by Anne Calhoun
“I can get someone else,” Cady said. “You’ve got better things to do than babysit me.”
“No way,” he shot back. Not without cameras or motion detectors.
“At least take a couple of hours off. Investigate on your own. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m not leaving you. No way.”
He stopped because he had no right to say that to her. No claim on her. She could fire him, demand a replacement. No one wanted to be around a guy with that kind of shit clinging to him, and no matter what Hawthorn said, that shit would stick to him for the rest of his career. His life. She would leave after the holidays and go on a world tour, meet up with Harry Linton again, marry a movie star or a music star or a tech mogul, and he’d be here. The only thing that made sense was to clear his name so he could keep the only life he’d ever wanted. The only family he’d ever truly belonged to.
She closed the folder, covering up the damning pictures, the allegations laid out in precise black and white letters on the page. Her movements were precise, straightening the edges so only the tab with BETTIS, JORDY showed. She did the same thing with the psychos email folder. The silence in the kitchen thrummed in his ears. No traffic noise, no television or radio, only the chirps and vibrations from her phone, cheerfully pinging notifications of new texts, tweets, posts, emails.
Then she tilted the phone and shut off the ringer, opened the drawer holding her hot pads and kitchen towels, and dropped it inside. Three steps and she’d closed half the distance between them. She looked up at him, but he couldn’t identify the look in her eyes. Desire, yes. Check. That was totally familiar. But something softened the look, something he didn’t recognize.
It was too much. Aware that his hands were tightly fisted, his shoulders rigid, he looked away.
Another step. Another infinitesimal tightening of his fists. His nails were all but embedded in his palms. He could smell the track on her hair, the cold air, hot rubber, grease, and underneath it, Cady’s wild, warm scent. “Don’t get too close,” he said.
She took another step. Less than an arm’s length between them now. Couldn’t she feel him vibrating? If he let go, he’d blow apart like a bomb.
“I’m serious, Cady.”
At that, she stopped. “You’re not in the mood? You don’t want me?”
The answer to both those questions was no. He wanted her more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life, all the basic things, like a permanent home. A family. A place he didn’t have to earn, didn’t doubt would always be there. He’d thought he had that in the department, but now even that was up in the air. Possibly, one of his brothers or sisters had betrayed him.
He stared at her. Never back down. Never walk away from a fight. This wasn’t a fight, except it felt like one, had all the charged emotion and threat of bruises, blood, getting scraped raw, inside and out.
Holding his gaze, Cady stepped through the invisible barrier defining his personal space. The shock of it went through him like a sonic boom. As the wave passed, echoes fading, all his nerves jangling, she reached out her hand. Impossibly, he stiffened even more, tensed and ready for God only knew what. A kiss.
She laid her hand on his shoulder then trailed her fingers down the length of his arm to his wrist, nearly numbed by the edge of his pocket digging into his flesh. The contrast between her callused fingertips and her gentle touch confused him for a moment. Then the tug coalesced into a request, and he pulled his hand from his pocket.
She rubbed the tender skin of his knuckles, then turned his fist over, clenched fingers up. Without applying any pressure, she stroked the skin until his fingers relaxed, tightened reflexively, then eased a little more. Before he knew what was happening, his whole hand relaxed, opening space for her fingers to stroke from his wrist to his fingertips.
A quick glance at his hand, then back at his face. She smiled, then set his hand on her hip. “Give,” she said, tapping his other hand.
She repeated the process, but this time his attention was torn between her touch and the heat of her body radiating through her jeans to his hand. Before he knew it, his left hand was open, vulnerable nerves set alight by her index finger tracing the creases in his palms.
This hand she lifted to her mouth and kissed. Training and experience prevented him from looking away, but the shock he got when he watched and felt her mouth against his skin nearly stopped his heart. She wasn’t looking away, either. Her gaze held his without challenge. As she kissed each fingertip, then bit the base of his thumb, he felt himself softening from the inside out, his shoulders relaxing, all the tension in his body slipping down to harden his cock.
He’d taken the edge off with sex before, a quick, hard fuck to let off some steam, but this was different. He couldn’t frame exactly how. The only way to know was to see it through.
The thought terrified and exhilarated him.
She lifted her chin and drew his hand down her throat until the heel of his palm rested over the notch in her collarbones. He could feel her pulse thudding under his fingertips and thumb. For a split second he wondered if she was crazy. She’d just opened his hands and put them on her body in the most fundamentally vulnerable way possible.
His heart took off as fast as her car, skittering sideways in his chest, individual beats blending together into a frantic thrum. His cock was an iron rod in his jeans.
She wasn’t looking away. Her pupils were blown wide, and a pink heat infused her face. She should be scared. She should be on the phone to Chris, or Hawthorn, demanding another bodyguard.
Not running.
He stood there like an idiot, her slender neck under his hand, until she spoke. “Do you want me?”
“Yeah,” he said. No point in lying. Not with his cock pushing against his zipper.
She laced her fingers through his and led him to her bedroom. His heart kept doing crazy things, and he couldn’t seem to stop fine tremors from running through his body. Cady didn’t seem to notice, or if she did, his lack of control didn’t frighten her. She left the bedside lamp off; the light from the kitchen lit up the door but the rest of the room was in darkness. He heard the rustle of fabric as she pulled back the comforter and the sheets.
“Come here.”
He did. He couldn’t do anything else. Any rational thoughts about department protocol, his future, even his past disappeared into dim, protective darkness of her bedroom.
“This is me being selfish,” she said, then pulled his Henley over his head. “I’ve wanted to do this since I saw you.”
“Do what?” he managed.
“Get my hands all over my body man.”
Before he could laugh, her hands were on him, slow, sweeping movements from his neck to his fingertips. When he relaxed, involuntarily, with no more forethought than a dog easing into its owner’s touch, she made a soft purring sound. He did it again, softened, almost leaned his big bulk into her tiny body before he caught himself.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I can take it.”
So he relaxed, leaned into her, then got an electric shock when her thumbs swept over his nipples. Sensation speared through him, as if his relaxed state meant his nerves were more receptive. Crazy, and yet true, because when she did it again it lit him up from his jaw to his cock, stronger this time. Fiercer.
More dangerous.
He shifted his shoulders, rolled his head on his neck, trying to find his footing. A cute girl wanted to make him feel good. Go with it. But this wasn’t just any cute girl he’d picked up in a bar or met through Shane’s family’s extended connections.
“Okay,” she said, although he hadn’t spoken. “Lie down.”
It was kind of amusing, the way she used her body to maneuver him to the edge of the bed, and kind of arousing too. Each bump surprised him, her abdomen against his hip, the way their feet tangled so that he lost his balance and fell backward, wrapping one arm around her back to pull her down with him. It was, he realized, a fight move. If he was going down, he took the o
ther guy down with him. Fists did less damage than feet.
But Cady wasn’t using her fists, or her feet. Instead, she straddled his hips, swept her hair over one shoulder, and kissed him. This was better, because he had her body all along his, grounding him against her fine cotton sheets. He wrapped one arm around her torso and fisted the other into her wild hair and tightened his grip. When she gasped, he slid his tongue into her mouth, seeking the wild, the frenzy.
But she tore her mouth from his. “Slow down,” she said, a smile in her voice. “I’m not missing this opportunity.”
“To do what?”
She braced her weight on one elbow and smoothed her palm over his shoulder, then his chest. “This,” she said. “Last time I didn’t get to touch.”
He gritted his teeth. Fine. If she wanted to touch, she could touch, but distant sirens were ringing. She stroked and smoothed and petted him, dropping him into a dark velvet moment outside space and time, coaxing his muscles to relax so she could shock him with a brush of her thumbs over his nipples, or, eventually, her fingers on his button fly.
His brain was buzzing, his breathing harsh in his ears, his skin sensitized to the point where her sweater was scratchy. “Take this off,” he muttered.
Obediently she sat up and swept it over her head, transforming her hair into a witchy nimbus around her head. He looked at her smooth long underwear top and knew without touching it would also be too rough. “That too.”
Another top discarded, another inch added to Cady’s hair. “How about this?” she asked, her hands behind her back at her bra clasp.
Lace and silk, he guessed. “Yeah,” he said.
Shoulders hunched, the bra dropped forward. His eyes had adjusted to the dim light, so he could see her dark pink nipples. He swept his hands up from her narrow waist to her breasts. She gasped, dropped her head back, arched into his touch, driving her sex against his erect cock.
“Get down here,” he said. His voice was rough with demand as he flattened his hands against her shoulder blades. She dropped forward, catching herself on her elbows, her mouth a breath away from his, her soft skin pressed to his so he could feel her quick inhales and exhales as she resumed that maddening, arousing sweep of her hands. Each time her fingers circled his navel or traced the ridge of his hipbone, she toyed with his fly, opening a button then retreating to his chest.
A low groan of desperate desire rumbled through the room. Couldn’t be Cady. Had to be him, and why not? Her skin against his soothed the ache she’d aroused and made it worse, because all he wanted was more, more, more. The tense energy he’d been holding inside for the last few days, maybe for his entire life, was being transformed, pulsing through him in big waves that made him lift his hips into hers, tighten his arms around her, loop one leg around her thigh. She kissed him back, hot and passionate and open, unafraid of the way his body trembled under hers.
She had his fly open now, her thigh draped over his, not pinning him but reminding him of her body, her sex, rubbing against his hip. The tease was maddening, the slowest of slow builds, so that when she worked his jeans and boxers down to free his cock, the shock of skin on skin sent a jolt through him.
He threw his head back and groaned again as she jacked him, her hands rough and sure, working him up until she slid down his body and licked a wet, hot strip from base to tip. The contrast between her hands and her mouth was startling. He kept making these hard lefts from what he expected to Cady’s pace, from fight to purring, from desensitized to desperate for skin, from callused fingers to the hot, soft clasp of her lips and tongue around his shaft.
He shouldn’t let her do this, but his fingers winding into her hair said otherwise. He braced himself on one elbow and watched her. His mind filled in the details in the darkness, Cady’s sweet lips stretched around him, her hand gripping the base of his shaft while her mouth worked the tip. Pleasure speared through him and he lifted his hips, struggling against his jeans around his thighs.
He stopped caring about his jeans when she engulfed him with a greedy sound that knocked him flat on his back. Her tongue fluttered against the bundle of nerves, then her lips closed around the shaft for a long, sucking pull. She alternated those two moves until he thought he would lose his mind, his hips rolling to her rhythm.
“Stop, stop,” he groaned.
She sat back and yanked his jeans down his legs and off. The cold air of her bedroom curled around his aching, wet shaft, hardening his nipples. She scrambled off the bed and stripped down her jeans, leaving them, long underwear, and socks in a pile on the floor before she darted into the bathroom for condoms. She came out with the box, tearing one packet off the strip then tossing the rest casually on the nightstand. She knelt between his thighs and sheathed him with a total lack of coyness or self-consciousness. Shrugging the comforter over her shoulders, she straddled his hips while he held his shaft upright.
When the tip of his cock nudged into her hot, wet folds, he both resented and appreciated the latex barrier between them. He wanted to feel her skin against his along every inch of their bodies, but without it he wouldn’t last thirty seconds. Even the slow, measured way she took him all the way inside her made his heart pound. When her bottom came to rest against his thighs, she sighed and twisted her hips a little, seating him even more firmly.
“So good,” she murmured, then leaned forward. Her hair and the comforter shrouded them in a cocoon of heated, electrified darkness slick with sweat and charged with a connection he couldn’t begin to describe. Nothing else existed. The world outside Cady’s soft sheets and silky skin disappeared, leaving only nerve endings tingling for more.
He couldn’t respond. His heart had pounded its way up to the top of his throat and was firmly lodged there, thunking away. He ran his palms up the backs of her thighs until he could cup her hips and brush his thumbs over the trimmed curls at the top of her sex.
She writhed on him, sending a spike of desire up his spine. “Are you teasing me?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. He was going to wring every single second of heated bliss from each moment he had with Cady. Because they wouldn’t last. This wasn’t real.
With each pass of his thumbs he opened the tender folds a little more, exposing her clit. Right now his touch was a faint promise, but with her first rise and fall on his cock he brushed the slick, swollen bud. She quivered, let out a trembling sigh.
She set a slow pace, giving him every opportunity to feel the hot, slick clutch of her walls around him, drawing up until his tip barely nestled inside her, pausing, then back down just as slowly. Pleasing herself, and him. He found a rhythm that matched hers, slow circles of his thumb at the top of her folds, dipping lower to rub her clit just as she took him inside her. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, so he could see the shadowy outline of his hands on her, gripping something solid and real, not fighting to hold on to his temper. Unless he gripped her hips hard enough to leave bruises, fine tremors ran through his fingers. He gave up fighting it and started to guide her movements, bring her down hard and firm, the soft slap of her bottom against his thighs muffled by the fluffy comforter.
Then her mouth found his, blundering from his ear along his jaw to pause, her lips gently pressed against his in a not-quite kiss. Hot, soft, swollen lips parted over his, then her tongue flickered into his mouth. She drew out of him all of the darkness and pain, taking it into herself. It was enough to almost shut him down, send him into overload. Without seeming to, she was taking him apart, picking him apart at the seams, but gently, like she knew she’d have to put him back together afterward and wanted to make sure all the pieces would fit.
He slid one hand from her hip up her back to close in her hair and press her mouth to his. Their rhythm was disintegrating, flying apart as the pressure rose in his cock. His hips snapped up, thudding against her body. She gasped, braced her hands against his chest and pushed back into his thrusts. The comforter dropped to her waist, revealing her cheek, flushed with desire, and th
e fine bones of her shoulders and arms, muscles straining in greedy demand for all he could give her. The sight pushed him over the edge. Instinctively he sustained the deepest possible thrust as he tipped over the edge, grinding his hips against hers.
Her head dropped back. She gave a sharp cry of release and froze. Even through his own release he could feel the tight clench of her sex. Then the tension ebbed from her muscles and she languidly shimmied her hips.
“Oh, yes,” she whispered.
Words were beyond him. Maybe when his heart settled back into his chest. After a long moment Cady lifted herself off him and collapsed to the side. “Yup. That’s what I needed.”
He grabbed onto the casual lifeline like a comedian getting no love, and huffed out a laugh. “Not drag racing?”
Her head lifted. She tried to shove her hair out of her face, but a thick tendril escaped her, hanging over one eye. “I didn’t drive,” she said, emphasis on I. “I sat on my ass on the bleachers and watched you drive.”
He couldn’t help himself. He smiled at her outraged tone. “Based on what I saw when we left the track, I’m doing my civic duty keeping you from behind the wheel.”
“It’s a rural paved road through twenty-seven miles of farmland until you hit Pender. In winter the fields are stubble, so you can turn on the high beams and floor it. Or so I hear. From, you know, lawbreakers who do things like that.”
“So you’re saying we should run some speed traps out there?”
“Spoilsport.” Giving up on controlling her hair, she dropped a kiss on his nose, of all places, then clambered over him, heading for the bathroom. “It was kind of fun to be an anonymous spectator.”
He gave her a minute, and when he heard water running in the steam shower, he followed her in and dealt with the condom. Steam puffed from the jets in the walls, enshrouding Cady’s figure. As he watched, her finger appeared, writing letters backward on the glass wall.
