Bending the Rules (18 page)

Nothing, that was what.

Okay, so the man had shot her down once already when he’d offered that lowering apology following the one and only kiss they’d shared.

Nevahtheless, declared a voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen, and Poppy infused some steel into her backbone.

Was she not the woman who’d just told the good detective he should always let her have her way? She had never been shy about going after what she wanted, but for some reason she acted unnaturally missish around de Sanges. Maybe because he had the ability to command such strong reactions from her—stronger than she’d known with anyone else. And she could admit it: that shook her a little.

Okay, more than a little.

Still, she had a reputation to uphold. So it stopped right here, right now.

She wiped up the pool of water she’d created and set the sponge back in its dish. Drew a slow, calming breath to steady an unsteady heartbeat. And sauntered over to Jason, putting a little swivel action into her hips. She watched his dark eyes grow darker. And cop-wary.

He was smart to be wary. She might not be a burglar, armed and dangerous. But she’d made up her mind, she was loaded for bear and that made her dangerous in her own way.

Stopping in front of him, she stood just a touch closer than was polite but not so close that she risked having him back her up a step, since she didn’t doubt for a second that he was just mean enough to do precisely that. She reached out to lay her fingertips on his chest in the most meager of touches. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

Brows furrowing over the prominent thrust of his nose, he stepped back, causing her hand to drop to her side. “For what?”

“The way you went out of your way to help last night. I think you’re probably a very good cop, Jason. I know we’ve had our differences when it comes to my kids and my programs, but you’re better with them than you let on when we first got into this. You totally rocked with Darnell and Freddy. So this is for them. And for whatever it was you said to Danny G. and Henry the day Cory had her meltdown.” And rising onto her toes, she pressed a soft kiss on his lips.

She almost jerked back, so electric was the sensation from what should have been a simple buss. And in execution it was simple: gentle, no tongue, no full-on press of bodies straining to get closer. But there was nothing simple about the way it made her feel.

Nothing simple at all.

But maybe that was merely her. Reluctantly—so much so that it hurt in places she hadn’t even known she possessed—she withdrew her lips from his in glacially slow increments, lowering her heels back onto the floor. And looked up at him with a level gaze, her eyebrows raised in question.

He stared back at her. Then muttered, “Damn.” And quicker than a striking snake, he whipped out those long-fingered hands to wrap warmth around her nape and haul her back onto her toes. He rocked his mouth over hers.

This was not gentle. This was all fierce lips and teeth and tongue, with a heat that turned her mind to smoke. But one thing remained constant. He kissed her and she lost all reason.

Plunging her fingers into his hair, she plastered herself against him. He waltzed her backward until her back hit the fridge and something atop it made an off-center spinning sound. Pressing her against the appliance, he bracketed her in with his inflexible torso, long, strong arms and longer, stronger legs. The contrast of cool metal against her back and the heat that pumped through Jason’s clothing to steam-press her front elicited a tiny moan from some atavistic stranger living inside her. Sucking at his tongue, she yanked his shirttails from the waistband of his slacks.

Making a feral sound, he ripped his mouth free, fisted the material of her delicate aqua sweater in his hands, growled, “Raise your arms,” and pulled it off over her head when she complied. He leaned back from the waist and gave her a comprehensive inspection from her mussed hair to her well-kissed lips to her bare collarbone to her unlined, ivory lace bra. When his gaze reached that it stopped dead.

“Jesus.” He traced the patterns of the lace and his forefinger contrasted darkly against the bra’s ivory and her own ivory flesh glowing through it. He circled her nipples, which Poppy could feel poking eagerly against the lace, in ever closer, tighter figure eights. Then he swept his thumb in to trap one and gave it a tug.

Sensation streaked south from the point of compression and Poppy sucked in a sharp breath. Her head fell back. “Gaaaawd,” she moaned at the ceiling as she thrust her breasts in the direction of his fingers as they retreated, her breath hitching as they went back to circling both nipples. “The opposable thumb’s a marvelous thing, isn’t it?”

He caught the one he’d neglected before and gave it another hit-and-run pinch. Rising onto her toes, she hooked a leg around his hip and yanked, slapping their pelvises together.

He swore and abandoned finessing her breast in favor of sliding both hands up the backs of her thighs beneath her skirt until they reached the bare cheeks exposed by her new Rio thong panties. Filling his hands, he hiked her up and Poppy wrapped her other leg around him as well. His erection sparked a new uproar inside her as it slid against the soft furrow between her legs.

Breath gusting out, he shifted his grip and his fingertips brushed the small triangle that dwindled into a narrow band riding the division of her buttocks.

“You are wearing something under here,” he said, tightening his fingers around her bottom, and Poppy almost aspirated her tongue as she felt her cheeks separate and his fingertips curl into the crease. Lowering his head, he kissed her again as his thumbs slid under the twin strings that connected the back triangle to its slightly larger counterpart in front.

Poppy wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back hungrily.

She nearly jumped a foot when someone suddenly pounded on the door and a man’s voice called, “Jase! You home, boy? Saw your car out in the lot.”

Jason dropped her back on her feet and stepped away so fast she staggered and had to slap her hands against the refrigerator at her back to keep from wheeling into the counter. He stared at her with dawning horror and, plowing a hand through his hair, opened his mouth.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “If you apologize again after kissing me like a starving man at the all-you-can-eat buffet, I will personally see to it you never father children.”

“No, okay.” Holding his hair off his forehead, he stared at her. “I’m not sorry,” he said. “But I still shouldn’t have started this.”

“Which—hello—you didn’t. I did.”

“But I fell right in with the program, didn’t I? And mixing it up with someone in one of my cases is against both my and the SPD’s professional code of ethics.”

Pushing away from the fridge, she glared up at him, her back erect and chin raised. “I’m not in a case of yours, pal.”

“Okay, someone that I work with then, which is the same difference—Shit!” The man out in the hall knocked again. “I gotta get that.” Looking unaccustomedly frazzled, he bent and grabbed her sweater off the floor. “Here. Get dressed,” he said, tossing it to her. “We’ll talk as soon as I get rid of—” His sentence faded away as he strode from the room.

“No, I don’t think we will,” she said to herself, pulling the garment on over her head, then smoothing her hair as best she could. She pulled in deep and even breaths and exhaled them slowly in an attempt to calm herself. This was the second time he’d gotten her all worked up only to slap her down.

Looking around, she located her purse and the empty Trader Joe’s bag and snatched them up. She marched down the hallway and pushed past Jason and an older man, who stared at her openmouthed.

“Poppy, wait.”

Dodging Jason’s outstretched hand, she blew past the two men. Because she agreed with that old maxim. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

And damned if she intended to be a fool a third time.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I hate that this hurts so bad. It shouldn’t. I don’t know him well enough. But it does. It hurts like crazy.

“D
AMN
, J
ASE
, I’
M SORRY
.”

Yeah, you and me both. Jase reached out and gently closed the door Poppy had just barreled through, resisting the urge to bang his head against the jamb. Man, she hadn’t even looked at him.

But he shrugged and led the way into his living room. “No need to be sorry,” he said. “Ms. Calloway was just leaving anyway.”

“O-kay.” Murphy gave him a who-do-you-thinkyou’re-kidding? look as he lowered himself onto the couch. “You might wanna let your woody go down and tuck your shirt back in your pants before you try floating that horseshit,” he said dryly. “Not to mention that grab you made for your lady friend to keep her from hoofing it out the door.”

“Yeah, whatever,” he said curtly. “In any case, it’s not a problem.”

“Hell, yeah, it’s a problem,” Murphy said indignantly. “I screwed up your evening.”

“No, you interrupted it. I did the screwing-up part all on my own.” Then he straightened. “No, dammit, it wasn’t a screwup. I just told her the truth. I shouldn’t have let things get started with her that I have no intention of continuing.”

“That you have no intention…?” Murph gave him an incredulous look. “Why the hell not? Are you blind, boy? Even with whisker rash all over her face, that was one seriously pretty young lady.”

Oh, man, you don’t know the half of it. A vision of Poppy’s eyes all heavy-lidded with arousal and of her lips, so pink and moist and swollen from his kisses, exploded like a hand grenade in his mind. He thought of her breasts, round and ripe and pale beneath her see-through lace bra, of their spiky little nipples and the wetness between her—

Sternly, he put the skids to those thoughts. Because it was pointless, wasn’t it? “She’s off-limits,” he said flatly. “I’m working with her.”

“Oh.” Murphy deflated. “Well, shit. That’s a cryin’ shame. So which case is she a part of?”

“It’s not exactly a case…”

Murph shot him the same level-eyed what-the-hell- are-you-talking-about stare he’d used to such good effect when Jase was a teen and the old man was on the job. “What exactly is it, then?”

Feeling defensive, as if he were somehow in the wrong, Jase said, “Look, she’s the one who used her influence with the mayor to pull me into this bullshit cleanup project with the taggers.” Only it turned out the project really wasn’t all that bullshit after all.

Murphy sat upright. “The Babe? That was the Babe?”

He shrugged his agreement.

“Whataya know.”

“It gets worse,” he said morosely, ignoring the speculative look on his friend’s face. “Turns out, she’s a frickin’ good girl.” Which he figured pretty much said it all.

Apparently, however, he seriously overestimated Murphy’s intelligence, because his longtime friend and mentor snapped, “So what?”

“So, get real, Murph. I’m freakin’-ass wrong for her.”

“Because she’s a good girl? What the hell does that even mean?”

“It means her tough-girl attitude is all for show. She’s a goddamn marshmallow who undoubtedly plans to go the white-wedding-and-kids route one day. Not exactly the let’s-screw-our-brains-out-then-walk-away-withno-regrets-or-recriminations sort that I go for. Poppy’s…shiny. She’s all about the kids. And thanking people with home-cooked meals.” But mentioning that made something inside him hurt, so he repudiated it by pretending he hadn’t brought up the subject in the first place and that the event itself had never happened. “She does good works, for cri’sake.”

“I thought you said she was a rich-girl user.”

“I did.” An unamused laugh escaped him. “Yet another instance where I was wrong, which should probably give you a clue. She grew up in a fricking hippie commune and from the looks of things lives paycheck to paycheck. Her entire place is about the size of my living room, has shit for security and she drives a rattletrap that shouldn’t be allowed on the road.”

“I’m not gonna ask how you know all this. But you like her,” Murphy said shrewdly. “I’m guessing, too, that she must like you right back or I wouldn’t have interrupted the two of you about to get busy. So why not just relax and see where it takes you?”

“Because she’s a good girl!”

“And you’re a good boy!” Murphy roared.

“I’m a fucking de Sanges. I quit being a good boy around the time I turned eight.”

“That’s just horseshit. You were heading down the wrong track when I met you, but you were still a good kid then and you’re a good man now.” Murph scrubbed his hands over his cheeks and jaw, then lowered them to grip his knees. “Jesus,” he sighed irritably. “I have never met anyone who works as hard as you do to undercut his own happiness.”

“I’m happy!”

“No, you’re at best content—and only then if you’ve got a lot of work to keep you occupied.”

“Don’t tell me what I am, old man—I’m fuckin’ ecstatic!”

Murph snorted. “My ass. But, okay, we’re not going to fight about this, too. I’ll concede you’re happy, okay?”