by BJ Harvey
My heart has palpitations at the thought of Zach coming back to me—for me. What on earth could he want at midnight on a Sunday after leaving me pent up and speechless just twenty minutes ago?
Then the three shots of tequila kick in and feisty, take-no-prisoners Dani comes out to play.
“Leave him out there,” I tell her.
Abi clutches her heart with one hand and wipes away a non-existent tear with the other. “I’m so proud right now,” she says.
“Yeah, yeah . . .” I sweep my hand toward the door. “Don’t you have a job and a penis to get back to?”
“Say penis again. It makes me hot when you go all grown-up on me.”
“P. E. N. I. S,” I spell out, enunciating every letter.
He knocks again, and the look of absolute delight on Abi’s face has me biting my lip to stifle my laughter.
“You’re going to have to put him out of his misery, Dan. I’ll let him in, you can make him work hard for it, and kick him out and make him work for it all over again,” she says with an amused glint in her eye.
“You’re evil, you know that?”
“You wouldn’t have me any other way, and besides, you can’t make it too easy. He did the crime; he needs to do the time.”
“I know.”
“He’s on my shit list right now for making you cry.”
“He didn’t make me cry as such . . .”
“Almost.”
“Almost is different from actually doing it.”
He knocks again. “I can hear you, you know.” Holy shit. “Please open the door, Dani. I need to explain.”
Abi raises her brow at me and I nod. “See you in the morning, okay?” she says quietly.
“Okay,” I whisper back.
“We can psychoanalyze the whole situation when you’re not three shots in and under his voodoo spell.”
“Voodoo spell?” I ask, my lips twitching.
“Hot alpha men have this powerful force field that pulls you in and shrouds all rational thought beyond ‘get that cock into me now.’”
I smile and nod. “I’ll keep my shield up in case he uses his secret weapon.”
“You do that,” she replies as she opens the front door and stands side on to me. All I see are her eyes bugging out of her head, which slowly looks upward.
“I like myself a tall man but you’re ridiculous,” she states, talking to Zach for the first time.
“Um . . . thank you?” he says back to her. “Can I speak to Dani?”
“She’s lying on the couch enjoying José.”
“What?”
There’s no way I miss the raspy undertone in his voice. “Come in, Zach. Abi was just leaving.”
“Nice to meet you, Abi,” he says, stepping into my line of sight as Abi disappears out the front door. I hear a muttered, “You hurt her, I’ll castrate you . . . slowly.”
“Not looking to become a eunuch anytime soon.”
“Good,” she bites out. “Bye, Dan,” she yells to me, and then the door is closing and yet again, I’m alone with Zach Cooper in my apartment, except this time, his expression is set to amusement as he stands all the way over on the opposite side of the room and looks at me lounging haphazardly—yet completely comfortably—on my couch.
“How’s José?”
“Very enjoyable,” I reply curtly.
“You pissed at me?
“I’m actually perplexed at your ability to disappear into thin air in the blink of an eye. Does the CFD know of this superpower of yours?”
His brows shoot up before he throws his head back and laughs. “You’re adorable.”
“And you should really explain your vanishing act from before,” I throw out haughtily. That gets some action.
He walks toward me and stops near our other couch. “Can I sit down?”
I tilt my head to look up at him. “I’m not going to make you stand the whole time, Zach. Besides, it would hurt my neck if I had to watch you all the way up there for too long.”
“We can’t have that now, can we?” he says with a chuckle.
“Stop being sexy when you’re obviously here to tell me what we did was wrong,” I grumble, diverting my eyes from his.
“Shit,” he says, moving quickly to sit his ass on my coffee table, the same piece of furniture I instantly decide to induct into the Zach Cooper Hall of Fame tomorrow so that it’s preserved for future generations. “Dani, you did nothing wrong. Nothing.”
Not known for being able to control my temper at the best of times, I swing my legs over the side of the couch and sit ramrod straight, looking him. “Then what was that, Zach? Because I may be kind of drunk now, but I knew exactly what I was doing twenty minutes ago when I told you I liked you and—”
He leans forward, watching me as he glides his hands down over his thighs and cups my knees, rendering me speechless—and if I’m going to be honest, definitely breathless. Oh shit, oh jeez. What if he came back to finish what we started? What if he tried to stay away but couldn’t get rid of his hard-on and wants to use me to relieve him of it?
He lifts his index finger and gently brushes it between my eyes, tracking the movement as he continues down my nose. “You think too much, Little Grasshopper.” His voice has gone gentle, the rough rasp like velvet being wrapped around my entire body. “You scrunch your nose up when you’re overanalyzing something. It’s adorable as hell.”
My throat feels as dry as the desert but even after he left me high—and definitely not dry—I still want to drown in the mirage that is he.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, attempting to distract myself from the overwhelming desire to jump into his lap.
I stifle a sigh when he takes his hand off my leg and I grit my teeth together to stop myself begging him to touch me again.
“You have to stop tilting your head at me.”
“Why? Will that freak you out too and send you out the door again?” I ask, frowning at him.
“Because whenever you do it, I want to kiss you.”
“But—” Hell, what does one say when the man you’ve wanted to kiss you—and do everything else to you—for the past seven years of your life says that?
He inches forward so his legs frame the outside of mine, putting his hands on my hips and singeing my skin in the process. “Zander is my best friend. He trusts me.” He emphasizes the word trust with a squeeze of his fingers. “If he knew . . .”
Before I can think of what I’m saying, I shock the shit out of myself and Zach too, if his wide eyes are anything to go by. “He doesn’t have to know.”
“Danika, you’re not a woman who should ever be a man’s dirty secret.” His thumbs trail back and forth and it takes everything I’ve got not to squirm in my seat.
“Is my brother the only reason you left?” His whole body freezes and I instantly want to take my words back so he’ll keep touching me. “Just be honest,” I say softly.
“I might have freaked out at what I felt while kissing you. My knee-jerk reaction was because of Zander. He’s the closest thing I’ve got to a brother.”
“Then why did you come back?”
“Because it took ten minutes of walking home, then turning around and walking my ass back to realize that there’s no way I can think of you as only Zan’s sister after I’ve had my tongue in your mouth and your taste on my lips. With just that one kiss, you had me seriously considering the consequences of losing him and keeping you.”
Woman down. Totally out for the fucking count.
I have no comeback for that. There are no words in the English language that I can conjure up right now that would even come close to the epicness of that statement.
“Where . . . ?” I swallow hard and blink rapidly to wrestle the gamut of emotions I’m struggling with. “Where do we go from here?” My body aches for him to scoop me up, then carry me into my bedroom and show me where we go from here, but from the twitching muscle in Zach’s cheek, I know that’s not on the cards. Any chance I
had of a ‘wham, bam, thank you ma’am’ tonight—even if it ended up being a fantastic memory and nothing more—disappeared along with Zach when he walked out earlier. Now, I might have to just rack this evening up to being one of those experiences you lament about for years to come.
“I want to spend some more time alone together. Away from the group—away from any of our friends.”
Well that was not where I saw this conversation going. I was expecting an ‘I’m drunk, you kissed me, I was powerless to resist, but now we have to be adults and forget all about it’ talk, one that if my brother ever found out about, could be swept under the rug as a one-off lapse in judgement on Zach’s part. It would be awkward for a while, but given that I’m known for being awkward and off-center at the best of times, it wouldn’t be anything new.
“Okay,” I blurt out and the beauty of the slow-growing smile that graces his delicious lips almost blinds me.
He drops to his knees between my legs and wraps his arms around my shoulders, pulling me in tight against his chest as I move my hands around his back.
Kissing my hair, he just holds me there for what seems like forever—yet it’s still not long enough or naked enough for my liking. He turns his head so his mouth is at my ear. “I might need some time to catch up to where you’re at with all of this, but I want to get to know you—the real you. I know you’re just as busy as I am with work and family, but I want to make time for this. For us.” He pulls back and moves his hands to rest lightly at either side of my neck, his thumbs gliding from the corners of my mouth down to my jaw while his eyes stare into mine.
“Let’s start as friends,” he says and my heart sinks. There it is—friend-zoned like a master. I must’ve worn my thoughts on my face because his eyes light with amusement and his lips quirk up. “Oh no, Little Grasshopper. If we’re doing this, we’re going to do it right. I’m going to do this right. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to rip your clothes off and bury myself deep inside you.”
“For the record, I’d be totally alright with that.”
He chuckles and flexes his fingers before placing his thumb over my lips and pressing in to silence me. “You keep talking like that and I’ll lose this resolve of mine to do right by you. What I’m saying is, before we get to that place, we need to be sure of what we’re feeling and where we’re heading first.”
I touch my tongue to his thumb. His eyes drop to my mouth and darken before he sweeps it away, allowing me to speak. “I have one request. Until we know whether this is heading where I want it to head—”
“Where do you want this to head?” he interrupts, dipping his head closer to mine.
“I’ve wanted you since I was fourteen.”
“But in the way you want me now?”
I look at him as if he’s got a screw loose and I’m the only person who can fix it. “In all ways. It’s just now, there’s a lot more depth and scope to the ways I want you.”
“Fuck,” he says under his breath. His eyes drop to my mouth again and linger a long time.
“Can we . . . I mean . . .” I take a deep breath and decide to just say what I’m trying to say without filter. “I get enough shit from my brother and sisters as it is for being the youngest, and their built-in need to protect me from anything and everything, as you well know. Abi knows because, well . . . she’s Abi.”
His brows shoot up, and I know I’ve surprised him with my request.
“Only until we know.”
“Only until we know,” I repeat with a nod. “Zach?”
“Right here . . .”
“Can you kiss me now? Because having you this close and not kissing you is screwing with my head, and since it kind of feels like we just reached an agreement of sorts, surely we should seal the deal with a kiss.” I tilt my head to the side and look up at him with a wry grin, one which he matches twofold.
“Deal accepted.” And with those words—and a panty-scorching kiss that I know I’ll be adding to my memoirs without delay—my night gets infinitesimally better.
Do I have regrets about going back to Danika’s apartment on Sunday night? Not one. But I do feel a horrible punch in the gut about the idea of hiding anything from Zander, especially when I’m attending a car accident early Tuesday morning and see Zander’s already on the scene when we pull up.
After extricating the victims from the car by cutting the roof off, then watching them getting loaded into the back of an ambulance heading to Northwestern Hospital, I make my way over to where Zan and his current partner, Emily, are taking a witness statement.
I lift my chin in silent greeting when I reach them and wait for him to finish up.
“Not a nice way to start the week off,” he notes, turning toward me.
“Looks like they’ll be okay though.”
“Yeah. Could’ve been a lot worse.”
“True,” he says with a nod. “Thanks for seeing Dani home last night. Everything go okay?”
More than fucking okay.
“Her apartment is nicer than I expected,” I note.
He laughs. “Who would’ve guessed that the youngest would land on her feet better than the rest of us?”
“You always said she was smart.”
“Man, she is the most intelligent woman I know. She was running circles around me when she was ten years old.”
“I met her roommate, too,” I say, feeling the need to cover my tracks in case Abi says something.
“Abi?” he asks and I nod. “Yeah, she’s a nut that one. Hilarious but completely wild. She’s a part-time stripper at the Pink Monkey.”
Now that piques my interest. “Dani is living with a stripper who works at the same place you used to be casually employed at?” I say, trying to hold back a laugh.
He snorts. “It was only once or twice there but yep. She’s harmless though and seems to be a good influence on Dani. Without Abi, she’d be at the office until all hours or locked up in her room playing games the rest of the time.”
I can’t find out anything else then because Zan gets a call over the radio at the same time as my lieutenant calls my name. “Gotta go. Catch you later in the week.”
“Sounds good. Stay safe,” he says, sitting down in his squad car parked at the curb
“Always.”
The following Friday morning I’ve just got home after finishing a really long overnight shift, full of callout after callout, when Zander calls me.
“Hey.”
“Hey, back. Did I wake you?”
“Nope. Just got home. I hit the gym after leaving the station so I’m about to jump in the shower and go to bed.”
“Right. You on tonight?”
“Got two days off.”
“You got plans? Because Kate’s mom and dad are in town for the weekend so we’re thinking of going to 42nd Street Bar for a few drinks with everyone.”
“Who’s everyone?” I ask. I was hoping to see Dani tonight. It’s been five days since our moment and my almost fuck-up, and today is my first real day off since then. At least if she’s tagging along to the bar, I won’t have to make excuses why I can’t hang out with the gang.
“Mac, Daniel, Noah, Zoe, Mia, Matt, their friends Nat and Jason, and I talked to Dani yesterday ’bout coming along too.”
Seems I’m going to be making another phone call after this. “Sounds good. What time?”
“Around eight? That’ll give us time to get Rose settled and for Kate to have an hour to get ready,” he says.
“Only an hour?” I say with a laugh.
“Wishful thinking, I know, but it doesn’t matter how many times I tell her she’s beautiful without any of that shit, she still rolls her eyes at me and says I have to say that.”
“She’s not wrong. Imagine if you didn’t say it,” I muse.
“You’re telling me. I’ll let you go, but see you tonight, yeah?”
“See you then,” I say before ending the call.
This will be the first time seeing Dani since last S
unday.
My need to see her—to just be near her—makes it obvious to me that I want to take things slow as much as I want a hole in the head. I bring up the cell number I got from her on Sunday and dial, listening to the phone ring in my ear before she answers.
“Hello?”
“Hey back.”
She gasps loudly, and I hear rustling followed by a muttered “shit,” quickly followed by a thump as if she’d dropped her phone on the floor. “Uh, hi.”
I chuckle to myself because damn, she makes the most inane things utterly charming. “You got hold of me now?”
“Yes,” she replies begrudgingly. “I have a firm grip.” Then the line goes deathly quiet. “Oh God, I really just said that, didn’t I? Please speak to me; I wasn’t trying to instigate phone sex or anything. I meant—”
“Dani?”
“Yeah?”
“You just gave me a heart attack and a near-on wet dream in one small sentence. I’d quit while you’re ahead.”
“But . . . really?” she says curiously, the inflection in her voice giving away her genuine interest.
“Just the thought of your grip being anywhere near me gives me thoughts I shouldn’t be thinking right now but will do anyway.”
“I like that,” she says breathily.
“I’ll never get to sleep if we keep on this topic of conversation and this definitely doesn’t help us take things slow.”
“Didn’t you say you wanted to take things slow?”
“I said friends first.”
“I don’t think friends talk about wet dreams, do they?”
“When it comes to you and that mouth of yours, I find myself saying things I don’t mean to say.”
“Now I’m thinking about mouths, and wet dreams, and everything they entail, so a topic change might be in order since I’m sitting at my desk and my office mate is looking at me suspiciously.”
“Shit, sorry. I didn’t call to embarrass you.”
She laughs and just the sound of it puts me at ease. “I may be a dork and most of the times flustered when I’m around you, Zach, but it takes a lot to embarrass me. In fact, we could sit here and talk about sex, erections, penises—or is it penii—vaginas, anything closely resembling sex or sex objects and it would in no way, no how, embarrass me.”
