Asa (Marked Men #6)(85)

“So this is us, Royal. Me and you from here on out, and I’m not letting you go again.”

I reached out a finger and ran it across the arch of his eyebrow. “You get one secret, Asa. Everything else is mine. I’m not going to bring it up because I’m going to trust you and believe that you wouldn’t keep something from me that I absolutely need to know in order to make this relationship between us work. I’m not going to ask about it, but this is the one and only thing you get. The rest is all mine.”

He was a man with a past. He was a man with a promising future. He was a man that had a lot to give right now, and I needed to know that he was willing to share all of it with me. I didn’t care if that made me seem greedy or unreasonable. I was asking for it all.

“You can have everything I have to give except for that.”

I let my finger trace over the slope of his nose and down so I could outline his mouth with the tip of my fingernail. He didn’t need to know that I had a pretty good guess what that big secret was. I didn’t need all the details. I just needed him.

“Then this is it. Me and you from here on out.”

He fell onto his back and pulled me over him so that I was draped across the hard planes of his chest. “The cop and the criminal. Who would have ever seen that coming?”

I traced a heart next to where his was steady and strong under my cheek. “I saw it from a mile away. It just took a little bit of time to get you to look in the same direction … and you’re a reformed criminal.”

He chuckled and twirled his fingers through the long ends of my hair where it wrapped around both of us.

“I stole your heart, didn’t I?”

I rubbed my cheek on the rock-hard muscle that made a surprisingly good pillow. “I stole yours first, Asa.” I let my eyes drift closed as he continued to pet me and rub his hand up and down my spine.

“Can’t take something that was yours all along, Red.” Oh my. That had a rush of tears rising up behind my eyelids.

“You’re so smooth.” My pillow moved as he laughed.

“I try. How do you feel about furniture shopping?”

I was almost asleep and feeling way better than I had in a long time. I gave his sides a little squeeze and turned my head so that I could put my lips right in the center of his chest.

“Whatever you want, Asa.”

Because if he was going to give me everything he had to give, then I could only do the same thing.

EPILOGUE

Six Months Later …

Living with a police officer was an interesting experience. I’d gotten used to Kevlar mixed in with silk and cotton in the closet. The sight of guns around the house no longer made me jolt in surprise, and her odd hours no longer had me staying awake when she rolled out of bed at the crack of dawn or in the middle of the night. What I was still learning to navigate was the way her job affected her. There were nights I came home to find she was crawling out of her skin with leftover adrenaline, and I barely made it through the door before she was all over me looking for some kind of release for all that pent-up energy. Then there were days that she came home and could hardly look at me. Those were the days I found her curled up in the shower crying and had to pull her out and hold her until she came back into herself. I figured out pretty quickly those were the days the bad guys won. Luckily the days I got tackled and stripped naked were far more common, so I just learned to love her through both. I still thought her job sucked but she loved it so much that I kept my mouth shut … most of the time.

Dom had worked hard and had the help of a very skilled physical therapist that had become instrumental in more ways than one when he had returned to the force. Surprisingly, Royal had asked him if it was okay with him if she stayed partnered with Barrett upon his return. She felt like she had been leaning on Dom too hard thus far in her career, and with a different partner she was really forced to be the cop she was always meant to be. Plus, she told him there was no way her heart could handle seeing him with a gun pointed at him again, and Dom, being the outstanding friend and man that he was, took all of that in stride. All he had ever wanted was for Royal to reach her full potential and she was doing exactly that.

I tossed my keys in the fancy ceramic bowl she had picked out to set by the front door. Even with a designated place for all the keys to live I was still running across town intermittently to let her into her car because she was still locking herself out of things and places on a regular basis. It was cute and the way she said thank you always left me with a smile on my face. My sexy cop was a handful and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Tonight I was the one getting home late. I had so many irons in the fire sometimes it was hard to keep track of things anymore. The business that Rome was spearheading was going like gangbusters. Our initial investment had doubled in just a few months. I honestly took pride in taking businesses that needed a helping hand and breathing new life into them. I was still working a shift a week at the Bar, mostly because I just couldn’t let it go. The place was like home to me when I really needed a place to feel welcome and I didn’t have it in me to just walk away from that completely. Generally I worked a Wednesday or Thursday night mostly so I could watch the way Dixie and Church were still dancing around each other. It was like a reality TV show live and in color, only far more entertaining. Dixie had recently started Internet dating and Church had all kinds of grumbly and growly opinions about the fact. I couldn’t figure out why he just didn’t take her to bed and put them both out of their misery, but he wasn’t explaining himself.