“I’m going back to jail over my dead body, Titus. Know it.”

He reached out and clamped a hand on my shoulder before I could dodge it.

“That’s what scares the shit out of me, you prick. Mom’s barely hanging in there. Novak wants you dead, or worse, and I know he wants me dead. Race is in the wind, and what, you’re fighting again and running around with some chick who looks barely legal? You can’t stay out of trouble if you try, and I’m going to have to bury you. You think I want that?”

I shook him off and shoved him back with a hand on his beefy shoulder.

“I’m not scared of Novak. I’ll find Race and figure this all out. She’s totally legal and Race’s sister. I’m not running around with her, Benny trashed her place and is hounding her trying to find Race. Mom isn’t my problem, you are not my problem. You lost your right to worry about me when you snapped those handcuffs on me, Titus.”

I went to yank open the door when his words stopped me.

“So you’ll forgive Race, keep an eye on his sister, even though he’s the one that set you up, but you won’t forgive me for doing my job?”

I looked at my half brother, the only person in the world besides Race who had ever tried to save me from myself. Titus and I were never really close. There was a six-year age gap between us and he had always been one to follow the rules, to toe the line as much as anyone could when fighting for survival. When I was ten, he had decided to leave me and Mom and go live with a friend of his on the Hill so he could switch schools and get out of the slums. As an adult, I didn’t blame him, but as a kid, I felt abandoned and alone. My mom’s care fell solely onto my young shoulders and it didn’t seem fair Titus got to go live the dream, while I became a criminal to keep up and keep alive.

“Your job sucks, Officer King.”

“Detective King.”

“Blow me.” I opened the door and slid in next to Dovie. She was looking out the window and twisting her hands together. She wanted to ask me about all of it, I could feel it rolling off of her, but she kept her pretty mouth shut.

“Go see Gus, Bax.”

Titus’s voice was barely audible over the roar of the powerful motor of my car.

A drive that should take twenty minutes only took ten as I raced back to the little house in the burbs. Going there with Dovie made me hate it less each time I walked in the front door. She was like some kind of balm that made all the ravaged and torn pieces of my soul feel less raw. I plopped all the grocery bags down in the kitchen and looked at her where she was leaning against the fridge.

“We need to put this away.” My voice was harsher than normal.

She let her head fall back and I wanted to run my tongue all along the length of her neck.

“Tell me about the night you got arrested.”

“No.”

“Yes. I need to understand how Race set you up.”

“I don’t even understand it.”

“That cop, who is he to you?”

“No one.”

“Bax.”

I growled—actually growled—and stomped over to her. I put my palms on the freezer so that she was caged in my arms. I don’t know if I wanted to scare her, intimidate her, or just fall into those forest-colored eyes and leave the harsh reality of who I was behind for just a minute.

“I need to know,” she said.

Probably, but I didn’t want to be the one to tell her. She reached up between us and put her hands on both of my bristly cheeks. I couldn’t look away from the lure of the pleading in her evergreen-tinted gaze.

“Race called me that night and said Novak had a job. An Aston Martin Vanquish up on the Hill. I didn’t want to do it. Those cars are high end, which means security is top-notch. I told him no, not only because it was risky, but because we were supposed to be working on getting out of the game. Novak was taking bigger risks, calling on Race for more and more errands, and it was all getting too deep and too tangled.”

I was breathing hard and drifting back in time, even though she was trying to hold me on to the present.

“Race called me back a couple hours later and told me I didn’t understand. We had to get the car. We didn’t have a choice. Either I went or he was going to have to go alone. Race is great with security systems, with car alarms, the LoJack and the digital systems that cops can override, but he’s not a thief. He’s not a car guy, so if he had to go on his own, it would’ve ended badly.”

I blinked, trying to make sense of it still. “I should’ve asked, Why? Why that car? Why that night? Why it HAD to get done, but I didn’t want Race to risk his neck for no reason, so I met him on the Hill and went to work.”

I pulled away from her and walked over to lean against the sink.

“Race was weird, nervous and twitchy. I kept asking what was going on with him but he kept telling me we just needed the car, Novak was being really specific about it. We got in the gate, got through the security on the garage, and the car was there, all shiny and beautiful, just like it was supposed to be. I would be a liar if I didn’t say I was looking forward to taking it, to getting behind the wheel.”

I could still see the perfect black paint and smell the flawless leather interior. I let my head drop and closed my eyes. I had to rub the back of my neck to keep going.

“I told Race to do his thing, get me in the car, but he just looked at me. I knew something was wrong, that it wasn’t just a simple boost. Before I knew it, we’re in the house and forcing the guy that lived there, some rich old bastard, into the car and heading back down to the District to meet Novak. I kept asking what was going on, who the old guy was, but Race just kept saying he was sorry and that I didn’t understand. He kept saying over and over he would pay me back, but I didn’t know what he meant. We get to the meet-up spot, Novak is there, Benny is there, and the old guy is freaking out. I wanted to hand the keys over, get out and never look back, and the next thing I know the cops are there, like every cop in the damn city descends on us. Bullets start flying, everyone scatters, and Race vanished as I took off in the car.

“I remember my blood pumping, the smell of rubber burning, sirens, and the look of sorrow on Race’s face as I tried to outrun the cops. I would’ve made it too, would’ve disappeared in the night and gotten away scot-free but I was worried about ditching Race, distracted by the entire shit show, and I lost control, skidded, and slammed the car into a telephone pole, knocking myself silly and giving the cops plenty of time to catch up to me.

“I asked the cop that pulled me out of the car where Race was, trying to figure out what was going on. Over and over again I screamed at the cop why. Titus was the arresting officer, he’s also my half brother. He put me in the back of the police cruiser, told me the old guy was dead, I was getting arrested for grand theft auto and evading arrest, and I would be lucky if I didn’t have kidnapping and accessory-to-murder charges leveled at me. I asked to talk to Race. I needed to know how things had gone so bad, why we had jacked the old man, what was going on, and Titus just told me I would understand later. He’s the only reason I did a five-year term and not a fifteen.”

I cleared my throat and finally lifted my head to look back up at her. She had tears in her eyes and looked as uneasy as I felt. I didn’t want her to feel sorry for me. I did bad shit and got caught. That was just part of the game. It was the betrayal from the only person in life I had ever totally trusted that twisted me up and left a bad taste in my mouth.

“Titus knew where the deal was going down. Race called him. He sent me to prison on purpose, I need to know why. He let Novak kill that man, facilitated it. I need to figure out if he’s gone, turned into one of them or not. Race was working his own angle that night. I need to know what it was.”

She whispered my name and moved so she could squeeze herself between me and the counter, which was still littered with the groceries we never put away. She put one arm around my neck and the other over where my heart was thudding in my chest.

“He must have had a good reason. You’re his best friend. He didn’t become one of them, because he came after me as soon as you went away. It all has to be tied together. Race isn’t a bad guy, and I don’t think you really are either.”

She was wrong. Pressing her hard into the counter, I used my forearm to send the grocery bags flying to the floor. They rattled and clanged across the tiles as I grabbed her around her tiny waist and lifted her onto the counter so we were eye-to-eye and I could insert myself between her legs.

“You’re wrong. If he set me up because he was too stupid to get out from under Novak, or because he was scared or caught up in something nasty, I’ll destroy him and I won’t regret it.”

She didn’t look away from me, and like it was a sign from up above telling me I had done my time and deserved just a few moments with this precious, difficult girl, I noticed one of the boxes of condoms had survived the crash to the floor and was still on the counter within reach.

“So tell me, Bax, what reason could Race give that will make this all okay? Is there one? Really?”

I felt my jaw clench and the corner of my eye twitch. I had spent five years thinking that very thing and the only answer I had come up with that was acceptable was, “If it was all just Race trying to save me from myself, like he always seemed to be doing, I can understand that.”

“I don’t think you will—destroy him, I mean. I don’t think you could live with yourself if you did.”

She didn’t know me well enough to say that, but I was about to show her just how far and how fast I was willing to go when I wanted something. She had no idea the devastation I could bring with very little effort. I was good at it. I reveled in it more often than not.

I saw her suck in a breath as I hooked a finger under the top button of her top and popped it open. I lifted an eyebrow to see if she was going to say anything, and when she didn’t, I gripped both sides of her shirt in my fists and ruined it by pulling it apart. The tiny plastic buttons pinged off the appliances and the floor. She made a face at me that had her wrinkling up her freckled nose. How on earth had I thought she was boring? She was like sunshine and warmth all wrapped up in a porcelain package blessed with the greatest tits I had ever seen. I never would’ve thought I was a freckle guy, but damn, I sure liked hers.

“You know that was my only shirt.”

I tugged it down her arms and tossed the remnants out of my way. Her bra followed, leaving her bare from the waist up and looking like an ivory-skinned dream. I had seen a lot of hot girls in my time, girls who made a living based on how pretty they could look, how sexy they came across to the opposite sex, but none of them held a candle to Dovie and her primitive and untouched beauty.

“I threw a couple T-shirts in with my junk while you were pouting.”

I got my hands under the gap at the top of her too-big pants and worked the fastener open and got the zipper down. I felt the baby-soft skin of her abdomen quiver against the back of my battered knuckles, but she lifted her h*ps without a question when I urged her up so I could get the rest of her clothes off, leaving her totally n*ked and pinned to the counter in front of me. Her hands were resting on either side of her n*ked thighs, her green eyes were huge in her face, and she was chewing on her bottom lip hard enough that I saw a drop of blood. She was all kinds of virtuousness and way too good for all the things I was bound to do to her.

“You are going to regret this when I prove to you everything you think about me is wrong.”

She lifted a hand and traced the star next to my eye with the dull edge of her fingernail.

“No, I’m not. You are not a mistake.”

Maybe I would just have to show her.

I yanked her with greedy hands and very little finesse to the very edge of the counter so she was pressed up as tightly as she could be with my erection. I put my hands on her bare ass and kissed her, not like you kissed a woman you wanted to seduce, but like a woman you wanted to own and imprint yourself on forever. There was something heady, powerful about having her totally n*ked and at my mercy while I was still fully clothed and looming over her. I wasn’t into all that power and domination crap, but with her, man, I could play lord and master all day long if she was into it.