Because what is he really asking me?
For the truth and an apology, almost certainly, but I think he’s asking me for more. I think he’s asking me to take a risk, to relinquish control…to be vulnerable.
To thaw.
Ever since Frazer died, I’ve been doing everything I can to keep myself as frozen as possible. Deep down, I never really minded being called Officer Ice Queen. I was a little proud of it, in fact, because it meant I did what I needed to. It meant I succeeded in keeping myself safe and my heart protected.
It meant I was strong.
But now?
Is this the kind of strong I want to be? The kind of strong that hurts other people “for their own good”? The kind of strong that would rather push someone away than do the hard work of loving through fear?
God, no. Maybe I needed these last twelve years of control. Maybe being an island has served me in the past, but not anymore. Not anymore because I have Jace and I have the knowledge I’ve had all along but somehow still couldn’t believe until now: surviving isn’t living.
And I’d rather be vulnerable with Jace than strong without him.
My breath catches, my heart pounding with this epiphany and my fingers already flexing to grab him back to me, to pull him close and tell him everything.
To tell him I love him and I want to move forward with him, even though, yes, I’m scared.
But when I wipe the tears from my eyes, I see something awful. I see that I’m alone.
Jace is gone.
Chapter Sixteen
Jace
My instincts have never failed me.
Not in a war zone, not on the beat. Not even when I took a bullet in a medical building staff room, because taking that bullet meant Cat was safe. Which means I’d do it a thousand times over again if I had to, even knowing how the shooting unraveled into pain and heartbreak. I’d still choose it because keeping her safe is the priority.
No, my instincts have never failed.
Except for right now.
I walk out to my car with fast, jerky strides, desperate to avoid anyone lingering after the ceremony or the usual flow of evening-shift cops dropping off in-custodies or hopping into the report room to catch up on paperwork. I smell like Cat and my uniform is rumpled, and I can’t decide if I need to cry or smash something with my fists. So yeah, avoidance seems like the right strategy.
And as I go, I question myself over and over again. How could I have been so wrong about us? How could my instincts have let me down?
From the moment I first saw that woman, I knew she was mine. Knew we fit together in some important way I didn’t entirely understand yet. And truly, through the next near month we shared, I saw our fit become better and better. She laughed more, played more. She trusted me, shared that keen mind with me, shared moments of genuine, unfiltered joy.
I knew she was good for me in every measurable way. But hell, I thought I was good for her too. I needed to be good for her. Not because of my male ego—well, okay, not only because of my male ego—but because she deserved it. She deserved someone to be good for her. Because it felt wrong to sponge up all that intelligence and determination without giving her something in return.
All of that came crashing down that awful night in the hospital, of course, but there’d been some stubborn part of me that refused to believe she really meant the things she said. This silly, fragile hope that she would confess she’d pushed me away out of fear and wanted to make it right.
Too young, too coarse.
A stupid waste.
Even now, the words rake over an unhealed wound, but even in my pain and shock that night, even through her cruel tone, I heard something almost sad in her voice when she accused me of being reckless.
If you’re that careless with your own life, how the hell can I trust you with my heart?
Yes, I’m young, and yes, I’m probably coarse and reckless and everything else she said—but I know the woman I love. I know she’s afraid and afraid with good reason. I know she’s kept herself safe for a long time by keeping everyone else away.
And I thought tonight when I chased after her…
It doesn’t matter. You were wrong. She didn’t confess to any of that. She didn’t apologize. She simply offered me her body. As if that were any kind of substitute for her heart. So now, here I am, alone and torn up and forced to acknowledge I was wrong about all of it.
She’s not mine, and she never was.
When I get in my car, I’m not even sure where I want to go. My apartment is still haunted by her. By the few odds and ends she left there. By the tea I bought for her and by the memories of her presence. I don’t feel like seeing any of my family or friends, and I don’t really feel like getting a drink at the Dirty Nickel and watching whatever sports thing is on the television there. Every place I can think of feels wrong because every place I can think of is a place without her.
I finally decide to hit the gym. It’s attached to my duty station up north, and I’ve got a change of gym clothes in my locker. Better yet, since it’s only for cops, it’s usually only got one or two other people in it, and I’ll have a chance at some privacy while I try to burn out these feelings.
I try not to let myself think too much as I drive from the main station to my station. I try not to think about Cat’s silence when I laid myself bare for her or about how she didn’t correct me when I told her I knew she didn’t love me like I loved her.
I try not to think about her at all.
And fail miserably.
An hour later, I’m sweaty and ragged, having set the treadmill to a dead sprint and then pounding out a run like I was being chased by ghosts, my arm wound screaming like hell the whole time. I grab my reusable water bottle and start chugging as I leave the gym and walk down the short hall to the locker room. Even though my body is thirsty and beat, my mind is still chewing on itself, wondering where I went wrong, and my chest still feels like it’s been cracked wide open.
I strip off my clothes—miserably, tugging on the waterproof sleeve over my bicep to protect the bandage there—and then I shower—also miserably, too messed up to even touch the swelling erection my starved cock is offering up against the water. Even fatigued, my body remembers that just ninety minutes ago I had Cat pressed against me, ready and whimpering for me to slide inside her. Even heartbroken, my flesh still aches for hers.
With a long, weary sigh, I shut off the shower and wrap a towel around my waist. I slide the curtain aside with a vicious gesture, scowling down at my unrepentant cock.
“Jace. Look at me.”
My heart stops. The air turns to concrete in my lungs. I look up and see the woman I love in front of me, still in her dress uniform, her aqua eyes like oceans of feeling and her Hollywood hair still tousled from where I kissed it earlier. Despite everything, my stomach flips over with an idiotic, naïve flip. I still want to see her. I still want her even though I know better, and it’s frustrating as hell.
“What do you want?” I ask, irritated that the words come out husky and curious when they should come out cold and flat. But I can’t help it. I can’t help anything about how I feel about Cat. She could rip out my heart with her bare fingers and eat it in front of me, and I’d still want to pull her into my arms.
But she doesn’t look like she’s come here to eat my heart. Instead, she’s sinking her teeth into her bottom lip and twisting her slender fingers in the department-issue necktie she’s wearing with her dress uniform.
She looks…well, nervous.
But every second she doesn’t speak reminds me that I’m damp and wearing nothing but a towel—and that towel has an oblivious erection twitching underneath it—and I finally say, “Look, we can talk later—”
“I haven’t told you everything about Frazer’s death,” she blurts out before I can finish.
Her eyes widen fractionally, as if she can’t believe she really just said those words, but then she takes a deep breath and forges on while I stand frozen in my to
wel. “That night—that call—I got there first. The dispatch notes said someone heard a woman screaming inside. Now we know it was the perp screaming, but then we thought it was someone else he was hurting…”
She trails off, and I nod because I know. Lots of situations require backup—but sometimes they require an officer’s immediate intervention more. If she thought someone was in danger, of course she would have gone in alone. I would have too.
But that doesn’t stop my pulse from spiking with worry, no matter how long ago this happened, and I think I possibly understand how Frazer felt when he realized she’d gone in there without him.
“The power had been turned off. I told you that, but did I tell you how hard it was raining that night? Flash floods all over town. The streets were like rivers. Every other step I took, there was a clap of thunder or a fresh gust of wind. Scared even me, and when I found the perp, he was huddled in the back room, crying and frightened. Abject, utter terror. Hearing him cry like that was…bone-chilling.”
Cat takes another deep breath and looks at the ceiling to gather herself. “I started talking to him. It took a minute or two, but he began to settle down. He told me it wasn’t a storm at all but people trying to kill him, and he was so, so scared. Had a kitchen knife with him in case ‘the people’ made it into the house. But I managed to get him to set it down, managed to get him to make eye contact, was able to say over the radio that the subject was alone and compliant and that we were in the back bedroom.”
“But then Frazer…”
A tear spills over Cat’s eye, and she wipes furiously at it as she nods. “He kicked in the back door—maybe because he thought it would be closer to the bedroom? If he’d just entered through the front door, which I’d already broken open, or if he’d just trusted that I’d call out on the radio if I needed help…”
“Cat, it was the suspect he didn’t trust, not you.”
She shrugs, and I know she thinks the distinction doesn’t matter. And maybe it doesn’t. The outcome was the same, after all.
“It startled the suspect. He grabbed his knife and pushed past me and went down the hall toward the noise. It was so dark, so fucking dark, and I tried to follow him, but I was tripping over all the trash in the hallway, and I—” Another tear, but she doesn’t flinch away from her next sentence. “I was too late.”
Her words hang in the cool, damp air of the locker room. I give her time to find her next words.
“He didn’t have to die,” she finally whispers. “Nobody had to. If only he’d waited or taken a minute to think and come through the front…he might still be here with me.”
Oh God. Suddenly I see exactly where this is going. “I’m not Frazer.”
She shakes her head. “No. No, I know you’re not. I can’t fault Frazer for trying to keep me safe, and I can’t fault anything you did with Pisani either. But I’m just trying to explain…why…”
I soften. “I know why, baby. It’s never been a secret to me.”
She looks down at her hands, still twisting in her tie. “I just thought if I didn’t let anyone in, then they’d be safe. And I let you in…and you got shot. You did the same thing he did, and you rushed in and you almost got killed. You can see why that’s hard for me.”
I wince. I hate how this is between us, this mountain of causality. This reality of our job, jagged and insurmountable. “Cat.”
She doesn’t let me cut in; she keeps going. “But you know what? I’m tired of the hard things keeping me from what I really want. I’m tired of the walls and the precautions and the ice. I was wrong, Jace. Wrong about what I wanted.”
Her words hit me good and hard, like a cold shot of top-shelf vodka. I think I feel those words buzzing in my veins.
“What do you mean?” I ask, voice rough. “Say what you mean.”
Her eyes are the sweetest sea color, and she gives me a sad, pleading smile that makes me want to slay monsters for her, even if the monsters are the sins between us.
“I mean I’m sorry for the things I said,” she says. “They were lies, Jace. The worst lies I could think of to make you let me go. I’m too selfish to want you to find a better, younger woman. I want you with me. I want to be your woman, age be damned.”
I can’t help the hope swelling in my chest like a balloon, and I take a step forward, reaching for her. She lets me. She lets me pull her into my chest with my good arm, and then she tilts her head back to look up into my face.
“I mean I love you,” she says softly, her hand coming up to cup my jaw. “You’re too young and too brave and so very caveman—and I love you. I love you so much that I’m willing to be scared. I’m willing to be vulnerable. I love you so much that nothing else matters.”
“Babe,” I rumble, burying my face in her hair as I squeeze her even closer to me. “Babe. Nothing else does matter. It never did to me.”
“Oh, Jace. Can you forgive me? The terrible things I said?”
“I already have,” I say, and I mean it. It’s the truth.
“And pushing you away? Leaving?”
“You’re here now, and that’s all that matters to me.” I kiss her hair again, never able to get enough of that delicate silk against my lips, of that exquisite, expensive scent of hers. “Fuck, I love you. And yes, I was hurt and angry and all the things when you left, but if you’re willing to be open with me, then I’ll be open with you. I don’t see what we can’t figure out if we have love and honesty.”
I feel her smile against my chest. “So wise for one so young.”
“Well, I stole that line from my PTSD counselor, but I still mean it.”
She laughs. “Good.”
She kisses my chest, and my cock responds, surging again under the towel and brushing against her. She purrs a little. “Young man.”
And then she reaches under the towel to give me a firm, urgent stroke. My eyes flutter closed. “What happens next?” I manage to ask. “Do I get to take you home?”
“Every day for the rest of forever. But first…” Another stroke.
I groan.
“First,” she whispers, “we’re going to see how fast you can make this ice queen melt.”
Game. On.
Epilogue
Jace
A year later…
“At some point, you’re going to have to let me sleep, caveman,” Cat teases, but she parts her pretty thighs for me all the same as I walk toward the bed.
“We’ll sleep in tomorrow,” I promise, giving my already primed cock a few slow strokes. Even though I just came back from putting away the warm cloth I used to clean her, I’m ready again. It’s our third fuck of the night because I can’t fucking get enough of her right now. I mean, I never have anyway, but right now, with my ring glinting on her finger and her belly heavy with our first child, I’m more caveman than ever.
“We have to work on the nursery tomorrow,” she reminds me, idly plucking at her nipple as she watches me approach. “We should rest…”
But her sensible words are canceled out by the hungry way she watches my cock bob up and down as I climb onto the bed.
“No rest for the wicked, babe,” I say, even though she is right about the nursery. I moved into her house when we got married half a year ago, and we’ve only just now finished integrating my things and turned to making the baby’s room ready for his entrance in four more months.
“I suppose we have time,” she muses, her free hand going between her legs to toy with the place I’ve already thoroughly pleasured tonight…and plan on pleasuring again.
I grunt in agreement as I mount between her thighs and take myself in hand.
“Young man,” she sighs happily, petting my hard abs and sliding her palms up the flexed lengths of my quads. “My young stud.”
And then her sigh turns into a broken moan as I slide on inside. She’s wet and swollen from all our earlier play, which makes her slick as hell and tight as a fist. She cradles her own breasts as I give her a second, deeper thrust, and th
e sight of her hands plumping and squeezing her own tits is almost too much.
“Shit, babe,” I mutter. “Gonna go fast if you do that.”
She just gives me a sly smile and continues the show, driving me to a state of indecent desperation and making my own palms itch to feel her. With a growl, I pull out and move us so I’m lying behind her, my chest to her back and my cock prodding at her sweet pussy from behind. I nip at her neck as I flex my hips and search out her tits with my own hands.
“Mine,” I grunt.
“Yes,” Cat gasps, arching so that her ass is pressed against my lap and her breasts press even harder into my hands. “All yours.”
Her curves are irresistible like this, and my hands can’t stop their possessive roaming as I take my time fucking her. I love the heavy weight of her tits now that they’re growing full for our baby. I adore the swell of her belly that I helped create. I love them all so much that I tell her I’m going to have five more babies with her, maybe seven or eight even, because I just love it so much.
Funny how she was afraid that I’d balk at having to choose a family too soon. If she’d asked me, I would have told her the truth.
Nothing with her is ever too soon.
She’s been horny as hell since I knocked her up, and it takes her almost no time to come again, writhing back against me and working my cock inside her to wring out every last bit of pleasure. When she finally settles, limp and satisfied, I wrap her tight in my arms, pull her ass flush to my lap, and rock into her with slow, grinding slides, feeling my shaft thicken with the inevitable.
“Give it to me, Officer,” she whispers. “Every last drop.”
She doesn’t have to tell me twice. With another ferocious growl, I release all my love and passion into her, spurting hot and thick and wet inside her channel and flexing my hips to get deeper as I do.
I’ve come enough already tonight that this climax has a bite to it—a sharp ache with every dizzying pulse, and I love it. I love knowing the ache comes from making her mine over and over again. From claiming her body so thoroughly that we’re both spent and sweaty. And I finish my claim now with a bite on her neck. Not enough to truly hurt but enough so she feels her caveman marking her on her skin and inside her body at the same time.
Misadventures in Blue Page 15
