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“Now you’re just trying to sweet talk me.”
I rotate her and pull the door shut, before catching her to me. “There’s a lot of better things to do with my mouth and you than sweet talk.”
“That was a very dirty thing to say,” she says, tilting that tempting mouth of hers in my direction. And damn, I want to taste her.
“I’m a dirty guy, sweetheart,” I say, lowering my voice, roughening it up. “Haven’t you figured that out by now?” I lean in and kiss her neck, whispering at her ear, “And my kind of dirty is the only kind I want you to remember.”
She pulls back to look at me, and that sexual tease of a moment fades into something else, something emotional, something that keeps me here far more than how much I want to fuck her again. “If you keep looking at me like that,” I say, taking her hand, “we’ll be back in your apartment, and we won’t leave.”
“Can we do that and skip the meeting with Chance?”
“No,” I say. “Lock your door, but I’m going to get a locksmith over here to put on new locks when we get back.”
“I was actually thinking that I need to do that.” She locks the door and pockets the keys in a small purse she’s wearing at her hip. “Someone here had to give him a key. That freaks me out. And how am I going to find out who? No one is going to admit they did it.”
“Which is why we need to go by security and talk to someone.”
“No one who matters is here today,” she says. “And I need to have Chance handle it. He now owns half the building.”
“And you rent.”
She cuts her gaze. “That’s another topic for another day. One we can discuss after you tell me why you didn’t stay at the event hotel, a Knight hotel.” It’s not a question meant to be answered.It was meant to tell me that we both have things we don’t want to talk about.
And just like that, she shuts me down but she was a closed book. And it’s not. I’m going to find out why she’s the redheaded stepchild, but what’s crazy is that I’m not sure she knows herself. Or maybe she does know because of that damn journal I didn’t read.
Chapter twenty-two
Emma
Jax and I walk through the lobby of my building hand in hand, and as crazy as it might seem to some, that’s the most intimate thing I’ve shared with this man. It’s that moment when I know this isn’t just sex. It’s a comfortable moment, too, a casual moment that could be awkward, but nothing with Jax feels forced. It doesn’t feel like an expectation but rather a need. We need to touch each other. When I was with York, it became about what he needed. It became about him. There was no “we” to consider.
“Let’s talk to security,” Jax says right when we’re about to exit the building, tugging me in that direction.
“No one that has any power is here today,” I remind him, tugging him to halt.
“But the person who let York in damn sure is,” he argues. “We need to scare the crap out of whoever that is and make sure they know there are consequences for what they did. Do you have a problem with that? Because I really want to do this, but if it’s an issue—”
“No,” I say quickly and like so many times before, I’m taken aback by this man. Jax is a powerful, confident man who knows himself, who owns a room when he walks into it, and yet somehow in this moment, he manages to take control and give it back to me. “Not at all. It can’t hurt anything.”
Still holding my hand, he folds our elbows and kisses my fingers before he winks. “Then let’s do this.”
Let’s do this, as in us, together. God, this man is trying to make me fall for him and I don’t know if that’s smart. Nothing he’s said erases the fact that he lives in another state or that he hates my family. Nevertheless, for now, I’m living in the moment, and just before we reach the security point, Jax leans close and whispers, “I’m going to rattle him and then you take over.”
I nod and we halt in front of the desk. “Let me be clear,” Jax says, without introducing himself to the singular guard behind the station. “If York Waters, or anyone for that matter, gets into Emma’s apartment without her permission, she will sue you and call the police. I barely talked her out of it today.”
Jeff, the thirty-something guard that has been here roughly six months, jerks his eyes to mine and doesn’t even ask who Jax is. “I have no idea what happened. I’ve been on duty all day.”
I forget about who’s in control and get angry. “Someone let him up. He walked right in. Had I been alone—I need to know how it happened.”
“Before it happens again,” Jax states.
Jeff nods. “I’ll find out. It won’t happen again.” He looks at me. “I can call my supervisor.”
“Yes,” I say. “Call your supervisor and have him call me.”
“Yes ma’am,” he says. “Right away.”
A few minutes later, Jax and I step onto the street and he slides his arm around my shoulders, setting us in motion on the short walk to the coffee shop. “I don’t think he did it, do you?”
