“Do you have pants on?”
His voice was gravelly and rough, much more so than usual, and I had to swallow before I could answer. I was doing a little ogling of my own and it took me a second to realize he was talking to me. Instead of his usual rumpled, button-up shirt and pressed slacks, he had on a black T-shirt that was stretched tight across muscles that looked like they were made of stone. His long legs were encased in faded jeans that had a hole in the knee and one in the thigh. The skin peeking out of the frayed material was a tawny color and looked just as hard as the rest of him. There was no softness to Titus King even when he was off duty. He had on the same boots he wore while he worked but his hair was in disarray like he hadn’t bothered to comb it down, and I had never seen the resemblance between him and his younger brother be as strong as it was right then. He looked just as harsh, just as unpredictable, as Bax ever did and it had places inside me quivering in a way that I really needed to ignore so that I could answer him and not sound like a breathless moron.
“Of course I have pants on. It’s not my fault your neighbor is a midget.”
I stepped away from the door and he followed me inside, immediately making the room feel a hundred times smaller.
“Did I say my neighbor? I meant my neighbor’s daughter. My neighbor weighs well over three hundred pounds, but her teenaged daughter is about your size, just shorter. I would’ve asked Dovie or Brysen, but I wanted to make sure we had a secure place to go before the charade starts. Dovie would have told Bax, and I’ve had enough of him being all over my ass where you’re concerned as it is. Brysen would have been game but I already pulled in all the favors I had where Race is concerned and I didn’t want to owe him any more.”
“Well, I’m glad no grown woman was trying to wear hot-pink short-shorts as actual clothing.” I lifted the hem of the hoodie to show him I did indeed have pants on, and noticed the way silver sparked in the center of his irises. “But I am going to need to get my hands on some real clothes in the near future. If the plan is to flaunt this affair in Conner’s face and to get him to come out of hiding, then I need to look like I look normally do.”
“How is that?”
He jerked his gaze away from my legs and lifted them up to look me in the eye. “How’s what?”
“How do you normally look?” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and I had to bite the tip of my tongue as the action pulled the top of his jeans down just enough that a sliver of skin was exposed between them and the edge of his T-shirt. Corrugated abs and that vee that was bound to make woman drool danced in front of my eyes. I had to count to ten to keep myself from reaching out and trying to touch the exposed skin that was dusted with just a hint of dark hair. Of course Titus wouldn’t be all baby smooth and perfectly manicured like so many men were today. He was too much of a man for that. It was just one more way in which Conner had been a sorry substitution for what I really wanted. He had been polished and primped even more than I was.
“I normally look good. I normally look like I want a man to want me. I definitely don’t look like this . . . like I’m not even trying. Conner would never buy that you were suddenly infatuated with me if it doesn’t even look like I’m making an effort. How do you think I caught his attention so fast?”
Titus did that guy thing where his lashes lowered and his eyes started at the top of my head and skimmed all the way down to my toes in a way that I could almost feel. I saw his chest rise and fall and his pulse jump a little at the side of his neck.
“You look just fine the way you are. You look better like this than most women do when they put in the effort. You don’t need to try, and if a guy makes you think you do, then he’s a dipshit. Get whatever you need and let’s get out of here.”
I might have fallen over or stripped off all my clothes and thrown myself at him if I thought there was a chance he would catch me in either scenario. No one had ever said anything that nice to me in my life. Sure, I had heard I was pretty. I had heard I was more than pretty, but they were hollow words when they came from mouths that spewed lies fair easier than the truth. If Titus said it, then he believed it. There was no hidden agenda, no subterfuge, and there was just something so powerful and alluring about that raw honesty and the lack of artifice.
I gathered my composure and the few things I had left strewn around the apartment and followed him out into the hallway. I dropped my gaze to the gun he still wore clipped to his belt. It was a stark reminder that even when he was dressed down and off duty he was still one of the good guys and I was not. We could want each other all day long, but there was no bridge strong enough or long enough to cross that fundamental divide that kept us separated.
He was alert and stiff as we hit the front of the building. Even though I was facing his back, I could almost feel the way his gaze scanned every single shadow and hidden place that stretched out in front of us.
He stopped in front of a massive, sparkly blue-and-white car that looked just as big and badass as he did. The windows were tinted almost black and the tires didn’t look like anything I had ever seen on any other kind of car.
“This doesn’t look like any kind of car a cop should be driving.” I couldn’t keep the disbelief out of my voice as he pulled open the door for me.
“It’s not a cop’s car, it’s this cop’s car. When we were younger Bax and I couldn’t manage to spend five minutes in the same room without wanting to murder one another. Our mom had a guy that she saw on the side that owned the garage Bax is running now. Gus put a wrench in each of our hands and told us to figure our shit out. The only time we didn’t fight was when we were working under the hood. Bax was always better at it than I was, but I couldn’t let my little brother be the only one with a sick ride. I built the GTO after he got locked up. I think it was how I dealt with the fact that I was the one that put him behind bars.”
I gaped at him as he walked around the hood and then climbed in on the other side. Everything on the interior of the car was just as pristine as the outside. The gauges were all shiny with chrome inlays as they glowed to life when he cranked the motor on. The car made the entire block shake and I saw a bum startle awake when Titus put his foot on the gas and roared away from the curb.
“You felt guilty you had to arrest Shane?”
His eyes cut in my direction and I instinctively braced my hand on the dashboard as he whipped the monster of a car around a corner with the tires squealing.
“No. I didn’t feel guilty about locking him up. He broke the law, he was always breaking the law, and he didn’t care enough not to get caught. I felt guilty that I was the reason he didn’t care. I felt bad that I was the reason he was a criminal in the first place. I left Bax to fend for himself with a drunk mother and a mobster father. He never had a chance and I knew it, but I left him anyway. I think failing the one person I was supposed to keep safe was one of the driving factors in me deciding to go into law enforcement. I built the GTO to show him that it mattered . . . the time we spent together before he hated me, before I let him down. Bax is an action guy. The words wouldn’t get through, but I thought maybe the car would.”
“That’s why you paid his rent while he was locked up? You wanted to show him that you cared?”
Titus grunted in agreement and turned his eyes back to the road. I settled back in the bucket seat and watched him as he concentrated on the road. He was driving way faster than the speed limit, and I wondered if he even realized he was breaking one of the laws he was adamant about following. Titus was a complex man and there was a lot more to him than I had initially thought. I knew his relationship with Bax was complicated and that the brothers were polar opposites, but I hadn’t known that Titus had demons from his past and from the way he had pulled himself out of the Point that clung to him. It made him seem less infallible, more human. It made me want him even more, which I didn’t think was possible.
“Where are we going exactly?” We hadn’t left the Point. In fact we were going deeper int
o it, past the District and all the way out to the docks. No one went to the docks unless they wanted to make a body disappear or they were trying to send something illegal out or ship something illegal in.
“Race has a place on the docks. He’s turned it into his own little command center. He has his own muscle and his own security system set up around it since his lady and her sister live there with him. It’s almost as good as protective custody, but it’s still in the city and visible enough that should Conner want to make a move he’ll know where to find us.”
I fidgeted nervously. “It’s also where he left that girl that looked like me.”
Titus sighed. “I know. But it’s the best option for what we’re trying to accomplish. You’ll be safe while I work, and that means I won’t have my attention divided between my job and your safety.”
A trickle of warmth tried to work its way into the heart I had been trying to freeze up toward him. “I wouldn’t think you would care if I was safe or not. After all, I’m the one that got myself into this mess.”
I rolled my head to the side so I could look at him and noticed that the tick he got when he was trying to hold whatever he was feeling inside had started to work at his jaw. His big hands tightened on the steering wheel and he bit out, “We can’t always control what or whom we care about. Didn’t you learn that lesson the hard way with Roark?”
I jerked my eyes back to the road and felt ice take up the spot where the heat had been sneaking in. “You’re right. I don’t need to learn any lesson more than once. So how did you get Hartman to agree to this setup? If he went to all the trouble of building a castle for his queen and princess, why would he let the wicked witch in the gates?”
He gave me another hard, sideways look. “Because he has his own agenda, and now I owe him. Race is neck-deep in stuff he shouldn’t be in, and being able to call in a major favor like this isn’t an opportunity a smart guy like him can pass up.”
A heavy ball of guilt and something uglier, something dirtier, lodged in my throat. “So you are compromising yourself for me, for this plan of yours? You would never give anyone a free pass otherwise.” I didn’t want Titus to go against his own code just to get me close to Conner. I didn’t want him to change at all. I loved the way he was . . . loved the way he came off as heroic and brave. Knew I could so easily love him with my entire heart if it didn’t seem so impossible.
He swore softly under his breath and then wheeled the noisy muscle car down a ramp that looked like it led to an underground garage. He turned to look at me, his eyes almost at bright as the headlights shining in the dark in front of us. He sounded resigned and tired when he told me, “I can’t tell the difference anymore between the bad guys and the good guys that are bad because they don’t have any other choice in the matter. I’m not compromising, I’m adapting. Isn’t that the first rule of survival?”
It was, but I didn’t want him to adapt. I wanted him to stay just the way he was, and I would die before being the reason he felt like he had to change.
Chapter 6
Titus
THIS WAS SOME SPECIAL kind of hell that I wasn’t sure I was going to survive.
It had been a week since I moved Reeve into the loft at Race’s compound. A week in which I killed myself at work trying to figure out why exactly Roark had declared war on the city. I called the marshals and got shut down because they didn’t want anyone else to know they had a viper in the nest, so I was working around them instead of with them. I was also going to the condo at night and pretending not to watch Reeve while she paraded around in clothes that were too tight and too short for my sanity or peace of mind. A week in which I tiptoed around her because the loft was just that: lofty. It was totally open, so there were too few walls and not enough places to hide. The bedroom was just a platform set above the open-plan kitchen, so there wasn’t even a door there to shut and hide behind. I heard her in the shower, I saw her kick off the covers in the middle of the night, I heard the sound of clothes rustling as she got dressed and undressed. The noise scraped across my skin, and all of it was making my insides itch and my temper quick to boil over. It was all a frustrating waste of time and I was almost at the end of my rope.
I gave her the bed and took the couch. I tried to find other places to be so that I didn’t have to breathe her in, and pretended to ignore the way every part of my body reacted to her. I was walking around with a constant hard-on, and even if I decided to ignore the pulsating sexual tension between us, Reeve didn’t. I caught the way she looked at me out of the corner of her eye. She was waiting, watching. I wasn’t sure what she expected me to do, but whatever it was, I refused to give in to the allure of her or the temptation of us together.
We were supposed to be out there putting on a show to draw Conner out, but I hadn’t had the time to figure out what was next and I wasn’t sure I could pull the game off as wound up as I was. My plan was half developed at best, and until I had a more secure end game in place, I wasn’t willing to risk her neck or my own. The condo had floor-to-ceiling windows that went dark and opaque with the flick of a switch on a remote and Race assured me that even if someone could see in during the day, they couldn’t send anything through the glass. He had literally built an impenetrable fortress, and I didn’t even want to think about where he came up with that kind of cash to sink into those types of security measures.
Every night when I finally went back to the apartment, I had to fight the urge to grab Booker by the throat and throw him out of the loft or into the closest wall. Even with a noticeable scar that decorated half of his face, Noah Booker was a good-looking dude. He was almost the same size as I was but had a much rougher façade. He wouldn’t go down without a fight, but the easy way he was with Reeve made it seem like they were both way too familiar with life on the bottom and far too comfortable there. It irked me to an irrationally furious level. Booker knew it pissed me off, so he went out of his way to make himself comfortable in the condo and with Reeve. Every time I turned around he was putting one of his massive paws on her shoulder or nudging her with an elbow like they had been friends for a hundred years. In turn, the raven haired beauty was flirty with him in an effortless way she didn’t have with me. I wanted to walk away from this stupid idea of mine and forget the whole thing. I couldn’t, but the temptation was there.
I was lying on the couch with an arm thrown over my eyes. It was well past midnight and I had been working the dead-girl-on-the-dock case all day. It turned out she had no one. She was a child of the system. Another poor kid no one wanted, so she ended up on the streets doing whatever she could to survive. It surprised me how furious Nassir was over her situation. Not that one of his girls was murdered by the same enemy that had burned his club down, but that there was no one to claim the body and mourn for her. I silently handed over the information he would need to claim the body and make sure that the young woman was put to rest properly. Nassir never struck me as the sentimental type, but it was a pleasant surprise to find out that he actually did have a heart somewhere under that three-thousand-dollar suit he wore. He cared about those girls more than the income they generated for him, and while I couldn’t condone what he was doing, I appreciated that he was doing it with his own kind of good intention.
I was tired. I was more than tired. I was soul weary and there were no reserves left to tap into. I had to recharge and get this plan to draw Roark out into the open moving. I needed an idea and I needed it yesterday. I couldn’t handle being stuck with Reeve for much longer, fighting my instincts and my body’s urges while trying to do my job effectively.
I heard the covers rustle and heard her mutter something sleepily as the moonlight cut silver shadows through the darkened windows. I bit back a groan and shifted restlessly on the couch. Luckily it was a big leather couch, so there was enough room for me and my bulk, but it still wasn’t as comfortable as my own bed or as tempting as the king-size bed up on the platform containing a too-sexy-for-her-own-good Reeve.
“Are you still awake?” Her voice was soft as it drifted down from somewhere above me.
This time I let the groan out so that it vibrated my chest, and shifted so that I was sitting up. I dropped my head into my hands. “Yeah.”
“How was work today?” There was a hint of dry humor in her tone. I sighed and threw myself back against the couch cushions and laced my fingers behind my head.
“Really?” I sounded like a dick but I couldn’t help it.
It was her turn to sigh. “We’ve been doing this a week, Titus. Each day that goes by, you get tenser and more tightly strung. Something has to give. We’re supposed to be lovers. We’re supposed to be unable to keep our hands off each other and making Roark crazy with jealousy. All you’re doing is avoiding me. I’m just trying to figure out a way to make this easier for you.”
The padding of her bare feet sounded on the stairs. “There is no easy. I’m working a murder investigation where I know who is responsible and I can’t even find my perp to question him. It’s like all those years hunting Novak while he carved holes in the city only to watch him walk away all over again. I don’t want to lose again.”
I turned my head when the cushions next to me depressed as she sat down. I had to bite my tongue to keep it from rolling out of my mouth like a horny teenager. Even in the barely-there moonlight all I could see was miles and miles of long, naked leg and endless amounts of ebony hair. Her shorts and tank top revealed more than they covered and it didn’t take X-ray vision to see that she didn’t have a bra on. Goddamn, this girl was going to be the end of me. Things big and wild started to swell inside of me.
Better When He's Brave Page 8
