I don’t know what the fuck just happened back at my place, and I’m not very happy about it. When I lose, I want to know why.
I definitely had Doc with me at first, flushed and ripe and this close to falling into my arms. Then somewhere my strategy went sideways. I lost both the game and her, although I didn’t give a damn about the game.
She’s not even looking at me as she sits in the passenger seat of my Tesla. I can’t imagine the sights of downtown Oakland are that exciting, especially since she’s seen them before.
When she said she had to go—when she shut down completely on me—I didn’t argue. I asked where she lived, then pulled the Tesla out of the garage. I’m driving all nice and sweet, partly to hold back my foul mood and partly to stick it to Doc.
Want a nice guy? I can be nice.
Except I can’t, and it’s not because I’m a bastard that she pulled away. It was something else entirely.
I’ve never been able to resist a puzzle, and Doc is the sexiest, most compelling puzzle I’ve ever met.
“How are your hands?” I ask. Every splinter, every bit of gravel I dug out of her palms was a dart straight to my heart. I can’t stop thinking about her flinches, the tears in her soft skin.
And how she tasted when I took her thumb in my mouth. Salty but sweet, pure enticement with a thread of copper.
“They’ll be okay.” Finally she forces her gaze over to me. “Thank you for what you did. All of it.”
The gratitude in her voice makes me want her to say that again, only this time about something much better. Like an orgasm or two.
“Make sure to put antibacterial cream on it.” My hands go tight around the steering wheel, as tight as my groin is. “If it looks infected, get to a doctor ASAP. I’ll pay for it.”
“Didn’t you tell me you’ve broken a ton of bones?” she asks dryly. “And you’re freaking out over some scrapes?”
“When they’re yours, yes.”
Her blush looks good enough to eat. I bet her pussy goes that exact shade of pink when she gets aroused. I bet it was that exact color—maybe even deeper—when we were playing that last game.
I smash down on the brake pedal, just missing the green light. If she hadn’t been with me, I would have floored it and taken my chances.
See how nice I can be? Even though I fucking hate nice.
“It’s just around the corner here,” she says, even though the car navigation said that already.
I nod at the construction site across the street. “Didn’t that used to be a diner?”
“Yeah.” She starts to put her chin in her hand, then catches herself, staring at her bandages. Once more, I resolve to tear the Oakland police chief a new one. “I guess it had been there for forty years. But a developer wanted to build some high-rise apartments, and he made them an offer they couldn’t turn down. The same company is putting up another high-rise a block over.”
“Gordian Development,” I read off the sign in front. The artist’s illustration of the high-rise looks completely fucking charmless, as sterile as every other high-rise going up across the bay in the City.
Give these developers enough time, and they’ll turn Oakland into a clone of SoMa in San Francisco, choked with office buildings and coders and utterly without character, which is a damn shame. Oakland is often overshadowed by the City, but in its own way it’s got more personality than San Francisco.
Doc sighs, a sound so sad I immediately want to make her feel better, make her laugh, smile, toss some snark at me. “We tried to stop at least one of the high-rises, but no luck.”
The light changes and I hit the accelerator. The Tesla surges forward. I want to stop those high-rises for her, but even if I could, there’s no bringing back the diner. I can’t turn back time, not even for her.
I frown. Now that’s a weird thought.
There’s a little noise from her, half gasp, half sob, but so quiet I almost miss it.
“Doc, are you…?”
When I see what she’s looking at, I don’t have to finish that question. It’s a drugstore, a chain that’s on every other corner in the Bay Area. Nothing special about it, but I immediately know that’s the drugstore her brother supposedly robbed.
I don’t know if he’s innocent, but I know Doc is hurting right now.
“Shit, I had no idea.” I search for a place to turn. But there’s nothing—we’ll have to go right by it. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Her gaze is tight on the drugstore as it slides past the car window. “Sometimes I take another route to avoid it. And other days I make myself go by, just to remind myself. To remember.”
“How much have you spent on legal fees?” I ask. She didn’t specifically say so, but I can hear it in her voice—she’s poured too much into her brother’s case. Of course that’s going to include money along with her energy.
She laughs humorlessly. “Enough so that I don’t have a safety net. Enough so that I’m living paycheck to paycheck.”
The drugstore disappears behind us. I take one last look in the rearview mirror, and my memory clicks, slides into place.
I’ve seen this before, this exact drugstore, this exact intersection. Except where?
I might be a genius, but I don’t have a photographic memory. If I did, I would have done a damn sight better in school. I let the back part of my brain chew on it as I finish driving to her apartment building.
“That was Ray’s spot.” Her voice is carefully neutral as she points out a grassy patch in a postage-stamp-sized park. There are a few people camped there.
Her apartment is literally around the corner. She must have seen her brother every day.
“So you were pretty close then,” I say, keeping my voice just as neutral. I wonder how much of this January knows. How much anyone else in Doc’s life does.
“Yeah.” She looks at her hands in her lap, wrapped in gauze. “I tried so many times to get him into housing, get him back into treatment… I even offered him the floor of my room, which my roommates would’ve hated. Nothing convinced him.”
“It’s not your fault.” Her guilt tears at me. Which confuses me. I’ve been with plenty of women but feeling guilty with them? Wanting to make over their lives so they’re utterly perfect? That’s not me.
I’m the clown. With women I laugh, I have fun, and then I move on. I don’t fix shit for them.
I want to fix everything for Doc, and I can’t. Which makes me as furious as a caged lion.
“It’s not about fault,” she says with a long sigh. “I know it’s all up to him, and he’s fighting this terrible, awful disease, but… He failed and I failed. And if ever get him home, I need to figure out how not to fail again.”
Holy shit, this is heavy. I’ve got a few friends who’ve done time, all for stupid shit like DUIs and growing weed or cooking meth. Which isn’t to say I’m an angel, but when you get to where I am in the food chain, crimes don’t send you to jail. You get a slap on the wrist, a fine that’s less than your daily income, and we’re all friends again. I’d have to do something spectacular to get sent to prison, like swindling rich people out of a lot of their money.
Which is why I don’t flaunt what I do have. I’m not going to brag or rub it in, because I’m not any better than those guys I left behind in Rancho Carne.
“I’ll help you,” I say. And I mean it.
She slants me a look. A suspicious look. “I don’t want to owe you anything. I can’t owe you anything—I already owe too much to other people.”
My jaw goes tight, but I hold back the rest of my reaction. I wasn’t offering so she could owe me. My helping her with her brother and us figuring out this attraction between us would be two separate things.
“It wouldn’t be like that,” I get out. Turning me down flat like that is silly, and Doc’s not silly. Money can solve pretty much anything—look at what I’ve done with my hometown.
I whip into a parking spot right in front of her building, forgetting to drive nice. She grabs the door handle, her eyes going wide, her lips wet and parted.
“Ooh.” Her hand tightens on the handle. “You slipped into that quick.”
Okay, if she’s going to set up hits like that, I have to take a swing. It’s instinct with me. “Yeah, but I like to take my time when I get there.”
I can’t tell if she wants to roll her eyes or smile. I’ll take both, because it means she’s cheering up.
And I’m going to look into her brother’s case anyway, without telling her. Something about that drugstore is familiar, but my brain still hasn’t pulled up what it is. I need some time in the secure facility, going through files to find it. But it’s there.
“What, all of thirty seconds?” she asks, one eyebrow raised.
“Yep, thirty seconds to your first orgasm. We’d go slow with the second one. Third could be fast again. Or slow. Lady’s choice.”
Okay, now she’s rolling her eyes and smiling, which is a great look on her. Sassy, smart women have always been my kryptonite.
“You’re a big talker.” Her hand’s on the door latch, but she’s not opening it. In fact, she’s fully turned toward me, her eyes sparkling.
“I’m a hell of a lot more than talk.”
The spark in her eyes flares. “I’d bet not.” But her voice is shaky with uncertainty and desire.
“You don’t want to find out ’cause I’d prove you wrong.” God, never have I wanted so badly to prove her wrong, to take her mouth and win her. Win her over.
Her swallow is long and slow, and my gaze is stuck to the elegant column of her throat. My tongue tingles as I imagine tasting that soft skin of hers.
“No, you won’t.”
“I’ll make it good. Better than you’ve ever had. And you know it.”
“There’s no room in my life for complications right now.”
“It won’t be complicated. Not at all. It’ll be the easiest thing in the world. Just let me take charge.”
She sighs like that’s the best thing she’s heard in a long time, like she’s ready to slip into my arms and never leave. She closes her eyes, one corner of her mouth ticking up. “I don’t know.”
When she opens her eyes again, they’re haunted. My every instinct—protective, aggressive, comforting—comes roaring to life. I put a hand to her jaw, breathe her in, savor the leap of her pulse, hammering at the base of her neck.
“Let me give you the answer then.” I lower my mouth to hers, and I’m so desperate to taste her it feels like it takes years before our lips meet.
Her mouth is cool at first, like the early-morning touch of fog. Her lips part under mine, and she does that sigh again, like this is the best thing she’s experienced in a long time. That sigh strokes down my cock, tightens my thighs.
I should take my time, give her space to ease into this, but that’s never been my style. Going zero to sixty is more fun the faster you do it.
I nudge open her mouth, slide my tongue along her lips. She tastes like heat and need and a touch of cinnamon. My lungs hitch because I’ve never had a kiss that tasted this damn right.
Her head falls back, a silent admission that she’s loving this, that she’s ready to get lost in this kiss. I tuck a hand in the small of her back and lift her toward me, pulling her against me. Her hand finds my shoulder and twists in the fabric of my shirt, fiercely anchoring me to her. Fuck, but that’s hot.
“I’m not going anywhere.” I nip at her lower lip, because it’s so pouty it’s begging to be bitten.
“Less talking. More kissing.”
I want to laugh and kiss her senseless at the same time. Goddamn, but she really is perfect. I do as she says, using my tongue to taste every inch of her mouth. When her tongue meets mine, it’s like stars or fireworks or I don’t even know, because it’s too fucking mind-blowing for words. Her glasses press against the edge of my nose, dig into my cheek, which somehow drives me even wilder.
I’ve never fucked a woman in the front seat of a car—the back seat, sure, plenty of times—but I’m about five seconds away from doing exactly that with Doc. And all because of a kiss.
We’re breathing hard between kisses, gasping for air in bursts before we dive back into each other. Why do we have to breathe again? Why can’t I keep my mouth on hers forever?
Because this woman is special. I want to take my time, make it mind-blowing for the both of us, not grope blindly in the front seat of my car.
Inch by agonizing inch, I pull away from her. She tries to follow, her eyes closed, her lips kiss stung, her hair looking like the morning after.
Fuck. I wish I were a bigger dirtbag so I could keep kissing her.
When she opens her eyes, I see sanity come rushing back. Her tongue comes out to wet her lips—which, seriously, is she trying to kill me?—and she pushes her hair behind her ears, the purple waves springing back the second she lets go.
We stare at each other for a long moment, and I swear I can hear her heartbeat, soft and insistent.
“I…” She gestures behind her at her building. “I have to go.” But she doesn’t open the door.
Which leaves me another perfect opening. In an instant I’m out of the car and opening the door for her, offering my hand. I’ve helped women out of cars before, but I’ve never meant it like I do now.
Doc takes a moment to adjust her glasses and smooth her hair, taking a deep inhale when she’s done. But her cheeks are still pink and her lips… Her lips are going to carry my mark for hours.
She lifts her chin as she puts her hand in mine, the bandages scratchy. “You didn’t win,” she says, back to her usual defiance. “That was definitely a draw.”
“A draw?” I splutter as I pull her into my body. “The hell it was.”
She pointedly looks down at the erection that’s not at all hidden in my jeans. Then she looks up and raises one eyebrow.
My cock jumps.
She smiles.
I smile back, leaning in to whisper in her ear. “I’ll take a draw then. Because that means there’s going to be a rematch.”