“Of course.” He closed the car door for me. “After all, I’m all about protecting and serving.”
I lifted a brow.
The scent of the late-blooming roses Mrs. Silver took care of filled the air as Reece placed his hand on my lower back, steering me up the old cobblestone walkway to the front porch. The weight of his palm seemed to sear right through my thin shirt. The whole no-touch policy went right out the door.
The lights were off in the Silvers’ and James and Miriam’s place, but a small yellowish glow radiated from the apartment above mine. I really needed to introduce myself. I added that to the ever-changing priority list.
Stopping in front of my door, I fished out my keys, desperately wishing I didn’t notice how his hand still remained on my back or that we were standing so close, his right thigh almost brushing my hip.
I glanced up at him and drew in a sharp breath. Out of all the things streaming through my head, I couldn’t pull out a single coherent sentence.
“See, you safely made it to your door,” he said, his tone light.
My skin felt too warm in the balmy air. “Thanks to you.”
“I’m good for something.”
“You’re good for a lot of things.” For some reason when those words jumped out of my mouth, they sounded a lot more perverted than they did before I spoke them.
In the dark, I could barely make out his expression, but he shifted so that we were face-to-face. Doing so caused him to drag his hand from my back to my hip. “Ah, Roxy, I wish I could say that I believed you knew just exactly what I was good at, but I can’t.”
Ack! Okay. The words really did come off perverted-sounding, because he was talking about that night, and we were supposed to move on from that. But we were right smack-dab in the middle of that mess. And my tongue got completely out of control. “You were good,” I said, remembering the way he’d kissed me. Drunk off his rocker or not, the man knew how to kiss. “I mean, really good.”
Those damn lips curved up, getting my lady bits all kinds of excited and wishing he’d move his hand a few inches to the left and down. “Now, Roxy, I thought it was nothing to write home about?”
I had said that. And I also realized we were thinking about two very different things. Kissing versus sex. I really needed to tell him what happened. “Reece, I—”
“There’s something I want to be up front about,” he said, cutting in. He dipped his head so that when he spoke, his breath danced along my cheek. “I told you that I missed you and I was done missing you.”
My brain emptied. “Yeah, yeah you did.”
“But that’s not the only thing,” he explained while my heart started to pound. “Obviously there is something between us. Drunk or not, that night would’ve never happened if there wasn’t.”
“Wait. You said you regretted that night. That you—”
“Yeah, I wish that night didn’t happen, Roxy. Only because I want to remember the first time I got inside you. I want to recall every second of thrusting into you, inch by inch, and commit that to memory, babe. That’s why I regret it and fully plan on rectifying that situation.”
Oh, holy balls, what he just said was light-me-on-fire hot. So steaming hot I wasn’t even focusing on the fact he’d never been in me. No guy, not even Reece, ever talked to me like that.
I liked it.
So did my girlie parts.
Katie once told me she knew this guy who could make her wet just by speaking to her, and I seriously didn’t believe her. Now I did. Totally did. Definitely no longer an urban legend. It was possible—wait a sec. He planned on rectifying the situation?
“You know what the fucking hardest thing the last eleven months was to watch?”
“No,” I whispered.
His voice was rough, a low rumble. “Seeing you with guys who weren’t even worth a minute of your time—people that make me wonder what kind of shit choice in guys you have.”
I started to defend my taste in men, but I snapped my mouth shut. Yeah, the last couple of guys I’d gone out with were kind of bad. Not Dean. He was just . . . blah. Boring.
“You go out with these tools while you’d turn and run from me.”
“You’re worth my time?” I asked, unable to stop myself from doing so.
The tilt to his lips was knowing, arrogant and annoyingly sexy. “Babe, you have no idea how worth your time I am.” The hand on my hip tightened. “I’m not wanting to be just friends with you, Roxy. Hell no, but if that’s all you want, then I’ll deal with it. I just need to lay it all out there. So we’re both on the same page. You know what I want.”
Static transmitted through his shoulder radio, a dispatcher calling in a traffic accident on a back road not too far from here. Keeping his eyes on me, he moved his hand and hit a button I couldn’t see on the radio. “This is Unit Three-oh-one,” he said. “I’m en route.”
When Reece removed his hand, he said to me, “Just think about it.” Then he dipped his head, brushing his lips across my cheek, to my temple. He placed a honeyed, all too brief kiss there. “Now get your sweet ass inside.”
In a daze, I did just that. The only thing that stopped me was when I turned in the open doorway and he was already halfway to his cruiser. “Reece!”
He looked over his shoulder. “Roxy?”
My cheeks heated. “Be careful.”
I couldn’t see him smile, but I heard it in his voice. “Always, babe.”
Then he was gone.
The pleasant trill was back, stronger than I could remember. It was like having sugar land on my tongue. I floated as I closed my door, seconds from throwing out my arms like the chick in the Sound of Music and twirling around when I drew up short, just in front of the hall. There was a low hum coming from the kitchen, the sound of gears—of a machine turning over.
Reece and his I’m-not-just-wanting-a-friendship speech forgotten, I quickly flipped on the light. Everything looked normal, but that sound . . .
Dropping my purse on the couch, I slowly made my way through the small dining room, flipping on lights as I went. My stomach twisted as I reached the kitchen, quickly finding that light switch.
Light flooded the kitchen and I sought out the source of the noise, immediately finding it.
“What in the world?” I muttered.
Directly across from me, the dishwasher was getting down, doing its business. Nothing weird about that . . . except I hadn’t turned the dishwasher on before I left for work. And even if I had, it wouldn’t have been running this long. Tiny hairs rose along the back of my neck as I stared at it.
With the breath hitched in my throat, I crept toward the dishwasher, expecting it to spring to life and start singing like appliances did in Beauty and the Beast. Swallowing hard, I slid my fingers under the handle and yanked it open, interrupting the cycle.
Steam poured into the air, and I jerked my hand back. The door creaked and then fell all the way open. There were only two things in the dishwasher. The cup I’d used for the tea before I left for work and the plate I’d eaten a bagel on.
Nothing else.
Leaving the door open, I backed away as I shook my head. I didn’t get it. Had I accidentally knocked on the timer? Sounded plausible, but hell, I honestly didn’t even know how to turn it on.
A cold chill snaked down my neck as I folded my arms across my chest. Turning in a wide circle, my gaze sought out every nook and cranny in the kitchen. Then, more than a little freaked out, I darted out of the kitchen, leaving all the lights on, and I didn’t stop running until I was in my bedroom, door shut and locked behind me.