Chapter 10
Kat
I hated to admit it,but it was a good thing that Alex had packed me a suitcase. The next morning, after a night’s sleep, I wore clean jeans and a sleeveless blouse for my interview with the Nashville police. I had brushed my teeth and my hair and put a little makeup on. I had tucked the ring safe in my suitcase. I was even wearing deodorant. The Advil had reduced my pain to a dull, steady throb. I’d eaten breakfast. For the first time since the attack, I felt like a real person again.
Two officers took my statement as we sat on the sofas in the hotel suite. Alex sat in one of the side chairs, adding his dark and scowling presence. He was wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt, and I could see the tattoos on his arms for the first time. I could also see the bruises on his knuckles where he’d punched the guy in my apartment yesterday. I kept my gaze averted from them as I told the police about the encounter in the parking lot, about the duffel bag. I described the men I’d seen and their car.
Then it was Alex’s turn. He described the man he’d seen in the hospital parking lot, and gave them the information about the car the man was driving—which, as Alex guessed, had been stolen. He gave them the photo he’d snapped as we drove past. He described the break-in at my apartment and the man he’d encountered there.
The officers took all of the information down, but they didn’t look too pleased. Every time they looked at Alex, they looked like they’d smelled a bad smell. “Where can we reach you, Miss Sloane?” one of them asked me.
“She’ll be with me,” Alex answered him. “We’re leaving for Dallas.”
I gave him a glare. I hated for anyone—especially Alex—to speak for me, as if I couldn’t answer my own questions. “I have my phone,” I said to the officers. “I can give you the address once I arrive.”
“I can give the address now,” Alex interrupted again. “I live there.”
I glared at him again. “Or, you know, the police could deal directly with me. The person who was almost abducted.”
The cops gave Alex that bad-smell look again. “Actually, it’s best if Miss Sloane doesn’t leave town,” one of them said.
Alex used his I-know-because-I’m-rich voice. “It is best, because she isn’t safe here.”
“We’d like to be able to interview her if we need more details.”
“You can do that over the phone.” Alex waved a dismissive hand. “You have her statement. That’s all you need.”
“We think that Miss Sloane?—”
“Hi,” I interrupted, raising my hand. “I’m Miss Sloane, and I know how to talk.” I looked at the police officer. “My ex-husband doesn’t speak for me,” I told him clearly. “We’ve been divorced for thirteen years. I didn’t even ask him to show up.”
“And yet it’s a good thing I did,” Alex said in a low voice.
I turned to him. “I didn’t ask your opinion.”
“We’re going to Dallas,” he growled. “These guys don’t give a shit about your safety. I do.”
“Fine, you’ve had your say as an alpha male. Happy? Now close your mouth and let me talk, will you?”
Alex glared at me, but he went quiet. The policemen looked on, silent, their eyes slightly wide.
I turned back to them. “I’m leaving town, and that’s final. I don’t want to go back to my apartment, and there’s nowhere else in Nashville for me to go. My ex-husband is offering the safest place for me at the moment. I figure I can put up with him if it means I don’t get killed.”
From his place on his chair, Alex made an annoyed sound. I ignored it.
One of the policemen leaned forward, his expression serious. “Miss Sloane, you don’t have to go anywhere with your ex-husband if you don’t want to. There are hotels, and there are women’s shelters if you’re short of funds. He may be wealthy, but we’re aware that Mr. Blake has a violent criminal record.”
I stared at him. They’d looked up Alex’s record? They thought he would hurt me?
And then I realized: The passage of time didn’t matter. His money and success didn’t matter. To the police, Alex was still a criminal. An ex-con with tattoos on his arms.
Alex had let Damon goad him into yet another fight all those years ago—a fight about me. Alex had broken Damon’s nose and given him a concussion. Like the asshole he was, Damon had pressed assault charges. Alex had done eighteen months of time.
The whole thing was pointless, and yet it followed Alex to this day.
Well, screw that. I could be rude to Alex if I wanted to—I’d earned it. They hadn’t. They were in no position to judge.
I looked the policeman in the eye, giving him the piercing stare I had learned from my Cherokee grandfather. “I am not afraid of Alex,” I said, talking about him as if he wasn’t in the room. If he could do it to me, then I could do it to him. “He would never hurt me. Besides, I have ways of making him do what I want.”
The policeman blinked in surprise, then cleared his throat. “All right. If you say so.”
They took Alex’s contact details, and Alex showed them out. He didn’t say anything to me.
I walked to the minibar, which was installed beneath an expensive granite counter. I didn’t want alcohol, at least not this early in the day. Instead, I figured I’d grab the chocolate bars and the ten-dollar bottles of water out of the fridge for the road just to top up Alex’s hotel bill.
I had pulled the first bottle from the fridge when Alex grabbed it out of my hand and put it on the counter. Then he slammed the minibar closed.
I turned and he caged me against the counter, his hands on either side of me. He glared at me. He’d showered this morning, but he hadn’t shaved, and he had scruff on his jaw. He smelled like soap and his eyes were blazing with an anger that suddenly made me hotter than I’d been in months. Maybe years.
“You have ways of making me do what you want?” he growled.
I looked into his dark-lashed gray eyes, defiant. Through the haze of my lust I managed to say, “Is there a problem?”
“What the fuck do you think?” His voice was low and dark.
I dropped my gaze to his arms. His tattoos were elaborate patterns, snaking over his skin. I recognized them because we’d designed some of them together years ago. He’d had a few when I met him, but then he’d added more. I’d gone with him to the tattoo shop and sat with him while he got inked. It was one of the good memories, those hours in the tattoo shop. The tattoo artist had put his headphones on, and Alex and I had just talked, making each other laugh while he tried to be manly and not to wince.
He’d wanted me to get inked, too—even something small—but I’d said no. I knew my family might see it. Getting tattoos wasn’t what a girl in my family was supposed to do.
His ink was the same now. He hadn’t added to it or had any of it removed. His arms were exactly the same, the ink stark under the dusting of dark hair on his forearms. He had the same dark hair on his chest, I knew.
I’d provoked him just now, while the police were here. No—we’d provoked each other. He was provoking me now.
And I loved it.
“Did it bother you?” I asked him. “Me saying that? I suppose now that you’re a hot, rich CEO, you’re not used to anyone telling you what to do.”
“No one tells me what to do,” Alex said.
“No?” I leaned toward him. “If I want you to behave, I can just do this.” I touched the tip of my tongue to his soft, gorgeous lower lip.
I couldn’t have said why I did it. It was definitely a bad idea to lick my dangerous ex-husband, especially when I’d just pissed him off. But something had been building in both of us through that whole conversation with the police. It had started yesterday when he showed up at the hospital. Or maybe—just maybe—it was something that had never been finished in the first place. So I licked him.
It was the first time I’d tasted Alex in thirteen years.
Alex exhaled, and I could tell he was holding on to a thin thread of control. “Kat, you are playing with fire.”
“I like fire.” I took his lower lip between my teeth and nipped it before letting go. Alex had always done this to me—made me bold, wild, willing to do anything. I licked him again—it was almost a kiss, but not quite—and at the same time I moved my good hand to the button of his jeans.
His hand came down and grasped my wrist, stopping me. Though the action was urgent, his touch was gentle, and I realized that with all my injuries, he didn’t want to hurt me.
His eyes didn’t leave mine. “You want to do this?” he asked me, his voice rough.
“I think we should clear the air.”
It was an excuse. What I really wanted was Alex, the pleasure his body always gave mine. I suddenly wanted that more than I wanted my next breath. I’d always been stupid for Alex.
“Is that what you think?” His free hand lifted and he trailed his fingertips over the front of my blouse, finding my nipple through the fabric. He rubbed the tip of his finger lightly over it, again and then again, as sensation pulsed through me and I gasped. My nipple went hard as a diamond under his touch.
“Yes.” It was the truth. We did need to clear the air, Alex and me. And I didn’t just want him—though I definitely wanted him. I wanted pleasure. I wanted to feel good. After the cloud of fear and pain I’d just been through, after having my life upended, after losing what little stability I had, after fighting every minute of every day—I wanted to feel pleasure. Just pleasure, and nothing else. And I knew from experience that despite everything, if I wanted to relax and receive pleasure, Alex was the one who could give me that.
He was watching me closely as his fingers traced a circle around my nipple. His eyes never left my face. He was trying to read my mind, I knew. He was trying to figure out what I was thinking. And maybe he succeeded.
His hand cupped my breast, warm through the fabric of my blouse and my bra. I was a good-sized B-cup, enough to fill his hands. My breath paused in my throat. I loved having my breasts touched—it drove me crazy. And he knew it.
He heard my breath catch. He knew my pulse was ratcheting up. He knew exactly what I wanted.
And instead of aiming barbs at me, for once, he just smiled.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s clear the air.”