Wild Fire (Chaos #6.5)(22)

Jesus.

“What?” he asked.

“I have a cat, that’s not really my cat, but I’m claiming him. He was not a big fan of substitute momma leaving him overnight to go meet a douchebag, deadbeat attorney in DC. So, in order to assist him in getting over his trauma of spending the night alone, I really shouldn’t make him spend the night alone again so soon.”

For the second time with shit she was saying, this time especially after that kiss, he couldn’t believe his ears.

“You’re not gonna come to me because of your cat?”

“Again, not my cat, though he is because I’m claiming him. He’s my roommate’s cat. She’s a doctor without borders. And I suspect, since she’s on stretch number two, she’s never returning home. So I’m taking this as an abandonment issue even though all of her belongings are still in my apartment, including her cat. But if by chance she does return, and she tries to reclaim my-cat-not-my-cat, I might have to catnap him and go on the lam.”

After she delivered that, so they didn’t have sex for the first time on his kitchen floor either, in that moment he considered it a very good thing the bar was between them.

“Are you always this cute?” he asked.

“I hope so. Are you always this cute?” she asked back.

“I’m not cute, babe.”

“You so totally are,” she mumbled, again to the neck of her beer bottle.

She took a sip and then grinned at him.

Okay, what the fuck?

Why was his dick getting hard just watching her grin?

“So, how many books do you have?” she returned to her earlier question.

“Bring your cat here, before your date-not-date.”

She huffed out a disbelieving laugh and asked, “You’re going to hold my-cat-not-my-cat hostage so I’ll come to you after my date-not-date?”

“Yup,” he confirmed before he took his first sip of his own beer.

“And you want me to serve my-cat-not-my-cat up as hostage by bringing him to you before my date-not-date?” she asked, now smiling huge.

He leaned into both forearms on the bar, his hands cradling his beer between them.

She hesitated only a second before she did the same thing so they were close enough to start kissing again.

He didn’t kiss her.

“So we got our plan,” he decreed, because, as funny as she was, he was done talking about her cat. “You come to me before you go to him and bring your cat. Then you come to me after. We talk. We drink beer. We watch TV. Whatever. We sleep together but do not fuck. And I’ll take you out to dinner the night after, and that’s when we’ll sleep together, after fucking.”

“I guess we do have our plan since the brand-new biker guy in my life has just declared that’s the plan.”

“Affirmative.”

She started laughing soft and quiet and hella pretty.

And he knew they had their plan.

Only then did he relax.

“And I have no idea how many books I have,” he told her.

“Have you read them all?”

“Not yet.”

“Is that a goal?”

“Yeah.”

“Impressive,” she whispered, not looking amused.

Looking into him and wanting to be kissed.

He pushed forward and touched his lips to hers.

She followed him a little when he pulled away, then quirked her lips in surrender when she realized that was all she was going to get.

For now.

“So what do you know that brought you to that warehouse?” he asked.

It was then she realized they were out of the flirty banter and into the heavy, so she sighed, but didn’t hesitate sharing, “I have other sources. Kids, or not-so-much kids anymore, that I met from past stories. When Jackson, the DPD guy, held out on me, I moved down the list to them and told them what I wanted. They were good kids who got disenfranchised, they liked me, thought I was cool, and fortunately as time passed, they didn’t quit doing that. So they poked around a bit and gave me some leads. The other stuff I checked out and it led to dead ends. I’m assuming, since you were there, that what I was about to look into tonight wasn’t a dead end.”

“Full disclosure, I was into you when your sister texted me your picture, and stayed into you even when you got off the plane in a bad mood—”

“You’re being generous now, honey,” she whispered. “It wasn’t just a bad mood. I was awful to you.”

He kept going like she didn’t talk and like hearing her call him “honey” in that sweet voice of hers didn’t hit him warm in the gut.

“So tonight was part about me making a fucked-up assumption and part that Vance had just warned me that if I got caught close to that warehouse, I’d disappear. So it was also part me pissed as shit you were bumbling around in a dangerous sitch that might get you hurt, or worse.”

She pushed up and asked, “Bumbling?”

He pushed up too and asked in return, “Did you know you were onto something that might get you disappeared?”

She didn’t answer, though she did, since she took an annoyed sip of her beer.

“Right,” he muttered.

She rolled her eyes.

That meant it was his turn to grin.

“I want in on your talk with the cops tomorrow,” she declared.