“I’m angry with whoever shot at both of us.” Most definitely. She could easily separate that strand of emotion from the twisted knot inside her.
“We will get them.” He said the words without inflection.
“I’m angry with you for lying to me. I’m angry with myself for falling for it.”
He leaned forward, braced his elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped, then looked at her. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. You had no reason to suspect I was anyone other than Chad Henderson.”
She looked at him. “That doesn’t make me less angry, Matt,” she said, testing his real name in her mouth. “You can make this all business, just doing your job, but to me it feels more personal than that. Were you faking everything?”
No movement. No reaction on his face, just a long silence during which she sensed more than saw him battling his emotions. “Protecting you was my only priority.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I wasn’t faking anything.”
His voice would be her undoing. She folded the paper towel he’d handed her to use as a napkin into halves, then quarters, smoothing down each fold. Avoiding his eyes, because looking at him only intensified whatever was simmering deep in the pit of her belly. Desire, electric and thrumming in the warm air of his house, was intensifying with every passing moment.
“So you were attracted to me and you used that attraction to keep me close.”
“It was the best way to make sure you were safe. Later, I wanted…” He stopped, drew in breath. “I wanted something I shouldn’t want. Something I can’t have.”
Of course. Explaining a sexual relationship to anyone from Caleb to Lieutenant Hawthorn to a prosecuting attorney to a jury would be unpleasant at best. But the dispassionate, observing part of her mind suggested that the key part of that confession wasn’t “shouldn’t” or “can’t.” The key part was “I wanted.” Unpredictable, uncontrollable desires seemed to unnerve Matt Dorchester, and yet those desires were the most honest, most real part of what they shared. He wanted her.
With each heartbeat her skin felt more sensitized, the nerves anticipating his touch, his body against hers. Swirling inside her was a dark mixture of desire and anger, potent, irresistible, and very, very tasty. The concoction flickered and skittered along her nerves, striking sparks before settling between her thighs.
It was just an impulse, a physical response to fear and fury in a situation so confined and unreal that anything could happen, then disappear in the bright light of ordinary life.
“Being angry doesn’t seem to be putting the brakes on wanting you.”
As motionless as he was, he went even more still, in a really interesting, intent way, jerking the feedback loop running between them into high gear. The body often wanted something the brain found incomprehensible, except wanting Matt didn’t seem incomprehensible. It seemed inevitable. But he said nothing.
“If anything, it’s making it worse,” she continued.
Sex wasn’t just about happy, cheerful emotions like love or affection. It was about darker things too. Hidden desires. Illogical attractions. Anger or fear or shock all could make people do something they wouldn’t normally do. The shock was gone, the fear receded into the background of her mind, but the anger, the anger had turned up the intensity, making her blood simmer in her veins, making heat gather between her thighs, in her lips, in the pulse thudding against the skin of her throat.
He sat back, looked away, then back at her, and blew his breath out. “I thought about this,” he said. “We’ve got a couple of options. You can go to town on the dishes.”
She blinked. Looked at her plate. Tried to imagine shrieking and smashing things. “Not even remotely close to physical enough.”
He nodded. “We can go down the hall, tape up your hands, and turn you loose on the heavy bag.”
“Better,” she said.
He held out his hand, the commanding move tempered by his watchful, wary eyes, as if the shift in territory from the fast-paced, sexy, loud nightclub brought out a softer side in him. Or maybe he was trying to find his way in all of this too.
She walked down the hall to the mirror-walled studio, and waited while he found wraps and tape. His fingers were businesslike as he wound the wraps around her knuckles, then fitted a pair of gloves over her hands.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she admitted as she took up position across from the heavy bag.
“Just hit it,” he said.
She did, throwing a punch that barely shifted the bag on the chain.
“Drive from your shoulder, then from your hip,” he said, demonstrating. She tried again, adrenaline searing her nerves, sending her heart rate bumping skyward, landed a punch with her right, then her left.
“Better,” he said, watching her judiciously.