Own (Command Force Alpha #1) (23 page)

“Okay, then.” She matched his smile. “At the very least, I want a ride on the carousel, a balloon animal and a cheap knock-off handbag. Oh, and gen-u-ine Boston cream doughnuts.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Quincy Market was
loud
. Not quite plaster-her-hands-over-her-ears level loud, but it certainly wasn’t a relaxing place, especially considering the reason for their visit. There were so many people buzzing around, for one thing, all investigating the myriad food shops down the main hallway. Though why a tourist would come to Boston and buy a Philly cheesesteak, Kat had no idea.

She tried not to care, because Evan was holding her hand.

Their fingers were laced together, palms pressed tight.

Kat felt like an idiot about how much she enjoyed that. They were in a potentially life-threatening situation, but her heart fluttered when he glanced down at her. She was an idiot for noticing the subtle laugh lines edging his eyes. He knew life. He lived it. This was his version of it, and she couldn’t tell if it was the most exciting or terrifying thing ever.

Sort of like being with Evan.

“So, what first?”

He shrugged his wide shoulders, and his cautious smile made her want to eat him up—however slowly or quickly he wanted. “I’m here to elucidate on any topic you wish. For example, it’s pronounced ‘Quinzy,’ not ‘Quincy’ Market.”

“I know that, you toad. You’re being kinda silly. You feeling okay?”

She wished she could take him up on the bigger implications of his words. Any topic she wished? Maybe she should. The earpiece he wore to communicate with their surreptitious cadre of bodyguards, however, kept her words in check. Balancing a good time with a trap where she was the bait—not easy. It had been strange enough to take an intentional walk around the hospital before getting into Evan’s car, even knowing that CFA operatives had been watching them all along.

Besides, her questions would sound about as intelligent and put together as her eighteen-year-old self had. In other words, not at all. Her chest squeezed two sizes smaller.

He stopped, there in the middle of the narrow market walkway. People swarmed around them, instinctively realizing that Evan was not a man one ran into. “I am, aren’t I? Right now? Silly doesn’t feel normal on me, considering everything that’s going on.”

She took the liberty of reaching up and cupping his hard jaw between her hands. The skin under her fingertips was barely prickly with the hint of imminent beard. She traced patterns over his cheeks. “Don’t shut it down. Please, Evan. You were always…accessible when you enjoyed things. Not so larger-than-life, where I felt like I couldn’t keep up.”

Looking a little bewildered, he wrapped an arm around her waist and hauled her close. They were still surrounded by a swarm of tourists, but none of that mattered when his mouth came pulsing down on hers. He kissed like life. Overwhelming and intoxicating. He was like being caught in a never-ending data stream. Fractions of information swarmed in, even in the absence of words because of secrets he needed to keep, while he kissed her as if he could open his soul for her alone.

She tunneled her hands in his hair. The strands were silken, twining around her fingers. She could scratch her nails over his scalp, but she didn’t. That would be too much. They were in public. And her panties were still wet from the crashing, one-handed way he’d lifted her earlier.

There could be repercussions if they were caught unaware. Memories of her apartment and the hair-raising feeling that someone had been in there, among her things, rooting through her life, remained like a burn. What if she’d been there? What would Evan have found when he finally pieced together where she was…and arrived too late?

She shivered and tensed, apparently signaling him to end the kiss. She’d been willing to let it go as long as he liked, allow him to take what he wanted, but the darkness was still following them, sinking deeper into his caresses.

“You okay?”

“Sure.”

“Liar,” he whispered against her temple. “But for now, fuck food. I say we go straight for donuts.”

“Was food ever on the table? I think I’m disappointed at that.”

He swung her down the row toward a bakery. “Chocolate on top, cream in the middle. I’ll settle for nothing less.”

They bought a full half dozen and sat with the pink box perched on Evan’s knees at a promenade in front of the east entrance, where he watched the crowd, the skies and every passing body.

“Is that going to be enough?” Kat asked, peeking into the box.

Evan lifted a single eyebrow. “If it’s not, I’ll get you a room service cheeseburger later.”

She scoffed. “The basement doesn’t have room service. We’re lucky it has furniture.”

His only answer was a noncommittal hum. He busily messed around with a handful of napkins and a donut. She immediately licked a tiny rivulet of chocolate that had dripped from the icing on top, only to look up and catch Evan’s gaze locked on her mouth. She held back the smile that wanted to quirk free, hid it again.

“No teasing,” he growled.

She looked up at him from under her lashes. That was…a dare. A taunt. She wanted to play with that, but she wanted to be played with in return. But not here. She wanted it where they could actually let their passions loose, where Evan could own her body and mind in ways that weren’t possible in the middle of the packed street.

“You promised me balloon animals. I should get a little bit of teasing leeway.”

He laughed. She liked that look on him, where the tiny lines at his eyes fanned into deep decorations around his true feelings. She hadn’t seen him much over the past four years—by design—but every time Kat had, he’d barely managed a brief and callous smile. This was real.

She liked him better this way.

Well, she liked him best of all when he was mean and growly and intent on ordering her into sexual servitude, but that was another topic altogether.

“I got you a guy on a five-foot unicycle juggling with fire. That’s not good enough?”

She faked a sniff. “It’ll do. So long as you get me a wicked awesome purse.”

“Knockoff only?”

“Well, duh. Have you seen how well I take care of my stuff?” She shook her head. “I shouldn’t own anything expensive.”

He timed his response perfectly, watching her as she lifted the donut to her mouth. He leaned close, just as she bit into the light dough, the chocolate the first impression. “You’ll take care of anything I buy for you.”

His words burst across her skin at the same time as the rich, sweet cream burst across her tongue.

Fuck, she was sunk.

She concentrated on the performers in front of her. They wore red pants and had a decent line of patter, but most of their magic was in the way they owned their bodies. They trusted each other to hold poses that shouldn’t have been possible, and to toss fire past each other’s ears.

She was trusting Evan and CFA that much. It was an amazing thing to realize, when she didn’t know if she could even trust herself.

She shook off the melancholy as the performers came up to their grand finale—the shorter one, with close-cropped hair, was
literally
standing on his friend’s head. Not his back. Not his shoulders. Just his head. Then he proceeded to juggle, except there were no red balls involved in this act. There were machetes.

Making a show of shivering, she used it as an excuse to press close to Evan. “He’s going to cut his toes off.”

“Nah,” he said with a laconic drawl in his speech. “If anything, he’ll cut his partner’s arms off, the way they’re out for balance.”

Except no limbs were sacrificed, of course. They’d likely practiced the act a thousand times before performing it to the crowd outside the Quincy Market entrance. Kat dusted off her second donut and wiped chocolate glaze from her fingers with a napkin. “I like not being a grownup sometimes.”

He gave her total side eye. “Meaning?”

“Dessert for dinner, of course. Complete with circus attraction.” She rolled her eyes with more sass than she’d ever
intentionally
aimed toward him. Would he make her pay for it later? She could ensure it with a well-timed cuss word. Instead, she pushed up from the low brick wall where they’d been sitting.

“Come on,” she said brightly. “You owe me shopping.”

He grumbled, but he tucked what remained of their donuts into a plastic shopping bag and followed closely enough that she could smell his soap. He was a slice of sunshine through the press of other bodies. Focusing on his citrus and woods smell was enough for her to stay calm and enjoy the moment. He was behind her, but she was essentially following him, reading his subtle cues regarding direction and pace. This was how he led others, with body language so concise but nearly invisible. No wonder her father thought the world of him, and had for a very long time.

He paused outside a Coach store along a line of shops inside the South Market.

She balked. “I don’t think we’re going to find knockoffs here.”

“In we go.” He urged her inside with a hand at the small of her back. She both tingled and wanted to drag her feet with resistance. The store was too fancy. Surrounded by muted, classic colors along the walls and floor, the purses were aligned like art on glass shelves and accentuated with delicate spotlights.

“I shouldn’t be in here.”

“I think you’ll be surprised. Look, Kat.”

At first she did only because he ordered her to. She liked the orders. But those fell away quickly. She fell head-over-heels for a cross-body handbag. Evan noticed her looking, of course, and signaled a salesgirl to take it down and hand it to Kat.

She stared at it. “It’s pure white. It’s ridiculous.”

“I know that look in your eyes.”

The leather was soft and alive and strong. It was everything she could want. In a stupid purse. “It’s almost five hundred bucks. That’s a third of my rent. I’ll get it filthy in no time.”

“No, you won’t.” He was so confident, though he didn’t follow up with why—not in front of the tall, ice-blonde salesgirl.

Kat only sighed and stared at it a little longer. She traced circles over the leather with her thumbs.

“She’ll take it,” Evan said.

She
knew
she should protest, but he used the tone of voice that she loved so much and frankly, she wanted the stupid, silly, practically useless purse.

“There’s a wallet that matches perfectly,” the salesgirl said with a cagey look in her eyes.

“She’ll take that too.”

Kat grumbled while the salesgirl wrapped the wallet and purse in tissue paper, tucked it in a linen bag, and tucked
that
inside a paper bag emblazoned with the Coach symbol. Kat never said no. Feeling more than a little dizzy, she clutched the shopping bag to her chest as they left the store.

“You’re still being ridiculous. I’m taking advantage of you.”

“Nope,” he said blithely. “There’s not a person in this world capable of taking advantage of me.”

That one, she had to give him.

She would have been ready to leave right then. What could top a purse like the one she kept peeking at? Except Evan apparently had a few more stops he meant to make. He picked up some lavishly, expensively scented candles and an ambient noise CD from the same store, though she teased him for using something as ancient as a CD player.

Their last stop was in an upscale leather boutique. Most of the store was devoted to jackets that Kat wanted to bury her face in. She could completely imagine Evan wearing one of them, particularly a slim-lined, black jacket. It would hide the concealed-carry holster of his pistol, while accentuating his broad shoulders and firm masculine torso. She’d want to see him match it with a black T-shirt and jeans. Except she didn’t get to make choices like that. Not directly, at least. It would take some maneuvering.

That was how a woman would think during a long-term relationship. She and Evan only had stolen moments in the middle of a storm.

The front half of the store was only part of the story. A subtle display case took up most of the wall at the back of the shop. Nestled on dark gray velvet, like an expensive jewelry store, were more…adult things.

Kat’s stomach clenched tight on a hot surge of want. Cuffs. Collars. She wanted them all and she wanted Evan’s hands wrapping them around her. She licked her lips and tried in vain to control her pulse.

He stood behind her, his hands flanking her hips at the beveled edge of the glass case. “Do you know what these are, Katsu?”

“It’s pretty obvious.”

He trailed his touch under her hair, across the back of her neck. The goose bumps he laid in the wake of his hands made her nipples tighten. “Have you ever worn them before? Anything like them?”

She turned in the shelter of his arms, because she wasn’t going to be so chickenshit as to say something like this without looking him directly in the eye. He didn’t deserve coy crap. She needed to see his reaction, to see what he’d really think—and she needed to do it in private. She cupped her hand over his earpiece.

“I’ve wanted a Master. I’ve looked for one, on websites and things like that. I even considered a guy who wanted to take things pretty far. He wanted to give me a collar.”