Her watery smile damn near turned his heart over.
“I don’t want you to change.” She kept up pressure on his shoulder even though her bandage was doing a hell of a job on its own. “I thought you were brilliant just now even if you scared a decade off my life. In fact, I think for my next undercover assignment I’m going to take a page out of your book and play things a bit looser.”
He groaned.
“I don’t recommend my approach, Dor. And I have to say that if it was you sitting here bleeding right now—even with just a flesh wound—I’d be freaking out.”
“That’s the blessing of being a grounded type,” she admitted, her cleavage truly spectacular as she leaned over to kiss his cheek. His mouth. And yeah, her jaw quivered even if the stubborn woman wouldn’t admit to any weakness. “I’m too practical to get worked up over a little scratch—and I’m intrigued about blood loss acting as truth serum.”
His head tipped back against one of the structural supports, and Dorian waved one of her cop friends over to secure Konstantinou. He suspected she was keeping everyone else at bay with her badge and a scowl he knew all too well. For once, her stand-back glare wasn’t directed at him. It was a feeling he could get used to.
“Yeah? You have more burning questions for me?” Her scent was so sweet he wanted to pull her against him and lay with her for twenty-four hours straight. He wrapped a curl around his finger, not caring if her cop friends saw him staring at Dorian like she was the only woman in the world.
Of course, she was as far as he was concerned.
“I sure do. Do you think if I take you home with me next time you’ll run out on me again?” She traced his lips with her fingertip then smoothed a path down his neck.
“If I was that lucky a second time, I wouldn’t walk back out your door in a million years, babe.”
She blinked fast, her eyes so pretty and glistening.
“Really? What if you were undercover?”
“That’s a tough one. But I think I might have to drag you into my cover with me so I could keep you by my side. You could be my drug dealer or the woman I was having an affair with—”
“Or the local dominatrix…just to make sure I don’t always have the position of weakness.”
“Whatever floats your boat, gorgeous.” He saw her waving over the EMTs and realized he wasn’t nearly finished with everything he had to say. “Wait. Dor?”
“Yeah?”
“I wouldn’t want you to lose even a drop of blood for my sake, but the truth serum effect…well, it would be cool if I could ask you anything sometime, too.” Was that too much to ask? Not that he thought she would lie to him other times. But they’d avoided the issues between them…the attraction…for so long they’d gotten skilled at weaving away from the whole subject.
“I’m game. Consider it my present to you for saving my butt on this mission.”
“If I take you home with me when I get sprung from the ER, would you stay?” The question shook him out of his blood-loss torpor enough to make him realize he was nervous for the answer. He’d been chasing Dorian for so long, screwing up and then trying to regain lost ground, that he knew he’d probably used up all his chances. If she didn’t want him now, he’d regret it for the rest of his life.
And then he’d just keep chasing her.
“How about if I go to the ER with you and hang around to drive you home, then you can find out the answer for yourself?” Her fingers walking up his chest felt damn good.
He smiled.
“Yes, ma’am. I like that idea.” He pulled her down to him to kiss her mouth, effectively blocking his view of the EMT guys vying to get their hands on him.
Damn it.
When Dorian backed away, she whispered, “No more true confessions, though, until it’s just you and me, okay?”
“Okay.” He loved that private side of her, the one that made sure she kept her wild moments just for him. Still, he couldn’t suppress his own impulse to tease her. “Did I tell you I bet everything I had on you on a poker round with Konstantinou, by the way?”
He held out his arm for the EMT guys to take his vitals, but he kept his gaze trained on every sexy inch of Dorian in form-fitting sequins. She scowled down at him as she stood but her eyes didn’t contain all that much heat to go with her glare. He couldn’t wait to get her alone.
“You bet on me?”
“Double or nothing. I had to have you for myself.” He winked at her and waved away the oxygen the EMT guys wanted to shove in his mouth. “And that’s no lie.”
EPILOGUE
“SO WHAT ELSE DID I say while I was bleeding like a stuck pig?”
Dorian couldn’t ward off a grin as they pulled into the palm tree–lined parking area of the downtown precinct of the LVMPD. She’d made a game of taunting Simon with alleged sensual promises he’d made while loopy from blood loss. She knew being injured on the job had pissed him off by taking a small chink out of his seemingly impenetrable pride, but the game had cheered him when she assured him he promised her multiple orgasms before they fell into bed for the night and even more the next day.
He’d made good on his fictional promise after the hospital had cleared him, and she was looking forward to seeing how he could possibly top last night.
Of course, first she had to file her paperwork at the precinct. She’d had help to make the arrests last night when she needed to get to the hospital with Simon, but someone had called her to let her know one of the hotel staffers who’d provided Konstantinou with a key to the basement level had also admitted to spiking Dorian’s drink. Apparently the server had been on the payroll for months, occasionally spiking drinks or otherwise stalling attractive women he thought might be open to the idea of extra “work.”
This afternoon she needed to tie up the rest of the details on the case and congratulate whichever one of her friends had won their bet for the week off. As much as Dorian would have enjoyed seven days of freedom to see how many more sensual favors she could receive and give back, too, she couldn’t have left Simon last night after he’d saved her. Her life. Her case. And quite possibly her heart.
“Hmm. You rambled so much I hardly know where to begin,” she teased. “But there was a lot about how much your shoulder hurt.”
His eyebrows knit together as he put the car in Park.
“Real men don’t feel pain. Now I know you’re making stuff up.” There was a pale cast to his tan despite his words, his coloring attesting to how close he’d come to death. His strength had saved him when other men might still be laid low.
“Really?” She fluttered her eyelashes for innocent effect. “Because you told me you’d need to rest your shoulder to recover and that I might need to explore some…um…oral options in the pleasure department while you got better.”
“Yeah?” He massaged his upper arm where a bandage lurked beneath his T-shirt. “On second thought, it does ache every now and again.”
She leaned across the console to kiss him, her heart already skipping wildly in her chest. The inside of the air-conditioned car heated up as much as the blazing temps of a Vegas summer outside.
“I don’t know how I’m going to wait eight hours,” she confided, seriously loving the fact that she could play games with Simon. Her world had been so intense for so long that it seemed freeing to laugh and joke and play.
And the sex…
She’d be having hot flashes all day at this rate.
“If it’s any consolation, I guarantee this day’s going to be even longer for me since you planted that particular sexual image in my head.”
Breaking away, she stared into his eyes, liking everything about him. Why hadn’t she seen past his easygoing facade to the committed, honorable guy beneath? She’d fallen for him even before the time she’d picked him up in a dive bar, but she’d let her pride get in her way to see that she wasn’t the only one working through some big problems that night.
Maybe they’d both just needed time to come t
o terms with the inevitable. They were diametric opposites in so many ways but that didn’t stop a core respect, caring and flat-out lust for each other. Who said a couple needed to share all the same qualities to create a strong relationship? For Dorian’s part, she was ready to try.
“I’ll make it worth your while,” she vowed, silently promising herself to see beyond people’s outward attitudes to the deeper core that mattered.
She’d missed that lesson with her mother and she could only hope that somehow her mom knew Dorian would grow to be a more understanding person one day. Testing out a real relationship with Simon made her think she’d already become that better person. But for good measure, she was keeping in touch with Evangeline to help show her she had friends and options for her future that didn’t involve selling her body. That felt like the right way to come to peace with her mother, too.
Plus, Simon would make sure the Bureau followed through on their end to help recover the lost prostitutes who’d gone missing this year. Konstantinou would give up their whereabouts when he was interrogated. She would make sure of that. As much as Dorian was thrilled to have captured the guys behind the awful scheme, her heart still hurt for those other women who hadn’t had the benefit of police protection, and she wouldn’t rest until they received help to come back home.
“Looks like we’ve got company.” Simon pointed out the back window to a Ford Explorer pulling up behind them and then leaned in for one more quick kiss. “You’d better get cracking at those eight hours because I’m not waiting an extra second when I come pick you up.”
“You’re on, Ramsey.” Sliding out of the car, Dorian hopped onto the curb in front of the stone-and-stucco facade and waved to Kim Wong who seemed to be arriving with…a man?
Sure enough, Kim sat in the passenger seat of her SUV, a purple baseball cap on her head, while Captain Marc Cardenas, the man assigned to pose as Kim’s boyfriend/bodyguard on her case, chauffeured her to work. The pair kissed so deeply Dorian felt like a voyeur and turned her eyes back to the parking lot in time to see Simon accelerate onto 9th street at the same time a sporty red BMW convertible drove into the station’s parking lot.
“Hey, Dorian,” Kim called, jumping down to the pavement from the SUV’s high running board before her brawny companion peeled away. “I see the love bug bit your butt this weekend, too?”
Kim spun the brim of her cap to the back so that the word Angel disappeared behind her head and the word Naughty took its place.
Dorian could only shake her head.
“Amazingly, it looks like we weren’t the only victims of lust on the job.” Dorian nodded toward the red BMW headed their way a little too fast for parking lot safety.
The driver took full advantage of the German engineering, however, sliding the car into place mere inches from the curb. With the convertible top down, Kim and Dorian had an excellent view of the muscular legs on the star cyclist athlete that Clarissa Rivers had been pretending to be married to during her undercover assignment.
From the borderline make-out that ensued, apparently Clarissa had changed her mind about male athletes. She grinned like a woman in love as she said a starry-eyed goodbye to her new Romeo and practically floated out of the car.
“Don’t tell me.” Kim shook her head in disbelief. “How long have we been working together and complaining over the total lack of romance in a lady cop’s life?”
“What?” Clarissa shook off the morning-after glow with considerable effort. “Did I miss something?”
Kim and Dorian laughed as they all headed toward the station.
“Only some bizarre proof that good things happen in threes. Kim and I both rolled into work with male companionship, and neither of us can remember when something like that has happened for one of us, let alone all three.”
“Must be cover assignments agree with us?” Clarissa suggested, running her fingers through her hair as they entered the station through the central glass doors.
“Either that or hell froze over,” Kim quipped, heading for her desk in an interior that seemed dim compared to the blistering sun outdoors. “So who won the bet while I was, uh…out of commission last night?”
Dorian and Clarissa exchanged a look just as Captain Pearson charged out of his office like a bull on steroids. The hat pulled down tightly over his head didn’t hide the blue vein throbbing in his right temple. His phone rang incessantly from the office behind him as he entered the mass of mostly empty desks where the majority of the detectives did their paperwork.
“Anyone ever heard of paperwork? I had a boatload of patrol cars screaming all over town this weekend and not one of you could be bothered with filing reports?”
Dorian knew her hospital alibi was rock solid, but before she could offer it up, both Kim and Clarissa leaped to their own defenses, spilling snippets of fights and arrests and shooting that Dorian couldn’t wait to hear in full detail.
The other more personal details were bound to be interesting, as well.
“Wait a minute.” Dorian entered the fray, determined to be reasonable and prevent the whole precinct from overhearing even if there were only a handful of cops milling around the station today. “It sounds like none of us has won the bet yet, right?” A great idea was brewing in her head and she was certain her love-struck friends were going to unanimously approve it.
“Not me,” Kim and Clarissa answered together in perfect synch as they dodged a cop coming through with a local boozehound who appeared to need some sobering up.
Around them the station seemed to go a shade quieter as if ears strained all over the precinct to hear what was going on. A coffeepot gurgled in the distance while the captain’s phone kept ringing.
“Then the week off could go to whoever types the fastest since we all closed our cases.” Knowing her own speed at the keyboard was formidable, Dorian couldn’t deny she was tempted. “But I think we all know who is most deserving of that week off.”
Clarissa smiled while Kim filled in the blank.
“The cranky cop the love bug failed to bite this weekend.” She nodded in agreement, her ponytail bobbing beneath her purple baseball hat.
Clarissa made her way toward the captain, her pink cheeks flushed with good health and happiness now that her hives were gone.
“Captain, we’d like to give you the vacation week since you’ve been working your tail off to orchestrate the big sting. We’ll cover for you while you…you know…remind your wife you still know how to be spontaneous and have fun.”
The captain looked so serious for a moment Dorian worried he might take issue with the suggestion there was anything wrong in his personal life. Cops could be touchy, and Dorian really identified with the need to present a controlled front to the world.
She stepped closer to the captain, knowing how much he deserved time to save his marriage and remember why relationships were worth fighting for.
“In fact, I’m going to throw in a call to the florist and send some orchids over to your wife on your behalf. Wouldn’t that be a nice way to let her know to expect a surprise coming her way?” She remembered Mrs. Pearson admiring the orchids at a police fund-raiser event a year ago.
“And I’m going to make you some dinner reservations at that new Italian place on Las Vegas Boulevard South.” Kim shoved aside a sequined tennis visor on her desk and reached for the phone book.
The captain’s stony features didn’t soften, but the vein in his temple had quit throbbing. An expression of pure determination came over his face just before Clarissa ran to her cubicle.
“Act now and you’ll also get a primo piece of tasteful lingerie to arrive while she’s dressing for dinner.” Clarissa pulled her cell phone from her purse. “Mrs. Pearson likes blue, right?”
The captain looked at each of them with the slow deliberation that made him such a great leader. The man never acted on impulse, but only with careful consideration.
“And you’ll each get those reports filed?”
“I�
�m on it,” Dorian assured him, ready to pull out all the stops to get him out the door. Her own wonderful weekend had her seeing the world through rose-colored glasses today, and she couldn’t wait to share that happiness with everyone else. “You know my work ethic speaks for itself, Captain. Last night was an aberration.”
“You should enjoy the good PR for the department after all the arrests this weekend,” Kim added, hanging up the desk phone and hooking arms with Marc Cardenas, who’d followed her inside after parking her vehicle. “You’ll be a hero in all the papers by tomorrow. Your dinner reservations are for seven o’ clock, by the way.”
Slowly, Captain Pearson took off his hat and hung it on the coatrack by his office door. His brown eyes glittered with new purpose.
“Very well then, ladies. I accept your offer.” He strode toward the door with determined steps. “I’ve earned a few days off.” He turned back to look at them before leaving, the hint of a smile finally curling one side of his mouth. “How much you want to bet my wife is going to like this idea?”
Bet Me Page 22