“I’m going to plead the fifth on the grounds that my answer may incriminate me.”
Oh, yeah. Some of the things they did would definitely be cause for scandal. They’d pushed limits, tested boundaries, explored just how far they could go. The answer was, pretty far. Lindsey didn’t always want to play the submissive game, but whenever they did, she climaxed so many times she was nearly incoherent.
Although Mike would have liked to spend entire nights in her bed and wake up with her every bright, sunny morning, the population of Wild Boar Island made it utterly impossible. Not only was he often on duty overnight, since his was a four-man police department, there was also the fact that his apartment was right over a shop owned by a gossipy busybody. She lived in another apartment across the hall from him, and he’d swear the woman had the hearing of a bat. Since she’d been one of the ones to bring him cakes and pies when he’d first arrived, she was often on the lookout for his return home so she could rush out with something she’d whipped up. When those return-homes occurred late at night, and he wasn’t in uniform, she asked intrusive questions about where he’d been.
He and Lindsey had resigned themselves to stolen hours on his evenings off. They were always at her place, and he always left at around four in the morning so he could sneak back home like a kid who’d climbed out the window to go to a kegger. He was dying to stay longer so she could wake up in the morning in his arms. She’d once commented that she’d never actually fallen asleep with a man and was shocked to find she liked it.
He liked it, too. As a matter of fact, he liked everything about her. And as the days had passed, he began to suspect what he was feeling was more than liking.
He just had no idea if she felt the same. Lindsey might have opened up to him a lot—physically and emotionally—but she still kept some mysteries close, and some vulnerabilities closer. She might say she enjoyed falling asleep with him, but she was also the one who always woke him up at 3:00 a.m. and sent him on his way.
He knew she was just protecting him because of his job. Yet, sometimes he caught a haunted look on her face that said spending an entire night with him would require knocking down another of those barriers she kept around herself. And she wasn’t quite ready to do it.
“Where did you go?” she murmured.
“Just thinking about you.”
“Why do you have to think about me when I’m sitting right across from you?”
He dropped his gaze, looking over the soft, pretty blouse that hid the amazing body to which he was fast becoming addicted. “Lately, I think about you all the time.”
She dropped her eyes, staring into her cup and stirring it. “We’re not being very discreet.”
“Fuck discretion.”
A sweet laugh fell from her lips. She quickly quieted, glancing around the café again. “We both know we have to be careful. I can’t take any more scandal, and neither can you. Or Callie.” As if reminding herself of that, she pulled her hand free of his, fisting it on the table.
“You’re sure that’s all it is?”
“What do you mean?”
He hadn’t intended to bring this up now, and certainly not here. He felt compelled, though, to start trying to batter at those last remaining walls. “I just get the sense there are things you haven’t told me.”
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand, or to hide the truth. “There are things I haven’t told you.”
He waited.
“And I don’t intend to.”
More bothered by that than he cared to admit, he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Care to explain?”
“Look, we’re having a great time. A fantastic time,” she said, leaning over the table and keeping her voice low. Swallowing visibly, she added, “Let’s not make more of it than it is.”
Well, shit. That sounded like it should be his line, it was such a guy attitude. He’d always been aware that Lindsey was not a typical woman. She wasn’t overly emotional and certainly not clingy. Her independence was attractive, but, to be honest, also a little intimidating.
And if he believed she absolutely meant it, that there was nothing else holding her back, he might take her at her word and write this off as a fling. But he didn’t quite believe it. She might not be ready to call it anything more, but that vulnerability in her face, the catch in her voice, revealed that something deep inside her wanted to. He just had to be patient and see if she could ever let herself admit it.
“Okay, I guess you’ve made things pretty clear.”
A frown creased her brow. “Don’t you agree?”