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He opened his mouth, then snapped it shut and hung his head. A low chuckle escaped and his shoulder shook. “I’m trying to decide if you’re reckless or just insane. So far, I’m leaning toward the latter. How this works is while you’re here, I take care of you, not the other way around.”
I crossed my arms. “Funny. That still doesn’t sound like thank you.”
Rafe barked a laugh, then scrubbed a hand over his face. “Shit. I’m sorry. And thank you.” He reached for my hand. After a pause, I accepted it. “There are things in my past that I never talk about. It’s as much for your safety as it is for mine. But I need you to just trust that I’m more than qualified to handle an asshole with a knife.”
Normally that would have sounded like a line to me, but I knew coming from him, it was the complete truth. I squeezed his hand back.
“Okay. But I just need you to acknowledge one thing.”
“What’s that, Diana?”
I secretly thrilled at the way his voice lowered to a near growl when he said my name. Because my vagina would swear I had skin in the game.
“I just need you to acknowledge that I totally saved your life back there.”
After a beat, Rafe let out a roar of laughter.
I stared. A completely unguarded, laughing Rafe was vajayjay kryptonite.Wow. Something pulled deep and low in my abdomen just as my nipples tightened to pebbles.
At my gasp, he sobered quickly. The air changed around us, and I shivered. I knew what was coming before he even moved, but there was no bracing for it. He gently tugged me against him, giving me every chance to pull back, but no matter the commands my brain gave, my body refused to comply.
Sorry, brain can’t come to the phone right now. She’s been body snatched by the libido.
Rafe slid his arms around me, bringing my body against his. His lips were gentle but demanding. A spike of electricity flared between us, scorching my lips when his tongue dipped in. With a low groan, he shifted our angle, kissing me deeper and ripping a moan from me as my whole body started to melt.
I didn’t have the defenses to fight off those long-dormant feelings. Somewhere in the far recesses of my mind, alarm bells rang, starting as a low buzz but quickly intensifying to a sharp clang.
He dragged his lips from mine and stared at me. His muttered curse echoed my own feelings. “We’re going to pick this conversation back up. But right now I need to call this incident in to the office.”
I wished I had something pithy to say, but at the moment my brain was still struggling to rev up and my libido was about ready to cut somebody.
CHAPTERSIX
Rafe
I wasn’t sure how to dispel the awkwardness that lay between us now, so I went with the old standby. Ignore it.
“I’m just going to make that call and take a shower. You can order some food. If you want, I mean. You’ll find a bunch of takeout menus by the phone.”
Diana didn’t seem any more eager to look me in the eye. “Right. I’ll figure it out.”
She spun on her heel and went into the kitchen while I continued down the hall to my room. What the hell was wrong with me? You’d think I’d never kissed a woman before. Memories of her lips, warm and firm against mine, sent another shot of adrenaline through my veins. I’d never had a woman respond to me the way Diana did. So open and completely uninhibited. My response had been just as incendiary.
After a quick status update with Oskar, I hurried through a shower, inspecting my skin while the water pounded on my back. There was a shallow cut on my inner arm. I hadn’t escaped the knife completely it seemed. Considering how shocked I’d been to see Diana standing in that alley, I was lucky I hadn’t taken a knife to the heart.
There was something about the woman that got under my skin. An image of her, soft and needy after the kiss, grabbed me by the dick. Jesus. I was harder at just the thought of her than I’d been for any woman I’d had under me. She distracted me. That made me sloppy.
A dangerous thing.
Not to mention the fact that her story about seeing me while out shopping didn’t quite add up.
Scowling, I cranked the water all the way to cold. The shock to my system wasn’t nearly enough to eradicate all thoughts of her, but it made my erection go down. Slightly.
I toweled off and then walked into my room to find clothes. While I stood in the doorway to the closet, my mind went over the events of the afternoon again and again. She’d shown up in the alley at the worst possible moment, a point in her favor to telling the truth. If she’d been following me all along, I would have noticed. Not to mention she would have had time to find a good hiding place. Add to that the shock on her face at watching me fight. No one could fake that expression. Diana had been terrified.
But despite things having a rational explanation, something about the situation still didn’t sit right with me. With a growl of frustration, I yanked on sweatpants and a T-shirt before leaving my room.
The only way I’d get any real answers was to talk to Diana. Carefully.
