“You really need to work on your phone etiquette.” Sloane’s voice was husky in my ear. It made me think of those fleeting perfect moments from before. Falling asleep next to her on a pile of pillows in a nice bedroom in a safe house. I hated that my body so viscerally remembered those times. “How’s she doing?”
“She’s holding up,” I said, wincing at the pain in my neck as I adjusted the pillows behind me the way teenage Sloane had.
“Maeve and I call her every day, but it’s hard to tell if she’s hiding stuff from us.”
“She put the ashes on top of the refrigerator,” I told her.
Sloane let out a soft, sad laugh. “He’d like that.”
“He would,” I agreed.
She was quiet for a long beat, and I worried she was about to hang up.
“So did you go beat the crap out of whoever ran Holly off the road?” she asked.
“Now, why would I do that?”
“Because you’re you.”
“Let’s just say they won’t be running anyone off the road anytime soon,” I told her.
“Nash told me that you kicked Jonah Bluth’s ass at football practice because he was talking shit about me in high school.”
Nash had a big mouth to go along with that shiny badge.
“I have no recollection—”
“Errr!”
Sloane’s wrong answer buzzer almost made me smile.
“So what did you not do to these guys?”
“Nolan and I made sure they didn’t have a vehicle to run anyone off the road with and that the local police knew where to look when Holly reported the incident.”
“Look at you and Nolan becoming buddy guys. Did you go for a buddy guy beer afterward?”
I’d actually had a scotch to Nolan’s Coors Light.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
I wondered what she was wearing. If she was in bed or if she was curled up on the couch, lipstick still on, book in her lap. My cock stirred.
I pressed the palm of my hand to my groin. I didn’t get spontaneous erections…unless I was near her. I was an adult in control of his baser instincts. The husky phone voice of the woman who had nearly destroyed me shouldn’t have this effect on me.
“So you cleaned up the mess, got back at the bad guy. Now what?”
“What do you mean?” I repeated.
Was it just Sloane’s voice that had me thickening with arousal? Or was this a symptom of something else? Of me losing control, my edge.
Me sending a message to Anthony Hugo wasn’t going to stop him from making more moves. I wanted him to. Because sooner or later, he’d slip up, and I’d exploit that mistake to beat him.
“I can practically hear the fury dripping off your syllables, big guy. Someone messed with one of your employees. You handled it. But how do you blow off steam when justice doesn’t take away the mad?”
I scoffed. “I don’t need to blow off steam.”
“Personally, I’m a fan of sweaty, dirty sex. It always seems to set the world right again,” Sloane said cheerfully. “You should try it sometime.”
A strangled sound tore free from my throat. My cock pulsed and I pressed my palm over it, hoping to suffocate the arousal. I wasn’t going to sit here having a conversation on the phone with a woman and jerk off. Even if that woman was Sloane.
She laughed softly. “Only messing with you, Lucifer.”
But I could picture her sprawled beneath me. Her hair fanned over a pillow like a halo. Those milky thighs locked around my hips. Her breasts half an inch from heaving out of one of those useless tops with the spaghetti straps.
“Oh, so you don’t actually enjoy sweaty, dirty sex?” I shot back.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” She all but purred the words in my ear.
I didn’t know what the right move was, what tactic I should employ. Because I couldn’t have what I wanted. I didn’t want what I wanted.
“Why are you still awake?” I asked gruffly.
“Some pain in the ass wouldn’t stop texting me,” she said lightly.
I could hear the smile in her voice, could picture it in my mind. That slow, sultry curve of her lips usually reserved for anyone who wasn’t me.
This was a mistake. I was making another mistake. I couldn’t stop myself. Sloane was the bad habit I couldn’t quit.
“You should go to bed,” I said.
“Geez. Maybe you should take a class in how to talk to people without sounding like an ass.”
“I don’t have time for pillow talk with you.”
“That settles it. My next book club selection is going to be something about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Maybe then I’ll understand why you go from almost human to Lucifer between two sentences.”
It was a dance we’d been locked into for years. Every time one of us showed a side that was a little too human, the other managed to strike. Walls were rebuilt, animosity reinforced. We kept relearning the same lesson over and over again, but it never stuck. We weren’t good for each other. I wasn’t good for her. And I could never trust a woman who had so thoroughly betrayed me.
“Don’t waste your time thinking about me. I don’t waste any of mine on you,” I told her.
With her gasp ringing in my ear, I disconnected the call, switched off the light, and lay in the dark hating myself.
18
Ruins of the Past
Sloane
Idragged the recycling bin up the short stretch of concrete, around Lucian’s Range Rover, and plunked it down in front of his garage door. It was a dark, damp Saturday evening.
It had been one of those days where one thing went wrong followed by everything else spiraling out of control. The computers in the library had crashed for over an hour, my shipment of paperbacks for the Valentine’s Day author signing arrived missing their covers, and I’d squeezed in a fourth blind date in hopes that BeardedByron223 would turn out to be better than my last three matches.
He was not. BeardedByron was neither bearded nor a fan of Lord Byron. He’d shown up late and drunk, and in the middle of me telling him it wasn’t going to work out, he took a phone call from his current girlfriend and told her he was at the gym.
He was so not better than the last three that I had plans to curl up tonight by the fire with the sperm bank’s website. If I couldn’t find a date with future husband potential, maybe I’d have better luck with a child.
To add to my already bad mood, I’d spent the past few days ruminating about Lucian. Lucian having dinner with my mom. Lucian texting me from bed. Lucian generously giving his employee a brand-new SUV. Lucian almost kissing me in his office. Lucian working with the FBI to take down one of the most dangerous criminals in the Mid-Atlantic region area. Lucian naked, crooking his finger at me.
That last one hit me in the shower yesterday after I spied his Range Rover in the driveway. Then again right before bed…and when I woke up…
I liked it better when I only occasionally remembered that the man existed.
We were on a never-ending roller coaster of insults, sexual awareness, bitterness, and flirtation. And it was time to put an end to it. I wanted to get off this ride so I could focus my energy on what I actually wanted…which was not Lucian Rollins.
I marched up the walkway to his front door, finger poised to jab his doorbell, when the door swung open.
“What?” Lucian demanded.
He was missing a jacket, tie, and shoes but was still dressed in tailored trousers and an Oxford with his sleeves rolled to the elbows. His socks were a fancy plaid pattern. He looked like he’d just strolled off the pages of Rich Guy Weekend magazine.
He also looked annoyed, tired, and obnoxiously sexy. A woman who didn’t know what a pain in the ass he was would have been tempted to shoo him back inside with promises of hot, homemade soup and a night of forgetting his troubles.
But Lucian Rollins didn’t deserve homemade soup.
“I’m sure you’re used to having your butler drag your trash bins back inside in the city, but around here, we do it ourselves,” I announced.
“Why would I need a butler when I have an overbearing neighbor who can’t seem to remember to put on a fucking coat?” he shot back.
“I don’t think you should be working with the FBI,” I snapped, going with the first item on my mental list of problems that I had with him. Well, the first problem that didn’t involve my inconvenient physical attraction to him.