Her lips twitched. “So sorry we older folks inconvenience the system.”
“Yeah, that kind of behavior deserves a spanking.” He lowered his voice to an intimate rumble. Yeah, so he should probably back off, but yanking her chain was just too much fun. She reacted so nicely. And he wanted to see something on her face besides icy blankness or gut-wrenching vulnerability. “I’d love to have you draped over my lap. Naked.”
Startled heat flared to life in her eyes and her breath caught. She wasn’t as immune to him as she might wish. Nice to know it wasn’t just him who couldn’t cut off the chemistry between them. The best they could do was ignore it and get on with their work.
Her mouth opened to respond, but he cut her off. “Forget I said that. Let’s talk to a few of Mary Winston’s neighbors and see if they saw anything useful. The telepaths on the scene didn’t pick up on anything, but they didn’t catch everyone. Can’t hurt to check on the ones who weren’t home this morning, but who might have been around when the party started last night.” He stood and snagged his jacket off the back of his chair. “With any luck, no one else will cry on us today.”
That hunted, haunted look crossed Selina’s face again, so fleeting that he almost missed it. The curiosity about her secrets, the concern about her as a woman flared inside him. His chest cinched tight with emotions he didn’t want to name, didn’t even want to admit were possible for him anymore. Not after what his wife had done.
Damn it to hell. It was more than just sex. Already. And he doubted he’d be able to ignore it. Not with Selina.
Now what was he going to do?
5
A knock sounded on her door, and Selina considered not answering it. She was beat, and her energy levels were in the toilet. Yesterday was a marathon for the wedding, she’d gotten little sleep the night before, and after the revelations of today, she was ready to bury herself in a gallon of ice cream and then pass out in bed. If she could convince herself to get up from her sprawl across the living room sofa.
The last thing she wanted was to deal with another human being.
She groaned when the annoying person knocked again. Her familiar, Grim, came over and stuck his cold, wet nose against her bare foot, which made her jackknife upright and curse. The big German shepherd barked and licked her toes when she glared at him.
Shuddering in disgust, she yanked her foot away. “All right, all right, I’ll get up. Damn it.”
The grumbling would have little effect on her familiar. Rubbing a tired hand down her face, she didn’t even bother using her magic to try to figure out who it was. Sometimes it was easier to do things the Normal way. She stumbled to the door and looked out the peephole.
Jack.
She bit back a groan and tugged open the door, trying to freeze her expression into the frosty glare she used with co-workers. After she’d almost broken down in front of him, they needed to establish some boundaries. “Is there a new development with the case, Agent Laramie? The standard practice these days is a phone call, not a house call.”
“Nothing new with the case or I would have called your cell.” Unimpressed by her frigid bitch routine, his eyebrows arched and he looked her over. She refused to fidget or feel embarrassed that she was in faded pajamas. That she’d teared up in front of a complete stranger. A complete stranger she’d fucked. Maybe it was wrong that the tears upset her more, but that was just her.
His slow smile said he didn’t care what she wore. “We were supposed to have dinner, remember?”
Oh. Right.
She had agreed to dinner with him. And a longer sexual relationship. That he’d want to hold her to that arrangement was something she hadn’t considered. She should have. She pulled in a deep breath. “Today complicates things a little, doesn’t it?”
He sighed and shook his head. “I know it does. I tried to stay away, but I couldn’t.”
“Why not?” She wanted the words to come out a demand, but she didn’t quite pull it off.
“Because I can’t get you out of my head. I can’t stop thinking about you underneath me last night. I can’t stop thinking about you almost losing it on me this afternoon.”
She closed her eyes and got about as close to blushing as she’d been in a century. “Can we not talk about that?”
“All right, let’s not talk about you crying.” He shouldered his way in and shut the door behind him. She engaged her security spells with a flick of her fingers, while Jack loomed over her, standing so close. “Let’s talk about why it upset you that Dorothy was crying. Let’s talk about why that shut you down. Let’s talk about why this case pushes your buttons so bad.”
Yeah, like she was going to tell him that story. Of their own volition, her fingers reached up to close around the talisman she wore. Too bad the one Bess had made for herself was for creativity instead of protection. It might have helped save her. Selina swallowed convulsively, wondering how her carefully constructed life had unraveled so fast. Then again, what life did she have left to worry about unraveling?
“Talk to me, Selina.” Jack narrowed his eyes at her. “I’m not calling you Grayson outside of work. I draw the line at that door.”
“Fine.”
His hand lifted to stroke over her cheekbone, just as he’d done that afternoon. She shivered, liking his touch too much, wanting to lean into it. Almost as much as she’d wanted to earlier. But she couldn’t allow herself the weakness. She wouldn’t.
“Talk to me.” His voice was low, coaxing.
He wasn’t going to give up. But then, he’d be a shitty agent if he weren’t a bulldog when he latched on to a topic. All she knew was that she couldn’t tell him the truth about why this case pushed her shiny red buttons. Merek didn’t know that one of the victims was her cousin, but if he did know, he’d understand that Selina could get beyond the fact that her family was involved. He’d understand Selina could handle that she was going to die. But Jack? Luca? She didn’t know them well enough to trust them, and they didn’t know her and what she was capable of. They might pull her off the case so fast her head would spin, and she couldn’t allow that.
Her name was listed nowhere on Bess’s official documentation—her aunt had made certain of that—so the likelihood that anyone would discover the connection was nil. The bottom line was she couldn’t let Bess’s killer get away again. She’d never be able to live with herself if she did. It was that simple and that complicated.
But Jack’s gaze watched her steadily, waiting. She had to tell him something, so she gave him as much of the truth as she could. “This was my first murder case. I was pretty new to the police force.”
Jack’s heavy brows drew together in a dark frown. “They gave a serial killer to a rookie?”
“We didn’t know it was a serial killer at first, but it didn’t really matter. It was a vampire who did it, so they were going to kick it down to the lowest rung they could. That was me. A female rookie. I joined the NOLA PD not too long after they opened up to women.” She shrugged, though she was oddly touched that he seemed so concerned for her, even decades after the fact. She was so going soft. “You have to understand how New Orleans was back then. The local Vampire Conclave owned that town and every Magickal in it. Think Mafia ... with superhuman powers. Drugs, guns, prostitution, you name it. And I was hunting down a rogue bloodsucker.”
If anything, that made him look even more pissed off on her behalf. “So they dumped the shit on you and let you take the political fallout, too.”