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Her breath hitched.
Sex with a gorgeous bad boy. The kind of sex, the kind of lover most women only dreamed about.
Except, Tanner was so much more than that.
She loved talking to him. Bantering with him. Lying in his arms and doing nothing more adventuresome than listening to the thud-thud of his heart.
She loved…
The jeans and shirt fell from her arms.
Ridiculous. Impossible. This wasn’t a romance novel. You didn’t fall crazy in love with a man in just in a couple of days, especially if he was pretty much a stranger.
Of course you didn’t.
* * *
Superman’s “something interesting” in the kitchen was a feast.
A bowl of fruit. Okay, the fruit was from a can, but no bowl of fruit had ever looked better or tasted more delicious. Big, fluffy pancakes with maple syrup. And just in case the pancakes weren’t enough, toasted bagels from what tuned out to be a working freezer.
He’d topped the bagel halves with blueberry jam.
“If you were a New Yorker,” Alessandra said primly as she popped the last bit of a jam-smothered bagel into her mouth, “you’d know that you never put jam on bagels.”
“Says the lady born in… What part of Italy was it?”
“A village in Sicily nobody ever heard of.”
She licked a drop of jam off her thumb.
Tanner reached across the table, snagged her hand and brought it to his lips.
“Lieutenant Akecheta at your service, ma’am,” he said, letting his tongue take the place of hers.
“And such excellent service it is, Lieutenant,” she said, while her heart skipped a beat.
He grinned. Oh, what a gorgeous grin he had.
“We aim to please, ma’am.”
She laughed. So did he. Amazing, she thought, that acts of terror and brutality had brought her to a moment of such incredible joy.
“You know, Lieutenant, I think it’s time I made a confession.”
Tanner sat back, his arms folded over his chest. “Go for it, Bellini. I’m ready.”
“When you didn’t realize that FURever was about protecting wildlife?” She sighed. “It was the name. Not you. I’d tried to tell them that the name was, you know, cute, but maybe misleading…What?”
“Nice try, honey, but it was definitely me. I had this stereotype in my head. Beautiful woman. Spoiled silly…”
“You’re the one who’s spoiling me. And I have to admit, I love it.” She smiled as he leaned forward and reached for her hand. “Your turn,” she said.
“My turn for what?”
“To tell me where you’re from, for starters.”
Tanner let go of her hand, from the table, got the coffeepot from the counter, took two blue mugs from a shelf, and filled them.
