Page 99 of Duty and Desire

“You think I giveonereal shitabout all that?”

Mo fully clicked into a conversation he thought he’d already been fully clicked into and he did that by realizing somewhere along the line he’d made her angry.

Veryangry.

“Lo—” he began.

“First,” she bit off, “you’re hot. Not a little hot,a lot. You might not be everybody’s cup of tea, but neither am I or anyone else. But trust me, Mo, I wanted to climb you like a tree the first time I laid eyes on you and Tammy would have gotten down on her knees to beg you to have her back. And that has a lot to do with you just being you, but the kind of woman she is, it also has to do with you looking the way you do and also the fact it’s pretty clear by her behavior you know how to use your cock.”

He’d had no complaints on that, as far as he knew, but he was not going to share that with Lottie.

Even if he was, he wouldn’t get the shot because she kept going.

“So you’re hot, and that’s my call to make, you can’t make it, so I don’t wanna hear another word about it,” she clipped. “Second, my dad promised us everything from trips to the Riviera to castles in the sky. He didn’t deliver onone single promisehe made, but more, he wasn’t even enough of a man to fight the urge to hit a table in order to see to his woman and his girls. You’re man enough to fight the urge to fuck me in order to make me safe. What else would I get if you let me have the rest? I don’t know, you do, and I want a shot at that.”

“Lottie—”

“And I don’t want Tiffany’s, Mo. If I did, I’d earn the money to buy something there. I doubt you’re on food stamps working for Hawk, but I also make a good living and if a woman’s about the living a man can earn, she’s not much of a woman. I need a man with ambition and drive and a belief in what he’s doing. I don’t need a man to drive me to Tiffany’s. I got my own damned car.”

“Baby—” he whispered, with all she said, unable to stop that word from leaking out of his mouth.

But that was all he got out.

“I don’t know what those bitches did to you, since my guess is Tammy wasn’t the only one. And I don’t know what happened to you in Afghanistan. I don’t even really knowyou. All I know, and I know it good, Mo, is thatI wanna find out.”

“This isn’t smart,” he said gently.

“Now? Or ever?” she demanded to know.

“Now.”

And possibly ever.

But he wasn’t going to get into that with her right then.

“Call Hawk and tell him to find this guy, Mo.”

“They’re workin’ on it.”

“Tell them to work faster.”

He said nothing because all his attention was set on stopping himself from smiling.

Christ, she really was something.

“Do you have a problem with me stripping?” she asked.

Mo now had no trouble not smiling.

“I don’t like men watching you take your clothes off,” he told her honestly.

“This is an issue because that’s what I do to pay the bills and I like doing it.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“Can you get over it?”

He didn’t know how he’d feel if he wasn’t there every night, watching the crowd watching her take her clothes off.