The Time in Between

by Kristen Ashley

  His grunts mingled with her moans, the sounds of their flesh connecting and Cady whimpering, “Coert.”

  So he kept exploding.

  Finally, his hips settled. His muscles relaxed. She collapsed on top of him, her hair all over his face and neck, and Coert didn’t care.

  The room smelled of sex and Cady, her perfume, the scent of her hair. Her warm, soft body was heavy on top of him, her breaths harsh against his neck. Her slick pussy was tight around his dick, the taste of her still in his mouth, the vision of her lost in it, lost in him, so focused on what they had it was unreal as she rode him. With all that, he could be suspended in that moment for an eternity and he wouldn’t have cared.

  He could rub it in she went fast. She rode his face for about five minutes before she got so excited, she had to move down, fumbling maddeningly (but that was in a good way) in her excitement with the condom, and then climbing on his cock in order to ride him rough and hard, like they both had only minutes to reach orgasm before the earth careened into the sun.

  But he wasn’t going to rub it in.

  At least not now.

  Because now he was riding the high of learning there was something hotter than bathroom-in-a-bar sex.

  Explosive.

  And through it he got to watch her ride him, her beautiful body naked.

  All except his diamond.

  He turned his head and kissed whatever his lips encountered, which was her hair over her temple.

  Then he muttered, “You get your way. You can have the top more often.”

  She took her time lifting her head like she didn’t have the energy to do it (and this wasn’t surprising, she’d gone gung ho, especially when she was riding his cock) and looked down at him.

  “Well, thank you.”

  He knew she meant it snotty but it came out wispy so he smiled.

  She shook her head then pushed up slightly, coming away from him. He felt her undo her wool scarf that bound his hands to his headboard.

  When it went slack, he slid them free and rounded her with his arms but didn’t move them any other way.

  Cady settled back down, flicking her hair away from his face, which was too bad, but burying her face in his neck, which he liked.

  “We need to do that again,” she murmured.

  “You get tied up next time,” he replied.

  She said nothing but she didn’t have to since she also shivered and he knew it wasn’t because she was cold.

  He kept one arm wrapped around her waist and used his other hand to smooth over her back, trail through her hair, just touching her, taking her in, before he curved it around her upper back and stroked his knuckles against the side of her breast.

  “We should probably not have so much sex and talk more, baby,” he murmured. “There’s a lot to talk about.”

  “Mm, but I like having sex,” she murmured back.

  He smiled at the ceiling.

  She kissed his neck but otherwise didn’t move. “We’ll talk. Maybe I can meet you for lunch tomorrow. We’ll go somewhere like Weatherby’s where it would be terribly inappropriate for Sheriff Yeager to have an erection so I’ll be certain not to make that happen. Instead, I’ll share such important tidbits as, the lighthouse is beginning its tours in February but I’m beginning to volunteer at the Historical Society mid-January. And I still want a French bulldog, or a mastiff, or a Newfoundland. And since Janie has clearly stolen Midnight from me, I now have an excuse.”

  Coert heard all she said but it was only one thing that made him stop stroking her to twist his fist gently in her hair and give it a soft tug as he turned his head to the side.

  She lifted hers and caught his eyes.

  “Tours?” he asked.

  “Yes. Two days a month. A Saturday and a Sunday, not the same weekend. Ticketed only. Small groups. And they’ll be guided.”

  This wasn’t getting better.

  “Guided how?”

  “Guided . . . guided. An attendant will be in the lighthouse with the people on tour.”

  Nope.

  It wasn’t getting better.

  “You mean you’re not opening the gate, you’re opening your home?” he asked.

  “Well, yes,” she answered.

  “I don’t like that, Cady.”

  She looked perplexed. “Why?”

  “That’s your home,” he said again.

  “Yes,” she unnecessarily agreed.

  “And people do stupid shit.”

  She didn’t have a reply to that.

  “You have things,” he stated. “Nice things. Things sticky fingers can grab. Or they’ll come there to case the joint. And you just invested a lot to make that joint a really nice joint. They see that they’ll think you have more. Cash. Jewelry. Whatever. You live alone. And that lighthouse is not close to town or really anything.”

  “I have Midnight and I have Elijah, and when you don’t have Janie, I’ll have you, and I have an alarm and again, there will be a volunteer doing the tours,” she reminded him.

  “Cady, it’s not smart to open your home to strangers.”

  “And I have a gate and a fence, Coert,” she went on like he didn’t say anything.

  “You’ve unfortunately been touched by it but it was in your life and then it was out. It’s been my life, my career, since I graduated college and the academy so I know people can suck, Cady. I know there are some of them that, if they can’t find ways to suck, they’ll invent them. And it isn’t rare they can do all that.”

  “You graduated college?”

  Christ, he forgot how cute she could be all the time.

  “University of Colorado, criminal justice and poli sci,” he said shortly so he could get back to the matter at hand. “You need to ditch these tours.”

  “Coert, Jackie at the Historical Society is over the moon to be able to give tours. Not only that, I’m donating the proceeds of the tickets to the Society. She’s already had her yearly budget approved with her estimate of revenue from this and it’s substantial. I can’t back out now.”

  “It isn’t wise.”

  “It isn’t foolish either. People in England give tours of private homes and they wouldn’t do that if everyone was robbing them blind.”

  “This isn’t England.”

  “I know. It’s Magdalene, which is New England.”

  “Cady,” he growled.

  “Coert,” she snapped.

  They fell silent, and as Coert kept his silence, he remembered something else. This being that way back when, he and Cady had disagreed very little.

  But regardless of the fact she didn’t hold a degree she was sharp as a whip. No one with that quick a sense of humor wasn’t highly intelligent.

  The bad part about that was, she didn’t use that intelligence just to be funny.

  She was killer with a comeback in an argument.

  Coert broke the silence.

  “Am I gonna be able to talk you out of this?”

  Cady responded immediately. “No.”

  “Then there’ll be a sheriff’s presence at the lighthouse on tour days.”

  Her eyes got huge. “That’s not necessary.”

  “I’m the sheriff, Cady. So it’s me who gets to say what’s necessary.”

  “That’s a personal abuse of resources. Which is an abuse of power. And it’s a conflict of interest.”

  “It isn’t a conflict of interest.”

  He had her there and he knew she knew it when her reply was, “Well, it’s the other two.”

  It absolutely was.

  That said . . .

  “It’s Magdalene’s lighthouse, Cady, now being open to the public. And as Magdalene doesn’t have its own police force, in these new circumstances, it’s up to me to make certain it remains secure. To add to that, the land outside the lighthouse is officially unincorporated Derby County land, not within the Magdalene city limits, so it’s not only in my jurisdiction, I think it’s well within the purview of the county’s sheriff d
epartment to see, with increased traffic, that that area is safe.”

  “That’s ridiculous and extreme and I’m uncertain your voters will feel the same way you do.”

  “You gonna produce a campaign video to share it with the world?”

  “No,” she bit off. “But we had a drama in front of the beauty salon. I came out of a bathroom in a bar, a bathroom that I was in with you, with sex face, and we held hands and kissed through a drink. We’re having lunch together at Weatherby’s tomorrow where I’m not going to make you get hard. People will learn I’m your woman and they’ll hear you’re assigning deputies to guard my home. They’ll question it and I don’t think they’ll like the answers they come up with.”

  “Your home happens to be the lighthouse open to the public and I’m not assigning deputies to give the tours, Cady. I said there’ll be a sheriff’s presence. My boys might do drive-bys. They might park and remain. It’s two days a month, not three hundred, sixty-five days a year. If there’s a murder, obviously, they won’t hang at a lighthouse staring down tourists. They’ll roll out.”

  “There’s murders in this county?” she whispered.

  “There’s murders everywhere,” he replied.

  “Oh my God, how many murders have you investigated?”

  He didn’t know whether to growl with frustration or bark with laughter.

  So he just squeezed her tight and reminded her, “We’re talking about you opening your home to strangers.”

  “I brought the old girl back to life, Coert. That needs to be shared. That’s Magdalene’s history. It’s beautiful. Honestly, how selfish would it be to keep those views from the observation room just for us and our friends and family?”

  They were getting into sticky territory here not only because she was making sense but also because the lighthouse wasn’t his. It wouldn’t ever be his. Maybe in nineteen, twenty years when their kid graduated from high school and they were empty-nesters, they could move in there.

  But in the meantime, it wouldn’t even really be hers because she’d be in the bed she was in right now.

  “I’ll share with Jackie you have concerns and that she or the other volunteers might see deputies around until you feel better about the situation,” she carried on. “But except the winter months where weather can be extreme, she’s expecting full tours for each day and she’s doing that because quite a bit of them are already booked. She’s been advertising this is coming for months. I can’t let her down now. I just can’t, Coert. And if you feel your sheriff’s deputies have to stare them down in case a master burglar or a meth head looking to score some glassware and knickknacks he can pawn to pay for his next stash comes calling, then all right.”

  “All right?” he asked to confirm.

  “All right,” she confirmed.

  “Can I be amused instead of annoyed at you now?” he asked to tease.

  She narrowed her eyes.

  He’d lost her between their legs so he rolled her to her back, stretching down her side, and all through this he was grinning at her.

  “I can’t imagine how you’d find it annoying that I would say what I’m going to do with my own home,” she remarked.

  “I can’t imagine how you’d find it surprising that anything I think might cause you harm, or upset or aggravation, I’d want to do something to stop.”

  When she shut her mouth, she did it so hard he could swear he heard her teeth clack together.

  Finally, he got her.

  That was when he started laughing.

  He just didn’t do it out loud.

  “Do you not have any women deputies?” she rapped out suddenly.

  “Why do you ask that?” he returned, still chuckling.

  “You call them your ‘men’ and your ‘boys’ and they aren’t that if there are females among them.”

  “I wouldn’t call them that if there were women, which there aren’t,” he answered.

  “Why not?” she demanded to know.

  “Because Liz moved to Annapolis with her husband a coupla years ago. He got the offer of a job at a firm that he couldn’t turn down. He’s a defense attorney, by the way, so you can imagine what it was like at their house. But she loved him and she managed not to kill him the five years I knew them while they were married, or the two years they’ve been gone, so go figure. And Jillian took leave to have a baby and decided not to come back, and,” he stressed when she opened her mouth, “that was her decision. She was a loss. The guys still invite her to anything we have going on and she’s still on the softball team. So now that I laid that out, maybe you can give Gloria Steinem a rest and I can have Cady back.”

  “Oh my God,” she hissed. “You didn’t just say that.”

  Coert dipped his face to hers. “Baby, you are just too easy to tease. You don’t want your buttons pushed, your best bet isn’t to turn on those blinking arrows pointing to them.”

  “I’m not enjoying discovering annoying, button-pushing Coert Yeager,” she declared.

  He moved in, burying his face in her neck. “Too late, honey. You’re never getting rid of me now.”

  She lay tense under him only a second before she turned into him and wrapped her arms around him.

  He kissed her neck.

  She kissed his throat.

  Coert guessed that meant they were done bickering.

  “Gotta hit the bathroom, baby,” he muttered in her ear.

  “’Kay. I’ll be in in a bit. Need to wash my face and brush my teeth.”

  He gave her neck another kiss before he slid away from her, out of bed and walked to the bathroom.

  After he turned the water on to wash his hands, she came in wearing a nightie, and Coert wished she’d nabbed his sweater.

  He dried his hands as she moved to the sink beside his that he never used and set her stuff down, lifting her hands to bind her hair back.

  He reached for his toothbrush. “Lunch is good tomorrow. I’ll text when I know I’ve got an hour free. Is that cool?”

  “Yeah, honey,” she replied.

  He loaded toothpaste on his toothbrush but before he started brushing, he looked at her in the mirror and said, “I think Janie would like to see everyone again before they go so can you talk to the family? Set something up?”

  She turned off the faucet and reached for the towel to dry her face, answering, “Of course. I’ll tell you at lunch tomorrow.”

  Toothbrush to his lips, he didn’t brush, he said, “She needs alone time with just you and me too. And I’d rather not wait until after your family leaves,” and then he stuck the brush in his mouth.

  She tossed the towel aside and grabbed her brush. “Whenever you’re ready for that but I think the family night first. And also, you should be around the day before the men and kids leave. We’ll probably do something up big. I’m not sure of the schedule. Do you have Janie on New Year’s Day?”

  He spit, rinsed, and told her, “Half day. The evening. Kim has her New Year’s Eve this year. So you’ll have me.”

  She pulled the brush out of her mouth, turned to him, and garbled, “Eggzelent.”

  Coert moved to her, hooked her around the waist, bent and touched her nose with his lips.

  When he lifted, she went back to brushing but didn’t move out of his hold.

  “But you need to know, I’ll be on call and just to say, New Year’s is crazy town so I might be in and out or I might be in for the beginning and then gone until whenever I come home to you.”

  She kept brushing and nodded.

  Coert kissed her nose again.

  When he lifted away the second time, he murmured, “Meet you in bed.”

  She nodded again, grinning at the same time she was brushing.

  Yeah, forty-one years old and his Cady was still cute.

  He gave her a quick squeeze, let her go and left the room.

  He’d pulled on pajama bottoms, walked the house, checked the doors, turned out the lights, and by the time he hit his bedroom, Cady was don
e in the bathroom and was under the covers in his bed.

  It was the most beautiful vision he’d seen since his daughter waved goodbye to him at preschool that morning.

  So Coert took it in as he moved across the room.

  And met her there.

  Paradise

  Cady

  Present day . . .

  MIDNIGHT WOOFED AT THE SAME time her body jerked, this jerking me awake in Coert’s bed.

  I got up on an elbow just as she woofed again and exited the bed.

  It was mostly dark, but I could see faint light coming in from the hallway because I’d left the kitchen light on for Coert.

  We’d had lunch together at Weatherby’s that day and managed to get through it without finding a bathroom to have sex.

  It was awesome doing something as everyday as meeting your man for his lunch hour. I’d never had that.

  I loved it.

  I still missed the sex.

  He also came over for dinner that night, and I belatedly made my family (and Coert) spaghetti pie.

  He’d approved.

  Then again, I already knew Coert Yeager liked pie in all forms. I’d made him a shepherd’s one back in the day and he’d loved that too.

  However, he’d had a callout, which meant he’d left not long after Dexter and Corbin had their fourth servings, which meant around eight o’clock.

  I looked at the alarm clock on Coert’s nightstand and it said it was nearly one in the morning.

  What I didn’t hear was any barking.

  I figured this meant Coert was home.

  I threw back the covers and got hit with a blast of cold that washed whatever sleep that was remaining clean away.

  Nevertheless, Coert was home so I left the bed, the room, walked down the hall and stairs and was wincing as I adjusted to the light from the kitchen when I hit the doorway to it. Through my wince I saw Coert in his light-brown sheriff’s shirt with the beige thermal under it walking my way with Midnight prancing beside him.

  “Baby, you shouldn’t have left bed,” he said, making it to me and reaching out a hand to the switch to douse the light in the kitchen.