What Alex doesn’t know, what he wouldn’t be able to believe if I told him, is that I’ve become obsessed with this woman, my whole being contorted toward her until she’s all I can think about, all I can care about.
I have to try and fight the instinct.
Alex is a good man. He has a family.
He doesn’t deserve to die for something I did.
“I’ll be there,” I growl.
He hangs up a moment later and I turn to find Ruby standing a few feet away.
My body thrums at the sight of her, despite the circumstances, roaring at me to charge over to her and grab onto her fuck-me body again.
My cock burns and the head pulses with the need to slip between her tits and pump obsessively, thrusting until she’s scorched with my lust.
Even if she’s put her clothes back on, it’s easy to mentally strip her raw, imagining her round luscious breasts and her hot glistening slit.
I close my eyes, taking a savage breath.
Focus.
I try to drum the thought deep into my mind.
“What is it?” Ruby murmurs. “What’s happened?”
Chapter Thirteen
Ruby
Rider looks like he’s going to erupt from his clothes, even more so than he did after we shared our intimacy.
I told him I was ready, and it felt so freaking true when I said the words, so real.
And yet when the phone went off and cut into our moment, I found myself relieved for the chance to have more time to think. It all seemed so easy when I was in the middle of the burning lust, my skin ultra-sensitive with need.
But even minutes after, as the immediacy of the lust faded and my worries and anxieties swirled back into my being, I started to wonder if I would have really been able to go through with it. Maybe I would’ve gotten his hopes up only to disappoint him when he brought his engorged manhood to my sex.
“Rider?” I murmur, striding across the room and placing my hand on his forearm.
His muscles bulge against my palm, twitching like he’s going to erupt from his predator’s skin like he’s going to lost control and grab hold of me.
“Your uncle has taken my partner hostage,” he snarls. “He told him to lie and say they have his family. But really he only has him.”
“How do you know?”
“Code words,” Rider grunts. “Anyway, Aaron wants to trade at sundown, at an abandoned warehouse on the docks.”
“Trade what?” I murmur.
Fierceness enters his eyes, glinting with rage and something else, something buried deep. It takes me a second to realize what it is.
It’s primal, ancient protectiveness, the same way cavemen must’ve looked at women once they’d claimed them and would do anything to keep them safe, would do anything to make sure the monsters in the dark couldn’t get their hands on them.
Thoughts like these would’ve seemed ridiculous once, but now they feel natural, right, like the only sorts of thoughts I can have where my man – my freaking man – is concerned.
“Trade you,” he snarls. “Which is never going to happen. I’m going to have to work out another way to get Alex back.”
“Can you call your cop buddies?” I ask as we return to the living room.
We don’t discuss it. It’s like we’ve been together for a long time, able to communicate silently with our bodies, the way married couples can. I’ve seen it in restaurants over the years, on the rare occasions I was allowed to dine out, the way wives will tilt their heads at their husbands, silent questions in their eyes.
And the husbands will nod, the subtlest of movements, a whole conversation passing between them, unseen to the rest of us.
I never thought I would experience that.
But it’s here, with Rider, even if it’s only the beginning.
He drops onto the couch with a sigh, pulling me down next to him.
“I could,” he snarls. “But Aaron may learn about it. He’d kill Alex. Fuck, Garcia doesn’t deserve this. He’s a good man, a damn good cop. We met when I got the case for a drug-mule operation out of the slums downtown. The previous cops were dirty down to their core. It was our first case together. I was suspicious at first because you never know in this city. But he proved himself to be damn trustworthy.”
“It sounds like you’re close,” I murmur, my belly twisting at the thought of my uncle hurting my man’s friends.
How has the world gone become crazy so fast?
“Princess,” he says, his voice deep and carnal. He touches my chin and draws my gaze to his, staring firmly at me. “This isn’t your fault. It’s your uncle’s.”
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised he can read me. I can read him far more intimately than I should be able to considering we’ve only known each other for a matter of hours, but truthfully I’m tired of questioning the bond blazing between us, tired of second-guessing every tiny beautiful moment we share.