May Contain Wine (SWAT Generation 2.0 5)

Tiana Ricci shook her head. “No.”

She was lying.

She knew damn well where he was.

“If you lie to us, you could go to jail for obstruction,” Bennett said bluntly. “And we will take you to jail.”

“I gave him the keys to our house in Florida,” she said softly, eyes forlorn. “He left last night. He actually should already be there.”

I cursed inwardly, pissed as hell that I hadn’t figured this out before it’d happened.

Then a thought occurred to me, and I looked over at Bennett. He caught the questioning look in my eye, then gestured for me to follow him out of the house.

He left Saint there, continuing to ask questions.

“What is it?” Bennett asked.

“If he left last night, how’d that bird get pinned to the side of her house this morning?” I asked. “It wasn’t there when I dropped her off. I would’ve seen it. So it happened in between me dropping her off and then us getting back just after my shift ended. I don’t think he’s in Florida. Either he lied and told her he was going, or she’s lying.”

Bennett turned to survey Tiana.

“I think she really did give him the keys,” Bennett murmured. “I’m pretty good at reading body language. She’s not lying about that. What I do think, though, is that she knows more than she’s telling us.”

“Damn right,” I muttered.Chapter 14

Professional patience tester.

-Coffee Cup

Louis

By the time I got home a couple hours later, I was no less pissed and frustrated than I was when I’d left Calloway all alone, warm and snugly.

The only difference was, now I knew that she was still in danger.

Which chapped my ass. I didn’t like the way it felt when I couldn’t control things. The thought of Calloway in any danger at all was making my heart hurt. Even worse, I knew that there really wasn’t anything that I could do until Julian showed his face again.

There were thousands and thousands of people in Kilgore and more than enough room to hide.

When I closed the door to my place quietly behind me, I smiled immediately at what I saw.

Calloway was huddled around a bowl of half-eaten popcorn.

Her face was resting next to the bowl. The remote control was next to that, pressed against her face.

Then there were the three-quarters of the way empty water bottles—I still didn’t understand why she never finished her water bottles. Still, to this day, she liked to say that the last couple of swallows were ninety-nine percent backwash.

Grinning like a goddamn fool, I walked to the television and turned the TV off. The ‘Are you still watching?’ was on the screen.

Turning the television off plunged the room into darkness, making it kind of hard to navigate her bottles of water, bowl of popcorn, and various piles of random crap.

There was a computer. The computer cord. A mouse. A bottle of hairspray. A bottle of nail polish. Then there was the most random of things—a single card—the ace of spades.

Pulling the remote from where it was pasted against her face, I placed it on the table and followed it up with the bowl of popcorn.

Seconds after that, I had my woman in my arms and I was carrying her to my bed.

She shifted and curled into me, her sweet mouth pressing against the pulse in my neck.

“What took you so long?” she murmured, threading her arms around me.

I didn’t want to tell her about any of it now.

I liked that she was sleepy, warm, and ignorant of the fact that she still had someone putting dead animals on her doorstep.

More so, if she was going to be awake, I had some more interesting things that I’d like to do with her. Things that didn’t include talking.

Laying her down on the bed, I watched as she rolled and curled up into my pillow, directly in the middle of the bed.

She didn’t push about what took me so long, but she did watch me undress.

The only light there was came from the bathroom, but with the door being mostly closed, only the smallest of amounts shone through.

Right on my body and where I was disrobing.

I could see her eyes glittering. Knew they were on me.

So I took extra time getting naked.

I ran my hands over my skin, taking much longer to push my pants down my legs than it would’ve normally taken me.

And when my cock popped free of its confines, hard and ready, I knew that she was no longer paying attention to anything but that certain appendage.

Keeping the theme of not talking going, I turned sideways and kicked my clothes in the general vicinity of the hamper, then shucked my shirt by grasping the collar and hauling it over my head.

Tossing that, too, I stretched my arms up high over my head, popping my back as I did.