Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(108)

That was a trick question if he’d ever heard one, but he just opted for blunt honesty. “I think it sounds nuts,” he said.

Sveti let her glossy hair swing forward to hide her eyes as she counted out a handful of colorful onesies and tiny wool socks. “I have experience in things that are nuts,” she said. “As nuts as this, perhaps worse. If Tam and the McClouds say that this thing happened, it did happen. I trust them. And I trust Miles, too.”

That needled him. “Miles? Really? You saw how he was at the wedding,” he said. “The guy’s on the verge of a psychotic break.”

“He is still my friend, and I trust him,” she said stubbornly.

Petrie wondered, not for the first time, if Sveti had a thing for Miles. Unrequited, of course, since the guy was perennially hung up on Cindy. Cindy herself had struck him as being in no way worthy of Miles’ devotion, but there was no accounting for tastes. “He’s got his hands full,” he said. “Hot and heavy with the new girlfriend that he just rescued from the black hole of Calcutta. Hell of a place to pick up chicks. Not much of an advertisement for his good judgment.”

Sveti gave him a reproachful look. “I would not make jokes,” she said. “It is not her fault, what happened to her. And I know how it is to be in a hole for months. It is not a matter for joking.”

Bring out the big guns, why didn’t she. She counted out a double handful of tiny disposable diapers, and packed them into the bag, so certain that her guilt darts had hit their mark, she didn’t even need to look up. But she hadn’t seemed upset about Miles hooking up with the girl from the black hole. She hadn’t batted an eye, in fact. Hmm.

Sveti could one-up almost anybody with her hands tied when it came to hard-luck stories. Kidnapped by a mafia Vor at the age of twelve, sent off to have her organs harvested in retaliation against her cop father. The father was subsequently murdered, and she was rescued at the eleventh hour by the McCloud Crowd, just as the bad guys were about to cut her heart out, but her mother had become mentally imbalanced from the tragedy and committed suicide some years after.

He figured that was what gave her the remote, tragic air. And her iron-clad moral upper hand. Hell, she was entitled to it.

But her hostility to him was still a mystery. She pushed him a little harder than she strictly needed to, to roll out the cart stowed beneath the bassinet to get out Q-tips, Tylenol drops, teething gel.

“What’s your problem with me, Sveti?” he demanded.

She waited just a little bit too long before she bounced it back to him. “Problem? What problem? I don’t have a problem.”

“Yes, you do,” he said. “You think I’m scum. I know I made a bad first impression, but—”

“Horrible,” she said. “Tormenting Zia with pictures of dead people. You were disgusting. Opportunistic.”

“Yeah, horrible,” he agreed. “It’s called ‘doing my job.’ It’s not a very pretty job sometimes. So forgive me, already.”

She gazed at him, her mouth a little open. Her eyes looked scared. Almost trapped. She smelled like some flower he half-recognized, a honey-sweet, succulent smell. Her cheeks had a blush of pink. And her skin was fine-grained, flawless. Somehow, he’d moved closer to her, without meaning to. There was a tiny nipple jut under the sweater. Like they’d just . . . gone hard.

God knows, he had. Like, when she walked in.

He cleared his throat. “You hate my guts.”

She sniffed. “Certainly not. I do not put so much energy into thinking about you, Petrie.”

“Wow. You cut me to the bone, Sveti.” He took a step closer, which had the effect of backing her right up to the wall. Bassinet on one side, desk on the other. Nowhere to run.

“Hold still,” he said softly. “You have something in your hair.”

It was a cheap, transparent ploy. He’d wanted to touch her hair for a couple of years now. But she didn’t call him on it. Just flinched away slightly when his fingers made contact with that miraculous stuff. Satin smooth, flashes of red in the brown. So warm. Almost like putting his fingers in a creamy, silken liquid. It made his cock ache.

Miles’ jibe at the wedding flashed through his mind, and he looked at Sveti’s pupils. Dilated. Vast velvet pools of black. Her face, so pink. All those capillaries, expanding just for you.

He hadn’t checked the heart rate yet, but he was going to make a stab at it. Her lips were moving, like she was trying to speak, but nothing was coming out. “What?” he prompted.

She shook her head. She looked almost on the verge of tears. “I forgot my English,” she whispered.

“That’s okay,” he said. “It’ll come to you. But there’s something I need to know. Something Miles said. I was wondering if it was true.”

He eased in a little closer, inhaling that scent, for as long a breath as his lungs would expand. She wore tiny jewels in her pink earlobes.

Her eyelashes fluttered, nervously. “What did Miles say?”

He insinuated himself deeper into that soft cloud of perfumed warmth that clung to her, savoring the shocked stillness, the dazzled look in her eyes.

And then it was happening. He hadn’t made a move. It was a kiss that had been forming underground for years, and now it had burst up out of the dark, ready to rock. No slick lead-in, no careful buildup, no crafty seduction. He just went at her, fierce and dominating, kissing her like he was already f*cking her. He didn’t remember deciding to stick his hand up under her sweater, cupping her tit, teasing her tight nipple through the filmy fabric of her bra. There was no calculation, no weighing if it might be too much, no wondering what he might get away with. His conscious mind had not been invited to this party.