“I definitely wouldn’t mind having you there,” I told her honestly. “Then I wouldn’t have to say goodbye to you every night because you’re too scared that I’m going to get tired of you.”
She opened her mouth and then closed it. “I-I just don’t want… I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”
My lips quirked at one corner. “If I thought that you’d overstay your welcome, I wouldn’t have asked you to stay,” I told her honestly. “Baby, I’m a pretty open and honest man. If I feel like you need to know something, I’ll tell you. If something is bothering me, I’ll tell you. If you’re doing something that’s getting on my nerves, I’ll definitely tell you.”
Her lips quirked.
“And if I need some time alone, I can just go to the gym. Or go to my office which you’ve yet to follow me to. Or, I’ll just plain ol’ tell you I need a break,” I informed her. “But the same goes for you. If you need a break, tell me. I’ll give you a break. If you want me to go fuck off, tell me. I’ll go fuck off. That’s the point of communication.”
Fran rolled her eyes.
“And while we’re on the subject of being honest, I know who your grandmother is. Everyone knows who your grandmother is, because she’s a fuckin’ bitch. Trust me when I say the name Pope is very symbolic around here. There’s no way that I wasn’t going to know who you were related to.”
She snickered. “I’ll bet your grandmother is way nicer than mine.”
I smiled then. “There’s no fuckin’ doubt in my mind that she is.”
• • •
“I want you to meet her,” I said as I helped her bring her things into my house.
After driving around for the last half an hour, making sure we kicked all the reporters that thought to follow us, we finally arrived at my home.
Not that it would be a secret for long.
It wasn’t unknown with the town that Fran and I were seeing each other.
I was sure, rather quickly, news would spread that she was staying at my place.
There was no way that I could keep it a secret with my nosy neighbors.
“Are you sure that it’s not too soon?” she asked quietly.
I grinned. “Sleep on it. And if it bothers you because it’s too soon, how about you think about the fact that there’s a serial killer out there? You can say that you’re staying until this motherfucker is caught. For now, I have other, more enjoyable topics.”
She frowned. “What?”
I ripped my shirt off over my head, then went to start on the jeans.
Her eyes went down to where I was slowly popping each individual button out of its slot, and she licked her lips.
“I’ve missed you these last few weeks,” I mused as I got to the end. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
Her eyes flicked up to mine.
“I…” She paused.
“Have been avoiding me,” I repeated. “You’re dodging my calls. You can only meet me for a short amount of time. Is it because I picked the case back up?”
Her eyes were pulled from the V that made up the muscles to my pelvic region to my eyes.
Her eyes said it all.
She was scared.
And not because of what happened today. But scared in general. Maybe of this feeling that I knew that she felt right along with me. Maybe of me in particular. I didn’t know. But I wanted to find out.
She sighed when her eyes stayed glued to mine for a long time. “I don’t know how to do healthy relationships. I don’t want to smother you with my desire to be around you twenty-four seven. And I don’t want you to get tired of me, because I really, really, really like you. And I want you to keep liking me as long as possible.” She paused. “And I’m kind of scared that you’re going to start pitying me because of what you learned of the assault.”
I moved fast, pulling her into my body, pressing mine into her lower half.
“Does that feel like I pity you?” I rasped, pressing a soft kiss against the base of her throat, right in that little hollow between her clavicles.
I made sure to twist my hips to allow her to feel my ‘non-pity.’
Her breath hitched. “You can pity me and still want me… like that.”
I scoffed, licking a line up the length of her throat to right underneath her chin. “I don’t feel pity for you,” I informed her. “I feel anger for you. Passion for you. Need. Desire. Want. I’m pissed that you didn’t tell me. Sad that I don’t get to see you every day. Mad that you keep ditching me because you think that’s what I want. But I most definitely don’t feel any damn pity for you. Not when you’ve persevered. When you’ve turned into this person that overcame a huge obstacle and made you into the woman that I see today.”
She sighed, pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, then slumped against the wall.
“I’m a mess, Taos,” she admitted. “I know that you think that I’m not, but I am. I look really good on the outside, but inside my head, I have all kinds of things going on that I’m sure normal people don’t…”
“I can top that. I literally think about serial killers all of the time. All day, every day. When I’m not actively working a case, I’m literally plotting out shit in my mind. I’m not sure that it’s normal for people to think about the best way to kill someone to cause arterial blood splatter to reach a ten-foot-high ceiling,” I told her bluntly.
She threw her head back and laughed, and I couldn’t take it anymore.
I moved until her entire body was pressed up against mine, not quite wrapping my arms around her before I said, “Why are you so far away?”
She smiled at me sheepishly before returning the hug that I was forcing her into.
“I don’t know,” she sighed. “I just…”
“You just need to turn off your brain and let me do all the thinking right now,” I teased.
She tilted her head sideways, her blue jean eyes sparkling with something feisty that I truly loved looking at.
“Oh yeah?” she asked, running the tips of her fingers down along the center line of my chest, not pausing until she couldn’t make it any farther due to our body’s proximity to each other.
“Yeah,” I pressed a chaste kiss on the tip of her nose. Then on the very edge of her lips.
“What are you going to do to make me get out of my own head?” she teased.
I moved backward, putting just a little bit of distance between us, then reached for her jeans.
She hissed in a breath when my knuckles rubbed against her lower abdomen, her eyes flicking up to meet mine as she waited for me to do what I would.
I didn’t waste time.
I stripped her of her pants, panties, shoes, socks, t-shirt and bra all in the same amount of time that it would take a normal person to strip off just one article of clothing.
When she was completely bared to my gaze, I moved her until she was sitting on the ledge of my dresser, right in front of my window, where anybody who cared to look in could see.
Sure, it probably wasn’t the best idea in the world.
Yet… I couldn’t help myself.
I couldn’t make it any farther than I’d already made it. The bed felt like it was a mile away.