Page 33 of Never Bound

“You don’t—”

“Yes, I do. I’m apologizing because I was wrong. Too.”

He actually smiled at that.

“Anyway, that doesn’t answer your question because that’s not the reason I’m here. And I may not know what the reason is, or maybe neither one of us is ready to hear it, but I do know this. Yes, you stupid fucking idiot, I want you. But I would nevereverwant you like that. And that’s why you get to fuck up. You get to fuck up with me. You get to be a complete fucking dick in every way imaginable, rather like you were today,and I am not going to punish you.”

“You’re not?”

“No. I’m going to get angry, of course. I’m going to scream and yell and call you a stupid idiot and tell you to get your fucking act together, but I am never going to punish you, trap you, or cage you. Because I’m not your owner. And I never will be. And I nevercouldbe. And if I ever try to be, call me the fuck out on it, okay? Because the only way I ever could own you,youcould own me just as much.”

His voice was shaky when he finally got out a complete sentence. “The world doesn’t say that.”

“Fuck the world. I’m saying it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now kiss me.”

A smile, at last. “Is that an order?”

“You’re damn right it is.”

Laughter. Actual laughter. “Do I have to call you out on this one?”

“Nah, I’m calling mys—”

“Good enough.” His kiss cut me off. I melted into it, never so grateful to be able to finally stop talking.

His relief matched mine. I could feel it in the way every muscle of my body seemed to uncoil as he clutched me. It took only seconds for his mouth to be everywhere, pressing behind my ear, tonguing my throat, nibbling on the upper part of my spine, and for his hands to be up completely under my bra, straining at the elastic, not even yet havingreachedmy nipples, and yet still sending every follicle of skin leaping to attention after having been asleep for days. And the happily tearful, quivering wetness between my thighs only echoed it all.

“You make one hot detective, by the way,” I whispered in his ear, fingers tugging gently at the strands of golden silk brushing his neck.

“So do you,” he whispered back. “Do you know what I would do to you right now if we weren’t in your professor’s kitchen?”

Just as I was about to tell him to go ahead and do it anyway, a gentle knock on the doorframe prompted us to separate immediately because dammit, habits were hard to break.

“Hey, it’s been half an hour. Have you guys made up yet?” Milagros popped her head in, looking from one flushed, well-kissed face to the other. “Okay, that’s a yes. So can I interest you in a taco, a joint, or both?”

We exchanged glances. “I’ve never—” he began.

“Had a taco?” Milagros supplied.

“How did you know?”

“Wild guess,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. “Well, you’re in for a mind-altering experience.”

10

HER

“Sotheconsensusisthat there are no safe choices,” he said. “Either I stay and Maeve is in danger, or I go and we’rebothin danger.”

He was stroking a very satisfied black long-haired cat named Millie—Milphidippa, formally—who had just the barest sprouting of red hairs on her paws.A tortoiseshell in disguise, Erica had pointed out, after which he’d observed that must be why she was named after the cunning maid from Plautus’Miles Gloriosus.

So he must have read at leastpartof the book I’d given him. And for some reason, that made me happier than anything yet.

We lay side by side on the woven double hammock. My body was curled into the curve of his arm that Millie didn’t occupy, my head on his chest, rising and falling with the rhythm of his breathing, while his fingers traced star shapes on the soft strip of skin between my top and shorts.

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