Spooky Business

by S. E. Harmon

  He huffed in amusement and hung up. Too bad. I hated when Graycie got the drop on me.

  I tossed my phone on the table and drew my feet up on the couch. After a moment of trying to get comfortable, I decided to lie down lengthwise instead. I stared at the TV for a while, the light from the screen flickering across my face. A mother-daughter duo busily discussed home improvements on a house that clearly needed to be bulldozed.

  Kane’s final words to me kept running through my head. I didn’t feel good about his parting shot when he was alive. I liked it even less now that he was dead.

  I’ll see ya real soon, Doc. That’s a promise.

  Chapter 21

  I woke to the warmth of the sun on my face as it peeked through the blinds. I stretched slowly with a wide yawn. Heady freedom came with a Saturday morning that couldn’t be matched. If I wanted to get up and eat breakfast, I could. If I wanted to turn on the TV and lounge in bed, I could. Hell, if I wanted to turn back over and go back to sleep, I could do that, too.

  My favorite Saturday morning activity was probably off the table, despite evidence to the contrary, currently lodged against my backside. I glanced over my shoulder, only to find Danny sleeping peacefully, his arm still locked around my middle, his leg half over my thigh. I couldn’t help but push back against that bulge slightly. Maybe a little more than slightly. All right, it was pretty much a slow grind. When he sighed in his sleep, his arm tightening around my waist, I stopped immediately.

  Things were still a little…off between Danny and me.

  We’d hashed out the FBI job offer situation, which was great. But I wasn’t oblivious enough to think he’d forgiven me completely for keeping it a secret. We were still treating one another a little too delicately, as though we were both afraid to upset our unspoken truce. Frankly, it was driving me crazy. He was more than just my partner—he was my best friend. I needed that easy camaraderie between us like I needed air.

  I knew better than to rush him, though. Just because I wanted things to get back to normal didn’t mean he was ready. In the meantime, I’d settle for a few moments of closeness in the mornings. Half asleep, he was sweet and pliable, and didn’t immediately remember that he was still annoyed with me.

  I traced the inked outline of the ace of spades on his forearm, the skin soft and warm under my fingertips. He shivered a little when I got to the middle of the tattoo, and my finger stuttered to a stop. I glanced over my shoulder again, only to find his eyes wide open. He didn’t look sleepy at all.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you,” I said.

  “You didn’t.” His voice was husky with sleep and… maybe something else?

  I turned back around, lying my head on the pillow. I could feel him breathing on the nape of my neck, disturbing the little hairs there, and it was my turn to shiver. His fingers played with the ties on my sleep pants like he was debating with himself internally.

  He brushed against my dick, and I pushed my ass back at him again, almost helplessly. He made a growling noise, low in his throat, and I congratulated myself on waking his inner animal with minimal effort. “Sorry,” I said breathlessly.

  I wasn’t sorry at all. I was, however, fully aware I was trouncing all over our unspoken cease-fire. I was pretty sure there was no sex during a cease-fire. Right?

  Apparently, there was. His usually dexterous fingers were clumsy as he went from toying with the ties of my pants to actively trying to undo them. I struggled to catch up mentally, lying there passively, like a child who hadn’t quite mastered the art of buttons and zippers yet. After a few seconds, my brain came online, and I pushed his hand out of the way to deal with the ties myself.

  The moment they came loose, he took over again, pushing my pants down around my thighs. I groaned lowly as he surged between my cheeks, his cock thick and weighty. Instinctively, I clenched around him to keep him in place. He didn’t seem to mind, gripping my hip with one hand and using the other to push my shirt up. The slide of his hand was a rough caress across the sensitive plane of my stomach.

  Every sense suddenly felt heightened. I smelled his utilitarian soap mingling with the muskier scent of his arousal. My harsh breathing was loud in my ears as he stroked leisurely up and down my cleft. It was a dry and stuttering path at first, but his precum quickly made that stroke a smooth glide. He caught on my rim briefly on one pass, and I let out a little sigh. Fuck yeah. I wasn’t sure how my leisurely morning had segued into me getting screwed into the mattress, but I was all about that action.

  He slid over my hole again, slower, and with intent this time. “Lube,” I reminded him hurriedly.

  “I don’t need help back here, please and thank you.” I looked over my shoulder to find the lube bottle in his hand. He was breathless and flushed and so damned gorgeous. “I’m pretty much an expert when it comes to handling your ass. Physically and metaphorically.”

  I huffed out a laugh. “Fuck you, McKenna.”

  It was the only coherent sound I made for a while as he prepped me thoroughly, carefully, his fingers a welcome intrusion. I leaned back against him, my back pressed to his front, my head back on his shoulder, showing him without words that I trusted him implicitly. I was his to do with as he pleased. He rewarded my trust by taking my mouth with his, thrusting rhythmically with his tongue in my mouth and two thick fingers in my ass.

  I could feel an orgasm building low in my stomach and ripped my mouth away from his. “Fuck,” I gasped as he plunged those talented fingers inside me a few more times. I reached back to still his wrist, and he avoided my grasp.

  Soon enough, he replaced those fingers with his dick, and I reached back again, this time grabbing his hip. Not because of the burn, which was, quite frankly, the most fantastic ache. But because I was, once again, seconds away from blowing my load. “Gimme a sec.”

  “You get as long as you need.” From the feel of his fingers digging into my hips, I thought that was a bit optimistic. When I told him as much, he let out a pained groan.

  He gripped my hips in those big hands, spreading my cheeks farther apart. “Fuck, you’ve got an incredible ass,” he marveled. “It just doesn’t look like this in pants.”

  “Yeah, well, I try to avoid buying trousers that make my ass look like a double-wide,” I said dryly. “Call me crazy.”

  “I suppose it’s a good thing. I’d be just one big walking hard-on all day.”

  When I was sure I wasn’t about to go off like a rocket, I let go of his hip and urged him on. “Go for it.”

  I didn’t have to tell him twice as he surged inside of me. I’d like to say my self-control was legendary. I’d also like to say that I lasted a decent amount of time, at least long enough for Danny to find his release. But that would all be a lie. Three strokes in, I felt the orgasm unfurling again in my stomach. Then my spine. By the fifth stroke, I was spurting against the sheets, hands-free, clenching so tight around Danny’s cock that he gasped.

  “Fuck,” I finally managed. What was usually a pretty impressive vocabulary now consisted of only curse words, and not very clever ones at that. “Just… fuck.”

  He chuckled in my ear, but the sound was strained, and I realized he was still very much hard in my ass. He started to pull out, and I stilled him. “Stay,” I said, reaching behind me to stroke his balls. He shivered, canting his hips to give me better access. “Finish.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “I would’ve said so if I did.” At his doubtful silence, I made an impatient sound. “Am I ever the type to mince words?”

  He chuckled even as he pulled out and pushed me flat on the bed. The sheets were damp and twisted under my back. “No, you’re not,” he said as he moved between my legs. He pulled them up before I could, partially resting my ass on his thighs. “Not even at an express, written request.”

  “That’s not a very nice thing to say. Especially to someone who agreed you could use his ass like a glorified fleshlight,” I growled. “And just so you know, it wasn’t an open-
ended offer, either.”

  He slid a thumb across my stomach, wiping up the remnants of cum that managed not to get on the sheets. I watched, a little openmouthed, as he swiped the mess across his dick like nature’s lube.

  “You’re such a kinky bastard,” I informed him. “Never change.”

  He chuckled. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

  He tunneled inside me again with one smooth, slow glide. I couldn’t help the small, hushed groan that escaped as he slid past my sensitive, slightly swollen rim and started fucking me, hard and fast. My dick gave one last little pulse as at that as it tried to stir, but I knew I needed a little more recovery time than that.

  “Wider,” he grunted, going full-on caveman. I spread my legs farther and lifted my hips higher, giving him complete and unfettered access to my hole. “Fuck, that’s good.”

  I wanted to watch his cock disappearing and reappearing inside me, but I was transfixed by his face. It always struck me how vulnerable sex could be, especially in a moment like this. It was honest and real, letting someone see those most unguarded moments.

  I recognized the signs of him coming probably even before he did, mostly because I was just staring at him with rapt fascination. His jawline was even more stark than usual as he jutted out his chin. His eyebrows were drawn, almost as if in pain, a grimace wreathing his patrician features. His golden skin flushed with color as he labored on, and eyes that could be bright and playful were dark and intense as a storm.

  I rubbed a hand across his tense thigh, which was rock-hard against my questing fingers. Sure enough, it only took a few more seconds before he hurtled over the edge, flooding my grasping channel with his seed. It looked painful—his teeth gritted, his brow furrowed, eyes squeezed shut, every muscle standing out in stark relief underneath sweat-dampened skin.

  He was so fucking beautiful, it was hard to look at him.

  He collapsed on me a few moments later, thoroughly spent, and became a lot less beautiful. We were both hot and tired and sweaty now, and that situation could hardly be improved by us cuddling like two handsy polar bears.

  I rubbed a hand up and down his back and then all the way up through his silky hair, feeling the fragile shape of his skull under my hand. Might as well get in some tender loving care before I kicked him off me.

  He trailed a few kisses down my throat. “What do you have going on today?”

  “A session with Dakota and then I’ll play it by ear. What about you? Anything on the agenda?”

  “Other than making an ass dent in the couch?” He huffed a laugh in the crook of my neck. “Not really. I’ll probably put something in the slow cooker for dinner and watch something mindless on TV. Too bad you won’t be here.”

  “Yeah, too bad.” I scowled. “While you’re getting your jollies on, I’ll be working.”

  “Glad to hear it. I won’t have to give you another check minus on your annual review for employee motivation.”

  “Fuck off, Irish.”

  “Oh my.” He pretended to clutch his nonexistent pearls. “Obviously, the needs attitude improvement I wrote in the comment section stays.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you write, love. I have job security. I put the P in PTU.” I sent him a cheeky grin.

  Suddenly, I remembered the errand I’d run on the way home the day before and realized I hadn’t followed through with the rest of my plan. I pushed at his shoulders, and he rolled off me and onto his back.

  I got out of bed with a groan. Why, oh why, were there so many reasons to move after a jelly-knee inducing orgasm? It only took me a few moments to find the envelope in my attaché case, and I scuttled back under the covers.

  I presented the envelope to Danny with a flourish. “I believe this belongs to you.”

  He gave me a questioning look as he opened the envelope and pulled out the cashier’s check, one with enough zeroes on it to make me gulp when the teller printed it out. They should offer you a fifth of whiskey when you practically empty your account of your life’s savings—that’s just good customer service, really.

  He looked at it for a few seconds, brow creased in confusion like he’d never seen a check before. Maybe the number of zeroes was throwing him off. “What’s this for?”

  “It’s for you. I’m buying into the equity of the house. Our house.” I frowned. “And maybe you could look less like I handed you a sack of dog poop.”

  He didn’t say anything, staring at me and the check alternatively. I thought he would be touched. Pleased, even. Right up until that crazy bastard crumpled the check.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I squawked. I plucked the crumpled ball from his hands and started smoothing it back out. “I waited in line for twenty minutes to get this thing.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they don’t like it when you walk into a bank and say, stick 'em up,” I said, irritation clear in my tone.

  “Not why did you wait in line,” he huffed. “I already put your name on the deed. Why did you get the check?”

  “To show you….” I stopped smoothing obsessively, my brow wrinkled as I struggled to think of the right words. “To show you that I’m in. All the way in.”

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I know.”

  His gaze was laced with exasperation and something else. I couldn’t quite define that something else, but it was warm and familiar. I wasn’t sure if he even realized it, but he reserved that look just for me, and it always made me a little weak-kneed.

  “Okay,” he finally said.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay.” He leaned up to kiss me on the cheek before dropping back on his pillow. “I guess we can put it in the joint account.”

  “You mean the one we don’t have?”

  “The one we need to open,” he corrected. “It’s just fiscally responsible.”

  I blinked at him, still clutching the wrinkled check in my hand. “Combining accounts? Wow. Doesn’t that seem a little… a little….” All out of words, I flapped my hands helplessly.

  “I was talking about a joint account in addition to our separate accounts. One we could use for household bills and vacations and things like that.” His mouth was set in a grim line. “But do go on. What exactly does it seem?”

  Oh boy. Does anyone else see that warning signal flashing neon orange? I’d hoped to put a lid on the can of worms the FBI badge had opened—instead, I just kicked the entire can down the stairs.

  I swallowed. “I just want to make sure we’re both sure, that’s all.”

  “So… you’re not sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “So you don’t think I’m sure.”

  “I think we should stop saying the word sure before it loses all meaning.”

  His expression got grimmer, if possible. “If you’re not sure about us, then maybe we should talk about that.”

  “I don’t have questions about us.” Not one. I was a hundred percent certain about that topic. “You just took me off guard with this joint account business.”

  “How so?” He frowned at me. “When you’re building a life and a family together, you plan for the future. That includes finances, Rainstorm.”

  “I understand that,” I said, trying to control my prickly tone.

  “Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page,” he said dryly. “I’d hate to have to pick our favorite kid to send to college and tell the rest to hit the bricks.”

  Pick our favorite… wait, what the what now? “You want kids?”

  He looked surprised. “You don’t?”

  I stared at him for a few seconds. Someone was pouring cold water on all my fragile mental circuitry. “You want kids?” I asked again.

  “I thought we could adopt a few, yeah.” He raised an eyebrow, and I reached out and touched the barbell glinting there. “Because of my history in the foster system, I thought it might be a good way to go.”

  “Wow.”

  “Not today or tomorrow or eve
n a year from now. But someday.”

  “I mean… wow.”

  “Could you stop saying wow, please?” Any higher and his eyebrow was going to leave his face. “I need other words now.”

  “That's… that’s certainly a conversation we should have.”

  “Then let's have it.”

  Fuck. I didn’t have my ducks in a row yet. My ducks were scattered all over the damn pond, and they weren’t listening to my frantic calling. I needed to think. And walk. I definitely needed to walk.

  I got out of bed and started to pace, ignoring the fact that I was stark naked. For his part, Danny sat up in bed and leaned against the headboard. He sat quietly, arms folded across his chest, watching me as I made a few circuits around the bedroom. He knew I had to hash things out my way, and I was grateful for his seemingly endless patience—it was a trait I didn’t possess and just one more thing I loved about him.

  I never really thought about having kids. Hell, sometimes I still felt like a kid myself. Even if I was ready to take on raising a human being—a human-fucking-being—our lifestyle didn’t exactly jibe with having kids. We were cops, and that wasn’t exactly the safest job in the world. We also worked a lot and odd hours at that. Fuck, we weren’t even home enough to have the dog Danny had been angling for.

  Although, plenty of busy people had kids. And dogs. Would there ever be the perfect time to expand our family? Maybe that was just the anal part of me trying to apply a term to parenthood that didn’t exist—perfection. Parenthood was the most imperfectly perfect, messy thing, and Danny would be the most amazing dad. I already knew he would be gruff and strict with them sometimes, but he was a big softie at heart. His kids would be lucky to have him.

  Our kids.

  Someone touched the panic button in my mind again. Didn’t kids need routine or something? I think I remembered hearing something about that. They also needed stability. Rules. And peanut butter. Didn’t they like peanut butter?

  I rubbed my forehead. Wait, no. I think they were allergic to peanut butter now. I’d brought peanut butter brownies to my nieces’ bake sale once, and I was lucky they didn’t cordon me off with yellow police tape and have me picked off by a sniper.