I took a deep breath, but I didn’t slow down. “You’re the detective, you tell me.”
“I’m guessing no more than a few weeks?”
“Is that you guessing or saying?”
He fell into step next to me. “I’m going to go with guessing.”
I stopped and turned to face him. “You’re good, Detective, I’ll give you that. But let’s say you’re right—and I’m not saying you are—but if I am the daughter of an Italian-American mafia boss, as you suspect I am, you’ve got real balls summoning me down here and then putting me in a damn interrogation room like a criminal. I’d say that wasn’t a very smart move,Detective.”
He studied my face, and I didn’t even blink. Heck, I didn’t even breathe.
“Are you threatening me,Karina?” Lord help me, but the way my name rolled off his lips was like eroticism on fucking steroids. It was like porn to my ears.
I took a step back and tried to ignore the tingles spreading through my bones like wildfire, and I squared my shoulders.
“Not at all.” I lifted my voice a single octave. “I’m merely stating that if what you said was true, you just made one hell of a rookie mistake.”
With my words hanging in the air like the threat it was meant to be, I turned on my heel and sashayed my curvy ass out of there. I could feel his eyes on me the entire time, until I exited the building.
The moment I stepped outside, I took a deep breath, letting the fresh air fill my lungs. The feeling that scratched against every bone in my body was too damn familiar. I’d experienced this before, the feeling of a man being able to electrify my body without even touching me. It was unnerving, yet exciting at the same time. But I learned the hard way that this feeling was also powerful enough to bring me to my knees. I promised myself I would never let a man affect me like that again. Too much was at stake, and I already had too many regrets because I gave in to that temptation once.
But, by God, my body felt like it was on fire just having Detective Stone’s eyes on me. He wasn’t even touching me, or close to touching me, for that matter. There was sweat running down my back, for God’s sake. That was how he managed to affect me within less than twenty-five minutes.
It was the eyes. It had to be those dark goddamn eyes. Devil eyes, that was what they were. Dark windows into the demonic world where he could make you offer up sweet, innocent little puppies with a single glance. Damn, I was pretty sure he would make you want to toss in a tiny kitten as well, just for good measure.
I exhaled and looked up to the sky. Was this the universe’s way of playing one sick joke on me, showing me no matter how hard I tried to put the past behind me, there was no way of escaping who I was? A woman drawn to the forbidden, charmed by the prospects of breaking rules, and resisting authority by walking on the edge?
No. Not again.Never.
Chapter 3
LORIK
In life, you got two types of women. You got the women who thought they were hot, pretending like they knew how to use their bodies to get a man’s attention, but, in fact, they didn’t. Sure, they would probably end up getting a man’s attention—or hisresponsiveness—every now and then, but only because seeing how pathetic they were guaranteed a quick and easy lay. Not a good lay, just an easy one. You know, like a good jerk off in the shower. It didn’t satisfy you completely, but it was sufficient to get you through the day.
And then you got the kind of women who didn’t need to use their bodies to get a man’s attention at all. They didn’t walk around thinking, “If I sway my ass a little to this side, and then a little to that side, I’ll get the men drooling.” No. They walked the way they walked, and they talked the way they talked. And without even trying, sexual energy seeped through every pore, sensuality emanating from their every move, and they wore eroticism like a second skin.
Guess which kind of woman Karina Valenti was. Yup, she was the kind who managed to get my balls aching and my cock twitching in a matter of minutes. And while I was staring at that gorgeous, curvy ass hugged tight in her black pencil skirt as she walked out of the station, all I could think about was seeing those cheeks jiggle while I pounded into her from behind. And those legs, those calves—good God, I wanted them wrapped around my neck, squeezing the fucking air out of me while I feasted on the sweetness tucked away between her legs.
The second she was out the door, I pulled my hand through my hair, trying to get my raging hard-on under control. The way her lips moved when she talked, the way confidence leaked from her every word, it was like everything she just did during the last twenty-five minutes had a direct line to my dick. That had never happened to me before—sober. All the other times women happened to have that effect on me were while I had more tequila and rum in my system than white blood cells and platelets. And it was usually those pathetic women—you know, the quick and easy lays.
“Stone!”
Ah, crap.Like one run-in with the devil wasn’t enough.
I sighed before turning and watched as the commander came storming my way. Judging by the way his nostrils flared and the smoke poured out of his ears, I’d say he was pretty pissed.
“Commander Pipole.”
He stopped in front of me. “So, now you manage to get it right?”
“I guess my mental block just got unblocked.”
He stared at me with so much disdain that for a second I felt twelve again, standing in Principal Swinton’s office, listening to him telling me how wrong it was to trash the school hall, half of the classrooms, and the principal’s office with toilet paper.
According to me, I simply showed my extreme commitment to a classic prank. Unfortunately, Principal Swinton didn’t agree and kept repeating the phrase “you’re suspended” while he tried to remove the toilet paper from his fish tank—along with the dead fish. How was I supposed to know the little fishy fuckers would eat the toilet paper? And, in my opinion, if you were stupid enough to eat shit paper, you deserved to die.
“Detective Stone, was that Karina Valenti I just saw walk out of the interrogation room?”