gut while anticipating him walking out the door and never coming back. And that bugged her. Perry was an incredible man. If she were better at this, she would know how to keep her cover, work the case and solve it, but still be able to keep him in a place where she could get to know him better once this was all said and done. Unfortunately, with his dominating nature, not giving him full reign damaged anything that might come between them before it had a chance to develop.
Perry turned when he reached her front door and she stopped in front of him, clasping her hands behind her back and watching his brooding expression. It was definitely her imagination that he suddenly looked sad. Perry Flynn wouldn’t know those emotions. Betrayal, noncompliance, refusal to submit, wouldn’t sadden him. It would outrage him. She was certain she misread the way his lips pressed together into a frown as he looked at her with deep green eyes that no longer simmered with passion.
“If you don’t want anything between us, so be it,” he said, his voice cold and flat. His words stabbed at her with the fierceness of a sharp knife. “But God help you, Kylie, if you know something about Dani that might bring danger upon her and you aren’t telling me about it… ”
Chapter 16
The night air didn’t have the chill to it that it had the past week or so. Instead humidity wrapped around Perry tightly enough that he could hardly breathe as he walked across her dry lawn to his Jeep parked in front of her neighbor’s house. Maybe tomorrow, when he’d put his temper, and all other emotions, under lock and key, he’d be able to rid himself of the overwhelming desire to walk back into her home and fuck the shit out of her until she admitted she wanted to be with him.
The sooner he backed out of Kylie Dover’s life, the better off he’d be. Focus on this case and nailing the prick who was destroying teenage girls’ lives should be all he allowed into his mind these days.
“Proof once again why you don’t have time for relationships,” he hissed under his breath as he reached his Jeep.
“Perry,” Kylie called out.
He held his car door handle, standing in the street, and watched, actually surprised, as Kylie ran across her yard barefoot and stopped when she reached the sidewalk at the front of his Jeep.
“I told you the truth when I said Dani didn’t want me to come to dinner because she didn’t want her mother playing matchmaker.” In the dark, it was harder to see Kylie’s face. Dark shadows shrouded a good half of her face, while her blue eyes reflected the streetlight behind him and almost glowed in the darkness. “There’s no way to prove this, which makes it speculation, but Dani worries that if we get too close I’ll share with you information she’s confided in me.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said, her voice cracking while she quickly looked away from him down the street, allowing him to see her pinched expression.
“I’m fine.” He found it interesting that his walking out on her after basically telling her good-bye affected her as much as it did him. Maybe Kylie did possess the ability to feel. Something twisted inside him, refusing to allow him to shove his growing feelings for her away.
“Good. I’m glad to hear that,” she said, her voice soft and sultry. She licked her lips and returned her attention to him, sucking in a breath, which pushed her breasts out and allowed him to see how puckered her nipples were through her dress. “Obviously I don’t know Dani like you do,” she began, watching him warily. “I see that she’s very intelligent. And I see her need to be accepted among her peers, which sometimes allows people, especially young people her age, to refuse to see things as they really are.”
“Tell me what you know.” He knew he sounded hard and cold, and refused to be daunted when she flinched. He’d never admitted to a woman before that she meant more to him than a good fuck. “If she’s done or is thinking about doing anything that could harm her, you’d better tell me.”
“I want your word first that you won’t let her know I told you.”
Like he owed her any kind of promise when she wrapped a cloak around emotions and desire as though it was her fucking wardrobe. Emotions he saw now making her cheeks flush and her eyes glow, even in the darkness.
“If you tell her I told you, she won’t confide in me anymore. I won’t know if she plans on going through with this if she closes herself off to me-kind of like you’re doing now,” she added, letting her voice fade away until her final words were barely audible.
“You have my word, and I don’t lie.”
“There are many different definitions, and reasons for not telling someone everything about you,” she said, tilting her chin defiantly. “I guess Dani’s safety is more important, though, than what you think about me. I’m worried that she’s talking to a boy on the Internet and that she might sneak out to meet him. With teenage girls disappearing right now, and his online name-”
“What is his online name?” Perry barked, interrupting her while every inch of him hardened painfully. He realized he gripped his door handle hard enough that he might rip it off his door and forced himself to let it go. Flexing and unflexing his hands, he doubted there was much he could do to harbor his anger at this point. “Tell me, Kylie.”
“It’s spelled in such a way that you wouldn’t guess it by looking at it, but Dani told me it’s pronounced ‘Peter Fish.’ She’s talking to an exchange student named Petrie and has been for a good six months. Now she’s outraged that he’s meeting another girl who goes to her school when Dani thought that they had some kind of online committed relationship.” Kylie walked around his Jeep, pausing at the front end of the driver’s side, but then clearing the distance between them and taking his hand in hers. “She’s going to go meet him. If the friendship I’ve created with her is tarnished in any way, I won’t be able to stop her.”
He pulled his hand from Kylie’s and turned to his Jeep; then because the emotions already boiling over inside him from Kylie, the frustrations from dealing with the Simolis, and being terrified that somehow his nieces would be pulled into this nightmare before he could catch the guy, needed an outlet, he roared loud enough to burn his throat when he pounded the roof of his car.
It surprised the hell out of him when Kylie grabbed his arm, pushing him hard enough that he turned to face her, and then moved into his arms. She leaned against him, stretching her hot, sexy body against his, and wrapped her arms around his neck. She wasn’t tall enough to capture his mouth without him lowering his face to hers, but when her lashes fluttered over her eyes and once again she licked her lips in invitation he didn’t dwell on the very real reasons why he should walk out of her life and stay out of it.
And he needed to. He’d known pathological liars in the past, people who would lie about what they had for breakfast because for some fucked-up reason it was easier for them to do that than tell the truth. They were annoying, exhausting, and he had no time or desire for someone like that in his world today. Refusing to admit to feelings that were as obvious as the nose on her pretty face was damn near the same thing as being a compulsive liar in his book.
Perry broke off the kiss, realizing his hands were on her ass, and dragged his palms around her hips while straightening and then looking down at her.
“I’m leaving,” he announced, his voice thick with the emotions that demanded he stay and fuck the shit out of her.
Kylie nodded once, her lips slightly parted and damp and swollen from his kiss. He ran his fingers past the edge of her dress, feeling her warm thigh and something else.
Her pretty blue eyes, turned milky from lust, cleared and grew sharp when he shifted from her, glancing down to see what his fingers had just touched.
“Goddamn, Kylie,” he whispered, holding on to the edge of her dress when she tried turning away and backing up at the same time. “You aren’t going anywhere. I offered you an out. You came to me. You know I’m not going to accept any lying and I walked away from you, but you came out here.”
“To tell you about Dani. I don’t want her hurt,” Kylie pleaded, grabbing his hand that held on to her dress.
“You kissed me.” He kept a firm hold on her dress, raising it slightly while she pushed on his hand, although
