Page 14 of Misadventures in Blue
He glances down at my nipples, erect and making themselves known against the thin fabric of my blouse.
“Is that for me?”
“Who else would it be for?”
“Kenneth.”
I make a dismissive noise, and my cop narrows his eyes.
“He wants to fuck you,” he growls. “I don’t like it.”
I lift an eyebrow. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
More scowling. “Still. He’s an asshole.”
It’s so churlish, so very male, that I have to laugh a little, and his gaze snags on my smiling mouth and goes from angry to something different. Something greedy.
“He’s not an asshole,” I say. “He’s very nice. Even if he were an asshole, however, it still wouldn’t be any of your business.”
“You’ve fucked him,” the sulky rookie says. “Haven’t you?”
There’s no point in lying, not when Jace and I are as little to each other as Kenneth and I are. Or at least as little as Jace and I should be to each other. “Three years ago. One date. He ended up moving right after to be closer to his kids, and that was the end of it.”
“Except he’s back now,” Jace points out. “And he wants to pick up where you left off.”
“I’m reiterating again that this is none of your business.”
Not that Jace is wrong. I think Kenneth would very much like to pick up where we left off. Have more china doll sex. And in the three years since he left, I’ve thought about it. Thought about how long the nights are getting, how my house seems to feel emptier and emptier and emptier. I never cared too much about becoming a spinster—I’ve even railed against the label as patriarchal bullshit—but though I don’t feel desperate to marry or start a family, I do feel…lonely.
And wouldn’t Kenneth be an easy solution? He already has two lovely daughters, so if we had children, it would be because we wanted them, not because we felt middle age bearing down on us. And we run in the same circles, share many of the same friends. It makes sense.
In contrast, Jace makes no sense. He’s the opposite of the pro-Kenneth list. Too young to settle down, and I bet too wild too. Just like Frazer at that age, working hard, playing hard—drinks and girls and danger. There’s no easy security in Jace, no clear path to a future.
So why am I uninterested in Kenneth?
And why am I so inexorably drawn to this young cop instead?
I look up into Jace’s stern face. “Why do you care?”
It’s the wrong thing to say. It betrays too much of my own conflicted desires, and Jace, like any good predator, smells my weakness.
“Do you want me to care?” he asks, his voice turning low and rough.
He’s visibly shaking with restraint now, his hands balled into fists on either side of me, his pulse thrumming fast in his neck. Every long, diamond-cut inch of his body is desperate to press against mine; I don’t have to look down to know he’s hard. His jaw is tense, rigid, a small muscle jumping along it. He looks like he wants to fuck me right through the wall.
God, this is sexy. It’s all so fucking sexy…
My composure is gone. My control is shot. There’s only him, smelling like leather and the barest hint of tea tree oil. Rugged and clean. I lean forward and run my nose along the edge of his jaw to smell it better.
He freezes.
His jaw is clean-shaven, but that five o’clock shadow is beginning to make itself known—just a hint of raspiness over his warm, sculpted jaw. It tickles against my nose, and his scent is even stronger like this. If the Yankee Candle store sold a candle that smelled like Jace, women would stop going on dates altogether.
“Cat,” he rumbles in warning.
This growling version of Jace is going to be the death of my panties. I rub my chest against his hard, body-armored one and smile into his neck.
He lets out a long breath. A “now I see” breath.
