that she was a walking entanglement.
Maybe this was the problem. Maybe the problem was that difficult was what he was into. That wrong was what he was after. Because after everything that he’d been through maybe he was just tired of butting up against brick walls and having them stand.
Maybe you want to knock some down.
“Officer Daniels, I don’t think there’s much of anything lucky to do with the fact that I would rather be out here with you than in there with her.”
He couldn’t see her face, but he could feel her posture go rigid even from ten feet away. He walked toward her, strung out like a wire. “And I had the feeling that you walked out of there because you didn’t want to see me with her. Am I right?”
“I... I don’t care who you’re with, West.”
It was the first time she’d ever directly addressed him. The first time she’d ever used his name.
“Pansy,” he said. “I think you do.”
“I don’t,” she said. “I’m trying to get a job as the police chief. And I’m not going to mess around with... I’m not going to...”
“But you want to.”
“I want this job.”
But he had seen her. Seen the way that her lips parted softly when she looked at him, the way that she looked at his mouth when he took a drink of beer. He had seen how she looked at him, and he knew the way that it made him feel. It was too damned late for her to pretend that he hadn’t.
He reached out and wrapped his arm around her waist, pulled her up against him. He wrapped his other arm around her back and placed his palm directly at the center of her shoulder blades. He expected her to get stiff. Expected her to pull away. But she didn’t. Instead, she shivered. Her whole body went pliant against his. All his blood rushed south. He wanted...he wanted her.
He wanted this.
And he was going to take his time, because he hadn’t held a woman in his arms since his wife, and every memory of making love to Monica was ruined now. Torn beyond repair.
In the dim light he could just make out her eyes, wide and looking up at his, glittering beneath the moon. He ran his thumb along her lower lip, and found it soft and full.
Inviting.
“Damn you’re pretty,” he said.
His voice was rough and husky, a stranger’s voice. He didn’t know if he could recall a time when the potential for a kiss had made him feel this way. So damn hard he couldn’t see straight. So damn hard it hurt.
And then she did something he hadn’t expected at all. She went up on her toes, bracketing his face with her hands, and kissed him.
Her mouth was so soft.
Damn.
And she tasted like that beer that she just been drinking. And it all went to his head. He tightened his hold on her, angled his head and took the kiss deep, parting her luscious lips with his tongue and tasting her.
It was his turn to shiver.
Desire shot down his spine like a lightning bolt. Need gathered low in his gut as he kissed her and kissed her, luxuriating in the little sounds that she made as he licked into her mouth. Nipped her lower lip.
He felt rooted to something just then. To her. Grounded in ways he hadn’t been in years. Maybe ever. She was so petite it would be easy to pick her up and carry her over to the side of the building where he could put her up against it and grind his desire against hers. Have her quick and hard on a darkened, empty street, with no one any the wiser.
The two of them could burn through the need that was eating them up. Except...
She wouldn’t like that. It would be against several laws, first of all.
And second of all he knew that she didn’t want to be a spectacle. Knew it. Felt it in his bones.
He cared enough that he wouldn’t do that to her.
But hell, they were in the perfect situation for someone who didn’t want rumors to fly about an affair. They both lived on Redemption Ranch. They couldn’t even be faulted for their cars being left anywhere overnight. It was their living arrangement. He moved his mouth away from hers, and her breath fanned against his cheek in intense, ragged puffs. He kissed her jaw. Her neck. She clung to him, making tiny almost injured little sounds