“I’m sure you could.”
They moved, were in each other’s arms in a heartbeat, mouths joined in a feverish, desperate kiss. It didn’t seem to matter that they both knew they shouldn’t be doing this. It was way past that. They needed each other and wanted each other and were going to have each other.
Ryan shoved up her T-shirt and palmed her breasts, squeezing their fullness. When he captured her nipples in his fingertips she gasped, her nipples still tender from his attention a few days ago. Sensations shot from breast to womb, and she grew even wetter.
He buried his face between her breasts, his rough beard scraping exquisitely. His hand delved into her shorts, found her liquid core and she lifted her butt off the couch. Fast. She wanted it fast, needed an orgasm now.
She pushed her shorts down, reached for him, pulled his hard throbbing length out of his boxers and stroked.
“Slow down,” he hissed.
“No.” She gave her head a jerky shake, shoved him down onto his back on the couch, one leg off, one foot still on the floor, and climbed on top of him.
“Okay, okay.” A smile flickered over his mouth and he gripped her hips as she took his cock in her fist, centered herself over him and lowered herself down onto it. He sucked in a breath and she let one out in a long whoosh, loving the way he filled her. “Here.” He reached for her, found her clit, rubbed with his thumb in tight circles. She rode him, rising and lowering, taking him so deep it hurt, but it was a good hurt, a beautiful, fulfilling ache, and then a starburst exploded around her in a shower of sparks and she cried out.
Ryan’s hips lifted below her as he thrust up and into her, his fingers firm on her hips, and she blinked the fog away from her vision to watch his face as he too came.
And then she realized they hadn’t used a condom.
Chapter Nineteen
“Shit.”
Ryan lay there, chest heaving, body tingling from his scalp down to his toes. “What?”
“We didn’t use a condom.”
“Yeah. Shit.” His head lifted off the couch. Their eyes met. And held.
“I’m sorry,” he said on a groan and let his head fall back. His cock still pulsed inside her and he could feel his semen seeping out of her. Too fucking late now. “Damn, I can’t believe I did that.”
“I think it was my fault.” She eased herself off him and sat beside him. He swung his feet to the floor. He reached for the box of tissues and offered her some. “Uh…thanks.” She snatched a couple of tissues and he tried not to watch as she mopped herself up. He knew the amount of semen had nothing to do with fertility or virility but he couldn’t help feel a little pang of masculine pride at the copious amount of fluid oozing out of her. He wiped himself off too.
“I really needed that,” she continued. “I, uh…so I’m sorry. But don’t worry.” She bit her lip and the unfamiliar uncertainty of the gesture tugged at his heart. “I’m on the Pill and I’m not…I don’t…you won’t catch anything from me,” she finished in a rush. A smile pulled one corner of his mouth up.
“Same here,” he assured her. “I haven’t had sex for a long time. I mean, before you. And never in my life without a condom.” Christ, it was true. His first bareback experience and he’d practically missed it, it had been over so fast. He sighed, shoved his hair back. “C’mere.” He tugged her up against him and lay back down. She laid her head on his chest, traced her fingers through his chest hair, then skated her palm over the bulge of his pec up to his shoulder.
“Why were you awake?” she murmured. “You seemed so exhausted.”
“I was exhausted.” His hand stroked down over her back to her butt and cupped a curve there. She moved against him, as if she liked that. “I just started thinking about stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
He moved a shoulder, squeezed her cheek again. “Just stuff.”
She lifted her head and propped her chin on one hand to look at his face. “Talk about it.”
When he still hesitated, she lowered her chin and looked up at him through her eyelashes. “Hey. I told you my darkest, craziest secrets. Yours can’t be any worse than mine.”
He met her gaze and held it for a long moment. She was right. She’d exposed herself to him, made herself vulnerable. Why should he be afraid of doing that with her? She was probably the only person he would ever do that with. He swallowed. “I was thinking about…” He stopped, unsure of his words. She waited. “When Vince walked in, the first thing he did was say how sorry he was about my mom and gave me a hug.” Sera nodded. “Nobody else did that. Back at the office, Josh, Darren, Manny, everyone else we work with…I’ve known those guys for years. They knew my mom was sick. And nobody said a word. In fact that asshole Darren seemed pissed that I needed to take time off.”
Sera dragged her teeth over her bottom lip.
“Then Vince and Carly, and A.J. and Zocco…they all cared more than my coworkers. These guys are criminals…but they’re almost better friends to me than anyone.” He closed his eyes briefly, his hands tightening on Sera’s body. “You know, one of the things we have to be careful about going undercover is that we don’t go so far under we can’t come up.”
“Are you worried about that? About yourself?”
“No. I know myself. I’m okay. But it did…scare me. When I felt like that, and then I had to remind myself about the scummy things these guys have done, it scared me. And then I thought, I’ll be sitting in court testifying against these guys one day. And I almost felt like I’d be betraying my friends.” He stopped, swallowed. “That’s a really bad way to be feeling.”
She smoothed her hand over his shoulder, the gesture tender and reassuring. “Yes. It is. But you know it is, and that’s what matters.”
“I’m okay,” he said again. “Just saying it out loud helps. Thanks for not freaking out. Just sometimes it all gets to you, you know? The stress is almost paralyzing. The fact that we’re always in danger, always on edge, always needing to be thinking two steps ahead…after a while it wears on you. Then I was worried about my mom, and now…” He closed his eyes again.
“I know,” she said softly. “I feel it too, Ryan. After what happened to Carly, I didn’t know if I could go on. If he hurt her again…”
“Yeah. I know. People get hurt. Things get stolen from innocent people. People buy drugs and take them and wreck their lives, and we let it happen just so we can have evidence.”
“I know it’s all good in the end,” she continued. “We have to think that, right?”
“Right.” He opened his eyes. “Thanks, Sera.”
“For what?”
“For listening. For understanding.”
“Yeah, I guess. For me too. In some ways, this is way harder than I thought it would be. If it weren’t for you…”
A connection stretched between them, drawing them together, close, inexorably, as their gazes held, warm and poignant.
“You know, I was thinking about something,” she said, dropping her gaze.
“What?”
After a long pause, she replied, “My dad.”
“What about him?”
“I was thinking about your mom dying, and about Leo and how he misses his daughter, and…I…well, maybe I should try to find my dad.”
He went very still, knowing how huge this was for her.
“Okay.”
“But I don’t know where he is,” she said, voice feathery.
He waited a couple of heartbeats. “Want me to track him down?” he asked, oh so casually.
After a short pause, she said, “You would do that?”
“I could try.”
“Um. Okay.” She pressed her cheek to his chest and they lay together in silence, and he stroked her long hair.
“I didn’t want you here,” he said after another long silence.
“I know.”
“But now…I’m glad you are.”
She went very still and silent for a moment. “We shouldn’t be
doing this.” She tried to roll away from him, but he caught her, pulled her back against him.
“Doing what, exactly?”
She hesitated. “We shouldn’t be having sex. We’re partners.”
He sighed. It wasn’t the sex that was the dangerous part. It was all the feelings percolating inside him for her. That was what should not be happening. Emotions and becoming personally involved with someone on a case were the biggest mistakes he could make when he was trying to prove to his supervisor he could do it without.
Again she rolled away from him and he let her go. She stood beside the couch and looked down at him, all long, tangled dark hair, sexy mouth and shadowed eyes, her body slender and toned.
She was right. They should not be doing this.
“We need to regroup.”
Manny, Ryan and Sera sat at the kitchen table the next morning, drinking coffee.
“I need to get Zocco’s confession,” Ryan said, staring into his black coffee. His insides burned with determination. If he accomplished nothing else on this op, he wanted to do that. He wanted to solve a murder and pin it on the gang. If it could be proved that a murder was committed on behalf of the gang, not only the individual murderer would go down but it would be huge toward indicting the entire gang. Nobody had ever done that before.
“You were dying to talk about that last night, when he was here, weren’t you?” Sera clasped her hands around her coffee mug, a small smile playing around her mouth.
“Yeah. Just couldn’t work it in there.”
“I’m onto more machine guns,” Manny said. “I think I can get this guy in Bakersfield to sell them to me.”
“And I’m going to do a couple more big buys from Zocco,” Sera added. “And then I’m ready to push to meet Casas. To see if he’ll tell me about the lab.”
Ryan’s eyes shot to her. “What was that last night? I forgot to ask.” Somehow she’d squeezed more cash out of Darren while he was gone.
“One more buy.” She shrugged. “I have to keep showing him that I can sell the stuff. Lots of it. It’s getting easier to get big quantities from him.”
Ryan looked at Manny. “How’d she convince Darren to give her the cash for that?”
She waved a hand in front of his face. “Hello. I’m right here. Ask me!”
“Uh…sorry.” He’d forgotten how much that irritated her. And now he knew the reason why. Holy crap.
“It wasn’t a problem.” She met his eyes. “The next one probably won’t be either, but after that…he’s going to have a shit fit when I ask him for a hundred grand.”
“Jesus Christ!” He almost choked on his coffee. “You’ll never get that from him, Sera.”
“Yes, I will.” Her small chin firmed with determination. “I have to.”
Ryan exchanged a glance with Manny. “Uh…don’t get your hopes up.”
“That’s the whole point of my being here,” she said. “To get to the lab.”
“Yeah, but…can’t you do it for less money? Somehow?”
“We’ll get the money back. That last buy will never happen. We’re going to arrest them then. When we find the lab and get in there and confirm what they’re doing—everyone will move in and we’ll make the arrests.”
“Uh…that’s an idea,” Ryan said. His mind raced. “We’re going to need to talk more about that. With Darren. And the whole team. You can’t just go making your own plans, Sera.” She really had to learn that she was part of a team.
She scowled. “I know that.”
“Okay.” They’d cross that bridge when the water was under it, or whatever the hell that expression was. “Meanwhile, we need to figure out how to get Zocco talking about that murder.”
“Maybe I can,” Sera offered.
Ryan sat back in his chair. “Yeah? How.”
“I don’t know. It was Carly who told me about it. She knows. Maybe it’s okay if I know too. A little indiscreet girl talk.”
“You don’t want to get Carly in shit with him,” Ryan cautioned. “I don’t know if I’d do that…”
“Well, you’re not me.” She stood and moved over to the coffeemaker on the counter to pour more steaming brew into her cup. “I’ll see what I can do. No guarantees.” She sipped her coffee and her face was veiled by the steam wafting from the cup as she stared back at him.
“Sera…”
“Believe me, Ryan, I won’t do anything to hurt Carly. After what happened…” She shook her head. “That’s the last thing I’d do.”
He didn’t know how she thought she was going to do this, and his gut cramped up at the possibility that she could cause more problems than she solved. “I don’t like it,” he bit out.
She heaved a heavy sigh. “I know. You don’t like much that I do.”
Memories of the two of them rolling around the bed together and the things she’d done that he’d liked very much invaded Ryan’s head, and he almost groaned.
He ran a hand over his face. He’d accepted that her version of reality was different than his, but no less real. It wasn’t that crazy. Lots of people claimed to have had near-death experiences, and he’d rather accept her reality and have her there than reject it and have her gone.
Chapter Twenty
They had their opportunity a few days later when everyone gathered at The Patch one night. Beers were flowing, joints were being passed around and everyone seemed in good spirits. Chatter rose and fell around the head-banging rhythm of Judas Priest’s Breaking the Law and the crack of balls on the pool table. Ryan bought several rounds of drinks, mostly because Zocco was there, part of the group, and he hoped to loosen his tongue with alcohol.
He and Manny had come up with a strategy.
Vince and Zocco dropped into empty chairs with perfect timing.
“So you’re saying you’d kill someone for three hundred bucks?” Ryan asked Manny, leaning on the table with both elbows.
Manny leaned back in his chair. “Maybe.”
“What’re you talking about?” Vince asked.
“Friend of mine just got sent to Legaldo.” Ryan named the maximum security prison not far from Clover City. “He admitted he killed a guy. Shot him because the guy owed him three hundred bucks.” He gave a short laugh. “I just wondered what would make a guy kill someone. Three hundred bucks doesn’t seem worth it to me.”
“Seems boneheaded to me,” Vince agreed.
“Harsh is an idiot,” Ryan said, referring to his fictitious friend.
“No, he’s not,” Manny said. “He knew what he was doing.”
“He’s in fucking jail!” Ryan said with a laugh.
“Sometimes you just gotta do these things,” Manny said. “Right, guys?” He looked at Vince and Zocco.
“Right,” Zocco affirmed with a nod.
“You’ve never killed anyone,” Ryan said to Manny. “What the hell do you know?”
“How do you know I’ve never killed anyone?” Manny frowned.
Zocco grinned. “Who’d you kill, man?”
Manny’s frown deepened. “I’m not gonna say I did or I didn’t.”
“Why not?” Ryan grinned too. “Pussy.”
“I’m no pussy, asshole. I just don’t want to talk about it.”
Zocco laughed. “Why not? Nobody here’s gonna turn you in.”
Perfect. Excitement flowed through Ryan’s veins. “How about you?” He lifted his chin at Zocco. “Ever kill someone?”
“Hell yeah.” Zocco seemed proud of it. Vince sliced him a glance.
“No shit?” Ryan leaned back in his chair.
Zocco started to speak but Vince leaned forward. “Shut the fuck up, Zee.”
Zocco turned to his chapter president and gave him an inquiring look. “What?”
“Just shut up.”
Shitfuckdamn. Ryan wanted to curse out loud. Vince was smarter than Zocco. But then, that wasn’t saying much.
“Hey, I wanna play pool,” Zocco said. And he rose from his chair and made his way to the back o
f the bar where the two pool tables sat.
Hell. There went that opportunity. Vince was supposedly the one who’d ordered the hit, and he wasn’t going to talk. It had to be Zocco. And he had to get him away from Vince.
Ryan searched the room for Sera and found her on the dance floor with Carly and Jessie. She always dressed a little trampy when they went out with the Angels—tight jeans and T-shirts, heavier makeup—but tonight she looked especially…well, hot. The same outfit on one of the other woman would’ve looked mega slutty, but on her it was just sexy.
A short, black skirt showed off her spectacular long legs. She’d told him she was an athlete in high school, running track, throwing shot put and javelin. That must’ve contributed to those long, toned muscles in her legs, the sleek muscles in her shoulders and arms revealed by the teal-blue halter top tied around her neck. The silky fabric didn’t hide the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra, and her tits jiggled enticingly beneath it as she danced. She laughed at something Jessie said, and her bright smile sucked the air out of Ryan’s lungs.
Christ. He found himself thinking about her almost all the time. That was bad. Very bad. He needed to be thinking about the case, needed to be on top of his game. His eyes were continually drawn to her, wherever she was in the bar, whoever she was talking to. Then he scowled as a man approached her on the dance floor and said something to her. She shook her head, flashed him a smile, and kept dancing with the other women.
One corner of Ryan’s mouth turned down. The guy must’ve asked her to dance. Back off, pal. She’s taken. The thought was instinctive and he had to stop and remind himself it wasn’t strictly true. He drained his beer, considered having another, but knew he had to keep his wits about him.
Then Vince ordered another round anyway. He’d just have to drink it reeaaal slow. His eyes met Manny’s and only a flicker gave any sign that he shared Ryan’s frustration.
Sera and the girls returned to the table, laughing and breathless, and there wasn’t room for enough chairs so Sera sat herself down on Ryan’s lap and slung one arm around his neck. She smelled delicious, warm and fruity-sweet. She reached for his beer and took a big drink and he let her. Her breasts pressed into his chest as she reached across him to set the bottle back on the table. His hands curved around her hips. She smiled down at him, dark-shadowed eyes gleaming, lips shiny with red gloss, and once again he forgot to breathe.
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