Tate wore a mile-wide grin and pushed off the front, giving me a spectacular view of his ass while he walked around the car and pulled open the driver side door. “This ass goes where it wants. Mind if I drive?”
I slid over to the passenger side. When he was close enough, I gave those tight buns a squeeze and then I froze, looking around over my right shoulder and then my left. I had the feeling someone was watching me, but everywhere I looked revealed nothing. No faces or suspicious shadows. “Let’s get out of here.”
Tate frowned and raked a hand through his long hair. “What’s up? Didn’t tonight go well?”
“Oh, it went amazing,” I told him as he put the car in gear. “It went fantastic and I was foolishly about to say how a few days had passed since the fire and there haven’t been any incidents.”
“And now?”
I looked to him and then my gaze darted to the side mirror. Still nothing. “Now, I just had a feeling someone was watching us.” I knew it sounded crazy. I shook my head and let my gaze blur against the stop and go traffic.
“Hey, I believe you. I didn’t see anyone but I know that feeling.
It’s saved my life a few times.”
I wanted to ask more, but I hated thinking about the hell he lived in for six years. “I appreciate that, but I didn’t see anyone. It was just a feeling.” I’d hoped that maybe the silence over the past few days meant they’d scared me enough, but like Tate said, that feeling is there for a reason.
“I don’t want to shit all over your good mood but usually these guys take a break before they escalate.” His white-knuckle grip on the wheel told me he hated saying it, but probably not as much as I hated hearing it.
“And you know this how?”
He shrugged. “I shared a cell with a man who stalked two ex-wives and an ex-girlfriend before he killed them all in the same night. He was able to do it by backing off for a few weeks, making them lower their defenses. When they did, he pounced.”
That sounded terrible. “They couldn’t have put you with someone normal? Just a serial killer?”
He barked out a laugh that surprised the hell out of me. He chuckled and smiled, but those bone-deep laughs were rare. And I loved the sound of them. “Since I wasn’t a woman who’d rejected him, he was a pretty nice guy. I learned a lot about a lot of shit I never wanted to know about, though.”
“Well,” I laughed because this was the most ridiculous conversation I’d ever had. “I appreciate the lesson he passed on to you. Really.” I looked around and realized we weren’t headed to his house. “Where are we going?”
He quirked an eyebrow at me. “We’re going to celebrate another successful event. Another week survived. And morning head,” he said, teasing me about the treat I’d given him before he’d barely opened his eyes.
“So, we’re celebrating the fact that you woke up with your dick in my mouth with a steak dinner?”
“I’m a simple man.”
At that I had to laugh. “You are a lot of things, Golden Boy, but simple ain’t one of them.” He was complicated as they came, but not in a bad way. “You say what you mean and you show what you feel, but there’s so much under the surface that you don’t reveal. That, my friend, is the definition of complicated.”
“Do you want steak or not?”
My lips twitched at how uncomfortable he was with the compliment. “Fuck yeah, I want steak — and lobster. But for dessert I think I’ll have some man meat.”
He laughed again as we walked inside the restaurant and I swore that sound shot straight to my core and soaked my panties.
***
“You know Teddy, it’ll only take about an hour or two to finish this thing up.” I could barely hear what the hell Tate was saying because his hand slid up and down my thigh in a slow, dragging motion. It could be the pot we smoked or the margaritas I’d made to go with the spicy beef tacos, but I was pretty sure it was just Tate.
Fucking Tate, who I didn’t see coming. I was starting to have thoughts I shouldn’t be having about any man, but especially Tate. Despite how great he was, how fucking fantastically hot he was, the man was practically family. When this thing, this hot sex we were having, ended, it would be awkward as fuck if one of us was dumb enough to catch feelings. “Fine, let’s do it soon-ish.”
“The hard part is done. Now it’s just some shading and coloring the next time you come into the shop.”
“Because it’s just that simple? You forget, I’ve been through the other stuff and it hurt like a son of a bitch, Tate.”
He chuckled, his hand grazing up and down my leg in lazy motions that shot straight to my pussy. “And that was the hard part. This will be nothing in comparison.”
And he was so damn good. How a man who’d been wrongfully imprisoned could still be a good person was baffling to me. Most of the shitty people in my life hadn’t spent one day in jail, and he was just good. And sweet. And hot. And, goddammit, I liked him.
“Hey, what’s that frown for?”