Page 12 of The Negotiator

“Since?”

He had to be playing with her now. “Are you really this slow?”

His hand covered hers. That thumb brushed over the back of her hand in a gesture so sexy and soft that she almost jumped on him.

“You’re talking about sex.” His voice dipped lower now, right into the it’s-time-to-get-naked range.

Took him long enough.“Yes, Garrett. Hot, strip-our-clothes-off, climb-on-the-bed sex. Or against the wall. I don’t care how as long as it happens. With you.”

That last part seemed important so she added it. It took mindless sex and plunged it to a deeper level, but she didn’t care. It was the truth. She wanted him. Specifically, him.

His hand froze and he visibly swallowed. “You refused to have anything we could even call a dinner date for three months and now you want to get naked?”

“Yes.”

“You do know I’ve visited you nonstop since we first met, right? This is the first green light, if that’s what it is, I’ve gotten.”

He really was going to make her spell this out. “It’s a green light. It’s not going to get any greener.”

Still he didn’t move. They stood there, staring at each other in the silent room. The only sound came from the clicking on and off of the heater.

A minute ticked by and then, without a word, he put his hands on either side of her waist and pulled her in closer. The touch scorched her. Everywhere their bodies met—their chests, thighs—her skin burned. She ached with the need to wrap her body around his and just hold on.

“Clue me in here, Lauren.” His voice sounded rough and raspy now. “I mean, fuck yes, the answer is yes anytime you want. But why now? Why the change? I need to know that we’re not going to be dealing with regrets tomorrow on top of everything else you have to handle right now.”

She couldn’t hold eye contact. For a second, her gaze bounced around the room from the pristine white comforter to the velvet drapes covering the floor-to-ceiling windows and pooling on the floor. “It’s ridiculous, I know.”

“I sure as hell didn’t say that.”

The amusement in his voice had her looking at him again. Her gaze met his and something inside her tumbled. It was as if her stomach flipped over and kept spinning. “I have all this energy bouncing around inside me. My mind is scrambled and I teeter between being so pissed off I want to punch something and feeling guilty and half sick that Carl died that way.”

Garrett rested his forehead against hers. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m confused and feel sad for him. For those who care about him.” She didn’t mean to dampen the mood, but she did need to say the words. Just once.

“Are you excluding yourself?”

She pulled back to look at him again. “What?”

“You’re not in love with him.”

There was no need to lie about this. She actually didn’t want to cover up anything when it came to Garrett. Something about him tugged at her, made her want to tell him her secrets and restart the life she’d convinced herself she could never have.

Stick to workhad been her motto for so long. But now, just for a few nights, she wanted something else. Something that was just hers. Something private and real.

“I haven’t been for a long time.” She toyed with the band at the v-neck of Garrett’s sweater. “But I’ve spent these last few years hating him and now I think about what his final minutes must have been like and—”

“Okay. Let’s try this.” One of Garrett’s hands came up to cup her face. “Breathe.”

The gentle touch soothed her. She leaned into his palm and let herself slip into the sensation of skin against skin. “I think I just want to feel something.”

“It sounds like you’re feeling a lot.”

He understood. Maybe that was the piece that made all the difference. He didn’t judge her actions or what she did to push Carl away. No, the voices in her head took care of that.

“But none of it is healthy and nothing is within my control,” she said, thinking about the anger that had boiled up inside her when Carl came to her door.

“I am.”

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