“Right.” He bobbed his eyebrows. “So you want the long version or the short version?”
Considering she was starting to get all hot and bothered again—hard not to when his big body was spread out before her like a feast of tanned flesh, crinkly man hair, and um, the most impressive-looking penis she’d ever had the pleasure to behold. Even semi-flaccid, he was still long and thick and blatantly, unrepentantly male. She figured she’d opt for the short version.
“Give me the CliffsNotes.” She ran her hand down his washboard belly, delighting when his skin quivered beneath her fingers. It was a heady experience to make a man like him—a former spec-ops soldier, an alpha male raised to the nth power—shiver. “That way, we can put those condoms to use.”
“Truly?” If he’d been a bird dog, he would have been on point. The arm he had around her tightened, and his wide-palmed hand found its way to her ass.
She pointed a finger in the air. “Hear that?” He cocked his head, straining to listen to the soft music drifting in from the speakers outside. “That’s Al Green. One note of Al Green, and I become Miss MonkeySex McHornyPants.”
He laughed. That low, rolling, want-to-listen-to-it-forever laugh. It did funny things to the rhythm of her heart. “Good to know. I’ll keep that in mind for the future when I’m trying to get you in the mood.”
The word hung in the air between them. Future… Was it possible? Had her plan worked? Did he realize how good they were together? How they just fit?
We’re talking Legos, folks.
But just when she began to hope, he waved a hand through the air and quickly changed the subject. “After my injury,” he said, “I was on some pretty heavy-duty pain meds. That put the chill on any nocturnal activities, if you know what I mean.” She pulled a face, and he flashed her that hundred-watt smile. “Sorry. Of course you know what I mean. But I’ve been off the sauce for a couple of months now. And things seemed to be in fine working order. Thank goodness. Between you and me, I was starting to get concerned.”
To say that Samantha was disappointed would be like calling the rain wet. But she was silly to have hoped, even for a second, that he had laid off the ladies because he’d decided to…what? Save himself for her?
For fuck’s sake, Sammie.
“I mean, not to blow my own horn or anything—” He stopped abruptly, and his smile turned decidedly wicked. “No need, since you’ve blown it so well.” Oh great. And now she was blushing. “But things are in remarkably fine working order.” He hitched his chin to indicate his penis lying atop his belly. No longer semi-flaccid. Now, perfectly erect.
Seeing it, an answering wetness slicked Samantha’s core. “Lucky for me,” she said. Any disappointment she felt was replaced with longing. Longing to be with him. To take him. To make him hers for as long as he’d let her.
She bent to claim his lips, but he stopped her by pressing a finger against her mouth. “Ah-ah-ah,” he said. “Turnabout is fair play. You got to ask me a personal question. Now you have to pony up the goods.”
She pulled back, lifting an eyebrow. “What do you mean? I don’t have any goods to pony up. I’m an open book.”
“Sh’yeah right. As If I’d believe that.”
“So okay,” she admitted. “You got me. This one time, in eighth grade, I glued tacks to January Jolly’s chair. But only because she had called me names all year long, started a rumor that I was going steady with a fifth grader, and cut off half my ponytail in art class.”
Ozzie’s lips twitched. “I mixed up all this fake puke at home, and then I went to this movie theater, hid the puke in my jacket, climbed up to the balcony and then, th-th-then, I made a noise like this…hua-hua-huaaaa…”
“The Goonies.” She grinned delightedly, immediately recognizing his quote and giving him extra points for doing a spot-on impersonation of Chunk.
“Best movie ever made.”
“Mmm…” She twisted her lips. “Second best. The Princess Bride is my all-time favorite.”
“Hallo. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!”
She laughed. She’d never felt so alive, so free, so…herself with any other man.
“And January Jolly sounds like a real bitch,” he said. “She’s lucky all you did was glue tacks to her chair. So what happened?”
“Since she was wearing a short skirt that day, she suffered the full brunt of those little daggers when she sat down. She yelped and jumped up, and the whole class laughed. I, of course, got suspended for two days. But it was totally worth it just to see that look of horror on her face.”
“So this killer instinct of yours isn’t a new thing.” He was watching her through half-lidded eyes. “You’ve always had it.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“Which brings me to my next question.”
Samantha rolled in her lips. “Why do I suddenly feel like the walls are closing in?”
“Apparently the problem is catching,” Ozzie said, right before asking a question that immediately tainted the easy atmosphere between them. “So what’s behind all that doggedness? Why are you so hell-bent on uncovering secrets? I’ve known you long enough to figure out it’s more than just a profession. It’s a calling. One might even say it’s an obsession?”
And for all they’d shared, this was the one thing she had never been able to bring herself to tell him. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe because it felt so big, so central to her soul and the essence of who she was. Telling him would give him everything, everything that was her. But considering all he’d shared, the grand secret that was the pasts of the men of Black Knights Inc.—and talk about power; he’d handed her a boatload with that one confession—she couldn’t do him the disservice of not answering. Turnabout was fair play.
Still, she was dismayed to hear her voice shake when she admitted, “It all started with my father’s murder.”
Chapter 16
Ozzie had been prepared to hear a lot of things. He had not been prepared to hear that.
Just like the time he had jumped in front of the neighborhood girl to save her from the slavering dog, his instincts had him reaching for Samantha and pulling her down so that her head rested beneath his chin. He wanted to protect her from it all. Erase the hurt in her eyes and the hitch in her voice.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” He knew how deeply a wound like that could cut, and he cursed himself for bringing up the subject in the first place. He had done it, after months of making sure he didn’t. He had thrown open her Pandora’s box of deep, dark secrets.
“No,” she assured him. “It’s okay. I… My dad was a good man. He was a hardworking man.”