by KB Winters
“See,” I said, my voice teasing, as she handed me the bottles of shampoo and conditioner, “look at all this space. That’s how the Navy packs a bag.”
Gemma launched herself at me and pinned me down flat on the bed. “Ya wanna keep running your mouth, sailor? Or you think you can find something better to do with it?”
“I’d rather find something better for you to do with yours…” I grinned up at her.
She tightened her grip on my wrist. I wrapped my casted arm around her and pulled her down closer. When she was close enough, I raised my head from the bed and captured her mouth.
Every emotion and remnant of fear and frustration channeled into the kiss that went from zero to sixty in three seconds flat.
Gemma moaned softly as I parted her lips with my tongue and ran it over the surface of hers. She loosened her grip on my wrist and I took advantage of her distraction to flip her over onto her back. She grinned up at me. “So it’s like that, huh?”
“I’m The Player, baby. I always win.”
She laughed and rolled her eyes, but her mocking quickly dissolved as I seared her lips with another intense kiss. Within minutes, we were stripping one another, and our bodies melted together like hot wax. I was in no mood to go slow and tease and caress her. I wanted to be buried inside her, working out my frustrations in a fit of hot passion.
When Gemma’s clothes were all laying on the floor, joining the mess of other clothes, she managed to wrangle me out of my jeans, jacket, and shirt, and was working on tugging down the waist of my shorts.
She was in just as much of a hurry as I was.
I grinned up at her as my cock sprang free from my boxer briefs and she let them drop to the floor. “Now, what was it I was saying about keeping your mouth busy…”
“Hmmm. I’m not sure…” she teased, stroking her fingers up my dick. I shuddered at her feather-light touch that set my skin on fire.
“Gemma,” I hissed, as her fingers closed around my balls and caressed them slowly. “Don’t make me wait.”
“Why not? It’s fun watching you squirm…”
“I’ll make you regret it,” I warned, smiling at her.
She took a step closer, her perky nipples brushing against my chest. “Oh, now I’m worried.”
“A glutton for punishment, huh?”
She shrugged but licked her lips slowly. “Depends on the punishment…”
Fuck, she’s sexy.
My cock twitched against her thigh, and she smiled up at me, her hand still wrapped around my balls, stroking them absently. I reached behind her, sliding my flat hand down her low back, over the curve of her ass, and then raised it a few inches. “Last warning, Gemma.”
She flashed a devil may care smile and I took the invitation to slap her bare ass. It was a light playful slap, but enough to make her shiver.
With a smile, she climbed up onto her bed and got on all fours, positioning herself for me to continue.
Which I gladly did.
I smacked her ass again and she moaned. When I slipped a finger between her pert cheeks, and through her folds, I grinned at how drenched and ready she was. I grabbed a condom from her bedside table and slipped it on before I delivered another slap.
“Harder,” Gemma said, her voice delirious with lust.
I teased her with the tip of my cock and then slapped her ass again, with my flat palm, this time leaving a red mark on her fair skin.
To my surprise—and delight—she continued begging for more and when I entered her, she spasmed and contracted so much I thought she came with the first thrust. I gave her a new spanking before each thrust and her ass cheek was bright red from the repeated slaps. I hadn’t hit her hard enough to make it bruise, but the mark would likely remain red for the rest of the night. The thought excited me and made me want to mark her in other ways.
“Are you going to behave, Gemma? And let me take care of you?”
“Uh-huh,” she groaned.
I thrust deeper inside her and her groan became more urgent and needy. “Good girl.” I rubbed the tender spot on her bare ass, massaging the mark. She spread her legs wider and I thrust harder and deeper still. She arched, begging for release, when I felt myself thicken. I wasn’t going to be able to hold on much longer. I didn’t want to.
Before I came, I tore off the condom and pulled out at the last second, and shot my load all over her bare ass. Gemma was moaning from her own release as I rubbed the substance into her skin. She sank down to the mattress and blew out a puff of air and I lay down beside her, for the first time feeling the stitches in my side protesting against my vigor.
It had been so worth it.
Chapter Eight
“I think I’m going to have to misbehave more often,” Gemma declared with a wink, as she rolled off of me, lying flat against the bed, her breasts still heaving from the exertion. Little beads of sweat coated her skin and her hair fanned over the pillow in a messy array.
She’d never looked sexier.
“I won’t say no. I knew you were gonna be trouble from the very beginning.”
Gemma laughed, but silence settled between us, and I could all but hear her wheels turning. I rolled over to face her. “What’s wrong?”
“Aaron?” She twisted to look at me, her stare suddenly dark and serious. “I’m sorry that I was such a bitch earlier.”
“You took your punishment like a champ,” I said, teasing her. She smiled but it faded quickly. I could see it in her eyes that she was sincerely torn up about our argument—regardless of how hot the make-up/punishment sex had been. I reached over and brushed her hair back. “You were right. I was being a macho dickhead with a caveman complex.”
Gemma giggled and the sound vibrated through me, loosening the remnants of tension and frustration from the argument in her kitchen. She rolled her had back against the pillow and let out a sigh. “Did you mean what you said…the falling in love part?”
My eyes swept over her profile, following each line and curve of her delicate face. I let her question sink in for a moment, waiting for the truth to come out, but was met with a quiet comfort. “Gemma, look at me,” I said softly.
She rolled to her side and waited, her eyes wide as she watched me.
“I meant what I said.”
Gemma considered me out of the corner of her eye for a long moment, just long enough to turn my confidence into uncertainty. “Hey, listen,” I started, pushing myself up into a sitting position beside her. “There’s no reason to make this all dramatic. I wasn’t saying it to get anything in return. I just wanted you to know.”
Gemma turned to look me full in the face. “Well don’t go backing down now.”
“I don’t want you to feel like you have to say something back right now.”
“There you go protecting me again,” she replied with a soft smile. She reached between us and wrapped her fingers around the tips of my fingers that stuck out of the cast. “I’m glad you said what you said. You don’t strike me as the heart on your sleeve type, so I know that must have been a big step...” she paused, and I didn’t correct her. She had me pegged.
So much had happened so quickly that there were moments when it was hard for me to decipher what was real and what was all in my head. But looking down at our interior locked fingertips, I knew that what was happening between Gemma and me was real. Somehow in the middle of the shit storm I’d gotten caught up in—there was a silver lining.
We basked in the aftermath for a few more minutes before the reality of our situation was thrown back onto me with the impact of a sumo wrestler, when Gemma said, “So, there’s something I need to tell you, but first you have to promise not to freak out.”
I groaned. “Don’t tell me you’re knocked up,” I said, teasingly.
Gemma slapped my forearm—not so teasingly. “No, but kudos for sensitivity.” She glared at me for a moment before continuing, “There’s a little more to the story about my afternoon than I told you before.”
All of my relaxed muscles tensed, one by one, turning my body into a thick wall. Bracing myself for whatever was going to come out of her mouth next.
“I didn’t get sent home from the ER, early, like I said” she started. “It was a slow shift. That part was true. But I was the one who asked for a few hours off.”
“Okay…”
She sucked in a breath. “I went up to Stallion Bay and did a little digging—”
“You what?” Fireworks of fury burst inside me, sizzling out like a chain reaction down my arms, firing every nerve and tensing every muscle, until my hands formed tight balls. “Gemma please tell me you didn’t. Wait, is that why you were acting weird when I showed up at the hospital? Because you were planning this?”
She refused to meet my eyes and after a moment she gave a slight nod before setting her jaw. “Hear me out, Aaron.”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear her out. I wanted to chew her ass for being so careless. When I’d been at the hospital, she’d blown me off and acted like I was invading her space, or that I was out of line, when really, she had just been counting down the minutes until she could run off to Stallion Bay.
“I can’t even begin to explain how stupid that was, especially with O’Keefe on your tail!”
She twisted to meet my eyes, hers just as fired up as mine felt. “First off, this was before you called me and told me about O’Keefe. And second of all, I think we just spent the better part of the afternoon deciding that I can handle myself. And third of all, my gut instinct was right and if you’d shut up long enough for me to tell you about it, I’d tell you what I found!”
She flung the sheet off of her feet and launched out of the bed. I was too angry to even react at the site of her stalking from the room butt ass naked. Every fiber of my body was revved up and ready to fight. But before I could fully put my argument together, she reappeared, holding a white security envelope in her hand. “From everything you told me about O’Keefe, he’s the type to play dirty.”
I snorted. That was an understatement.
Gemma ignored my reaction and continued, “I was at work and I couldn’t stop replaying everything in my head. It was like a deck of cards shuffling over and over again. Something just wasn’t clicking. I got to thinking about his other business endeavors and when I followed that trail I found that his last big development was in Stallion Bay. I did a little digging around online and found out that similarly to Holiday Cove, the citizens of Stallion Bay weren’t exactly waiting with open arms when O’Keefe came rolling into town, talking about luxury resorts and high-rise condos.”
“They didn’t?” I hadn’t paid much attention to the deal, and it was far enough away that it hadn’t seemed relative. Stallion Bay was thriving with the new resort and all the new businesses and residences it had brought in, so I’d assumed it had been embraced wholeheartedly from the beginning.
Gemma shook her head. “No. And I remembered something you told me about a while ago. You told me that when O’Keefe first came here with his proposal there were protests and petition at town hall to send him and his blueprints packing. The same thing happened in Stallion Bay. The difference was that it’s a bigger city so there was more of a divide. Whereas here in Holiday Cove it was a flat out, nearly unanimous ‘no’, but in Stallion Bay it was closer to fifty-fifty. Half of the residents thought it would boost commerce and bring in new people—money—which they saw as being a good thing.
“Naturally that crowd was ecstatic when someone of O’Keefe’s caliber came forward with an offer. However, the other fifty percent were staunchly against it and took their concerns all the way up the political chain, and managed to win the mayor over to their side. He used his political ties to side with the people against O’Keefe and after a little battle, got the proposal turned down and sent O’Keefe on his way.”
I shook my head, not following. “When was all this? Stallion Bay’s resort has been up and running for almost a year now.”
Gemma nodded. “I know. It was a year and a half before they broke ground. O’Keefe had to file permits and everything twice.”
“How did he get around the mayor? Did he buy him off too?”
“Not exactly.” At this point in the weaving of her tail, Gemma opened the sealed envelope and handed me the contents “He died before the proposal went through. I think O’Keefe had him killed.”
Chills ran over me as though the room had just dropped ten degrees.
I took the pages from her hands and began to skim the words on the pages but my mind was spinning and I couldn’t decipher what I was reading. “Okay hold on. Tell me what I’m looking at here,” I said, starting at the beginning again. It looked like some pages had a medical record but I couldn’t see what it was Gemma was trying to show me.
She sat down beside me on the bed. “After I found the mayor’s obituary online, I left work and drove up to the hospital in Stallion Bay where he had been taken. I pulled a few strings with one of the doctors there and managed to get his autopsy results.”
I turned to glance at her profile, my eyebrows raised. Soldier, nurse…super spy? Who the hell was this woman?
Gemma continued, not even noticing my inquisitive stare. She gestured at some figures on the paper. “Turns out he had high blood pressure, which was a known condition and he’d been taking medicine to control it for some time. However, the medication that he was taking, when mixed with this drug,” she pointed out a line containing a long word that, to me, looked like jumbled nothingness, “would have been fatal.”
“Holy shit. And nobody knows about this?”
Gemma shrugged. “I don’t know. And I don’t know why nobody caught this. And I definitely don’t know who prescribed him this drug. I mean maybe I’ve watched too many forensic science shows but it seems to me that at this dosage it was a deliberate poisoning. Even if he wasn’t on the other medication for his high blood pressure there’s no doctor that would have prescribed this drug to him, and certainly not at this dosage. Levels this high indicate a massive dose, which might not kill a healthy person, but it certainly wouldn’t be good for them, either. So, after everything you’ve told me about O’Keefe, combined with what the FBI and FAA teams found at the museum, it’s starting to look like O’Keefe is playing a very dangerous game and that he’ll do anything to win.”
My head spun as I stared down at the paper, the ink blurring together the more I stared at it.
“Gemma, did you tell anyone else about this? Does anyone know where you were this afternoon?”
She shot me a dirty look. “I’m not stupid, Aaron.”
I sighed. “I know you’re not.”
“Well then stop assuming I’m going to fuck this whole thing up. I think I just proved that I can be more of an asset in this mess. You don’t have to keep treating me like a liability. All right?”
I held her gaze, my eyes desperately searching hers for the right way forward. She wanted me to stand beside her when my natural inclination was to stand in front of her. Not because I thought I was better than her. Quite the opposite. Gemma was rapidly becoming the best part of me.
A part I was desperate to protect.
“I don’t see you as a liability, and I do appreciate this information, but that still doesn’t mean you’re safe. O’Keefe is not opposed to using any kind of leverage he can find and right now—that would be you.”
“Aaron,” she sighed and sat up, her breasts flattened against her thighs as she curled her legs up and wrapped her arms to tuck them in tight. She stared straight ahead at the wall. “I thought we just went over this…”
I grabbed her hand and gripped it tightly. Her eyes moved to mine, widening at the intensity of my hold on her. “Gemma, I can’t lose you,” the words came out in a strangled whisper, getting caught in my throat. “You’re not weak. But right now, you’re my biggest weak spot. If he threatened you—which, he already did, verbally at least—I wouldn’t be okay and as it is, I’m barely hanging on over here.�
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The statement sank into the space between us. Weighty and heavy.
“You’re not going to lose me, Aaron.”
I reached for her and she melted against me. As I held her in my arms, safe and secure, I was overwhelmed with how raw and exposed I felt with my true emotions on the table. The closer we got, the more evident my old scar tissue became.
“We’re going to make it out of this, baby. I promise.” I dropped a kiss to her forehead, tasting the sweet saltiness of her skin.
As we huddled together on the edge of her bed, I wished I could find some way to freeze the moment and stay there forever.
Chapter Nine
Before Gemma and I went to sleep that night, tucked safely in my bed, we agreed that the best course of action would be to take the evidence to the FBI and FAA agents the following morning, as they’d been finished for the day when we finally got back to my place.
When the sun rose the following morning, I was awake and alert—despite having a rough night. All of the tossing and turning had reminded me of my first tour overseas. As a low ranking officer—brand new to the ship—every single noise was enough to jolt me from sleep and got my heart rate sky high until I got used to the sounds.
Now, I wasn’t in a tent, or in the desert, but up on the bluff it was quiet enough that each sound was pronounced and distinct. Normally I slept through it all, no problem, in fact, most of the time I slept with the windows wide open to hear the soft roar of the ocean and the rustling of the wind through the trees. I’d never worried about my safety. There was a gate at the end of the drive, that had been built to keep tourists out once the museum was closed, but half the time I didn’t even bother with it. I’d never had a problem with strangers showing up outside of business hours and the location was remote enough that there weren’t people trying to illegally camp out or park their RV.
But the night before, every whistle or rumble threw me from sleep into a cold sweat. I couldn’t even recall how many times I’d jumped out of bed to check the perimeter with a nine-millimeter and a flashlight. The most threatening thing I’d found was a tag team of gulls who’d decided to come out for a midnight snack courtesy of a trash can lid thrown open in the night breeze.
