“Peach-flavored beer is frivolous, half pint. Cookie dough ice cream is unmatched.”
“Spoken like someone who hasn’t tried butterscotch.”
“And never will. That’s a grandma flavor.”
Midway through my gasp, I realize he’s trying to distract me from what happened—and it’s working. He’s soft on the inside. Did part of me sense that from the beginning? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Now he’s carrying on a conversation about ice cream even though the vein in his right temple looks like it’s going to tick out of his head. “I’m okay, you know.”
He swallows a sound. “Goddammit, Taylor.”
I can’t stop myself from leaning up and kissing his chin. He closes his eyes at the contact, dipping his mouth to mine, our breaths tripping over one another’s. “Please,” he urges gruffly against my lips. “Stop.”
“Stop what?”
“I don’t know. Everything. No matter what you’re doing, it gets to me. When you’re pissed or laughing or hurt or not even with me, I get torn up over it.”
“That’s them. Those are the words,” I whisper, shaken, chest twisting.
He’s shaking his head. “Taylor, I’m leaving after I solve this case. As soon as I find out who did this to you, I’m going to lock them up and throw away the key. Then it’s back to bounty hunting. You in Connecticut. Me on the road. I’m not going to be your boyfriend. You’re not going to fix me. I’m not going to settle down. All right? If that’s what you’re thinking could happen…” His jaw flexes. “I’ve done everything I can to give you the opposite impression.”
“I know, Myles. I…”
“What?”
“I haven’t gotten that far. As in, the future. A future where you’re my boyfriend. I haven’t imagined what would come next if we were together. It hasn’t even entered my mind.”
Now he looks angrier than ever. This man is so confusing.
“I just want to be with you now,” I murmur, sitting up straighter in his lap, ghosting my mouth over the rapidly beating pulse at the bottom of his neck, my hand smoothing up the front of his shirt. “I need to be with you. Just for now.”
I work my lower body in a slow circle on his lap, but he grabs my hips before I can complete the revolution. “You’re hurt.”
Mouth pressed to his ear, I whisper, “Being hurt only makes me need you more.”
The car pulls to a stop outside the rental house.
Myles blows out an unsteady breath. “Shit.”
Chapter 16
Myles
* * *
Our shoes have been left at the front door and I’m carrying Taylor through the house. I’m half hoping Jude is home to provide a distraction, half hoping he’s not.
Okay, fine. A lot more than half of me is hoping we’re alone. Maybe even all of me. But I should not be bringing this woman up the stairs to her bedroom. Christ, she was just attacked. My fucking blood is hot, it’s cold, I don’t know what it is. All I know is when I saw her lying unconscious on the floor, my world tipped sideways. I’ve never felt that combination of ice-cold fear and violent rage before and I never want to again. This is why I am a bounty hunter. I don’t get attached to anyone.
I can remain emotionless. Robotic. Efficient.
It’s too late for that now. With Taylor.
I’m a storm of feelings over her. So many that I can barely pick them out of the blurring whirlwind and try to define them. I’m protective of her, proud of her, lustful to the point of pain, adoring and confused. Because I know, I damn well know that if I fuck her, I’m going to grow even more attached and leaving is going to gut me, yet here I am, putting one foot in front of the other. Holding her against my chest like she’s fragile, maybe to try and fool myself into forgetting she wants to be treated—manhandled—like she’s far from breakable.
My stones are aching. My head is crowded. My chest is a fucking crime scene after she was assaulted on my watch. Mine. All because I missed a detail. Again. I missed something. But she’s kissing my neck and I’ve got a cock that could punch a hole in a window and damn…she’s growing more adept at teasing that spot under my ear by the second, her teeth closing around my lobe and tugging. Licking. Kissing.
She told me in the Uber that she hasn’t considered a future for us.
As much as that messed with my head, it’s very convenient for me to believe her promise right now. That she hasn’t considered us long-term. It takes away the guilt over hitting and quitting a girl who should be carried to the wedding altar on the wings of a dove. Brought home to mom. Given whatever she wants until she’s deliriously happy.