The air was cooler here, and he took some deep breaths, the lingering perfume and body oils from the working girls doing some kind of aromatherapy on him.
He was on his second round trip down and back when Alex came through the door he’d put to use. “My office. Right now.”
Ah, shit.
Duke walked over with her, but didn’t sit down once they were shut in together. Picking the far wall, he leaned up against the concrete and crossed his arms in front of his chest.
Alex parked it behind her desk. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
Great. He couldn’t wait to hear this.
“We’re giving you a couple of nights off.”
He looked up. “That’s ridiculous. I’m—”
Alex cupped her hand by her ear. “Not going to argue with me? Fantastic. Good choice.”
Duke scrubbed his face so he didn’t start yelling and thereby prove her damn point. “I don’t need—”
“To waste either of our time trying to convince me otherwise? Man, you are getting so smart. I really respect where you’re at.”
As he resumed glaring at the floor, he could feel her staring at him across the desk.
Abruptly, she picked up the one living thing in the room: a small plant in a green-colored plastic pot.
“You see this?” she said. “You know who gave it to me? A nice guy named Detective de la Cruz. He paid me a visit here a little while ago, and you wanna know whose health plan he’s on? The CPD’s. Again, nice guy. But I didn’t want this f**king plant, and I reallllly don’t want him to come back—most certainly not because we had bodily damage of a permanent variety happen in one of my f**king bathrooms by one of my cocksucking bouncers.”
“I can keep it together.”
She put the pathetic ivy or fern or whatever it was back down. “It’s my own damned fault. I didn’t realize this, but you’ve worked the last twenty-five nights that we’ve been open in a row—I shouldn’t have asked you to come in last evening. You’re just too dependable, and frankly, too good at your dumb-ass job. Unfortunately, you’re also getting burned out. It happens. Those idiots out there will drive you demented.”
He opened his mouth, but she cut him off. “This is not subject to compromise or discussion. At all. You either do what I say, or, as much as it pains me to say this, I’m going to fire you.”
Duke felt his temper flare even higher … but he knew better than to argue. She was holding all his cards, and she probably wasn’t being all that unfair. Damn her.
“Can I finish out tonight?”
“As long as you relax? Yeah. But then it’s two shifts off.” Duke turned to go. “I didn’t say I was done with you.”
“What,” he asked the closed door.
“You have a visitor. I put her down the hall in the interrogation room.”
Duke cranked around. “Visitor?”
Alex offered a sly smile. “Blond. Five-eight. Looks out of place here—which I can’t help but think recommends her. In fact, maybe if you spend a little time with the female? You’ll get in a better mood.”
Duke blew out of the boss lady’s office and strode down that corridor. When he got to the door of the room they “talked” to people in, he didn’t knock, just opened wide.
And there she was, standing in her sensible shoes, hands in the pockets of her jeans, eyes shooting over like she was out of her element, her comfort zone … and her mind.
At least in her opinion.
Duke would beg to differ, however.
Dropping his lids, a sense of purpose calmed him out so much better than the chain-yanking of his boss.
As he shut the door, she lifted her hand awkwardly. “Hi. I…”
He put his finger to his lips and shhh’d her. Then he went over to the monitoring equipment in the far corner and reached waaaaaay up, disconnecting the unit that was mounted on the ceiling.
Facing off at her, he drawled, “I’m assuming you don’t want this recorded.”
“Ah…”
As she clearly searched for words, it was obvious she hadn’t been playing when she’d said she didn’t do shit like this.
No problem. He was going to take care of everything.
Closing in, he already had her naked in his mind, naked and up on the table in the middle of the room, her legs spread for him as he kissed her so hard, she fell back on the scratched surface.
He didn’t say anything as he reached for her, slipping a hand around the base of her neck and pulling her forward by the throat.
She put her palms out to his chest and held him off. “Don’t you want to…”
“What? Talk?” His eyes locked on her mouth. “That’s not why you came. That’s not why I asked you here.”
In the recesses of his mind, he found it strange that he was so sexed up over this female. But he wasn’t wasting time on that one. She was here. She was not going to say no. And he needed this with a desperation he not only didn’t understand, but knew better than to question.
He wanted her willing, however.
And that meant he was going to have to seduce her into the f**king.
He moved his hand up so that it plowed into her hair, and then took her by the waist. “I saw your car earlier. You came by the front of the club, didn’t you.”
She swallowed hard. “I wanted to see…”
“Me.” He leaned in, putting his chest against her br**sts and his mouth next to her ear. “You wanted to see me again, because you couldn’t believe you were thinking about meeting me here. You couldn’t believe that while you were watching that singer … I was the man on your mind.”
He moved his hips in, brushing his erection against her before he backed off to measure her reaction.
Oh, yeaaaah. That’s what he wanted: Her lids closed briefly and her lips parted—so she’d definitely felt what he’d wanted her to.
“I knew you were going to come,” he said, “for me.”
That was when he kissed her, shifting fast and taking over, gathering her hard and bringing her in tight to his body as his mouth found hers. She was stiff against him, but that didn’t last. As he licked his way into her, she went loose all over, and man, that was good—just as good as the way she tasted.
Talk about transformation. All that pent-up frustration he’d been riding got rechanneled into lust for her, and the heady surge of erotic power was his first clue that this casual hookup was going to be different. But then he didn’t think of anything much else. She was the perfect receptacle for his burn, her tongue meeting his, her spine arching her forward, her arms shooting around his shoulders to hold him in return.