Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 104185 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104185 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
The lush stroke of her tongue pumped heat into my body.
There were alarms blaring in my head, but I shut them down. I had what I wanted, my hands and mouth on her. What could be wrong with that? Nothing about this felt wrong—only that I’d waited so long to do it.
I pushed a lock of her hair out of my way as my mouth drifted across her cheek and down the slender column of her throat. She smelled good, like sunshine and lemons and summer, in total opposition to the dark, cold, and musty basement. My lips trailed a line of kisses from her ear down to her shoulder, and it made a shudder of pleasure wrack her body.
“Fuck,” I groaned in satisfaction as she ground herself in my lap, rubbing against the fly of my jeans. It made me want to peel back the straps on her Kevlar vest so I could have my hands on her—
I jolted as my brain came back online, and the war between my body and mind was brutal. My job was everything, and no matter how badly I wanted her . . . the woman on top of me threatened to destroy it.
I clasped my hands around her waist and lifted her with me as I rose from the stairs. Her legs folded around me, and I groaned against her lips, only this time with disappointment and frustration. What I needed to do was just as cruel to me as it was to her.
I broke off the kiss, set her back on her feet, and stepped away as soon as I was certain she wouldn’t fall over from shock.
“No,” I said. “We can’t.”
Laurel seemed dizzy, like I’d pulled her from a fog, and she wasn’t quite sure where she was.
“It was the adrenaline,” I tried to explain, “that’s all.”
She blinked in confusion. “What?”
I stared at her kiss-swollen mouth and got angry. Angry at the situation and angry at myself for allowing it, because kissing her hadn’t helped my situation at all. It had only made it more dire. My need for her was ten times stronger.
“That can’t happen again.” Was I telling her . . . or myself?
I got a flash of her guilty expression before she looked away. “I’m sorry. It won’t.”
“You’re upset about your situation, and it’s easy to get confused when that happens.”
Her attention snapped back to me and her eyes narrowed. “Confused?”
“My job is to keep you safe and that’s all.” I was all out of sorts, not liking how she was embarrassed when it was my fault, and I panicked. “Don’t read into it as more.”
She stiffened. “You kissed me back.”
I wasn’t sure how I did it. I’d never been much of an actor, but I felt my face turn hard. “I didn’t. I told you, it was just a reaction.”
“Because you have, like, no interest in me.” Her voice dripped with condescension.
Then I told the biggest goddamn lie of my life. “Yeah. That’s right.”
I watched her mouth fall open and expected every blue word she knew to come out, for her to call my bluff.
But she said nothing.
She took a deep breath and her expression turned cold. Hurt flooded her eyes, and it was the scariest reaction I could imagine.
Abruptly, she marched to the base of the ladder, grabbed the closest rung, and began to climb.
Shit.
“Laurel, wait.”
She didn’t. I followed right behind, but when she scrambled up through the trap door, she let it slam right on top of my head with a painful, well-deserved thud.
12
JASON
Laurel seemed to be only half-listening from the back seat as we were brought up to speed about the driver of the mystery car.
His name was Leo Kowalski, a handyman who’d been shopping at a home improvement store when a guy offered him a job. The man said he had a stack of documents he had to serve before five and was running out of time. Kowalski just had to knock on the door and hand the envelope to whoever answered.
Two hundred bucks up front, and another two after he delivered the benign-looking manila envelope with an address scribbled on the front. Kowalski had done his best to locate the non-existing address, driving up and down the neighborhood until he knew it better than anyone who lived there.
When shown the picture of Frey, Kowalski answered with a “maybe.” The Marshals Service was still waiting on FBI forensics to examine and report their findings on the envelope.
I drove this time, letting Derrick sleep, and I could feel the tension radiating outward in my direction.
It’s good that she’s angry. I needed some distance because there’d been a long moment on the stairs where I’d lost myself completely. Remembering the kiss caused me to tighten my grip on the steering wheel.
I waited until I was completely sure my partner was asleep. “Sorry about earlier,” I said quietly. “If I upset you—”