I nodded a little. “No. But he got me another one. This one is licensed.” I was still doing me and living my life, I was just doing it with more clearly defined lines than I did before. It was actually pretty fun when I had my own sexy cop around to enforce the rules.
“Good. I don’t want you to lose your edge.” His eyelids started to droop, so I reached out and squeezed one of his hands. Despite it all, Booker’s heart had been in the right place even if he might have gone about everything all wrong. That was something that was painfully familiar to me.
“Those edges just smooth out naturally when they end up rubbing against the person that is your rock, my friend.”
He grumbled something and let his eyes drift closed. “I don’t need a rock. I’m hard enough on my own.” I didn’t say anything, but I did think of the doe-eyed teenager that had just snuck in to see him. Sometimes rocks were tiny pebbles tossed around in a storm, battering endlessly against a much bigger boulder, slowly, silently chipping away at the surface.
I slipped out of the room and went down to the GTO so I could get back to Titus. He didn’t throw the L-word around a lot . . . in fact he had only said it to me twice. The day after Conner was hauled away by the coroner and the day he finally came home from the hospital when he was still stoned out of his mind on pain pills. It didn’t bother me because the next day he had handed over the keys to that Liberty Blue muscle car and told me I could use it until his leg was out of the cast. If that wasn’t a full-on declaration of love and devotion, then I didn’t know what was. The keys to the GTO were better than any diamond ring he might give me.
I parked the car in the alley behind the house and made my way through the back door. The kitchen was a mess, obviously the leftover remnants of Titus trying to make himself lunch. I sighed under my breath and threw my purse on the table. It took me fifteen minutes to put stuff back in the fridge, rinse off the dishes, and wipe down the counters. I was irritated when I went to go find him. I wasn’t his maid for goodness’ sake.
When I got to living room he was easy enough to spot. Somehow he had managed to push all the furniture to the edges of the room and he was laid out on his back in the center of the room doing sit-ups. His shirt was off, showing the Ace bandage that was still wrapped around his bruised ribs and all he had on for clothing, if you wanted to call it that, was a pair of black boxer briefs, since getting anything on over his cast took both of us and a lot of tugging and swearing. He must have been at it for a while because all his muscles were pulled taut and a slippery sheen of sweat dotted all of his naked skin. He was breathing hard enough that I could hear him from across the room and it was louder than the heels of my shoes clicking on the hardwood floors as I made my way toward him. He turned his head as I approached but didn’t stop curling up and down until I plopped myself down right on top of him. He fell back to the floor with a grunt and put his hands on my waist. Fortunately for me, I had worn a skirt when I went out to run around town, so all his hot and sweaty skin brushed enticingly along my bare thighs as I straddled him. He always felt better than anything in life ever had.
I rubbed my fingers on the white spot in his hair. It seemed to have stopped spreading and now was the size of an Oreo cookie, stark and brilliant against the rest of his black hair. It was one of my favorite features of his. One of the other ones was coming to life under my backside as I leaned forward to kiss him soundly on the mouth.
“How did you move all the furniture? You’re supposed to be taking it easy.”
His hands moved to my thighs and started pushing the filmy fabric of my skirt up my legs. The roughness of his palms made me shiver as he kissed me back just as hard and just as forcefully as he always did.
“Taking it easy sucks. I want to go back to work as soon as this stupid thing comes off. That means I need to stay bigger and badder than the guys committing the crimes.”
I put my hands on his rock-hard chest and dug my nails into the unyielding muscle that lived there. “Sitting around and watching TV for a few weeks isn’t going to turn you into an out-of-shape blob, Titus. You deserve to relax.”
His eyebrows shot up as his fingers dipped into the edge of the panties at the very top of my thigh. I was already getting wet and ready.
“I do relax.” His fingers danced under the fabric closer to the heart of me.
“When?” The word came out in a breathy rush and I leaned forward even more, giving him more access to the places I wanted him to touch. My hair fell around us like a curtain blocking out the afternoon light.
“When I’m inside of you.” I gasped at him as his fingers found that perfect point of pleasure and began to trip across it.