Page 39 of Misadventures in Blue
Most of all, I hate the thought of someone else using his bicep as a pillow. Knowing the warm fan of his breath in their hair. Getting to wake up to sleepy gray eyes already blazing with possession.
And I can’t meet those gray eyes now as I think about all this.
Hating it doesn’t change anything, I remind myself. He’s still too young. He’s still a cop. This is all still so wrong.
Jace catches my chin with his fingers and forces me to look at him. “Is it really such a huge thing? Our ages? Because it’s not to me, and if anyone says anything to you about it, I’ll tell them as much.” His gaze darkens. “Or more.”
The noise that comes out of my mouth is a sour, scoffing noise that I’d ordinarily be appalled at making. “What are you going to do, Jace? Beat the shit out of every person who calls me a cougar?”
He starts to object at the word, but I go on. “Are you going to shake up every person who stares at us, wondering if I’m your older sister or an aunt—or worse, your mother? Walk around with a sandwich board telling people to fuck off?”
His eyes are narrowed now, and I feel the heat of that cop gaze scrutinizing me, and I hate it. I hate that he’s examining me while I’m shredded with fear and messy with feelings I didn’t ask for. Catherine Day isn’t supposed to be shredded or messy—I’m always contained and cool. Icy, just like the rest of the department says I am. And not being icy when I most need to be is infuriating.
I toss my head away from Jace’s fingers like an agitated filly. “And what are you going to say to yourself, Jace? In a year? In five? In twenty? When you’ve thrown away your life chasing something ridiculous instead of living it the way you should?”
I’m pinned to the bed before I can blink, two hundred pounds of pissed-off cop looming over me and pressing my body into the mattress. “You are not ridiculous,” Jace growls. “And you’re not allowed to say that shit about yourself. Not while I’m around. Got it?”
Despite everything, the insane chemistry between us is setting my skin aflame. I can feel my nipples pebble between us, his cock go rigid and hot in the notch between my legs, both our hearts hammering hard against our chests as if they’re trying to trade places. I want him to kiss me. I want him to eat my mouth like he’s starving and then fuck me screaming into the bed.
Jace looks like he very much wants the same, his arms trembling where he holds himself above me and his eyes dropping to my mouth like he can’t decide whether he wants to kiss me or shove his cock down my throat.
I moan, and his control breaks—for a single instant. He drops his mouth onto mine for a crashing, ragged kiss, but before I can even begin to kiss him back, he’s gone. He’s off the bed, staring at me, naked, his denied erection dark and bobbing between his legs. He ignores it and bites out, “We’re not going to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Fuck the fight away,” he says shortly. “That’s not going to help anything.”
“Because it can’t be helped, Jace.”
He ducks his head, muscles popping in his jaw, but he doesn’t argue my point.
Which leaves me feeling a little stung, although I’m not even sure why, given that I started this fight. And I’m not even sure what I feel anymore, actually, just that it’s a million things at once. Like maybe a secret part of my mind was hoping he’d keep trying to convince me that we could overcome this.
“I can’t help my age, Cat,” he finally says.
“I know,” I say. “But it’s not just that.”
“Oh,” he says, his posture stiffening even more. “That’s right. The badge.”
I blink, and in that blink, I see my dead fiancé’s sightless stare and an ocean of blood.
I sigh. “Yes.”
“You’re a cop too,” he says. Accuses.
“Exactly.” I get to my feet now as well, which maybe is a mistake because it only serves to highlight how much taller he is, but I don’t care. “I already carry all the fear and the trauma for myself. I can’t carry it for another person. I can’t wait up every night wondering if this will be the night you don’t come home. I can’t be the one waiting on that phone call, Jace. I just…can’t.”
“Are you saying you don’t worry now?” he asks, taking a
step forward. “Are you saying because it’s only been a few weeks, because we haven’t put labels on anything, you wouldn’t give a shit if I lived or died?”
My mouth drops open. Of course not, I want to sputter, but he keeps going.
“Because maybe you feel that way, but if you don’t think I’m already in so deep that I wouldn’t be in fucking agony if you were hurt, then think again.”
I’m staring up at him—defensive and confused—and whatever he sees in my face is not the right answer because he reaches down for his clothes and starts yanking them on in jerky, vicious motions that make me suddenly desperate to take back everything I’ve just said.
“Jesus, Cat,” he mutters, pulling his T-shirt over his head. “You can’t freeze out everything, you know. And I’ll be damned if I’ll let you do it to me.”
