But her in his space was bad enough.
Christ.
“Let me make myself perfectly clear. I like you, Mo.” She leaned closer. “A lot.”
“We’re not going there,” he grunted.
“We so are.”
“We’re not.”
She put a hand to his chest and her eyes warmed as her voice went soft and sweet. “We are, baby.”
“We’re not because there is no way I’m gonna be in the position of being inside you and my attention all about you something that would give some whackjob the opportunity to get the drop on us and put a bullet in the back of my head.”
Her face went slack and her hand curled into a fist on his chest.
But he wasn’t done with her.
“After that, he’ll drag you out from under my dead body, and no one will get the warning you’ve been taken because I’m dead in your bed and he’s got you somewhere, making you wish you were as dead as me.”
She pressed her fist into his chest but said nothing.
“Lottie, you get this is serious, but what you gottareallyget is that I need to be focused and not on how badly I wanna make love to you, but on how badly I wanna keep you safe and healthy, physically, but more,mentally.”
“Okay,” she whispered, understanding the intelligence of that right away, and that was his girl. “We’ll wait until it’s over.”
Goddammit.
“We won’t do it then either.”
She showed her shock then her hurt before she said, her voice rising, “Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t cut me up too much, the likes of Tammy dumping me, but I start something with the likes of you and you get the urge to move on, then do it, where do you think that’ll leave me?”
“Have you thought about the fact that I might not get that urge?” she asked.
“They move on, Lottie. Theyallmove on.”
“I’m not them.”
“You can do better than me and both of us know it.”
They did.
They both did.
And he knew she did when she dropped her head, took her hand from him and stepped away.
Nowthat…
That cut him up.
Until she tilted her head back and speared him with her gaze.
“What’s better than you, Mo?” she snapped.
“More money. Better lookin’. Trips to Tiffany’s.”