Page 63 of Bulletproof

“And? So?”

“So, if you were gonna fuck someone, it should’ve been me,” he yelled, grabbing hold of my sweater, yanking me forward, his breath hot on my face.

I tore free of his grip, shoving him off me, and bolted by him and down the hall. It was good that he had no idea I had been with Sam, but it really did make me look like a whore.

The thought of what was true and what looked real haunted me all the way home.

NINE

Ishowered, and under the hot water, I calmed, settled. I changed into pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, and I was standing in the kitchen, looking out the window, when the front door was thrown open and Sam Kage came through. My eyes were all over him—the jeans; the cotton T-shirt stretched across his wide, muscular chest; and the slate-blue eyes, now dark with anger.

Slamming the front door closed, hurling his keys across the room at me, he growled, “What the fuck were you doing at that club?”

I stood there and just stared at him. I had known the man for over five years, and still, he made my heart stop.

“Did you fuckin’ hear me?”

Yes, I’d heard him, and, yes, he was breathtaking. I smiled at him.

“Jory.” His voice cracked on my name.

I ran toward him. He met me at the couch, grabbed me, and we fell down together in a tangle of arms and legs. As soon as I had some wiggle room, I got my hands free and on his shirt. It was coming off.

“Who was that woman the other night? Tell me!”

“For fuck’s sake, Jory, she’s undercover; she’s a Fed. That’s all that was,” he grumbled, his hands all over me. “You know me. There’s nobody else but you.”

I knew him.

“Put your leg over⁠—”

“I missed you,” I said, arching up, wanting to be closer.

“Look at me.”

My eyes locked on his.

“Every part of Cristo Liron’s life is bugged—his phone, his car. Everyone heard you tell him you loved me the other night, confess it all, and while I love how honest you are, you basically took me off the front line of my own case.”

I stilled under him.

“You know, we were this close to being derailed the other night with Dorian Ducal almost making Cristo call off his deal with Adrian Miller, but you—just you—put everything back on track. Crosby Holt—he’s the agent in charge of our task force—must’ve said a million times that my husband was brilliant, the way he kept everything going.”

I reached up for Sam’s face. “I thought you didn’t want to come home.”

He turned his head in my hands, kissed my left palm, and made a noise in the back of his throat.

“Sam?”

“I always want to come home, and you should know that instead of coming apart.”

The undoing had been all me; he hadn’t changed at all. I was the one, all by myself.

“I was scared.”

“Shame on you,” he said as he lifted up off of me.

“Sam?”