Shades of Gray

CHAPTER 40

WARM hands slid sensuously over P.J.’s bare back, and she moaned softly, arching into Cole’s touch. Damn but the man was spoiling her sinfully.

His mouth soon followed and he kissed a line up her spine until he reached the sensitive skin at her nape. A full-body shiver overtook her despite the sun beating down on the both of them.

“I’m back,” he murmured against her ear.

She rolled on the beach towel, loving how his eyes darkened when he saw her breasts. “I noticed. What’d you bring me back?”

“Mmmm, depends on how good you’ve been,” he teased.

“I haven’t shown anyone my boobs but you,” she said.

He laughed. “Well, there is that, I guess.”

He stretched out on the towel next to her and handed her a yummy, fruity drink with one of those cute little umbrellas in it.

Then he extended his arms upward and made a big show of putting his hands behind his head.

“You know, as suspensions go, this one is pretty damn awesome,” Cole said.

P.J. chuckled. “You know as well as I do, they didn’t suspend us.”

“They’re good people,” Cole said seriously. He rolled to his side and rested his hand possessively on her naked hip. “So tell me something.”

“Something,” she replied quickly.

He gave her a light smack on the ass.

She grinned. “Okay, okay, what do you want to know?”

“You going to be okay working? I mean you and me. Same team. Like before?”

For a moment she was alarmed. Was he trying to say he had a problem with it?

He put a finger to her lips. “Don’t get all worked up, P.J. You’ve got to learn to stop jumping to conclusions. This is a conversation. Something two people who love each other have. It’s not the end of the world. There are things we need to talk about. Work being one of them.”

She let out her breath, feeling like an idiot. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. And yeah, of course I’ll be okay working with you. I mean God, you gave me a heart attack. I thought you were going to suggest that one of us transfer to Rio’s team since he’s a man short.”

Cole’s expression darkened. “Hell no. I want you right where I can see you all the time. And as I’ve told you before, I like the idea of you guarding my six. I trust you more than I do anyone else and I know you’ll never let me down.”

She scooted in close and then rotated so she was staring down at him. Then she kissed him, long, hard and lusty.

“Damn straight I’ll never let you down,” she said huskily.

“Now on to the other things we need to talk about.”

She lifted an eyebrow.

He slid his hand over her ass and up her spine, rubbing back and forth. She didn’t even wonder if anyone could see. For one thing they were on a very private beach in Bora-Bora. They’d only run into two other people in all the time they’d spent in this particular little haven, and she knew for a fact Cole had coughed up a lot of money for exclusivity.

Right now she was thinking it was well worth whatever he’d had to pay.

“We’ve done everything in this relationship pretty much bass-ackward, so I figure a honeymoon before the wedding is pretty much par for the course, and this definitely should count as a honeymoon.”

Her eyes widened and she stared down. “Whoa, wait a minute, Coletrane. Are you proposing to me?”

“Well I would if you’d let me finish,” he grumbled.

She lowered her mouth and proceeded to pepper every inch of his face with kisses. He laughed and finally pulled her away.

“Okay, okay, ask!” she said.

His eyes went soft and he touched her now-healed face, smoothing some of the sand off. “Will you marry me, Penelope Jane Rutherford?”

“Yes! Yes, yes, yes!”

“I like your enthusiasm,” he said with a grin.

But then her face fell and she glanced away.

He nudged her back to look at him, frowning as he caressed the line of her jaw. “What’s going through your head now?”

“You said we’d had the honeymoon before the wedding, but Cole, this hasn’t been a real honeymoon and you know it.”

He looked pissed and so damn loving all at the same time she wasn’t sure how he pulled it off.

He grasped her face in both hands, forcing her to look directly at him.

“Do you think love and marriage and a honeymoon is all about sex? Do you think we don’t have anything unless we’re fucking like monkeys?”

She would have shaken her head but he was holding her too tightly.

“I love you, P.J. You. And that’s not conditional on us having sex yet, or even tomorrow, or next month. We’ll get there. And I plan on having fun every step of the way. But you know, I’m an old-fashioned guy, and I kind of like the idea of having paperwork that says you belong to me and I belong to you. So what do you say we hop a plane to Vegas after we’re done here and get hitched before our two months is up?”

She smiled down at him, a sheen of tears obscuring her vision. He leaned up and kissed the scar that ran straight down her midsection.

“I do love you, you know,” he said, repeating the words she’d spoken to him after that terrible day when she’d taken Brumley out.

“I do know,” she said softly. “And I think Vegas sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.”