She was almost crying with laughter now. “Nate, stop it! Oh God, this is too funny! Can I take a picture?” She pushed on my chest, trying to get me off her as she reached for her cell phone from the side.

I frowned and grabbed her hand. “Hell no you can’t take a picture!”

She pouted. “Aww, just one photo? I’ll let you take one of me in return,” she suggested, raising one eyebrow teasingly.

Oh yeah, that’s what I’m talking about right there!

“Okay deal,” I agreed. “But a topless one.”

She rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t have expected anything less.”

“Let’s do the photos later,” I whispered, pulling her back to me and kissing her again. She smiled against my lips and kissed me back immediately, one hand tangling into the back of my hair as I pressed my body back to hers again.

Her hands were exploring the skin on my back, her fingertips trailing over every inch of it, making me stiff as a board. Hesitantly, because I didn’t know how far she would allow me to take things, I slipped my hands up her top. As I kissed her deeply, my palms brushed over her breasts, cupping them gently, relishing in the feel of the lacy material of her bra, just waiting for her to stop me. She didn’t. Instead of shoving me off her, like I was expecting, her own hand gripped my ass, pulling me closer. Her smell was all around me, making me a little dizzy with excitement. She literally smelt good enough to eat. When she guided me to roll over, there wasn’t much room so I decided we should move the session down onto the floor instead. Lowering myself down to the floor, I brought her with me, not breaking the kiss for a second.

She smiled and pulled back, sitting up, straddling me. I chewed on the inside of my cheek to stop myself from saying the inappropriate things that sprang to mind while she straddled me – slutty comments about her riding me, or me having to buy her a cowboy hat.

Her eyes didn’t leave mine as she brushed her hands down my chest and across my stomach, tracing the black lettering with one finger. A playful smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

“Hmm, I kinda like this actually. Is that what you are now, Nate? My bitch?”

“I’ll be anything you want,” I muttered, swallowing my lust.

She smiled, and moved up, leaning in and resting her forearms either side of my head so our mouths were inches apart. “And what if I want you to be Officer Peters, tough SWAT guy who punishes naughty girls?” she purred.

Holy fuck!

I had never been more turned on in my life. “Do you know any naughty girls?” I asked my voice thick and husky with lust.

She brushed her nose up the side of mine, and I tilted my head up needing to kiss her. Suddenly the lustful look was gone from her face and she pulled back, sitting up on my stomach.

“Nate, I’m really sorry, but I think you should go before I do something I’ll regret in the morning.”

My heart sank; I didn’t want to leave her, I’d barely seen her. “Can’t I stay the night? We don’t have to do anything, please?” I asked, trying not to let the desperation leak into my voice. I didn’t want to go home on my own. I didn’t want to walk out of her place and kiss her goodbye.

She frowned, and her eyes flicked to the hallway where the bedrooms were.

Seeing her indecision, which I somehow knew would be linked to DJ, I continued, “I have to get up really early for work, I’ll be gone before he even wakes up.”

She blew out a big breath and slumped back down on top of me, kissing the side of my neck as she got herself comfortable on me. As her finger stroked my Adams apple, I folded my arms around her and suddenly realised how strangely satisfying cuddling with her was.

“If I’m being completely honest, I don’t want you to stay,” she mumbled, so quietly that I only just made out the words.

“Why?” I croaked, frowning and tightening my arms on her possessively.

She sighed and kissed my neck again. “I don’t think I could just lay there with you,” she admitted. “And I really don’t want to ruin anything by rushing things. I like you, I really do, but things are moving incredibly fast between us. It’s scaring me a little. I have to think about DJ. I have to think about what he’d feel like if he found out you stayed here. You understand?” she asked, shifting and setting her chin on my chest, looking at me uncomfortably, as if she was expecting me to be annoyed with her.

I smiled and brushed her hair back from her forehead. “I get it.” I smiled reassuringly. “I’m just too hot for you to handle,” I added as an afterthought, trying to lighten the mood a little.

She nodded, kissing my chest lightly, her hand trailing down to my chest, tickling her fingers on the slight hair I had at the base of my stomach. “Your body is incredible, just like I imagined it would be.”

I grabbed her and rolled her onto her back quickly, making her squeal from the shock. “Wait, so let me get this straight… You’ve imagined me na**d?” I teased.

“Yeah, I had a nightmare the other night.”

“I’ve had plenty of nightmares about you too; they always end well though.”

“That’s gross, you don’t have to admit that to me!” she muttered, shaking her head, but laughing at the same time.

I smiled, knowing I should really go. Clearly she’d made up her mind about me staying, so I didn’t want to push it any further. “I’d better go then. I’ll see you tomorrow night?” I said hopefully.

“Eight o’clock?”

That was our usual time, it meant I only got to see her for a couple of hours at a time, but at least I still got to see her. “Definitely. Hey, you think that you’d be able to get a sitter for Friday night so I could take you out? There’s a new restaurant opening and I thought we could try it?” I suggested.

She nodded enthusiastically. “Josh has DJ this weekend, so I’m free Friday through until about seven on Sunday night. Provided he doesn’t get called into work again,” she said, frowning when she said the last part.

I smiled happily. “Sweet! Pencil me in for Friday through until Sunday at seven then.”

“No rock-climbing this time though, huh?”

I shook my head, chuckling to myself. “Okay fine, bungee jumping?” I bartered, as I pushed myself off her, taking her hands and helping her to her feet too.

She didn’t answer just stuck her tongue out at me and bent down to grab my T-shirt from the floor. I used her distraction to quickly rearrange myself in my jeans – not that she wouldn’t already know I had a raging boner, but I could at least try not to make it so damn obvious. She handed me back my T-shirt, so I slipped it on, kissing the side of her head softly, letting my mouth linger for a few seconds too long while I just savoured the feel of her against my lips. I really didn’t want to go.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night, Stripes,” I whispered, forcing myself to move away from her and slip on my sneakers, before walking as quick as I could to the front door. I was about three seconds from begging her to let me stay here for the night. I didn’t even need to do anything with her; I just wanted to hold her for longer.

“Bye, Nate.”

I didn’t look back as I walked to my car. It was definitely getting harder and harder to walk away from this girl.

Just as I stepped through the front door of my apartment, my phone beeped with a new message. I opened it instantly, knowing it would be a goodnight text from Rosie. When I opened it, I gasped. It was a picture message. My hands were trembling as I looked at it. She’d taken a picture of herself, literally just of her chest, no shirt, just a black lacy bra. I stared at the photo, taking in every detail of it. Her br**sts were incredible, and I was rock hard again at the sight of it. She’d written a message underneath.

‘Wish you were here?’

I burst out laughing as I read what she’d written. Wish I was there was the understatement of the century. I wanted to live right there in that photo!

Flicking the lock on my front door, I pulled off my shirt and snapped a picture of my body art, sending it to her in return. A deal was a deal, after all.

Chapter Eighteen

As I suspected, my workmates found my newly acquired body art extremely hilarious. Even now, four days on, they were still ribbing me about it.

On Thursday we were called out for a job. We were briefed on the way there. Eight men had gone into a bank intending to rob it, but the robbery had gone wrong when one of the clerks managed to press the silent alarm. Now, seventeen hostages were inside, and they were currently in negotiations to get them out of there. The on-site Captain had called for backup and I had a gut feeling that things weren’t going to go our way with this one.

I sat on the edge of the van, across the street from the bank, listening to the officers all talking about how best to approach the situation and get the hostages out unharmed. A couple of things that the lead perpetrator had said, led them to believe that they had no intention of letting all the hostages live. They had already shot one hostage to prove they were serious, and were threatening to kill another if the helicopter wasn’t here within the next thirty minutes.

Captain Richardson, the officer in charge of the operation, shook his head. “I think we need to send in a strike team. We can’t get the helicopter here within the time frame. I’ve already tried to buy more time, but he’s not having any of it. If we don’t give him what he wants within the next,” he looked at his watch, “twenty-three minutes, then he’s going to take out another hostage.”

Captain Elder nodded, frowning and looking over the schematics of the bank again. “There just doesn’t seem to be any way in there without them seeing us. Surveillance shows that they’re covering all entrances into the building. We can’t get in there undetected.”

I looked over at the building again. There had to be some way in there. “What about the roof?” I suggested. “Don’t they have roof access in case of fire?”

The two captains turned to look at me before they both looked back at the schematics again, thumbing through pages until they found the top floor ones.

“You’re right, Peters. There’s a security hatch up there! If we could get in there, we could work our way down the building. There’s a good chance they would have overlooked the roof entrance.”

I nodded. Even if they just sent in some tech guys to set up some cameras it would be an advantage. At the moment, we were blind. They’d boarded up the windows so we couldn’t see in. My sniper team was useless because they had no visuals. I had positioned three guys on the two buildings opposite, covering the two exits in case they tried to break free. Other than that though, we could do nothing to help, it would all be down to a ground team and negotiator.

I listened as they started planning the best approach. They were sending in a ground team through the roof access; cameras would be set up to feed intel while they played out the remainder of the time they’d been given. Hopefully they’d be able to do something before the deadline was up and they killed another hostage.

When everything was arranged, I walked up to Captain Elder. I wanted to help; I hated being stuck on the sidelines. “Sir, can I go in too? I could just cover the team, be backup in case the ground team need it,” I suggested. It wasn’t my usual job, but I had done this occasionally, if there was a better vantage point inside then I would take it.

“You want to go in?” he asked. I nodded, and he patted me on the shoulder. “I’m not gonna lie, Nate, you’d be helping out a lot doing that. You could lead the team in there, they’d benefit from your experience. We could split the strike team and have you lead half and Jacob lead the other half.”

“Absolutely, sir.” I headed over to Jacob Granger, who was planning with his team and ordering the tech guys around. I joined in the plans, excited to be seeing some action for the first time in three days.

Ten minutes later, we slipped through the roof hatch undetected. I raised my gun, holding my hand up for my mini strike team, signalling for them to stop behind me. When I was satisfied that the coast was clear, I pointed and ordered them to fan out so we could cover more ground. I had four people with me, and the other mini team had the same amount. There was another team that was going to blast the front door and come in once we were settled in positions. We’d all move at the same time and have the element of surprise on our sides.

We worked our way silently through the building, stopping on the floor above them. Using the ventilation schematic drawing, we found the crawlspace we were looking for. The main tech guy and I eased off the metal grate that covered it, before crawling inside. If we went in about thirty yards, we would be directly above the vault on the floor below, which was where the last intel put the hostages.

After crawling in and estimating we were in the right position, we stopped. “Get the camera in,” I whispered.

He nodded and pulled out a little hand drill, boring a hole into the tiles where we were, then pushed a small camera wire in, holding the handset out to me so I could view it. After a couple of seconds, the picture came into focus. I took hold of the wire, twisting the camera around so I could view the room below us.

The hostages were sitting over to the north section, huddled together. A guy with a semi-automatic weapon walked in front of them. He looked nervous and jittery, shooting little glances off to the side. Forcing the camera in a little further, I angled it in the direction that the guy kept looking. Sitting there, behind the manager’s desk, was a man that I instantly knew was the leader. His feet rested up on the desk, crossed over at the ankles. He was far too relaxed.