by Anne Calhoun
“You never know. He might be into ménage.”
“Caleb!” she yelped with a glance at the door.
“Evangeline,” he said, his face completely serious as he dried the last glass, “medals aside, you don’t know jack shit about this guy. Even if you did, this isn’t real life.”
It was hard to remember, given the immediacy, the sheer intensity of “now.” “Now” meant she and Matt would go back to his house, and go back to bed, perhaps even to sleep for a while before returning to Eye Candy tomorrow. “Yes, I remember Steve Hollister,” she conceded. Barely. “I’ll think about it when this is over. I promise.”
She collected Matt from the front room and kissed her parents as they moved through the front door.
Neither one of them said anything until they were back in the Jeep. “So … not your first time at that rodeo?” she asked as she jammed the buckle into her seat-belt clasp.
“It’s what happens when you join the Army after nine eleven,” he said, his voice tight as he shifted into first and accelerated down the street. “You’re assigned to an infantry division in a war zone. People shoot at you and you shoot back. It happens less frequently as a cop, but it does happen.”
Are you freaking kidding me? “Are those your medals hanging at the end of the hall?”
“My dad’s,” he said abruptly.
“Where are yours? The Bronze Star? You have dog tags hanging from your mirror.”
“Framing medals wasn’t high on my list of priorities when I got home.” He consciously relaxed his grip on the wheel. “Your name’s Evangeline? Your records all say Eve Marie Webber.”
The topic switch and the white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel told her to go with the flow. “It’s vaguely creepy that you’ve seen my records, Matt.” His face didn’t change, so she dialed down the sass. “They wanted to name me Evangeline, but I was three weeks early and Dad was away at his annual retreat. Mom was completely out of it when the nurse asked for my name, and Mom gave her the nickname. I’m Eve to everyone except my family, and then I’m Evangeline only when I’m screwing up.”
“Or swearing.”
She looked at him, dread in her heart. “How much of that conversation did you hear?” she asked.
“No ménage,” he clarified.
She sank down in the seat, embarrassment heating her cheeks. “I’m going to kill him,” she said.
“Unless the next time you get pissed at me, you decide that’s how you want to work out your anger.”
Her jaw dropped. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Yes,” he said. “No ménage.”
Thank God.
“Caleb’s hiding an honest-to-God big brother under that swagger,” he said.
“Takes one to know one?” She sighed. “Sometimes he’s such a jerk I forget he really cares.”
Matt downshifted and coasted to a stop at a light. “What drives him? They teach argumentation in law school, but he takes combative to a whole new level.”
She thought about how to answer that question for a long time before saying, “He made a mistake. Lives were ruined forever. He puts on a front because the world sees gold and Caleb knows better.”
He nodded, as if that made perfect sense to him. Maybe it did. “What do you see?”
“My brother,” she said simply. “He used to strap my Barbie dolls to bottle rockets, and light them while I screamed. He taught me to shoot free throws well enough that I won the school competition my senior year.” She laughed. “Classic Caleb story. My sophomore year I wasn’t allowed to date, but Nate Marshall asked me out. He was a senior starting wide receiver on the football team, teen idol movie star gorgeous, and he knew it. I was all angles, no curves, and he asked me out. So I snuck out to meet him. Nate drove me out to the reservoir north of town and said he wouldn’t take me home until I—red light! Red light!”
The Jeep jerked to a halt halfway through the crosswalk, the seatbelt locking with the force of the stop. Matt cursed, shoved the gearshift into reverse, and backed up a few feet.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Fine,” he ground out. “What happened?”
“I told him to go to hell and fuck himself when he got there. Then I got out of the car and started walking, and he took off, spraying me with dust and gravel from his nifty Camaro as he drove away. Caleb got wind of the whole thing, and found me a mile from home, walking along the highway. He got me inside without Mom and Dad finding out, and the next day, after school, he went after Nate. I didn’t see it, you understand, so I’m just repeating what I heard, but apparently the entire offensive line was clustered around Nate’s Camaro when Caleb waded through them, twisted Nate’s arm up behind his back, grabbed his hair, and slammed his pretty face into the trunk of the car.”
“I would have done the same thing.”
“Two broken teeth, a broken nose, split lip, and Caleb hadn’t hit him yet. Caleb took him apart. I was minding my own business, sitting on the front steps of the school with most of the drill squad, wondering where the hell Caleb was because he was my ride home, when Caleb shoved Nate in front of me and told him to impress us both with his eloquent apology.”
Another one of those deep, unwilling laughs. “You have to respect his style.”
“The school tried to suspend Caleb for fighting, but they couldn’t get Nate to identify Caleb as the person who did it because Caleb said he’d make Nate tell the principal, the football coach, his parents, my parents, and most important of all, the football recruiter from Ohio State why Caleb beat him up.”
“Nate believed him,” Matt said, but it wasn’t a question.
“Years and experience have reined in the temper, but Caleb takes personal offense when the strong take advantage of the weak.” She watched the scenery shift from the small homes and small lots of the East Side to Matt’s neighborhood. “He’s just Caleb. That’s all I see.”
Matt said nothing for a few moments. “You were on the drill squad?”
“No. President of the Future Business Leaders of America. Nat was on the drill squad.” Another memory surfaced, one that made her laugh at the irony. “I just remembered how Caleb found out what Nate had in mind for me. Lyle was at Aquinas High by this time, selling steroids to football players. He heard about it, and called Caleb.” She looked out the window. “Maybe in the suburbs things are black and white, good and evil. It’s harder to pin down the East Side. I know Lyle’s bad news now, but to me he’s still the kid who called my brother. Even then Caleb hated him, but Lyle still called him.”
He pulled into his driveway and cut the engine, but didn’t get out of the Jeep. “It’s a gift, you know.”
“What is? Forgiving Caleb for taking on the world and everyone in it?”
“Seeing people as they are and caring about them anyway.”
Might get her in trouble, given how much slack she’d cut Lyle. “Guess I paid attention in church.”
Another laugh, the noise tugged from somewhere deep inside, rusty and unused, but she liked it. She liked seeing his battered face morph into something filled with humor and personality. She liked being the woman who did that for him.
“They ride you pretty hard,” he said quietly. “Why?”
Sitting in the now-warm Jeep, she smoothed the strap of her purse in her lap before answering. “Because at heart I’m selfish. I want what’s best for the East Side, but I want something for me too. A good person, a good girl, wouldn’t do what I do. I’d be teaching or in social work, volunteering at church and the SCC. I should be married by now. Raising babies.”
“You’ll be good with kids, but I can’t see you at an insurance company, boss.”
“You and I are the only ones with that particular deficit in our vision, Matt.” When he didn’t say anything else, she added, “It’s Monday night.”
“It is,” he agreed.
“Football night, right?”
“Preseason game in New York,” he said.
“Do you want to watch the game?” she asked. “We could order a pizza. My treat. Dinner was inedible. Mom’s an amazing cook with unlimited quantities of butter and…”
Her voice trailed off. His eyes were heavy-lidded and intense. Despite the setting sun, the air in the Jeep was heating rapidly, twilight-dark, close.
“What do you want to do, Eve?”
Uncertainty shimmered in her stomach. Dinner with her family only brought back the realities she was ignoring, the troubles the East Side faced, her job, her lack of a steady boyfriend, and suddenly the fear was back, the threat from Lyle intensifying every worry she had about the present, let alone her future. Matt sat next to her, hands relaxed on his thighs. His only concession to the heat in the Jeep was the deep red flush on his cheekbones and the glimmer of sweat at his hairline. The scent of his skin, his sweat, was engraved on her memory, and oh, she wanted him. He could make her forget all her troubles, at least for now.
“I want to stop thinking for a while,” she admitted.
Emotion flickered in his eyes, unreadable and almost imperceptible, and as the seconds passed she began to wonder if she’d seen it at all. “Stay there.”
Following his order was good practice for that by-the-book officer/civilian thing he kept talking about, so she waited, marking time by the slow thump of her pulse in her wrists and throat as he walked around the Jeep and opened the door for her. He stayed close, protective or possessive, or both, as they walked up the ramp to the front door. She was hyperaware of his body, hot and substantial next to hers, as he guided her through the door and down the hall to the workout room. The light hung soft and heavy between late afternoon and twilight, light enough to see herself, six inches from the mirror, Matt visible behind her.
“Watch,” he said.
She blushed so hard her cheeks were darker than the soft pink blouse. “I can’t possibly,” she said, even as her gaze skittered over the strangely demure woman in the mirror, feet primly together, knee-length skirt, shirt that skimmed her curves without drawing attention to them. She looked sweet, maybe even innocent.
His hands rose to the first tiny button on her soft pink blouse, unfastened it slowly, moved to the second. He gained deftness but scorned speed as he moved down, exposing her throat, then her collarbone. “What was all that about choosing mirrors over cuffs last night?”
They hadn’t made it anywhere near the home gym. “You were supposed to watch,” she said. “Not me.”
He bent his head, the gesture at once both protective and authoritative, and murmured in her ear. “We’re both going to watch.”
Electricity cracked through her, igniting heat in her nipples and deep in her belly, and sending another flare of color into her face. He shifted focus from his big hands at the slowly parting edges of her blouse, and smiled. “I can’t believe the sexiest cocktail waitress in Lancaster is blushing at having sex in front of a mirror.”
“That’s different,” she said. “That’s an act. I wear a costume, say lines. You get that.”
“So you really are sweet and innocent?” he asked as he opened the last button.
“Shy,” she murmured, because his fingertips were hot through the white microfiber bra, casually brushing her nipples as he tugged the fabric down her arms and off to puddle at her feet.
He said nothing, just drew the side of his little finger between her breasts and down the middle of her abdomen to the top of her skirt. She took in details as he slowly stripped her, noting the way her nipples hardened as he slipped the hook-and-eye free, slid the zipper down, gave the skirt the merest nudge to send it to the floor.
Then he cupped her breasts through the bra and brushed his thumbs back and forth over her nipples, the slow, measured movements rasping the fabric over nerve endings on full alert. When she gave an involuntary undulation Matt unhooked her bra, pulled it down and away to drop on the floor, leaving her in nothing but the sheer white panties and dusky twilight.
Her eyelids drooped, part response, part reluctance to take in the carnal image in the mirror. Her nipples were red, hard. The urge to look away overwhelmed her. She turned her head to the side, but Matt laid fingers along her jaw and turned her to face the mirror. “Watch,” he said again, and this time the command held a hint of steel.
She met his eyes in the mirror. “Are you watching?”
“Hell, yes,” he said. His gaze held hers for another long, searing moment, the hazel gone dark and deep as his pupils expanded in the growing darkness. Then he deliberately looked at her mouth, then her breasts, then the shadow of dark curls covering her mound. She made an inarticulate sound and lifted her hands to cover something, her body, her breasts, maybe her eyes. He caught them, flattened her palms to the mirror at shoulder height.
That was easier, as if something to push against channeled the heat surging through her. She pressed her hands firmly against the glass, felt dampness slick the smooth surface. He slid his fingers over her hips and lowered her panties to the floor, leaving her naked in front of the mirror. She tipped her head forward enough for her hair to unmoor from behind her ear and slide into her face, hiding one eye.
“You’ve got nothing to hide,” he murmured, low and rough.
Only how she felt about him.
The thought disappeared when he stepped into her back and braced his forearm on the mirror over her head while his right hand skimmed down her belly, between her legs. He knew her body now, dipped into the folds to trail moisture up to her clit. She gave an inarticulate little cry and strained into his unyielding body. Oh, that helped, the glass under her palms, the length of him against her back.
He didn’t stop. They both focused on his hand, dark against her hip and thigh, touching her so intimately, so confidently. Another slow circle around her clit and she shuddered again, the fabric of his shirt and pants chafing her skin as she watched her mirror-self spread her legs. His finger circled her clit, sending darkly erotic pleasure in waves through her abdomen. Strung tight between her hands on the mirror, her feet on the floor, and her back and ass braced against his body, the tension climbed from her sex, seared along nerves connecting her nipples and clit. Her mouth dropped open, and a gasp shuddered into the air. The long muscles in her thighs began to tremble as the pleasure coiled dark and hard under his relentless touch. Then she shattered, waves of release pulsing out in time to the soft cries she stifled in her shoulder.
She sank to her knees on the floor, pushed her hair out of her face, and tried to catch her breath as she peered up at him in the mirror. He was fully dressed, hands on his hips, the tiniest of smiles lifting the corner of his mouth. “Still thinking?”
No. “Yes,” she said. The vulnerability of kneeling naked on the gritty floor while he stood fully dressed behind her registered in her brain as slightly embarrassing and very arousing. She lifted her chin at him. “Take something off. Please.”
With efficient movements he unbuttoned his shirt, tugged it free from his pants, shrugged it off. That was a little better, and yet wasn’t any better. His lean, muscled torso distracted her until he dropped to his knees behind her and began to unbuckle his belt. Without a word he freed his cock from his pants and situated her with her hands against the mirror again, making her wait while he smoothed on a condom. Then he gripped her hips, positioned himself at her entrance, and pushed inside.
Climax made her sensitive, so he paused, lodged just inside her, and while he waited for her to stop trembling he leaned against the mirror and put his deft, knowing mouth to her neck. The sheer female submissiveness of the position coupled with the scrape of his teeth against her nape crashed over her in a wave of sensation. She tilted her head to give him better access, watched his hands smooth up her abdomen to cup her breasts, pinching the nipples firmly. The current running between her nape, her nipples, and the soft, aching walls of her pussy intensified.
Then he started to move, slowly but not gently, insistent demand in his rhythm and strokes. She took each thrust, balanced on th
e razor’s edge of pleasure and pain, and arched her back for more. Her attention wavered between the interior sensations of his cock churning millions of nerve endings into screaming need and the image in the mirror, her widespread knees, the damp curls at the apex of her thighs, his tanned hands on her breasts, her parted lips. Fire licked through her, and she turned her head.
It was a mistake, because in the mirrors to their right she could see the finely honed length of his ass and back rippling as he thrust, felt the head of his cock drag against swollen inner tissues. The ache contracted tight and hard in her belly. “Oh, God,” she gasped.
When he turned his gaze, dark and fierce with desire, and met hers, the jolt of recognition sent her over the edge. A second orgasm, deeper, more intense than the first, rocked through her, and she dimly heard soft cries echo in the room in time to the contractions. A growled curse, then he wrapped his arms around her torso, buried his cock inside her, and came.
“Was this payback for teasing you about the remote?”
A laugh ruffled the hair at her temple. “You looked too sweet to go after payback,” he said, low and assured. Then he bit her earlobe, the pressure enough to sting, the sting enough to remind her that no matter how often they’d done this, the heat never entirely went away. “Next time you’re wearing that leather outfit and you flip me that attitude, it’s game on.”
Sparks flew under her skin. “Promise?”
“Count on it,” he said. “Still thinking?”
He’d very effectively shut down her brain. “Not anymore,” she said with a smile.
“Good.” He pulled out and walked out of the room.
Water ran in the bathroom as she looked in the mirror. Her eyes were a languid green, amused and satisfied all at once, but as the pleasure continued to ebb from her body, realization stole through her consciousness.
She could do more than like him. He’d handled dinner with her family under strained circumstances, and come out unfazed. Reality was tilted on its axis, and she could easily feel more than she should.
