“What?”
“Tell me something no one knows about you.”
“Why?
“Why not?”
“What are you twelve?”
“Christ, woman, would it kill you to answer the question? It's not like I am asking you what your favorite position is. Though,” he said, his boyish smile creeping across his lips, “I wouldn't mind knowing that either.”
I looked away, taking a deep breath. Tell him something no one else knew about me? It wasn't like it was a hard thing to figure out. Most people didn't know anything about me and positively no one knew everything.
“When I was seventeen,” I started, shocking myself way more than him that I was willing to give him any of my secrets, “I really wanted to go to this show in town, but I was grounded. I snuck out when my dad was sleeping and had a blast. When I got home, I cut the lights on my car so he wouldn't see me pulling in. And, I kind of... tapped the bumper of my dad's truck because I couldn't see.”
Cash's smile turned a little warm, a little too sweet. “He never found out?”
“Oh, he found out alright,” I admitted, the bitter taste of the memory making me feel queasy, “about the sneaking out, not about the car. It was the only thing in my whole life that I could get past him. His truck was a real piece of shit, covered in dents and dings.”
“Did you get in trouble?” he asked, still looking a little too pleased to get the information he wanted out of me.
He had no idea the kind of trouble I got into. “Yes,” I said, with finality, and his smile fell. It was such a sad sight to behold, that I found my mouth opening again before I could stop it. “And... lotus.”
His brows knitted together, trying to make that information make sense. “Lotus?”
I felt my own lips quirk up as I met his eyes, lifting my chin slightly. “My favorite position,” I clarified and was rewarded with him throwing his head back and laughing. I was helpless to do anything but watch, a full smile spreading across my face, making the bruises smite, but it was worth the pain. “Your turn,” I said, unable to stop myself.
He stopped laughing, but the smile remained, his head tilting to the side a little. “You have the sweetest pussy I have ever tasted.”
The words hit with actual impact, making me take a step back, my face, no doubt, twisting in a mix of surprise and arousal. Who said things like that? In the kitchen? To someone they all but hated?
Apparently, fucking Cash did.
I swallowed hard, trying to pull myself together. “Classy,” I tried, attempting to put a shield back up.
“Tight too,” he went on, making the place in question, well, tighten.
“Cash...” I said, tone half pleading as I shook my head at him.
“Yeah, I like it when you say my name. I'll like it even more when you say it when I have my cock inside you.”
Oh, hell.
There was absolute chaos between my thighs at that idea.
“That's not going to happen, Cash,” I said, remembering my words from Summer's dinner party that suddenly felt like it happened ages ago.
“It is,” he said, shrugging a shoulder like it was inevitable, like my objections didn't hold any weight.
“No,” I said, my tone as firm as I could make it, and seeing as I was raised by an ex-marine of a father and learned from the best, that was really freaking firm.
“Honey, why you fighting it so hard?”
“Why are you pushing it so hard? You don't even like me Cash.”
Again, another shrug. “True.”
Holy hell. He wasn't even going to try to deny it? He thought it would be a good idea to tell me he didn't like me and then expected me to still spread for him whenever he wanted?
“But what does that have to do with anything?”
He could not be serious. “It has to do with everything.”
“Why?”
“Because I don't have sex with men who don't like me.”
“Baby, just because I don't like you doesn't mean I wouldn't treat you real good. Do you need a refresher of last night?” he asked, giving me a sexy little smirk as he pushed away from the counter and made his way over toward me.
My hand raised instinctively, pressing the flat side of the knife against his chest to still his approach. “You try it, your balls will be part of that stew,” I offered, pressing the knife a little harder against him.
“While I think you are perfectly capable of chopping a man's balls off, Lo, I know you're all bluster.”
“Try me, Cash,” I threatened.
“What was the dog park about?” he asked, once again throwing me off my game with his unusual change in conversation.
“What dog park?”
“When Reign, Wolf, and I came to Hailstorm to ask you for help with Summer and you took us to your command center... you had all kinds of shit on your walls: information on the local crime syndicates, plans for hits, mugshots of bail jumpers you guys were chasing down, and a fucking... flier for a dog park. What was the dog park about?”
“Why?”
“What? Are you twelve?” he asked, throwing my words back at me.
There was no reason not to answer, but I found myself not wanting to. Still, chances were, if I didn't, the conversation was probably going to turn sexual again and I needed for that not to happen.
I shrugged, pulling the knife from his chest. “We do a lot of different jobs. Like you said, hits for hire, catching skips, some private security, all that jazz. But sometimes we get wind of things and do stuff just because.”
“What could you have gotten wind of at a dog park?”
“Six dogs died after having the water bowls poisoned with anti-freeze,” I recalled easily. Janie had been so fucking furious about that case. She had worked day and night for weeks to come up with leads.
I remembered asking her one night as she downed her third energy drink why that case in particular was affecting her so much. She looked up, exhaling a breath, her face looking unusually open and vulnerable and said in a quiet voice (which was also not like her. She tended to bitch and yell and scream), “No one should get away with hurting defenseless creatures.”