“Wait?! We can’t wait.”
Hearing nothing but utter desperation in her voice, my eyes lift to Regan’s. “As frustrating as it is, this is a part of the process. The information you recalled will be a great help; we’ve got a lot to work with.”
“But?” she asks, hearing it hanging the air.
“But. . . as much as I’d love to pin his nuts to the wall for what he put you through, I can’t. Not without ensuring the evidence stacks up. A lot of men wear vanilla-scented colognes. Nearly as many of them have feminine hands. The likelihood of him having both those featuresanda prior run-in with you lowers the possibilities of this being a mix-up, but we still need to assess the probables. I made a mistake once thinking Danielle was the only perp on our radar. I won’t risk a second fuck up.”
A sudden wish not to be able to read her as well as she can me smacks into me when I see the words she can’t express in her eyes. She’s not worried I’ll fuck up; she’s petrified I’ll fail her. I’m not talking in the physical sense. It’s an emotional upheaval she’s worried about the most.
This woman is more detrimental to my sanity than the world’s most potent drug. She makes me heedless, which, quite frankly, I’d hate. . . if I didn’t love it so much.
“How long of a wait are we talking?”
My brows perk up from the uneasiness in her tone. “An hour, possibly two.” I scan her body. “Plenty of time for dinner.”
The low growl of my words has her forgetting the seriousness of our exchange faster than I can snap my fingers. Good. She doesn’t need to panic. I’ll never let anything happen to her.
“And perhaps dessert?”
I return my eyes to hers. They’re the most devastatingly beautiful they’ve ever been. “Anddessert. No ifs, baby. I work off facts, not assumptions.”
Rolling her eyes at my term of endearment, she tosses her laptop to the side before hooking her leg over my waist. We groan in sync when her quick straddle of my hips has my cock grinding against her rapidly dampening crotch.
“Since you only work off facts, let me give you a few.” She waits a beat, needing a minute to control the fire running rampantly through her veins from having intimate parts of our bodies sitting so close together. “First, don’t call me ‘baby’ or any other throw-away name. I’m not your baby. I’m also not your girl.” When I attempt to talk, she talks faster. “But I do love it when you call me Rae, so if you need a nickname, stick with that.”
My lips furl before my chin meets my chest, soundlessly calling in my defeat.
“Second, I think we’ve both established that we have some weird, unexplainable connection going on.” When I nod in agreement, she adds on, “Then can we stop pussyfooting around? I’m not glass. I won’t break if handled roughly. I’m reasonably sure the handprint you left on my ass proves that without a doubt.”
My cock rapidly thickening beneath her makes her last fact the hardest of them all to absorb. “And third, but not at all least, if this man is responsible for what happened in my apartment Friday night, we need to tread lightly.”
I stiffen. Unfortunately, not all the rigidness is confined to my zipper region.
“I don’t want him to get off scot-free; I’d just rather not have another spectacle like the one at Luca’s memorial. Danielle’s defense has created quite a lot of gossip in my hometown, gossip I’d rather avoid.”
I peer up at her, shocked she’s aware of the false accusations Danielle is slinging her way. I wasn’t aware they were common knowledge.
“I spoke to Ayden after our run this morning. He wasn’t impressed he had to go out of his way to track me down. I thought you were going to update him when we landed?”
“I did—just twenty minutes after he would have liked.”
From Ayden’s reaction, anyone would swear I had shipped Regan to the Bermuda Triangle instead of Washington DC.
“Ah.” Regan’s brows lower as her lips turn downward. “I take it your conversation didn’t go well?”
I twist my lips to hide my smile. Regan acts tough, but she hates the idea of me getting hurt. “My life was only threatened three times in ten minutes, so that’s somewhat of an improvement.”
Regan laughs. I can tell she feels guilty about her brother’s bossy demeanor, but she heard the jest in my tone. She’s also grateful I’m taking her family’s overbearing personalities in stride. A lesser man may have run for the hills, but I’m not a lesser man. What I said to Regan on the plane is true. I’m not going anywhere.
My eyes slowly drift to Regan’s when she says, “Your ma is right. You’re a good man, Alex Rogers.” Her praise is unnecessary, but fucking great to hear.
“Hmm.” She squirms as if my deep, thick voice rumbled through her body. “Let’s see if you’re still saying that in the morning.”
The tension in the room evaporates when I complete the maneuver she pulled on me last night. In under two seconds, she is beneath me, panting, smiling, and it is all done without a single bit of hesitation crossing her mind. Who in their right mind has time for anxiety when you’ve got a man as strong and protective as me glancing down at you with lust and admiration in his eyes?
Not anyone sane.
13
