“Well…” Soph hesitates, like she’s truly considering my question. “Hmm… did you make her come yet?”
“No. She’s pretty set on consent, and she hasn’t given hers yet.”
“Fair call. Did you tell her something deep and important from your childhood? That often makes chicks soft. Not me,” she adds with a chuckle. “Don’t come at me with that shit, but most chicks would go gaga over it.”
“She knows everything about my life. She knows everything about my parents’ life. She’s my sort-of therapist, so she has access to everything.”
“Oh… your therapist. That makes things sticky. There are rules about that sort of thing.” She pauses for a moment, hums under her breath. “You’re probably gonna have to get her fired. Then the client/therapist thing is solved. Then you’ll know if she was saying no because of work, or if it’s because she genuinely doesn’t like you.”
“I genuinely don’t like you,” Ally murmurs and brings my eyes back to hers. “The work thing is a convenient excuse.”
“That was a lie,” Soph murmurs into my ear. “Just in case you didn’t know.”
“Yeah, I caught that.” I inch closer to Ally. Closer. Closer still until our breath mingles and her heart pounds against mine. “I’m gonna hang up now, Soph. I have a crime to un-commit, then a girl to get fired.”
Soph snorts and does something on her end – tapping keys, rhythmic typing. “I’ve just set the alarms off at the hotel across town. All available patrol cars will be heading that way, and they’ll stay there for the next hour until they realize it was me, at which point…”
“We’ll be done. Solid assist, Soph. Appreciate it.”
“No problem, Twin. Now ask your co-conspirator about Sonia and her man’s relationship.”
“Huh?”
“I said what I said. Ask her how they got together. You can thank me tomorrow.”
The line goes dead, and police sirens wail a couple streets over. Red and blue lights illuminate the sky, then the sirens grow quieter in the distance until we’re left in the silence once more.
Sliding my phone into my pocket, and leaning heavily into Ally’s space, I nip at her jaw, her cheek, her lips. “You done growling yet?”
“I don’t growl.”
“Ha,” I laugh. “I assure you, when you’re drunk, angry, or jealous, you growl.”
“And if I’m all three at once?”
“Then I have seconds to seduce you before you have me murdered and fed to the pigs. Tell me about Sonia’s relationship.” I lean in so heavily that Ally’s chest lifts and falls against mine. Her breath scorches my skin, and her nails dig into my arms. She doesn’t mean to mark me, but she’s nervous, and I’m too damn close. “Tell me.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.” She turns her head away and presents me with her exposed neck.
So I take it, and catch her when my teeth dig in and her knees buckle. “Tell me about Sonia.”
“She met my great-grandfather when they were young. Teens. And then he went off to war.”
“Romantic story, but you’re gonna have to keep going.”
“He came home a few years later, but he’d changed. He wasn’t a boy anymore. But a man.”
“I’m a man.” I slide my tongue along the warm pulse point on her throat, and groan when a soft whimper escapes. She didn’t mean to let it out. She’s too proud for that, but sometimes shit happens, and now I have that sound to tuck away in the recesses of my brain to revisit later. “Keep going. There’s more to the story.”
“He had changed…” she swallows, loud and nervous, “because of the things he’d seen. So he needed someone to talk to.”
My grin creeps up. “Finish it.”
“She was his therapist. Unofficial, but still.”
“Fuckin’-A.”
I slam my lips against Ally’s and swallow her cry of shock. Her nails dig deeper against my skin, but she doesn’t push me away. Rather, she pulls me in and holds me close enough that the warmth between her legs turns to an inferno.
Poor old Chester has to bear witness to the things my tongue does to hers. To the way my hands slide along her luscious curves and down to cup her ass, and then they lift her, and we nearly topple Chester altogether.
My phone chirps again, but I don’t need to answer it.
“Take it out of the street,” I pant, and press my forehead against Ally’s. Our breath races, our hearts sprint and try to catch up. “Soph’s calling to tell us to take it out of the street.”
“She can see us?”
“Yeah. She sees all.” I pepper kisses along Ally’s jawline. Biting, suckling, painful kisses that make her groan and her thighs tighten. “Stop hiding behind the therapist thing, Ally.” I bend her neck and continue tasting. “Stop hiding because you’re scared.”
“I don’t live here, Luke. And I’m still young. I don’t want a relationship or a reason to not want to go home.”
“Whatever you feel, you already feel it. Sex or no sex, it’s already there. So whatever. We shouldn’t deprive ourselves of the best part.”
“That’s easy for you to say! You’re the eternal bachelor. You’re the one who has a reputation for bedding women and walking away without a single backwards glance. This is old-hat for you, but not everyone lives that way.”
I pull back, panting and breathless, to catch her eyes. “First of all, ouch. That hurt my feelings a little bit.”
“Luke, I—”
“But second, I’m the guy who can sleep with a woman, then walk away without a single backwards glance. And yet…” I nibble on her throat and steal another cry of pleasure. “I keep coming back to you. No sex, but I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“I don’t want a relationship,” she repeats on a cry. “I refuse to jump into something that involves my heart. But I also don’t want you to walk away like I mean nothing. Which means my head is completely messed-up. I don’t know what I want.”
“And that’s okay too. I’m usually the guy who walks, and the word relationship is scarier to me than dentist. But I can’t walk away now without feelings either. Which makes for a messed-up head on my part too.”
“So, what? We both go in knowing we’re indecisive idiots? That’s not how you build a solid relationship.”
I pull back and smile. “But I thought you didn’t want a relationship?”
“Ugh!” She throws her head back and growls out her frustrations, then shimmying down my body, she drops down to flat feet and goes around to Chester’s ass.
“What are you doing?”
“Pushing this stupid thing back to the ice cream shop. Then we’re going to have a sleepover at your place. Whatever happens, ha—”
“Forget him.”
I snag Ally’s hand and swing her away from the statue until she crashes against my chest with an oomph. I start into a slow jog, that turns to a sprint, that turns into Ally’s wild scream and her hair flying in the wind as we race just a couple blocks back to my apartment.