I was rubbing my hands together briskly and blowing into them to try and warm them up when headlights suddenly illuminated me and a vehicle rolled into the parking lot and didn’t stop until it almost reached me. The lights cut out and the driver’s-side door swung open. I would’ve worried, tensed up and walked the other way, if I didn’t recognize the ancient SUV and the female driver. Royal was always going to be prettier than any of the other trophies I used to flash around back in my heyday … prettier even when it was obvious she hadn’t been sleeping well.

I pulled the collar of my shearling coat up around my jaw and stepped around the door to where she was sliding out of her seat to the ground. She looked like she had just come from the gym. She had on some kind of stretchy skintight pants and a big sweatshirt. Her hair was tangled in a messy knot on the top of her head and her eyes looked a few shades darker than their normal sweet chocolate color. She also had on running shoes instead of her typical sexy footwear, and she was shivering in the night air.

“You’re out and about late.” I tried to keep my tone even. She was unpredictable and I never knew which way she was going to go with things. I was used to being able to read people like an open book, but she kept turning the page on me. It was always surprising and unexpected.

She pulled the sleeves of her sweatshirt down over her fingers and looked up at me in a way that made my dick twitch hard behind my zipper. It should be legally prohibited for anyone to be that effortlessly sexy.

“I was at the gym because I haven’t been sleeping well. The powers that be cleared me to go back to work at the end of the week as long as I keep seeing the department shrink for the next three months.”

I thought she would sound happier about that fact than she did. “That’s good news … isn’t it?”

Her shivering turned to outright shaking, and I knew it didn’t have anything to do with the cold outside. Against my better judgment I reached out and hooked an arm around her neck and pulled her against my chest. I pulled open the sides of my coat and let her burrow into me while she shook uncontrollably. I felt her hands snake around my sides and search for warm skin below the edge of my shirt on my lower back. I jolted and I wanted to tell myself it was because her hands were like ice, but that wasn’t it. Her touch made my skin ripple in excitement.

“I’ve never worked a shift without Dom. He’s like my other half. They’re assigning me a temporary partner to work with until Dom comes back.” She pulled away so she could look up at me through her silky lashes. “Only they didn’t say when Dom comes back, they said if. I don’t know if I can do what I do without him.”

I felt her fingers dig into the hollow right at the top of my ass and I had to fight down a full-body shiver.

“You love your job.” I knew it was true. Even though she was acting wild and off the tracks lately, she was so much of what she did for a living. “You don’t need your partner in order to be a good cop, Royal.”

We stared at each other silently for a long moment and then the corner of her mouth kicked up in a grin that made my gut tighten and turned my blood thick. I needed to let go of her and get to getting before I did something stupid.

“Did you miss me this weekend, Asa?”

That was a loaded question if there ever was one. Of course I had noticed she wasn’t around, but I had steadfastly refused to acknowledge how her absence made me feel, so I sighed and asked her, “What are you doing here so late?”

She cocked her head to the side and her eyes narrowed just a fraction. Her fingers dipped below the waistband at the back of my jeans, and I had to suck in a breath through my teeth, which hurt because the night air was freezing.

“I don’t know. Every time I can’t seem to figure out where I’m going lately I always end up wherever you are.”

I swore and went to take a step away from her, but her hands just dipped lower and tugged me closer. “You need to get your compass fixed, then. It’s pointing you in the wrong direction, Red.”

Suddenly it went from being below zero to feeling like we were standing on the surface of the sun. My breathing went shallow and a little erratic as her gaze went all liquid and melty.

“The more you tell me that, the more determined I am to prove you wrong.”

Then she stood up on her toes so that she could put her mouth on mine, and it was all over. I knew it was coming. We had been dancing around each other for months. She was too pretty and too persistent for this not to happen at some point in time. She was also too kind, and far too good, to let someone like me put my hands on her. I wasn’t really what she wanted, but I was getting tired of trying to tell her that. Despite my best intentions, this inferno that raged between us was going to burn out of control and she had just lit the match and tossed it carelessly on the tinder.

Her hands found their way to my sides as her soft lips did their best to render me mindless and stupid with lust. I could inhale her. It would be so simple to just get lost in all the soft and sweet that made her delectable, but somewhere in the back of my mind all the ways in which this was going to go horribly wrong were poking at me. I raised my hands and gently cupped her jaw. I ran my thumb back and forth across skin that couldn’t possibly be that soft, and tried my damnedest not to let her lead me to a place I would never find my way back from. I pulled away from the exquisite brush of her mouth along mine just as her tongue darted out to trace along the sealed seam of my lips. It made me groan out loud. I was going to put a stop to it, I needed to end it now, but she was quick and took advantage of my reaction by slipping her tongue inside my barely parted lips, and then it was hopeless to stop the avalanche of desire that engulfed me.

After all, I never claimed to be an angel and even the devil could only play with fire for so long before he gave in to unholy temptation and danced in the flames.

I backed her into the open doorway of the car. I tunneled my fingers into her hair where it was tight against her head and I inserted a leg between hers so that our pelvises were flush against each other. I wasn’t nice. I kissed her like she had been after me to kiss her from the beginning of this game. I used my tongue. I used my teeth. I didn’t let her breathe and I didn’t give her any kind of space to move away from me as I crowded in on her. I reached around her and grabbed her very spectacular ass in one hand in a really classless move and made sure to manhandle it and her in a very obvious way.

If she wanted me how I really was, then she was going to get it. I had no problem letting the pretense fall away, especially when she was writhing and whimpering against me. I twisted my tongue around hers. I sucked hard on her lower lip until she gasped. I pressed my chest into hers until I could feel the rigid points of her nipples even through all the layers of clothes that separated the two of us.