“What?”
Snickering at my reaction, he laid it out. “I said ok. That’s not a hardship for me to do, Tabby, considering that I’m already there.”
So many thoughts hit me at once. I’d missed a cut near his hairline that needed Betadine. Was he actually telling me he loved me? Was Katy attacking Law? Had I put their bowls on the floor like I’d been about to do before she attacked him? Was he actually telling me he loved me (this one warranted being asked twice)?
“You love me?”
He replied, not missing a beat. “Absolutely.”
“Did I put the bowls of food down for them before we came through here?”
His lips twitched, and he gave my butt cheeks a squeeze. “Yeah, you did.”
“And you love me?”
Again, he answered without hesitating. “Without a doubt.”
Drawing in a deep breath, I tried to make sense of it. I’d had a lot of long talks with Jose about Dave over the last nine days. During it, she’d pointed out that I’d been falling in love with him, which was why I’d reacted the way I had, and that the sooner I admitted it, the sooner I’d be able to deal with what had happened. But what if I wasn’t falling in love? What if I was already there?
Holy shit, I was in love with the guy who’d arrested me three times.
“You gonna tell me what’s going through your head, baby?”
“I…I think I love you,” I murmured, staring at his eyebrow now. For some reason, looking him right in the eye would make it too real, and I was already feeling vulnerable as it was.
“Tab,” he called, giving my butt cheeks a squeeze again. When I met his eyes, I saw how happy he looked, and the vulnerability riding me started to go away. “We’ll work through this together, yeah?”
“I’ve never been in love with someone before, at least not someone who wasn’t related to me,” I warned. “I don’t know how to do it.”
“Me neither, baby. But we’ll get through it together. It’s a learning curve that we’re gonna experience at the same time.”
This man always had a way of calming me down and making things doable. As someone who looked at life positively, I loved this. All the worries about our compatibility had been stupid because I couldn’t imagine someone being more perfectly suited to me.
I’m not exactly sure who tackled who, but in the blink of an eye I was on my back on the bathroom floor with Dave’s weight on top of me and his mouth on mine. I groaned when he licked into my mouth and angled my head slightly to the side so I could get even more of him when he did it again.
Without separating our mouths, we both reached down at the same time and took handfuls of each other’s tops, pulling them up as far as we could. When he lifted his head away from mine, I curled up and pulled his shirt all the way over his head, groaning when I saw the white undershirt that he was wearing under it. Taking pity on me, he got up onto his knees and took it off, giving me space to do the same with my own, leaving me in a bright pink lace bra.
“Holy shit, it’s better than any wet dream I’ve ever had,” he muttered, rubbing his hand across his chin as he stared down at me. “I mean, I’ve had plenty fantasies over the last nine days, but absolutely nothing compares to what I’m looking at right now.”
Lifting my hand, I reached out and traced up the center of his stomach, the tips of my fingers spreading out to feel each muscled bump as I skimmed over them. When I got to a sensitive patch, the area trembled slightly, and he sucked in his stomach reflexively. “You’re ticklish.”
Shaking his head, he reached down to his belt and undid it, the clanking metal making my nipples tighten even more. “No, I just have a funny spot. If you tickle my feet or my sides it doesn’t bother me, but that spot gives me the willies.”
I wasn’t going to admit that I was ticklish as hell, and that I hated being tickled. I hated it so much that I’d given a Johnny Watts a black eye in second grade when he wouldn’t let up. I hadn’t aimed for his eye per se, I’d actually been aiming for throat, but he’d been bending down to tickle me even harder at the time and had paid the price. So, I wouldn’t be telling Dave Bell that I was ticklish because knowledge was power, and this goat pecker would totally use it against me.
Using my position as a distraction, I took over what he was doing, undoing the button and the zipper on his uniform pants. His uniform was technically a white shirt and nice jeans, but I’d learned over our short time together that if he wasn’t at work, his jeans were faded and scuffed to hell and back. So smart ones were totally work wear for him.