23

THE LAMP

(Fifteen Months, One Week Ago)

For Christmas, I got two lamps.

There were plenty of other gifts in my holiday haul—Jordan got me a subscription to a delivery service that drops off a box of snacks every week, Oz surprised me with a fantastic sneak photo he took of me and Jordan with our arms around each other, and Grant’s mom wrapped a stack of paperbacks with cupcakes and kittens on the covers. They were thoughtful gifts, making me feel unworthy of so much affection all at once.

I also got the lamps. The first was from Grant. It was hideous, and I loved it. The cast iron base was shaped like a lion cub—to match my guard lion at the door—and it had a fringed lampshade that I suspected was one of his antique finds. There was history in that lamp, both ours and his. There were also strong implications of a future.

The second lamp was, of course, from Riker. It was waiting in my apartment when I got home from West Virginia, taking over the far wall with its five fully adjustable arms. It had no bows and no tag, but I didn’t need to be told who dropped it off—or why. I also didn’t need that many lamps shining lights into the corners of my apartment. In the semidarkness, it had always been a comfortable enough place to lay my head at night. Small and underwhelming, perhaps, but mine.

So much illumination meant I could see every chip in the floor, the uneven paint on the ceiling, the spidery cracks reaching up the wall. I saw my life in bright light for the first time, and I wasn’t happy with what I found.

“We need to talk,” I told Riker over the phone as soon as I had enough time to absorb the implications of both gifts. “Something happened in West Virginia that I think you should know about.”

Jordan would have been a more ideal choice for a play-by-play breakdown of my romance, Oz would have grunted and nodded and done whatever I needed to make sense of it all, and I had two new lamps that would have made a willing audience. But what I really wanted was my best friend and ally, the man who’d been there during the lowest point in my life and had walked by my side ever since.

He was understandably upset.

“You have to end it.” Riker paced through my apartment like a wild animal, eating up the floor with his long strides as I outlined a bare-bones version of my holiday. “You have to break up with him. This has gone too far.”

“Okay, but if you think about it, this might actually work in our favor. If I say yes—”

He stopped. “Are you fucking kidding me right now? You’re actually considering marrying this guy?”

“It’s not like that.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying this to me right now. He’s an FBI agent, Pen. You’re a criminal. In no world does that relationship make sense.”

I raised my hands, supplicating and holding him back at the same time. “Hear me out for a minute.”

“What for?”

I knew, going in, that this conversation with Riker wasn’t going to be easy, but nothing could have prepared me for the way it split me down the middle. Half of me wanted to tell Riker that of course he was right, of course I wouldn’t marry a man he hated, of course it was time to walk away. The other half was still in West Virginia with Grant, lying next to him on his twin bed, our fingers intertwined as we talked about everything and nothing.

“It’s not as bad of an idea as it sounds. He admitted something over the holidays—about his motivations, about what he’s trying to do. I’m pretty sure he’ll keep tailing us, regardless of whether or not he and I are in a relationship. He’s…I don’t know how to put it. Obsessed? He’s going to keep looking for my dad’s treasure, and nothing I do or say can stop him.”

“So?”

So indeed. That was no reason to commit matrimony, and we both knew it. But I didn’t know how else to make Riker understand when I couldn’t begin to understand it myself. I was balanced on the top of an iceberg that went so far down, it touched the ocean floor.

“My best bet is to keep him close,” I said. “I can watch his movements, see if he makes any progress in his investigation, intercept incoming information. He thinks he’s being clever and sneaky, preying on my emotions like this, but it only works if I’m not aware of him doing it. And you know it’s good for business to have an FBI ally. He won’t let us get arrested if he thinks we still have value.”

“You’re serious. You’re actually considering it.”

“No, I’m not. I—”

I didn’t have a chance to finish my sentence. Without another word, Riker grabbed one of the arms of his lamp. He pulled it so hard that the cord came out of the wall, sending the whole thing crashing. Glass from the bulbs shattered around him, and one of the lights gave an intermittent buzz before plunging into darkness.

All I did was stand there in the wreckage, mouth agape. Of all the types of anger I’d seen Riker exhibit over the years, he’d never been physical before. He was mean, sarcastic, a wounded animal snarling at anyone who got too close—but he’d never crossed the line to violence.

Until now.

“No, you’re not considering it, are you?” He stepped over the broken glass, heedless of how he sent it flying. “You’ve already decided. The guard dog takes all.”

* * *

I was on the phone with Grant within minutes of Riker’s departure.

My feet crunched over the broken shards, but I was too shaken—too shaky—to make the attempt to clean them up. I was also too shaken to be alone, which should have been my first clue that I was in over my head.

Being alone was the one thing I was supposed to be good at. It was a thief’s default state.

“Sit tight. I’m on my way,” Grant said as soon as he heard my voice. I don’t know what I said to tip him off, but I only got as far as Riker was here, and he broke my lamp before all the background noise dropped. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“But how can you—” I began before I thought better of finishing that question. There was one very good reason why he was only ten minutes away, and it had more to do with me being a thief than with me being his girlfriend. “Okay. Thank you.”

I clicked the phone off and stood surveying the mess, wondering what I might have in my apartment that could work as a broom. One of my older T-shirts could probably be sacrificed to move the glass off to one corner, but there wasn’t anything approaching a dustpan in the place. Cleaning was just another task I never mastered and never cared to. What was the point? When one place got too bad, I could always just pack up my three belongings and move.

It was that thought, more than anything else, that set me off again.

Riker was right. I don’t have any common sense. I’m not good at ordinary things.

I had no roots, no ties, and no dustpan. Who was I to think I could live a normal life with anyone?

“Penelope?” Grant didn’t bother knocking. The door was already half-open from Riker’s abrupt departure, and he pushed through with an urgency that bordered on the frantic. “Are you here? What happened?”

He skidded to a halt as soon as he saw me standing in front of the wreckage. Without asking any questions, he picked his way carefully to my side. It was the first time I’d seen him hesitant to approach me, unsure of his welcome or how I would react to him. Maybe it was because we’d left things hanging so open-ended back at his mom’s house, or maybe it was the fact that there were large and dangerous shards of glass within arm’s reach, but he didn’t try to touch me, didn’t even try to speak.

“He gave me that lamp as a Christmas present,” I said.

Grant paused. “I see.”

“I liked it.”

“I see.”

I turned to him then, wondering if he was aware how close to breaking down I was, how close to sobbing in his arms, but his gaze was trained straight ahead, as inscrutable as always.

“I take this to mean you told him?” he asked, as nonchalant as if we were talking about the weather. “About what I said back in West Virginia?”

I snapped. There was no way I could talk about West Virginia while Riker’s anger was still a palpable presence in the room, no way to admit to Grant how much the shattered lamp meant without giving myself away. So I didn’t try. Heedless of the glass or of the fact that Grant was in full FBI regalia, complete with a closely cut dark suit and his gun holster, I launched myself at him.

He was so taken aback at first that he didn’t respond, accepting my twining arms around his neck and my lips pressed against his without demur. In fact, his body responded before he did. His lips parted to accept my kiss, a groan of pleasure escaped his throat, and I thought for a full thirty seconds that I might get away with it.

But then my hands moved down his back and grazed that holster, and he jerked back. His expression was one of agony, his breathing labored.

“Wait, Penelope. Wait.” He took a wide step, arms up, backing away as if afraid I might attack again.

It was a good instinct. I wanted to do just that.

“I’m not going after your gun,” I said, an angry undertone to my voice. Always, always, that stupid gun got in the way—at least metaphorically speaking. There was nowhere we could go, nothing we could do, where the gun and the badge didn’t follow.

“I know you’re not,” he said. “That’s not why I stopped you.”

“Oh? Do you have somewhere else to be?” I asked. “A big case that needs your attention?”

“No,” he said slowly, watching me. “I’m free if you need me.”

I did. I needed him in ways I didn’t understand, ways that would ruin me if I brought them to light. “Good,” I said. “Then come here.”

He didn’t.

“Let’s get this mess cleaned up first.” He shrugged out of his coat and unclipped his gun, setting it carefully on the kitchen counter before efficiently rolling his sleeves. As usual, he was a man on a mission, and he made that mission look good. “Where are your supplies?”

“I don’t have any,” I said flatly.

His lips moved in a smile. “Why am I not surprised? Do you at least have any grocery bags lying around? That should do the trick.”

I rustled around beneath the sink and handed over the plastic bags with a sullen expression on my face. It shouldn’t have bothered me that my boyfriend rushed over in the middle of the workday to clean up broken glass in my apartment, but it did. He was so freaking perfect all the time. Always kind, always generous, always the gentleman.

Just once, I wanted to see him as rattled as I felt inside. Just once, I wanted him to pick up a lamp and smash it in anger.

“There,” he said as soon as he was finished. “As good as new. You okay?”

I nodded. The broken shards were gone and the lamp pushed aside, my apartment returned to the sparse warehouse it had always been—with the small addition of his couch, his lamp, his record player. He was everywhere inside this place.

He was everywhere inside me. And oh, how good he felt in there.

This time, when I launched myself at him, I didn’t give him a chance to slow me down. That man might have been stronger than me, and he might have had the willpower of an ox, but I had something more. With one quick, efficient movement, I stripped off my shirt. His eyes flared—in alarm or appreciation or more likely a combination of the two—and I used his momentary distraction to push my leggings over my hips.

“Penelope, before you go any further, I think we should talk about what I said—”

“No.” I spoke so forcefully, I almost shouted. “No talking. You said you have some free time if I need it, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“I need it, Grant. I need you.” I choose you.

More than anything else in that moment, I needed him to choose me back. Throughout the course of our relationship, stare-down challenges like this had become a regular occurrence. No matter where we were or what we did, there was always a chance that one of us would pull out a dare and wait for the other to accept it. We were good at that, he and I—playing the game, following the rules.

But for once, this was about more than just two people going head to head. We were going heart to heart.

“He broke my lamp,” I said. “Please don’t break my heart along with it.”

I knew I’d won when he released a string of curses that would have done a pirate proud. Well, that and when he started to undo the knot of his necktie and the line of buttons down the front of his shirt. Finally, I was getting a glimpse of the marvel of his chest, and I couldn’t even appreciate it properly through the rapidly forming tears in my eyes.

“I promised myself it wouldn’t happen like this,” he said as the last button came undone and he kicked off his shoes. It was a daring maneuver when there might still be glass on the linoleum, but he didn’t heed the dangers as he crossed the floor to sweep me into his arms. “I promised myself a lot of things where you’re concerned.”

The skin-on-skin contact sent a reverberating shock through me. Even though I knew it was ridiculous—and physiologically impossible—I could have sworn our heartbeats synced the moment we touched.

“Oh yeah? How’s that working out for you?” I asked, breathless as his hand slid up the side of my neck and tilted my face toward his.

He swore again, but this time, there was a smile on his lips. “Like shit, and you know it.”

“Good.”

His lips crashed down on mine, preventing me from goading him further. Not that I wanted to about twenty seconds into the kiss, when it became clear that Grant intended to take things horizontal in the best possible way.

My new couch was the only comfortable horizontal space in the apartment, and he nudged me in that direction with the kind of efficiency that proved he was capable of casing a room the second he walked in. He knew exactly how many backward steps it would take me to get there, understood the specific force required to lower me to a lying-down position. He also timed my descent perfectly so that he undid the clasp of my bra before my back hit the cushions.

“Jesus. You’re so beautiful.” He swallowed heavily. “I might have stood a chance, if only you weren’t so goddamned beautiful.”

That confession—the idea that he was as powerless to stop this as I was—undid me more than the fact that I was half-naked and supine on the first real piece of furniture I’d ever owned.

“I feel even better than I look,” I said—still challenging, still playing. Mostly, I was hiding the fact that I didn’t know what else to say. I’d never been this nervous over a sexual encounter in my life. “Want to find out for yourself?”

He hesitated a moment, and I was afraid he was going to try and introduce the topic of West Virginia again. I couldn’t let that happen and was about to do something drastic like rip his pants off, but when he spoke, it was on a different topic altogether.

“I didn’t come over here expecting this,” he said.

“I know, Grant. You’ve made it very clear that you’re only doing this out of a sense of duty.”

His eyes grew dark, kindling a warning. “No. What I meant was I didn’t come expecting this. As in, I didn’t stop to grab condoms.”

Oh. Oh. “The medicine cabinet. Top shelf.”

He was gone so long, I was afraid I’d scared him away or he’d found a secret stash of jewels I’d forgotten about, but he eventually returned with the promised prophylactics. He paused in the bathroom doorway, clad only in a pair of black boxer briefs that outlined every shape of his anatomy.

I’d never seen such a beautiful man—not before that moment and never since. It wasn’t just the muscles, though they were impressive enough where they dipped and swelled above his waistline, leading up to a body designed to bear the weight of the world. No, it was the expression on his face as his gaze found mine that caused my heart to skip a beat.

If I didn’t know better, I might have said it was the look of a man in love.

“Before we do this, I need you to tell me why you called me over today.”

I blinked, my heartbeat erratic. “What?”

“It wasn’t duty that brought me here, and it’s not duty that’s going to carry me across the room. So tell me.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I didn’t.

“Why did you call me?” he repeated. Although his look still said affection, his stance was growing rigid at my lack of response. “What were you hoping I’d do when I picked up the phone?”

“I don’t know,” I said with perfect honesty. I felt exposed in more ways than one, but I didn’t make a move to cover myself. It wouldn’t have been fair. “I was just sad. I was sad, and the only thing I could think of was how much I wanted to hear the sound of your voice.”

He crossed the room in three strides.

From that moment on, Grant’s strength was no longer a thing of conjecture. He lifted me off the couch and placed me in his lap, his hands everywhere at once. In my hair, stroking my face, cupping my breasts—if there was a patch of skin on my body, he found it and explored it until I was reduced to nothing but nerve endings. I wanted to return the favor, but he made it impossible for me to do anything but accept his long, slow kisses and then his harder, faster ones.

He held me on top of him. Pinned me underneath him. Showed himself to be dominant and in control in every possible way.

That is, until the moment we were both naked and breathless, his body poised to enter mine. The hard length of his erection was so close that I could barely hold my body still. I wanted him on top of me, inside me, moving with the same assured and agile grace that characterized all his movements.

But of course, he wasn’t going to make this easy.

“You’re sure about this?” he asked, his words a whisper spoken into the side of my neck. “This is what you want?”

My body had never been wetter, my limbs never more pliable. Unless I took a short break to announce my ecstatic consent from the fire escape, I wasn’t sure what other clues he needed.

“What if I said no?” I whispered back, mostly to be contrary. “What if I said I changed my mind? What would you do then?”

“I’d wait,” he said, and with such calm assurance, I knew he meant it. “Until you were ready, until you decided you wanted to try again. Forever. That’s how long I’d wait for you, Penelope Blue.”

I don’t remember giving him the go-ahead to continue, but I do recall crying out. I cried my pleasure and his name, my satisfaction at finally feeling the full throbbing weight of him inside. I might have cried other things, too, things I’d be ashamed to look back on, but he was too much of a gentleman to mention them.

He was also a gentleman when it came to taking his pleasure. My own orgasm came swift and powerful, the result of long months of waiting for this man to claim me as his own, but he took his time with his. Not content with a quick release, he returned his attention to all my secret, hidden spaces, exploring with fingers and then lips, treating my body as though it was the first—and last—time he’d ever hold a woman in his arms.

In fact, he waited until I was a quivering, blubbering mess before he entered me once again. By that time, I was so far gone that all he had to do was reach between our bodies with his strong, capable, ex-football player hand to send me over the edge. With one flick of his thumb he had me crying out in ecstasy all over again, his own body shuddering as he finally let himself go.

I was, naturally, exhausted by the time we were through. Grant was, naturally, not. He pulled me into his arms and held me there, hands stroking my hair and my back, tracing the line of my waist, for what could have been hours but felt like minutes.

And then he ruined it.

“I know you’ve been trying to avoid it, but I think we need to talk about West Virginia.”

I stiffened in his embrace. “I had a good time. Your mom and I got along really well without you there.”

His laughter was low but still managed to shake us both. “My mom isn’t the person I want to talk about while your thighs are entwined with mine.”

“It’s getting late, isn’t it?” I asked. “Don’t you have to get back to work?”

“Penelope.”

“I mean, you must have been working on something big if you had to cut your holiday short to get back here. I wouldn’t want to keep you any longer than necessary.”

“Penelope.” More firmly that time.

I decided to turn it back on him. “Grant,” I said, my tone brooking no argument. “Thank you for coming over here today, and thank you for what is unquestionably the greatest sexual experience of my life—”

“I asked you to marry me. You can’t just ignore that.”

I jolted out of his arms. Ignoring it was exactly what I planned to do—and for as long as I could get away with it.

“Technically, you didn’t,” I said, frantic. Rushed. “You only said you intended to. There’s still time to take it back.”

I don’t know why I thought that would work, but of course, it didn’t.

“I have no intention of taking it back,” he said. His eyes were dark, devouring mine. “In fact, nothing would make me happier than for you to—”

The shrill sound of his phone prevented him from finishing that disastrous sentence.

“Goddamn Simon and his goddamn sense of timing.” He reached for his pants and extracted his phone, his stare daring me to make a move in any direction.

Despite my strong urge to do just that, I stayed put.

“What?” he barked. “This had better be good.”

I couldn’t make out the conversation on the other end of the line, but I could tell from the way Grant’s expression went from annoyed to full-on outrage that it was plenty good.

“Yeah. I know, but— Yes. I can, but—” With one long, lingering look at me, he groaned. “Fine. I’ll be right there. Don’t move from your position.”

Never had I been on friendlier terms with Simon than I was in that moment.

“Duty calls?” I asked brightly.

“Please don’t,” he said and sounded pained enough that I didn’t. His movements were rough as he found his clothes and got dressed, looking very much like a man who’d shirked his professional duties all afternoon to indulge in the pleasures of the flesh. I wanted to point that out to him, but there was a serious air about him that caused hard knots to form in my stomach.

Ever since that semiproposal in West Virginia, I’d done everything I could to convince myself that it was another game, another trap. Agent Grant Emerson was just trying—and succeeding—to get under my skin. Even the fight with Riker had been me convincing myself that marriage was an impossibility.

But watching Grant get dressed, seeing the way he struggled to keep it all together, made me question everything.

Maybe he meant it. Maybe what he offered was real.

He shoved his feet into his shoes and shrugged back into his holster, running a hand through his hair as he surveyed my apartment for signs of anything he missed. But the only thing remaining unattended was me, naked and unsettled and raw.

When he spoke, however, it wasn’t to press me to give an answer I wasn’t prepared to give.

“Are you okay?” he asked. He drew close enough to run his hands up and down my arms—a gesture of affection, a gesture of comfort. “Is there someone else I can call to keep you company? Maybe Jordan?”

My eyes swam. The man had just been cut off mid-proposal, called back to duty while at his most vulnerable, and the thing he was worried about was me. “No. I’m good.”

“Are you sure?” He crouched so we were on eye level. I was sure he could see the tears forming in mine, so I nodded vigorously.

“I’m better now, I promise. The mess is gone, and I’ve calmed down. Riker won’t—”

I didn’t know how to finish. Riker wouldn’t what? Return? Blow up at this new turn of events? Throw more lamps?

“Riker won’t bother me,” I said. “Thank you for coming when I needed you.”

“Anytime,” he said and dropped a kiss on my hairline. From the way he looked at my lips and down to my bare breasts, I felt sure he wanted to kiss more of me, but Simon was waiting. Duty called. It always would.

“I have to run, but think about what I said, okay? You and I are not done talking about this.”

I nodded and managed a smile to send him off. Had he lingered a few seconds more, he would have seen that smile transform into a frown, watched me sink to the floor in a slump that showed just how not okay I was.

That was the second time Grant had almost proposed to me, the second time he turned my world upside down with just a few warm words.

One more, and I wasn’t sure I’d have the strength to turn him down again.