He scoffed. “Fucking incompetent lot of idiots. People are the most honest when they’re wasted. That’s when I got most of my best interviews. More likely to agree to being quoted too,” he added with a wink. “We’ve got the police being useless working to our advantage. Get yourself some proof or another source.” He paused. “No, draft a story first. Skeleton, with the quotes you’ve got. Then get it to me and we’ll see what we need before we go to print,” he said, mind working.
I nodded.
“Now get out of my office and do your job,” he snapped.
Keltan was waiting for me outside the coffee shop instead of a hard-faced Heath, who I’d left there after he drove us from Ashlin’s.
He handed me a coffee and then yanked me in for a delightful kiss, arguably more delightful than the coffee in my hand.
I sipped it. “Ah yes, I’ll keep you,” I declared.
He chuckled. “Happy to hear. And if the only thing I have to do is keep you in coffee for the rest of our lives, then it bodes well for me,” he said, walking us to the garage.
My stomach dipped on the “rest of our lives” part of that sentence and the easy, offhand way in which he said it.
“Well, that and wine. It’ll work in your favor, at least,” I said with a grin as he opened the door for me. “So, what is the big boss of Greenstone Security doing here? Shouldn’t you be guarding the queen? I heard she’s in town,” I joked.
Keltan took hold of my hand once more. Though his smile remained, his eyes scanned the parking lot in a way that told me that easy grin wasn’t entirely genuine. He was searching for a threat.
Once he seemed happy enough he couldn’t see one, he squeezed my hand, glancing down at me as I sipped my coffee. Even in my heels he was glancing down at me. I dug that.
“Babe, I am protecting royalty,” he murmured. He leaned in to kiss my hair as we stopped at my car. He backed me up slightly so my back pressed into the car and my front pressed into Keltan. His forehead brushed mine. “My queen,” he declared.
Then he kissed the ever-loving shit out of me.
I would have been hard-pressed to tell anyone what day it was or what my name was when he finally released me.
“Missed you,” he told me.
“Missed you too,” I admitted.
The way we were getting into the swing of things should have been jarring. Instead it felt like slipping into a facet of life that was made specifically for this.
For us.
“You didn’t get into any trouble today.” It was a statement, not a question.
I bit my lip. “No.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie. Trouble, after all, was relative.
“Let’s hope it stays that way. No breaks in the story?”
I bit my lip again. “Nothing concrete. Or publishable.” Not a lie either.
Roger had read through my story draft and I’d agreed with him when he said it needed teeth.
Or a moustache. And the name of the man behind it. That would be ideal.
“Let’s hope the police catch them before then and you can publish that instead,” he muttered.
I frowned at him. “Let’s not talk in the creepy parking lot of my building,” I countered, glancing around at the shadows that weren’t at all menacing now that I had a strong hulking ex-army protector pressing into me.
He glanced at the shadows too, and then he was no longer pressing into me.
“Yeah, babe. Need you to get some stuff so we can bring it to my place.”
I raised a brow. “Stuff?” I repeated.
“Yeah,” he said. His eyes went over me and my outfit, a leather skirt with a slouchy tee tucked in and thigh high suede boots. All black, of course. Like my soul.
“Imagine you have a lot of shit to get together for an extended stay with me.”
I crossed my arms. “You’re telling me to get some stuff in order to come and stay with you, without structuring any of this as a question. Is that correct?”
He crossed his own arms, his biceps flexing much more impressively than mine at the motion. “I thought you didn’t want to talk in a parking lot.”
“I changed my mind. I’m a woman, so it’s my prerogative,” I snapped.
He sighed. “You’re stayin’ with me because of the heavy shit you’ve got yourself involved with and my apartment has better security. You’re sleeping with me because I can count on one fuckin’ hand the times I’ve slept with you pressin’ against me, woken up to that face. Because we’ve got time to make up for. And because I’m not planning on not waking up to that face ever,” he declared. “And because your walls are thin as fuck, and I want to make you scream louder than you ever have before.”