When I swung the door open and saw Blake standing there, I couldn’t help the grin that split my lips. “Did you come back for seconds? Wait, no, by now it’s thirds? Fourths. I guess that depends if you consider me fingering you as sex.”
She glared at me and shoved past me into the room. “You’re such a pig.”
“And yet here you stand in my room.”
She walked over by the bed and stopped, staring down at the file that laid on top. I watched intently as she slowly picked up the file, wondering what her reaction would be. She flipped it open and then snapped it shut, turning to face me. “Doing a little light reading?”
“I was considering it.”
“And?”
She was pissed. She did a great job of hiding it, but I could tell by the subtle twitch of her right eye and the way she was holding herself. I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned back against the wall, trying to show her that I was calm and cool over all this.
“And I decided that if you wanted to tell me, you would.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
I shrugged. “Either you do or you don’t. I’m not here to make you feel better about anything. Knight says that you’re good and I should trust you.”
“Why would he need you to trust me?” she asked curiously. The way she was looking at me, she wanted to ask me something else. She shifted slightly, showing her unease at the territory we were headed into. She was nervous about something, but if she really was clean like Knight said, then she wouldn’t be nervous talking about this. No, she was nervous because Knight said that I could trust her, which meant that she knew about me, and now she was trying to figure out how to ask me about it.
“Fuck, who told you?”
She shoved her hair behind her ear and cleared her throat uncomfortably. She was great about hiding her emotions about herself, but when confronted about this, she sucked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Really?” I asked, pushing off the wall and stalking toward her. “So, you don’t know about my DD from the military?”
She took a step back and then another as I continued to prowl toward her. She was getting nervous, most likely because she knew what would get a person discharged, and right now, she was trying to decide which it was. She was wondering if she had fucked a murderer or a sexual predator. She had to know that I wasn’t a deserter. I wouldn’t be working in this field if I was. And I was trying to find out about a possible crime with a senator’s accounts that looked corrupt. Fraud was off the table. No, she was worried that it was the first two.
“I don’t know anything about that,” she said, continuing to back up until she was right up against the wall.
I moved into her space, crowing her body with my larger frame. I knew she could take me down. She’d already proved that a number of times. But if she was really that fucking worried about me, it would show in the next thirty seconds. I placed my hands on the wall on either side of her head and I pressed my body into hers, waiting for her to show me if she was afraid.
“What do you want to know?” I growled.
“Like I said-”
“What do you want to know?” I shouted. She flinched slightly, but didn’t push me away. Her instincts were telling her that I wouldn’t hurt her, and they would be correct.
“Why were you discharged?”
“I was court-martialed,” I answered matter-of-factly.
“For what?”
“Rape.”
“Did you do it?”
I huffed out a laugh and brought my finger to her cheek, running it down her neck, then resting against her collarbone. I slowly lifted my eyes to meet hers. I didn’t want to have to say it. I wanted her to just know. I was tired of proving myself to people. I needed someone to just look at me and know that I was a good person. As I stared into her eyes, I pleaded with her to tell me what she was thinking, to draw her own conclusions based on what she already knew.
My eyes shifted to her throat as she swallowed hard and stared at my mouth. I wanted to bite that plump lip of hers and bury myself inside her body again, but I wouldn’t be doing anything like that ever again unless I was one hundred percent sure that she knew I would never do what I was accused of.
“You tell me,” I finally said.
She took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay, you don’t give me any creepy vibes. You seem like a genuinely good person, other than your horrible decision-making skills after you fuck a woman. Plus, you’re working for a reputable company filled with former military. I don’t see any of them working with you if they felt you disgraced the uniform, even though none of them seem to know why you were discharged. Everyone here seems to trust Knight’s judgement, even if they don’t always like what he does. They all know that you have a DD, yet none of them are kicking you out of here. So, if they all go along with Knight bringing you in, that tells me that they’re willing to wait this out and work with you. And if they’re all willing to give you a chance, then I’m willing to also.”
I wanted to take the win and run with it, but it wasn’t enough. I needed for her to believe in me, and not based on what other
