by Anne Calhoun
As soon as the door to the garage closed, they stumbled down the hallway to the kitchen. The whole first floor smelled of fresh evergreen, clean, enticing. Conn stripped off her top two layers, turning her hair into a wild, static-filled halo around her face. “Wait, wait,” he muttered, cupping both hands around her head to hold her for his kiss. She took advantage of the lingering moment to slide her hands under the hem of his Henley, then up his ribcage, pulling his shirt off as she went. He broke away long enough to let her strip him, then wrapped one arm around her waist and hoisted her onto the kitchen island, stepped into her spread thighs, and kissed her again.
His kisses were deep, raw, out of character for him. Before he’d been controlled, careful of the differences between his strength and hers, but now he vibrated with a desire so passionate it was almost desperate. Cady left off running her hands over his shoulders and chest to grab the hem of her turtleneck and silk undershirt and pull them off. Conn’s hands made short work of her twisted bra, and then they were skin to skin. She wrapped her legs around his hips and her arms around his neck, and pulled him close, pressing her breasts against his chest, her belly to his.
His breath left him with a barely audible groan, then he relaxed against her. She felt his abs lifting against hers as he inhaled, the hot, hard length of his cock pressing against his zipper, but mostly she felt the way the tension eased from him. His big hands stroked up and down her back, his thumbs bumping over every notch in her spine, from her nape to the waistband of her jeans.
He leaned back just enough to look into her eyes, asking a question, watching for a response. The first few times they’d done this, Cady was looking for nothing more than to release months’ worth of tension built up on the road with a man she was attracted to. She didn’t fool herself into thinking Conn wanted anything more than that … then.
Now? Now she knew him, knew his past and his fears; from there it was a short step to hopes and dreams. Now she could give him something she knew he’d gotten from so few people in his life: herself, freely offered.
“Hey,” she whispered. Over his shoulder she could see his back reflected in the big glass windows overlooking the backyard, the breadth of his shoulders, his muscled spine, the twin dimples just above the waistband of his jeans. She reached around and trailed her fingers up the valley of his spine, and watched him shiver, felt his cock pulse in the notch of her thighs.
His next kiss was hot, possessive, and slow enough to seduce Cady into a state of total limp surrender. He cupped her breasts, gently squeezing her nipples; it was her turn to shiver and lift against him.
“Bed? Or here?” he asked, rough, like she had to make a decision now.
“Bed,” she said, remembering the bruises on her lower back, his knees. The energy in the room had shifted from the frantic heat in the car to a tidal pull ebbing and flowing between his body and hers. “Definitely bed. Go slow. I want this to last.”
He groaned, but visibly gathered his control, testing himself as he popped open the button on her jeans and unzipped them. She wriggled from one hip to the other to get them off. They’d just hit the floor when Conn wrapped both of his big pushy arms around her waist. She clung to him as he carried her into the bedroom. Still in his jeans, Conn paused by her nightstand to unclip his holster, cuffs, and badge. He took off her panties; she worked down the zipper on his jeans and stripped him to his beautiful skin. They climbed into bed together, Conn pulling the covers over them both to trap the heat roiling between them.
Braced on one arm above her, he locked eyes with her, trailed his fingers down her sternum, over her belly, and into the folds between her legs. She shuddered, both at the possessive look in his eyes and at the slick heat he found. She reached for his shoulders, then his hips, then wrapped her hands around his wrists, gripping tighter and tighter as his fingertips slid along either side of her clit. She was sensitive, juicy from the teasing friction of rubbing herself against him, and he knew her so well now. In a moment she was digging her fingernails into his wrists and sobbing out her release.
When she relaxed enough to remove her nails from his skin, he was fumbling in her nightstand for a condom. “That wasn’t slow,” she said.
He shot her a quick Conn-grin as he ripped open the packet and sat back on his heels. “If you’re complaining about it, I must have done something wrong,” he said.
“I’m not complaining,” she said. Her hands were trembling as she slid her palms up his hair-rough thighs. “I’m just saying … it wasn’t slow.”
He aligned their bodies and nudged the tip of his cock into her soft, wet entrance. She gasped as the pressure stimulated nerve endings already strung to hypersensitivity. He kissed her, his swollen lips brushing over hers making her aware of yet another place on her body attuned to him. “Again?” he asked, his voice nothing more than a low rumble in the heated cocoon of covers.
She couldn’t think. He was no more than an inch or so inside her, stretching her swollen folds, encouraging her body to open to him and fold around him all at once. She hitched her heels high up on the backs of his thighs and lifted just a little.
“With me, Cady?”
“Yes,” she gasped. The multiple-orgasm thing usually eluded her, and she considered it a courtesy if her partner didn’t pound away for fifteen or twenty minutes afterward. Maybe she just hadn’t waited long enough. Maybe she’d been with the wrong man. “Oh, yes?”
He gave her a little more, just enough for her body to take notice. His thrusts were shallow, slow, in rhythm to the hot way his tongue slid against hers. Gold wires of sensation tendriled through her body, then, as he slid all the way inside, drew taut. He was careful not to grind against her sensitive clit, instead taking his weight on his elbows and kissing her, again and again, so possessively and thoroughly she forgot what it was like to not touch him.
Hot honey poured along her nerves with each thrust, sweet and sticky and just rough enough to make her tremble. Sensation swamped her from all sides, but mostly from the energy pouring from Conn’s body over hers. She opened to it, became the reservoir for it, offered it back to him with each lift of her hips, each welcoming lick or nip along his jaw.
He tore his mouth from hers and let his head roll against the pillow. “Fuck. Cady. Just … fuck.”
“I know,” she gasped. He was so hard inside her, sweat slicking the contact between their bodies. “I can … I think I can…”
“Yeah,” he said. “Fuck, yeah. Do it.”
She couldn’t stop herself if she tried. Her release tipped over the edge from possible to certain, and she froze, hips straining for contact with his, her entire sheath rippling against his hard length as he stroked in with a rhythm that must have cost him dearly to sustain. Then the tight, clenching fist inside her flung open and she cried out, sharp, short, unmistakable sounds of release.
Conn wrapped his arm around her shoulders and gripped her hip with the other hand, then plunged deep one last time. Cady trembled again from the sheer pleasure of feeling him come buried deep inside her.
Conn lifted himself off her and went into the bathroom. Cady lay in the blanket cocoon heated by their bodies, phrases and bits of what felt like might be a refrain drifting through the haze in her mind. When Conn emerged, he didn’t get dressed or head straight for the shower. Instead, he came back and clambered over her to snuggle back into the warm bed. His arm locked around her waist, pulling her close.
“I could get used to this,” she murmured, already half asleep.
His arm tightened around her waist. “Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.”
When she woke up the next morning, she had it. Overnight her brain had done that mysterious, magical thing, and the jumbled pieces of lyrics and melody and meaning were now at least a couple of verses, well on the way to a song.
“That’s it,” she said.
“What’s it?” Conn asked.
She pushed at his shoulder. “I’ve got it,” she said, which probably wasn’t any
more helpful. “Let me up. I need to write this down.”
He obligingly lay flat so she could scramble over him. “That’s a first for me,” he said, clearly amused.
“What is?” she asked, distracted by the rhythm and words in her head. She followed the trail of her clothes out of the bedroom and into the kitchen.
“Having a woman jump out of bed. Usually there’s morning cuddling.”
“I’ve got an idea for the song,” she said, then did a double take. He was standing in the doorway, one shoulder braced against the frame, magnificently naked. “Do you want to cuddle?” she asked, torn.
“I’m good,” he said, still smiling. “Go do your thing.”
Thank God. She bolted for the stairs, desperate to get to the studio where her notebook and guitar waited. Noncreative types didn’t understand the way a song, a melody, a lyric could well up inside you, suddenly fully formed where before there was only a muddled mess, or worse, nothing at all. She hauled open the door and thumped down on her chair, already reaching for her guitar. She had the strap over her head and the body balanced on her thigh, her hand patting for the notebook that held the lines she’d written down back in August, the ones she thought were going nowhere.
No notebook.
She came up short. When she’d heard Conn come back inside after chopping wood, she’d been so desperate to get out of the mental rut she’d left it on the little table, open to the last page full of scribbles and doodles.
Maybe not. Maybe she’d taken it with her, automatically tucking it into her pocket. She leaned her guitar back in the stand, trotted back up the stairs. Water was running in her bathroom, so Conn was taking a shower. Down the hall, into the garage to search her car. Not there. Then she went through her coat pockets. No notebook.
A creeping sensation prickled the skin on the back of her neck. Convinced she was being watched, she whirled around, but there was no one behind her. The light was bright enough that she could see the outlines of the trees sloping up the hill. A flash of movement caught her eye and she startled, her hand flying to her mouth.
Forget looking strong and unafraid. She bolted for the bathroom. Conn stood under the steam shower, both arms wrapped around his waist, turning his amazing shoulders back and forth under the pressure. He looked up when she hurtled into the bathroom.
“What?” he said, already reaching for the handle to shut off the water.
“My notebook is missing,” she said.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Conn hastily toweled himself dry enough that his clothes wouldn’t freeze to his body, then yanked on his underwear and jeans. “Stay here,” he said to Cady, unholstering his gun. Safety off, round in the chamber. “Lock the door behind me.”
Her eyes were huge. “Why?”
“If someone was here, we don’t know that he’s not still here,” Conn said. Cady’s eyes widened. Even he could hear the deadly menace in his voice.
“I probably just forgot it—”
“Do you really think that?”
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t.”
The one place he knew an intruder wasn’t was the bathroom, so he pushed Cady back into the steamy room, cursing the total lack of safety in this situation. Then he cleared the closets, under the bed, then pushed the button to lock the bedroom door and closed it behind him. Not much protection, but the best he could do.
He searched the rest of the house like he was searching a drug den, methodical, every sense on high alert. On the main floor he looked behind the big tree waiting to be decorated, and downstairs he shifted all of Cady’s boxes from home, peered into spaces you wouldn’t think a human being could cram into, even pulled down the attic ladder to check up there.
They were the only two people in the house.
Gun still in his hand, he walked back to the master suite. “We’re clear, Cady,” he called.
A sharp snick as the bathroom door unlocked, then the bedroom door. She peered around the doorframe. “There’s no one here?”
“No,” he said. “From here on out, you stay in the garage while I clear the house. When did you last have the notebook?”
She was opening and closing the drawers, then the cabinet doors. “In my studio,” she said, gathering her hair into a coil to keep it out of her face as she searched. “I think. I don’t know. Most of the time I take my notebook with me when I go out, but I don’t think I did this time. I just don’t know. Maybe it fell out last night at the airfield? Oh, God. What if someone found it?”
“Hey,” he said, catching her by the wrist. “I don’t remember you having it in the car, so it’s in the house.”
“How can you be so sure?”
The catch in her voice meant she was near tears. “That’s my job, to observe. We’ll find it.”
They didn’t find it. They reached the crazy search point, where they were looking in drawers she’d never opened, in cabinets that held a collection of vases and a turkey pan used once a year. Finally they met up in the kitchen.
“Wait here while I search the yard.”
“For my notebook?” she gave a laugh that was probably supposed to be lighthearted but reached into hysterical territory. “I’d remember if I took it outside.”
“For footprints,” he said.
He snagged the Maglite from his duffle and went out the sliding glass doors to the deck. The beam was bright and powerful, but in the end gave him nothing. The snow had melted, then frozen again, giving him nothing more than a surface to slip on as he walked the perimeter. No new footprints, no conveniently dropped wallet with ID and an incriminating note. Even the possum stayed inside, where it was warm.
He stopped and looked back at the house. Cady was in the kitchen staring at the spot on the counter where her kettle lived, probably waiting for it to boil. The house looked so homey, warm light spilling onto the snow, big comfy chairs snuggled around the fireplace, the tree stretching its branches to the ceiling, all ready to be decorated by Cady’s family.
Maybe he’d be there for that. If he didn’t catch the sick bastard fucking with Cady’s mind, he’d be in the family room, listening to Christmas carols and drinking hot cocoa or mulled wine, watching Cady, her volatile sister, and her tough-love mother decorate a tree. It was a familiar scene, standing on the perimeter watching a family celebrate a holiday or a family event. He’d gotten used to feeling like an outsider. As close as he was to all the McCools, as narrow as the gap was between close friend and member of the family, he couldn’t quite bridge the gap.
There was a holy, profound power to someone pointing at him and saying not, Yeah, sure, you can come and stay for a while but rather You. I want you. You get to stay forever.
There was no point in longing for what wouldn’t happen. Eventually Cady would either go back on the road, or they’d catch this bastard, and she wouldn’t need protection anymore. Either way, once she found out he’d put security cameras on her house without her permission, he was back where he started, where he’d been almost happy for most of his life.
Before he’d seen what he could have, and never knew he wanted.
Resolve shot down his spine. He was going to get some fucking answers for Cady, and for himself. Enough of this hiding-out, stay-out-of-everyone’s-grill bullshit. He was going back to what he knew worked, getting in people’s faces and being a scary motherfucker until somebody talked to him. Because maybe, just maybe, if he did that, he wouldn’t have to tell Cady he’d violated her trust.
He climbed the stairs to the deck and let himself back into the house. Cady was on the phone. “He just came back inside,” she said, and put the phone on the island. “It’s Chris,” she said, muting the conversation. “He’s got details for the album’s promotional tour.”
An idea hit him. Let’s start with Chris. “Do you have the Find My Friends app?”
Puzzled, Cady frowned. “Yes.”
“Are you and Chris friends?”
She rolled her eyes. “I have no idea ho
w to characterize my relationship with Chris,” she said.
Chris was listing off cities. “… Baltimore, not ideal but I think we can pick up a pretty good–sized crowd from D.C., where you’ve got that big fan community, then New Jersey, then Philly, then State College, then Pittsburgh, I know, I know, Pittsburgh, but you have to do it…”
Conn picked up her phone and handed it to her. “Pull up the app.”
“He’s in Brooklyn,” she said. “He said something about going out for sushi and the only place he’ll eat sushi is at this crazy dive down the street from his apartment. He’s had too much bad sushi—”
Conn peered over the top of her head to look at the phone. Chris’s dot sat right in the middle of the block housing Eye Candy.
“He said he was in Brooklyn,” Cady said. “He’s lying to me.”
Relief poured through Conn, profound and exhilarating. “Keep him talking. Get your coat,” he said. “And text Eve and have her meet us at Eye Candy.”
“I’m sorry, Chris,” she said, juggling the phone from ear to ear as she slid her arms into Emily’s coat. “I didn’t get the part in the middle. After Baltimore. Can you go over the part in the middle again?”
Conn held her coat so she could find the arm hole, then took her hand and pulled her down the hallway to the garage. His heart was pounding. Maybe, just maybe, he was about to get really fucking lucky and catch Chris red-handed, with Cady’s notebook and her grandmother’s bracelet, and maybe a voodoo doll he was sticking pins into to make her hair go berserk.
Cady’s hand closed reflexively on the armrest when he shot backward down the driveway. “Wait a minute,” she said to Chris. “You promised me I’d never have to do another show in Poughkeepsie again. You promised. That hotel had cockroaches the size of rats! I can’t even imagine how big the rats were!”
Chris’s voice came placatingly through the phone.
“Good,” Conn said. “Ten minutes. That’s all I need.”
Cady flicked a glance at the speedometer. Conn slowed down. Getting pulled over meant lost time, and possibly some guy deciding to be a hero in front of Cady, which meant publicity drawing attention to a problem that was, for now, a total secret.
