Chapter Three
Yeah. Despite the promise Henrik had made to Ailish, there was no way in hell he was sleeping tonight. There had been a significant part of him that wondered if the initial impact of Ailish that day in the park was all in his head. That his memory of her beauty, the husky notes in her voice, had been embellished over time to justify what he’d done to keep her out of prison.
Oh no. She actually had the nerve to be better than his memory. He’d expected quiet dignity. Or caginess. Why wouldn’t the daughter of a violent crime boss be cautious and jaded? Instead, however, she was this irresistible fucking combination of wit and innocence, rolled together in an adorably sexy package. And after fantasizing about her for months, here they were, crammed inside a bathroom, Ailish in pajamas with no bra underneath, him without a shirt. If this were one of his fantasies, his next move would be pushing her forward over the sink, tugging down those tights that clung to her ass, and railing her from behind.
This was not one of his fantasies, though, and Ailish didn’t know him from a hole in the wall. She shouldn’t have let him into the cabin without some identification, let alone be pressing her body up against him as she tended his wound. Her lips were pursed as she worked, blotting away the excess blood with breathy little apologies that made him feel like a bastard for the creative ways he’d dreamed of screwing her senseless. Yeah, she definitely wouldn’t want to be in such close quarters with a man who’d imagined her kneeling enough times to sustain permanent rug burns.
Couldn’t he have pictured her doing something innocent at least once? Knitting, picking flowers, reciting poetry…anything.
He should leave the bathroom now. Fix his own bandage and pop a few Advil. But dammit if his feet weren’t buried in concrete, refusing to carry him away from Ailish. Her scent reminded him of summertime, all sunbaked and fresh. God, he couldn’t inhale it fast enough. She had a twitch, too. It was so subtle, most people probably didn’t even notice it, but every couple minutes, her right eye did a little half wink. Like a wince, but a million times cuter.
Unfortunately there was nothing cute about his cock at the moment. Between finding Ailish gone in Wisconsin, driving back to Chicago, then immediately turning around and speeding north to Michigan, there had been scant time for stroking off, a task he’d been performing on a regular basis since the day she’d spoken to him in the park. Had it been three days since he’d found her missing? Four? Having the object of his lust so close was a recipe for disaster in his restless state. Already, moisture crowned on the head of his dick where it laid swelling inside the right leg of his jeans. He should move away now. This was a job. He’d come here to protect her, not assuage his sick infatuation.
A waterfall of red hair got in the way of her ministrations so she shoved it back over her shoulder, sending a waft of summertime into the air. “How did you find me, Henrik?”
Oh fuck. Don’t go saying my name. “We tracked your cell phone to a tower about eight miles from here. This was the closest rental park, so I took a chance. A phone call from my superior convinced them to be helpful at the front office.” His hand flexed at his side with the need to adjust himself. Don’t do it. She’ll notice. “We need to destroy your phone as soon as possible. If we tracked it, someone else could do it, too.”
“My father, you mean,” she murmured, before ripping a piece of white medical tape with her teeth, nearly wrenching a groan from Henrik. “You keep saying we. Who is we?”
“I work with an undercover squad.” His voice emerged like a growl rippling through a dark tunnel. “Sort of an unofficial branch of the police department. We’re not technically cops, we just do their dirty work.”
“And I’m considered dirty work?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Henrik said. “There’s nothing dirty about you.”
She looked up at him through a sea of black eyelashes. “You’d be surprised.”
Even though he was fully aware she couldn’t possibly have meant the rejoinder to sound sexual, Henrik’s hungry thoughts had a hard time processing it any other way. Jesus, he needed to get some air before he did something embarrassing. Or against the rules. But the depraved man on the inside, the one who finally stood in front of the woman who’d robbed his concentration for months, wanted to press her into acknowledging an awareness between them. To prove he wasn’t alone. “Some men might take what you said as an invitation, Ailish. Are you always so reckless?”
“Invitation for wha—” Her head came up, gaze focusing on him. “Oh. Well.” Her gulp was audible. “I guess you’re not talking about a party.”
I’m going to hell for wanting to corrupt this girl. “No. I’m not.” Deep breath. “But I should be. I should be talking to you about anything but invitations. Like your favorite pizza toppings or scary movie.”
“Pepperoni and Poltergeist,” she whispered. “But to answer your first question…yes. I am reckless. And stubborn. We’ve only been friends for five minutes and you already know my two greatest faults.”
It must have been the way she couldn’t stop staring at his mouth, but God help him, he stepped closer, careful to keep his hips angled away, so she wouldn’t feel his erection. “You forgot about dirty.”
“No, I didn’t.” Her cheeks went pink, and Henrik couldn’t help dipping his head, letting his mouth hover over her right one, just to feel the radiating heat. They flushed even pinker. “I didn’t forget, but if I tell you my third fault, you might think the bad outweighs the good. I’ve already shot you, Henrik. I haven’t really had a chance yet to put my best foot forward.”
Ailish’s logic made him desperate as hell to kiss her. He wanted to tug her chin down and get his tongue so deep, she’d moan and press her thighs together. “Put your best foot forward tomorrow. Right now, I want your third fault.”
“You won’t like it.”
His lips brushed her cheek, and she gasped. “Let me be the judge.”
This was bad. Very bad. He’d been in her presence for twenty minutes and already he inched toward breaking the rules. She was a potential asset under his protection. In his care. Touching her could jeopardize the case, his job, and the possibility of earning back his badge. His good name. Worse, she didn’t know a disgraced cop stood in her midst. She didn’t know what he’d done on her behalf. For all he knew, that knowledge would make her run screaming in the opposite direction. Shit, though. It just felt so goddamn perfect to be this close, to hear her breath racing in and out.
“Henrik, I’m—” Her words cut off abruptly when she stepped too close. One of her thighs rubbed against his dick, and those eyes shot wide. Henrik focused on staying very still. Focusing on not slamming her hips up against the sink and humping her pussy through the thin tights. He could come that way. So easily. God, if she knew his thoughts, she would be horrified. Any second now, she would slap him. Or sprint a hundred miles an hour from the bathroom. Right?
Wrong.
Ailish smiled.
She lifted her hands and clutched handfuls of her hair, excitement dancing across her features. “Is that for me?”
...
Ailish was an unrepentant tease.
It was her third and most heinous fault.
Junior year of high school, she’d fallen behind in her advanced literature class. Words had never been her strong suit. Numbers. She’d always loved numbers much more. Thankfully, her private school had an active tutoring program with college-aged teaching students looking to get work experience. Ailish’s tutor, Chris Nussbaum, had been on the skinny side and always wore the same green hoodie. But she’d liked him. He’d obviously liked her back, too, because he’d made his move during their third literature lesson, taking her innocence on a wobbly wooden desk while tutoring sessions continued in the next room.
The experience had been less than satisfying, but she hadn’t exactly expected to reach the Promised Land on attempt number one. Trying would be fun. Or so she’d thought. Late one afternoon, the driver sent to pick her up from tutoring had caught Ailish and Chris sharing a kiss behind the school. Her father had been informed of her budding attachment to Chris, and she’d never seen him again, except in the pictures he’d posted on Facebook of his time in Saint Anthony’s Hospital ICU. He’d credited a fall down the train station steps, but Ailish had known her father’s men were responsible.
Severe guilt caused Ailish to swear off men. But doing so had really pissed her off. She’d felt powerless. Small. Until one day she’d caught one of her father’s men checking out her butt and shaking his head in the reflection of the car’s passenger side door. A tiny ball of fire had lit in her belly. And she’d regained a little power each time it happened. She filed those hungry expressions away and withdrew them late at night when she felt restless. Knowing she’d turned a man on, starved him a little, was enough to excite her. Enough to push her over the edge as her heels dug into the mattress, as she kicked at the sheets. And as an added bonus, her actions didn’t put anyone in the hospital.
Ailish hadn’t been teasing Henrik at all. She’d been too focused on his injury to notice much else, but he had all the classic symptoms of a teased male. His fists were balled, his breathing uneven. The bulging line of his arousal was breathtaking, a damp spot marking where the head sat, wedged inside the leg of denim. All because she’d been standing close to him? Ailish’s heart sped up. Imagine how he would react when she really turned it on.
“You shouldn’t be smiling right now.”
“I know.” She chewed her bottom lip. “Isn’t it awful?”
Suspicion tempered the heat in his gaze. “What’s the third fault?”
Thrills raced up and down Ailish’s back, weaving into her hair. “I like to torture men, Henrik. Maybe your undercover squad should have sent a woman.”
She knew her nipples were in hard peaks by the way he shuddered while looking down at her breasts. “I don’t understand.”
Ailish dropped her attention to the vee of his legs. “Are you sure?”
“Eyes up,” he rasped. “An answer, please.”
Never having been required to put her affliction into words before, it was difficult for Ailish to form an explanation. “I’ve learned to be satisfied when a man wants me. But…I don’t actually let him. Have me, that is.”
“Jesus Christ.” Henrik’s laughter was chock-full of pain. “I deserve this. That’s the fucking kicker.”
“Why do you deserve it?”
He raked both hands down his face. “You don’t want to know, Lish.”
She wanted to push, but her stubborn nature wouldn’t allow it. If he didn’t want to tell her, she wasn’t going to beg. “You have a pet name for me already. Can I come up with one for you?”
“I’d prefer you didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I might like hearing you say it a little too much.” His attention was locked on her mouth. “I can’t have this conversation with a hard dick, Ailish.”
She sucked in a breath. “Do you have a plan to make it soft?”
His crack of laughter made her jump. “That plan can’t involve you.”
“Why?”
“Damn, you ask a lot of questions.”
Ailish’s shoulders sagged under the weight of disappointment. “Oh God. I have a fourth fault now, too?”
Henrik’s sigh blew her hair back like a stiff gust of wind. “While I’m with you, Ailish, I’m working. There are lines I can’t cross.”
Even knowing it was a little evil, nothing could suppress the pop of excitement in her belly. She was alone with a man—a gorgeous man—who wanted her. But had to keep his hands off. It was a tease’s paradise, and they were both screwed. Or not screwed, depending on your point of view. “We can’t sleep together.”
“No.” He dropped his needful gaze to her breasts again. “We can’t.”
She executed her best nonchalant shoulder shrug. “Oh.”
“You’re smiling again.”
Ailish couldn’t stifle her chuckle. Man oh man, she really liked this big ol’ bruiser, and they’d only just met. He deserved a fair warning about what he was getting himself into. “Henrik, you should probably put as much distance between you and me as possible. I really like that you want me. And I probably won’t be able to help trying to keep it that way.” She drew a lazy circle on his abdomen with her index finger, watching in awe as the ridged muscle shuddered under her touch. “For instance, I’d love to tell you I’m wearing cheap white panties and you can see clear through them in the right light.”
His body did this kind of heave, right at Ailish, flattening her backside against the sink. Their mouths were suddenly so close, she could feel his hot puffs of breath on her lips, feel his chest lifting and falling where it met her breasts. “I don’t like hearing that you’ve talked to other men that way.”
“I haven’t,” she whispered. “I don’t. I usually just—”
“I do not want to know.”
Henrik made a subtle move, just a downward roll of his hips that dragged his erection over the crotch of her leggings. But it wasn’t really subtle at all because he stopped right over her clit and nudged forward. She nearly jumped out of her skin, it was so unexpected, her body’s deluge of need so extreme. “H’oh boy.”
His mouth sifted through the hair covering her ear. “Tease me as much as you want. Just don’t try to send me packing again. Are we clear?”
“I told you I don’t like being ordered around.”
He rasped the stubble of his jaw against her neck. “You’d love the way I do it.”
Ailish’s outrage was shattered when Henrik pulled away, leaving her to sag back onto the sink. “You’re not the only one who can tease.” Her mouth hung open as he backed through the doorway into the bedroom. “Where do you keep those see-through panties?”
What had just happened here? She couldn’t deny her curiosity over wanting to see what he did next. Not very many things surprised her, but this man—he couldn’t seem to stop. Brow knit, Ailish pointed toward the top drawer of her dresser. She watched as Henrik remove a single pair, examined them a moment, and stuffed them into his back pocket.
“I’ll be watching the cabin, but you won’t see me until tomorrow morning. We’ll talk then about why I’ve been sent and your potential role in the investigation.” He paused at the door. “You’re safe, Ailish.”
Finally, she found her voice. “What about you?”
He arched an eyebrow.
“Men who anger my father don’t last long. Especially when I’m involved.” She hugged the bathroom’s doorframe. “Maybe that’s the real reason I think you should put distance between us.”
“What did I say about trying to send me packing?”
“I can say whatever I want because you just stole my panties.”
He held up a shiny black device. “And your phone. Say good-bye.”
“This friendship is over.”
His laugher followed him out the door.
Ailish frowned at the entryway for a moment before shutting off all the lights and slipping into bed. Time to consider the real matter at hand. Henrik was here to take her back to Chicago, to operate against her father. A terrifying possibility. Despite her father’s overprotective nature, he wouldn’t hesitate to mow down his own daughter if he perceived her as a threat. Running away with his money had already accomplished that task to a certain degree, but if he realized she was working with the cops? It would be the ultimate act of betrayal.
Could she believe Henrik Vance when he said cooperating had to be her decision? What if the police had really found new evidence against her to use as leverage—and this was just a ploy to bring her in peacefully?
She might have escaped her father, but she hadn’t escaped the one very important lesson he’d imparted. Trust no one.
Ailish had to get away from Henrik Vance.