Frisk Me(89)

Nor would it be Nonna or his interfering parents.

It wouldn’t be Lopez or any of his other guy friends.

He opened the door.

Ava.

While he wasn’t surprised to see her standing there, he was surprised to see this version of Ava.

Gone was the smart-looking blouse and pressed pants and perfect makeup.

Her brown hair was pulled back in a messy knot and her lipstick was long gone. Her feet were in flip-flops, her glasses just slightly askew on her nose. Seriously, why didn’t she get ones that fit better?

“Sims,” he said, leaning against the doorjamb.

“Moretti.” She pushed past him.

“Come on in,” he muttered.

He’d barely closed the door before she threw a crumpled-up ball of paper at his head. He dodged it. “What the hell?”

“I’m not paying that damn ticket.”

In spite of everything, he nearly smiled as he played dumb. “What ticket?”

“The one you left on my desk at the station!” she snapped. “You can shove it up your ass, Moretti.”

He lifted an eyebrow, mockingly.

She got in his face, shoving at his shoulders, and he was surprised to see anger in her eyes. Why the hell was she angry?

A tear ran down her cheek and Luc felt real alarm, even though he was supposed to be mad at her. “Sims?”

“Why’d you do it?” she asked.

“Honestly, if I knew you were going to be such a pain in the ass, I probably wouldn’t have bothered with the ticket,” he muttered. “I’d have let you be some other cop’s problem.”

She shoved at his shoulders again. “No, I mean why’d you get up there and let me ask you those questions?”

Ah. That.

He swallowed. Lied. “I didn’t know you were going to ask them.”

“You knew. You knew.”

“Yeah, I knew, though not because you told me!” he exploded, temper snapping. “What the hell, Sims?”

Her eyes darted away, guilty, as she should be. “When we were feeding each other spicy tuna rolls you couldn’t find two seconds to say, by the way, I know about Shayna and Mike and the cover-up?”

“It’s not a cover-up, not officially,” she said quietly. “We did our homework. There’s no way anyone can press charges against you or your father, or your brothers for colluding.”

“Oh, well, that’s nice, Sims, thanks for that,” he said sarcastically. “That makes me feel so much better about the fact that I f*cked up and people died.”

“You didn’t f*ck up,” she said quickly. “I tried to make that clear by the end of the interview that there was nothing you did wrong.”

“But you certainly planted the seed, didn’t you? Had to make sure everyone knows a little girl and another cop died on America’s Hero’s watch.”

“You’re twisting my words.”

“Yeah, Sims, you’re the victim here,” he said, swearing and moving toward the kitchen, needing space from her.

“Luca—”

The sound of his name on her lips ripped at him, and he closed his eyes. She moved up behind him.

“Why did you let me?” she asked, her voice small. “I need to know.”

He turned around, prepared to lay into her about how she didn’t have the right to ask anything of him. He’d already given her everything.

But then he saw the vulnerability on her face, and all he could see was a woman who’d never been loved, not really. A woman who had everything she’d ever wanted within her grasp but who wasn’t really sure it was what she wanted after all.

He knew the feeling.

And though he knew it was the worst kind of mistake, he did what he hadn’t done that day two years ago. He acted on his instincts.

He pulled her toward him.

The kiss was hard at first. He meant it to be hard, punishing and fast, just to give them both a taste of what could have been, but when she made a soft noise against him, he couldn’t bring himself to push her away.

The kiss gentled, their lips brushing softly, their tongues teasing. Her hands slipped up his back and his found her face. The kiss went on endlessly, a quiet declaration of something neither would say out loud.

When he took her hand and led her to the bedroom, she let him lead her.

And when he roughly pulled her shirt over her head, pushing her pants down her hips, she let him do that too.

She wasn’t wearing a bra, and he didn’t bother with preliminaries as he took her the way he wanted. His knees bent, his head dipped, and he wrapped her nipple in his mouth, suckling her as she clutched at his head.

He moved to the other breast as her fingers fumbled with his belt, and he stepped back just long enough to take off his own clothes before wrapping an arm around her slim waist and pulling her back to the bed.

His eyes held hers as his fingers hooked into her panties, tossing them aside as he spread her thighs. His gaze held hers as he lowered until his shoulders were behind her legs and his mouth was inches from where she was already damp and ready for him.

She started to remove her glasses, but he stopped her with a curt, don’t.

Then he licked her, his gaze held hers until she cried out and arched her back, breaking the eye contact. He licked and suckled and teased, his assault rapid and relentless, only to stop when she was seconds away from release.