Page 67 of Entangled

“Okay.” I break our kiss and roll my hips, grinding down against him. “I’ll come.”

He arches a brow at my innuendo, lips pulling up. “Good. He and I both wouldn’t have been too happy if you hadn’t.”

“Well, then.” I cock my brow and roll my hips again. “Who am I to disappoint?” I slide my body down his and hook my thumbs inside the top of his shorts, pulling them down to free his impressive cock and dragging my teeth over his hip bone along the way. I take him in my grip and pump him once before throwing him a wink. “But first…” I dart my tongue out and lick the bead leaking from the head of his cock. “Priorities.”

His harsh groan fills my ears as I wrap my lips around him, his fingers threading through the back of my hair. No encouragement is needed though, I sink my mouth down eagerly and swallow him whole.

***

“Tell me more about your job.” I play with Coop’s hand in mine, looking down at his scarred knuckles and running my thumb over them in thought as we approach the outskirts of San Jose.

“What do you want to know?”

“You said before that you locate people or things for clients. But what does that really mean? How does that work?”

“A lot of it is research, on people, their patterns. Going through their lives and figuring out what makes them tick. People are puzzles, you figure out how they work and you can predict what they’re going to do most of the time.”

I hear the disconcerting echo of my own thoughts in his words and my stomach flips as I raise my eyes to his face. “And the other?”

“Typically…” He hesitates, flicking his eyes to mine. “After the research period… I would insert myself into their lives somehow and try to recover whatever it is I was hired for.”

I quickly work through his words in my head. “So you go undercover?”

“Yes.”

Dropping my eyes to our linked hands, I run my thumb over his scarred knuckles again and a sense of foreboding fills me. “Does it ever get violent?”

I feel his eyes on me and look up to meet his gaze. “Sometimes… yes.”

Of course it gets violent, you idiot. He’s a fucking mercenary, El. What did you expect? Are you seriously just working this out now?

Apparently, I’d been having too much sun and sex and not enough thought.

I bite my lip against my next question, stomach flipping at the thought but am unable to let it go.

“Have you—” I clear my throat, forcing my voice to be strong and clear. “Have you ever killed somebody?”

His jaw tightens and he keeps his eyes on the road, making a turn off the highway before flicking his eyes to mine. “Do you really want to know the answer to that?”

I pull my hand from his as my guard shoots straight up. “Yes, Cooper. I do.” I answer him in a hard voice.

A beat passes before he answers with quiet reluctance. “Once.”

I swallow down the sick feeling working its way up my throat. “What–what were the circumstances?”

“Are you asking if it was self-defense?”

“Yes.”

“Would that make a difference to you?”

“Of course it would.” I scoff in disbelief.

His eyes find mine, searching for something in them. “Why?”

“Because… because…” Because I don’t think I could bear the thought of a world without you in it. “It just would. Obviously it would.”

Fuck, this was twisted.

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