Page 17 of Forbidden Want

“You’re not going anywhere,” he said, typing on his phone. His shirt was gone, his pants still open. “Dasha will be here in twenty minutes. She’s got a card; get whatever you need new. Manzani will be watching your place, avoid it. Avoid tipping our hand.”

“I can’t live under siege,” she said, going closer. “And you can’t shut me out. I caused this…” Right in front of him, she still didn’t get his attention. “Can I see Daly? I need to apologize.”

He looked at her. “He’s at the doc’s.”

“A hospital?”

“With a guy on payroll.”

And she could argue with him, but things worked differently in his world. She’d studied it, talked about it, read, learned, but this was her first time living it that deep.

“This’ll never work,” she said, laying a hand over the phone to stop it distracting him.

“It’s under control.”

“I can’t live here, Connel. I have an apartment.”

“I can’t secure it like I can Stag. You have an army here.”

“Is this your pride again? You just can’t be incapable, can you? My family won’t understand. They’ll ask questions. And my boss? What about my work? I’m in the middle of an investigation.”

“Baby, don’t worry about work,” he said. “My guys will go over there—”

“To scare the shit out of my boss?” she asked and smiled. “Steeple is a good guy. He takes care of his people.”

“Not that good. You’re mixed up with me and Vex.”

EIGHT

IF ONLY SHE could blame someone else for her predicament. Unfortunately, no one else was culpable, not even by association.

“Vex happened years before I started working for Steeple,” she said. “And ending up here was my fault… I got tired of sitting in my apartment waiting for him to knock.”

“Another reason you’re living here.”

“I have to be able to do my job. How would you feel if I got between you and your work?”

“That’s what you’re doing now,” he said, backing up to go into the bathroom with her close behind.

He turned on the shower and shirked his pants to step under the spray. As the steam rose, obscuring her view, the idea of joining him appealed.

Until voices interrupted her fantasy. “Could be he killed her.”

“Don’t count her out. She’s scrappy.”

That second one was Strat.

Leaving Connel, she went into the living room as Strat and Niall got to the top of the stairs.

“You reach an agreement?” Niall asked her.

Strat was checking out her apparel or lack of it. “Looks like she reached something else.”

He hadn’t missed her purse scaled across the floor either. Somehow that had become a victim of their passion and she couldn’t even remember it leaving her hand.

“Better that than fighting,” she said, tucking the sheet in over her breasts. “Either of you want a drink?”

“Making yourself at home, Scamp?”

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