Page 37 of The Woman in the Garage

“Someone put a different lock on my unit. I… need to report this. And ask the office if they have, like, bolt cutters or something.”

“I can cut it off,” I assured her. “Just let me go to my trunk.”

Dasha waited in the doorway as I went to my car, wondering to myself what the hell Phil was into, what was stored in those boxes, and why the hell they were worth stealing.

I had no fucking idea.

But I had a feeling I was going to need to try to figure it out.

CHAPTER NINE

Dasha

Okay.

It defied logic, but Santo looked almost intolerably sexy coming away from his trunk with a set of bolt cutters.

Did I momentarily wonder if maybe he used those bolt cutters to, I don’t know, cut someone’s fingers off or something? Yes.

But he walked into the building with swagger, with purpose, then snapped that padlock like it was nothing.

I wanted to climb him like a damn tree.

Then he was pulling up the door, reminding me that he’d needed to cut that lock because someone had takenmineoff and replaced it with their own.

I wasn’t surprised to find that when the door opened, all of those garage totes were missing.

“I’m guessing there was more in here than that,” Santo said, flicking on the light, then waving toward the couple of boxes in the back corner where I’d placed the boxes of junk from my car.

“There were several garage totes. Maybe three or four of them.”

“And you have no idea what was in them?” he asked.

“Not a clue,” I admitted. “I should have come back sooner,” I grumbled, sighing hard.

“Don’t blame yourself,” he said, dropping the bolt cutters onto one of the shelves. “You weren’t being paranoid. You were attacked.”

The bruise on my butt had been a daily reminder, all purple and blue. Then green and yellow. Until, finally, it faded away.

“I could have had an employee go with me, though,” I said, glancing out into the hallway, but it was just darkness.

“Hey,” Santo said. He was in front of me, his hand gently lifting my chin, forcing me to face him. “It’s not your fault that someone took advantage of the weak security around here.”

“I know,” I agreed, wondering if Santo heard just how breathless my voice sounded then.

He was so close, overwhelming my senses with his scent, his heat, his touch, and that gooey look in his eyes.

His thumb shifted, tracing my lower lip.

There was no stopping the shiver that worked its way up my spine and through me.

Feeling it, Santo’s eyes went molten, the intention in them clear just a second before his head dipped and his lips claimed mine.

A throaty sound escaped me as my hands reached out, sliding up his arms. His hands moved to frame my face as he pressed deeper, as his kiss demanded more.

I was all too happy to give, my lips responding in kind, taking, giving, asking for more.

Santo’s tongue traced the seam of my lips, waiting for mine to fall open on a soft sigh before moving inside, teasing over my tongue, making another full-body shiver rack my system.

---