up with a kiss, one I hadn’t been sure I’d ever get again after he found out what I’d been keeping from him.

But Cooper continued to amaze. I couldn’t get enough of his endless curiosity or his insatiable desire for me. He was fucking crazy for that, but then, that made two of us.

I licked my way into his mouth and clenched the back of his neck with my gloved hand, and his soft moan reminded me of just how much Cooper got off to being dominated. It made me hard, made me want to throw him down on the couch and?—

He ripped his mouth away, breathless, but there was an anxious look in his eyes.

“This isn’t…” he started, only to sit back on his heels. “I mean, we’re not… I’m not…”

“Cooper, this is the only time I’ll tell you this, but spit it out.”

That brought a faint smile to his lips, but it disappeared just as quickly.

“This isn’t over, right? Like, I don’t just go home and never see you again?”

“Why would you say that?”

“I just mean because the whole reason you brought me to Libertine was that I was in danger, but now Mick and his guys have been taken care of, so…” He didn’t meet my eyes as he said, “I just…go home?”

I reached for his face, forcing him to look me in the eyes.

“Scout. What doyouthink?”

38

COOPER

One Month Later…

IT WAS AFTER eight p.m. when I finally typed the last line of my article due ASAP for the weekend paper. The story had come across my desk a couple days ago with a deadline for tonight, which was accounting for the late hour.

“You still here?” Jill, one of my new colleagues, said as she powered off her computer at the cubicle across the room.

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