“Ike, you’re already doing enough for me.”
“If I was doing enough, you wouldn’t be in trouble in the first place.” Ike wanted to bite back the words the second they escaped his mouth. Jess didn’t need to know how protective he was of her and how much he really cared. Just the memory of the fear in her voice when she’d called last night and how badly she was shaking when he’d pulled her out of her closet made his blood boil.
Her brow furrowed and she stepped closer. “How were you supposed to know this would happen?”
“Given the situation, I should’ve planned for the worst-case scenario and had you stay at Hard Ink with everyone else. Jeremy’s employees being targeted for information wasn’t that big of a leap.”
“Ike,” Jess said, compassion and affection plain in her voice. She closed the gap between them and rested her hand against his chest. The soft touch shot through him, setting his body on edge and making him want so much more. “None of this was your fault. You can’t think that it was.”
He wasn’t going to debate it with her. Ike wasn’t a boy looking to duck his responsibilities, he was a thirty-five-year-old man who fully owned it when he’d fucked up. Because, Jesus Christ, when he fucked up, he did it spectacularly. What happened to Lana proved that. And the same thing had almost happened to Jess. What would Jess think if she ever learned Lana had died on his watch? How safe would she feel right now if she knew how badly he’d let another woman down?
Sonofabitch.
Jessica’s hand gripped his shirt, and she softly beat her fist against his chest. “Ike, tell me you know I’m right.”
Ike cupped her fist in his big hand and pressed her fingers against his chest. For just a moment. Problem was, he liked her touch. He wanted more of it. And restraint had never been his strong suit.
He looked over her shoulder to the bed. In his mind’s eye, he walked her backward toward it, his hands in her hair and his mouth claiming hers. Desire roared through him.
Shit. Time to fly.
“Listen, I haven’t been up here for a while,” Ike said, giving her hand a squeeze and then stepping away, breaking the contact. “I need to pick up some food for us. Any special requests?”
“Aw, look at you being all domestic,” Jess said, a playful, ball-busting grin on her full red lips. “I’m seeing a whole other side of you.”
Ike rolled his eyes, pretending like he didn’t enjoy her taunting even though he did. Jess was fun and adventurous and the kind of woman who grabbed life with both hands and didn’t let go. She played hard and loved freely, and he admired her for both. She didn’t let other people’s expectations run her life or set her agenda. She wore her heart on her face and in her eyes and on her skin. And she was brave and loyal, too—things that meant everything in his world. Those were core tenets of the code by which the Ravens lived and died.
“What-the-fuck-ever,” Ike said, starting down the steps. He needed some distance from her. And he sure as hell needed to get his head on straight and his body under control. “Just some damn groceries. You have special requests or not?”
Her footsteps followed behind him. “I’ll just go with you—”
“No,” he said, his tone harsher than he’d intended. He turned to watch her make her way down.
Standing on the next-to-last step, Jess planted her hands on her curvy hips. Hips that would feel so damn good in his hands, provided he ever let himself off the leash where she was concerned. Which he hadn’t. And wouldn’t. “Why the hell not?” she asked, brown eyes flashing.
Shaking his head, Ike gave Jess’s body a long, slow once-over, from her wavy red-streaked black hair, to the fucking luscious cleavage created by the red lace push-up bra she wore under the form-fitting black V-neck shirt, to the knee-high Goth boots she wore over a pair of torn-up black jeans that wrapped around her thighs like a second skin. Against all the black, the color of the tattoos on her arms and chest stood out like sun breaking through the clouds.
That his hands had put a lot of that ink on her skin? Made him more possessive of her than he had any right to be.
“Can’t chance having the wrong person notice and identify you. You don’t exactly blend in to the crowd.” Understatement of the year, right there.
She smirked. “I can tone it down when the situation calls for it.”
Ike immediately hated the thought. Jess was loud, vivid Technicolor in an in-your-face kinda way. Exactly the way it should be. “Not a chance. You could shave your head and wear a paper bag and I’d still know exactly who you were from a football field away.”