His words were chilling in their frankness and they brought goose bumps to the surface of my skin. “I know.” It came out sounding shaky and I hated revealing that weakness in front of him.
He moved closer to me so that our knees were touching. He reached out a hand and put a finger under my chin and lifted my head up so that we were once again locked in an unwavering gaze. His eyes were so light now there was almost no color in them at all. It made him look fierce and wild.
“I am the only person on your side and I am there reluctantly.”
“Ouch.”
I went to lower my lashes so I didn’t have to see how he really felt about me shining out of that reflective gaze.
“But as much as it pains me to say it, we can help each other out. In fact I think the only way to do this with minimal casualties is to work together. I want Roark and you want to keep your ass covered, and to do that, we need to be attached at the hip.”
I frowned at him as he continued to loom over me. “What are you suggesting, Detective?”
“I’m not suggesting it. I’m telling you that you are suddenly and irrevocably in love with me. You are obsessed with me and we are about to embark on a passionate, out-of-control, unexplainable, and very, very obvious romance. We are going to shove our new relationship so far down everyone’s throat that they are going to choke on it.”
I gulped and opened my mouth to tell him how crazy he sounded, but he reached out a hand and placed his palm lightly over my mouth. I scowled at him and contemplated sinking my teeth into the meaty part of his hand.
“Seriously, Reeve, it’s the only way. Bax will rein it in if he thinks I’ve got a thing for you. Nassir won’t back all the way off, but he’ll be less dangerous if he thinks he has to go through me to get to you. Plus, from what you’ve told me, and what I understand about whack jobs like Roark, if he thinks you replaced him with me, it’ll force him to move more quickly. He’ll come out of hiding faster if he thinks you moved on without a second thought. If you understand the risks involved, I’m willing to take them with you.”
I lifted both my eyebrows up and tapped my fingers on my knee until he took a step back as he gauged my reaction. I don’t know what he was expecting but he actually looked nervous as I climbed to my feet.
“What do you think?” His voice was low and he didn’t look away as I walked up so that I was standing directly in front of him.
What did I think? I thought there was no “suddenly” about being irrevocably in something that looked a lot like love with him. I thought passionate, out of control, and obsessive about summed up the way I already felt about him and that it would require zero acting on my part. I reached out and put a hand on the center of his chest. He was warm and hard. He felt like security and strength.
“I think you are going to have a much harder time pretending you like me than I will pretending I like you, Detective. Have you considered that?”
He balked a little and lifted a hand to circle his fingers around my wrist. I wondered if he felt my pulse kick at the touch.
“I do whatever it takes to get the job done.”
Oh, I bet he did. I smirked up at him and lifted up on tippy toes so that our lips were almost touching. I expected him to recoil, to back away in haste, but he didn’t. Instead his tongue darted out to lick across the curve of his bottom lip, and I almost groaned out loud.
“Prove it.” I whispered the challenge and then held my breath to see what this scary, sexy man would do once the gauntlet was thrown down.
He didn’t disappoint. He never did.
Chapter 4
Titus
PROVE IT.
Those odd, dark blue eyes flashed the challenge at me and I couldn’t resist it. Not the challenge or the girl. I didn’t like that she got under my skin. I hated that she was right at the center of this mess with Roark, and it really, really grated across my already taut nerves that even with no makeup on and looking like she hadn’t slept a wink, she was still the most gorgeous woman I had ever seen. I didn’t want to notice that. I didn’t want my dick to twitch when she touched me¸ but it did, which was going to make pretending to be infatuated with her easy and so much harder at the same time. She knew it too.
Prove it.
Okay. I would prove the shit out of the fact that I could do what I had to do in order to make this scheme of mine work. I could pretend to like her, which really was the only thing that would be fake. I couldn’t reconcile the way my pulse leaped every time she turned that midnight-blue gaze on me with the fact that she had orchestrated a man’s murder. She was beautiful but she was also deadly. She was just as hard as this place we came from, and I’d had enough of the city hammering against my foundation, as it was. Lusting after a woman who had it in her to be just as cold, and just as calculating, as any other criminal I locked up on a day-to-day basis was nowhere for my head to be while I was on the brink of war with her deranged ex-lover.
I was pissed off when I bent my head toward her. I was mad at myself. I was mad at her. More than all of that, though, I was furious that either one of us had to be in this situation in the first place. Every time I turned around, another bad thing or bad person was nipping at my heels. It was getting harder and harder to stay a step ahead. Eventually I was going to trip up and go down and there would be no one left with any kind of conscience in this place, no one left that cared about justice and righteousness.
That anger had my hands shaking as I reached up and used my thumbs to tilt her head back so her mouth was pointed up at me. I didn’t have much time to date, didn’t have the patience for a woman who didn’t understand that I was trying to save an entire city from itself and that my job took up most of my attention and energy. The women I did date were never the right height, or the perfect size, and they sure as hell never looked as luscious and as tempting as this woman did. No one had ever fit me the way she did and that pissed me off even more.