Free Wicked Pleasures by Tori Carrington Page B

back to allow him deeper access. And when he came, she came with him.

12
     
    W HAT IN THE hell was he doing?
    Linc had spent the day juggling his Lazarus duties with tailing Regina and felt as raw as an overworked piece of meat. Right now she was covering the dinner shift at the diner and due to get off soon. He was heading to her place, where he planned to add a motion sensor to the other equipment he’d already installed.
    He gripped the steering wheel so tightly he had to consciously loosen it for fear he’d snap it clean off.
    Last night had been…incredible. But having hot sex with Regina was the last thing he should be doing right now.
    Yeah? Easy to say that now that he’d spent all night doing it.
    He could virtually hear his back teeth grinding together. With the break-in interrupted yesterday, it was a pretty good bet that Billy Johnson was already plotting ways to finish the job. He had the bedroom yet to search.
    And that angered Linc all the more. What had Johnson planned to do once he’d completed going through the living room while Regina was asleep?
    The possibilities brought his blood to the boiling point.
    Damn it, he should have told her. He should have let her in on the fact that her ex had broken out of prison. Better she should be aware and prepared than continue allowing her to stumble around in the dark a moment longer.
    His reasons were purely selfish at this point. While he might have explained away his duplicity before as a business matter, now…well, now that Johnson was in the area and had made his first move, Regina’s ignorance placed her in greater danger.
    And once she did know? What would she do? What would the revelation that her ex was not only in her area, but after her, compel her to do? Would she run yet again?
    The idea sent something awfully similar to fear stabbing through his chest as clean as an ice pick.
    Then there was what Johnson might have up his sleeve to consider. Once he discovered Regina didn’t possess what he was looking for…
    He had no doubt physical confrontation would be next.
    Linc thought of Regina’s mother lying in a medically induced coma halfway across the country and tightened his fists on the steering wheel again. He tried to find comfort in the thought that there was still one step Johnson had yet to take—finish his search of Regina’s apartment—before he reached that point. But the knowledge was of little consolation.
    Linc had to put all this together to make a workable resolution. Now.
    And pray that it didn’t end up with his getting kicked out of Regina’s life.
    Life?
    No, her bed.
    He parked his truck and then let himself into her place with the spare key she’d given him so she wouldn’t have to leave the door unlocked again. Not that she could do that anymore, not with the system he’d installed. If she didn’t lock the door, it would automatically lock within two minutes of being closed. That was another reason she’d insisted he take an extra key, and he’d suggested she have a copy made to keep elsewhere, say, in her locker at work, just in case she accidentally locked herself out.
    The instant he entered her place, he felt different. The tension coiling his muscles eased a bit. Merely being surrounded by her things, her scent, made him feel better. Even without her there, he could at least sense the anticipation that she would be soon.
    He dropped his duffel on the floor and went to the kitchen to put away the bag of groceries he’d picked up. Sandwich fixings, juice, eggs and a loaf of bread.
    His cell rang. He glanced at the display. It was his aunt.
    “Hey, kiddo,” she said when he picked up.
    He smiled slightly. He’d tried asking her once to stop calling him that, considering it had been a long time since he’d been a kid. She’d told him that to her, he would always be the quiet little boy who stole her heart, so he might as well prepare himself to hear the endearment when he was sixty, granted she lived long