Page 28 of Luke, The Profiler

If he stopped kissing me now, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to go on existing.

As if reading my mind, he amped up the intensity by sliding his hands boldly down to my butt, laying claim to it with the squeezing of his strong fingers. I took a nanosecond to mourn the fact that I’d worn pants today rather than a skirt, but thankfully he didn’t seem to mind as his hands pushed me up against him. When he did so, the bulge of his cock growing ever harder was unmistakable.

Oh, my.

His tongue delved deeply, dancing with mine. I matched him with gusto, reveling in every stroke of his tongue and nip of his teeth. His taste was addictive, and I flung myself full-tilt into getting hooked on him. But even as I let myself sink deeper into the bliss that was his kiss, a small part of me growled that it wasn’t enough.

But I knew what would be.

My hands slid down to clutch at his shirt at the small of his back and pulled it free from the waistband of his jeans. As I did, I brushed against the gun holster he had attached to his belt, and that brought his head up with an abruptness that took my breath away. I opened eyes I couldn’t remember closing to find him looking down at me, his lips hovering a fraction away from mine.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered automatically, though I wasn’t sure what for. “I didn’t mean to touch your, uh… gun.” Not that gun, anyway. “I forgot it was there.”

“So did I.” The way he said it sounded as if that ticked him off, though that made no sense. His sharp intake of breath moved his chest against my breasts, and all at once the only thing I wanted was for the clothes we wore to melt away like magic. “That’s a first.”

“I won’t tell anyone if you won’t. It’ll be our little secret.”

“Our little secret, huh?” His eyes were still half-lidded as he looked down at me, and his arms still encircled me, but something was different. It was as if he’d managed to distance himself from me without moving an inch. “Don’t you think we have too many secrets between us already?”

My smile wilted as I stared at him, baffled. “What are you talking about, Luke? What secrets?”

“There are so many to choose from, but I’ll start at the very beginning.Yourbeginning, to be specific.”

The grimness of his tone made me tense, the same way a boxer tensed when they saw a punch coming but couldn’t avoid it. “Luke—”

“What’s your name, Eden? The one you were born with. You’ve never answered the first question I ever asked you, so I’m asking it again. Who are you, really?”

I froze. It started in a place deep in the center of that thing I called my soul, before it splayed its icy fingers to every corner of my being until I was sure I’d become as hard and cold as a statue. It hurt. God, how it hurt, but facing reality was preferable to believing the sweetly romantic bliss of his carefully crafted illusion.

This was just another mind game.

His kisses, his caresses, even his damn hard-on—all a trick.

I was lucky I had the brains to figure it out before he went so far with his charade that I went and fell in love with him.

Yeah.

I wassolucky.

My arms dropped before I stepped back, thinking wildly that I’d throat-punch him if he fought to let me go. But he didn’t, his arms falling to his sides while he watched me, calculating.

Always frigging calculating.

God, he really was a monster.

“My name,” I said just above a whisper, and it was a wonder my breath didn’t puff out in an icy vapor, I felt so frozen, “is Eden Steadfast. Eden Steadfast is who I am, who I’ll always be. If you don’t know who that is by now, it’s no wonder you feel compelled to stoop to such manipulative tricks like pretend-kisses to try to figure me out. In fact, if you have to get that low in the gutter just to read someone, you’re no profiler. What you are is a monster, and I don’t deal with monsters.”

“Monsters have no problem mixing business and pleasure, Eden. I do.” He took a surging step toward me, then visibly checked himself when I took a defensive half-step back. He took in a breath that I could hear before he locked a ferocious gaze on me.“Hear me now, woman. When I kiss you, it’s because I can do nothing else. When I fuck you, it’s because I’m fulfilling the ultimate reason for my existence. But protecting you now, even from yourself and whatever horrors you’ve got buried in your past, is my number-one priority. I need to keep you alive and get you through this rough patch you’re going through, so that I’ll be free to kiss you and fuck you and devour every perfect inch of you until you know that you. Are.Mine.”

His words ate up all the oxygen in the room. Frantically I worked on keeping a neutral face while trying to fill my lungs with nonexistent air. “Get out of my house, monster. You’re not welcome here.”

His eyes were like blue flames, and a muscle worked in his jaw, as if he were chewing on words he refused to let loose. “You mentioned an address book with everyone you’ve ever known. Give it to me.”

“Why, so you can harass everyone my life has touched?”

“Yes,” came the unrelenting reply. “I’m not leaving here without it.”

Without another word I turned to my desk, plucked it out of a drawer and handed it to him, careful to make sure we didn’t touch. Anything to get rid of him.

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