Was he serious?

“What?” I asked. “It’s been four days.”

“Cops on our crew have exhausted all avenues to try to find someone who might know if Tony Crowley was investigating a couple, or a syndicate, of dirty cops. And after two of our boys went and struck out, Ally visited the widow, hoping she’d open up to a woman. But she’s locked down tight. Scared as shit. They got to her, but she knows something. So we did some checking, and in a thorough search of her house, no files, no hidden panels with folders filled with damning evidence—”

Hang on.

“You searched her house?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Who searched her house?” I pressed.

“Me and Mag.”

Hang the fuck on.

“You, like, broke into her house and searched it?” My voice was rising higher.

“Yeah,” he repeated, like he hadn’t committed a felony, even if it was for the greater good, like getting Brett off the hook for a crime he did not commit and getting me safe.

“Okay then,” I said, though I didn’t mean either word.

Because, seriously…

What if he was caught?

“Did a search of her,” Boone carried on, still like he did not just admit to committing a crime. “And Crowley. And those close to them. Brothers. Sisters. Parents. Even friends. No one has a storage unit where they might be keeping something important. Ditto safe deposit boxes. And none of them, at least the ones who live in Denver, are keeping anything hidden in their houses.”

“You searched their houses too?”

“Well…yeah.”

“Like you personally?”

“I did her mom and brother. The mom with Mag again. The brother with Mo.”

I closed my mouth.

“Babe,” he said slowly, “we’re not cops.”

“Unh-hunh.”

He studied me before he stated, “Ryn, there are different players in this town like there are probably the same in every town.”

“Unh-hunh,” I repeated.

He tried and failed to hold back a grin before he launched into educating me.

“There are cops who have very specific rules and they take an oath to follow them. When they don’t, if they’re caught, that’s not a good thing and that manifests itself in a variety of ways.”

“Right,” I said, because I knew that.

“Then there are guys like the Nightingale crew, who are licensed investigators who have professional standards, but like any citizen, they need to operate within the letter of the law. It’s just that with Lee and his crew, they decide what standards they like and how they feel about any given law depending on how significant an obstacle it is to them getting where they want to go.”

“Right,” I said a whole lot more slowly.

“Then there’s Hawk’s crew. Us.”

I said nothing.

But I was on tenterhooks.

He watched me closely as he shared, “And for us, anything goes.”

“Anything?” I whispered.

He nodded, just once. “We got a job to do, we do it. We take the direct route to that. And we get it done.”

“How direct is this route, uh…usually?”

“As direct as it needs to be.”

“Oh boy,” I muttered.

“We also do shadow really good.”

“What?”

“No one knows what we do, Ryn, except the client who walks away satisfied, though maybe not with his bill. Because the skills we got, the crew and how it works together, we don’t come cheap.”

“So, you wading into this thing with Brett…” I let that trail.

“Nothing Hawk’s team has done has been visible to anybody,” he asserted. “They might know we’re interested, because I’m with you. They definitely know we’re keeping you protected, because we’re not hiding that. But other than that…”

He shrugged.

“So you’re safe, trying to sort this all out,” I surmised from his words.

Or more like…hoped.

“Babe, remember, they aren’t going after guys.”

“They’re going after Brett,” I reminded him.

“As a tool to use to solve a problem for them. Unless they wanted in on his action—”

Boone cut himself off abruptly.

When he looked over my head and his mind went a thousand miles away, it was on the tip of my tongue to call his attention back to me.

But I didn’t when it hit me he was working something out.

And I knew he worked it out when he bent, touched his mouth to mine, set his coffee mug aside (which, incidentally, was awesome, as was all of his stoneware, a matte dark gray with taupe trim, seriously, my maybe-official boyfriend had it going on), and muttered distractedly, “Gotta make a call, Rynnie.”

“Do what you do, baby,” I said softly.

He went and grabbed his phone.

I sipped and listened in.

“Hawk,” he said. “I think we missed something. Maybe Cisco wasn’t an easy target to use to cover up an assassination. Maybe he was two birds for their stone.”

I grinned into my mug.

So, we talked some of my shit out, and although it had kinda rocked me, and I sensed the beginning and end to the work of get myself past that crap didn’t happen on Boone’s counter, still…I felt better.

Then Boone got to talk a few things out, and they had a new angle.

I looked to the microwave.

It was barely nine.

So far, for the first time in a loooooong time, it was starting out a great day.

And seriously, I’d take it.

* * *

The bed moved as Boone got back in it after returning from the bathroom when he’d finished cleaning me.

We’d just made love. Missionary. Vanilla.

Amazing.

I liked this.

I’d never had a Dom/boyfriend before, and it didn’t occur to me, until right then, after having vanilla sex, but I didn’t think you could sustain a constant D/s scene sexually for the long term (nor, in considering it, after vanilla sex which was amazing, would I want to).

One, to do it, Boone’s creativity levels would have to be inexhaustible, and there were times I thought he might be superhuman, but he actually wasn’t. Two, it was a thrill that would be less of a thrill if it was all we did. And three, part of the thrill, I was now understanding, was not knowing when it would happen.

But even so, Boone was Boone and I was me so parts of that leaked in.

Like he commanded our lovemaking. I could touch him and do what I wanted, but the flow of it was all his.

And I liked that too.

Also, he ordered me to stay as I was before and while he cleaned me up, something I suspected was going to be a matter of course (he’d done that last night too). And before he went back to the bathroom, he again told me not to move.

Now, he’d slid in beside me, but I didn’t move from my position lying on my back even when Boone fitted his long, fabulous, naked body down my side and started running a hand lazily over my skin.

And I didn’t because Boone had fit his long, fabulous naked body down my side and started touching me.

We’d had a good day.

A full good day.

Start to finish.