Then I teased, “Is that official protocol for dealing with a stalker? Saying macho, badass, possessive alpha male shit that would piss him off and send him over the edge?”

Mike’s hand at my ass stopped drifting. His fingers cupped it firmly, possessively and he replied, “No. I didn’t take that call as a cop. I took that call as a man who was f**king my woman for the first time in my goddamned bed and I did not like some other man who will not clue in he cannot lay claim to what’s mine callin’ while I was doin’ it. So I didn’t think like a cop. I thought like a man who was pissed off an ass**le was calling while I was pleasurably engaged in makin’ my woman purr for me.”

My belly pitched and it felt nice.

I lifted my head and looked down at him.

I knew he wasn’t experiencing any belly pitches because he did not look happy.

So I asked cautiously, “I take it that was Beau.”

“Yeah,” he clipped, his eyes holding mine. “That was Beau.”

I pressed my lips together. Fucking Beau.

“You hear from him since the last incident?” Mike asked.

“No,” I answered.

“Fuck,” he muttered, his eyes moving to the ceiling. “He gave it time, let you cool down, thinks he could make another approach.”

I figured this was true. Though I had no clue how he got my new number.

Mike went on, still muttering, “Not gettin’ the message.”

I figured this was true too.

“Luckily, I’m a thousand miles away,” I reminded him and his eyes came back to me. “And living next door to my badass, alpha male cop boyfriend and in a house with two teenage boys who love their Auntie Dusty, know where their Dad’s shotguns are and aren’t afraid to use them.”

The anger slid from his eyes, his lips twitched and he kept muttering when he said, “Yeah.”

I decided I didn’t want to talk about Beau so I dipped my face closer to his and whispered, “That was hot honey.”

His hand at my ass and arm around me gave me a squeeze.

“Yeah.”

“Like, mega-hot,” I went on.

He grinned.

Not done, I informed him, “Like, mega, off the charts, I’ve never come so hard, hot.”

He started chuckling.

“You’re a bad boy under all that good,” I observed.

“Nothin’ bad about it. You came harder than you ever cl**axed, seems to me, that’s all good,” Mike replied logically and he was not wrong.

“You got more where that came from?” I asked.

He grinned.

Then he answered, “You liked that, you got a lot to look forward to.”

Great freaking news.

I grinned back.

He lifted his head and kissed me softly.

When he was done, I repositioned so my cheek was resting on his shoulder and his fingers resumed drawing on the skin of my booty.

I relaxed deeper into him and reflected on the week.

It was Friday night after Clarisse’s birthday party. That week I’d had lunch with Mike twice at Frank’s, met him for a quick cup of coffee once at Mimi’s and I’d come over on Wednesday night to have dinner with Mike and his kids.

Or, I should say, Mike came to get me even though I could walk to his house. But he did this because we ate with his kids then his kids camped out in front of the TV with us so we had no alone time.

The good news about this was that clearly No and Rees liked me. Rees was emerging even more out of her shell and responding to my attempts to bond with her.

The bad news was we had no alone time except when Mike took me back to the farmhouse and we made out in his car. We did this heatedly but not long enough for me. This was mostly because neither of us wanted two impressionable teenage boys to see their aunt and a local cop going at it hot and heavy in the lane.

So I said my good-byes and walked up to the house wishing for the first time that I wasn’t going to sleep alone. I had no problem sleeping alone and didn’t mind doing it. That wasn’t to say I didn’t like company in my bed and, if they didn’t snore, I liked it regularly. I was not a slut, I chose my partners carefully (I thought at the time until I was proven wrong) but I was willing to endure long, dry spells. Which I did.

But I didn’t like to be separated from Mike. I’d had only one night sleeping in his arms and I did that. Slept in his arms. That wasn’t something I normally found comfortable.

With Mike, it came naturally.

It had been gone a long time. I wanted it back.

Mike was taking it slow and steady and I understood he did this out of necessity. He didn’t want his new girlfriend up in his kid’s faces twenty-four, seven. I got that.

It just sucked.

But also, Mike was busy. Unfortunately, Mike informed me, The ‘Burg was experiencing a crime wave. And considering, strangely with the current economy there was growth still happening all around so there were more people paying taxes, the Department had recently gone through cutbacks. Luckily (kind of), some time ago a dirty cop was weeded out and when he was fired after being arrested (which happened after he was shot, nasty business, shockingly nasty as explained by Mike), they didn’t replace him. When another detective moved to the IMPD and a patrolman passed his detective test and also moved to the city, they hadn’t replaced them either. They then decided to find other ways to reduce spending that didn’t include further loss of personnel.

This was good and bad. Mike told me with his seniority, his job wasn’t threatened. But The ‘Burg was growing, crime increasing and the cops were tasked to look after their citizens but having to do it with less manpower and fewer resources.

This, Mike explained, was a recipe for disaster.

The first part of the crime wave was what Mike described as “piddly shit”. Likely one kid or a few of them, graffiti and some vandalism. It was constant though random and because of the last and the fact that other work took priority, it had been happening awhile without the kids being caught. For the owners of the property vandalized, they didn’t care the cops had limited resources, personnel and other priorities. They just wanted it stopped. Alec Colton and Pat Sullivan bought that case.

The second part was a rash of breakins, the same MO happening throughout Hendricks County, where The ‘Burg resided, and the west side of Marion County which butted our county.

This was who Mike thought IMPD caught, who they interrogated on and off for four hours last Saturday and who turned out not to be the culprit.

A disappointment.