Page 53 of Take the Bait

Her heart warmed. “Aww. You say the nicest things.”

“I’m not being nice. I’m telling you the truth.”

She heard the conviction in his voice, and the warm, fuzzy feeling spread through her whole body. She asked longingly, “How much longer until the Koronov case is over? I really want to make love with you, again.”

He made a sound of frustration. Both of them had been trying to push the case along as fast as possible, asking to expedite everything they were allowed to expedite, but the court dockets were jammed. It was taking forever to get anything more than the upcoming plea hearing on the case.

“If only we had a trial date,” she grumbled. “At least then I’d know how long it’ll be until we can resume our relationship where we left off. But this waiting is killing me.”

He grunted in commiseration.

“Any chance we can spend just one more night together?” she asked hopefully. “Just one time. Nobody will ever know.”

“Slippery slope, baby,” he replied regretfully.

“Yeah, I know. Party pooper.”

He laughed painfully. “Believe me, I’d be all over racing you down that slope if I weren’t worried about your career. But I couldn’t live with myself if I wrecked your reputation because I couldn’t keep it in my pants for a few months.”

“You have a great deal more self-discipline than I do. I’m dying, here.”

His laugh became a little more pained. “Don’t tell me things like that. It’s hard enough staying away from you.”

* * *

About a week before the plea hearing, she started having nightmares. They all involved Cam leaving her in some horrible way or him being with other women. Did she unconsciously fear he would get tired of waiting for her and move on to another woman?

The weird bit was the more she talked with him, the more she trusted him. Why her sleeping mind was going the other direction, she had no idea.

The third night she lurched awake, literally sobbing as she woke from a dream of Cam marrying another woman. She caved in and reached for her phone.

Its face said it was four a.m. Too late to call Cam and hear the reassuring sound of his voice. She comforted herself by texting him a quick message through her tears that she missed him.

About five seconds later, her phone rang. “What’s wrong, Dani?”

The floodgates opened. She full on ugly snot-cried. Good grief, this had better be her hormones acting up because she never randomly cried like this.

He demanded, alarmed, “Talk to me.”

“I had a nightmare about you, and it’s really stupid because you’d never—” she broke off. Nope. Not telling him what she’d dreamed about him. “—I’m just stressed out at work, and sick of waiting for Alex’s trial, and I’m not getting any sleep, and this is probably just my stupid hormones?—“

“I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“No—“

He’d already hung up. Crap. What had she done?

He wasn’t kidding. Her doorbell rang in five minutes to the second. She didn’t want to think about the speed limits he’d destroyed to get here that fast. And how on earth had he found a parking space at this hour? She ran to the door in the sloppy t-shirt she’d slept in and threw open the door.

Cam swept inside and enveloped her into his arms, hugging her tightly. And then it was all hands plunging into hair, wet mouths, and murmured words of lust.

“Bedroom?” she muttered.

“Better not. No way would I be able to put on the brakes.”

In fact, he declined to come any further than just inside her front door, mumbling something about any horizontal surface being a temptation at this point. She buried her face against his chest and inhaled the clean, masculine scent of him, relishing his warmth and strength, and loving the thud of his heart, which was neither slow nor steady at the moment.

Gradually, her nightmare faded, chased away by Cam’s comforting presence.

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