Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  He wanted to kiss her. Barrett Rockwell wanted to kiss her, and what was more—she wanted him to kiss her, too.

  The day had changed her view of him completely, and he was no longer some unknown interloper into her conception of justice and order. He was a mysterious, and dynamic, and powerful dragon shifter, and private investigator whose life and career she needed to—wanted to—help him protect.

  And God she wanted his hands all over her.

  He came back in just as she was imagining that very scenario, and she could feel herself flush all over again. Barrett was too preoccupied to notice, though.

  “They won’t come,” he said, sounding astounded. “My dad said no.”

  Victoria stood up, immediately shifting back into pure work mode. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  “I explained the situation,” Barrett said. “Grandpa had already filled them in on quite a bit, but I elaborated. And then I asked them if they would come over here and talk to me about it.”

  “Did you mention me?”

  He nodded. “Yes. I said that I was working with a police officer who thought that getting their statement was the next step in the case.”

  Victoria put her hands on her hips, biting down on her bottom lip as she concentrated. “So, it could be that they don’t want to talk to me, and that it’s not about you at all.”

  “It could be,” Barrett said.

  “But …”

  “Probably not,” he said, once again agreeing with her. “It seemed a lot more like they don’t want to touch this with a ten-foot pole, no matter if I’m innocent or not. Which tells me basically all I need to know about my parents and where I stand with them when things really matter.”

  Victoria closed the distance between them and touched his arm lightly. “I’m sorry. That’s never a good thing to discover. Everyone deserves parents who stick by them through thick and thin. I have complaints about my own parents, but one thing they have never done is abandon me. No parent should do that.”

  “Maybe I’ve always known that there was something …off,” Barrett said, crossing his arms over his broad chest. He shook his head, as though he couldn’t believe that his parents really weren’t going to come to him in his time of crisis. “My grandfather is going to be furious with my father now. I know he will be. He won’t easily forgive Dad for this, and that’s going to cause even more trouble. God, it’s like I can’t stop being at the center of trouble. All I’ve ever wanted to do is live up to the Rockwell legacy, and I’m falling short of it everywhere I turn.”

  Victoria’s heart ached for him in a way that surprised her. She wanted to reach out and put her arms around him and comfort him, but she didn’t dare do that after the moment they had shared moments earlier. She wanted to comfort him, but she didn’t want it to lead to something that neither of them would be able to take back—and it very easily could.

  “Come with me,” she said, stepping back from him. “Let’s go.”

  He frowned at her, not understanding. “Where are we going?”

  “They won’t come here, right?”

  Barrett nodded.

  “Well, let’s go to them,” she said, nodding towards the door. “Listen, if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s investigate. And I know you do, too. And if this were someone else’s case, you’d be loitering around, finding answers whether people wanted to volunteer them or not. Wouldn’t you?”

  “I would,” he said, walking towards the door with her. “Yeah. I’d be going to the source. You’re right.”

  “Of course, I’m right,” she said. “Do you have any shoes I can wear?”

  “In that closet,” he said, nodding back towards the hall. “Anything you find that will work, you can have.”

  Victoria hurried towards the closet, pulled it open, and found a pair of flip-flops. It wasn’t the ideal investigation footwear, but it would do well enough for now.

  Barrett was slipping his own shoes on by the door, and when she rejoined him, he looked like he had been invigorated again. They walked out of the house together and got back into his car. When they had done the same earlier, she had been about to learn his deepest secret, and now, just hours later, she had somehow come to terms with the fact that he was a dragon shifter, and she was on her way to help him investigate his own parents. If she was wrong, and his parents were just withdrawn, she was possibly driving a wedge between them for no reason.

  But Victoria didn’t think she was wrong. Her gut was telling her that they were on the right track, and that Barrett and Annie were both eventually going to get justice.

  Chapter 17

  Barrett

  Barrett would never have imagined that he would be partnering with a police officer to secretly investigate his own parents, but that was exactly what he was doing. He parked his car a reasonable distance from his parents’ house—well out of sight given how dark it already was—and then he and Victoria got out of the car and, without having to coordinate any sort of plan, began walking towards the house he had identified, separating to flank each side.

  They did a quick sweep together and met around the back, just to the left of the backdoor, hidden in the shadows.

  “The lights are on,” Victoria whispered.

  Barrett put a finger against her lips, shaking his head. His parents had heightened hearing just like he did, and anything that she said, they could very possibly overhear without even trying.

  Victoria’s eyes went wide as his finger brushed against her lips, and the look on her face sent heat straight to his groin. It was amazing that in the midst of everything his body and mind both had time to react to her so powerfully, but there didn’t seem to be any way to get around it.

  He used his other hand to grip her waist, turning her so she was facing the window that they were standing by. There was just enough space between the half-closed blinds to see inside, and he moved behind her, crowding her against the window as his hands settled on her waist.

  Victoria’s body was tense beneath his hands, and he could hear her heart pounding just as hard as his was. It was satisfying, knowing that she reacted to him the way that he reacted to her, and he let his arms wrap around her waist as he pressed her closer to the window. He lowered his head and placed his lips right beside her ear.

  “Don’t speak,” he said, his words barely audible. “They’ll hear you.”

  She leaned back against him, and he took that to mean that she understood him, and together they stayed in their tucked-away spot, peering into his parents’ home. There was nothing there to see, though, and Barrett found his mind struggling to stay on task as he felt Victoria’s body pressed against his.

  Unbidden, his hands began to stroke up and down her sides, and his fingers caressed the dip above her hip. He placed his lips by her ear again, but this time, instead of speaking, he let his lips brush along the shell of her ear, feeling her shiver with pleasure.

  “Nola?”

  The sound of his father’s voice jolted Barrett back to attention, and he peered through the blinds. He still didn’t see his father, but he could hear him. Victoria couldn’t, and she looked back at him with a questioning look. He shook his head, putting his finger against her lips again.

  “He’s here,” Barrett mouthed. “I can hear him.”

  “Nola—open the door,” Gideon said, sounding tired. “Honestly, this silent treatment is ridiculous.”

  “He’s our only child,” Nola said, emotionally. “At least, the only one we have left. How can we not help him through this?”

  Barrett was so shocked by his mother’s words that he almost missed his father’s response.

  “You know why,” Gideon said, with a sigh. “We have to answer to the elders. We’ve been down this road before, Nola. I know you remember it like it was yesterday, the same way I do. Now another one of our children has been accused. We can’t appear to be siding with him.”

  “But he’s our child.”

  Barrett dropped his
hands from Victoria and stepped back, all of his physical desires and longings for her shoved to the back of his mind, as he tried to understand what he had just heard.

  Feeling his tension, Victoria turned and looked up at him, scanning his face intently. She, of course, couldn’t have heard what his parents were saying inside their house, and she had no idea why he had suddenly withdrawn into himself.

  Another of our children.

  The words echoed around in Barrett’s head, and he didn’t know how to make sense of them. He had never heard so much as a whisper of another child—of a sibling. That sibling must have been born before Barrett. And what had happened to that child? Had he or she died young? No—his father had said another of his children had been accused.

  Another of our children.

  Barrett turned and began to stalk away from the house, hearing Victoria hurrying behind him, trying to keep up. He walked back towards the car, Victoria silently by his side, and when they arrived at the vehicle, he got in without a word and turned on the engine. Then he sat there in his seat, seatbelt off, hands in his lap, air conditioning blowing hard, and lights still dark. He stared straight ahead, wracking his brain for anything that might help him understand what was happening.

  “You heard something,” Victoria said, after a long moment of silence between them. She was sitting in her own seat, facing him with one leg tucked underneath her and her hands in her lap. She looked even younger than usual sitting there like that, almost like a young college student out on a date. There was something so sweet and innocent about her as she watched him with concern, but he couldn’t feel the same appreciation for her beauty with his emotions churning, as if they were stuck in a mill.

  “My parents have another child,” he said, voicing the words and making them real. “And that other child was accused of something—something similar to what I’ve been accused of. And for that reason, my parents won’t stand by me in this because they have to answer to the Elders for whatever happened …before.”

  Victoria’s hand rested on his arm, and she pressed there gently. “That has to be a shock, Barrett.”

  He nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, quietly. “I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now, but I know that your head must be all over the place.”

  Again, he nodded, the motion tight and abrupt. His parents had lied to him his whole life, and now they were putting their own safety and position with the Clan above his without a second thought. Well—his father was. His mother just didn’t have what it took to defy Gideon. He didn’t blame her for that. She had spent her whole life following Gideon’s lead.

  Victoria would never be that kind of wife.

  The thought came out of nowhere, mixing in with the tumult of his other thoughts, and it gave him a moment of pause, wondering where it had come from. But he shoved that thought away and focused, knowing that if he didn’t get a handle on the truth and on his own reaction, he was going to be operating at a severe disadvantage.

  “I need to drive,” he said. “Are you good with that?”

  She nodded, and he threw the car into reverse, backing up and turning around, so that he could drive out of the residential neighborhood. He didn’t even stop to think about where he was going—he knew instinctively where he needed to be and what he needed to do. And he was glad that Victoria was with him, even though he was about to do something that he would normally only do in the privacy of his own company or with his trusted friends around him.

  It was difficult to explain, but Victoria had gone from enemy to trusted confidant so quickly that he couldn’t question the process. She was clearly meant to be in his inner circle, and she seemed to want to be there.

  He drove them back to the bayou, where they had been earlier that day, and when he got out of the car and grabbed the same bag of clothes from his trunk, Victoria followed.

  In the dark night, they both walked into the bayou, their feet sloshing in the mud. A soft sound from behind him alerted Barrett, and he turned, finding that Victoria was sliding around as she walked because she was wearing flip-flops, and he went back to her, handing her his bag and then turning and crouching in front of her, so that he could lift her onto his back.

  He picked her up, her body resting against his and her legs wrapped around his waist from behind. He anchored his hands at her thighs, feeling the strong, toned muscle there, and he began to walk away, carrying her on his back as though she was weightless. When her arms slid around his neck, hugging him to keep herself balanced, the tension in his chest eased slightly, and he let himself focus on the whisper of her hair against his neck.

  It took about ten minutes of walking for him to feel as though they were deep enough into the bayou, and then he stopped walking and carefully set Victoria down.

  “It’s so dark in here,” she said. “I guess you can see perfectly.”

  He could, and he should have remembered that she couldn’t. He turned to look down at her, touching her cheek lightly. “I’m sorry. Are you scared in here?”

  Victoria shook her head. “No. I’m not afraid. I’ve just never been so far in the bayou at night. It’s …haunting almost. There must be creatures everywhere, watching us.”

  “There are creatures everywhere no matter where you are,” Barrett said, leaning Victoria up against a tree and bending his head down to hers. He caught her lips in a fierce kiss, giving himself over to the moment because nothing seemed to matter, and he felt doomed no matter what he did, given that his own parents were willing to turn him over to the elders for scrutiny just to protect themselves from being dragged through the mud again—because apparently another child had dragged them through the mud before.

  Victoria gasped softly when his lips touched hers, and he anchored his hands on her waist, holding her possessively but not so much that she couldn’t push him away if she wanted to.

  She didn’t push him away, though. Her hands gripped the fabric of his shirt and pulled him closer, and her mouth parted beneath his, their lips melding in a heated kiss of passion and need.

  She felt incredible and tasted addictive. The sensations that moved through him as their lips met again and again were so powerful that if he had let them, they could have erased the whole miserable day and the miserable last few weeks and months. She was warm, and alive, and eager and she tasted of sweet promises and pleasure. His hands tangled in her hair and roamed down her sides, gripping her hips and pulling her into him. Her arms wound around his neck, and her body pressed to his so eagerly that it made him instantly hard as a rock, needing her more than he had ever needed anything.

  But Barrett pulled away, breathing hard, and he reached for his shirt, pulling it over his head and discarding it.

  Victoria’s eyes had adjusted enough that she could see him now, and he watched her face as it masked with desire.

  He reached for his pants and stripped them off, standing in front of her in only his black boxer briefs, his body on [almost] full display. But instead of reaching for his boxers to strip those away, too, he jumped straight into the air and shifted, his dragon form springing out of his human form like it had been desperate to be released. His wings unfurled, and his tail cut through the air, and as he stretched out his neck, craning his head towards the sky, he opened his mouth and he let out a cloud of fire that released from somewhere deep within his gut.

  The fire lit up the dark bayou, and he looked down at Victoria, as he hovered above her. Then he swooped down and gently scooped her up with one wing, settling her on his back before he lifted himself up into the sky, his wings cutting through the night air with ease. He took them higher and higher, and he flew straight south, heading for the Gulf of Mexico and the freedom that came with nothing but water stretching out before him.

  Chapter 18

  Victoria

  The wind rushed around her, catching in her hair, so that it swept around her face like a tornado of tendrils. Victoria pushed the strands out of her eyes and tied her hai
r back with the band that was always present on her wrist. When she did, and she could see around her, what she saw took her breath away.

  She was flying on the back of a green dragon, Barrett, and the world was so far below them that the lights of the city were just distant, glowing orbs. The Gulf stretched out before them, and Barrett’s wings were bringing them further and further out towards the water, as he cut through the air with speed and precision.

  All around her was the black night, and below her the black sea, rolling, as the wind swept wave after wave up into gentle crests.

  She had no control. If she sat up further, she risked being carried away by the wind, and if she moved her position, she risked sliding off Barrett’s back. It should have made her feel terrified, but instead she felt liberated. There was nothing she could do to take over, and that let her release completely, lie back, and watch the dark world unfold around her.

  As Victoria did exactly that, she could feel the strength of Barrett’s dragon form as it moved beneath her. His power radiated up through her own body, and she closed her eyes, just feeling the sensations moving over her. She didn’t know where they were going, or why, or what they would do when they got there, but the ride was incredible.

  She could feel it the moment that Barrett began to dive, plunging down out of the sky where he had flown them both so high, and then spiraling down towards the waves below them. Her stomach flipped over as their altitude changed, and he was moving so fast that she stopped falling at the same rate as him. The moment her body began to lift up off his back, she felt a rush of panic move through her, but then he moved out from under her completely so that she was in free fall and after the rush of terror subsided, she realized that it was the most exhilarating feeling, tumbling through the air.