Playing Dirty (Risky Business, #2)(4)

CHAPTER ONE


Four Months Later

It’s amazing how sleeping with a hot guy with rock-hard abs provides motivation to get one’s ass to the gym.

At least that’s what I kept telling myself as I sweated my way through twenty minutes on the elliptical. I watched the closed-captioning scroll across the mounted television tuned in to the news, increasingly resentful of the female anchor with perfectly toned and tanned legs on display.

Finally, the timer beeped and I turned off the machine, stepping back to the floor with legs that felt like rubber. Megan bebopped up to me, her ponytail bouncing with each step.

“I always feel so energized after I work out,” she said, grinning.

I stared daggers at her. “I hate you so much right now,” I panted, still trying to catch my breath. Megan was petite and tiny with a personality I adored … usually. We’d worked together at KLP Capital for almost two years now.

“C’mon, Sage, you know you’ll feel better after a shower.” She grabbed my elbow and dragged me with her to the locker room. “Then we’ll have lunch. I know this great new sushi place just around the corner.”

The prospect of food made me perk up a little and I glowered slightly less. By the time I’d cleaned up, blown my hair dry, and added some makeup, I was congratulating myself on how healthy and diligent I was to get up early on a Saturday to go work out. Which lasted precisely as long as it took to walk to the sushi place and see the donut shop next door.

“So how’s Armed and Delicious?” Megan asked, biting into a powdered donut.

I answered around a mouthful of strawberry jelly. “Ryker’s fine,” I said. “He had to work late. Was still asleep when I left. So … I guess we’re kinda … living together now?” I meant it as a statement but it came out as a question.

Megan’s chewing ground to a halt. “Kinda?” she asked, mouth full. She swallowed. “How do you kinda live with someone?”

“Well, I gave him a key, because his hours are so weird,” I explained. “And now he just comes by when he gets off—whenever that is—and stays. He gets up when I leave for work and has a cup of coffee with me, goes home and sleeps, then the process kind of repeats. So is that living together?”

“Does he have clothes and toiletries at your apartment?” she asked.

I thought about it. “A toothbrush and a few changes of clothes,” I admitted. “Sometimes he showers there, so yeah, there’s some of his stuff.”

“Congratulations,” she said. “Your boyfriend is living with you and you didn’t even know it.”

I rolled my eyes at her dry sarcasm, taking a sip of my coffee. It was chilly and rainy today—autumn was rolling in—and the coffee was like a soothing blanket.

“So is this a good development or bad?” she asked, peering in the bag for another donut.

“Good, I think,” I said. “It just snuck up on me, that’s all.”

“It sounds like things are progressing,” she said. “You’re sleeping with him, it’s a given that you’re together as much as possible, and now you’re ‘kind of’ living together.” She used quote-y fingers for kind of. “Isn’t that what you want?”

Parker’s face drifted through my mind. I shoved it away. “Yeah,” I said. “It just seems a bit … fast, that’s all. We’ve only been seeing each other for a little over four months. Do you think that’s fast?”

She shrugged. “I think that’s up to you and Ryker.”

“It feels right, I guess. It wasn’t like we had a conversation about it. Like last night, he didn’t get there until almost three in the morning.”

I didn’t mention how I hadn’t thought he was going to come over, not when he’d called and said he had to work late. But then I’d woken to the feel of his body against my back and his arm slung over my waist.

“What’re you doing here?” I’d murmured, reaching behind me to push my fingers into his hair.

He’d nuzzled my neck, his lips pressed to the tender spot beneath my jaw. “Couldn’t stand not seeing you,” he’d whispered in my ear.

Ryker was a hard-as-nails homicide detective for the Chicago PD. To say he wasn’t the type to “share his feelings” was an understatement. So when he said that, my eyes had flown open in surprise.

“Really?” I asked, turning in his arms. Our relationship was still new and we’d both shied away from any big declarations.

“Really.”

He’d made short work of the pajamas I’d worn to bed, his hands skating down my hips to my thighs as he moved above me. His lips met mine and I slipped his dog tags around to his back from where they’d rested against me.

I was lost in the memories of what had happened next when I heard my name.

“Hey, Sage. Snap out of it.”

I glanced over at Megan, sheepish, but she was grinning.

“You’re hopelessly whipped,” she said, rolling her eyes at me.

“I’m not whipped,” I protested. “I’m just … heavily in like.”

“So we’re not mentioning the other L-word?” she said, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s only been four months.”