Just as the last blush had faded, she felt another one taking its place. And it didn’t turn her on—that she knew of anyway; it was only that the question embarrassed her. Or maybe it was the way he made everything about sex, and so matter-of-factly, too. “No,” she said. “It’s just that I’m an attorney. And so I know that some people are good liars.”
His laugh almost held a bit of . . . dare she think admiration? “Be right back,” he said then, rising to head down the hall.
Of course, if she was so nervous, she probably should have asked to see his badge in the car—but better late than never. The fact was, she believed him, but now she just wanted to be completely sure.
Returning a moment later, he held down a silver badge sporting an eagle and the words MIAMI BEACH POLICE, an American flag draping down on each side. She took it from his hand, their fingers brushing, and tried to act like the mere touch didn’t send a tingling sensation skittering up her arm.
“Just so you know,” he said, sitting back down, “I do a lot of things, but I never lie.”
As she nodded, she tried to look and feel as confident as she usually was. What was it about this man that knocked her so off balance, made her feel so . . . inexperienced? It was like being a sixteen-year-old girl on her first date. Well, except that even raging teenage hormones had never prepared her for the kind of passion she’d suffered in that alley with him. That’s why he knocks you off balance. The way you kissed him. The way you . . . couldn’t stop. The way you . . . wanted him to make you do it.
She tried to suppress a shudder but failed, and he said, “Cold?”
She fibbed. “Maybe a little. Without my jacket.” Even if it was still warm-bordering-on-hot outside, despite the late hour.
“Want me to turn the A/C down some?” He cast a flirtatious grin. “Get you warmed up?”
But she shook her head. “I’ll be fine.”
When a buzzer sounded letting them know the pizza had arrived, Rogan excused himself and headed down to the lobby to pay for it. Feeling practically desperate by then for something other than silence and their voices, she spotted a sound system near the flat-screen TV. Picking up the remote on top, she pushed a button and got lucky—the radio tuner lit and soft music echoed out, something old by Whitney Houston. “You Give Good Love.” Oh crap, maybe that wasn’t so lucky after all. But she didn’t know how to change it, and a glance at the remote only confused her. She didn’t want to start just pushing buttons and mess up his system—she knew from every single time Allison’s kids’ played with her TV remote just how easily that could happen.
She stood staring helplessly at the radio lights when he came back inside. “Turned on some music,” she said, and immediately felt stupid, not only because that was so obvious but because she felt like she’d unwittingly set the scene for seduction or something.
The big bad wolf just smiled. “Good,” he said, lowering the pizza to the coffee table. “What do you want to drink? I’ve got soda, beer, wine . . .”
Normally she’d have said soda. “Wine,” she answered instead, though, thinking maybe it would help her relax and act like the confident, mature woman she was. And she almost regretted the choice as soon as she said it—maybe staying alert was better, nervous or not—but she didn’t want to retract it and make him wonder why. Lord, you really are being so immature. Just stop it. You are a self-assured, in-control woman. You’ve shared a meal with a man before, even in strange surroundings. This is no big deal.
They made small talk over the pizza, and April found the glass of white wine he gave her did help her relax a bit. Or maybe relaxing had come with reminding herself who she was. Or just getting used to being with him. Whatever the case, she felt more like herself.
“So, Mr. Cop,” she asked—though as soon as she said it she wondered if the wine was particularly potent or something, “ever catch any really, really bad guys?”
She thought he appeared pleased by the question. Or perhaps he was just pleased that she finally was relaxing. “Don’t know for sure what you consider really, really bad . . . but no—not yet anyway. I’m still young, though,” he said with a wink. “That’s why I came to Miami.”
“From?”
“Rural Michigan,” he said.
Despite her surprise at the answer, she decided not to share with him that she’d originally lived in Ohio, the state just below, as a little girl. She’d learned long ago that such information would lead to talking about the death of her parents, and if people found that out about her too soon, they often used it to define her, to consider her damaged or fragile in some way—when she knew she was just the opposite. At least most of the time. “So what’s it like in rural Michigan?” she asked as if she’d never lived anyplace but beneath the bright lights of Miami.
“Quiet,” he said, and they both chuckled. “Too quiet.”
“And you need action,” she heard herself say without thinking.
“Yep, and lots of it,” he told her, somehow inviting her gaze to connect with his. As soon as she met his eyes, though, it felt like a mistake, putting her on edge again. Why was it that she could look at most people’s eyes all day with ease, but looking into this man’s eyes just made her think sex, made her feel the invisible draw between them that easily and undeniably?
She dropped her gaze back to the plate in her lap, letting herself focus on the circles of pepperoni dotting the slice of pizza there. “Well, Miami is definitely the place for it.”
“I’m finding that out.”
The warmth of his voice seemed to speak of more than just police work. Ask something else, something innocuous that can’t have any double meaning. “How long have you been here?”
“Six months,” he said, and she relaxed a little again, enough to lift her gaze and watch him reach for the beer bottle on the coffee table and take a drink.
“Ah,” she said. Just that. Out of questions already.
“So, an attorney, huh?” he asked.
“Yes. That’s why each time you’ve seen me I’ve been in a suit.” His words from the alley came back to her. If you have to wear a suit, the red is much hotter than what you had on last time. She tried not to hear them in her head, tried not to remember how she’d been feeling when he’d said them.
“Guess I’d figured that out after the first time.”
Oh—she’d forgotten having alluded to Kayla’s case.
“The girl you were meeting with that night last week,” he went on, “what do you know about her husband? Anything?”
“That he’s a scumbag—probably a physically abusive one, and definitely mentally abusive.”
He gave a quick nod. “Anything else? ’Cause he’s one of the guys I’m keeping an eye on. Think he and his buddy might be doing some illegal stuff out of a back room at the Tropico.”
It took April only a few seconds to decide to break client/attorney privilege in this one and only instance—since this could work to Kayla’s benefit and because she was in the privacy of Rogan’s living room. She explained about the first case she’d worked for Kayla, how she’d suspected Juan Gonzalez had perpetrated the crime. And let his wife take the rap for it.
Rogan replied, “Sounds familiar. By doing business out of the Café Tropico, it sets up Dennis, the owner, to look guilty if the law were to get wise that drugs are coming and going there. Makes him the much easier target than a couple of guys who shoot pool there two or three nights a week.”
“Aren’t you the law?”
He explained to her then that he was investigating Kayla’s husband and the guy in the alley off duty, as a favor for Dennis, but that as soon as he found any evidence he would officially be the law again.
Finished with her pizza, she set her now-empty plate on the coffee table next to the open pizza box, noticing that he’d done the same. She was using the time, and the silence—other than the quiet, still-sexy music that played—to think through what he’d just told her.
“So . . . what you’r
e doing isn’t . . . totally aboveboard,” she sought to clarify.
The man at the other end of the couch just shrugged. “Depends upon whose board you’re looking at, I guess.” And when she didn’t answer, he went on to say, “Just doing what I can to help out a business owner and maybe take a couple of low-level dealers off the street at the same time. Hard for me to find anything wrong with that, Ginger.”
And—oh hell—it was probably the wine that kept her from considering her next words before she said them. “You seem like the kind of guy who makes his own rules. And thinks that’s okay.”
His expression never changed. “Not all rules are good ones. I’d think, as a lawyer, you’d know that.”
“But they’re all in place for a reason.”
“Not always smart ones,” he countered.
And she didn’t know how this was possible, yet somehow even this exchange had begun to feel . . . sexual. Maybe because the conversation was becoming quietly heated. Or because of the way their eyes were firmly locked on each other’s now. Maybe it was just that intense chemistry that flowed between them like electricity. Each and every time she met his gaze she felt trapped in a current from which she couldn’t escape.
“Rules are black-and-white,” he said. “But sometimes life comes in . . . shades of gray that rules can’t account for or address.”
April didn’t answer. Because she couldn’t. Because he was leaning slightly forward toward her now and her heart beat too fast. And she knew exactly what he was talking about even before he went on. Because she could feel it. She could feel it somehow emanating from his eyes. And she could feel it inside her, too.
“For instance,” he said slowly, his voice going lower, “each time we’ve kissed, you were telling me you didn’t want me to. When it was very clear you did.”
April sucked in her breath. Her instinctive response was to deny it. But even she could see now that it would only make her look silly.
And God knew she didn’t want to be having this conversation. She was usually up-front with people, yet in this instance she was taken aback by his bluntness, and she almost found it rude that he’d make her discuss this. But you’re a smart, capable woman. You know how to deal with people. You can deal with this, too. If he wants to talk about it, you can talk about it.
“It was because I didn’t know you at all. I’m not the kind of person who generally finds herself kissing men she doesn’t know.”
He leaned even closer then, so close that her chest ached and the very air around her felt heavy. He wasn’t touching her in any way whatsoever, but she felt consumed by him just the same. “Wanna know something, April Pediston?” He didn’t wait for her to answer, though. “When you were struggling, trying to make me let go of you, but I knew you really didn’t want me to, it turned me on in a way nothing else ever has.”
It grew more difficult for April to breathe beneath the weight of his words. To find out this wasn’t just an everyday occurrence for him, either. To discover that he’d been experiencing something very similar to what she had. It provided . . . strange validation. It made her feel less alone in her unthinkable responses to him.
And yet . . . it frightened her in a whole new way.
Was she supposed to get into a deep, intense discussion about this with him? Was she supposed to demean herself and her entire gender by admitting to him that she’d wanted him to force her, that she’d said no when she meant yes? No means no. Everybody knows that. Tons of rape cases had hung on that and it had become the standard everyone everywhere was expected to live by and respect and understand. It was still hard for her to fathom that she’d done that—said no while desperately wanting him to keep on. Said no while longing for him to hold her still tighter and make her submit.
You’re in too deep here. Somewhere along the way she’d apparently talked herself into expecting him to be a gentleman who would let this go. She’d begun to think they were going to eat pizza and have a civil conversation and then he was going to drive her back to her car. Maybe ask her out on a real date on the way? Maybe start over and forget the alley encounters had ever happened? Yet now she realized all that had only been a wish on her part, what she’d hoped would happen.
And what was happening in reality . . . well, it didn’t matter how capable and mature she was—there was something about the depths of the truths in this conversation that she simply couldn’t face. Wouldn’t face.
Without warning, she pushed to her feet. “I think you should take me back to my car now. Or I can call a cab,” she added, thinking that sounded more sensible at this point. Hell, she’d walk if she had to.
“Not yet,” he said—and then he reached up, grabbed on to her wrist, and pulled her back down to the couch.
She gasped her alarm even as their eyes met, even as he briskly grasped her other wrist as well and pushed her to her back against the throw pillow. He leaned down over her, close, their gazes still locked, and despite herself, she surged with wetness. She didn’t want that to happen; she didn’t want to be excited by him, by this. She really, really didn’t. In this moment, more than ever since the moment she’d met him, she wanted all that strangeness, all that unbidden passion, to just go away so that everything inside her could be normal again.
Her breath became labored, but she managed to eke out words in between. “What are you doing?” Though it sounded too whispery, heated.
His eyes dripped with lust. And he answered only by kissing her, his mouth coming down hard and insistent on hers.
Yet she still didn’t want this. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t.
And so she struggled.
She tried to break her wrists free from the viselike fists that held them. She tried to wriggle out from beneath his body on the sofa—but his knees pinned her in between so that she was trapped.
And with every move she made, her excitement quickened. Her breasts ached where his knuckles pressed into them. The crux of her thighs pulsed with desperate need.
She still didn’t understand this, the way his forcefulness thrilled every cell in her body, the urge it gave her to fight against him still more, so that he would hold her tighter and tighter, so that he would make her . . . give in, submit to whatever he wanted.
The urge took over then and she tried harder to pry her wrists free, even knowing it was useless and that she didn’t really want to be let go. His rough kiss had ended and the result of her effort was for him to force her arms to either side of her head, wrists still in his grip. She found his eyes once again burning through hers, fiery hot, mere inches above her. She didn’t measure her words as they came tumbling out. “I can’t do this. I can’t want this.”
“But you do anyway,” he said low, his tone deep.
Turning desperate, put on the spot, there seemed nothing to do but deny it. “No,” she murmured, far too weakly. And she felt the lie written all over her face. It had been silly to even try.
Even while pinning her down, he was able to give his head a cocky tilt as he lowered his chin to say in a smoldering voice, “Come on, Ginger. The more you fight it, the more you want it. I can feel it in every move you make. Just let go, baby. Let go. Give in to me.”
Oh God. Now he was . . . asking her? He wasn’t going to just . . . keep right on forcing her? He’s a cop. He knows the rules. He knows if I’m saying no and he keeps going that it’s rape. And was it? Would it be in this instance? Lord, she couldn’t examine that right now. Right now, everything was too intense. And he was waiting. For her to say something. Or do something. To assure him it was okay to go on.
And the fact was, she had no idea what she wanted right now. Her body sizzled with hot desire. But her head . . . oh, she’d never been more confused. And she’d never had casual sex. Or weird sex. And this would definitely be weird sex. With a man she still just barely knew.
And he was starting to look—oh no—a little angry. And when he spoke, it came through lightly clenched teeth. “Say something, Ginger.”
She still didn’t, couldn’t, frozen between her usual self and this wild, lusty self she didn’t quite recognize.
“Damn it, say something. Tell me it’s okay. Say it’s okay and then you can go back to fighting me all you want.”
Her whole body tensed at that last part. The fact that he knew, that he understood that part, only added to her horror. And it was hard to think with him pressing her for an answer.
So she found herself responding with . . . honesty. But a quiet honesty. Because somehow it felt like the quieter she spoke, the more it would be like she hadn’t. She lifted her head as much as she could, given that she was pinned to the couch, and she whispered in his ear as softly as possible. “Don’t ask me. Don’t ask. I can’t say yes.”
When she rested her head on the throw pillow again, his eyes were immediately back on her, his frustration from before having clearly changed to comprehension. “Then don’t say no, either,” he rasped gently. “Got it?”
And now her own frustration was mounting. Because—God—she wanted him, she wanted this! She couldn’t help it. And she couldn’t keep trying to deny it to herself. She still hated admitting it with her whole being, but she heard herself saying, far too desperately, “Just . . . just do it.”
After that, time blurred. Reality along with it.
There were moments when she continued to struggle—because it did feel good. Because his tightened grip or the heavier weight of his body on her at least gave her the sensation that she wasn’t permitting this, that she wasn’t okay with casual sex with a virtual stranger. It felt better to think he was taking it from her, that she had no choice.
But then came moments she forgot to struggle and when it was more like what he’d said a few minutes earlier—like she was giving in to him. She was relaxing into it, letting him do things to her. And even then it was easy to pretend, to tell herself he’d simply worn her out, that she knew she couldn’t get away from him so she’d had no choice but to give up.
When he released her wrists, that was a fighting moment—it happened without thought on her part and she found herself suddenly struggling again, squirming beneath him. He responded by simply grabbing on to them once more, though, then trapping both in one fist above her head, same as back in the alley.
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