by K. Bromberg
But then again...I can’t put my finger on it but this feels so very different than anything I’ve had of late. And late meaning in the past year or so...I may like to have my fun, but that doesn’t mean I sleep around.
I hear the raindrops outside for the first time. The tap, tap, tap against the roof overhead through the open windows.
It had to be the eye contact.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Or his need to slow it down and make a first impression.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
He reaches over and puts his hand on my waist.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
He starts to pull me over to him, and I have a slight panic attack.
I sit up instantly and shove to the end of the bed. “I...uh...I have to go.”
“Desi?”
Without responding, I stand in the darkened room and pretend to look for my clothes on the floor when I damn well know they are in the other room. It’s easier to look at the floor than him, but it does nothing to distract me from noticing the air smells like rain on the pavement and the sex we just had.
Like us.
I walk out of the bedroom without responding and hate when his feet pad on the floor behind me.
“What’s going through that complicated mind of yours?”
I want you. I only just had you, but it isn’t enough.
I find my shorts and pull them on as my mind frantically tries to shut out the butterflies beginning to dance. I’m not sure if they’re there because I already want him again or because I know I can’t have him.
That’s not how I do things.
This isn’t how I do things.
“Desi?” A little harsher, his sculpted body a silhouette against the sliding glass door at his back.
“I just—I heard the dogs barking. I need to take them out. I need...some of them get scared by thunder and I need to—” I stop, knowing that my excuse sounds just like what it is—an excuse—and yet I don’t do anything to correct it. “I need to make sure I shut the back door. They’ll run through it. Escape. I can’t lose dogs I’m supposed to be taking care of.”
His head is angled to the side as he watches me yank my tank top over my head, but I can’t see his eyes.
Oh, how I want to see his eyes.
His sigh fills the room. “I’ll walk you home—”
“No. It’s fine. I’ll be okay.” That means a kiss goodbye, and I can’t swoon right now when my insides have turned to mush and are already in a puddle at his feet.
It takes a second for me to find my flip flops and without looking his way, I mutter “Good night” like the chicken I am before walking out the door.
The screen door slams behind me as the rain hits me with each step through his backyard and into mine.
I thought I’d be able to breathe once I was outside of his house—when I was away from the scent of us together—and now it feels harder to draw in a breath.
It’s because the sex was good.
At least that’s what I’ll tell myself.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Right up until I jog up onto my own porch, hair and clothes now plastered to my body, and yelp when Reznor’s hand flashes out to my bicep and spins me around.
Without a word, his lips find mine again. He’s instantaneously heat and desire as his tongue touches ever so briefly against mine and my arms fall lax to my side, afraid to betray my mind and grab on to him for one more round right here on the wet patio.
When we break from the kiss and he steps back, his eyes meet mine. He shakes his head ever so slightly. “There. Now you can go. Good night, Desi.”
And it’s only when he turns around to walk away that I realize he’s still buck naked.
And I’m royally screwed.
Chapter Eleven
Reznor
The coffee scalds my tongue, but it’s worth it in the morning silence. The still air is filled with birds chattering and somewhere in the distance a rooster crows. The jingle of dog collars and sharp nails on wooden floors can be heard from where I sit, and I notice how last night’s rain washed away the mud from yesterday where it fell off the tarp and onto the concrete.
The door opens and dogs bound out of the house to the grass area. She appears shortly behind them in a different outfit from last night—but one that has me thinking about how her tits lifted with the fabric when I pulled her tank over her head.
Shit.
So many things I’ve relived about last night and yet I’m sitting here. I’m waiting for her. I’m wondering what the hell is going on.
The dogs—one black, one multi-colored, one with only three legs—do their business, but it’s only when she turns to go into the house that she sees me sitting in the chair in the far corner of her porch.
Her yelp fills the air and her hand flies up to her chest. “What are you doing here?” she asks. But there is something in her eyes—genuine fear—that makes me think her being startled has to do with so much more than me surprising her.
“Sorry,” I murmur and then knock on the table in the pattern I established earlier. Knock-knock. Knock-knock-knock. “Hi, it’s me.”
She huffs out a breath and rolls her eyes. “So?”
“Just enjoying my morning coffee,” I say in a slow, steady drawl as her eyes narrow, and she tries to figure out what’s really going on. “The dogs were good, then?”
She walks over slowly and takes a seat opposite me as the dogs come to greet me. I take my time giving them love so she can wonder more, and when the dogs go back to explore the yard and leave us be, I return my attention to my coffee.
When the waft of her shampoo or body spray or whatever the hell it is hits my nose over the dark roast, last night comes rushing back—not like it was far from my mind. The taste of her skin. The feel of her pussy. The sound of her moaning my name.
The panic in her voice when she jolted out of bed afterward.
“My job is interesting most days,” I begin and see her stiffen in attention out of the corner of my eye.
“Self-defense?”
I snort a chuckle. “Nah. SWAT.” I think about everything I’m missing by being here. Am I missing it or do I miss the chaotic normalcy and unpredictability? “Some weeks it’s neverending boredom. Hour after hour. Day after day. Sitting and waiting for the next call, the next crazy person, the next whoever needs our help. Other weeks, we can’t even put our weapons in their lockboxes before the next call comes in.”
“It sounds—”
“Exciting? Daunting? Unconventional?” I ask as she nods cautiously, inquisitive eyes cast my way. “You could say that.”
“I’m sure you’ve seen more than most people could ever imagine.”
“Pretty much.” I bring the mug to my lips. For some reason, I wish there was a little something stronger in it...when that’s not something I’ve wanted in a long time. “It’s all about control.”
“What is?”
“My job.” My life. “Who has it. Who wants it. How to transfer it from one person to another with the least amount of damage to everyone involved.”
“It’s a power play.”
“Most times, yes.”
I look her way and the barrage of questions normally thrown at me are in her eyes: Do you ever burn out? What’s the worst you’ve seen? Have you ever been injured? And on and on...but she doesn’t ask. She sits there with patient eyes and a soft smile, waiting for me to talk.
“I don’t sleep at night, Desi, because every time I close my eyes I picture things I don’t want to see.”
“Rez—”
“A call went bad a few weeks ago. A hostage situation where kids were involved. I made the call to breach the house. Instead of the suspect taking his anger out on my team—shooting at us—he killed his kids, because he didn’t want us to give them back to their mother.”
“Christ.”
“Nah, he wasn’t anywhere in sight that day,” I murmur as my mind takes me back to eve
rything I see when I try to sleep. The hazy smoke in the air. The spray of blood on the wall from where my guys engaged and took the suspect out. The tears welling in Bull’s eyes when he came out of the side bedroom and shook his head because the kids were gone.
“Those poor babies. My God. What animal would—”
“People do all kinds of things under the wide-reaching blanket of love.”
“That’s not love.”
“Not how I see it, it isn’t.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing you can say. It was just a shit situation. A decision I’ll second-guess for a long time. Should I have waited him out or would it have ended up with the same result regardless?”
“So that’s why you’re here?”
“More or less,” I say and take a sip of my slowly cooling coffee. “I needed a change, something to clear my head for a bit.”
“You’re going back then?”
“Eventually. I think.” I chuckle and run a hand through my hair. “Two months ago, if you would’ve asked me if I could see myself sitting in a slow, quiet wine town without going stir-crazy, I would’ve told you that you were the crazy one...but it’s been a good change of pace.”
“Sometimes change is good for the soul.”
Our eyes meet as the dogs play in front of us, and we stare at each other in silence. “That’s why I was up last night,” I say then pause. “You?”
“Seriously?” She laughs, and I can see the change instantly. The stiffening of her spine and playing down of the fear I saw in her eyes when she found me sitting on her porch.
“Yep. Seriously. I’m trained to notice things, Des. How you jump when someone doesn’t announce themselves. The fear and panic you get in your eyes. The self-defense class. It’s written all over—”
“Maybe it’s none of your business.” Oh, there she is. Defiant. Fearless. Stubborn. “I don’t need a hero swooping in to save the day.”
My chuckle is raw and real. “I’m far from a hero, but I’d try to nonetheless.”
“It’s nothing. Leave it be,” she warns.
“Maybe it isn’t. But you wanna tell me what was up last night?”
“You were.” She cracks the joke, but I don’t give her the smile she’s working for. Instead I give her my investigator’s stare and wonder if she knows what she looks like right now. Like a teenager caught in a lie who isn’t sure what to say and knows that no matter what comes out of their mouth, it will land them in hot water in one way or another.
“Desi…”
“I told you, I needed to check on the dogs.”
“And I wasn’t exactly done with you yet,” I murmur and love the sudden catch of her breath that she tries to pretend didn’t happen. Her eyes widen and she licks her lips as she tries to think of what to say. “Yeah, I wasn’t. Not in the least. I had a few other ways to make you tired...but your loss.”
“There are things we didn’t talk about. Things that I don’t—I’m not someone who commits—who—”
“Perfect. I’m all for casual-neighborly sex.” I fight my grin, but lose the battle as I rise from my chair and move to rest my ass on the table so I’m directly in front of her. If she’s going to bullshit me, she’s going to have to look me straight in the eyes when she does it.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?” I fold my arms over my chest.
“I’m not a relationship girl.”
“Good thing I didn’t ask for one, then.”
She’s not getting out of this one as easily as I let her out of telling me her other truth. No way. No how.
I want the woman again—would have her right now if she let me—but something tells me there’s a lot more beneath the surface I’ve yet to find out...and hell if I’m not determined to uncover it.
“That’s not what I mean—”
“You keep saying that. And I keep waiting for you to explain what it is you do mean.”
“If you’d back up and give me some space, maybe I could think straight.”
I do the exact opposite. I step forward, put my hands on both arms of her chair, and lean down so we’re face to face. “Maybe I don’t want you to think straight. Maybe I know that’s when you’ll be the most honest. We slept together, Desi Whitman. It was incredible...you were incredible...and I’d like to do it again with you real soon...but I need a little more from you than a wham-bam-get-the-hell-out-ma’am. That’s not my style. Far from it…”
“Maybe I’m just a one-night-stand girl.”
“First of all, you’re far from a girl.” I drag my eyes up and down the length of her body. No man would be satisfied with one night with Desi. She’s gorgeous, passionate...fucking hot. “Secondly, I’m all for a one-night stand...if I’m not going to see the person again, but I’m going to see you. I plan on seeing you...so yeah, I don’t think that kind of parameter is going to work for me.”
“Reznor—”
“Don’t bother giving me your excuses,” I say as I lean down and brush my lips to hers. Fuck if it isn’t brutal to stop at a measly kiss from the woman who seems to harden my dick with just that. “Just practice saying yes.”
And with that, I stand to full height, smirk with a shake of my head, and walk out of her yard—this time with clothes on—leaving her and her stunned expression to think about the word yes.
The woman is scared.
And it’s not only of strange men surprising her on her patio.
She’s scared of someone getting close to her. Emotionally, definitely. Physically, maybe...unless, it seems, she gets to set the rules. A woman like Desi Whitman shouldn’t live in fear. That carefree laugh of hers needs to be heard. So is that why I did that? Is that why I can’t keep the fuck away from her when clearly she keeps trying to set boundaries?
Christ, Rez. Quit playing the hero. She didn’t ask you to be one.
Pausing at the steps of my porch, I look over at the fence that separates our yards and shake my head. Whether she asked me to or not, it seems I’m putting on the cape regardless.
If she thinks she’s done with me, she has another think coming. I’m making it my job to erase that look from her eyes.
Chapter Twelve
Reznor
“You got broken pipes?”
I lift my head up and see Grant peering at me down the cereal aisle of the grocery store. “My pipes are doing just fine, Malone.” I laugh. “And what the hell are you talking about?”
“You’re in a fishbowl now, Rez. Someone told the cashier at 7-Eleven that she saw the cute new guy with the tattoos and muscles at Ace Hardware buying some PVC. The cashier was at the coffee shop, and I overheard her tell it to someone else...so I drew some conclusions.”
“Fucking great. Let’s hope I don’t go to buy some condoms. That’ll really get the gossips going.”
Note to self: Buy more condoms. My current stash isn’t going to last if I’m living next door to Desi.
Then again, she needs to say yes.
“If you buy condoms, you’ll have women lining up at your door asking for directions…”
“You mean the take off your clothes, get on all fours type of directions?” I ask with a chuckle.
“Something like that.”
“How’s work?”
“Same ol’. You know how it goes—feast or famine. Right now, it’s feast.”
“Running ragged, huh?”
“Pretty much. We’re looking for a few more guys.” He lifts his eyebrows and smirks. “You know, if you fall in love with it here and want to stick around.”
“I’m not falling in love, no worries there,” I say and wink but am shocked that my mind immediately veers to Desi.
Get a grip, Mayne. It was sex. One night.
A night I plan on having again and again.
“You never know,” he says and shakes his head. “I wasn’t falling in love either...and then it fucking hit me the minute I saw Emerson.”
“Someday,” I say. “Not now.” I chuckle as I grab a box of Crispix off the shelf. “Right now I’m relegated to letting women beat me up in defense class and fixing broken sprinkler pipes for the hot neighbor.”
“Hot neighbors are never a bad thing. Where you living?”
“What? You know I’m fixing pipes but not where I live?”
“I’m sure the cashier could have told me if I’d asked,” he says with a laugh.
“I’m renting a house over on Vintage Road.”
“Great area. We have a close friend who lives there. Desi Whitman.”
I cough over the automatic laugh when he says that. “No shit,” I finally manage.
“Something tells me you’ve met.”
I nod slowly. “She’s in my self-defense class,” I admit, because if this is a small enough town that people are talking about what pipe I’m buying, they’ll sure as hell talk about who’s in the self-defense class.
“Really? She wouldn’t happen to be the hot neighbor too, would she?” he asks, but there’s something about my reaction that he catches. Leave it to a cop to notice everything.
“She’s hot all right.” I whistle low and appreciatively.
He laughs. “She and my wife are best friends. Have been since way before we met.”
“Small world.”
“It is indeed.” We stare at each other, two men who understand the silent warning the other one is giving after the unspoken acknowledgement, that yes, I have slept with her.
His warning is be careful.
Mine is it’s none of your business.
“It’s actually quite a good thing. I can breathe a bit easier knowing you’re next door after what happened.”
If he didn’t have my attention before, he sure as hell has it now.
I fight the need to know and the want for her to tell me herself. The need to know wins.
“What’s that?”
“She hasn’t told you?”
“Nah, but I know something’s up. She jumps at the slightest sound. She’s constantly on edge. Unsettled. The look is the same one any of us on the job have seen before. She tries to hide it, but it’s still there. Add to that, she’s in my class. Reluctantly.”