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He pulled away from her touch. She didn’t even know the worst of it. “She fooled me. I thought we were on the same side in real life, just like in Magic Battledome, but we weren’t. She drugged me and almost killed Sylvie and Tony.” Blood rushed in his ears and his chest tightened, but he had to tell her. He had to show her who he really was. “I found the three of them at the Harbor City Museum. Ivy was going to shoot them, but I fired first. She was dead before she even hit the floor. I killed my girlfriend, just like Keenan killed your sister. I’m as bad as he is.”
And he’d put as much distance between that guy and the new Carlos as he could, giving up any part of his life that Ivy had tainted as his penance for being so blind to the truth and nearly getting his friends killed. His life had become perfectly divided into before and after Ivy. But it hadn’t been enough. It would never be enough to pay for his sins.
“No.” Mika took his face between her palms, forcing him to look at her. “I’m sorry that happened to you, and I totally understand why you’ve turned your back on Magic Battledome. Taking this case couldn’t have been easy. But you’re not Keenan, and I’m not Ivy. Not everyone out there is Ivy. You have to learn to trust people again—to trust yourself again.”
It would be so easy to follow his impulses and sink into Mika’s warmth, block out his own failings. Isn’t that what he’d been doing for the past year—trying to forget? It hadn’t worked. It never would. This was the life he’d chosen when he’d fired that bullet, and he needed to stop being such a wimp and accept that.
“It doesn’t matter.” He stepped out of her grasp, hardening himself against the hurt that flashed in her eyes. “No matter how badly I want you, when this case is over, we’ll go our separate ways. I’ll never get to touch you again.”
She scraped her teeth across her bottom lip, then looked up at him through her thick lashes. “And you want to?”
Heat seared his skin and he shoved his hands in his pockets to stop himself from reaching out to touch her smooth skin. “So much that it took everything I had not to dropkick Captain Douchetastic this afternoon.”
Her hands went to the top button of her jeans, and she slipped it free before pushing them down over her round hips. Gravity pulled them down her lean legs, and she stepped out of the puddle of denim. Standing before him in just her T-shirt and low-slung hip-hugger panties, she raised her chin. There was no mistaking the hunger—the need—in her eyes, because it burned in his own.
She toyed with the hem of her shirt. “Then you’d better touch me while you can.”
A better man would resist. A better man would walk away. But Carlos wasn’t a better man.
Chapter Eleven
“The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.”
—Jean Cocteau
If there was a chill in the air, Mika couldn’t feel it. Hot desire licked at her skin everywhere Carlos looked as his focus traveled across her nearly naked body. Never had a plain white T-shirt made her feel as sexy as right now. Under his hot gaze, her nipples pebbled under the thin material and dampness grew between her legs. He wasn’t like Keenan. What had happened with Ivy had shredded but hadn’t broken him. If it had, he wouldn’t be here with her, making her want tomorrows instead of just tonights. She couldn’t convince him of that with words, but her body knew a language her tongue couldn’t form.
“You’re impossible to resist.” He grabbed her hips, whipping her around so her back was against the windowpane.
She was between a glass wall and a hard man—one who, despite all the reasons why she shouldn’t have, she’d fallen for. No one had ever just gotten her like he did. He was the one; she’d known it the moment he’d touched her on the nonexistent dance floor at Feeny’s.
Carlos’s eyes darkened to nearly black as he watched her—not touching anywhere but his fingers on her hips, but the intensity of his gaze branded her, marked her as his. The air sizzled between them, and she forgot how to breathe, how to think, how to do anything but want this man. Her man. Carlos.
Her breath hitched as she fought to control the lust lapping against her as palpable as the air on a hot summer day when there was 90 percent humidity. “So wh
y try to resist me?”
He laughed, a low rumble that did something to weaken her knees, and he twisted his fingers around the simple cotton of her panties, drawing them tight against her wet core. “Is this how you do everything in life, just give in to the impulse?”
“Yes.” It was an answer to his question and approval of how the material pressed against her clit.
He bent his head and kissed his way down her neck, stopping and taking a soft bite at the sweet spot where it met her shoulder. “That’s insane.”
“Why? Because it’s not how you do it? I’m comfortable with who I am and who I want.” She slid her hand between the rough denim of his jeans and the springy curls of his happy trail until she could wrap her fingers around his thick cock. “It sure feels like you are, too—at least right now.”
“That’s all I can give you.”
The fit was tight, but there was just enough room for her to stroke him up and down. He let out a tortured groan.
“Maybe it’s all I want.” At least it had been only a few days ago. Now? She couldn’t think about it. It was like seeing a glint in the distance and knowing it was something you needed, even if you weren’t sure what exactly it was.
“How do you want it?” He followed the V of her thin T-shirt, then continued down and sucked her hard nipples through the material, grazing his teeth across the sensitive peak. He twisted his fingers to tighten his hold on her panties, then crossed to her other breast and teased her until she was panting with need—only then did he pull back. “I could tear these panties off you, bend you over that ugly couch, and fuck you until you can’t remember your name.”
Her core clenched. “Big talk.”
The sound of ripping material filled her ears, followed by the shift in the air between her legs as the material fell away.
“Oh, it’s more than just talk.” He flipped her around so her breasts pressed against the window with only the T-shirt covering her. The cotton covering her nipples, wet from his mouth, was trapped between the cool pane and her sensitive flesh, and the damp chill made her nipples even harder.
