Page 45 of Built for Mercy

She stayed silent, searching my eyes for… I don’t know what.

Clearly, even if she felt something between us, me laying all my cards on the table wasn’t enough for her to want to see where our relationship could go.

I straightened and dropped my hands from her shoulders, nodding once. “Okay. I hear you loud and clear. I won’t pursue you anymore or send my guys to watch over you.” I paused, truly at a loss of words from the lump in my throat, a rare display of emotion I wasn’t used to. Frowning, I added, “I really did enjoy what brief time we had together. When I find out more information on your family, I’ll send someone to you.” I leanedin and pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. She just stood there, frozen.

I sighed as I turned and left her mother’s house, bounding down the steps and relishing the cool night air rushing over my heated skin and wounded heart.

What a fucking embarrassment.

Acting heartbroken over what could have been.

21

Sophie

Iblinked back tears. Stood stock still, stuck in shock and confusion.

The front door clicking shut as Maverick left set me into motion.

Here he was, reassuring me in ways I didn’t deserve, for no other reason than that he liked me. Wanted, at the bare minimum, a night to see if we were compatible. To see if our one night together was more than just pent-up sexual tension. To see if there was really something here.

And I just stood there?

After weeks of being a solemn bitch?

Fuck, I was an idiot.

I rushed into the kitchen, blabbering to my mother in Spanish about having to go but that I’d see her later, and hurriedly grabbed my things before stumbling out the front door.Maverick was just opening his car door down the street when I came running out.

“Mav, wait!” I cried. He paused, and there I saw it. The hurt. It sucked the air from my lungs. This man—dangerous and powerful as he was—was hurt because of me.

I jogged to him until I was mere feet from him, but it could have been miles for how breathless I was. What good all that running had been doing for me.

“I want to come with you. I’m sorry. I’m just… I’m not used to this. People in my life tend to bail when they find out I’m not all sunshine and butterflies. I’m scared to get hurt.” There. I put it out in the open. The ball was in his court now.

He blinked those dark blue eyes at me, illuminated by the street lights overhead, much like the first night we met. Then he took a step toward me, then another, and when his scent wrapped around me like a security blanket, all my thoughts went out the window. A breeze slipped between us, cool against my skin—until he erased it with his touch, warm and sure as his fingers traced my jaw before cupping my cheek.

“Detective, only a moron would see only sunshine and butterflies when they look at you. You are equal parts light and dark. You light up a room while simultaneously darkening the shadows in it. You’re charismatic, but you’re also deeply passionate and enigmatic. Lawful yet vengeful. To let other people make you feel like you’re less than any of that is a shame. And I’m only seeing the tip of the iceberg. I can only imagine how much more amazing you are the more layers I peel back,” he confessed softly.

I let out a half-laugh, half-sob at his words. Without kissing me, he guided me around the passenger side of the car.

“Thank you—” He cut me off by pinning me to the side of the car and slanting his lips over mine. A noise of surprise got trapped in my throat as his tongue met mine, tasting of sin anddesire. One hand tangled in the hair at the nape of my neck and the other curled around my throat, pressing just enough to make my breaths come out harsher.

“Twenty,” he breathed between suffocating kisses.

“Wh-what?” I stammered, struggling to focus on anything outside of the heat pooling between my legs, the friction of his hips against mine.

“Twenty days. That’s twenty punishments you owe me. Starting now.”

Oh.Whimpering, I wondered how he was going to punish me in public. He held my head still against the car. My every muscle tightened in anticipation.

It didn’t take long to find out what he planned.

Keeping one hand on my throat, his other trailed down my breasts, tugging my taut nipples in a way that made my back arch. I’d barely come up for air from the delicious way he was kissing me, consuming me, claiming me when his fingers slipped under my dress, beneath my lace panties, and right over my clit.

I groaned, right in the middle of the sidewalk, and it sounded straight-up pornographic. Maverick smiled wickedly against my lips. “Oh, how I missed your sounds,” he growled.He missed me. Ugh.With his fingers moving in circles, he played me like a fiddle, making my body sing. One, then two fingers inserted in me, his thumb keeping the pressure on my clit, his mouth never giving me a break, and it was too much—way too much. I squirmed, the walls of my pussy quivering with my impending orgasm, my body and mind and soul chasing that high—

And suddenly he was gone. He stepped back, and I huffed in disappointment, gasping for air and tingling in all my sensitive places.