We clear the steps and once we’re at the file room entrance, I’m thankful to find that Becca is not at her desk. I reach for the door, and Jacob is there first, our hands colliding, a charge between us that jolts me to the core and tells me one thing. He closes his hand on the knob, but doesn’t open it. He does, however, crowd me from behind. “I didn’t plan that.”
“Not a conversation I want to have for the cameras,” I bite out.
I can almost hear him curse in his mind before he turns the knob. I push the door open and I’m inside the reception area a step later. I pass Becca’s desk and head down a row, created by shelves of files, on either side of me. Jacob is by my side in an instant, and damn it, our paces seem to naturally align. A lot about me and this man naturally align except for the big one: he’s trying to protect Jesse Marks while I’m trying to put him behind bars.
At the end of the path I cut to my right.
I enter the room, and of course, my robot is still with me. We pass through two rows of files, a path that feels like it goes on and on forever, while the charge between myself and Jacob is downright combustible for about ten different reasons. I open my office door and enter. And while I fully intend to put the desk between us, I’m not even slightly surprised I never get the chance. Jacob shuts the door and catches my arm. And so, the war is on and Jacob, The Robot Betrayer, is about to find out Green Berets have weaknesses.
I rotate and shove him against the door, my hand on the hard wall of his chest, heat seeping through his shirt to my palm. “I’m a pretty good judge of people,” I say, “which I’ve proven again with you because I was right. You’re an asshole. We’ll do it together wasn’t an offer. It was the only warning I got about that meeting.”
“I never denied my willingness to be an asshole to protect you.”
“Protect me? Or keep my cold case on Jesse Marks cold? Because we both know his name on my lips is when you decided to put your lips on mine. To control me. And it won’t work.”
“If you weren’t controlling me, I’d never have kissed you. I wouldn’t want to kiss you so damn badly now.”
“You kissed me to control me.”
“I kissed you because I wanted to kiss you.”
“Right. Just like you told me we’ll do this together and I was going to do this together when I don’t do together.”
“We are doing this together.”
“This is how you do together?”
He shackles my hips and pulls me to him, and I could fight him, but he is a Green Beret. And I really won’t win a brute force battle. “I couldn’t risk you shutting me out,” he says, as my hands go to his wrists to avoid his chest again, but it doesn’t help. Now heat is rushing up my arms and over my chest. “We both know,” he adds, “that you’re safer with me by your side.”
“Because you’re my personal Green Beret bodyguard, right?”
“Yes, detective. I am.”
“And you’ll fuck me and then if I cross you on Jesse Marks, you’ll make me beg you to kill me?”
“If I make you beg, it won’t be from death.”
“I don’t beg. Ever. For anything. As for right now, I’m going to work from my apartment, not Walker Security. We both know you’re coming with me, so you need to know this. I can fuck you, I can enjoy it, and I can arrest you the minute it’s over. I might even get off on it. And you can let go of me now.”
“Not until you hear what I have to say. I’m here to stay. I’m releasing you, but I’m not letting you go. You won’t get rid of me and you can take that to the bank.” His hands fall away.
I don’t immediately move away. I stand there, a lean from touching him, and I stare into those cool gray eyes of his. “I’m going to get what I want,” I say, thinking of that burned file.
“As will I,” he says. “You can bank on that, too. And then we both win.”
The heat that sizzles between us in the moment after that exchange says that we want each other, but we both want more. We both intend to get more. “We’ll see, won’t we?” I say, and on that note, I turn away from him and walk to my uncle’s desk, and key my computer to life. I go to the file search and right when I’m about to pull up the Jesse Marks file, Jacob grabs the keyboard and moves it away from me. I look up as he presses two hands on the desk across from me.
“If you think,” he says, “that I’m going to let you pull that file, you are wrong.”
“That’s fine,” I say, standing up and forcing him to straighten to keep a dominant position. “We both know the information I need is in your head and the battle we need to fight can’t happen here.” I grab a box, fill it with as many files as I can stuff inside, and then I round the desk and shove it at him. “My uncle had a lot of files and you’re big boy. Let’s go to my apartment, where we can be alone.”
“Whatever you want, detective,” Jacob replies.
“Yes. Whatever I want.” I head to the door, with every intention of taking this man to my apartment, where I might just go ahead and cuff him. From there, I’ll get my answers, one way or the other.
By the time I’m in the file room, walking between two rows of files again, Jacob is back by my side. We don’t speak, and he follows my lead to the rear exit of the precinct. It’s not long before we’re a few blocks away, and inside a semi-vacant subway train. I claim a pole and Jacob is immediately at it with me, despite having two others he could use. He sets the box on the ground and grabs the pole, our hands now stacked but not touching, that push and pull between us thick in the air, the reasons I shouldn’t touch him, many. The reasons I should, in my mind right now, just as many.
The train begins to move, and both of us instinctively stick a foot to the box to hold it in place. We do a lot of things alike, to be so different. I want to understand that and him. “Where exactly are you from?” I ask, deciding it’s time to be a detective with this man.
“You didn’t read that in my file?”
“I want to hear it from you,” I counter.
“Long Island,” he says.
“Tell me about your sister.”
“I don’t want to talk about my sister, but before you read into that, there’s nothing scandalous there. I just don’t talk about it.”
Like I don’t talk about a lot of things myself. I don’t like it, but I get it, so I move on. “Why did you get out of the army?”
“I told you,” he says. “It was time.”
“Your entire life was based around the Army and it was just time?”
“Everything ends,” he says, his tone a bit haunted. “If anyone understands that the way I do, you do.”
He’s right. I do. Too well. And for that reason, among others, I don’t doubt the attraction between us. I don’t doubt that chemistry bouncing between us like a ping pong ball is real. It is. But just because something is real doesn’t mean it can’t be used against you. It doesn’t mean that it can’t be used to hurt you. Anything this powerful and immediate can be dangerous. Anyone as skilled as Jacob King is dangerous. And he’s who I chose to affect me. He’s who I’ve let work himself beneath my surface and make me want and need. He’s the person I wanted to trust until he reminded me that I cannot.
The train stops and my body lunges toward the pole, while Jacob’s stays steady, aligned with it, and now with me. He catches my hip, steadying me too, while that familiar jolt that is every touch with this man hits me hard this time. I don’t look at him, or reach for him, but I can feel him all over, everywhere he’s touching and even where he’s not. My nipples are hard. My breasts heavy. My sex tight. I do want him, and he knows it. But ultimately, he’s trying to control me and I’m trying to control him. That kind of game between us is actually liberating. I can get naked with him and there is no fear that I’ll fall under a spell and fall for him. Because I don’t want to fall. I don’t want to care for anyone ever again.
The doors open and his fingers flex at my hip as if he doesn’t want to release me. My gaze lifts and find his, and wi
th that connection, I see the same in his eyes. He doesn’t want to let me go, and the truth is, despite how angry I am with him, I have never wanted a man the way I want this one: so instantly, so intensely. But he does let me go. His hand slides away and he grabs the box. Not long after, we’ve done the trudge through the station, and we’re on the sidewalk above, walking in silence toward my apartment, the anticipation of a confrontation between us, that may or may not be resolved while naked, pulsing between us. For my part, I’ll confront him about Jesse Marks. For his part, he’ll expect it. He’ll try to shut me down.
We reach my gate and enter, walking up the sidewalk and then the steps. I turn to key in the code, when my gaze falls to the dark corner of the wall that no camera could capture, with the certainty that something is lying in the corner. “What is it?” Jacob asks, stepping closer.
“I don’t know,” I say, opening my leather case at my hip and pulling out a plastic bag. Sticking my hand inside it, I bend down and scoop whatever it is up. Turning the bag inside out to cover it, I stare at the item, freezing with the sight of a pink paper umbrella, which one might find in a cocktail, but it’s not in a drink. It’s here and it’s here for a reason. For me. It’s here for me.
I stand up, shaken enough that I don’t turn and look at Jacob. I stick the bag in my case and key in the code. Jacob opens the door and the instant we’re on the stairs, he asks the inevitable. “What does it mean to you? And don’t tell me nothing. I’ve been with you around the clock now. This isn’t nothing.”
“I’m trying to figure that out,” I say. “I need to think.”
“What do you think it means?” he presses.
“I’m trying to figure it out,” I repeat, a ball of emotion in my chest that I hate I’ve let this bastard playing with my head create. I have to get it under control. I have to get myself under control.
We reach the door and I open it, and without waiting on Jacob, I enter the apartment and head to the island. Jacob is the one who flips on the lights, but by that time, I’m already headed up the stairs to the library. Once I’m there, I flip a switch and a lamp splays light over a cozy room just big enough for an overstuffed brown couch framed by two bookshelves right and left, while black and white abstracts fill the wall above it. I like black and white. I see enough of the wrong colors in my job.
I pull off my bag and set it on the floor, then walk left to the bookshelf. Locating what I am looking for, I grab the memory album I made several years back but haven’t opened since. The front reads: Martha Carpenter’s life. My mother’s life. I’d made it as part of the healing process and inside I have memories that range from her childhood to the end. I flip to a photo of my mother standing in front of her bakery, holding one of the pink umbrellas she sold in her bakery. A photo that was in a well-published advertisement, so it would not be hard to find. It was public knowledge, but it’s still a countdown to me, a list in order of those who have died in my life. It’s meant to get my attention or my father’s, but it feels like me. The message seems to be leading to my uncle, and then me.
Jacob’s footsteps sound on the stairs behind me and I stick the book back on the shelf and turn to watch him join me on the landing. And just that fast, the already tiny room is smaller, and he is bigger, and not in size. This man consumes me when he is near, and I both resent that reaction he stirs, and crave more of it—of him. But what I want and crave isn’t the issue. Not now. Not with all I have going on in my life, not with my duty in the forefront. “What does that umbrella mean to you?” he asks, his voice managing to be low, but still a rough demand.
“What does Jesse Marks mean to you?” I counter.
“Tell me about the umbrella,” he says, closing the few steps this room allows between us, and stepping toe-to-toe with me, that spicy wonderful scent of him filling the room. He fills the room.
“So you can make it a public service announcement?” I demand.
“You knew that the Walker crew knew about the butterfly. They were all looking through the security feed. Tell me about the umbrella. I need to know and you need me.”
“You know, I’d decided that I needed you. As my Lieutenant said, this is personal. I’m objective enough to know that affects my judgment. I’m too close to this. But then you sideswiped me. You made me look bad to my boss.” I poke his ridiculously hard chest. “You made me feel like it’s me against the slayer and you.”
He stares down at me with one of his hard robot looks on his stupid handsome face.
“Cat got your tongue?” I demand, when he is slow to answer.
“Every move I’ve made,” he replies tightly. “I’ve made to protect you.”
“Is that right?” I challenge, not liking where this is leading me. “Then that means you kissed me to protect me?”
“I told you—”
“That you wanted to send a message to those watching me and us. Got it. You made the move to protect me. How many women have you kissed to protect? How many did you kiss to shut them up, like you did me? How many—”
He steps into me, one hand on my hip, while the other tangles into my hair. “I have never kissed a woman I protected, ever. You were the first.”
“And how do I know that?” I demand, my hand on his chest, his heart thundering beneath my palm. “Your heart is racing. That could mean a lie.”
“I don’t lie. I have never kissed a woman I was protecting,” he repeats.
“Then you just kissed me to shut me up.”
“I kissed you because—”
“You wanted to.”
“Yes. Because I wanted to. And I have never wanted to kiss any woman as much as I do you right this minute and that is the God’s honest truth. But tell me. What do you want? That is what you said this visit to your apartment is about, right? You getting what you want?”
“Yes,” I say. “That’s exactly why I brought you here.”
“Then I repeat,” he says. “What do you want, detective?”
“What I want is for you to stop calling me detective. It makes me feel like you have some creepy schoolteacher fetish, only for detectives.”
“For your information, Jewel,” he says. “My only apparent fetish involves you being a bitch to me and giving me hell all the damn time.”
I have no idea why him saying my name turns me on so damn much, but it does. My fingers curl around his shirt. “Are you going to kiss me, asshole, or what?” I demand.
He smiles a moment before his mouth closes down on mine, when he never smiles. And I have just a moment to think about how damn sexy it is that he did so now because I told him to kiss me, before he licks into my mouth. Before the first wicked taste of him explodes into my mouth, drugging me with raw masculinity and the hunger I taste on his lips. His hunger: mine. I moan softly, and he pulls back, his lips lingering just above mine.
“Just to be clear,” he says, his voice low and rough. “I’m breaking every rule I own with you. I don’t fuck women I’m protecting.”
“You could hand me over to someone else,” I suggest, “and it won’t matter.”
“Not a chance in hell,” he says, his hand sliding under my hair to cup my neck. “We’ll break the rules together.”
“I’m not sure I like how you do ‘together’.”
“I’ll make sure you do,” he promises, his lips slanting over mine, and this time he kisses me like he owns me, like he wants to control me, and like I really am his, like I belong to him, and in this very moment, I can honestly say I am. I want him, and I can’t get enough of him.
And how can it ever be enough when he’s this damn impossibly hot, and he’s such a damn good kisser. The way he makes me want his mouth on every part of me and the way he makes me want my mouth on every part of him. And so, there it is. I’m his, but I’m going to make damn sure he’s mine, too. I kiss him back as passionately as he’s kissing me. I meet him stroke for stroke, arching into him, telling him I am here and present, and I’m not even close to afraid of him or of thi
s. He doesn’t get to control me. He isn’t making me do this. I control me, and I choose him and this.
Arching into him, his shoulder holster and mine are in the way, and I want them gone. I want him naked. Just to be certain that he knows that’s where I want this to go, my hand presses between us and I stroke the hard line of his shaft. He groans low in his throat, a sexy rough sound that tells me he gets the point. This isn’t his show. It’s ours. It’s us together, or there is no show, with or without our clothes on.
His reaction is to tear his mouth from mine, his lips lingering there though, as if he wants to kiss me again, and just when I would kiss him again, he leans away just enough to shrug out of his jacket. I take one step backward, and do the same with my blazer. I reach down and pull off my boots and he does the same. Next, we disconnect our shoulder holsters, and the truth is, it’s the first time I’ve ever been with a man who is probably more armed than me. That feels significant when it perhaps is not. He’s not a cop. He’s not that kind of career complication. He’s a Green-fucking-Beret, and one hell of a hot one, for that matter.
He sets his weapon on the couch and snags my hand, walking me toward him and taking my holster and weapon as he does. “Just making sure you don’t end up shooting me before this is over,” he says, setting it with his before shackling my hip.
“I told you I’ll wait until after the orgasms.”
“Careful,” he says, a hint of a smile on his lips again. “I might hold that orgasm and you captive.”