by Paige Tyler
Triana shook her head. “No, I’m okay. I just need time to process everything. It all happened so fast.”
Fast was an understatement. One moment, her mother had been talking about the lawyer making an offer for the shop and everything in it, and the next, Remy was beating up Murphy’s goons. The entire thing couldn’t have lasted more than a minute, but while Triana had been freaking out, her heart thundering in her chest as she tried to understand why they hadn’t called the police, her mother had acted like a brawl in the middle of her shop wasn’t a big deal.
After Murphy and his crew left, her mom had gone about her business while Triana stood there gaping like a fish out of water, saying she was heading out to attend an emergency meeting of the local shop owners about coordinating preparations for the storm in the event it turned in New Orleans’s direction. Then her mother gave her and Remy hugs and told him to bring his friends over for dinner tomorrow night, before flipping over the closed sign and walking out.
Triana tucked her hair behind her ear with a trembling hand. “Are you sure it was safe to let Mom go out there on her own? What if those men are waiting somewhere out there?”
Remy reached across the table and took her hands in his. She couldn’t help noticing how small hers looked compared to his and that they’d stopped shaking the moment he touched her—as if he was some kind of security blanket she liked to hold on to.
Triana cringed a little at that admission. She might work for a crime lab that supported the Houston Police Department, but clearly she wasn’t built for tense situations. She’d been worthless down in the shop.
“Those men are currently on their way to the nearest emergency room,” Remy assured her. “They have no interest in anything beyond pain relief at the moment.”
Triana supposed she could believe that. She was pretty sure she’d heard bones break when those two thugs had tried to get in Remy’s way. She had no idea how he’d done it, but maybe it had something to do with his SWAT training. Hopefully those goons had been scared off for good. The idea that they might come after her mother at some point when Remy wasn’t there scared the crap out of her.
Regardless of what Remy said, something told her there was a good chance those men, or others like them, would come back. And she and Remy would both be going back to Texas soon.
“All that stuff about buying the shop is BS,” she said quietly. “While I’m sure Murphy and whoever he’s working for would be thrilled to get his hands on this place—it’s worth a thousand times what Mom’s family paid for it back in the day—the offer to buy it is about the necklace my father wore. I guess they thought she’d take one look at the amount on the check and forget about taking the necklace with her when she moved.”
Remy gently caressed her hand with his fingers. “But you knew your mom wouldn’t sell, right?”
Triana nodded. “Deep down, yeah. This place has been in her family for a long time. It’s where all her memories are, especially those she made with my dad.”
She smiled as she thought about the conversation she and her mother had earlier, when she’d told Triana she’d fallen for her father the moment they’d met.
“What?” Remy asked softly.
She shook her head. “Nothing. Just something Mom told me today about her and Dad. It was a special memory she has of him and this place and is yet another reason she’d never sell the shop. Not voluntarily, anyway.”
“And she’s not going to have to,” Remy said firmly. “If Gemma has any more problems with these people, my guys and I will go pay Murphy a visit. We may look like poster children for Officer Friendly, but trust me, we can be very persuasive when we want to be.”
She laughed. She was sure that if Remy or any of those other big cops from Dallas showed up at Murphy’s office, the guy would probably flee the city within the hour. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but she felt better knowing Remy would do something personally if those jerks threatened her mother again.
“I can see you being very persuasive, considering how quickly you handled those guys downstairs earlier,” she said. “Speaking of which, how were you were able to push them around so easily? I know you have training on your side, but those men were nearly as big as you.”
He chuckled. “It’s my experience that size rarely matters as much as people thinks it does. Most of the time, it usually comes down to locating that one sensitive spot on the other person, then knowing what to do with it when you find it.”
Triana lifted a brow. “Are we still talking about how you handled those goons downstairs?”
He gave her a sexy half smile, and she realized he’d been playing with her, trying to get her to stop stressing over the stuff she’d seen downstairs. It was amazing how he could be so in tune with her emotions and what she needed at any particular moment.
She was still thinking about that and all the stuff her mom had said about falling fast simply being a way of knowing you’d found the right person you were meant to be with, when Remy suddenly pushed back his chair and stood, tugging her to her feet.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you what I mean.”
Curious about what he meant by that, Triana let him guide her across the kitchen and through the living room, into the short hallway that led to her old bedroom. Her heart began to beat faster all over again, but now it was for a different reason.
Remy stopped and turned so suddenly she almost ran right into his chest. Before she could move, he put a hand on her shoulder and gently nudged her up against the wall in the hallway. Her pulse skipped a beat. It was kind of crazy how fast he could get her going.
Triana thought he was going to kiss her, but instead of capturing her mouth with his, he stayed where he was, one big hand on her shoulder pinning her to the wall.
“Now imagine that I’m one of those thugs from downstairs,” he said. “What do you do?”
She stared up at him, sure he was kidding. That was definitely not the image she wanted in her head right then. “Is now really the best time for a lesson in self-defense?”
“Something else you’d rather be doing?” he asked, a knowing smile teasing the corner of his mouth.
“Yeah, there is.”
“Great,” he said. “Then show me what you’d do and we can move on to that something else you’d rather be doing.”
She considered trying to distract him with a kiss, but the firm set of his jaw dissuaded her. He was serious about this. Sighing, she gazed up at him, trying to imagine what she could do if a man as tall and muscular as Remy were pinning her to a wall like this. After a moment, she shrugged.
“I guess I would punch the guy.”
“Where?”
She looked at Remy like he was speaking a foreign language. “Where?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Where would you punch me?”
She lifted her hand and balled it into a fist, then gently rested it on the side of his strong, sexy, scruff-covered jaw. That’s where everyone got punched in movies. “Here?” she asked.
He frowned. “Not unless you want to break your hand. Remember what I said earlier about finding that one sensitive spot on the other person?”
She couldn’t resist a teasing little smile. “And your sensitive spot would be…?”
His mouth quirked. “There’s the obvious one, and if you can kick or knee a guy there, it will definitely work. But if all you can do is punch, there are other places just as sensitive.”
“Like?” she prompted, hating the idea that she might need to know this kind of stuff.
He pointed at a spot just below his sternum, right in the center. “There’s the solar plexus. A hard strike to this area will definitely knock the wind out of someone and give you time to run.” He tapped his index finger to the side of his head. “A punch to the temple is going to hurt your hand, but it will temporarily stun most people. If you don’t
think you can hit a person there hard enough, grab the top of the ear and yank. That will definitely take the fight out of the toughest bad guy. However, if you only have one chance to hit a person and it’s life or death, aim for the throat, and punch as hard as you can. At the very least, it will give you time to get away.”
Triana leaned against the wall, praying she was never in a position to have to do any of the things Remy had showed her. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to.
“Okay,” he said softly. While he still towered over her, his expression was less serious than it had been before. “Self-defense lesson is over for the evening. Sorry I spoiled the mood we had going on there, but with what happened downstairs earlier, I felt it was something we needed to talk about, and I didn’t want to let it wait.”
She nodded. “I understand. And you didn’t spoil the mood.”
His smile told her he was fully aware she was fibbing her butt off. “Why don’t you change and we’ll get out of here? Everyone is probably wondering where we are.”
When Remy took a step back, she grabbed his hand, pulling him back. He gave her a questioning look, but before he could say anything, she stood on tiptoe and kissed him.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“For what?” he asked.
“For being more worried about me and my safety than you are about getting naked with me. It sounds like something any guy would do, but trust me when I tell you, it isn’t. Most men are so focused on what’s important to them that they’d never tell a girl something she really needed to hear, no matter how badly she needed to hear it, if it got in the way of what they wanted.”
He chuckled, looking a little embarrassed at the compliment. “That’s me—Sir Remy Lancelot, your knight in shining armor.”
“Actually, that’s exactly what I’m starting to think you are,” she said.
Before he could say anything else self-deprecating and humble, she pulled him down for another kiss. And this time, she did it forcefully enough to convince him he definitely hadn’t spoiled any mood.
Triana knew she had him when his hands went around to cup her bottom and tug her hard against him. She could already feel his cock hardening in his jeans as his tongue slipped into her mouth and tangled with hers.
Her body immediately responded to his touch, desire spiraling through her to coalesce between her thighs. Clearly, it took very little on his part to get her going. If the hard-on in his jeans was any indication, she was good at getting him going too.
That’s why it surprised her when Remy lifted his head and took a step back. “I really was serious about what I said earlier. If we don’t get moving, we’re going to be late meeting up with everyone at the club. I know you really wanted to go dancing.”
She slid one hand down to the front of his jeans, caressing the bulge she found there. “I definitely want to go dancing, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a quickie first.”
Remy’s beautiful hazel eyes glinted, reflecting every ray of light in the hallway. “A quickie, huh?”
She tugged at his belt, unbuckling it. “I told you this morning that I can work fast when I have to, so I guess the real question is, can you?”
“Tell me you have a condom nearby.” His voice was a husky whisper, making her legs quiver. “Then you’ll see how fast I can work.”
Triana expected to find Remy naked and in her bed by the time she ran back from grabbing the condom out of the purse she’d left on the couch, but instead, he was standing in the hallway, his T-shirt still on and his jeans down around his ankles, his gorgeous hard-on at the ready. Okay, he really did intend to work quickly. She could handle that.
As difficult as it was to do, she resisted the urge to drop to her knees in front of him and instead helped him get the condom on. The moment she had that extremely enjoyable task done, she reached for the hem of her dress, ready to yank it over her head. She never got the chance because Remy pressed her back up against the wall and shoved the dress up to her waist. Excitement rushed through her at the idea of making love with most of their clothes still on. There was something so urgent and primal about it.
She hooked her fingers in her panties so she could push them down, but Remy grabbed her hands and pinned them to the wall above her head with one of his. “I’ll get those for you.”
Triana gasped as she felt something sharp graze the skin along her hip. A moment later, there was a tug and a ripping sound, then the remnants of her panties were flying through the air. She wondered briefly where the heck he’d hidden a pocketknife, but then he released her wrists to nudge the underside of her chin, tipping her face up to his. At the same time, the fingers of his other hand traced along the folds of her pussy, making her gasp.
“How did you get my panties off like that?” she whispered.
Remy flashed her a grin, then pressed his lips to her neck. “SWAT magic,” he murmured in her ear. “You don’t have a problem with a little magic, do you?”
She opened her mouth to reply, but the words came out as nothing more than a moan as his mouth did amazing things to the sensitive skin of her neck while one of his fingers slipped inside her. “Well, I was planning to wear those panties tonight when we went out dancing,” she finally gasped as his finger wiggled around, making her wetter by the second.
“I guess that means you’ll just have to go out tonight without any panties,” he said with a deep chuckle. “What a shame.”
Triana whimpered. Like she needed another visual to get her more excited. The thought of going dancing without wearing anything under her dress was scandalous and something she never would have done with anyone but Remy.
She was about to tell him as much, but he chose that moment to slip his finger out of her wetness. Getting a firm grip on her hips with both hands, he lifted her up and pinned her against the wall. She didn’t have time to wonder how he was able to hold her there so effortlessly because in the next breath, he buried himself deep inside her.
She gasped loud enough to be heard out on the street as he moved his hands to the underside of her ass and thrust into her urgently. All she could do was wrap her arms and legs around him and hold on for dear life as he took her harder than anyone ever had. She’d never been with a man so strong, so animalistic…so perfect.
As she buried her face against Remy’s strong shoulder while she came, Triana couldn’t imagine not being in his arms for the rest of her life.
Chapter 10
Triana had been sure her mother had lost her mind when she’d set three big cast-iron pots on the stove that morning to make dinner for Remy and his friends.
“It’s just the four of them. You know that, right?” Triana said as she helped her mom chop mountains of peppers, onions, celery, and herbs. “They can’t eat this much jambalaya, or we’ll have to roll them down the steps.”
“Don’t worry about that,” her mother laughed. “Something tells me those boys are going to show up here with an appetite.”
It turned out her mother had been right. Remy and his three friends had oohed and aahed in appreciation of the aroma coming from the kitchen before they’d even gotten upstairs to the dining room. And once they’d started eating, they hadn’t messed around. They’d put away more of the thick, spicy stew than Triana would have ever thought possible. And that was on top of the huge tray of corn bread they’d demolished. How the heck could guys who looked like they did eat like that? Triana put on weight just watching them.
“You have to give me this recipe,” Max told her mother as he inhaled another piece of corn bread, then helped himself to seconds—or whatever it was called when someone ate six bowls of anything. “I have to make this the next time I’m running the grills at the cookouts we have at our SWAT compound in Dallas.”
“I’ll write everything down for you,” her mother promised. “If you’re making it on a grill, you’ll have to watch the heat and
stir it constantly, or all the rice will sink to the bottom and burn to a crisp.”
Sitting there at the table in a dining room that had started feeling way too lifeless since her father had died and listening to her mom share jambalaya cooking tips with Max made Triana smile. She hadn’t realized it until now, but Remy and his friends reminded her a lot of her father. She couldn’t quite put her finger on why she thought so exactly. None of them looked like him or acted like him. They simply had a presence that struck her as familiar. She was almost certain her mother felt it, too, which was probably why she was having such a good time.
Triana was still thinking about that when she realized Remy was looking at her in a way that had her stomach doing backflips. Their eyes locked, and while everyone around them was laughing and talking, she and Remy simply shared a moment alone in a room full of people.
There was no denying it. She was falling for Remy—hard. Even though she’d known him since high school, she’d only been seeing him romantically for three days, but she already wanted to spend time with him after they both went back to Texas at the end of the week. Dallas and Houston were only a few hours’ drive from each other. If she and Remy wanted to, they could make it work.
If anyone had told her she’d have these kinds of thoughts about a guy so soon after getting involved with him, she would have told them they were crazy, then tightened the straps on their straitjackets herself and called for a pickup wagon. But it wasn’t crazy. She’d never met anyone like Remy, and no matter how much she got of him, she always found herself wanting more.
Part of it was the amazing sexual chemistry between them. There was no denying that. She loved sex as much as the next girl, but with Remy she didn’t just love it—she craved it all the time. That quickie in the hallway last night had been amazing and probably should have left her satiated for days. Instead, after a couple of hours dancing with him at a club on Bourbon Street, she’d dragged him back to his hotel room for another round of lovemaking that probably qualified as an out-of-body experience.
