Prove it.

Okay. I would prove the shit out of the fact that I could do what I had to do in order to make this scheme of mine work. I could pretend to like her, which really was the only thing that would be fake. I couldn’t reconcile the way my pulse leaped every time she turned that midnight-blue gaze on me with the fact that she had orchestrated a man’s murder. She was beautiful but she was also deadly. She was just as hard as this place we came from, and I’d had enough of the city hammering against my foundation, as it was. Lusting after a woman who had it in her to be just as cold, and just as calculating, as any other criminal I locked up on a day-to-day basis was nowhere for my head to be while I was on the brink of war with her deranged ex-lover.

I was pissed off when I bent my head toward her. I was mad at myself. I was mad at her. More than all of that, though, I was furious that either one of us had to be in this situation in the first place. Every time I turned around, another bad thing or bad person was nipping at my heels. It was getting harder and harder to stay a step ahead. Eventually I was going to trip up and go down and there would be no one left with any kind of conscience in this place, no one left that cared about justice and righteousness.

That anger had my hands shaking as I reached up and used my thumbs to tilt her head back so her mouth was pointed up at me. I didn’t have much time to date, didn’t have the patience for a woman who didn’t understand that I was trying to save an entire city from itself and that my job took up most of my attention and energy. The women I did date were never the right height, or the perfect size, and they sure as hell never looked as luscious and as tempting as this woman did. No one had ever fit me the way she did and that pissed me off even more.

Everything about her was a test of my will. The way her dark eyes flashed when I lowered my head toward her parted lips. The way her hand trailed up my chest to curl around my neck as I got closer and closer. The way she breathed out a soft little sigh that tickled my mouth when I finally touched my lips to hers. It was supposed to prove a point. It was supposed to be an act of defiance, and maybe it was for a split second, but then it was nothing but a kiss and I forgot who she was and what it was supposed to be about. After that half a heartbeat I just wanted to kiss her and keep on kissing her until both of us were naked, and I was balls-deep inside of that perfect, traitorous body of hers.

Her mouth was soft, which was a lie because she was not a soft woman. She tasted sweet, which was also a lie. She might look like a dream and taste like dessert, but I knew there was a lot of tart underneath that pretty outer shell. Her tongue darted out and the very tip of it touched the center of my bottom lip, and before I could consider what I was doing, I was kissing her like I kissed a woman I wanted, not like a woman I was trying to resist.

I had my hands tangled up in her long hair and was using that leverage to back her against the flimsy door in the hotel room. She hit it with a little gasp of surprise and I took full advantage of the way her lips parted to dive right inside. I wanted to devour her. I wanted to eat her up. I wanted to stay in this moment where all I could feel was her heart thudding against mine and her nipples hard and tight against my chest. The way her mouth moved on mine made it so that there was no world that was falling apart around me. There was no city on the brink of ruin that I felt responsible for, there was just this woman whimpering as I forced her legs apart with my knee and stroked her questing tongue with my own.

I felt the bite of her fingernails cut into the skin at the base of my neck. I felt her hips arch up to meet mine when the fullness between my legs lined up perfectly with the softness between hers. It was almost scary how well we meshed together. I wasn’t a small guy and often felt like I had to rein myself in when it came to the opposite sex. I didn’t want to intimidate or come across as threatening, but with Reeve I didn’t have to worry about it. She took everything I was throwing at her and returned it in a way that had me letting the leash I kept on all of my frustration and aggression slip a little. Things deep down inside of me roared and awoke from where they typically slumbered. She didn’t even seem fazed that I still had my gun clipped to my belt, where it felt like it permanently lived. She kept her hands up around my shoulders and let me ravish her like she was my last meal and I was a dead man walking. I had never felt starved for anything in my life until my lips touched hers.

I let my teeth bite into the plush curve of her bottom lip and my hands got really rough in her hair as I jerked her head back farther and dove deeper into the hot and welcoming pull of her mouth. My dick was yelling at me to do something, do anything, and my pulse was thundering in my ears so loud I almost missed the way my cell phone was ringing from where it was shoved in my pocket.

I let go of her and stumbled back like she was on fire. We were both breathing hard and both flushed. Her eyes were almost black and I was sure my own were burning white hot with everything inside of me churning. I don’t think I had ever felt so good and so bad at the exact same time.

I yanked the phone out of my pocket and put it to my ear with a barked, “What?”

I felt like I couldn’t breathe and she just stayed slumped against the door watching me with big eyes. I almost lost it when she darted her tongue out to dab at the moisture and tiny drop of blood I had left on her mouth after my less than gentle kiss. I hadn’t meant to hurt her, to cause her pain like that, but her long lashes dipped down a little when she saw I was watching her and it kicked in that she liked it. She liked the edge. She liked the violence. Of course she would.

“I know you just went off shift but I got a DB out on the docks that you might want to look at.” I couldn’t place which fellow detective the voice belonged to but it was obviously someone that knew that when someone went down for good in the Point, I was the first call that generally went out.

DB was short for “dead body” and I absolutely did not want to go look at it. I had seen plenty of them in the last few days. I shoved my hands through my hair and glowered at Reeve as she finally pushed off the door and wandered back over to sit on the bed. I cringed. It really was too disgusting to touch.

“What makes you think I want to see it?”

“Because she’s just a kid. No more than eighteen or nineteen.”

I swore and started to pace back and forth. “Yeah, that’s shitty but not uncommon.”

“Yeah, well, the reason I called you is because she looks a whole hell of a lot like the bombshell that waltzed into your office yesterday. Long black hair, blue eyes. At first glance it could be her but she’s younger and worked over in a really personal way.”