Sergeant's Christmas Siege

by Megan Crane

  And then he leaned forward and got his mouth on her.

  At last.

  Tough, ornery Kate melted like candy. Soft and hot. He licked his way in, easing his way through her slickness, then finding the part of her that was the neediest. He teased her there. Using suction. His teeth.

  Whatever worked.

  First she went stiff. Then she went blazingly hot.

  Then she started to lift her hips to meet each slide of his tongue, each scrape of his jaw.

  Templeton was a man who indulged his appetites. And Kate was a feast.

  He made her shiver, then he made her fall apart.

  She shook and she shook, clamping her thighs around his head and making it that much better. That much hotter.

  So he kept right on going.

  And by the time he was finished with her, tasting her with his mouth and using his fingers to make it even more fun, she was limp. Shaking as if she’d never stop.

  And best of all, making tiny, delectable little sounds in the back of her throat.

  Templeton pulled back and stood, running a hand over his jaw as he stared down at the picture she made. Kate Holiday, his uptight trooper, splayed out on the bed before him. Every inch of her pink, rosy, and replete.

  It wasn’t that he was hard. He ached. He wanted her in ways he didn’t have words to describe. He felt her everywhere, like some kind of vicious flu that could take him down to his knees if he let her.

  He didn’t.

  Her eyelashes looked like soot against her cheeks, and her mouth was gently parted as she panted into the arm she’d thrown up over her head.

  God, she was beautiful. That ache seemed to double, and Templeton would never know how he stayed where he was, standing there, not touching her. Not taking her.

  “Go on,” she ordered him as if she could read his mind, though her voice was wispy at best. “It’s your turn.”

  “I don’t believe in taking turns,” Templeton told her, and he didn’t sound like himself anymore. Too raspy. Too edgy with need and longing and that ache besides. “It’s all fun for everyone or it’s no fun at all.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  He watched as she struggled to open her eyes, and when she did, she looked dazed.

  And Templeton was glad for every last second of the intense training he’d undergone over the course of his life, because he was certain that was the only thing that kept him in check. When everything in him roared for more. To sink himself deep inside her, and never come up for air again.

  But he’d practiced control. He knew how to exercise it.

  And somehow, he did.

  “If we were doing this my way,” Templeton gritted out, “that would only be the beginning. A little warm-­up before things got serious. I don’t like to rush, Kate. I like to take my time. Every time.”

  “Is that supposed to be a threat?”

  “I don’t make threats.”

  Kate pushed herself up on one elbow, and everything about her was sultry, beautiful. He had no idea why he was standing at the side of the bed, fully clothed. What was he doing to himself? Why?

  But then she smirked at him, and he remembered.

  “I should have known,” she said, looking far too sure of herself. “You like it when it’s more of a game. You want me to play pretend. Beg. Act like I don’t want it when I do, is that it?”

  “Not at all,” Templeton said quietly. “I want you to want me, Kate. Not it.”

  Her eyes opened wider as the smirk disappeared from her mouth, but he couldn’t take that as a victory lap. Not when he was beginning to think that she was the cardiac event, and he was just going to have to get used to it.

  “Let me guess how this usually goes for you,” he said in the same quietly serious way, and she would never know what it cost him when he had the taste of her in his mouth. She was still naked before him, so beautiful he thought she might actually leave scars all over him. That she already had. “Everybody thinks you’re uptight, untouchable. So you toss back a couple of drinks to prove them wrong. Someone makes a move and you think, why not? Because you know how to do this part. You know how to get naked, and fast. You know how to get exactly what you want, and how to avoid the things you don’t want to deal with.”

  “Are you really going to pretend there’s something wrong with that?” she demanded. “Since when is knowing my own mind a problem? I’m sorry if that intimidates you, Templeton.”

  He didn’t rise to the bait. “You know exactly what to do with a man who wants it the way you do. Hard. Fast. You can do that, easy. But if I tried to hold your hand you’d try to shoot me. Wouldn’t you?”

  He watched her swallow, as hard as it was audible. “Don’t psychoanalyze me. Especially after three glasses of wine.”

  “The wine is a great excuse, isn’t it?” Templeton murmured, never shifting his gaze from hers. Pinning her there, naked and still flushed. “A lot like some night out in a bar for you. It’s your excuse. Your alibi, if you need one. But I want you naked because I want you naked, Kate. I don’t need an alibi. And I’m not going to blame anyone in the morning. Can you say the same?”

  “I’m too busy blaming you for ruining tonight to worry about tomorrow morning. Thanks for that.”

  Templeton wanted to laugh, but he didn’t. “Don’t worry, we’re going to revisit this topic. You can count on it.”

  “Like hell we are.”

  “I have the feeling it’s all going to go down the way it did tonight. You’re going to tell me how you don’t do something, I’m going to show you that you do, and better still, that I don’t care if you get mad at me about it.”

  “Will this all come with lectures? Because nothing’s hotter than that. Every girl dreams of being naked before a pompous man who doesn’t know when to shut his mouth. I know that keeps me up at night.”

  “It’s going to keep me up, too, Kate,” he told her, and this time, he didn’t smile. Or laugh. Or try to make it better. “I can promise you that.”

  And he left her there, only cracking a smile when he heard her curse his name as he went. Then throw something hard at the door behind him. He suspected it was her boot.

  That made him smile a lot wider.

  It wasn’t until he had taken the long, frigid-cold walk back to his cabin—­where he doused himself in cold water, gritted his teeth, and reminded himself that he’d chosen his frustration—­that it occurred to him he hadn’t told her the reason he’d been waiting for her in the first place.

  That someone had broken into Kate’s apartment in Juneau earlier tonight.

  That an individual dressed all in black had been lying in wait for her, which she would know as well as he did no one did when they planned to leap out for a hug and a cuddle.

  Whoever it was had expected to find Kate there. Alone and off her guard. And when they’d been confronted by a neighbor instead, they’d taken off.

  But they’d be back.

  Templeton had absolutely no doubt.

  Twelve

  Kate didn’t know where to begin processing everything that had happened that night. From her surprisingly carefree dinner with Bethan and Everly to . . . everything that had come afterward with Templeton. Which she would certainly not call carefree.

  It was easier to focus on what had happened in Juneau instead.

  One of her neighbors had walked by and seen Kate’s door open, just a crack. Thinking that was unusual—­because it was, of course, absolutely unheard of in all the months Kate had lived there—­the woman had knocked and then walked in, calling out Kate’s name.

  Which was especially surprising, given Kate didn’t know hers.

  Her neighbor, who Kate now knew was named Alasie Benally, had startled whoever was inside. They’d rushed out, leaving Alasie shaken and knocked to the ground. Alasie was ad
amant that whoever the assailant was, she hadn’t interrupted him in the middle of a robbery attempt—­he’d been lurking there.

  All the lights in the apartment had been off. He’d rushed Alasie when she’d moved far enough inside that, had she been who he wanted her to be, he could have gotten himself between his quarry and the door.

  He’d growled something at Alasie when he’d seen her on the floor at his feet, then left.

  This told Kate that whoever the assailant was, he was looking for Kate. He had broken into her apartment and he’d waited there, for her. Not whoever might happen to show up, but Kate herself. Kate specifically.

  She couldn’t pretend she liked how that felt.

  The Juneau police had invited her to come back and do a walk-­through to see if anything was missing, but Kate had declined. It hadn’t looked like anything had been taken in the photos they’d sent her. And the good news was, it wouldn’t have mattered if the man had stolen everything from that apartment. There was nothing in it Kate couldn’t replace. Most of what was in it, in fact, wasn’t hers to begin with.

  Though she found that when she said things like that to the police or her colleagues, there were those uncomfortable silences that reminded her—­powerfully—­that she really wasn’t like other people. And there was nothing that screamed Christmastime with more forced, uncomfortable cheer than being made to feel, yet again, like an alien.

  I’m glad you took your leave seriously and got out of there for a while, her captain had told her gruffly when they’d spoken on the phone. You deserve a vacation, Kate.

  And the truth was, Kate didn’t really like how that felt, either. As much because she wasn’t actually on vacation as because, when her captain had asked where she was, she’d said she was holed up on an island in the Inside Passage to ring in the New Year.

  That wasn’t a lie. Kate couldn’t tell lies directly to anyone. She refused. But it wasn’t exactly the truth, either.

  It felt a lot like one of those gray areas she’d avoided her whole life. She hated it. She hated that it made her wonder if she was on a slippery slope that led directly to megalomaniacal homesteading in the Alaskan interior like her father, ranting at captive family members about purity. Something that also did not feel great.

  Kate was full up on feelings.

  And that was before she got to thinking about what else had happened that night in Fool’s Cove.

  She’d woken that morning with the expected drumbeat in her temples, though it wasn’t bad enough to allow her to feel truly sick, which would have been a terrific way to not face up to the previous night’s behavior. Sadly, the couple of ibuprofen she’d swallowed had dealt with the headache but done absolutely nothing to wipe away the details of what had transpired between her and Templeton. On that couch, and then—­worse by far—­on her bed.

  She’d chugged a huge glass of water. Then another. She’d made herself a strong pot of coffee as she checked her phone and learned what had transpired in Juneau while she’d been eating pasta and then rolling around naked with a completely inappropriate man, letting him do things that she would have sworn up and down she wouldn’t like at all. Except she had.

  Her unmanageable feelings churned around inside of her, no matter how hard she tried to shove them back down, into place.

  Especially since it was a text from Templeton—­sent late the previous night, after he’d left her—­that had very tersely outlined what had happened in Juneau.

  By the time Kate had finished her rounds of endless phone calls, she was edgy. So she’d dealt with all of it—­her issues and her hangover and those unwieldy, unwelcome feelings—­the way she’d always dealt with such things and always would.

  Kate had gotten back to work.

  And by the time Templeton ambled back around to find her, it was already dark again on Friday afternoon. Only a rainy, insubstantial little spit of daylight earlier had indicated that Kate had worked almost all the way through the night, nibbling on a power bar when she thought of it. She’d passed out on the couch for a few hours around four in the morning, then jumped right back in when she’d woken a few hours later.

  Kate had finished going through Oz’s lists and all her old cases. Which was a good thing, because she could see that questioning sort of expression on Templeton’s face and wanted nothing to do with it.

  “Whatever you’re about to say,” she said briskly—­professionally—­when she opened the door to his knock and that knowing gleam in his dark eyes, “it’s going to have to wait. I’m ready to talk about these lists.”

  She expected him to argue. Because didn’t he always argue?

  But instead, Templeton grinned big and wide, as if he’d expected her to do exactly this, which was deeply irritating. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t tease her or make suggestive remarks. He didn’t glance in the direction of the couch, or her bedroom, or even her body.

  He made her want to scream.

  Kate did not scream. Because she’d decided that all she could really do was exude professionalism from every pore and treat Templeton the way she’d treated any of the other cops she’d gotten involved with in one way or another over the years. With distance and disinterest until they got the message and went away.

  And the fact that Templeton had made her feel things she’d always thought were the sort of overheated, overwrought, deeply unrealistic fantasies best suited for romantic movies was something Kate planned to keep to herself.

  Templeton waited—­still grinning, damn him—­while Kate pulled on her jacket and boots, then he led her back to the main part of the lodge. He brought her through that main lobby area and into the back rooms that she’d seen briefly when she’d toured this place that very first visit. And it was in one of those back rooms that she sat with Oz himself, who looked like no computer geek or man behind a curtain that Kate had ever known, with clever eyes and the build of a world-­class athlete.

  Together, she and Oz had gone through the lists again until they’d hammered out one they both agreed on. Out of all the cases that Kate had worked on in her career, they narrowed it down to three potentials.

  One was a family of human traffickers who’d operated a “pleasure cruise” out of Ketchikan, up through the Inside Passage. Another was a group of religious separatists whose base on a communal farm outside of Anchorage had been the center of a number of abuses and alleged exploitation of minors and laborers. Kate had been instrumental in dismantling both and putting the leaders in jail.

  The third was her own family. Samuel Lee Holiday, his three brothers and two cousins, and their foiled plot to alter the political landscape with homemade pipe bombs. Her uncles and second cousins were in jail, along with her father, and Kate had been more than “instrumental” in making that happen. She’d cracked the case wide open when she’d walked into that Trooper station and told them who she was and why she’d stolen that snowmobile to get away from her father’s compound.

  Not that Kate wanted to believe her personal history was relevant to explosions fifteen years later and an intruder in her Juneau apartment. But she couldn’t say with certainty that it wasn’t.

  She and Oz had dug into all three of those cases—­and more important, the current whereabouts, if known, of every person connected to those cases—­ever since. They’d pulled another near-­all-­nighter, with Kate crashing out for a couple of hours on one of the couches in the lobby, lulled to sleep by the crackling fire. Then she’d been back at it, breaking only to experience the mess hall conditions Bethan had been talking about.

  And the best part of throwing herself into all this research was that it left her absolutely no time to consider the ramifications of getting naked in front of, and all over, Templeton Cross.

  But she’d be lying to herself—­and not in a gray area, slippery-slide sort of way, but an all-­out, full-­scale lie—­if she pretended she ever really got
anything that had happened that night out of her head.

  Whatever she was doing, whatever lead she was trying to follow, she would always find herself lapsing back into the memory of Templeton’s mouth between her legs, those huge shoulders of his holding her legs apart, and his hands—­

  It was not helpful. The memory might kill her. Kate was a little surprised it hadn’t already.

  But it was also drawing closer to Christmas.

  Blue and Everly had left for Chicago Friday morning. Griffin and Mariah had headed off to tour their re­spective hometowns together on Saturday. Because they all might be elite special operatives, but some of them had families. And normal families did normal things come Christmastime, which usually meant congregating in groups. Together. This Kate already knew from a thousand movies and all the online reports of happy, glowing scenes involving iced sugar cookies, twinkling lights strewn over evergreens, and hapless reindeer statuary.

  “I didn’t expect Alaska Force to be the sort of place that closes down for the holidays,” Kate said, possibly more grumpily than was necessary, at the briefing on Sunday morning. Saturday had been the winter solstice and the longest night of the year, which meant that today was the first day in the long climb out of the dark.

  But it was nine in the morning and cloudy, so Kate was going to have to take that on faith.

  Her trust was anemic. Her faith was nonexistent.

  “We don’t shut down,” Isaac told her. “Ever.”

  “You said you were going to Anchorage,” Kate pointed out.

  Or threw in his face, to be more precise.

  And no one actually gasped out loud at her temerity in talking back to their commanding officer. But they didn’t have to. Kate knew better.

  Isaac smiled. And the room around her changed almost imperceptibly. Kate reminded herself that Isaac Gentry was a wolf in sheep’s clothing at the best of times. Above and beyond that, he was also not her friend. She hadn’t served with him. She’d come here in the first place to find a way to arrest him, not befriend him.