Raw Redemption (Crossing the Line #4)(10)

“No, I didn’t.” Her cheeks went pink, and Henrik couldn’t help dipping his head, letting his mouth hover over her right one, just to feel the radiating heat. They flushed even pinker. “I didn’t forget, but if I tell you my third fault, you might think the bad outweighs the good. I’ve already shot you, Henrik. I haven’t really had a chance yet to put my best foot forward.”

Ailish’s logic made him desperate as hell to kiss her. He wanted to tug her chin down and get his tongue so deep, she’d moan and press her thighs together. “Put your best foot forward tomorrow. Right now, I want your third fault.”

“You won’t like it.”

His lips brushed her cheek, and she gasped. “Let me be the judge.”

This was bad. Very bad. He’d been in her presence for twenty minutes and already he inched toward breaking the rules. She was a potential asset under his protection. In his care. Touching her could jeopardize the case, his job, and the possibility of earning back his badge. His good name. Worse, she didn’t know a disgraced cop stood in her midst. She didn’t know what he’d done on her behalf. For all he knew, that knowledge would make her run screaming in the opposite direction. Shit, though. It just felt so goddamn perfect to be this close, to hear her breath racing in and out.

“Henrik, I’m—” Her words cut off abruptly when she stepped too close. One of her thighs rubbed against his dick, and those eyes shot wide. Henrik focused on staying very still. Focusing on not slamming her hips up against the sink and humping her * through the thin tights. He could come that way. So easily. God, if she knew his thoughts, she would be horrified. Any second now, she would slap him. Or sprint a hundred miles an hour from the bathroom. Right?

Wrong.

Ailish smiled.

She lifted her hands and clutched handfuls of her hair, excitement dancing across her features. “Is that for me?”

...

Ailish was an unrepentant tease.

It was her third and most heinous fault.

Junior year of high school, she’d fallen behind in her advanced literature class. Words had never been her strong suit. Numbers. She’d always loved numbers much more. Thankfully, her private school had an active tutoring program with college-aged teaching students looking to get work experience. Ailish’s tutor, Chris Nussbaum, had been on the skinny side and always wore the same green hoodie. But she’d liked him. He’d obviously liked her back, too, because he’d made his move during their third literature lesson, taking her innocence on a wobbly wooden desk while tutoring sessions continued in the next room.

The experience had been less than satisfying, but she hadn’t exactly expected to reach the Promised Land on attempt number one. Trying would be fun. Or so she’d thought. Late one afternoon, the driver sent to pick her up from tutoring had caught Ailish and Chris sharing a kiss behind the school. Her father had been informed of her budding attachment to Chris, and she’d never seen him again, except in the pictures he’d posted on Facebook of his time in Saint Anthony’s Hospital ICU. He’d credited a fall down the train station steps, but Ailish had known her father’s men were responsible.

Severe guilt caused Ailish to swear off men. But doing so had really pissed her off. She’d felt powerless. Small. Until one day she’d caught one of her father’s men checking out her butt and shaking his head in the reflection of the car’s passenger side door. A tiny ball of fire had lit in her belly. And she’d regained a little power each time it happened. She filed those hungry expressions away and withdrew them late at night when she felt restless. Knowing she’d turned a man on, starved him a little, was enough to excite her. Enough to push her over the edge as her heels dug into the mattress, as she kicked at the sheets. And as an added bonus, her actions didn’t put anyone in the hospital.

Ailish hadn’t been teasing Henrik at all. She’d been too focused on his injury to notice much else, but he had all the classic symptoms of a teased male. His fists were balled, his breathing uneven. The bulging line of his arousal was breathtaking, a damp spot marking where the head sat, wedged inside the leg of denim. All because she’d been standing close to him? Ailish’s heart sped up. Imagine how he would react when she really turned it on.

“You shouldn’t be smiling right now.”

“I know.” She chewed her bottom lip. “Isn’t it awful?”

Suspicion tempered the heat in his gaze. “What’s the third fault?”

Thrills raced up and down Ailish’s back, weaving into her hair. “I like to torture men, Henrik. Maybe your undercover squad should have sent a woman.”

She knew her nipples were in hard peaks by the way he shuddered while looking down at her breasts. “I don’t understand.”

Ailish dropped her attention to the vee of his legs. “Are you sure?”

“Eyes up,” he rasped. “An answer, please.”

Never having been required to put her affliction into words before, it was difficult for Ailish to form an explanation. “I’ve learned to be satisfied when a man wants me. But…I don’t actually let him. Have me, that is.”

“Jesus Christ.” Henrik’s laughter was chock-full of pain. “I deserve this. That’s the f*cking kicker.”

“Why do you deserve it?”

He raked both hands down his face. “You don’t want to know, Lish.”