Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4) - Lauren Blakely Page 0,15
had fun trading gym playlists. Their favorite activity after a late-night gym visit was getting sweaty in another way. They’d fucked well, and often. But apparently that hadn’t been enough for Katrina.
When she’d ended it, she simply shook her head in frustration and said, “You’re in love with the past.”
He’d scoffed, doubtful. “What does that mean?”
“Ask yourself. I’m done trying to figure you out.”
“There’s nothing to figure out. What you see is what you get.”
His quads burned from the fast pace on the dusty trail. Stuck. Ha. He was fine. Work and family were all he needed. Besides, he had too much going on. Business was booming, and the investigation into his father’s death had gotten its first big break in ages last month when the police had arrested the getaway driver.
Michael was stuck on absolutely nothing.
Seeing Annalise had proved that, hadn’t it? He wanted her, but he wasn’t caught up in her. He’d be a stone-cold idiot to be hung up on someone who’d moved on more than a decade ago.
That kiss had proved it, he reasoned, as he neared the trailhead.
That was enough to get her out of his system.
Except he couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss.
That intoxicating kiss.
That fucking kiss, which had ignited all his fantasies last night. She’d felt like fire in his arms, and just as hard to contain. But he’d craved the danger, the risk of touching her. Of what it might do to him to have her.
It would either free him or wreck him.
Those thoughts powered him the final feet to the end of the trail, where he caught up quickly to Ryan’s four-legged best friend. Johnny Cash panted hard, tongue lolling from his snout. Michael’s heart beat furiously as he pressed the spigot on the water fountain. “Here boy,” he called, giving the dog first dibs on the water as Colin’s relentless pace boomed closer.
“You bastard. You on the juice now?” he shouted as he caught up.
“No. Ryan is. That’s the only way he can manage to finish within a minute of us,” Michael said, panting.
Colin laughed as Michael took a drink of the water, then stepped away from the fountain for Colin to get his shot. When Ryan arrived, wiping his palm across his brow, Michael adopted a look of feigned disgust. “I see your almost-married life is slowing you down,” he said, teasing his brother, who’d recently gotten engaged.
“Nothing slows me down. Not ever,” Ryan said. “I let you win.”
“You wish.”
Michael wandered over to the wooden fence that edged the lot, parking his foot on a post to stretch. Colin and Ryan joined him, and Johnny Cash trotted behind, slumping in a furry black-and-white heap at Ryan’s feet.
“Listen. We’ve got some things to figure out,” Michael said, diving into a conversation he’d told his brothers they needed to have on their run today. “I was thinking we need to take care of Marcus when shit starts going down. Probably even sooner.”
Colin nodded, shoving a hand through his dark hair. “Definitely. I’ve been talking to him about what to expect.”
“What does he say? What does John say?” Ryan asked, his blue eyes shifting from Colin to Michael. Ryan was engaged to Detective John Winston’s sister Sophie, but John kept most of the details of the reopened investigation into their father’s murder two decades ago close to the vest, understandably. However, with their half-brother Marcus spending more time at Colin’s home, and acting as an informant in some ways for the detective, the three of them had a sense that matters might heat up soon.
One of the accomplices in the murder had been arrested several weeks ago. Kenny Nelson, the getaway driver, was behind bars for several smaller crimes, and was likely going to be tried for accessory to murder, too. With the revelation that by night Marcus’s father was the leader of the notorious street gang the Royal Sinners, John and his colleagues were even busier. Presumably, the cops were working to devise the best way to dismantle the gang and connect Luke to the murder. Michael reasoned that any sort of sting operation to take down the group’s head, who’d successfully operated as the clandestine leader for more than two decades, would put Luke’s son Marcus square in the face of danger.
“He’s already working on transferring to another college out of state,” Colin said, breathing hard as he stretched his quads after their five-mile run. “That way he has a