“You broke into my locker!” Lara’s accusation sounded incredulous rather than outraged.
Probably because that was how she felt.
Malachi was like no other man she’d ever met. Honest, brutally so on occasion, in a way she’d never experienced before in anyone she’d met. Single-minded in a way that he refused to take anyone’s path except his own.
He’d kissed her earlier with an intensity that said he would die a happy man if that was the last thing he ever did on earth.
And now he calmly admitted to having taken possession of Gerard Taylor’s wallet!
“You broke into my locker!” Now she sounded outraged, her voice rising higher with the emotion.
“Yes,” Malachi didn’t even attempt to deny it.
“Before or after you kissed me?” she demanded to know.
“After.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You really could do with a few lessons in learning how not to always tell the absolute truth. Because breaking into my locker and stealing some of the contents of my handbag, before or after we kissed is seriously not okay.”
He shrugged. “The wallet doesn’t belong to you.”
“But the rest of the contents do!”
“I had some time on my hands while I waited for you to finish work, so I decided to take a walk through a few more of the doors marked Staff Only—”
“And no one stopped you?” What the hell was the use of all the security the hospital had in place if it didn’t succeed in keeping people out of the private areas?
“I waited until the two security guards had gone off on their rounds in another direction.”
“And then you broke into my locker.”
Malachi shrugged. “I’d seen a couple of nurses go into that room and took note of the four-digit code they punched into the panel. After that, it was a simple matter of going in and finding the locker with the name Lara Myers.” He grimaced. “I thought my reclaiming the wallet on behalf of my client would save us the trouble of having to revisit that part of our conversation.”
“And yet we’re having it anyway!”
“You kissed her?” Darius Kingston prompted his brother.
Lara turned her impatient gaze on him. “That’s all you took from all we’ve just said?”
He grinned. “Because it’s momentous.”
She blinked. “It is?”
Darius nodded. “Part of Mal’s personal preferences is that he doesn’t like to touch people who aren’t family.”
Lara felt herself blush. “I sincerely doubt he’s a virgin, which means he’s definitely touched several women when his part A went into slot B.”
“But I didn’t kiss any of them,” Malachi put in softly.
She looked at him with wide eyes. “Why the hell not?”
“It’s too personal.”
“You don’t consider putting your cock inside someone to be personal?” Her voice rose in disbelief.
Not just because of Malachi’s opinion regarding sex, but also because of his claim never to have kissed any of the women he’d had sex with. Impossible to believe when she knew firsthand just how intensely and expertly Malachi kissed.
But, even on such a short acquaintance, she also knew Malachi didn’t lie. Which meant he had to be telling the truth now when he said he hadn’t kissed any of his sexual partners.
Unbelievable as the idea was, it was also deeply flattering that he hadn’t hesitated to kiss her. Lara knew she probably shouldn’t feel that way about it, but she couldn’t deny her inner reaction.
“I’ve always worn a condom, so there was no exchange of bodily fluids or touching of internal flesh, and only the minimum of touching externally,” Malachi explained dismissively. “I also showered after the sexual release was over and then left, and I never do repeats. Which, so you know, isn’t how I want it to be between the two of us. Which means we should probably both get tested so that we can make love without a barrier between the two of us as soon, and as often, as possible.”
Lara once again felt as if she’d fallen into that parallel universe they’d talked about earlier tonight.
Or maybe she’d just fallen down the same rabbit hole as Alice?
Whichever it was, Lara felt disorientated.
* * *
“I think you should grab Lara and leave now, while she’s still trying to decide how she feels about all that information you just dumped on her,” Darius advised Malachi ruefully. “By the way, I think she’s perfect. For you,” he added dryly when Malachi scowled. “She’s perfect for you,” he repeated so there would be no further misunderstanding on Malachi’s part.
The tension eased from his shoulders as he watched the emotions, dazed and confused, flickering across Lara’s expressive face. “She is, isn’t she.”
“Yep,” Darius confirmed before grinning as he looked down at the keys he held in his hand. “I appreciate you trusting me to take care of your Harley.”
It was a decision Malachi might come to regret, but at the moment, all he wanted was to take Lara home, where hopefully she would allow him to continue kissing her. To do that, he needed the comfort of Darius’s SUV to transport Lara to her apartment as quickly and safely as possible.
“I expect you to take care of it as if you were protecting the love of your life,” he cautioned his brother.
“I don’t have one of those. Nor do I want one,” he added hastily before Malachi could say anything. “It’s great watching all of you fall in love but I have too many hang-ups to burden anyone else with them.”
Malachi knew that his brother still suffered some PTSD from his years spent in the military. A time during which many of Darius’s actions were so top secret, he couldn’t even talk to his family about them. Darius had been advised to see a counselor when he left the army, but as some of the events from his past were still top secret and he wasn’t allowed tell them everything about the horrors that haunted his nights as well as his days, the exercise hadn’t been a success. Five years later and Darius still occasionally suffered from those night terrors.
Malachi, who tended to wander about a lot at night, because of only needing a few hours’ sleep, had often heard Darius pacing within the confines of his own suite at Kingston Manor.
He gave Darius’s arm a reassuring squeeze. “You’ll get there,” he stated with certainty before brightening. “Maybe you’ll meet someone who will bring back your colors and keep the monsters at bay.”
“Maybe.” Darius glanced up. “But you might want to catch up with your own Lady of Colors right now,” he advised dryly.
Malachi’s head whipped round in time for him to see that Lara had decided to take advantage of their preoccupation with the conversation and had taken matters into her own hands by simply walking away.
Malachi smiled at the sight of her striding in the opposite direction of the nearby car park where Darius’s SUV and his Harley were parked. “I have a feeling she’s really going to make me work for this,” he murmured appreciatively.
“Her temper matches her hair,” Darius agreed.
“She’s a natural redhead,” Malachi admired.
“I’m not even going to ask how you know that on such short acquaintance,” his brother said with a chuckle. “Go, before she completely disappears,” he encouraged. “I saw the Harley on my way in. The SUV is parked in the middle of the row of cars directly behind it.”
Malachi didn’t waste any more time before hurrying in the direction of the car park.
* * *
“Get in the vehicle, Lara.”
Lara was so agitated, so infuriated by the events of the night, by Malachi’s high-handedness, she hadn’t even been aware of the vehicle cruising beside where she was walking briskly along the pavement in the direction of her apartment.
She kept walking, not needing to turn to know that it was Malachi behind the wheel of what she could see out of the corner of her eye was a black SUV.
“I’m sorry, okay?”
Her head swiveled so she could glare at him, determined to ignore how much more lethally attractive he looked in control of the powerful SUV. “What are you sorry for? Breaking into my locker or getting caught doing it?”
“I didn’t get caught, I confessed,” he reasoned. “And I believe we agreed we would talk about this again once we were at your apartment?”
“You decided that. No, you stated it as a fact,” she snapped. “Whereas I’m happy not to talk about it ever again once you’ve given me back the wallet.”
“You have yet to explain why you wanted it to begin with.”
“None of your damned business!”
“Unfortunately for you, that’s exactly what it is, which is why you need to talk to me.”
“I don’t care if I never talk to you again about anything,” she stated angrily before veering sharply to the left to take a short cut down a narrow alley where she knew Malachi couldn’t follow in the SUV.
Her smile was one of satisfaction as she emerged from the alley and continued to walk the rest of the way home.
A smile that slipped and then completely disappeared when she recognized the black SUV parked outside her apartment building and the man leaning back against the front passenger door waiting for her.
Lara would be lying to herself if she didn’t admit a thrill ran the length of her spine in response to Malachi not having given up on her simply because she’d ducked into a narrow alley where he couldn’t follow her.
A part of her had already known he wouldn’t, of course. Not when he had already waited for three hours in the dark and cold for her to finish work.
He only did that because he wants an explanation from me as to why I stole Gerard Taylor’s wallet.
That might be so, but seeing Malachi standing there, so tall, dark, and extremely dangerous—not to her, because she really didn’t think Malachi would ever hurt her—once again aroused that deep awareness and desire inside her that seemed to occur whenever she was anywhere in the vicinity of this man.
And she couldn’t feel that way. Had to concentrate on what was of greater importance right now.
Before she ran out of time.