eyes, she sighed. “Yeeeeeah, and here I am, talking like I know anything. I’ve never been in the military—”
“Do you always have that gun on you?” he asked.
You mean the one that you had me point at your chest? she thought.
“If I’m out on the street, yes.”
“Keep it with you always.” He looked at her with serious, steady eyes. “Don’t ever have it out of reach. Do you sleep with it next to you?”
She frowned. “Any particular reason why you’re bringing this up?”
“It’s a dangerous world. You need to protect yourself.”
She thought of Gigante. And the body she’d seen wrapped like a bow around that fire escape. “Yes, it can be. But I don’t believe in being paranoid.”
Liar. But she was trying to front so he’d respect her.
“Paranoia keeps you alive.”
“Has it done that for you?”
“Are you a reporter?”
“Nah, I just hang out at the CCJ office, twiddling my thumbs.” She smiled a little. “Actually, I’m in the middle of my first story now. I was doing online stuff before that. And I’m still doing the online stuff.” She tilted the beer bottle toward him. “How about some quid pro quo? And you choose the topic.”
There was a long pause.
“Well, tonight . . . I saved someone’s life for the wrong reason,” he said softly.
Jo felt the urge to sit upright and go Why? How? Who? Where? in rapid-fire succession. But she sucked all that back.
Keeping her voice quiet and level, she said, “How is it ever wrong to save a life?”
“I just did it because I wanted . . . to fight.”
“The end result was good, though. And how do you know it was just for fighting.”
“Sometimes that’s all I want to do.” His shoulders tightened, as if in his mind, he was remembering specific conflicts. “Sometimes that’s all I have in me and I have to let it out.”
Jo slowly sat forward, compelled by the mask that covered his face. She needed to know what was under there with an intensity that had bad idea written all over it.
“You can trust me,” she whispered. “With your secrets. I’m not a reporter in my personal life.”
“If I thought for one instant you were not trustworthy, I wouldn’t have come here.” His eyes shifted over to hers. “You were the one person I thought of.”
“What happened. You weren’t gone very long.”
“It isn’t how long something takes.”
As he receded away from her again, she had the sense that he had sought her out for some kind of help which she was not qualified to provide. So Jo gave him what she could.
Reaching toward him, she put her arm around the span of his massive shoulder. “Come here,” she whispered.
She expected him to fight her. Instead, Syn’s huge, hulking torso caved into her lap, as if he were past his capacity to hold up the burdens he carried with him.
Running her hand over the rock-hard contours of his bicep, she felt him shudder and saw his thick lashes lower onto his cheek.
“You’re exhausted,” she said.
“More than I can ever explain. Or recover from.”
Jo’s heart went out to him. She knew exactly how that felt. “You can sleep here tonight, if you want.”
Syn focused on the slow, magical circles that his female made on his arm. She soothed his whole body just by her touch, and he gratefully sank into the peace she gave him. He knew it was not going to last. Sooner or later, and certainly before dawn, he was going to have to leave her—and he mourned the loss of her even as he was in her lap.
After a while, he turned onto his back and looked up at her. When her eyes went to his mouth, he knew what was on her mind, and not just because of what she was focused on. Her scent changed, and with every inhale, he took her arousal into himself, his body instantly responding, his cock thickening in his leathers, his blood starting to pump. Hard.
“Will you let me pleasure you?” he said in a deep voice.
As her eyes flared, he made no move to touch her. He wanted her to freely choose her way. Freely choose him.
Although how freely could she have him when she didn’t know what he was?
In time that would be solved, though, he told his conscience as he inhaled her scent even deeper. In time, they would be the same when she went through her change.
And after that? Well, he was deluding himself if he thought they had