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perimeter sweep yourself?”
    She rolls her eyes, although I see the second’s hesitation there. I expect her to slap my arm and giggle or some shit and then send me into the house to look for the bad guy, but instead she snatches the gun out of my hand. “Fine. Wait here. I’ll go and do a perimeter sweep, and then you can have your gun back and you can leave .”
    I rock back on my heels, my face throbbing with the effort it’s taking to keep the smile off my face. I can’t remember the last time I felt the need to fucking smile so desperately. Fighting it back’s as hard as trying to shove a wet cat inside a hessian sack—almost impossible. I shrug, feigning nonchalance. “Be my guest.”
    She scowls at me, opening the front door and then going inside. She pushes the door half closed behind her, but guess what…I’m not waiting outside. Sloane must hear me follow her in, my black bag in hand, but she doesn’t say anything. She’s actually conducting a bona fide search of the ground floor, gun raised and ready to fire. It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever fucking seen.
    She sweeps the lounge, the kitchen, the pantry, the downstairs bathroom, the rear yard. I might as well be watching a cop at work. She has to have done this before. Has to. I follow her at a distance, just in case there actually are people inside and she needs me to brutally beat the living shit out of them for her, but other than that I let her do her thing, and I keep my mouth shut.
    Once she’s ascertained that there’s no one waiting for her in her shrubbery, she stalks back through the house, glaring at me as she passes, and heads upstairs. The bathroom, a spare room, a linen closest, another bedroom— her bedroom. I smell her as soon as I walk in. The scent is fresh and bright, even though she hasn’t been here for a week.
    “There you go. You can have your stupidly big gun back now,” Sloane says, pressing the weapon sideways into my chest. I grab hold of the thing and snick the safety on, raising an eyebrow at her.
    “So you’re happy that there’s no one here?” A little mockery works its way into my tone; I just can’t seem to help myself.
    “Oh, no,” she says, tipping her head to one side. “There’s someone here. There’s someone here that really shouldn’t be, and I’d really like it if he would leave now please.”
    I drop my bag on the floor.
    Her eyes grow wide.
    I put the gun down on top of her dresser and I prowl toward her, feeling positively predatory when she starts to back away. In five short steps, I’ve closed the gap between us and her back is pressed up against her bedroom wall. I place my palms against the wall on either side of her head. “I’m not going anywhere for another fifteen minutes, Sloane.”
    “You shouldn’t have done that back at my parents’ place,” she says. Her voice sounds breathy and distracted, which is a goddamn green light if ever I’ve heard one. I lean forward some more, so that my face is only a couple of inches away from hers. Her eyes are unblinking, staring back at me, traveling all over my face, and I know what she’s thinking about. I know what she wants. It’s pretty fucking cruel, but I feel like teasing her a little bit…so I lick my lips. Sloane instantly turns her head away from me, pulling in a sharp breath. Yeah. She wants to kiss me.
    “Why shouldn’t I have done that back at your parents’ place?” I growl into her ear. I take the tip of my tongue and I carefully flick her earlobe with it; my cock stirs again, already very nearly fully hard from the little show she just put on with the gun.
    She won’t turn back and look at me, but her body reacts, jumping a little. “Because they’re my fucking parents . I don’t know what kind of household you grew up in, but in mine we don’t go around giving guys hand jobs under the table while we’re trying to have an important discussion.”
    She sounds angry, but her body is such a traitor. She wants