"Are you all right?" He breathes in deep, taking in my scent like a drug.
I don't answer, dangerously close to lowering my very last piece of armor. The piece of armor that's kept me alive all these years. Because, for the first time in my entire life, I can't stand the thought of being alone.
Reed seems to realize I don't want to speak. He falls quiet and holds still for a long while, his nose nestled just behind my ear. Those strong arms cradle me on either side and he keeps his body flush with mine without bearing all his weight on me. It's just right. He just breathes me in while his thumb caresses the other side of my face.
This silence is so intimate. Too intimate. More than the sex. More than the sounds I allowed to trail from my lips.
When I loosen my hold and quietly drop my hands to the mattress, he finally pulls himself up onto his elbows and looks at me properly. His gaze washes over me like a spotlight. The longer we stare at each other, the further our expressions yield to mischievous smiles.
"You have no idea how many times I've done that to you in my head," he says.
The hunger in his eyes is unapologetic and fierce, as if to make up for all the times he couldn't. Or wouldn't.
"You hid it well."
"I'm a professional, Ms. Woods."
"I'd say so. I hope you don't plan on charging me extra for that."
"Of course not. You'd go bankrupt."
"Excuse me, that's a boisterous claim."
"That was some boisterous sex."
"Indeed."
His lips twist upward into one of his rare grins.
God, he's handsome even when he's straight-faced, but his smile is like a gut punch when you least expect it. I lay a hand on his face wishing I could claim him as mine, but fearing someone already has.
"What would your partner say, if she saw us?" I ask.
"She would be royally pissed."
"Out of jealousy?"
"No, it's not like that between us," he says. I work hard to hide the relief that floods me, as he goes on, "She just thinks I'm reckless."
"You seem the opposite of reckless to me."
"I guess you wouldn't know, but I can be impulsive with a knack for bad decisions."
"Give a girl a minute to get dressed before you start calling her a bad decision."
"I wasn't talking about you. Trust me, I've made my share of mistakes and none of them felt this good afterward."
"Do your mistakes typically involve sex?"
"Unfortunately, they don't. Lately, they've involved concussions."
"Ah. Yes, concussions are not very sexy…" I eye the scar over his brow. It's much thicker than it seems at a distance, suggesting it healed from a deep wound. I'm unable to stop myself from bringing my fingertips over it and tracing the raised skin as if it can tell me a story in braille. Reed's smile falters when he realizes what I'm doing.
"Do you have any siblings?"
His question comes out of nowhere.
Did a sibling give him that scar?
"I don't know. I'm sure you already know I was abandoned as an infant." I lower my voice to a dramatic whisper. "It's all very tragic."
I shouldn't expect him to find this amusing, despite my playful tone, but I don't like the way all humor drains from his gorgeous face. He has a file on me sitting on his desk. He knows much more about me than I know about him. In fact, I know nothing about him at all.
"What about you?" I ask. "I know you have a sister, any brothers?"
"Two brothers, both cops."
"Looks like you fit the mold. Is your dad a cop, too?"
"He was, but he's out now."
He stares at my lips, tracing them with long strokes of his forefinger. His touch is soothing and grounding, but his expression grows distant. I stare, transfixed, trying to read past the layers he's so carefully plastered on.
"How'd you get that scar on your brow?"
"This?" He lifts his brow like he's trying as I did to make light of an old wound, but doesn't have the energy. "It's what happens when a fifty-pound kid gets in the way of a two-hundred-pound man."
I touch the scar again. "Your father?"
He lifts his gaze to mine and my heart clenches at what I find there. In a flash, I see a boy with those very eyes witnessing a flurry of violence and blood. Pain and betrayal. Somehow, I know the answer.
"I didn't want to be a cop. Not when a man like him could be one. For years, he trapped my mother in a marriage she couldn't escape from. Trapped me and my siblings in a life we hated."
"But your brothers went on to become cops anyway. And so did you. You're one of the good guys."
"Am I? I lost my temper and knocked a man unconscious. Am I really one of the good guys? When I moved here, all I wanted was a fresh start. I opened up this gym, grew it from the ground up. But two years into it, I finally admitted to myself what I really wanted was to join the force. So, I did, and now I'm right where I said I'd never be."
He doesn't have to say where that is, because it's all there on his face.
Now I'm right where I said I'd never be.
Following in my father's footsteps.
"You were protecting a woman from an assault."
"It's more than that…" He hesitates, like he's about to tell me something he's never said aloud before. His fingers run across my temple and into my hair where it's spread out on the mattress. His gaze grows unfocused, as though his thoughts have pulled him far from this room. "I made it personal. She reminded me of my mother and when he hit her in front of me, I lost it. Then the news broke and the guy turned out to be wealthy and well connected. Somehow, that seemed to matter. But that's what your story is about, isn't it? About the chief's connection to the Thatcher Organization?"
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
But this is what I've led him to believe.
I look down at his lips, wishing he'd kiss me again instead of reminding me of all the things I haven't told him yet. If tomorrow night goes wrong, I want him to be able to say he had no clue what I was up to.
"Well?" he asks. "Are you going to make me fuck the answer out of you?"
"You're welcome to try, Sebastian."
"Alright." He pulls his brows together in mock seriousness. "I just need a few more minutes." I laugh and he muffles the sound from my lips with his own, kissing me before speaking against them. "I like how you say my name. I never liked you calling me Reed."
"Sebastian," I breathe out, jokingly. "Like that?"
His tone grows tantalizing. "Now I need you to say my name like that again. But for real."
"Detective Reed, I'm shocked. You're typically so professional."
"The only thing I want to be a professional at tonight is fucking you so hard you can't sit tomorrow."
I start to tell him I'm already there, already sore. Already marked and ruined and properly fucked. But he grows hard as he says this and before I know it, we're back at it again. My fingers grasping around the grooves of his back muscles as he takes me. Again.
He's passionate and gluttonous, bringing my body a delight it's never known before him. But none of it compares to seeing the way he comes undone, tensing violently before his face relaxes and he all but melts into a satisfied heap on top of me.
We kiss for several long minutes until he seems to force himself to stop and rests his forehead on mine. All of the sounds of our passionate sex seem to echo off the walls long after we fall into the most gratifying sort of silence.
"How am I ever going to stop fucking you?" he asks, almost to himself.
"You don't have to."
"Don't say that. I will seriously keep you in this bed until we waste away. Having you like this, naked underneath me, makes it damn hard to care about anything else. I need you to sober me up because I'm drunk off you."
"Sober you up?"
"Tell me something about you," he says. I raise an eyebrow and he adds, "Something real. Something no file could tell me."
I get what he means. We're encased
in a bubble of our own making. I can't get over how great it feels to be underneath him, the freedom of being able to stare at his face and take in every inch of it without hesitation. To have his bare skin against mine. To have him speak to me in such a low and soothing voice as he runs his fingers through my hair. I'm drunk off this moment, too. But I know we can't stay like this forever. I know eventually he'll pull his body away from mine and this night will be just a memory of a time we lost control. Still, the moment lulls my guard down and I let it, because I'm intent on making this night last as long as it can.
"My dad—the man who adopted me—he was scared of his own shadow. Just a scared man who might have literally worried himself to death."
"And your mother?"
"We lost touch after I left home."
"How do you lose touch with family?"
"She's not family. She never loved me, but to be fair, I didn't make it easy for her to. Still, I realized early on she didn't want me, and the only person who ever did was a neurotic mess."
I surprise myself by saying that. But then, maybe I owe Sebastian some piece of me in turn. Isn't that how trust is built? By letting someone else hold pieces of you, one at a time, and hoping they will keep them safe?
That's how hearts are broken, too.
In my eyes, Sebastian is careful and resolute, and yet even he's been swayed by the influences of his past. I carry the mark of the discarded, he carries the mark of the powerless. We've both sought out careers to gain that which we were denied.
"I'm sorry to hear that. Not having family must be lonely."
"Being alone doesn't mean you're lonely. You could be surrounded by people, by family, by friends, and feel lonelier than someone who doesn't have anyone at all. There's something liberating about not having anyone to disappoint, anyone to lose. I prefer to live that way."
"Sounds to me like you're just afraid."
"Well, I'm not. Not of that. Not of being alone."
"You do realize my job is to tell when people are lying to me?"
"I'm not lying."
"You are. And not just to me. You're lying to yourself." His fingers drag across my skin, absently drawing circles and somehow managing to anchor me to this moment, even while my past threatens to flood me away. "You're naked and you're still scared to bare yourself."
Emotions come in, a tide rising too swiftly for me to prepare for it. I take a slow breath through my mouth, gearing up to respond, but the thought dies at my lips when he brings a hand to the side of my face. He drags his knuckles softly over the skin of my cheek while taking in my features with a mesmerizing gaze full of curiosity and longing.
"Your pride is beautiful," he says, pausing to run his finger over my bottom lip. "But it will keep you from the things your heart wants."
CHAPTER THIRTY
Amelia
I'M NOT SURPRISED WHEN I wake to find Sebastian already gone. I lie still for a few minutes, savoring the weightlessness that's so unlike the heaviness I've been carrying around. It's as though I'm floating inside of myself.
I haven't slept that hard in…I don't know how long.
Last night, I didn't exactly have time to take in my surroundings. But now I can process how tidy his bedroom is. So unlike the chaos of my own apartment, there doesn't seem to be anything out of place.
The bed is in the center of an exposed brick wall, which brings out the warm tones of the dark wood headboard and nightstands. Straight across from the bed is a finished wall, with a large-paned window that pours sunlight into the room.
I slide off the bed and my feet meet the wood floors, which are smooth and spotless. In fact, the entire room is so clean I'm compelled to make the bed as best I can.
As the fog of sleep lifts, a single thought settles into my head and heightens my senses. Tonight's the night. The mayor's party.
On my way to work, I call Susan Levine to coordinate a time and place to make the exchange once I secure her precious pictures. Even over the phone, I can tell she grows more nervous than ever. I'm afraid she's getting cold feet and all I can do is ensure her I would never give away my source. I'd go to jail before I did. I hope she believes me, hope she hears the conviction in my voice, because I mean every syllable down to my core.
When I reach my desk this morning, the very first thing I notice is the absence of the gifts. Again. Two days in a row.
What does this mean?
I settle into my chair and get to work. All day, I battle with an odd weight in the center of my chest. A heaviness I can't place until lunchtime when I receive a message from Sebastian.
[Pick you up at seven?]
I picture his gorgeous face, the small smile twisting his lips when I teased him last night. The protective gleam in his eyes when he took in my features, slowly, as though seeing me for the very first time.
And a sharp pain stabs at my gut, the uncomfortable squirm of the truth.
I haven't been truthful with him and I've even leveraged his dislike toward the chief to influence his decision to invite me.
Focus.
This is about my job. About the truth. A story that needs to be told. A story that will make my career. This isn't about a guy I like. No one's getting hurt. After all, doesn't he have an agenda of his own by bringing me in the first place?
[Thanks, but I'll catch a cab. Got lots of work to do before then.]
My plan is to arrive purposely late, using the advantage of a full house to slip in mostly unnoticed.
[Can't wait to see you.]
I get a flash of his eyes, the way the caramel strands in them light up at my proximity, at my interest.
You're manipulating him.
Manipulator.
I blow out a breath and sit back in my office chair as the word peeks out from a corner of my mind. Maybe this is what it's like to work on such a big story.
Maybe it leaves you covered in grime.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Amelia
SEBASTIAN MEETS ME AT the end of the long driveway as my cab drives off. The sight of him is enough to knock me on my ass. He's wearing his dress uniform from the ceremony earlier in the evening. It's midnight blue, crisp, and square in all the places that accentuate his masculinity. There's a slight blush to his face that tells me he's been drinking, a lightness in his eyes. He catches me staring and a grin curls his lips.
What a change from just a few days ago. He seems relaxed and unafraid to show how glad he is to see me, no longer treating me like something that might explode in his hands if he handles it the wrong way.
He's lowered his guard.
The thought brings my gaze down to the ground as I battle with the guilt threatening to overtake me.
Focus.
I smooth down the sides of my dress without thinking, but become aware when his eyes follow the progression of my hands, moving down my hips to my exposed legs. The way he looks at me has me forgetting to breathe for a second, because I see things spilling from his expression I could never take for granted. Desire in the way he wets his lips just slightly. Restraint in the way he sucks in a subtle breath.
He strides forward and I'm taken back to the first time I saw him. Even then, before I knew anything about him, the world shrank around him, moving out of his way and carving his path to me. Tonight is no different, it's impossible to look anywhere else.
"Hey," I say, playful, even while overcome by unexpected nerves.
He stops a few feet away and tilts his head, a haze still floating across his face.
"Hey? Are you kidding? You're using my own pick-up line against me? Come here."
I walk up to him, encouraged by the playful glint in his eyes. He takes me by the waist, tugs me close, and says, "You can't just show up here looking like that and just say hi." He brings his face to the crook of my neck and plants a kiss there.
His strong hands hold me close to his body and to anyone looking, we may just seem to be a couple in an embrace. But the intimacy of his touch, the promise wove
n into his whisper, make a painful ache throb between my legs.
He inhales and lowers his voice to one I recognize from our time together in the dim light of his bedroom, just last night. "God, Amelia. What are you doing to me?"
The tone sends a pleasing tingle down my spine.
What is he doing to me?
Headlights shine behind us as another car pulls up. This seems to sober us both. Sebastian straightens and holds out his arm for me to loop my own through. We walk in pointed silence up the driveway of the mayor's house. It's a long driveway, perfectly manicured lawn stretching out on either side. The windows of the house glow in the night, and the silhouettes of the party inhabitants move across.
"You look good in that uniform," I say matter-of-factly. "You should wear it more often."
"Only if you promise to wear that dress more often… " He trails off, but shoots me a sideways glance.
His face reflects the light from the front of the house, and something else. Something that stirs with hope as his gaze hovers over my lips. There's a coyness in how he looks at me, like he's replaying last night and the ways our bodies moved and twisted.
Someone from the mayor's security greets us at the door. They let us into a living room crammed with uniformed police officers and their spouses, along with suited politicians and other government workers, with their clean-cut haircuts and shady eyes. It's exactly what I expected. They're all drinking and laughing, guards visibly down, including that of the man whose arm I'm currently holding. But still, the sight of so many uniformed police officers in one room is enough to make me fight the urge to cringe back. A part of me fears my thoughts are projected onto the wall and everyone will know I'm here tonight with every intention of stealing something from the mayor's possession.
For the first time, the reality of my plan, the absurdity of it, diminishes my confidence. I clutch Sebastian's arm tighter, but I only realize I do when he looks at me and asks, "Are you all right?"
I don't get a chance to answer. Someone tugs at my free arm. I turn in time to see a blonde woman, dressed in full cocktail attire, looking like a million bucks in her gorgeous red dress.
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