AN: YOU GUYS ROCK. Seriously. The number of reviews and alerts were blew me away, I am stunned and thrilled and so, so appreciative. Don't forget to follow on twitter…annaliesegrace. You'll get ETAs on chapter postings and thoughts as writing.
I feel I should warn you, the case is a vehicle and probably not going to amount to much.
Also…I want to let you guys know that this fic is quickly turning into one of my favorites to write, I hope you are enjoying reading as much as I am enjoying writing.
Happiness can only be found if you can free yourself of all other distractions. – Saul Bellow
Lying in bed that night, Kono couldn't sleep. It was sad and pathetic and completely teenage girl behavior, but she couldn't get the kiss out of her head. She struggled to remember if she had ever experienced a kiss like that, where it felt like she would suddenly combust from the heat and fire and the feeling completely overriding logic and sense.
Nope, definitely not.
Frustrated she flipped to her side and stared at the numbers on her alarm clock.
1:45.
This was preposterous, she was happy with Adam, he treated her well and now that their relationship was in the open it was easier on them both. Occasionally she still got a snide comment from someone in HPD, but her teammates had kept shockingly quiet about the relationship, though she sensed the men in the group were less than thrilled. Part of their silence probably had to do with the fact Adam had saved her life and pulled her from the Pacific after Delano dumped her in it. So he had gained her teammates respect, at least enough that they kept their thoughts about the relationship to themselves.
And yet she couldn't get slate blue eyes out of her mind.
After another thirty minutes of tossing and turning, she finally slipped into sleep.
The blue tinged room wasn't familiar, but she felt comfortable there with cool sheets covering her mostly naked body.
Then a hand touched her abdomen and she let out a happy sigh as it started moving in slow, sensual circles. Her eyes fluttered closed as the hand moved up between her breasts, fingers ghosting over her skin, sending goose bumps chasing across her arms.
Warm, wet lips placed an open-mouthed kiss on her bare shoulder and she sighed. The hand slid back down her abdomen, pausing just above the material of her panties.
Involuntarily she arched her hips up, encouraging his downward path. Instead the hand moved back up and she grumbled unhappily until lips captured her breast and she moaned, her fingers coming up and wrapping in his hair, nails scratching his scalp.
"Steve…" she moaned as he worked her into a frenzy.
"Kono…" he whispered back and moved up her body, kissing her deeply, his tongue moving past her lips gently, exploring.
Then his hand moved back to her abdomen, this time sliding down, under her panties…
Kono shot up in bed, sweat covering her body, blood thrumming through her ears and a familiar ache where there should not be. Jesus, one kiss and she was dreaming of him.
Another glance at the clock revealed she had been asleep all of three hours.
Screw it, she thought and pushed the covers back, there would be no more sleep for her that night.
An hour later she had gotten in quite a bit of moonlight surfing, the first rays of the sun just starting to peek over the horizon. It released the physical tension she was feeling and yet, there was still mental distraction.
She was trying to forget, trying to push him out of her mind but it wasn't working, and her traitorous mind kept replaying the kiss, reminding her how he felt pushed against her, his hands and lips on her skin, setting it afire.
So lost in thought, Kono misjudged her proximity to a small coral reef and was unable to stop or change direction before the board came to a violent stop, tossing her into the water and scraping her right side and arm along the sharp coral.
Surfacing, she let out a string of curse words and tried to get a look at the damage. But even with the sunlight starting to light the water it wasn't enough to get a good look at how serious the injury was.
Grumbling she swam slowly to shore, each stroke of her right arm agony.
Kono had surfed at night more times than she could count and not one time had she gotten so distracted as to miss a reef she was well aware was there.
Once she got to shore, Kono realized the reef had cut her up far more than she initially thought. The worse of it was a large gash right under her ribs that was bleeding profusely and a marginally smaller cut on her forearm that was bleeding only slightly less; the rest composed of mostly small scratches and abrasions.
Certainly not the worse she had ever come out of the water, but there was no doubt a trip to the hospital was in order.
Somehow she got the board back on top of her car and wrapped her towel around her abdomen, keeping her from bleeding all over the seats. With the minimal traffic at six thirty in the morning she could make it to the hospital in ten minutes and hopefully be in and out and at work on time.
Sleep was elusive for him that night. Lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, Steve wondered how one kiss could send his whole world tipping. Glancing over at Catherine he smiled at the woman who was curled on her side facing him, sleeping peacefully. He cared for her, maybe he even loved her, but somehow it felt like he had betrayed her. And he couldn't quite pinpoint why.
There had never been more than light-hearted flirting between him and Kono…well and maybe a couple meaningful looks that he easily explained away as emotional reactions. Of course her beauty had not slipped by his notice; it would have been hard to seeing as when they had met she'd been wearing a small bikini. It quickly became apparent though she wasn't just a pretty face; she could hold her own in a fight and was more than a little bad ass, and whip smart. Sometimes he thought she was a younger, female version of him.
Then he thought back to the embrace they had shared after his return from retrieving Wo Fat. He had so easily pulled her into him, practically burying his nose in her hair, he remembered thinking she felt like home and had held on probably a little longer than he should have. If anything, he wanted to hold onto her longer, tighter.
He looked at the clock and sighed.
Five thirty am. Might as well get up and get a swim in.
Walking into the ER, any hope of keeping her visit quiet was dashed when the receptionist smiled at her and said, "Officer Kalakaua! What brings you in?"
The woman behind the desk was someone the Five-O team was familiar with as she seemed to always be on duty when they came in to interview a suspect or victim. She was friendly enough and Kono hoped she could use that to get in and out in a hurry.
"Hey, Leia. I had an…incident on the surfboard this morning and think I might need some stitches, any way I can get back there quickly?"
The look on Leia's face told Kono she was out of luck. "I doubt it, massive accident this morning on Kapolani, all the docs are pretty tied up right now." Then she looked at the two people waiting in the room behind Kono. "I'll get you in right after they are done though. Are you bleeding?"
"Off and on." Kono had noticed in the parking lot while getting shorts and a t-shirt on that the cut (unsurprisingly) bled the more she moved around.
"Ok, take a seat and I'll see what I can do. But fill out these forms first."
Kono took the offered clipboard and sat carefully, favoring the injured side.
Pulling himself from his morning swim Steve was feeling better about whatever had happened the previous night. He'd convinced himself it was nothing, that it meant nothing; that the sparks he felt were completely natural and not anything out of the ordinary.
Wrapping the towel around his waist he had completely pushed it from his mind until entering the kitchen to find Catherine at the counter, pouring him coffee.
Smiling he approached and pulled her to him, leaning in for a deep kiss. And then pushed farther, letting his hands roam over her body, touching her as he had Kono; and while it felt good and familiar it was not remotely close to what spiked through him the night before with another woman. Then he thought back to his and Cath's first kiss, in a bar on their first date and realized it wasn't there then either.
This was bad, it was like he had been afforded a taste of something unattainable and now could only dream about. And yet, that something was with him sixty plus hours a week, constantly tempting him.
"Steve…" Cath said and pushed him away a little. "We need to get going to work."
Hiding his disappointment he nodded and pulled away, taking the coffee mug she offered.
As the surgeon was finishing stitching up her arm Kono realized how very late she was going to be. There was no way she would make her usual 7:30 am arrival time. And her frustration grew at the situation, and that frustration was clearly focused on Steve. Because she had convinced herself this was his fault. He had kissed her (and yes, she knew it was necessary and a good cover) and that kiss was what had been on her mind when she went careening into the damn reef.
Picking up her phone as the doctor bandaged her arm she called Chin.
"Hey, Kono…what's up?"
"I'm gonna be a little late, in by 8:30, ok?"
"Yeah, sure. Everything ok?"
She sighed. "Yeah, fine…overslept."
"K…I'll let the bossman know."
"Thanks Chin."
It wasn't long after that they handed her a bag with vicodin for the pain (which she wouldn't take) and gauze, tape and antibiotic ointment to change the bandages in a couple hours.
After a quick swing home so she could change clothes – thankfully it was going to be somewhat cool that day so a long sleeved loose top was not uncalled for and hid the bandage on her arm – she was on her way into the office and was hopeful she would make it in by 8.
Kono told herself she didn't want the team to find out about her spill because as a former professional surfer these things really shouldn't happen, but really it was because she didn't have to admit she was distracted by him. And she wasn't confident she could come up with a convincing explanation otherwise.
Sitting at the smart table an hour after arriving Kono finally started to feel pain from her side and arm. And her body just ached. Adding to that was the exhaustion from sleeping a mere three hours. She was just miserable.
Vicodin was out; she wouldn't be able to function. So instead she got up, grabbed a bottle of water and swallowed three Motrin.
As she was coming out of the small kitchen area Steve was walking in and she stopped suddenly. There was an awkward tension between them. Exactly what she was hoping wouldn't happen.
"Hey," he said and shifted on his feet a little.
"Hey," she said back.
Then there was silence and the tension increased.
"Anything off the drive yet?" he asked.
"No, not yet. Bloomquest keeps a lot of data on his computer. Couple hours and I should be through all of it."
"Ok…good."
Kono smiled gently and then stepped away and back to the table, sitting carefully in the chair she had pulled over to make the chore of going through the data more manageable.
It was two hours later that she finally stumbled across what she was looking for. Emails and bank transactions that linked another of Bloomquests properties to the operation.
"Got it!" she yelled out and instantly the team was surrounding her at the table as she went through what she'd found.
Chin was already on the phone with the DA getting a warrant for the property that was in the emails. Still missing was anything directly linking the man to the operation or that could get them into his house, which was where they suspected the real information was.
"Ok, let's get ready to serve that warrant," Steve said and the team dispersed.
Kono slowly made her way to her office and sat in her chair a minute, despite the Motrin the pain was intensifying. For just a brief moment she considered admitting to Chin what had happened and staying back. Then her pride took over and she collected her weapon and badge from her desk drawer.
When they arrived at the other club Bloomquest owned to serve the warrant he was unsurprisingly not there. With the help of three HPD officers they quickly turned the place upside down, confiscating papers, a laptop and tablet computer.
As they were loading the back of Chin's Traverse, Kono spotted a man at the end of the alley, watching them with interest, he was clearly nervous; one hand kept running through his dark hair.
"Hey, you," she called out and instantly the man bolted in the other direction.
Kono immediately took off after him. Which she realized as she closed the space between them, was a colossal mistake – stabbing pain radiated from her side. Behind her she heard heavy footfalls; someone had (thankfully) followed her.
"Five-o, freeze!" she yelled and slowed as she approached a corner the man had disappeared around.
Popping her head around the side of the building she saw he was trapped, it was an alleyway to nowhere. So she stepped out, her 9 mil trained on the man, and moved toward him.
"On your knees."
The man's eyes darted around panicked, still looking for an out.
"Now!" she yelled.
He started to go down and she moved closer to him. Then at the last second he stood up, driving her into the brick wall of a building, sending searing pain through her side and arm and for a second her vision blurred. Stitches had pulled, she was sure of it.
Despite that she was able to rather indelicately put her foot out and literally trip their suspect so he fell with a loud thud, possibly cracking his head on the concrete since he didn't move after that.
It was all she could do to stay on her feet and she wrapped the arm not holding her gun around her side.
Then Steve whipped around the corner, gun up, and she cursed her luck. Of course it would be him.
tbc…
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