...Call me vain, but I find it tough to hold a grudge against a guy who’s just admitted my mere presence interferes with his basic thought processes. “Can I ask a question?”

“You can ask. Can’t promise I’ll answer.”

I rolled my eyes. Typical cop. “What was it that tipped you off to me? What made you run the prints? Was it my slip about the older brother?”

He nodded. “That, and the Jersey accent that popped up after the third glass of wine. The blue contacts didn’t help either.”

“Shit.”

“Plus there was the way you reacted to McDane. Pretty extreme.”

I sighed. “Anything else?”

He considered me for a second or two. “You want to know the big tip-off?”

“Yeah.”

He looked away, as if trying to formulate his next statement. “Generally speaking, nice girls named MaryJane from Indiana can’t…they don’t…”

“Suck cock like I do?”

For a second, I thought I’d finally killed him with my filthy, unfeminine mouth. His eyes got huge in his face and his throat worked like he was choking on his tongue. Then he made a noise that sounded like a growl, which turned into a laugh, all rich and dark like a whiff of good coffee from a brand new bag. It made my mouth water—made me want to taste his laughter, to see if it felt as good on my tongue as it sounded in my ears.

I went with the impulse. His reaction was satisfying, if a little overwhelming. He slammed me against the fridge as if he meant to bust us both right through the door. I heard glass rattle around inside and had time to wonder if anything spilled before there was no more oxygen to feed my brain because he’d squeezed it all out of my lungs, pressing up against me so hard. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn there were secret messages encoded on the roof of my mouth, the way he used his tongue on me.

Fragments of thoughts, like I should try to breathe, and this would be a good time to maybe lift my arms, skittered across the surface of my brain, but my lungs weren’t taking orders at the moment, and my limbs felt as if they were full of wet sand.

He eased off finally and I sucked in some air. He muttered what might’ve been an apology, then licked a trail up my neck and chased it with a bite to my earlobe.

“Bedroom,” he said, more distinctly, but with a pained undertone. Like maybe it would cause him physical discomfort not to be kissing me for the thirty seconds it would take us to relocate.