Inked

by Drew Elyse

  But the big guy—and he was big, maybe not quite as much as Jackson or some other men I knew, but definitely large enough that he should probably intimidate and might if I weren’t well over the edge now—didn’t say anything. He looked at me impassively, but there was a tension to him that told me it was fake. This wasn’t a friend used to the fallout from his buddy’s man-whoring ways, faced off with another angry female he just had to wait out. No, this was something else.

  Just that, one expression, had me rethinking it all. Texan had been polite, but stoic now that I thought back. And having some buds help you move boxes out was one thing, but this guy had been actually taping up the box. Had he been packing it, too? Because that was definitely weird.

  I stared at him, looking for something I was missing. He wasn’t dressed for moving someone out. No, most people would go for just about anything but a dress shirt and slacks for that task.

  Then, I saw it there on his hip.

  At first, I thought it might be a phone clip or a pager. Both were a little odd, but some people still used them. But that wasn’t it.

  I leaned to my side, trying to get a better angle and…

  It was a badge.

  He was a cop.

  And he was here, Jackson’s apartment. Who I hadn’t seen in two weeks…

  The air went thin, then seemed to vacate the room entirely.

  “No,” I whispered.

  No, it couldn’t be.

  His eyes tracked mine down to his badge, and that tension became apparent all over his face.

  “Is…is he…” I couldn’t ask it.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose.

  Fuck.

  He’d just been here to…what? Pick up some belongings, I guess. And he hadn’t thought he’d have to give anyone the news.

  I wanted to retreat, run right back to my apartment, hunker down with my food, and pretend I’d never come in here, but I couldn’t now. I had to know, and it looked like this guy wasn’t offering the answer up on his own.

  “Is Jackson okay?” My voice trembled, and I knew he heard it. His jaw clenched even harder.

  He sighed, a deep, resigned sound that shook me even more before he started, “Listen.” But I couldn’t.

  Here I’d been harboring all this anger and resentment, and all along he’d been…gone.

  My hand flew up to cover my mouth, instinct ready to smother any sound ready to come out at the understanding that Jackson was…

  “Fuck.” My eyes focused back in front of me, to the officer who looked ready to pull his own hair out if he could only get a better grip on it. He took me in, then moved quickly around me, down the hall. I wasn’t sure if I was meant to follow, but it didn’t matter. He came back a second later, looking like a man on a mission.

  “Listen. I only have a second, but he’d fucking hate me if I let you walk out of here like this.” His words were low, rushed, and intent.

  I didn’t interrupt. Somehow, he already knew who I was.

  “What I’m about to say, you don’t repeat to a soul. Get me?” I nodded by rote. “I don’t know what conclusions you were jumping to there, but I can guess. That’s not what this is. He’s fine.” While I was drawing a desperate breath into my lungs, he paused, pulling his lips in and biting them as if he still wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m guessing by that reaction you had, more happened between you two than he let on, which is so fucking stupid I could wring his neck. If I hadn’t already looked into you, know you’re clean, know you’re good with Sketch and his boys, you wouldn’t be getting this. Fuck, you still shouldn’t. I should walk away right now, but he wasn’t exactly good at hiding what you were doing to him.”

  Waiting on bated breath, I managed to whisper, “Please tell me.”

  “He was undercover. His name isn’t Jackson. I can’t give you his real one.”

  He wasn’t dead.

  He wasn’t even Jackson at all.

  He was…someone else entirely.

  “I can’t tell you more than that. Fuck, I can’t even tell you that. I’m risking a hell of a lot for me, him, and the whole fucking investigation telling you even that. Whatever happened with you two, he should have waited. He tried, I know that, but he should have done better. Now, I’m giving you that for him, but that’s it. You need to go back to your apartment and pretend this conversation never happened. He’ll be in touch when he can.”

  I understood that last part was not an invitation to hang around for even another second. Even the other men—officers?—helping him couldn’t know what he’d just shared.

  Without a word, I took off, hustling back across the way, and shutting myself in.

  For a long time, I just stood there processing it all. Understanding now why he’d held off for so long. Realizing that it had been him trying to protect me from the lies he had to tell, from the exact thing that happened with him disappearing on me.

  And accepting that maybe this wasn’t over after all.

  Chapter Three

  Braden

  Once this was done and these fuckers were sent down for a long time like they should be, I was never taking fucking undercover work again.

  One night. I got one fucking night with her in my arms. One night of burying myself in her as she cried out for me. One night of exploring the tattoos that artfully decorated her curvy body.

  It wasn’t enough. Not even close to what I needed from her.

  Then, the prosecuting attorney had given in—sort of. The fucker decided to do a sweep, rounding up everyone they could on what I’d given them, and me. Yeah, my ass got thrown in cuffs along with them to keep up the lie. Until he was sure he had enough to prosecute—and he was hoping to get more by getting some of the crew to start singing to save their own asses—he didn’t want my cover blown.

  Since they weren’t going to sit me in a cell through that process, they shipped me upstate to a fucking cabin in the middle of nowhere so I could virtually not exist. Until everything was set one way or another, I was sitting on my hands.

  Fuck that, the truth was my hand had been busier than it had since I was a fucking teenager.

  I had nothing to do up here but think about the way Jess went wild for me. Even a couple weeks in, not one of those images was drying up. Neither had my imagination. Having had a taste, I found my appetite for her only grew. I was spending as much time dreaming up ways I still would have her once I was free of this investigation.

  And once I managed to get that spitfire of a woman to forgive me for pulling this disappearing shit on her.

  If I could even manage that.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  I thought taking that sweet mouth, pushing her back into her apartment, and shutting us in was answer enough. Based on her hands shoving me back harder than I’d have anticipated and the fire in those hazel eyes, I was wrong. I knew she’d keep me on my toes.

  “I should have said yes.”

  No, I shouldn’t have. Not yet, but that ship sailed when I finally felt those lips. There was no way in fuck I was stepping back now unless she made me.

  “I’m sorry?”

  Her hands went to her hips, and she really needed to rethink that placement if she ever wanted to have a conversation I was fully focused on when she was pissed. All that move did was make me want to replace them with mine.

  “Earlier, you gave me a chance at something I’ve been wanting for six fucking months,” I laid it out for her. “I wanted to say yes more than anything, but there’s a lot of shit going down in my life that made me feel I couldn’t. Now, I’ve been sitting around for over an hour kicking my own ass. I want you, Jess. I want this. The other shit be damned.”

  She tried to keep that stern expression that was only making my cock hard, but she couldn’t hide that I was getting through.

  “And what happens when you up and change your mind again?”

  It wasn’t in her face, not anywhere that I could find, but there was a vulnerability to that que
stion I hadn’t expected. Beneath that gorgeous, confident surface with all the sass and wit on display, I already knew there was soft. You could see it in the way she cared about the people in her life. I hadn’t known until right then that she was already letting me get close to it.

  Done with the distance, I pressed her back into the wall, feeling every curve of her against me. I couldn’t make promises as much as I was fucking tempted to. As sure as I was that I wanted her, there was no telling what would happen. For all I knew, she’d want to kick my ass to the curb in a week. What I could give, I did when I cupped her jaw and made sure I was speaking directly down to that part of her when I said, “If we don’t work, we get to that place together. But I’m fucking done standing in the way of what we both want.”

  It was the right answer. Jess didn’t want flowery bullshit. She wanted real. And as real as I could give her, I would.

  I wouldn’t have done any of that, wouldn’t have said those things, if I’d known I’d leave the next morning and end up with cuffs on. If I’d known the dick of a lawyer was going to cave—a bit, anyway—so soon, I wouldn’t have touched her, not until I was free of the lie. Then I’d be back at her door, fessing up and begging for a shot.

  Now, God only knew what she thought of me. Probably that I was the world’s biggest prick that fed her a line of shit just to get in her pants, then took off once I got what I wanted.

  Except I didn’t have what I wanted, not yet.

  Sex with Jess was the hottest thing I’d ever experienced, but that wasn’t enough. I wanted her. All of her. I wanted her fire, her sass, her sweet. I wanted a crack at really getting close to that soft spot. I wanted to find out if the promise of her was all I thought, and if it was I’d be hard pressed not to put a fucking ring on her finger.

  But even the possibility of getting us there got a fuck of a lot slimmer being stuck up here.

  I went to the small fridge for another beer, thankful at least the place had been stocked up properly given the fact that being there might just be destroying my damn future. Until I had any move to make, that beer was going to keep me company.

  I was out back, chopping wood to alleviate some of the tension and boredom from being trapped up here when I heard the car approaching. No one should be able to find this place or know I was there outside a handful of officers I trusted, but that didn’t stop me from moving quickly around the side of the cabin, concealing myself there while I reached for my sidearm. If by some chance one of those motherfuckers found out who and where I was, they weren’t going to get a shot at taking me out. I slowed my breathing as the car pulled up, keeping myself forcibly calm and focused.

  Before the vehicle even stopped, a voice called out, “McCaffery!”

  Releasing a breath, I disarmed and stepped out. There were five people that knew my whereabouts, and each had their own code word to announce themselves. That, from the word and voice, I knew was Jack.

  I watched while he threw the Jeep in park, then climbed out while leveling me with a look I did not get. He closed the door, standing in that same spot a minute before he announced, “You’re a fucking idiot.”

  He was dead serious, and I had not one clue what just happened.

  “What’re you talking about?”

  He shook his head, coming up the drive to me. “The girl.”

  Shit.

  I didn’t say it, but Jack read it anyway.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

  I didn’t know how much he knew, or how he knew anything at all, but that didn’t matter. “Is she alright?”

  There was no way anyone in the Coranco crew knew about her and there shouldn’t be any way they’d gotten word about me, so she shouldn’t be a target. But the way he was acting, I suddenly wasn’t so sure.

  “She’s fine.”

  Thank Christ. I didn’t know what the hell I’d do if I’d gotten her hurt.

  Giving myself a second to let that panic leave my system, I turned and led him inside, dropping into the single armchair while he took the couch.

  “Fucking pissed at you, though,” Jack picked up his story. “We were clearing out the apartment and she came charging in ready to rip you a new asshole.”

  It shouldn’t make me grin, but I knew exactly how she looked when she was pissed and, call me twisted, that look fucking did it for me. I didn’t like meek women, never wanted to be with someone that’d let me get away with any shit I might pull. My mom, my aunts, even Gram had never been those type of women. I once watched Gram pull out a cleaver after Gramps said something about the weather girl being a peach. She didn’t use it, but she got her message across just pointing that thing. What’d Gramps do? Started laughing.

  “Boy, I’ve seen a lot on the force. You wear that badge as long as me, you can’t escape that. Ain’t ever seen a thing in the line of duty that scared me the way your gram does when that fire lights up. But you know firsthand how that same fire lights everything she does, including the way she loves. Nothing better on this earth than feeling that.”

  I’d never forgotten the day he told me that. I’d been a teenager, too young to really give much thought to the type of woman I’d want beside me for life, until he said that. Realizing just what it was he had, what my dad had found too, made that picture start to take shape.

  Jack, seeing my expression change, shook his head. “You’re so fucked.” He probably wasn’t wrong there. “Look, I knew you were feeling this girl, and I can’t say I don’t see why. My tastes run a different way, but a blind man could see the appeal there. I just don’t know why the fuck you’d make that move like you did. I really thought you’d kept that locked down.”

  Dropping my head back, I admitted, “I did. Until our last call, I kept her at arm’s length. About fucking killed me to, but I did it. Then you said all that shit about how we weren’t moving forward and all I could see was another six months bogged down in that case, living across the hall while she moved on because she thought I wasn’t interested. I couldn’t do it. If I was going to be stuck there, I was going for it and I’d just have to convince her to forgive me later. It was a shit plan, but it was all I had.”

  Jack just stared at me like he was tempted to smack some fucking sense into me.

  “Look, if I’d fucking known the prosecuting attorney was going to suddenly blow shit open the next morning, I wouldn’t have.”

  “Yeah, well, the guy’s a prick. The captain got on his ass non-stop, even started making threats about what the next election would look like if he didn’t have his support. That got him considering a different course of action quick.”

  After all I’d dealt with the asshole on this case, I hoped the captain voiced his support elsewhere anyway. Leaving a cop tied up on an investigation that was done was a reckless move. More time undercover meant more time for that to be found out. If he did it to me, there was no telling who else had dealt with the same. The last thing cops wanted was one of our brothers’ asses swinging in the wind that way.

  We both stewed in that silent agreement for a long minute that he broke.

  “I told her.”

  I was fucking floored.

  “You what?”

  He threw his hands up. Jack was usually a chill guy, so seeing him losing it was surprising. “It was a mess. She came barreling in, pissed as all hell. I had no idea what to do with that, but I figured I had to let you just deal with that when the time came. Then she realized you weren’t there, but we were boxing up your shit. When she saw my badge…” He shook his head. “She thought you were on a slab. If it’d just been a concerned neighbor, I’d have let her think it gladly. But you made such a thing about this girl.”

  And he knew I couldn’t just go walking back into her life if she thought I’d died. If she had to mourn that, regardless of what little we’d had, it wouldn’t be a simple matter of forgiveness.

  I’d put him in an impossible situation, and he chose to have my back even when the consequ
ences would all fall on him if this came out.

  “Thank you.”

  “Yeah, well, you better hope she keeps her mouth shut and this all gets wrapped up quick.”

  I did hope that.

  Because Jess knew, and hopefully, that meant she was waiting.

  “And if internal gets involved, I’ll sell your ass up the river so fast you’ll be halfway to Canada before you realize it happened,” he grunted.

  It was an empty threat.

  He’d have my back even then.

  We’d only had this case together, most of the contact in that time coming over the phone, but that didn’t mean shit.

  He was my partner.

  Given the chance, I’d give him the same.

  Just as soon as I got out of this fucking cabin and back to Hoffman where I now belonged.

  Chapter Four

  Jess

  I resisted the urge to look up.

  Despite the strange internal feeling otherwise, I knew that if I did, I’d see nothing, just like the last four times. I’d have heard if someone had come in the shop door, so where this need to check if there was someone standing there, waiting for me to do my job, I didn’t know.

  All I knew was that it felt like there were eyes on me.

  It was a feeling I seemed to be experiencing a lot lately, always without cause. If I let myself admit it, it was probably wishful thinking. Some part of me was hoping I’d look up and Jackson—or whatever his real name was—would be standing there. But as days since I’d stormed into his apartment turned into weeks, then passed over a month, and was quickly approaching two, I was losing faith that it was going to happen.

  Maybe he had been undercover and that was why he’d up and disappeared, but maybe that was also just perfect timing for him. I was trying to withhold judgment since it wasn’t like I knew how long it took to do…whatever he was doing that took him away, but it got harder to do the more time passed.