Without Restraint

by Angela Knight

  The cat looked up at his name, then went back to eating when Alex gave him a comforting ear scratch. “It’s kind of like when my mother calls me by my full name. I hear Alexis Eleanor Rogers, I instantly become six years old again, and my mama ain’t happy.” She grimaced and straightened. “Speaking of which, we’d better hit the sack if we’re going to get some sleep before reporting to Casa Coach for my ass-chewing.”

  Frank ran a hand down the length of her back in a stroke not unlike the one he’d given SIG. “Look on the bright side—at least none of them will be armed. Day’s looking up.”

  “My family doesn’t need guns,” she told him glumly, heading for her bedroom with Frank ghosting at her heels. “They prefer fangs and claws.”

  * * *

  With Frank curled warm and hard around her, Alex slept dreamlessly for the next three hours.

  Frank, unfortunately, could not say the same. He woke her with a low, desperate moan. “Alex, Alex, no, don’t . . . Don’t go. Don’t.” His voice dropped into a deadly snarl. “You fuckin’ bastard, I’ll kill every last fucking . . .”

  “Frank . . .” She tried to turn in his arms, but they tightened painfully around her. “Frank, wake up.”

  “Fuckers, I’ll blow your fucking heads . . .” His fingers dug into her skin. She suspected she’d have bruises.

  “Frank!” Her voice spiraled toward a shout as she tried to pull free of his painful grip.

  “Alex?” He jolted against her. She knew he was completely awake when he let go of her as if her skin burned his. “Oh, Christ, Alex, did I hurt you?” He turned her in his arms. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine, babe.” Her gaze searched his. “You okay?”

  “Fine.” The word was so clipped, she knew it for a lie. He rolled out of bed and straightened to his full height. Big, muscled, and gloriously naked, he raked his hands through his hair. It was so short, he barely managed to muss it. “Just a dream. I have those.” Frank gave her a probing stare. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “You’ve got a hell of a grip, but you didn’t hurt me.” She gave him an exaggerated leer. “And if you had, the view right now would be worth it. Man candy. Yum.”

  He grinned at her, taking his cock in hand. “I’ve got your man candy right here, baby.”

  “Slut.”

  His eyes glinted dangerously, and his voice dropped to a growling register that made her cunt go slick and tight. “Is that any way to talk to your Dom?”

  “You gonna put me in my place, big man?”

  “I’d love to.” His eyes flicked to the alarm clock sitting on her vanity. “Unfortunately, we have to be at Casa Coach in half an hour.”

  “Oh, shit!” She shot from the bed. “Dammit, I knew I should have set that alarm!”

  As the shower pounded them five minutes later, she remembered the moments before he woke up. “Who did you dream was killing me, Frank?”

  He stilled in the act of soaping her breasts. “Couple of Taliban assholes.” His hands went back to work teasing her hard nipples. “You know how dreams are. Made no damn sense at all. We were back in Afghanistan. You remember my BUD/S buddy Randy Carson?”

  She nodded. “The one who got shot, right?”

  “Right. That was Randy. Anyway, we were hunting Asad Abd al Jabbar, and they shot him in the gut. Then somehow he was you, and you were dying in my arms . . .” He broke off, shaking his head before giving her a sharp look. “And no, one nightmare does not add up to PTSD.”

  “I didn’t think it did. The close call with the cop killer must have triggered it. Actually, I’m surprised I didn’t dream about it myself.” She grimaced. “Probably too worried about dinner and my Alex-ivore relatives.”

  He gave her a slap on the ass that made her jump. “The only one who’s going to be eating you tonight is me. I am really possessive that way. Now quit stalling; get out and get ready.”

  Alex swept the shower curtain open. “Easy for you to say. You’re not on tonight’s menu.”

  * * *

  Casa Coach, as all and sundry had called the Rogers home for a couple of decades now, was a quirky brick two-story with high ceilings and a wide balcony that featured a wrought-iron railing worthy of the New Orleans French Quarter.

  The house’s overstuffed furniture, sturdy enough to accommodate a family of large, football-playing men, leaned toward earth tones. Afghans that Mary Rogers had crocheted were draped over anything that seemed to need one, lending splashes of turquoise, sandstone, and peach.

  The dining room featured a Shaker-style blond pine table and chairs, while the knotty pine floor there was darker, warmed by rugs in Southeastern shades.

  At the moment, Frank and the Rogers men were outside on the brick patio drinking beer in the shadow of the balcony and kibitzing as the Coach cooked burgers. The gas grill he presided over was stainless steel and enormous; he swore it cost more than his first car.

  Judging by the cheerful rumble of deep male laughter, Frank seemed to be getting along pretty well with the Rogers men. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking, Alex thought with a sigh. My luck’s not been the best today.

  If, that is, you ignored the fact that neither she nor Frank had been shot. Definitely something to be thankful for, though Alex was carefully keeping the sniper’s attack secret from her mother. Mary had only recently quit trying to get her out of law enforcement. This would only set her off again.

  Which was why, badge and gun notwithstanding, Alex was currently doing her best imitation of a proper Southern girl. She and her mother were at work on the meal’s side dishes: baked beans, deviled eggs, and green beans seasoned with fatback—all those luscious Southern staples that weren’t even remotely healthy. Mary was normally more conscious of fat and calories in the meals she prepared—otherwise she and the Coach would be the size of sumo wrestlers. But when it came to special occasions, she’d never met a dish that couldn’t be improved by the addition of a stick of butter. Alex secretly agreed, though she usually kept her butter addiction in careful check. As it was, she’d be paying for tonight’s meal the rest of the week by adding an extra mile to her daily five-mile run.

  “I really like your new young man, Alex,” Mary said as she stirred the green beans. “He’s very handsome, and he’s seems like such a nice boy.”

  At the thought of whip-wielding Frank Murphy being described as a “nice boy”—hell, as a “boy” period—Alex almost did a spit take with her mouthful of sweet tea. Regaining breath control, she wheezed, “Oh, he is.”

  Her mother eyed her over the strip of fatback she was about to add to the green beans. “You like him a lot, don’t you?”

  “I’ve only known him a few days, Mom.”

  “Sometimes it doesn’t take long. Answer the question.”

  Resisting the urge to roll her eyes like a teenager, Alex gave up. “All right, yeah.” She added brown sugar, mustard, and ketchup to the baked beans and began stirring. “He’s been a good friend.” Her throat suddenly thickened with grief. “Especially after what happened to Ted.”

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Mary said softly. “It must have been tough finding him like that.”

  Alex looked up from the beans to find her mother watching her with sympathetic moss green eyes. Fifty-plus or not, Mary was a lovely woman who looked a good ten years younger than her driver’s license would have you believe. She’d been trying to lose twenty pounds since the eighties, but as far as Alex was concerned, the extra weight only made her hugs warmer and more comforting. Tonight she wore a flowing maxi dress in a green and blue paisley cotton that swirled around her tall body when she moved. She’d gathered her silver-streaked red hair in a messy knot on the top of her head. Alex only hoped she looked as good at her mother’s age.

  “Yeah, finding Ted was . . . It was really tough, Mom.” The words started pouring out of her without permission from her brain. “I don’t care what those jerks on television said—he was a good guy, a good friend. He never abused Cal. He wouldn’t.
Anything they did . . .” She swallowed the rest, knowing it would only upset her mother.

  But to her surprise, Mary stepped away from the stove and moved to hug her. “I know he was a good man, sweetheart. Maybe I don’t agree with his personal choices, but I do believe he loved you. Loved you so much I wasn’t sure I approved of him because I thought he was too old for you . . .”

  “It was never like that, Mom.” Alex hugged her back, taking comfort in the soft warmth of her mother’s arms.

  “I realize that now. Actually, I realized that even before all this . . . business. Ted loved you more like a father than anything else.” A smile flickered around her mouth as the two women drew reluctantly apart. “Not like your new friend outside. He’s not fatherly at all.”

  “God, I hope not,” Alex said with involuntary honesty.

  Her mother only laughed.

  * * *

  Since Mary had held her fire during food preparations—a perfect opportunity for maternal mayhem—Alex had relaxed by the time the family and Frank sat down to eat.

  They were discussing the playoff chances of Harrison High’s basketball team when Alex became aware of her brother Andy’s brooding glower. Not that there was anything unusual about that. Alex had grown up getting glowered at by Andy.

  Some accident of genetics had left the ginger-haired thirty-year-old shorter than his two older brothers—and a half-inch shorter than Alex herself, for that matter—resulting in a serious a case of short man’s disease. Like Ted, he was aggressive as hell; he’d never met anyone he’d back down from, with the possible exception of the Coach. Unlike Ted, he didn’t have a sense of humor about his height—or much else, come to think of it. He taught history and Western civ at Clancy High, Harrison’s crosstown rival; his brothers ragged on him endlessly as a result.

  Yet beneath that prickly exterior was a sensitive man who loved his family with a fierce, devoted loyalty. Alex, knowing that about him, had always given him a pass when it came to his occasional hissy fits.

  Today, though, he seemed intent on glaring a hole in her skull while working his way through a six-pack of Budweiser Light. He was making her twitchy as painful childhood experience yammered warnings that her brother was getting ready to unload in her general direction.

  Her instincts were right.

  “So, sis,” Andy finally drawled, “I got a text-alert from WJIT this afternoon. Seems they had a story that a couple of deputies got shot at from ambush this morning. A source inside the department identified the officers as Alexis Rogers and Franklin Murphy.” His eyes narrowed to pissed-off hazel slits. “You got something you want to tell us? Like maybe why a guy who shot your partner because he was a pervert is targeting you now?”

  Alex stared at him, stunned. It had never occurred to her the department would out them. Who, and why, for God’s sake? The sheriff wouldn’t have done it . . . He’s been busting his ass to stress Ted’s heroism. She longed to defend herself, but her vocal chords seemed paralyzed.

  Frank lowered his cheeseburger to his plate, and leaned back in his chair, a muscle flexing in his jaw. He smiled, but it wasn’t even remotely friendly. “What exactly are you implying, Andy?”

  Alex’s mother stared at her in horrified shock. “Somebody shot at you today? And you didn’t even mention it?”

  “I didn’t want to upset you,” Alex said absently, glaring at her brother. “Besides, neither of us got hurt.”

  “It sounds like that was only by the grace of God!” Mary cried.

  “I’m saying,” Andy said, ignoring both sister and mother, “that since the guy who shot Ted apparently did it because he was gay, that kind of begs the question, Frank.”

  “And what question is that, Andy?”

  “Are you a f—” He shot a glance at his mother and obviously thought better of using a homophobic slur in front of her. “Gay, too?”

  “What do you care?” Frank’s upper lip curled in a snarl that would have done a werewolf proud. “Gotta say, just in case the thought has crossed your mind, you ain’t my type.”

  Andy’s redhead-fair complexion flushed an ugly shade of red. “You saying you aren’t gay?”

  “No, not that it’s any of your business, he is not!” Alex exploded, unable to take any more. “He—”

  “So what kinda pervert are you, then? You must be some kind of perv, if the sniper shot at you. ’Cause that’s why he shot Ted . . .”

  “Did it ever occur to you he shot at us because he’s an assh—” Like her brother, Alex thought better of her vocabulary. “Jerk? I mean, we are talking about a cop killer.”

  “Was it really the cop killer who shot at you?” If anything, Mary’s soft moss green eyes widened even more like a woman whose worst nightmare had just missed coming true.

  Alex met her mother’s gaze and discovered, not for the first time, that she couldn’t lie to her worth a damn. “We don’t know for sure. It could be a copycat inspired by all the media attention.”

  Glaring, Andy rose and stalked around the table toward Alex, radiating drunken menace. He jerked his chin at Frank. “So is this guy like the other pervert you brought around my child, you—”

  Frank rose and stepped into his path, towering over the much shorter man. “I wouldn’t finish that sentence if I were you.” His tone was utterly calm. The look in his eyes was not.

  “I’m not talking to you, ‘hero,’” Andy spat. “Now get the hell out of my way.”

  Alex had heard just about enough. She boiled out of her chair. “He is a hero, goddammit!”

  “Alexis Eleanor Rogers!”

  Ignoring her mother for once, Alex spat, “He saved my life today! When that bastard shot at us, he knocked me down and covered me with his own body! And you have the unmitigated gall to—”

  “You brought a fucking fruit around my little boy! What if he’d—”

  “That is enough!”

  Everyone in the room froze at Ken Rogers’s impressive roar, even Frank. Alex hadn’t heard the Coach shout at one of his kids like that since her rebellious teenage years.

  “I thought I taught you how to be a gentleman.” Ken, too, was on his feet now, giving Andy his best frigid glare. He was several inches shorter than Frank, yet somehow he seemed to take up a lot more room than someone his size should be able to.

  “But Ted—”

  “Being gay doesn’t make you a pedophile, boy. Otherwise I can assure you Matt Greggory wouldn’t be my defensive coach.”

  “It’s not the fact that he was gay,” Andy spat. “It’s the fact that he liked to beat that poor little bastard he slept with. Who knows what else he liked to do!”

  “It wasn’t like that!” Alex spat. “Cal’s a friend of mine, and he told me anything that happened was something he—”

  “How can you defend that, Alex? He beat the man!”

  “I said that’s enough, boy,” Ken said in a low, furious growl. “Frank is a guest in our home. I don’t need to tell you what to do now, do I?”

  Andy stared at him, high, hot flags of color in his cheeks. “I’m not a boy,” he gritted. “And I’m damned if I’ll apologize to either one of them.” He wheeled to stomp toward the door.

  “Drive him home, Tim,” the coach snapped. “He’s had too much to drink. I don’t want the idiot to wrap that minivan of his around a tree.”

  “Sure, Dad.” Tim got to his feet, a broad-shouldered, blue-eyed blond who looked like a bigger version of his father. He also looked grateful to escape as he hurried after his brother. “Andy, wait up, you damned fool.”

  After the door banged closed behind them, Ken turned to contemplate Frank, his gaze assessing. “My little girl seems to think you saved her life.”

  “He did,” Alex insisted stubbornly.

  “Maybe not,” Frank pointed out. He still sounded like the calmest person in the room. Better yet, his eyes no longer belied the tone. “We don’t really know who he was aiming at. Could have just as easily been me.”

  �
��You still covered my body with yours.”

  Ken paused to give her a long, thoughtful look before turning back to Frank. “That’s good enough for me.” He extended his hand. “Sorry my son acted like an ass.”

  Frank took the offered hand and gave it a squeeze. “Man is entitled to be protective of his child, even if his assumptions are flawed.”

  “I agree.” Ken leaned in a little too close, deliberately invading Frank’s personal space. “And have no doubt, I will protect my child,” he said softly. “Don’t give me a reason.”

  Frank lifted a black brow, but there was respect in his gaze. “Believe me, sir, I don’t intend to.”

  “Then we don’t have a problem.” The Coach squeezed Frank’s hand. Alex noticed both men’s knuckles turning white.

  “Men.” Mary shot her daughter a look. “I don’t know about you, but I think I’m getting testosterone poisoning.”

  * * *

  “I am mortified.” Alex slid into the front seat of Frank’s personal car, a candy apple–red 1964 Mustang. “I’m so sorry I dragged you into that.”

  “Alex, you didn’t drag me into a damned thing,” he said, starting the car. He smiled in pleasure as the vehicle rumbled into life. He’d told her he’d restored the car himself and kept it running by a combination of babying and prayer to the ghost of Henry Ford. “And I know this is probably going to piss you off, but Andy seemed genuinely motivated by what he perceived as a danger to his son.”

  “Ted Arlington was the last man who’d ever be a threat to kids! Hell, he used to work sex crimes. He had nothing but contempt for anybody who’d abuse a child.”

  “I know that, and you know that, but Andy didn’t know Ted.”

  “But he knows me! I would never put Andy Jr. in danger!” Alex had adored her four-year-old nephew from the moment she’d first seen his wrinkled little newborn’s face. “How could my own brother think I’d bring somebody around who’d be dangerous to that child?”

  Frank shot her a glance before returning his gaze to the road in order to pass an SUV. “People don’t always know somebody’s dangerous.”