For You (The 'Burg #1)(58)

“We need to talk about that kiss yesterday,” I announced, not really wanting to talk about it but feeling, considering this morning’s circumstances, that we needed to get things straight.

“We will,” Colt agreed. “Not now,” Colt evaded.

“Now.”

He pulled open the top of the cat food tin but speared me with a glance. “Not now.”

“Now.”

He turned fully to me; Wilson noticed this delay and started meowing again.

“I got work,” he repeated.

“You already said that.”

“This conversation’s gonna take time. I’m tellin’ you I don’t have that.”

“Well, make it!”

He took one step to me and had his hand wrapped around the back of my neck so fast I didn’t even get a breath in while he was doing it. It was then I felt a little bit of Lore’s pain. I’d seen Colt move fast yesterday when he took Lore down, I’d even seen him do it before he kissed me but I still wasn’t prepared for it.

He yanked me close and I almost didn’t get my hands up to break my fall, but I did and they landed on his chest.

“I got home at dawn. I was in that bed with you for half an hour. I was in it because I’m not takin’ any f**kin’ chances. Someone who can get through a door can get through a window. They get through the window, they get me first. Now, do you get me?”

My mind blanked, my stomach curled sickeningly and I stared at him.

“You found something last night,” I whispered.

He let me go and turned back to the cat food.

“Colt.”

Colt forked the food into the bowl. “We found something. When he visited, he spent time there.”

“Oh my God.”

I didn’t know what this meant but the escalation in Colt’s protection said it was no good. This wasn’t about a madman invading my mind by stealing my thoughts written on a page. This was something that freaked him out and he was a cop, I didn’t suspect much freaked him out.

He moved to put the food down for Wilson and Wilson settled down belly to the floor on all fours and stuck his face in it.

“What’d you find?”

He straightened and looked at me. “I’ll know more this mornin’. They were still working when I left.”

“What’d you find?”

“I gotta shower.”

“Colt –” I started but he was moving away.

I stared at the hall he disappeared into long after he disappeared. Even after I heard the shower go on in the master bath.

After awhile it hit me that he was protecting me with more than him keeping close, close enough to sleep in his huge bed with me. He was protecting me by not sharing and I decided to wipe my mind clean.

Some folk, I suspected, would want to know.

I didn’t want to know.

I knew enough and it was tearing at my insides. I could use a break.

By the time he came back out, hair wet, slicked back but still curling around his neck, dressed in jeans, boots, shirt, badge clipped to his belt, shoulder holster on, gun clipped in place, blazer bunched in his hand, I’d made coffee and toast. I’d also poured him some coffee and it was keeping warm in a travel mug.

He hit the kitchen, shrugging on his blazer and I was turned to him, one hand wrapped around his mug, the other hand holding up a plate with four slices of buttered toast.

“I made toast and coffee,” I said.

He was looking at my hands but when I spoke his eyes came to my face. Something in them struck me funny, not in a bad way, in a good way. That look settled in beside his smile from yesterday, the one that was still lodged in that private place deep inside.

When I thought he’d stop moving toward me, he didn’t and I had to jerk my arms to the sides to give him space and he took it. His hand came up and around the back of my head, fingers in my hair, fisting and tugging down. I made a surprised noise that came from deep in my throat when I had no choice but to tilt my head back before his mouth came down on mine.

This kiss wasn’t hungry, wet and desperate. No tongues. It was hard, closed-mouthed and swift.

It still did a number on me and I felt a curl that I liked a lot between my legs.

He let me go, grabbed the mug and took the slice of toast off the top of the stack.

“We’ll talk about that kiss later too,” he said, turned and walked away. At the door he turned again and ordered, “Lock this after me. I’ll send Jack in. You’re not alone, Feb, ever. Not even in the storeroom at J&J’s. Not even to walk down to Meems’s. You move; you make sure you have a shadow. Yeah?”

I stood there still holding up the plate and nodded.

“Stay safe, baby,” he said, the cop authority gone from his voice, this statement was quiet and sweet and it strolled right into that private place inside me, took its seat and sat back, intending like the others to stay awhile.

“You too,” I replied and he left.

It took awhile for me to pull myself together. The only reason I did was because the door was unlocked and I hated it but that scared the shit out of me.

I put down the plate, walked into the living room and locked the door. On the way back to the kitchen, the phone rang.

I hit the kitchen and reached out to the phone. It was an old fashioned kitchen wall phone, yellow, boxy, with push buttons and a long, curly cord so you could wander the kitchen with it held in the crook of your neck while you were doing shit. I liked it mostly because I could imagine wandering Colt’s kitchen with it held in the crook of my neck.