Page 35 of Fatal Conspiracy

“Don’t apologize. We can snuggle back together for a few hours since Cal said we had until nine, right?”

“At the earliest,” she agreed as he helped her back onto the bed with a gentle lift from her hips. “But I want to be there when he briefs the team, so we should aim for nine.”

“When I woke up, it took my brain a few seconds to catch up to what happened last night,” he admitted, pulling her into him again. “It took me some time to remember that this beautiful and brilliant woman I’d held all night long had managed to give me my future back with her dogged determination. Maybe I’m not completely out of the woodsyet, but now we have breathing room to figure out who really killed Hugo.”

She raised her hand to stroke his jaw, a bit of scruff tickling her fingers. “We’ll figure it out. That’s what we do at Secure Watch. We protect and serve, just in a different way than Detective Henry.”

“He’s a total blowhard,” he said, laughing even harder when she joined him with her hee-haw laugh.

“Cybersecurity is the kind of job where you rarely get to see interactions like last night, but nothing was more satisfying than seeing his face when he realized his entire case had fallen apart.”

“It was a moment of relief for me,” he said, leaning toward her. She wound her fingers into his hair, bringing his lips to hers in a kiss that left her dizzy with anticipation and need. Derek broke the lip lock to trail his lips down her neck to her collarbone.

“What are you doing?” she asked as he moved her sleep shirt aside to kiss her shoulder.

“Kissing you,” he whispered. “Isn’t it obvious?”

She pulled her shirt back over her shoulder. “Trust me, you don’t want to take those kisses any further.”

When he sat up, it was easy to read the confusion in his eyes. “Because?”

“Because of so many reasons, Derek. You can’t understand, so I won’t bother to explain it,” she said, leaning back against the pillows.

“Saying you won’t bother to explain it because I can’t understand is insulting, Alayah. Saying that you don’t know how to explain it leaves room for an open discussion.”

Her frown deepened when she glanced up into his face, his expression honest and caring. “I’m sorry. It’s not that you can’t understand it. It’s that I can’t explain it.”

“Or maybe it’s that you can’t explain how I could feel differently about your body than you do?” Her nod was her only answer. “It would be easy to fall back on the old saying of beauty is in the eye of the beholder here, right?” She nodded again with a shrug. “And while that’s true, I suspect it goes deeper than that for you. This is about the bigger picture. It’s about everything you’ve internalized regarding the things you were told were wrong with you, even though there’s nothing wrong with you.”

“There’s plenty wrong with me, Derek,” she said with a derisive laugh. “From my strangely shaped torso to the scars crisscrossing it, not to mention my protruding forehead and impossibly short arms and legs.”

“And you can feel that way if you want to,” he agreed. “But I want you to consider my version of that story. It’s different, that’s for sure, but maybe it’s a kinder way to treat yourself. I haven’t seen the scars, but what I have seen paints a much different picture of who you are.”

“You’re going to say my skills as a cybersecurity agent and my childlike innocence, right?” she asked, trying to keep the sarcasm at bay but fearing it slipped in anyway.

His mouth opened to respond, but then he closed it again and held up his finger. “I think it’s time for show rather than tell,” he said as he lowered himself to the bed and laid his lips on hers.

“Derek,” she whispered as he kissed his way down her arm. “What are you doing?”

“Kissing you,” he answered, kissing the tip of every finger. When he was finished, he brought his lips back to hers for another tangle of tongues that left them both breathing heavily.

She was about to beg him to keep going when a sound from the other room stopped her. “That’s my phone.”

“Leave it,” he whispered, dropping his head to place a kiss on her chest. “They’ll call back.”

When the ringing stopped, she relaxed into the mattress as he lifted her shirt just a hair to feather his lips across her navel, drawing a quick breath from her lips before heat pooled low in her belly. Suddenly, the sound of a trumpet filled the room.

“Is that ‘Reveille’?” he asked, lifting his head.

“Cal was an army guy,” she said with a smirk before she realized what it meant. “That’s an all-call alert! Quick, grab my phone.”

Derek darted from the room and was back in record time, holding out her Secure Watch phone. Before she had it to her ear, she answered. The voice on the other end was calm, but it did nothing to quell the tremor of anxiety that went through her at his explanation.

“We’ll come to your room.” She paused as he continued speaking, then nodded. “Heard and understood. See you in ten.”

Whatever look was on her face had him turning on the bedside lamp. “Something happened.”

“You could say that,” she agreed, swallowing down the bile threatening to erupt. “Josh Hunt was just found floating face down in Lake Superior.”