Five miles outside Atlanta Pip realized that not only did she not want her time with Hunt to end, she was also starving. Her alternatives for dinner were a soulless hotel restaurant or lonely room service. The need for human company had her dialing his cellphone using the fancy Bluetooth setup in Cindy’s SUV.
“I…hm…changed my mind. About dinner,” she clarified. For now.
God, she was so out of practice with the whole “man” thing and was way out of her depth when it came to a guy like Hunt Kincaid. She didn’t even remember the last time she’d gone on a date.
“Where do you want to eat?” she asked.
“Follow me.”
He passed her in his big black truck that suited him way more than the tan Buick he drove for work. He took the next exit off I-75 and drove for ten minutes before pulling up behind a pale, square, brick building at the end of a row of shops that were now all closed.
She pulled up beside him, wondering if she was about to make a massive mistake. The butterflies in her stomach started to take off. She wanted more, and the thought terrified her.
He opened her car door and his gaze scanned her features. “Relax,” he said. “It’s just food.”
She gave a little laugh that released most of the tension she’d been holding onto. He led her inside. The place had exposed brickwork and an enormous Stars and Stripes flag that almost covered one wall. It was cozy though, low lighting, lots of customers but not too rowdy. They could talk without yelling and had plenty of privacy.
Hunt asked for a corner booth and sat with his back to the wall.
They ordered immediately and the waitress brought them each a beer. He watched her lips as she took a sip and a sliver of something hot slid down her throat along with the brew. Her nipples tightened, clearly visible against the thin cotton of her t-shirt. Wonder Woman was getting excited. She pressed her thighs together to try and stop the effect he was having on her. It only made it worse.
A call came through to Hunt and he apologized even as he took it, talking quietly and using purposefully vague language to whoever was on the other end.
He mentioned finding Pete Dexter’s university ID in Cindy’s car but she couldn’t read his reaction.
Why did Cindy have it? Had Pete accidentally left it behind? Had Cindy kept it as a keepsake? Had she still been hung up on the guy?
Pip liked the fact that Hunt’s work was important to him. Being a journalist had been important to her, too, but the idea of going back to it, of cultivating new sources…
Her fingernail scraped the gold foil off the brown glass of her bottle. She’d taken pride in her job, weeding the bad guys out. But she didn’t know if any of it had been worth it.
“Sorry.” Hunt reached out and caught her hand, ran his thumb over the back of her knuckles. His touch sent shockwaves of sensation through her, and it beat the hell out of thinking about Frank Booker’s murder spree.
The waitress arrived with their food and Pip moaned in appreciation. Burgers and fries. They smelled divine. She popped a fry into her mouth, flavor flooding her tongue as she moaned again.
“If you don’t stop doing that I’m going to come over there and taste you rather than the food.”
“Hah. No one is getting between me and this burger.” She smiled because despite the heat in his eyes he was teasing her.
“You have a point. I haven’t had much time for eating lately.” He chewed and swallowed. “Even less for running, and I missed a training session with Will but he pissed me off, so…”
“Why did he piss you off?”
He pulled a face as he chewed and shook his head.
“Oh.” Will had obviously said something about her. Probably echoing Agent Fuller’s warning to stay away from her.
So why hadn’t he?
The allure of forbidden fruit? Or something else?
“I used the treadmill at the hotel after you left this morning.” She wiped her mouth and gave up trying to be delicate about eating the burger. “So at least I don’t have to feel guilty about eating this.”
“The fact you run makes you the ideal woman, you know.” He was joking with her, not trying to sell her a line.
She laughed. Took a sip of beer. “Except I don’t like guns.”
“Definitely my favorite kind of date.” He winked.
He had a dry sense of humor she liked. She hadn’t noticed it before. Hadn’t felt much like laughing. Cindy would have liked him, she realized. She didn’t know why it mattered but it did.
“She went for a run the night she died. She went every day like clockwork. Five miles.” Her mind drifted to her friend again and the humor died.
“So… I told you just about everything there is to know about me.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sure.”
He’d sensed her thoughts were turning morbid and wanted to distract her. And she was tired of being miserable. She was ready for some distraction, especially if it involved a honed body and an intelligent mind.
“Where’d you grow up?” asked Hunt.
“Don’t pretend you haven’t run a background check on me.” She gave him a look.
“I have a background report on you. I haven’t read it yet, but I know a few things,” he admitted. She saw his eyes change. He looked like a man trying to figure out how to get to know a woman rather than an agent conducting an interrogation. “You grew up in foster care?”
“Mostly.” Her fingers tightened on the bottle. “Near Tampa.”
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
She gave a heavy sigh. “It wasn’t a happy time.”
His eyes turned worried and he asked the hardest question, the one no one ever asked straight out. “Were you abused?”
She pressed her lips together. Shook her head. “No. I was lucky, but it’s not the only issue with being a ward of the state.”
He asked a thousand questions with his eyes, and saw way more than she wanted him to.
“Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t all bad. The first foster family I had was fantastic. I was with them for four years, and I loved living with them.”
A small line formed between his brows.
“My mother refused to give up her fight to get me back so I couldn’t be adopted.”
“Why were you removed from her care?”
She wiped her mouth on her napkin. Then played with the label on her bottle some more. The last person she’d told this to was dead. It wasn’t a story she shared very often, but it would all be in his file anyway. She’d rather she was the one to tell him than he read it in some antiseptic report.
“Mom was an alcoholic. My dad left when I was two or three. I don’t really know. No idea what happened to him and I honestly don’t care. Cops turned up one night after Mom and her latest boyfriend went on a bender and started smashing up the place. Found me in my bedroom hiding under the bed.”
He didn’t say anything, just watched her. Still eating. She did the same. It made the whole thing less heartbreaking to do this over food. Like they were talking about some other girl, a case, a story.
“Cops called social services and I ended up with a foster family in a town about thirty miles away.” She smiled in reminiscence. “I loved it, actually. The first time I’d had clean clothes to go to school in. The first time I’d been fed on a regular basis.” She waved a fry at him. “Probably accounts for my love of these.
“My mother didn’t know where I lived.” She brushed hair behind her ear. “I thought I’d landed in Heaven.”
“What happened after four years?”
“Howard Briggs—the dad—got transferred to an office in San Francisco. They wanted me to come with them. Offered to adopt me, but Mom refused permission for me to move out of state.” She shrugged like it hadn’t killed her a thousand times over to be removed from the only safe home she’d known as a child. “The Briggs were fantastic and did everything they could to keep me with them, but… it didn’t work out.”
He took
a sip of his beer and let the silence hang.
“By the time they moved away I was nearly thirteen which is not a good age for girls.” She grimaced. “I acted like a brat. I was shuttled from one foster home to another. I got into trouble a few times, mainly wanting to fit in with the other kids. I tried weed and E, but I wasn’t into it. Didn’t like the kids who were. I didn’t try sex, thank God.”
It was a long time ago but it felt good to put all her hang ups out there. “I was nearly eight when I was removed from my mom’s home but I remember seeing her having sex with different men. I think she was hooking to get money for booze and meth.” She looked up to see if he was shocked, but his expression didn’t tell her much. He’d probably seen or heard it all before. Her family was nothing special. She shrugged. “Cindy knew how badly drugs messed up my mom. She might have experimented once upon a time but she was vehemently against using and screwing up her brilliant brain.”
“Even after she lost her entire family?”
Pip nodded. “Her work was too important to her.”
They fell silent for a few seconds, before Pip continued. “I had some amazing teachers and counselors in high school and they helped. I qualified for scholarships and got into FSU. That’s where I met Cindy and her family. They saved me.”
He put his hand over hers and squeezed. “What happened to your mom?”
His hand felt good on hers. Warm and strong. His lips had felt even better on her mouth.
She looked away, hoping he couldn’t read where her thoughts had drifted. She’d much rather think about kissing Hunt than talk about her mother. “She died when I was seventeen.”
“Did you ever see her?”
Pip’s gut clenched at the memory. She’d dealt with this. It wasn’t her fault. It just felt like it sometimes.
“Yeah.” Her voice was gravelly now. It did that when she got emotional. “A few days before she died.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “She wanted me to move back in with her when I turned eighteen so we could try to reconnect.” Her mother had begged her. Pip didn’t like remembering that conversation. The shouting and emotional manipulation. Pip had been strong enough to say no, but a part of her had always wondered if things would have been different if she’d given her mother another chance. “I refused.”
She took a final swallow of beer. “Cops found her dead in her apartment a few days later. Heart attack. The years of alcohol abuse hadn’t helped. I blamed myself for a long time, until Cindy convinced me my mother had made her own choices. She’d had an illness she couldn’t control. It wasn’t up to me to save her.”
Her mother had been dead to her for a long time, and yet, there was still a part of her who knew that if she could go back ten years she might now know how to deal with the situation better. Pip might have saved her.
She pushed her half-eaten plate of food away. She was full. Hunt had consumed every scrap of food in front of him and was eyeing hers as he finished his beer.
He opened his wallet and pulled out enough bills to cover both meals.
She dug into her pocket for her wallet.
“I’ve got this,” he said.
She opened her mouth to argue.
“I’ve got this, Pip. Put your money away.”
She let him because it wasn’t worth fighting over. “I don’t like charity.”
“You can pay next time.”
It was a throwaway comment, a reflex on his part.
“Will there be a next time?” Hope and vulnerability were naked in her voice, though she tried to disguise them. But she needed to know what this was between them.
He looked at her and something changed in his eyes, heated and softened. “What do you think?”
He took her hand and tugged her gently out of her seat and toward the door. Once on the sidewalk he turned to face her and brushed her hair to one side. Then he lowered his lips to hers and kissed her again. A jolt of heat shot along her nerves. Tangy and sizzling. Alive. She held onto his forearms as he tilted her chin and deepened the kiss.
His tongue touched hers and she moaned and felt him smile against her lips. She tangled her tongue with his. He tasted like beer and salt and hot alpha male. Her fingers traced the hard planes of his chest, the warm cotton of his t-shirt. The scent of his leather jacket mixed with the musky scent of his skin made her knees go a little weak.
He pulled back, still cupping her face. Before she could think or speak he kissed her again and a tremor of longing ran through her. She curled her fingers into his t-shirt and pulled him tighter against her.
When they broke away they were both breathing hard.
“Come on.” He took her hand and strode along the sidewalk, around the corner to their vehicles. He opened her door, boosting her into the seat, his hands lingering on her hips in a way that suggested he didn’t want to let go.
“Come home with me,” he said gruffly.
A wave of desire curled inside, tumbling her thoughts into a mass of confusion. She wanted him, but she’d always been lousy at casual sex. But goddamn it, she’d almost died today and this was something she’d been thinking about since he’d come to her room that morning. And that was before he’d thrown himself over her to save her from flying bullets.
They were only alive thanks to a fickle dose of good luck.
Live a little.
Cindy’s voice in her head dared her.
The dead woman was definitely haunting her now.
His eyes were dark with night shadows. “I want to show you something.”
She snorted.
He grinned and took her hand, his fingers kneading the tension out of her joints. “That too, but if you’re not interested or you change your mind at any point, I will make sure you get home safely. There is something else I’d like to show you. Something important.”
She wasn’t one to trust easily, but what did she have to lose? This would be a way to forget the sadness from the last few days. Unlike drugs or alcohol, sex with Hunt Kincaid wouldn’t destroy her mind or body, though it might damage her heart.
But if she knew it was temporary going in, she could protect her heart. He’d be a distraction. Not an addiction.
She wanted this. She wanted him.
“Okay.”
He kissed her fingertips and then got in his truck and left her to follow him through the city and into the outskirts, north of the city center.
He pulled up in the driveway of his neat little town house in Ansley Park. She parked by the curb.
She turned off the engine and the sounds of the night pulsed around her. Cars in the distance. People walking their dogs. Laughter. He got out and walked over to where she sat, watching him. Admiring him.
She squeezed the steering wheel, exasperated with herself.
It wasn’t too late. She could still leave.
He opened the door and held out his hand, waiting for her to choose to get out of the SUV or drive away.
When she took his hand and turned toward him he lifted her and very gently placed her on the ground in front of him. His hands stayed were they were and she reached up to pull his mouth to hers, wanting that fire, wanting that burn of desire because she didn’t want to change her mind. She wanted to forget all the bad things that had happened. She wanted him.
He hauled her against him, picked her up, and closed the door with a loud slam. He carried her all the way to his house, never breaking the kiss and she felt devoured by him, consumed by need.
He placed her down carefully on the front step and unlocked his door. He took her hand as they stepped inside and Pip shivered.
She was doing this.
The curtains were open and soft blue light showed a tidy living room. Dark masculine furniture. TV the size of Outer Mongolia on the near wall.
“What did you want to show me?” she asked with a smile.
He shook his head. “Not now. Later.”
She kissed him again so he closed the door with his foot and her fingers dove aro
und his waist, tugging his t-shirt from his jeans, finding smooth hot skin beneath the soft cotton.
His muscles clenched at her touch and she loved the way he trembled as she moved her hands over hard abs, then ran her nails gently up the groove of his spine.
He groaned and worked her shirt free of her jeans. Clever fingers cupped the underside of her breast as his thumb brushed over rough lace, teasing the sensitive tips. She gasped as he rolled a taut nipple, a full body shiver making her hold on tight to his hips. He reached around her back and unclipped her bra in a move that spoke of a lot of practice.
She eyed him warily. “Smooth.”
“Don’t hold it against me.” He nibbled her exposed throat as his attention returned to her now liberated breasts. “I try to be good at everything I do.”
“Overachiever.”
“I give everything my best effort.” He laughed and she felt the slight scrape of stubble over the soft skin of her cheek.
Her heart gave a little skip. “I guess I’ll find out, huh?”
He reared back. “You’re sure?” He sounded uncertain all of a sudden.
She liked that. Liked that he’d been no more certain of her than she’d been of herself. This was sex and she’d learned a long time ago that sex and intimacy were not necessarily the same thing.
She pushed his jacket off his shoulders and he let it drop to the floor.
“Hang on.” He locked the door, then slipped off his holster and put his gun in a drawer in a cabinet near the entrance. He came back, pressing her against the wall as he kissed her.
She lifted his t-shirt and he pulled it over his head and flung it away. She bit her lip and ran her hands over the satin-clad muscles. He had well-defined pecs and stomach that felt ridiculously sleek and hard.
“You obviously work out. A lot. Is that a general FBI thing?”
“I’m in training.” His smile had a level of confidence that should have been irritating, but even a blind person could appreciate Hunt Kincaid’s body. Especially a blind person. She closed her eyes and skimmed her palm from his collarbone all the way down to his jeans, slipping her fingers just inside the waistband where the skin was downy and delicate.
Cold Blooded Page 23