Page 83 of License to Kill

Giggling, I accepted the strawberry. “I’m not sure that counts as romantic or as pampering, Jake.”

“But it got you to accept my offering of food, which is the first step on getting you into better shape. I will likely file for leave for at least a few weeks while taking care of you. You need me with you, not handling some bullshit assignment. Unless the bullshit assignment involves spending all of my time with you, in which case I’ll recant my opinion about that, but only if you want to do the work involved with the case. After you have your hot chocolate, we’ll look over the room service menu and get whatever we want, and as my father agreed to pay me back, he can’t complain. And yes, I’m hoping asserting dominance over my asshole parents appeals to you. If it doesn’t, I will come up with another plan.”

“We didn’t kill each other while stuck in those holding cells,” I reminded him. If he let me get away with it, I would ignore his commentary about him taking leave or working a case until I had a chance to think it over.

“I was attempting to use my masculine charms to appease you. Did it work?” Jake waggled his eyebrows at me.

“You look like an idiot when you do that.” I raised a brow and sipped my hot chocolate before nibbling on my strawberry. “It may have worked a little.”

“Good. I’ll try to do better. If I’m not attentive enough, let me know. Younger Fenerec define what it means to be hormonal, so I’m going to make the assumption foxes are no different, especially since you tend to start talking with your teeth when you want me to take you to bed.”

I needed to work on that—or just point at the nearest bed rather than open fire with biting. “Do you mean hormonal or horny?”

“I really mean both. It seems foxes may be the same way, something that is a benefit in my opinion. I am willing, able, and ready to do whatever is required to keep my little vixen happy. If you require attention every morning and evening, I am game. We’ll have to work on you asking when you need attention, but if attention is what you want, attention is what you’ll get.”

“That makes me sound needy.”

“You’re not being needy. If anything, I’d like you to be more needy. At the very least, I’d like you to ask for what you want before you become frustrated enough you attempt to tear out my throat with your teeth. I’m not sure if vixens are trainable when it comes to biting, though,” he teased.

I drank my hot chocolate, stretched my legs out and basked in the warmth of the fire, which had begun to burn in earnest. “We need a new couch, a new coffee table, possibly a new everything on the ground floor. Did we manage to keep anything intact?”

“The kitchen emerged unscathed.”

I glared at him. “Because you had nothing in the kitchen to damage.”

“Apparently, I eat my feelings before I go to the gym in a state of guilt because I ate everything in sight, and then I would order pizza because I had no motivation to go grocery shopping. Then the pizza reminded me of you, and I’d eat my feelings again and return to the gym. I went to work between binges of pizza and gym time. Since working beat going to the gym and eating pizza, I worked more than was necessarily healthy.”

“That explains why you’re in peak physical condition. Spending that much time in the gym tends to be good for your muscles.”

“Exercising that much did not make me feel any better, in case you were curious.”

“I just worked, slept, and sometimes foraged if food crossed my path. I did not forage for much when I did forage.”

“Anyone who has seen you in your peak is aware of that.”

“So, you’re saying you’ve been almost as much of a mess as I have been.”

“Basically. All the pack did was make me more miserable, and the only time things got better was when I was looking for some trace of you. When you were in New York? Let’s just say my pizza consumption and gym time skyrocketed. I was flat-out barred from stepping foot outside of the state without approval.”

“Your parents’ approval?” I growled.

“No. The FBI made sure I stayed in Maryland. I still don’t know why we were put on that damned Hemshaw case, but if I find out who was responsible for that, I’m sending them gifts. It’d been my first time out of Maryland since you went to New York.”

I considered the options, and I could make a guess or two, and it involved the black market Amelia had introduced me to. “Are you going to hate me if you find out I helped murder the fuckwits who shot us in London?”

“I will be jealous I didn’t get to help. Managed to get back at them when you were on your own?”

“Amelia helped.”

“I’m jealous. I want to help.”

“If you take leave off work, maybe we could work with Amelia and work on that.”

“You want to go rogue. Actually rogue, in the FBI sense of it.”

I stared into his chocolate brown eyes. “Look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t want to.”

He scowled. “That’s just playing dirty, Karma.”