“Fine.”
She slid off him, pulling her skirt down over her very nicely toned thighs and reaching for the remote. The TV sprang to life. An I Love Lucy rerun appeared. Okay, that would work.
Under the cover of adjusting his clothing James tried to make an appropriate mental adjustment to calm himself down. It wasn’t working. Had he really just backed her off his ready-to-go johnson? He needed his head checked. Yes. Definitely. Maybe if he just …
As she sat back down, Bogart jumped up on the sofa and wedged his hairy body between them, rump toward James and his big head in Shay’s lap. The result was a pretty damn effective barrier.
James glared at his partner. Bogart seemed to have an uncanny way of reading his handler’s mind and emotions. Spooky, actually.
Shay stroked the big doggy head, the rhythm helping to ease the frustration of wondering how to move on from a moment she had desperately wanted to finish. She noticed James was petting his partner, too.
She didn’t have a whole lot of experience with men, besides Eric. He thought she should always be ready for him. Once he was in the mood, nothing stopped him from jumping her and pumping away until he, at least, was satisfied. Foreplay had disappeared long ago. She often felt like a whore. Nothing in that relationship seemed useful when dealing with James Cannon.
She glanced cautiously across at him. He was staring at the TV like he’d never seen one before. He must be weirded out, too. If the silence between them didn’t end soon, she knew they would never get back in the mood.
Desperate for the sound of his voice, she said, “Do you always work the night shift?”
He didn’t look at her but kept stroking Bogart. “Most K-9 patrols do.” He paused to chuckle at something Lucy Ricardo did. “We patrol an area each night, unless there’s a special event we need to attend during the day.”
Shay cocked her head to one side. “You sound like a night watchman.”
That drew a smile from him. It was exactly how his sister Allyson had sized up his career path, night watchman with a pooch. Her spouse was a narc.
“It’s a little more complicated than that. I don’t just rattle doorknobs. You get to know your areas, the people, the look and smell of places. There’s a feeling when something’s not quite right. On top of that, we can be called out for any reason on any day, even our days off, for anything from crowd control to tracking a criminal, for a search-and-rescue operation, whatever support we can provide.”
“Like finding the baby tonight. That was so cool.”
“Yes.” The memory gave James a happy buzz. “From the first I prepared to become more than a patrol officer. I got a bachelor’s in criminology with a minor in psych and trauma studies before I attended the police academy. How about you? Where’d you go to school?”
She swiveled her head toward him. “Why?”
James kept his expression bland. “I share. You share. It’s called conversation.”
“North Carolina State.” The words sounded as if they’d been mined from somewhere deep. “Community college first. It took me six years because I worked my way through. I don’t like owing anybody anything.”
“You don’t have any debt?”
She glanced at him warily. “No, why?”
He shrugged. “I’ll be paying off student loans for a while, especially since I’m enrolled part-time again.”
She looked down, shielding her very expressive gaze.
He clicked off the TV. “So, it’s time to tell me about Eric.”
Shay glanced at him. His voice sounded normal, too normal. Law enforcement calm. Her hands began to tremble with frustrated desire. How could he sit there so proud, so closed, so unemotional? She felt as if she’d been caught up in a class 5 erotic twister that left her bereft, unfinished and unsatisfied.
She snuggled back into the sofa cushions, needing a little more space than she anticipated from him.
Bogart whined and lifted his head, dark molasses eyes staring into hers. Of course he could detect the tension. The air practically vibrated with it, like the moment before a lightning strike.
“Shay?” James’s expression was closed, shutting her out. But his gaze still scorched her skin. She could feel it sizzling under his blue-eyed stare. “You need to tell me about Eric. Why you’ve let him rough you up and make threats, and yet have never called the police for help.”
The accusation stung. “That’s not true. I did call the police. Once.”
“Want to tell me about that?”
Shay bit her lip and shook her head. If she did tell him, she suspected he would walk out and never come back. Damn it to hell. Eric was still ruining her life. Or maybe she’d done that all by herself a dozen years ago. If James was going to leave, maybe it was better he did so now, before she began to count on his being around.