Alessa stared at him, feeling too many things she didn’t know how to express. Most of them confused. “Rocco…” She ought to try and articulate the outrageous way anything at all between them would be too complicated to consider. She owed it to herself to figure out what his intentions were, if he even had any, or if he was just horny for the new girl. And she tried not to think about how disappointing that answer would be, despite also seeing how much easier it would be to handle.
“Those addresses you asked for came in,” he said, abruptly changing the subject and shoving his hands into his pockets once again. He shifted his weight, but it was glaringly obvioushe was still physically unsettled. “The information should be hitting your email now.”
She opened her mouth to ask what he meant before it dawned on her. The addresses for the various loan shark types in West Las Vegas.Yes, work.She’d lost too much time that day. Whatever the situation with Rocco, it had to wait. “Great. I’ll get on those.” She moved forward, leading the way out of the room and doing her best not to dwell on how close to the bed she and Rocco had been while they’d been wrapped around each other.
It would have been so easy….
She knew, shamefully, that she wouldn’t have resisted if he’d pushed her onto the mattress. Or was he more of a thrower? He had the arms for it, but she struggled to imagine that. She wasn’t a large woman in height or size, but no one had ever tossed her around in that way. That was probably one of those things the books she read on rare occasion liked to exaggerate.
“I’ll come with you this time,” Rocco declared as they descended the stairs.
Alessa nearly tripped. “What?” She whipped around as soon as she hit the landing, leaving barely enough room for him to finish his descent. “Sir, you—”
Rocco curled a hand around her throat and tugged her close, ghosting his lips over hers. “Be very careful when and where you address me that way, beautiful. I’m not known for my self-control under the best of circumstances.” He took hold of her wrist with his free hand and guided her palm over the top of his clothed erection. “And if you haven’t realized it yet, I have veryparticularreactions to you.”
Alessa swallowed hard and tried to tell herself she didn’t feel a thrill at the change in sensation with his firm, yet nonthreatening, grip. Instead, she held his heated stare and pressed her palm down at a slight angle, applying friction to the cock she had previously been rocking against.
His nostrils flared but he made no move to stop her.
“And how am I supposed to know,” she asked, slowly curling her fingers as much as the fabric of his slacks allowed, “what does and does not constitute a ‘particular’ reaction from you?” She smiled and angled her head slightly, until their lips almost touched again. “Sir.”
He growled low, but Alessa moved faster, sweeping her hand up and dislodging his grip of her throat. She stepped back while he was still leaning forward, and she smirked just a little. His eyes snapped over to her, but for all his warning, he didn’t look too scary. She only saw a man she really wouldn’t mind letting pin her to a wall.
Another time.
Other circumstances.
Alessa pivoted in place, made sure to sway her hips, and called back, “I have grueling, unpleasant field work to do. It’s hardly the kind of thing you need to waste energy on. I’m a big girl, I’ll be fine.” She kind of did want him to insist. It would be different, it would mean more conversation, and it might be fun.
It would also be a terrible distraction.
Rocco made a sound that could only be a hard, probably displeased, grunt. “Fine. Work first. But I’m coming with.”
A smile tugged at her lips and she told herself not to get too swept up in his words. Men like him didn’t like to lose. Whether he saw bedding her as the challenge, or proving he could handle a day of field work, or something else, none of it meant the implications of the past several minutes held any significance.
She worked with too many such men not to be aware of that.
He knew he shouldn’t have touched her. Hell, he shouldn’t have gone up to her suite in the first place. But the days when Rocco worried about what he was and was not supposed to do had long gone.
What mattered to him in the moment was that she had responded.
“We stand out like a sore thumb,” Em said as Ignazio squeezed their SUV in between a small POS and a polished sports car. The latter was probably specifically tricked out for street racing, based on the paint job and choice of accessories.
Ignazio killed the engine. “We stood out the second we turned into the neighborhood.”
Rocco frowned and let his gaze drift out the tinted window at his side. It wouldn’t be the lingering stare of passersby they needed to worry about, of course, but he took a second to scrutinize the punk leaning against the gaudy racecar, anyway.
Alessa released her seatbelt. “If you boys are uncomfortable, feel free to wait in the car. I’ll be back when I’m done.” She popped her door open before any of them could respond.
Ignazio made a sound almost like a groan, but opened his door.
Rocco didn’t wait for Em, knowing the larger man would follow his lead, and stepped onto the curb. Like hell he was letting that woman strut through the Westside without backup. No matter who she worked for, and how much they trusted her, she was one person. One incredibly sexy, fearless person who didn’t know her way around.
“Yo, old timers,” the punk near the racecar called, already gesturing between the vehicles. “You touched my car.”
Rocco frowned.
“We did not,” Em replied.
