by Mazzy King
Wait.
Wait a damn minute…
Max was insistent to the point of threatening when he asked—no, told—me to come to this meeting tonight. It was just supposed to be a meeting where I felt the fence out, got all of the intel, and gave it to Max. It was no big deal. He could have had one of his right-hands take the meeting, guys who outranked me in the absurd hierarchy of this crime ring.
But no. He’d forced me to go.
Did he know?
Had he smelled something off and…set me up to take the fall?
We had a bad relationship. We have a bad relationship, but I have an uncanny knack for stealing cars and orchestrating diversions to help the team steal cars. It’s because of that I’m still here—because Max recognizes my value at least as a thief if not a human being, and certainly not as a woman.
I suppose I thought that skillset might protect me.
Clearly, I’m dead wrong.
Outside, the cop and Saint appear to be wrapping up their chat. Neither look particularly happy, but the other cop hands Saint the white plastic bag with the diner’s logo on the side he’s been holding the whole time. They do a half-shake, half-hug, bro thing and then Saint walks back to the car.
Without my permission, my gaze devours him as he approaches. He’s just as sexy as I remember him being that night two months ago when we met at Triple Six. The orangey glow from the parking lot light casts a bright patch on his sandy hair as he strides toward me, head lowered. His wide shoulders sway with an arrogant swagger, but it’s not contrived, as if Saint himself is unaware of his arrogance. That lack of awareness makes him thirty times sexier, and there’s not much room for improvement to start with.
He left me breathless in that bar two months ago, and as he opens the door and slides behind the wheel, I’m practically dizzy now.
He lifts a hand toward the other cop, then reaches behind me to place the bag that appears to be full of Styrofoam containers into the backseat.
“He got us food,” Saint says unnecessarily. “The safehouse is low on groceries.”
“I can’t imagine you have people staying there all the time,” I say as he starts the engine and pulls off.
“We don’t.” He keeps his eyes on the road, and I lapse into silence, staring out the window. The enormity of the night falls over me, and I tumble into a kind of shock.
I’m not sure how much time passes, and I don’t realize I’ve almost started to doze off when I hear Saint mutter, “Oh, shit.”
I sit up straight in my seat and throw him an alarmed look. “What?”
His gaze travels between the road and the rearview mirror, his jaw tensing as he clenches it. In another setting, that would’ve turned me into a puddle in this leather car seat, but now I find it frightening.
Then he says those three words. You know those words. You hear them in every single action movie, every single thrilling TV drama right before an epic car chase kicks off.
“We got company.”
“Oh, shit,” I murmur, sinking down in my seat.
“They’ve been on our tail for the last five minutes.”
I crane my neck to peer into the sideview mirror in a futile attempt to glimpse our “company.” “Is it possible it’s one of your cop buddies giving us an escort?”
“I would know about an escort,” he says in a clipped tone. He casts a sidelong glance at me. “I suspect it’s one of your buddies.”
I suspect that, too. I just didn’t have the guts to speak it out loud. My heart plummets. There’s only one reason why one of my “buddies” would be tailing us—me. And it’s not because they’re worried about my safety. They want to harm it.
They want to kill me.
“Well, here we go,” Saint sighs in this too-calm, done-this-too-many-times, resigned voice that immediately makes my stomach lurch. “Your seatbelt is on, right?”
I tug on my belt for good measure, just as he mashes the gas pedal and the car shoots forward. The engine makes a heavy thrumming noise in response—the telltale sign of something serious beneath the hood. Looks are deceiving. I could’ve sworn this unmarked was a piece of crap, but it’s been keeping a secret.
Like Saint was, when we first met.
“Never would have thought when I first met you at Triple Six two months ago, we’d be here,” he says in that same calm tone, eyes shifting nonstop between the road and the rearview mirror. “Baby, I’d say you made some poor choices.”
“I’m not your baby,” I snap, trying to ignore the embers that stir way down low between my thighs when he calls me that. “And my choices are none of your business. You don’t know me.”
He spares me one intense second, his hazel eyes fixing on mine before he turns them back to the road. “You stole cars. And you’re cozied up with a man who’s in charge of that operation. I’m an Auto Theft Detective. I’d say that very much does make it my business.”
Without warning, he cuts over to the right lane and swoops onto the interstate ramp. We’re about to take the scenic route.
The car following us, a silver sedan with deep-black tinted windows, just barely manages to follow us.
“I should’ve known you were a cop that night,” I spit, gripping the oh-shit handle with one hand and my seatbelt with the other. “Just trying to work me for information.”
Saint glances at me again, then removes one hand from the wheel and covers mine. “That’s not all it was.”
An intense burst of heat surges through me at his touch. That night, I stepped out of the ladies’ room at the back of the bar and found him waiting outside the door.
“Creeper,” I muttered, trying to slip past him.
His hand landed on my arm. “Wait.”
I turned and found myself staring into these beautiful hazel eyes, a straight nose, a square jaw, and tempting, full lips. His short, light brown hair was intentionally mussed, as if he’d run a palmful of gel through it and let the wind take care of the rest. His muscular body, arms covered in tattoos, might have intimidated me, especially since he was so much taller, but his touch was gentle.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he told me.
I shake my head at the memory, surprised at how much it hurts. “You were working me.”
“Everything I said to you was real,” he says. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I don’t know what you’re doing with a loser like Max Hendricks. And I can take care of you.”
That night, I remember being surprised at myself for falling for his lines as if I never heard them before. I was so desperate to get away from Max, my bullshit radar must have been broken.
But I didn’t feel like Saint was bullshitting me that night. And part of me doesn’t feel like he is now. But then I think back to that night again, to what happened at the end of the night, when his patrol cop friends put me in handcuffs—at his directive, I found out later.
“Were you taking care of me when you had me detained?” I ask, stifling a grunt as he whips around a corner.
He doesn’t answer for a long moment, weaving in and out of traffic. “Goddamn bastards,” he mutters. Then he sighs. “Yes, Lyra. I was taking care of you.”
I glare at him. “Explain that one, please.”
“I had no intention of arresting you, personally,” he says. “The same way you told me you can read people? I got mad skills there too, baby. It’s how I made my career. And I could tell you were there against your will. I’m not saying you’re innocent—God knows you’re not.”
I tighten my lips and look away.
“But I do know there’s more to you than meets the eye. And if your pals, who clearly care so much for your safety and well-being, got wind of the fact that you and I had an understanding, you’d have been dead a long time ago.”
“So could you.” I turn to look over my shoulder. The silver sedan is several cars behind us, and Saint heads toward a ramp to get off the interstate. “I could’ve told them I saw you tal
king to those patrol cops before you slipped out of the bar. You never would’ve walked into the garage tonight.”
Saint stares into the rearview, cuts a hard right turn, then another right, then a left, and then finally whips the car into a narrow alley and kills the lights and engine.
In the darkness, he turns to me. “So why didn’t you?”
I gape at him for several seconds. “I-I don’t know why.”
He leans toward me, sliding one hand along my jaw and underneath my hair. “I do know why. It’s because you felt what I felt that night. I’ve never forgotten it. I’ve never stopped thinking about you.”
I gulp audibly. My heart pounds hard against my chest.
I say nothing, but it’s because I can’t deny his words. I can’t tell him he’s wrong, he’s full of shit, that I never thought about him.
Because I have.
His palm is warm against my cheek. “You don’t have to say it,” he says, as though he’s reading my mind. “But you know it’s true. I know it’s true. And, Lyra, I’m going to make sure nothing happens to you.”
He pulls his hand away from me and throws the gear shift into reverse. He stealthily backs the car out of the alley, maneuvers back onto the street, and creeps off.
We’ve lost the tail. I should feel good about that, but it’s hard to concentrate.
It’s hard to think of anything but the lingering caress of his hand on my skin.
Chapter 5
Saint
The night I met Lyra, I intended only to question her about Max Hendricks, see if I could flip her as a witness for our side, offer her protection and maybe a deal—some immunity for her cooperation. I knew she was gorgeous, but when she stepped out of the ladies’ room and I got an up-close look at her exquisite face and those haunting blue eyes, her delicate nose and those incredible, plump lips, everything I intended to tell her went out of my head and I uttered the only words I could think of in that moment.
You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
Not my finest moment as a detective. But as a man? I just saw an angel.
Then I did some extremely fast talking, that included me telling her who I was, who I worked for, that I knew who she was with, and that I could help her if she’d only take it.
That I’d take care of her.
It didn’t go over well. The brief moment we shared before I did the very fast talking shattered. At the mention of the words “Ridge City PD,” she backed away from me, shaking her head, her long, beautiful dark hair swaying.
I had to tell Gunner who was there with a few other undercover cops to put her in cuffs along with the rest of her crew—to avoid any suspicion. By the time Gunner’s crew descended on them, Max Hendricks had fled, and we ended up having to release those assholes because…no evidence.
That’s one of the shittiest parts of this job—knowing some people are every bit as guilty as you think they are, and not being able to do anything about it because of rules.
After that, I waited for the other shoe to drop. I waited for the attack to come, after Lyra surely ratted me out. But it never did.
She had my back.
As we pull into the attached garage of the house discreetly used as a safehouse in a subdivision fifteen miles outside the city, I glance over at Lyra. She hasn’t said a word since we left the alley. I don’t know what to make of it, and I wonder fleetingly if I should’ve just kept my mouth shut. But, dammit, I have thought about Lyra every single night since that night at Triple Six. And walking into the garage tonight fully expecting to see Max Hendricks’s punkass and seeing her instead was like a thousand volts of electricity thrumming through my body.
And now, we’re going to be alone together, until I can figure out what to do with her.
The safehouse is small and tidy. We don’t use it on a regular basis, but every now and then an undercover cop needs to lie low here, or a witness needs some protection. I hope Lyra will become the latter—she can singlehandedly put Max Hendricks away for a long, long time, if she decides she’s willing to take that risk.
And if she’s not… I don’t want to think about those implications. Because none of the scenarios end well for her.
I make Lyra wait in the kitchen while I quickly clear the house. We have a state-of-the-art security system to make sure things are safe and quiet at all times, but you can’t be too careful.
When I make it back to the kitchen, Lyra has put the pancakes, cheese omelets, hash browns, and bacon from the containers Gunner gave me from the diner onto two plates and is rotating them in and out of the microwave.
She catches my eye and shrugs. “I’m hungry. I’m sure you are, too.”
I eye her in those tight, high-waist black jeans, black scoop-neck crop top that shows a tantalizing hint of cleavage as well as a flash of her tummy, and her heeled boots.
Yes. I am very, very fucking hungry.
She locates maple syrup in a cupboard and pours a generous amount over her pancakes, then passes me the bottle. She quietly digs into her food.
I do the same. I’ve eaten at that diner plenty of times, so I know it’s legit, but I barely taste anything as I watch her out of the corner of my eye.
Finally, I say, “Let’s talk about what happens next.”
She doesn’t meet my eyes as she licks syrup off the tines of the fork. Is she trying to torture me? “Okay. What happens next…Detective?”
The way she says that bothers me, like it’s a dirty thing she hates about me. I swallow.
“What happens next is you tell me everything I need to know about that operation of Hendricks’s, where he is, and how I can get him.”
“You want me to do your job for you?” She arches a brow.
My eyes narrow a little. “I did my job tonight—I got the star witness.”
Lyra’s creamy olive skin pales. “Witness? What part of they will kill me do you not get?”
I set my fork down and place a hand on her forearm. “What part of ‘I will take care of you’ do you not get?”
Her crystalline eyes slit, but she doesn’t pull away from me. “You expect me to just take you at your word. I know what you cops are like—you say whatever you have to say to get what you want.”
“Why are you protecting him?” I demand. “I know you don’t love him. And he certainly doesn’t love you, considering what you’re doing and the fact that you could’ve been killed tonight.”
“You don’t know a thing about us,” she returns, but I don’t buy that bravado for a single second.
“Lyra,” I say gently, “what does he have on you?”
She lowers her gaze. A tear drops from her eye onto her napkin. I want to brush it away, but I don’t move. Slowly, she reaches for the neck of her top. I try to keep the flare of warmth from rushing through my body straight to my dick as I catch sight of even more of her delicious, creamy cleavage, but then a line of puckered skin beneath her right collarbone appears. It’s jagged.
“This is one of the scars you can still see that he left on me,” she whispers, not meeting my gaze. “The bruises faded. But the mental scars are still there. He’s…blackmailing me, Saint. And he’ll kill me if he finds out the cops want me to cooperate.”
Involuntarily, my fists clench. Any man who abuses a woman is the scum of the motherfucking earth in my book, and Max Hendricks just managed to become even more of a piece of a shit. I didn’t think that was possible, but the scar on Lyra’s chest opens up a whole new can of worms.
“When I find him, I’m going to make him pay,” I say quietly, and the dark tone of my voice makes her look up at me finally. It even frightens me. “He will never touch you again, Lyra.”
Her chin quivers for half a second, and then she swallows and straightens. “Why do you want to help me so much, Saint? Why do you care? I’m a car thief. I break the law. I deserve to go to prison.”
“I see more in you,” I tell her. “I saw it the night we met. I see it now. I told you, I felt som
ething that night. Something I can’t shake. I can’t shake you. And I don’t want to. You don’t want me to. I know you don’t.”
She swallows hard again, and the movement of her throat drives me insane. She turns quickly to her plate as if to distract herself, lifting a bite of soggy pancake to her mouth. A droplet of maple syrup escapes her lips and rolls down her chin, her neck.
Deliberately, I lean toward her, running my silky fingers through her hair. The droplet pools in the hollow of her throat before slipping between her breasts.
“Let me get that for you,” I whisper.
She draws a shaky breath, but her eyes are blue fire. She feels it—that magnetic pull that fell over me the night I saw her at Triple Six. That undeniable, invisible bond that manifested between us, as if it was established ages ago and roused itself when we finally, finally, saw each other.
She knows I want her.
And she wants me, too.
It’s so wrong. It goes against the badge. I can’t fraternize like this. It could cost me my job.
But despite her choices, she’s a woman in need of saving.
And I’m the only man for the job.
I dip my head and use the tip of my tongue to find the literal sweet spot between her breasts, then follow the sticky trail up her chest, detouring to pay homage to the scar there. Then I glide over to the base of her throat, then up the graceful column of her neck. I swipe my tongue over her pulse in the underside of her jaw, kiss her chin, then hover just a breath away from her lips.
“Saint,” she murmurs in the millisecond before she’s in my lap and in my arms.
We devour each other’s mouths as if they’re our last meals. Her lips are soft and plush against mine, sweet from the syrup, and so, so hungry. I greedily take from her lips over and over before coaxing her mouth wide open and reaching in deep with my tongue. My dick goes rock-hard inside my jeans, and I feel the little center of heat from her, placed directly over my lap. She swivels her hips, grinding against me hard.
“I want you,” she whimpers against my mouth.
“Then take me,” I whisper against hers.