“Ethan?” Her quiet murmur made my heart skip a beat. I wanted to hear her say my name like that every hour of every day for the rest of my life.
“Yes, l—Lyra?” I’d almost said it without thinking. Love. What the fuck was I doing here? With her? A god damn CIA agent I’d only known a few hours? I had to get out of this houseand away from her. Get some fucking perspective, which seemed to be impossible with my dick inside her.
“I’m tired. So tired.” Her head rolled on my shoulder, and she tucked her nose under my chin. Nuzzled me. Trusted me to take care of her. I felt like a conquering warrior king with her lips on my neck and her swollen pussy wrapped around me.
I was so fucking screwed.
“When was the last time you slept?” I didn’t know what she’d been doing for the hours or days before she walked into the morgue. Suddenly, I wanted to know everything. Every move. Every thought. Everything.
“I don’t know.” Her yawn was cute, like a kitten’s. Or I was already so in over my head with her I’d lost all contact with reality. “I took a few naps. Few days. Four I think. Lost count.”
Four days? She hadn’t truly slept in four days? How was she coherent? Speaking?
Fucking me over and over like a wild thing the last few hours?
God I was an asshole. I should have asked. To be fair, I was shot, then unconscious. She woke me up, healed me, and then crawled into my lap and kissed me like a hungry sex goddess. What mere mortal could resist her? Apparently, not me.
Not fucking me.
I lifted her in my arms and, for the second time that night, carried her upstairs.
She slept like the dead, protesting only when I left her alone in bed for a few minutes to check in with Jenkins. I called his burner from mine, utilizing the cell phones we shouldn’t have, that we used to talk to people we shouldn’t be talking to. I might have thought better of it, but Jenkins and I were both done withshouldn’tthe day Charlene and Maddy died.
I caught him driving home. He’d just left the station, had spent the last few hours—while I was drowning in Lyra—beinginterrogated by the Feds, asked a thousand questions to which he had no answers.
“Hooked me up to the fucking poly.” He sounded as tired as I felt.
They gave a twelve-year veteran of the force a lie detector test? “Assholes.”
He told me everyone in the city was looking for both me and Doctor Pearson. The morgue’s camera system had malfunctioned—of course it did—and they had nothing to go on except pink splatter that the Feds were sending for DNA analysis, a pile of ash on the examination table, and a smear of blood on the floor. They found my cell phone, too, which pissed off the FBI because they couldn’t use it to track my current location.
I almost felt sorry for them.
They would pick my phone apart. I didn’t care. They weren’t going to find anything out of order. I was a good fucking cop when it came to doing my job. Throw in some alien assholes? That’s where Jenkins and I both were willing to go rogue.
I told him the splatter was all that was left of the good doctor, the blood was mine—I’d been winged by a bullet, nothing serious—and the pile of ash used to be our alien corpse. I told him about the three alien thugs, the time of their attack, and gave him descriptions so he could start a camera sweep of the surrounding area. Assholes that big and ugly were bound to stick out.
“How the hell did you get out of there alive?” Jenkins asked.
I glanced at the gorgeous woman curled up in the cream-colored sheets. “That’s a long story. I’ll tell you everything, but not over the phone.”
“All right. Now I’m curious, but I’ll wait. You’re presumed dead, you know?”
“Am I?” For some reason, I found that information humorous.
“Nothing official, but that’s what’s on everyone’s mind. Mine, too, until you called.”
“Sorry about that.” I didn’t mean to worry him. He didn’t need to lose anyone else, even a cranky fucking bastard friend like me.
“The Feds are watching your apartment.”
No surprise there. “I’m not home.” No, I was hiding out in suburbia in a safe house commandeered by a CIA operative. No one was going to come knocking.
“I figured. You need backup? Or you wanna stay dead for a while?”
“I’m good. I could use some sleep.” I didn’t need to play dead. But I didn’t want to spend hours upon fucking hours in an FBI debrief right now either. All I wanted was to crawl into that big, soft, king-sized bed and wrap myself around Lyra. Get some rest. Pearson wasn’t going to get any deader, and those alien thugs weren’t going anywhere, not if this was their turf.
I promised Jenkin’s I’d keep my burner on and crawled under the covers next to Lyra. My eyes ached. Body ached. I realized I’d been awake for more than twenty-four hours.
