Going Deep

by Anne Calhoun

  When his mouth trailed down her abdomen, she broke rhythm by whimpering bereftly, then felt his chuckle against her skin when she lifted her legs and braced them on his thighs to give him better access. His mouth paused at the top of her sex, then one hand slipped under her bottom. A moment of breathless anticipation, during which she quivered like a guitar string, then his tongue circled her clit at the same time two fingers circled her soft opening.

  It was hot, sweet torture, waiting while he opened her by infinitesimal increments, teasing, pushing, retreating to circle again, then dipping deeper. Her hands clutched at his shoulder and nape. Unable to get a grip on sweaty skin stretched taut over hard muscles, she slid her fingers into his hair and pulled tight.

  Her reward for this pushy move was his fingers, deep enough to graze the aching bundle of nerves inside her sheath. Sweet heat zinged through her body and she moaned again, not stopping while he ruthlessly, implacably used the pressure of his fingertips and tongue to draw her climax from her. The steam hardly muffled her short, sharp cries.

  “I’ve never done that in here before,” she said when she regained her words.

  “Come on,” he said, his eyes flashing blue-gray through his damp lashes. “Really?”

  “Never with another person,” she amended.

  He swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “You’ve owned the house how long?”

  “Fair point,” she conceded. She leaned forward so their foreheads touched. “Don’t stop now.”

  He opened the condom package, now softened by the steamy heat, and rolled the latex down his shaft, their heads bent together so she could stroke his nape.

  “Now you like watching?”

  “Love your hands,” she murmured, stroking his nape while she watched the complex play of tendons, ligaments, muscle, and bone as his fingers performed the delicate task. “Also, there’s nothing better going on.”

  He lifted her off the bench and onto his lap seemingly without effort. His cock jutted away from his pelvis, making it easy to center her over the tip and let her weight do the work. “How about now? Something better going on now?”

  Her eyes fluttered closed again. “Definitely,” she hitched out. Seeking entrance, the tip stretched sensitive, vulnerable flesh, then parted the swollen folds and slid inside. He controlled her descent with his hands, pausing when she flinched. She waited until the single pang passed, then licked his throat. He tasted of water, sweat, and his skin.

  “All the way,” she said, and stopped breathing until he was seated inside her.

  He gave her short, slow, shallow thrusts, working the tip of his cock over the most sensitive tissue at her entrance, reminding her body that more pleasure awaited. His mouth was open against hers, soft, panting grunts increasing in intensity as he moved. He was holding back, she realized, so she kissed him, flickering her tongue over his lips, into his mouth, tempting him into kissing back as she circled her hips in his hands.

  “Stop helping,” he groaned.

  “I’m not helping,” she replied. “I want you deep.”

  A tremor ran through him. He lifted himself a little higher on his knees, bracing her lower back against the tiled bench. Cady flattened her feet on the floor but even then she wasn’t ready for a thrust driven by his powerful hips. The only thing keeping her in place was his equally powerful arms, one around her waist, the other curving over her shoulder to hold her in place. His tempo increased, a solid, slapping sound became the counterpoint to her hiccupping cries.

  “Again?” he asked.

  “Again,” she said through her tight throat, tipping over the edge into that pulsing certainty before she came. “Oh yes, again.”

  The deep shudders wracking his body and his arms tight around her told her he’d followed her into the void. Tension eased from his body in stages, his fingers trembling against her shoulder and hip, then relaxing. When she thought her arms would take her weight, she braced her palms on the bench behind her and lifted herself up and off him, his hand supporting her the whole way.

  “That was intense,” she said.

  “Probably crazy to do in that kind of heat,” he agreed, flashing her a softer, sweeter smile.

  Probably crazy to do at all, she thought as she got to her feet and tottered over to the controls. With the twist of a handle she shut off the steam and turned on the shower jets, adjusting the temperate to a more reasonable warmth. The dual rain heads turned on, and she stepped under the spray.

  He joined her a moment later, taking the shampoo bottle from her hand and setting it back in the niche, then taking her jaw in his hands and holding her for a series of sweet kisses. “I should have done more of that,” he said.

  “Well,” she murmured against his mouth. “There’s always round two.”

  * * *

  Round two didn’t happen. They soaped and rinsed and dried off, but when Conn wrapped a towel around his hips and headed for his bedroom, she caught his hand and pulled him into bed with her. When she woke up the next morning, pushed her hair out of her face and rolled over to see who was asleep beside her, the first word out of her mouth was “Ow.”

  Conn didn’t move. Buried in her enormous, fluffy comforter, he was snoring faintly, and dead to the world. Cady smiled fondly. His hair was as much of a wreck as hers, sticking straight up off the side of his head where he’d fallen asleep on his side. Hers, no doubt, was a Bride of Frankenstein mess. She eased herself out of the bed, wincing at the soreness in her low back. A quick glance in the bathroom mirror showed a line of bruises forming at the base of her spine.

  She shook some anti-inflammatories into her palm, then continued into the kitchen to down them with a glass of water, then do her morning steam treatment while the coffee brewed in the French press. When she turned around, Conn was standing by the island, resting his weight on one palm. She snorted.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, rubbing his hand over his crazy hair. He slept naked but was dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. “What have you got there?” he asked with a nod at her little pharmacopeia.

  “Painkillers and vitamins,” she said.

  “What are the painkillers for?”

  Wordlessly, she lifted up her fleece pajama top, tugged down the bottoms, and showed him the line of bruises along her back. Equally silent, he pulled up the cuff of his sweatpants and showed her a purplish-black bruise on his knee.

  “There’s a matching bruise on the other knee. I’ll take a couple of the painkillers,” he said.

  She laughed as she dumped pills into his outstretched hand, then handed him what was left of her glass of water. “Pro tip. You don’t want to spend a lot of time on your knees on tile. Or hardwood. Or concrete.”

  “Or carpet,” he said, pleasantly willing to laugh at himself. “Rug burn is for amateurs. So variety isn’t the spice of life?”

  She twitched her wrist to adjust her bracelet, an automatic move she’d done thousands of times. But this time there was no bracelet. The smile disappeared off her face so fast the muscles in her jaw twinged in protest. “My life is already a little too spicy at the moment. I want safe, comfortable spices. Gingerbread lattes. Spice cookies. Peppermint candy canes. Holiday spices that smell like home and family and love.”

  “I get that,” he said.

  She was beginning to put together the pieces, his conversation with her mother, his relationship with Shane. Conn knew how it felt to never feel safe, to never know if home was the place where people took you in, or threw you out.

  “I got another text from Bryan. There was another attack. I’m starting to see frustration from fans—emails, tweets, that kind of thing.”

  “What did he say?”

  She showed him her phone. Anyone in Lancaster hate you? IP addresses there definitely involved.

  “I thought I was safe here,” she said. To her shock, tears were welling up in her eyes. She turned away, busied herself with pushing down the French press, then pouring coffee into two cups.
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  Conn’s voice, sandy and resonant, came from behind her. “We will find this guy, and make this stop.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” she said, pleased to hear her own voice was steady. “But a dozen more are waiting to take his place. A hundred. This is my life. I can’t believe in fairy tales anymore.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Plans for the day?”

  “I’ve got some ideas running in my head,” she said, hearing the notes for the phrasing patter through in her mind. It was insistent, not catchy, but demanding her attention. “Studio time. You?”

  “We need to have a meeting,” Conn said.

  That brought her up short. “With who?”

  “Hawthorn. Dorchester. Whoever else they think is a good idea to bring in. We need to do it here. I’d rather keep you at home than risk you going out.”

  “Fine by me,” she said, reaching for her phone. “Chris is going to want in on that conference.”

  He had some thoughts about Chris. “Understood.”

  After a few minutes of texting with their respective tribes, they’d set a time to conference at Cady’s house later in the afternoon. “I’m going into my studio,” she said, and gathered her notebook and her guitar in one hand, and the handles of her tea and coffee mugs in the other.

  Conn stopped her with a not-so-subtle lean of his body, then dropped a quick kiss on her mouth. “Keep your cell with you at all times,” he said, his slate eyes serious.

  She waggled it at him, shifting her guitar in its case in the process. “You know where to find me,” she said, and walked downstairs, into the studio.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Conn peered in the opaque reflective glass on Cady’s microwave and winced. He was about two weeks past a regulation haircut, and after falling asleep in Cady’s bed with wet hair, he looked like he did after he’d let Shane’s nieces and nephews go to town with their craft paste. He solved that problem with his watch cap, which, after ten minutes of riffling through pockets of every coat hanging in Cady’s mudroom, he found drying on top of the washing machine in the laundry room. She’d scrubbed all the sap off his jacket and hers; they hung side by side on hooks by the garage. His and hers hooks, he thought as he shouldered into his jacket. He backtracked into his bedroom for his gun, badge, and cuffs, then walked outside. He was due for a perimeter check.

  As he strode down the driveway, scanning the snow for footprints, his boots crunched in the dusting that had fallen over night. It made it easier to track an intruder or a peeping creeper, but all he saw were deer tracks on the edge of the woods and rabbit prints leaping from a den sheltered under the pine trees. The driveway, slate path, and porch were all neatly cleared of snow, making it difficult to tell if anyone had poked around.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and set off around the side of the house, testing doors and windows, scanning the ground, the bare trees sloping up the hill at the edge of Cady’s property, the house itself. Someone was in her house, in her goddamn house, without her consent. By all rights she should have collapsed in hysterics, weeping and freaking out and calling in the National Guard or the SEALs or whoever it was famous people had on speed dial. Instead she womaned up and went on. He could tell she was freaked out by the way she bit at her lower lip, and by the fact that she looked worried when she went into the studio. The first day or two she was home, her studio was her retreat, a safe place where she could explore the stories she wanted to tell through songs. But the bastard who’d come into her home took away that security.

  Conn wanted to wring his neck with his bare hands. A more useful tactic would be to convince Cady to install security cameras. He kicked at the woodpile, expecting the mama possum to skitter out and head for the hills again, but all he did was draw his attention to a gigantic wolf spider’s web, strung among the logs at the far end of the pile. “Jesus,” he muttered. The spider was the size of his fist, a hairy malevolent-looking fucker, to quote Hawthorn after a gang sweep briefing.

  Only the LT would use a word like “malevolent.” Conn knew he needed to call him and report what Cesar said. But if Cesar was right and someone in the Block was behind Jordy Bettis’s assault, who could Conn trust? No one.

  He needed to think. He needed to burn off some energy so he could think.

  An axe next to the pile of logs, left there by the former owner, who’d dealt with the trees felled to clear the property by slowly turning them into firewood. Shane’s dad had taken them camping off and on as kids, so Conn knew how to use the axe, and knew he needed the release. He set a log on the stump scarred with indentations from the axe head, hoisted the axe over his head, and swung it at the log.

  Thwack-crack.

  The impact of the axe up his arm and the crack the log made as it split into two nicely sized pieces of firewood gave him something to do while he thought through the current situation. He had two problems. He was starting to think they were connected.

  Cesar said he needed to look inside the Block to find Jordy Bettis’s attacker. Conn wished he could say that made no sense, but everyone knew it happened. But framing another officer for it was a completely different situation, explained only by the fact that no one in the gang community was taking credit for the assault. Someone had to roll. Hawthorn would have that information when he arrived in an hour or so.

  But his brain followed the logic. If someone inside the Block had attacked Jordy in order to grease up Conn, then that meant anyone connected to Conn was also fair game. He wasn’t worried about Shane. Shane could take care of himself, and his family. But Cady was another story entirely. Cady was already under incredible pressure. The website attacks and the missing heirloom bracelet weren’t helping.

  Thwack-crack. Conn set the split logs at the end of the pile and lifted another log onto the stump. He hefted the axe and paused.

  Sneaky. Very sneaky. A psychological attack could tarnish Conn, make him even more vulnerable. Gang members wouldn’t have the resources to track down Cady, but someone at the Block would. They’d know how to work through the records, or, failing that, have a network of people to call on who would know contractors, electricians, plumbers, kitchen and bathroom guys.

  The whole thing was starting to make more sense. The drunk guy aside, the attacks all started after Conn signed on as her body man. What if, rather than getting him out of the way, he’d inadvertently brought the woman he was falling for into harm’s way?

  Thwack-crack.

  His body was warm and loose despite the mid-December air, but the thought sent a cold shiver down his spine. His money was still on Chris. He wore his suits like Conn wore his uniform, so Conn had no doubt in his mind that despite the flippant attitude, if Chris had to land on someone like a ton of fucking bricks, he would. Chris had the most to lose if Cady decided to go her own way, which put him at the top of Conn’s list, by a mile. But having a top of the list meant he had to consider everyone else on that list too. Getting a solve meant nothing if it wasn’t the right solve.

  Who else wanted to hurt Cady? The internet crazies came in second. She was ruining music, she was dating Harry Linton, she’d broken up with Harry Linton. What it boiled down to was this: She existed. She existed and she did her own thing.

  Thwack-crack. Conn had a massive fucking problem with assholes who terrorized other people simply because they shone bright.

  He made a mental note to go through the psychos folder again, with a fresh perspective. The threat had changed from physical to psychological. Reading explicit descriptions of someone wanting to take a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire to Cady was obvious. He needed to think of this in a different way, and he needed to set aside his emotions to do it.

  Thwack-crack. He tossed the logs on the pile and set another piece on end to split. Which led to problem number two: Cady’s threat to him.

  He was falling for her. Hard. He’d stood at the Field Energy Center and watched Queen Maud deliver a two-hour set, and felt not the slightest interest in her. But Cady … Cad
y drove fast and ate barbecue. Teased, and took care of, her little sister. Asked him for what she wanted, something he found hot as hell. Truth was, she was amazing. Not just as a singer-songwriter, because to be honest, it wasn’t his kind of music at all. But he appreciated people who did things from their heart, with all of their passion behind it. He raced that way, worked that way, had everyone fooled that he felt that way.

  She’d see through him, find the fear inside. Which frightened him more than walking down one of the dark alleys in the warren of the East Side’s abandoned warehouses, more than flipping open the folder and seeing Jordy’s jacked-up face, more than seeing 10.00 come up on the clock at the drag races, more than watching the McCools at a holiday meal or a family function. The deepest fear he had was that he’d never truly belong.

  Cady was making him face that fear. He’d been accepted into Shane’s family for so long he didn’t think about it. But Shane’s family was basically picture perfect, a miracle. He’d never aspired to have something like that for himself. But Cady’s family, with her salt-of-the-earth mother and her snotty-teenage-girl sister, was imperfect enough that he could dream about it. She’d cleaned his jacket, shared meals with him, taken him Christmas tree shopping with her family.

  “Because you work for her,” Conn said, swiping the back of his hand over his forehead. His Henley clung to his back and arms. He shrugged his shoulders to adjust the fabric, then hoisted the axe and brought it down. The log splintered into two pieces that all but flew to the sides. “That’s all.”

  Except it wasn’t. She’d made it abundantly clear that she didn’t sleep with everyone who worked for, or with, her. He knew her well enough now to believe he’d done her a disservice assuming he was just a way for the celebrity to blow off steam.

  He’d made a dent in the woodpile but gotten nowhere by letting his brain churn along while he worked. Breathing hard, he pulled his phone from his pocket and checked in on Cady the same way Chris checked in on Cady: social media. She’d sent out a bunch of pictures he’d taken of her and Emily at the Christmas tree farm. Scrolling through the list of reposts and comments took five swipes of his thumb, and she’d posted it less than an hour ago. Emily’s coats had struck a chord with Cady’s followers, something that was sure to make her happy. Finally she posted a shot of her guitar and her notebook in the studio. Going in for some songwriting time! <3 <3 <3