Okay. Time to get back to the real world. The one in which people are dying and I have an inch-long gash across my foot.
Oy vey. Reality is overrated. Just like losing your virginity.
I check my foot, but I can’t see a thing through the bandage wrapped around it. I can’t complain. He did promise I wouldn’t go to the hospital, and I’m not. I swing my legs out of bed and gingerly touch my toes to the floor. My foot stings as I lower my heel, and I figure walking is going to hurt for a couple of days.
That’s the last time I wear heels to a crime scene or run around one barefoot.
My eyes catch a scribbled note on the nightstand, and I snatch it up. It’s from Drake, scrawled in his rough capital letters, telling me that he called my mom but, apparently, my injury doesn’t excuse me from family dinner. He promises to swing by and drop me off because I’m not allowed to drive until the wound is no longer open in a couple of days.
I scrunch my face up. Yeah, I’m gonna check that with Alison. I’m not up to being ferried around, and I wouldn’t put it past him to make that crap up just so he can keep an eye on me.
He does get a little overbearing when people start kicking the bucket. God knows what he’s worried about. He should know by now that the chance of anyone murdering me is next to nothing. I’d talk their ear off and shoot them before they could remember what they were doing.
Actually, no. No, I’d just shoot them. Then talk. Because we all need distracting from a gun wound. Unless it’s fatal. Then there’s not much to distract from.
Let’s face it, I think as I tiptoe toward the bathroom. I do have a pretty epic record against murderers. I am two for two on getting the first bullet in in the showdown. Granted it’s the only epic record I have in my mission to save the world, but it’s a record.
I sit on the toilet, my panties around my ankles, and bury my face in my hands.
These cases always make it come back. The helplessness I feel when I’m not on the brink of an answer or surrounded by certain evidence can be overwhelming. It happened before in the other cases, but for the most part, I could block it out. Now, though…
Now, the bodies are coming too fast. The people missing… It’s the same thing as it was in Dallas. First, it was one missing child, then another, then another. Then we were getting referrals from the surrounding areas and their police departments. Disappearances were happening if you didn’t hold their hand tight enough in the supermarket.
And they really were kids. Five, six, seven… Younger… Older…
I close my eyes. If it’s quiet enough, I can still hear it. The gunfire. The yells. The screams. The cries. The rev of the engine as the semi sped away before we could scramble a chase. The deafening echo of silence once the warehouse was empty.
If I feel long enough, I can still taste my own guilt. I can taste the revulsion at myself and the hatred I bathed myself in for so long. The responsibility that weighed on my shoulders. The pity from my colleagues and the silent anger from my superiors. The promises that we’d still get them, that we’d save them. That someone would. That someone had to.
I knew the truth. I knew I’d blown the chance we had. They blamed themselves for putting the rookie in charge of that. It was in my blood, they said. I could do it, they said. They believed in me, and I failed them.
Everyone fucks up. I just did it epically, royally, explosively.
I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t save Lena or Daniel, or Natalie or Vince. I couldn’t save Toni or Melissa or Annabelle.
But then I did save Portia. I saved Alyssa and Madison McDougall. I saved Ellis, for what it’s worth when she gets her inevitable death sentence.
Maybe, if I stop being so damn sorry for myself, I can save someone else.
“Noelle?” Drake appears in the doorway.
I turn my head and meet his gaze, which is swimming with concern.
“Are you all right?”
I take a deep breath and nod. “Yeah. Just thinking.”
“In the bathroom? On the toilet?”
I drop my eyes to my feet. Oh, shit. How long have I been sitting here? My cheeks burn as I mumble a, “Yeah. Guess so.”
He laughs. “How’s your foot?”
“Can I…you know”—I wave at my underwear—“alone?”
He rolls his eyes before backing into his room. I quickly wipe and pull my panties up. Then I hit the flush and hobble into the bedroom, where he’s taking his tie off.
“Aren’t you going back to work?”
His shoulders drop, and he throws the balled-up tie onto the bed. He deftly undoes the top button of his shirt. “I was until your crazy, old grandmother stormed the police station and demanded every Bond or potential Bond be at dinner tonight. Sheriff Bates was too shocked to argue.”
I choke on thin air. “Potential Bond?”
Drake glances at me, his lips quirking. “She married us off weeks ago. She’s insane.”
Eh. It’s hard to argue with such a stellar explanation.
I’m opening my mouth to agree when I feel the searing burn of his gaze on me. His eyes are trawling across my body, from the way the shoulders of the shirt fall halfway down my biceps to the way the buttons start being done up right between my boobs. My skin tingles at the intense, lustful look in his eyes. I self-consciously tug on the bottom of the shirt and tuck my hair behind my ear.
“Ahem,” I cough, tucking my hands up inside the open sleeves.
He doesn’t even meet my eyes. Hell, he doesn’t acknowledge that I even made a sound. He simply continues to look at me as though he’s never seen a woman in a shirt, standing in the middle of his bedroom, before.
“Hello? Drake?”
Nothing.
“Earth to Detective Nash!”
He snaps his eyes to mine, and the heat that blazes in them sets my whole body on fire. He’s in front of me in two steps, and he hooks one finger around the top button of the shirt. His knuckles brush my breast right next to my nipple, and I breathe in deeply as it shoots a bolt of desire through me.
“Earth sucks,” he murmurs in a low, husky voice, curving one of his hands around my butt. His fingers play with the hem of the shirt, gently brushing across my skin in what I’m sure is a deliberate move. “I’d rather be in Heaven, thank you very much, Ms. Bond.”
I curve one eyebrow upward. “Cute. I think I want to vomit.”
He smirks, pulling me right against him. “Can’t blame a man for trying when you look that fucking hot.”
I press my finger against his lips with a smile on my face. “And I’m this hot because I was born and raised in Hell. You’d do well to remember that.”
“Oh yeah. I can see the horns now. Your bedhead doesn’t cover them.”
“Those are called my nipples.”
“Ah. I was under the impression they were called ‘mine.’”
“You’re right. They are. Except they’re mine mine, not yours mine.”
“Nah. You’re mine, so if they’re yours, then they’re mine too.”
“I’m actually my own. I just let you think I’m yours. You make a mean omelet, and for all the skills of my vibrator, they haven’t made ones that lick pussy or cook. Or bring me coffee. If they ever do that, I might have to crush your dreams.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “I believe a vibrator that could do all of that is called a robot.”
I twist my lips to the side. “Will it argue with me and lose its socks under my dresser? Pee on the toilet seat?”
“Probably not. How would they sell that to a woman?”
“Aha! Excellent. Then, when it happens, I’ll trade you in. I could get a good price.” I tap his chest and step back, but he grabs me and spins me onto the bed.
I should be used to the feeling of falling with a two-hundred-pound wall of muscle taking me down, but I’m not, so I scream. A little in pain, actually.
“Foot! Foot!” I squeak, straightening my leg so no part of it is touching the floor.
“Fuck!” Drake immediately jumps up and grasps my ankle in his strong grip.
I clamp my teeth down on my lower lip as he jolts it.
“Are you all right? Did I hurt you?”