Page 5 of Savagely Yours
She stared back, her chin raised.
“You okay?” I asked.
First, she nodded.
Then, her eyes rolled back, and her knees gave out.
I caught her before she hit the ground.
“How’s Songbird?” Jesse asked.
I scooped Larke up, and she dangled in my arms like a ragdoll. “She’s fine. She passed out, but honestly, I was more worried that she was still conscious with everything that’s happened over the past several minutes.”
“Woman’s a force to be reckoned with.”
“Yeah, but something tells me she’s had to be.” I adjusted my grip, tucking her forehead against my shoulder to feel herbreaths against my collarbone. “Let me know when they’re done.”
“DOJ can?—”
“No, I’ve got her. Until they give the all clear, she’s staying with me.”
CHAPTER TWO
LARKE
A blast of cold stung my lips.
My eyes popped open, and I blinked until I made out a face in the darkness. Dez was looking down at me, the space between his brows more wrinkled than a Shar-Pei puppy. I was lying across my bed, his large body perched over mine and his hands planted on either side of my head.
I reached for whatever he’d used to zap me into alertness just as he withdrew an ice-filled sandwich bag, the thin plastic dotted with condensation.
“You wouldn’t wake up,” he said, gently wiping the moisture from my lips with his thumb. “So, I improvised. Lips have some of the densest concentrations of nerve endings in the body.”
I tapped the space beneath my nose. “What about here? I got my ‘stache threaded exactly one time, and it was so painful, I considered taking out additional life insurance.”
He smiled. “The philtrum is pretty sensitive, yeah.”
“And the clitoris.”
“That as well. I’ll start there next time.”
“I’m only providing information, not an invitation.” I relaxed into the gentle sensation of his fingers, knowing the moment would be over sooner than I wanted it to be. “And, by the way,your salary’s guaranteed. You didn’t have to wake me up. You could have let me drift off into the eternal abyss. Your direct deposit will still come through.”
“Tapley, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I wasn’t protecting you.”
He eased away.
I yawned and stretched my arms above my head, sitting upright. While I wasn’t unfamiliar with a blackout every once in a while, this level of darkness seemed to exceed anything I’d ever encountered. The only reason I could see at all was because Dez had set a flashlight on the nightstand.
“What are you doing here so late?” I asked, covering another yawn. “You usually don’t do night duty. I beg, and I beg, and you never come.”
He tossed the sandwich bag on the nightstand. “If you actually ever did beg me, trust me, I’d come. But, after what happened at your office, I’m not leaving your safety up to anyone else.”
“You can’t leave that bag there.”
“It’s not real wood. There’s nothing to warp.”
“If you’d like, I can draft up a contract that says, ‘Dez gets to make the rules about my furniture because he agrees to pay my bills, starting from today, in perpetuity.’”
