Better When He's Brave

by Jay Crownover

  “The sooner we start to rub this in Conner’s face the sooner he’ll make his move. Stop tiptoeing around what needs to be done.” I flinched involuntarily when she reached out a single finger and gently stroked down the deep frown lines that were etched in my forehead over my nose. “Maybe then you can actually get a full night’s sleep. You’re going to run yourself into the ground, Detective.”

  I caught her wrist and yanked it away from my face. Her touching me wasn’t a good idea, for either one of us. Rumblings from the things I kept so carefully locked down turned into howls of hunger.

  “Tomorrow I’ll take you to get some clothes that actually fit, and then we can hit up some really visible places in the Point so that way, even if Roark doesn’t see us, other people will and the word will out be on the street.”

  She pulled her hand free and used it to spear her fingers through her long hair. The motion pushed her breasts up higher, making them strain against the thin material barely covering them and making me grunt as I watched the way her nipples obviously tightened under the weight of my gaze.

  “Where exactly are you thinking we should go?”

  It took me longer than it should have to come up with a coherent response. With this woman, listening to her breathe was more of a turn-on than anything any other woman had done for me or to me. She shoved all of my common sense and resolve straight into my dick, where it turned into want and desire so thick and heavy it actually hurt as it throbbed behind my zipper. It wasn’t just the parts of me long denied that she called to, it was all the parts of me that could desire and want her that listened to her song so carefully!

  I wanted to shift a few inches over because I could feel electricity arcing between our bare skin. In hindsight I realized I should have left my T-shirt on when I crashed for the night. Between the two of us there were too few articles of clothing to keep us from feeding off of each other’s heat. “I think we need to stop by Spanky’s. That gives us the opportunity to be out where the kind of people that need to see us are and it also gives us the opportunity to show Nassir that you’re with me. Plus, if for some reason Roark does make a move, we won’t be alone. Chuck will be there and Nassir always has armed security staff manning the joint. It won’t be an uneven fight if Roark makes a move with a minion instead of doing it alone.”

  She crossed her legs and I jerked my gaze up to hers to see if she’d done it on purpose. She had. Her dark blue eyes reflected the glow of the moon and I could see that she was just as affected by my nearness and half-dressed state as I was by hers. This was going to explode all over the both of us, and when the smoke cleared we were going to be picking out shrapnel forever. I had a sinking suspicion the wounds we were inevitably going to leave on each other were the kind that never managed to heal all the way through.

  “I used to work on the hair of a lot of the girls from Spanky’s when Ernie was running the place for Novak. Most of them were really sweet, even the girls that did more than dance. It sucked that once they got in the business there was no way out. Novak owned them.”

  There was a drop in her voice. She must have felt the same way while she waited and waited for him to collect on that massive favor she’d owed him.

  “Nassir takes better care of the girls that work for him than that. He’s picky and he makes sure they are protected and taken care of. He won’t keep anyone on that isn’t loyal and quiet, that includes his clients. I’ve tried to bust him on solicitation charges more than once, but no one ever comes forward as a witness. He’s the one taking care of the arrangements for the girl on the docks, so I think he cares about them in his own scary, silent kind of way.”

  She hummed a little noise and my balls instantly tightened at the thought of what it would feel like if her mouth was wrapped around my cock and she was doing the same thing.

  “They should have someone there to help them when they want out. That’s what’s so awful about this city. Once you’re in, there doesn’t seem to be any way out. A girl can get on a stage and be lured by all that money she can make stripping when she’s eighteen or nineteen, but what’s after that? Suddenly she’s thirty and all she knows is selling sex and the streets and what shot does she have for anything else?”

  “Are you speaking from experience?” If she ever took her clothes off for money, entire countries would end up broke.

  “No. Just from what I heard when they were in my chair and then from watching how quickly my sister got sucked into it all. There is no escape once the Point has you.”

  She leaned her head back on the couch and shifted her eyes up to the ceiling. I thought I saw a sheen of moisture dance across the navy-colored surface but then she blinked and it was gone.

  “It sucks,” I said. She tilted her head to look at me. “The way everything went down with your sister, that sucks. But you tried to help her, tried to save her, and that’s what you should focus on.”

  She made a noise low in her throat and shoved up off the couch. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked down at me with eyes that went flinty hard. “It wasn’t enough. What time do you want to head out tomorrow?”

  The quick change in conversation forced me to switch gears. “I have to work in the morning, so when I get back.”

  “Are you actually going to come back after your shift tomorrow?”

  So my avoidance tactics hadn’t gone unnoticed. “Yes. I’ll try and be here before five. You really do need some clothes that fit.” Brysen had run a few things up after we had been camped out for a couple days and they fit slightly better, but no girl alive seemed to have those ridiculously long legs or the same kind of curves Reeve was working with up top. Brysen’s stuff covered her up more than my teenaged neighbor’s, but not enough that I didn’t get an eyeful every time I looked at her.

  She linked her fingers together and lifted her arms up over her head in a way that pulled the hem of her tank top up over the indent of her belly button and lifted the edge of her tiny shorts so high I didn’t have to use much imagination to envision what all the secret, soft parts of her looked like. Like I needed any more incentive to keep thinking about her and sex when my mind and attention should be anywhere else.

  “I can cover it all up, it’s not going to change the fact that you want me and are angry about it.”

  She twirled on her foot and flounced back up the stairs. If there had been a single door in the loft I knew she would have slammed it to make her point.

  She was right. I did want her. I had wanted her from the second she came into my precinct and admitted to me that she had solicited Novak for murder. I wanted her when she tearfully told me about her part in Dovie’s abduction. I wanted her when the marshals had whisked her away and I never thought I would see her again. And yes, I wanted her now in the middle of this charade that had life and death woven into the fabric of it. I wasn’t angry that I wanted her, lusted after her. She was beautiful, slick, and all kinds of street-smart. She looked at me like she understood what made me tick and didn’t care that I acted like it was me against the entire city most of the time. I was fighting a losing battle every single day and that essentially made me a loser, but she didn’t seem to see that. There were a lot of reasons to want her, to find her attractive and ultimately irresistible.

  There was more than one major reason that every time my blood kicked in response to her, guilt and shame roared to life inside of me. Of course I had an issue with the fact that she was an admitted criminal. She was one of the people I was trying to protect the city from. No matter her intentions, no matter if she was trying to use one bad guy to get rid of another bad guy, she hadn’t done it by legal means. But there was also the fact that the monsters of my past, my burden of beasts that I kept buried so deep and dark inside of me that I tended to forget they were there, woke up and started to scream when she was near. There was no more ignoring them and the way they strained against the skin of the man I tried so hard to be.

  Being infatuated with a woman that had a hist
ory of taking the law into her own hands would be my absolute undoing, and if I couldn’t keep those feelings in a box there was going to be nothing left of me. I would have nothing left to stand against my inner animal, and it would chew me alive from the inside out and I would be just like the rest of the people lost and alone, just waiting for the city to claim them. I couldn’t let that happen.

  I wasn’t angry that I wanted her, I was terrified that I did.

  I lay back down on the couch and took one of the decorative pillows and smashed it over my face so I could shout every dirty word I could think of into it. It was already a long night and now it was going to seem endless.

  “YOU AREN’T GOING TO try any of that on?” I hated shopping. Hated it. Most men I knew just considered it a necessary evil when they had a woman in their life they needed to keep happy. I only went shopping for myself when I ran out of underwear or needed new shoes and stuff for work. Most of the jeans and T-shirts I wore I had had since the police academy back in the day and that worked just fine for me. Reeve was an anomaly. She seemed to dislike the act just as much as I did.

  There wasn’t anything close to a mall in the Point, in fact most retailers had pulled up stakes years ago after one too many armed robberies. So we had driven to the outlet shops that were on the outskirts of the city. I braced for hours of torture. Much to my surprise she blazed through the stores like she was on a mission to get in and out as quickly as possible. Her eyes kept darting around like she was expecting someone to jump out of the clothing racks and grab her, and as a result she had an armful of clothing she was marching toward the checkout counter with without having tried a stitch of it on.

  She looked at me over her shoulder as the salesclerk started zapping the tags on everything.

  “I know what size I wear and I didn’t get anything too fancy. Just some jeans and shirts and a couple of skirts that are too short so that anyone looking at us will know why you can’t resist me.”

  I grunted at her and handed over my credit card as the clerk rattled off the total. Reeve thanked us both and then told me she was going to change really quickly after grabbing a pair of the new jeans and darting back toward the dressing rooms. I took the bags the clerk handed over and headed out to the front of the store to wait for her. I scanned the parking lot and kept my eyes on the people milling about while I waited for Reeve to appear.

  My phone rang and I hit ignore when I saw my brother’s name flash across the screen. I had been doing a bang-up job of ignoring Bax for the last few weeks. He knew I was shacking up with Reeve at Race’s place, but I had yet to explain to him why. I was surprised he hadn’t stormed the castle yet, demanding answers, but he had changed a lot since Dovie entered the picture. He was a lot less reactive than he had been before.

  “Jesus.” I jolted involuntarily when a light hand landed on my lower back as I slipped my phone back in my pocket and looked down at Reeve. She shouldn’t have been able to get so close to me without my noticing it. It made my spine snap straight and my hands tighten on the bags I held.

  She lifted up on the tips of her toes and brushed her lips across my check. I knew it was all for show but the simple and sweet gesture made my back teeth click together.

  “Thanks.” She curled her hand around the inside of my elbow and looked up at me from under the long fringe of her lashes.

  “It had to be done.” I started across the parking lot not caring that she had to scramble to keep pace with me. She dug the edge of her nails into my skin, forcing me to look down at her.

  “Remember that whole pretending-to-like-me thing. You’re sucking at it and we’ve only been out in public for an hour.”

  I sighed and slowed my steps to match her shorter ones. I put a hand over where hers were resting and forced a grin across my lips. “Sorry. Being out in the open makes me nervous and I didn’t hear you come up behind me because I was thinking that it’s odd Bax hasn’t shown up demanding answers yet or found me and tried to take a swing at me. I can’t afford to be distracted and you can’t afford for me to be distracted either.”

  “You’re only human, Titus. There is only so much you can do and only so much you can take responsibility for.”

  I stopped by the GTO and reached around her to open the door. “Isn’t that what I tried to tell you last night?”

  She slid past me, her body dragging all the way across mine. I had to suck in a breath when she stopped with the tips of our noses almost touching.

  “You’re trying to save everyone, I just wanted to save the one person that mattered to me. It’s different.”

  She slid into the passenger seat and I handed over the bags full of her purchases so she could throw them in the backseat. I didn’t have an answer to that, so I went around the car and wheeled us out of the parking lot and back toward the city so we could hit up Spanky’s.

  “What reason are we going to give for being at a strip club? You don’t really strike me as the type that needs to slip dollars in a G-string in order to see naked women.”

  She would be surprised. I hadn’t seen a naked woman in a lot longer than I cared to think about, and I definitely didn’t keep my eyes closed anytime I ventured into Spanky’s for work.

  “I’m going to tell Chuck I need to talk to Nassir about the girl-on-the-dock case. He’ll let us in without asking too many questions.”

  Chuck was the head of Nassir’s security. He was a holdover from Novak’s days and old-school muscle. He wouldn’t let a badge and a gun intimidate him. Luckily he seemed to like me and we generally didn’t have to butt heads. I knew that wouldn’t be the case if any of the charges I had thrown at the club over the years had managed to stick. Chuck was loyal to a fault and Nassir made sure to reward him accordingly.

  “Okay. So what am I supposed to do while you talk to Nassir? Believe it or not, I’ve never actually been in a strip club.”

  “We just need to walk in acting like we can’t get enough of each other. Nassir and whoever else might be watching needs to think I can’t stand to be away from you for even a second. Hold my hand, keep up with the little touches and junk. Just look at me adoringly and sell it. I bet Roark has eyes everywhere, so someone will get the news back to him.”

  She lifted an eyebrow at me and smirked. “Adoringly. Gotcha.”

  I grinned and looked at her out of the corner of my eye. “The girls that work there are kind of territorial. They aren’t going to love a girl that looks like you waltzing in on their turf, so try and ignore any shade they throw your way.”

  She snorted softly. “I’m a grown-ass woman, Titus. I can handle myself. No one can make me feel worse about myself than I already do on a daily basis.”

  I didn’t doubt she could hold her own, but years of being nothing more than meat for the hungriest predators the Point had to offer made the girls that danced at Spanky’s an entirely different breed of woman. They could be vicious and cruel without a second thought. It was how they protected themselves.

  “Just remember why we’re there.”

  She mumbled her agreement and the rest of the ride was silent until I pulled into the parking lot of the strip club. I made sure to park next to Nassir’s Bentley. It was the only spot where I was pretty sure nothing was going to happen to my baby. Nassir loved his outrageously expensive car, so I knew he probably had cameras on the spot where it was parked. I didn’t want the GTO to meet the same fate that had befallen Race’s Stang. Nassir might not give a shit about me or mine, but I left the GTO close enough to his ride that should anything happen to my car, his would be messed up as collateral damage, and the fancy bastard would never stand for that.

  I pulled Reeve to my side and wrapped an arm around her shoulder so that her side was pressed tightly all along my own as she curled her arm around my waist and we headed inside. I burned everywhere we touched and I heard her breath hitch at the contact. I pulled open the door and winced as loud music and an overwhelming view of pink assaulted my senses. Nassir had way better taste
than the previous owner of the club but he hadn’t gotten around to redoing the place. His attention had been focused on his club burning down and finding the man responsible.

  Chuck was a giant black man. He was one of the few people I had ever encountered that I actually had to tilt my head back to look in his eyes. He flashed a blindingly white smile at me, which had the gold incisor he sported sparkling at me. I squeezed Reeve when I felt her stiffen next to me.

  “What’s up, Chuck?”

  “Twice in one week, cop. That’s not good for business.”

  “I thought of another question I wanted to ask your boss.”

  His dark eyes skimmed over me and landed on Reeve. He let his gaze sweep over her and then bounce back to me.

  “You traveling with your own talent now?”

  I forced a laugh and saw Reeve roll her eyes out of corner of my eye. “Something like that.” I hugged her closer and inwardly applauded her when she reached up to put a hand in the center of my chest. She batted her eyelashes at Chuck and gave him that grin of hers that was designed to stop anyone with the Y chromosome from thinking with the head that was located above their belts.

  “It was supposed to be date night. He’s lucky I’m willing to let him make it up to me later.” She played the temptress so well it was no wonder it was all I could do not to touch.

  She giggled when I let my hand slip to her ass. She turned the appropriate shade of red as Chuck waved us through into the heart of the club. I wasn’t an openly affectionate guy but something about touching her, putting my hands on all of her curves, felt natural. Playacting with this girl felt more right than being with any other girl that I had actually been involved with. That didn’t bode well for me or my sanity in the long run.

  “Let’s go up to the bar. There’s less chance of any of the girls getting in your face if you aren’t down on the floor taking attention away from them.”

  She didn’t say anything. Her eyes were big in her face as she was taking everything in. There was a lot to see. The naked girls onstage. The lights changing colors as they skipped over bare, glittery skin and drooling customers. The burly security guards that were wandering around keeping an eye on things. The scantily clad cocktail servers that scuttled by on dangerously high heels with trays full of drinks. It was loud and flashy but underneath it was sadness and hopelessness that seemed to permeate every single corner of the club.