Page 14 of Sinful Seduction
He exhales, soft and content. “Perfect girl.”
“It’s wherever you are.” The sun rises behind me, burning the small line of exposed skin at the back of my neck between where my collar ends and my ponytail begins. “My favorite place is wherever I get to exist in the quiet and have you right there with me. Which is incredibly ironic, considering, before you, I would have sworn my favorite place was alone.Alonealone.”
“I appreciate you making room for me.” He suckles my bottom lip between his teeth. Tasting. Taunting. “You could so easily have given methe physical benefits of knowing you, but nothing more. And chances are, I might’ve accepted that, since I wouldn’t miss what I hadn’t yet experienced. You’re beautiful, and you’re excellent in bed.”
I choke out a fast, noisy snicker. “Pig.”
“I was looking to fuck, Chief. Back then, I wanted your body and, if I was lucky, a chance to bicker with you sometimes. But now I know what sizzles beneath the surface. I know how deeply you feel, even when you try to hide it. I know how incredibly relieved you are that Doctor Chase is safe, so I wanted to bring you somewhere you could be alone for a moment—alone,with me—to feel your feelings and process that relief.”
“I sniffled.” I lean against his powerful chest and turn my face to rest over his heart. “When he told me, my nose did this weird thing. So then I instructed him to close the door on his way out, because I wanted him to leave before he realized my nose was doing that thing.”
“So many big feelings.” He runs his hands along my back, sliding them under my coat, then under my blouse, until it’s just his palms touching my bare skin. “That poor doctor will never know how worried you were about him. He’ll never understand the way your eyes changed the night Patten called to give you the news, or the way you hardened and took that responsibility on your shoulders, even when you weren’t on shift at the time of the incident. He’ll never know the textbooks you’ve read some nights since then,updatedtextbooks with new data surrounding HIV treatment. And he’ll never know about the weird thing your nose did today.” He inches back and waits for my eyes. “But I know. And I vow to protect your heart at all costs. Because it’s special and fragile and so, so fucking sweet, I mourn every single day the possibility I could’ve settled forjustsex back before I knew better.”
“But I’m fantastic in bed.” I sniffle and lay my cheek on his heart again. “The sex is good, so you’d have accepted what I gave you and said thanks.”
“And doing so would’ve been a tragedy. You ready to go home?”
“I suppose Aubree could do rounds.” I get caught up in a long, noisy yawn that holds me captive and sends tears to my eyes. Not weird, emotional, relieved-Doctor-Chase-is-okay tears. But normal, eye-squeezing tears that remind me how wiped out I am. “I wasn’t built for all-nighters, Detective Malone. But I’m not gonna go home and sleep unless you are, too.” I scrub my hands over my face. “Can you take a few hours?”
“Yeah.” He drops a kiss on my lips. “I’m good for a few hours down. Then you have a dress fitting at three. We’ll set an alarm so we don’t sleep through it.”
“Ugh!” I spin out of his arms and reconsider walking to the edge of oblivion. “I haven’t changed sizes since I last tried the dumb dress on! Why the hell should I keep going? Didn’t they hear, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?”
“Einstein?”
I grab his hand and march us toward the door. “There’s no documented evidence that Einstein wrote or spoke those words. People just say he did.Insanity.”
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“Dammit! Ugh!”
I wake with a start, shoving up in bed and looking straight toward my closed bedroom door. Which is the direction Minka’s grunt and bad mood echoes from. But just to make sure, I glance to her side of the bed and confirm: she’s gone.
Flopping back again, I fall into my own sweat and groan. The summer heat pelts the side of our building and leeches through the bricks until we exist inside nothing better than an oven. My pillow is wet. My hair, wet. My sheets and boxers. It’s like I’ve been for a swim in the fuckin’ ocean before falling into bed. But I get none of the benefits of an ocean dip.
“Jesus, woman. Stop throwing a fit!” Cato’s voice hitches with a grunt. “You’re not being reasonable.”
“Move your shit! Clean it up.” Another grunt. “Stop living like a pig, and I won’t feel the need to throw anything.”
“You’re mad because you have to try on pretty dresses,” he giggles.Giggles! But the sound cuts to a deathly quiet that brings me up in bed again.To save his life? To hide Minka from a twenty-five-year prison sentence?“If you don’t wanna go, tell them you’re not going. Pick up the damn phone and take your bad mood out on the chick who insists on a second wedding. I did nothing to earn your wrath.”
“You left your shoes on the counter!”
I drag my legs to the left and over the side of the bed. Then, pushing off the mattress, somehow more tired now than I was when I first laydown, I stretch my arms to the ceiling and stumble through the door without getting dressed. I wear silk boxer shorts and not a damn thing more, and walking the hall with my eyes closed most of the way, I emerge at the end mid-yawn and completely fucking ready for a full eight hours of sleep.
But then Minka lobs a Jordan high top—just one—across the apartment and nails Cato square in the chest.
“You have no need for this many pairs of shoes!”
Cato’s desperate eyes swing to mine. “She’s cracked, Arch! She’s gone feral.”
“I’m not feral!” She spins, raccoon caught in a flashlight, wild-eyed and messy-haired. She’s feral, plain and simple. “I woke drenched in my own body fluids, expecting to come to my living room in themiddleof a workday.Midday! That implies my living room should be empty. Ya know, since most respectable human beings are at work or school at this hour.”
“It’s summer!” Cato exclaims. “I’m not in school right now.”
“But nooooo,” Minka snarls. “Couldn’t get time alone with my TV in my own living room. Can’t sit on my couch, because Baby Mafia over here has worked his butt indent into the cushions. Can’t use my coffee machine because Mafia Boy used the last of the beans. And can’t make a sandwich on a clean counter, because… because…” Frustrated, she slings her gaze back to him.
“Little Timmy?” he offers. “Fake Felix. Criminal Carl?”
