Chapter Two #4
“No,” I said, and watched her slide beneath the covers with all that fight and heat and bad judgment aimed directly at me. “You’re trouble.”
She settled against the pillow, hair spilling over motel-white cotton, eyes still wide awake. The metal at her wrists rested over the blanket, small and bright in the lamplight.
It had been too long since a woman had been in a bed this close to me.
I’d pictured willing. Easy. A woman who knew my name because I’d given it to her over a drink, not because it was printed on the ID I’d shown before taking her in.
I’d pictured a door I could leave through without guilt and a morning that didn’t require transport, paperwork, and keeping both hands off a woman who looked at me like she’d already found the crack in my control.
Crystal turned onto her side, facing me. “Are you really going to sleep in that chair?”
“I’m going to sit in it.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I know.”
“You’ll be useless tomorrow.”
“I’ll manage.”
“Because you’re tough?”
“Because I’ve done it before.”
“Sad answer.”
“Practical answer.”
She tucked one bent arm under the pillow as much as she could and kept watching me. “The bed’s big enough.”
“No.”
“I didn’t invite you to ravish me, Tolliver. I made a statement about square footage.”
“You don’t say anything without an angle.”
“Maybe my angle is that you drive better when your spine works.”
“How thoughtful.”
“I’m full of surprises.”
“You’re full of outstanding warrants.”
“There’s that romance again.”
The lamp hummed. The air conditioner coughed and pushed a cold thread through the motel’s stale warmth. Crystal shifted under the covers, and the thin sheet slid down an inch, baring one shoulder and the black strap beneath it.
My mouth went dry.
I could control my hands. I could control my voice. I could control where I sat and where I looked if I worked at it hard enough.
I couldn’t control the fact that every inch of the bed seemed to know she was in it.
She saw me swallow.
A slow smile touched her mouth. “You’re worried.”
“I’m thinking.”
“That sounds painful.”
“It is when you’re involved.”
“You’re worried about me running.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re worried about getting too tired.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re worried about the bed.”
I didn’t answer fast enough.
Her smile deepened.
I leaned back in the chair, spreading my knees because there was no comfortable way to sit with my cock this hard and my common sense this loud. “I’m worried about you trying to use my better judgment against me.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“That’s what it is.”
“Better judgment,” she repeated, and her voice turned softer. “Is that why you checked the restraints twice? Gave me water? Bought me terrible pretzels?”
I looked at her.
She didn’t blink.
“That’s the job,” I said.
“Liar.”
The word landed low this time. Not sharp. Not playful.
She was right enough to make me angry.
A half-awake man in a chair was useless. A man with his boots off and his keys in his pocket could still block a door. I stood, dragged the second chair in front of the window, and checked the bathroom sight line one more time.
Crystal watched me. “That looked like surrender.”
“That looked like strategy.”
“Does strategy usually involve taking your boots off?”
“When strategy wants to walk tomorrow.”
I sat on the edge of the mattress to pull them off. The bed dipped under my weight, and Crystal’s breath changed before she covered it with a small cough.
I looked back at her. “You have a comment?”
“I’m respecting your process.”
“That’ll be a first.”
She smiled into the pillow.
I stripped down to my T-shirt and jeans, left my belt on, and stretched out on top of the coverlet on the door side of the bed.
I kept one arm between us and my phone under the edge of my thigh.
The key stayed in my front pocket. My body was close enough to feel the heat trapped under her side of the blanket and far enough away that I could still pretend discipline had a vote.
Crystal lay under the sheet beside me, gorgeous and furious and wanted in every way she couldn’t be.
This scenario sure as hell wasn’t what I’d pictured the next time a woman crawled under the covers near me.
I stared at the ceiling. “Go to sleep.”
“Dex.”
My name in her voice stopped every thought I had left.
I turned my head.
She lay on her side, hair pale against the pillow, eyes on me, mouth soft in a way it hadn’t been all day. The fight was still there in her shoulders and the set of her chin. Now it had heat under it, a steady burn that moved through the dark and wrapped around my ribs.
“You either trust yourself,” she said, “or you don’t.”
“I trust myself.”
Her gaze dropped to the front of my jeans, then rose again. “Then turn off the light.”
I reached over and turned off the lamp.
The room went dark except for the thin green bleed of the motel sign around the curtains.
I lay still on top of the coverlet, listening to the air conditioner rattle and the quiet shift of her breathing beside me.
Then Crystal laughed softly in the dark, like she knew exactly which part of me I was fighting.
I didn’t move toward her.
Not yet.