Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(44)

He paused just a second, framed by the light, looking down at her. “You are so f*cking unfair to me,” he muttered, and moved in, pushing her in front of him—“Excuse me, ma’am”—and to the side as he shut the door.

Had he just been rudely shoving, or was he using his body automatically to block her from any line of fire as he moved her out of it?

Fuck, she was so paranoid. But…hard to imagine Jake pushing her around gratuitously.

“Ma’am?” She raised an eyebrow at him.

One corner of his mouth curled as he realized what he’d said. “I apologize for being polite.”

She took a deep breath of lusciously dirty pleasure as she imagined him saying excuse me, ma’am with that same polite firmness as he took over her body some other way. Excuse me, ma’am, as his thumb settled right over her—

“Oh, no need to apologize.” She tried to make her voice a sexy purr, as she moved back to her counter, untying her apron as she went, but she was afraid her voice sounded more like a brook burbling with delight.

Oh, yeah, she liked how fast her body had set up a certain pattern of expectations. He showed up, and that meant hot sex.

Mmm.

Instead of, say, guns and death and violence.

She folded her apron and set it on the counter, but going straight to unbuttoning her chef’s jacket seemed a little brazen. Rude even, like she wasn’t even going to bother to talk to him first.

Like she was using him just for sex.

Which he hated.

In a masochistic way.

She frowned and turned back around to consider him. He sure did know how to complicate a simple situation, didn’t he?

She broke into a grin. Good for him. She might have wanted to keep things simple the first time, but today…well, life was complicated.

That was the great thing about life.

“Will you quit looking at me like you’re happy to see me?” Jake said irritably. “It’s messing with my head.”

She held up a chiding finger. “You have a problem with intimacy.”

He stopped dead, staring at her as his lips parted and closed. “I have a problem with intimacy?”

“It’s okay,” she said reassuringly.

“I should hope so,” he said dryly. “Since the accusation is coming from a woman who is just using me for sex.”

“Oh, as if that’s not every man’s fantasy,” she scoffed, to cover uneasiness.

“That’s a self-fulfilling prophecy if I ever heard one. If you typically use men for sex, I’m willing to bet you don’t have many relationships with men who want more than just sex, do you?”

She frowned at him, folding her arms over her chest. “You’re an exception.”

“Hoo-rah,” he said, deadpan.

“I mean—” She waved her hand. “This is an exceptional situation.” She frowned more deeply at him. And you know why.

“Yes, I think you’ve made clear what’s exceptional here, and it’s not me.” He prowled around the room, but then came back to her counter as if she held him on a leash and he couldn’t get away.

The idea fascinated her. He pulled her as if he had her lassoed in silk, and she pulled him, too?

Maybe she was yanking him too hard, then, or something, because he acted far more restless on his leash than she felt on hers. She liked being pulled in sure and strong to him. He promised all kinds of yumminess if she yielded to his temptation.

He glowered down at her, but the glower slowly faded into something more serious, that straight, steady gaze of his. His callused thumb touched lightly under her eye. “Not sleeping?”

Damn that stupid concealer. She lifted her chin. “Like a baby.”

“Waking up every fifteen minutes screaming?”

Pretty much. She frowned at him very hard. “I was up all night watching a Lord of the Rings marathon.”

Fantastical violence that came from evil orcs not other human beings. Honor, courage, hope against sadness, and good won out. Also Viggo Mortenson.

Plus, anything was better than falling asleep. And having nightmares in which her body moved slow, slow, slow, while the muzzle of a gun lifted, pointing at Vi. The person lifting the gun was never a stranger—it was always someone she trusted, turned into horror. Her father. A favorite teacher from childhood. The pastry chef who had first taken her on as apprentice. Jake, this last time.

She never knew who the attack would come from in the nightmare, but the rest stayed the same. Her body never could move fast enough, no matter how desperately she tried, and then there was Vi, blood all over her, on the floor, and—

Warm hands slid over her shoulders, squeezing them.

She blinked back into focus on that hard face, on the brown speckles scattered amid the layering of shades on his skin. As if Van Gogh had decided to do his impressions of gold that day and used Jake’s skin as a canvas.

She reached up to trace his cheekbone on a wave of that whimsy his skin always evoked in her, as if she would feel the dots of paint. But no. All smooth, even his jaw fresh-shaven.

“Did you just shave?” For me? The idea utterly charmed her. Him shaving at three in the afternoon, maybe to impress her?

“I just got up.”

She blinked. She’d slept until noon herself, but she hadn’t fallen asleep until somewhere in Mordor after dawn broke outside. Middle Earth had been growing darker and darker, and the light had shown through her window, and she’d finally drifted off, dreaming for a little that she was the fallen head of a statue with flowers curling across her brow. Then Sam in her dream got possessed by the Ring and started firing an AK-47 at her and Frodo. “Lord of the Rings marathon, too?”