Page 70 of His Deadly Lies

“Good. I mean it to be one.”

“Are you being truthful, or do you think you’re making things better for Ricardo if you butter me up with compliments?” I wonder. I’d rather not bring the other man into this moment, but the thought of him being there anyway…I need to know.

“We both know my decisions haven’t made things better for Ricardo.” Carter sounds so solemn that my chest aches. “Yet I can’t stop making them.”

“Will you…tell him?” My fingers clench against his chest, bunching his shirt. “What we’ve done?”

“No.” It’s a whip of sound, that single syllable. No. “Nothing is going to happen again.”

The comment sets my skin prickling, and I stare at Carter imperiously. “Isn’t it?”

Maybe it's because he’s acting as though the line is drawn, or maybe it’s because the fire inside me only stokes higher and hotter when I look at him. This man, this strong and stoic asshole who somehow has gotten to me in a way that no one else has been able to. Who has reached me in a way no one else has.

Or maybe I’m fucked in the head.

Both are no doubt true.

I can’t control myself. I drop my hand down the plane of his chest, lower, and Carter stops me before I reach the bulge in his pants. The bulge growing harder and more pronounced with each passing second.

He slowly lifts his gaze to meet mine and holds my attention there, sliding his hand from my wrist all the way up my arm to grab my neck. He squeezes the back of it but rather than pushing me away, he pulls me forward. Lower.

“I mean, if you wanted a blowjob…” I purposely trail off.

“Shut up, Princess.”

Something in the periphery of my vision shifts, and Carter breaks eye contact as fast as he made it, shattering the moment.

Men, two of them, make their way toward the warehouse door as a third waits in an innocuous gray sedan to pick them up again. I hold my breath and hardly dare to move as distant scraping sounds from below. The men are only downstairs for a few minutes before their laughter sounds from outside.

Carter keeps his hold on my neck until the sedan drives out of sight. “Come on.” His attention is already fractured. “Let’s check. See what they were up to.”

There’s nothing downstairs aside from their tracks, and Carter looks ready to burst, his cheeks going red and his jaw clenched.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding,” he blurts out, his voice echoing off the rafters overhead.

“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you? Where is your sense of adventure.” I’m a little disappointed but excited in equal measures. “Guess we’re on to the next site.”

Carter chuckles, and I breeze past him.

“I have plenty of adventure,” he says. “It’s you I’m worried about.”

“I’m not sure you’ll be able to keep up with me.”

Carter shifts close enough to take my chin between his thumb and forefinger. Fuck, they’re calloused and sexy on my skin. “You need to watch that mouth of yours, Princess.”

I blink, a come-hither gesture. “Why?”

“If not, we’ll end up getting caught before we find the information we need.”

It’s no surprise to find myself soaked, needy. The friction of my panties against my core is unbearable. What has Carter brought out of me? I’ve denied myself and excused it as fine because men are just playthings. The opinion made it easy to keep denying. But now I’m dying to push the limits.

With my fiancé’s bodyguard.

He keeps close enough for me to feel the heat of his body all the way back to the car.

We pull up to the fourth warehouse, the twilight sun casting peachy golden rays across the land. No lights on the car, either. Far enough away to not be observed. Rather than heading toward another location, Carter stays in the driver’s seat and pulls a pair of binoculars out of the center console.

“There are two cars over there, and one of them is the gray sedan. Parked behind the building rather than in the front parking lot. I’m going to bet this is more our scene.”