Chapter Sixteen
Morning dawned clean and clear. Yates rolled over in the bed and smiled. Tasha was smashed up against him with one of her legs thrown over his. The softness of her inner thigh brushed his cock. The intimate touch made every part of him wake up and take notice.
She made an adorable noise as she stretched and opened her eyes. Her smile could have lit the sun. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” Yates murmured. “Did you sleep all right?”
“Other than feeling like there wasn’t enough of it,” she said ruefully. “Yeah. I slept better than I ever would have imagined, considering everything that happened yesterday.”
“Good.” Yates couldn’t help but wish that he was part of the reason she’d slept well, although he sure as hell wasn’t going to come right out and ask her about it.
“Yates?” Tasha gently brushed her fingertips over the stubble growing along his jawline.
“Yes?”
“Will you make love to me?”
The request was almost innocent in nature. Sweet. He felt the enormity of the request and had no trouble recognizing just how much trust she was placing in him. It was staggering. “Are you sure?” he asked quietly. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I know I don’t.” She looked thoughtful, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and giving a tiny sigh. “I think that’s why I want you so badly. You never make any demands. You’re always happy just to give instead of receive. It’s—well, it’s refreshing.”
“Tasha,” he groaned.
The instant overload of endorphins flooding his brain made him almost giddy with excitement. He felt like a kid. He could only hope that he would handle this entire situation a little better than some randy teenaged boy would have.
Where to start.
The two of them were already naked. Maybe that was a bonus. No. As he ran the palm of his hand down her side, over her ribcage, and down over the rounded contour of her hip, Yates knew this was a bonus. She felt so silky smooth. Her skin was perfection. His cock was already hard, and he had a feeling he was going to come the moment he slid inside her heat. That meant he had to make damn sure Tasha was satisfied before they ever got to that point.
She gave a tiny gasp when he moved his hand to the inside of her thigh. He kept his touch light, almost teasing. And as he stroked ever closer to her mound, he could tell that she was eager and not frightened. It was exactly what he wanted.
His fingertips barely brushed the short hair shielding her pussy. He tugged on the coarse hair before threading her fingers through it. Yates nuzzled her ear and whispered, “You know why I love a woman with hair on her mound?”
“Why?” Her voice sounded choked.
“Because the hair carries your scent. And there’s something so very erotic about that entire area. The hair, the soft flesh, the wetness”—he gently slipped the tip of his index finger between her fleshy nether lips”—and especially the way you feel when I stroke you.”
Tasha moaned. She pushed her head back onto the mattress and arched her back. Driving her hips down, she spread her legs wider and wriggled as though she were determined to get him to touch more of her pussy.
“Do you need more, sweetheart?” he murmured.
“Yes!” She wasn’t shy at all. In fact, her voice was downright demanding. “Now!”
TASHA COULD NOT believe she was lying there demanding sex, but her body was going down in flames, and she instinctively knew that the only relief would come from joining with Yates.
She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to remember how to breathe. Then his fingers spread her pussy lips, and he stroked her clit with a firm touch. She groaned in relief and satisfaction. It had been so very long. In fact, she was going to—Tasha came hard and fast, the orgasm ripping through her body and leaving her gasping for air as she felt her muscles contracting with each throbbing beat of her heart.
“That’s it, baby,” Yates encouraged. “Come for me, Tasha. Show me everything.”
His words nearly made her lose her mind. It was like coming out of her skin. Each place their bodies touched, she felt as if she were on fire. The scent of him surrounded her. She wanted to be closer. She trusted him to keep her safe, and she wanted to fly with him to the moon and back.
“Yates,” she moaned. “I want you! Please?”
“One more,” he coaxed. “I’m going to put my fingers inside that pretty pussy, and I want you to squeeze me so tight. Give me what I want, baby.”
Nobody had ever said anything so bold to her before. Her entire body was alive with sensation. Her nipples tightened, stabbing the air and stinging with sensation where they rubbed against Yates’s chest. Her pussy was hot and wet. The sound of his fingers touching her was decadent.
Then he slid one finger deep inside her body, and Tasha was utterly gone with the bombardment of sensational feelings. The friction was incredible. Her pussy seemed to bear down on him of its own accord. Then she felt everything below her waist tighten, and she came once again.
The orgasm left her breathless. She couldn’t even open her eyes. Stars burst behind her eyelids, and she felt as if she were completely outside herself. In some corner of her mind she knew that she was moaning and thrashing around, but she couldn’t have stopped if she had wanted to.
“Yates!” she cried out, needing his reassurance as her whole world came apart.
“I’m right here.”
He moved then, covering her body with his. She felt his weight on top of her and spread her legs to accommodate his body. It felt good to have him there, right somehow. And when the tip of his erection probed her slick entrance, she didn’t feel a single misgiving. She wanted this.
YATES WAITED UNTIL he was absolutely certain that Tasha wanted to be with him in this way. He would never take a woman who didn’t want him. That went against his grain in so many ways.
Yet when she opened her eyes and put her fingertips on his cheek, Yates knew that she was accepting him in every way. He pushed forward and took her in one long thrust. He felt his balls come up snug against her rounded bottom and the tip of his cock kiss the very deepest part of her pussy. It was pure heaven, and he never wanted it to end.
She was so delightfully tight and wet. Even flexing his hips to make himself barely move inside her resulted in an earth-shattering sensation of friction. Heat lanced through his body and culminated at a point near the base of his spine. He could feel his climax building in his balls. They grew tight and hot between his legs, and he wanted so badly to spill himself inside of Tasha and just let go.
“You feel so good,” he told her in a tight voice.
Yates stroked her face, memorizing every inch of her even as he was gently moving inside her body. He pulled back and then thrust back inside over and over again while holding her gaze captive with his own. The intimacy was more than he’d ever experienced with another person. It was as though he could see her soul peeking out at him through her eyes.
Her expression was filled with wonder. He loved that. There was something very honest about her in this moment. She hid nothing and held nothing back. She was giving him everything that she had, and he was grateful.
“Come with me, Tasha,” Yates murmured. “I can’t wait any longer.”
He grunted, thrusting hard and burying himself as deeply as he dared inside her body. She was warm and welcoming, and when he poured his seed inside her he knew that he had marked her as his own. This was his woman. No matter what else happened, that much was true.
She gasped, her eyes opening wide as she bore down hard on his cock. Her body convulsed, and then she came again. She whimpered as she climaxed, her release making her almost limp as she showed him the prettiest sight he’d ever seen.
Yates held her close as she came, lowering his mouth to hers in the last seconds and kissing her until he didn’t know where she stopped and he began. Their tongues tangled together, and their voices meshed as they both found their fulfillment at that moment.
TASHA DID NOT
have words to express what she felt while she was lying there with Yates’s body still buried inside of hers. She knew she didn’t want to let him go. It felt so good to be joined with him. She’d never felt this close to anyone before in her life. It wasn’t just sex. It felt like more. She wrapped her arms around him and held on while she closed her eyes and just let the world pass by.
She had no concept of how much time had passed when Yates rolled them both onto their sides. To her relief, he gathered her close and seemed unwilling to let her out of his arms.
“It feels so good,” she whispered.
“Hell yeah, it does.”
His grunt made her smile. It was filled with masculine pride and maybe more than a little bravado. That made her happy. If she could somehow help Yates feel awesome, she was all about that. After all, she was pretty convinced that he was—in fact—awesome.
“Thank you,” Tasha whispered. “I never knew it could be like that.”
“Most of the time it isn’t.”
She considered that. “So are we just compatible then?”
“Maybe.”
“I feel guilty.” The whispered confession slipped out before she could really think about what she was saying. She didn’t want him to think she was regretting her decision or something. She was just so very aware of the fact that there were a lot of women out there going through hell right now, and she was safe inside a fancy hotel room with a great guy who made her feel like a million bucks. How was that fair?
“Tasha,” Yates said soothingly. “You can’t stop living just because bad things happen to some people in the world. If we all did that, there would be no life left for anyone. Bad things happened to you too, remember?” He gently stroked her cheeks, her forehead, and then tapped the end of her nose. “That doesn’t mean that your life is over. It doesn’t even mean that you’re required to spend your life hunting down bad people that do those kinds of things in an effort to prevent that stuff from happening to other women. You’re not responsible for anyone but yourself. Not really. The fact that you choose to empathize with those women and help them makes you exceptional. All right?”
She had never felt so cherished and important before in her life. It was as if he had peeled back the hard outer layer she’d worked so hard to cultivate and was looking at the soft gooey center of her. More importantly, Yates actually liked what he saw. It was incredibly validating.
“You’re awfully good to me,” she whispered. “But I think it’s time we get our lazy butts out of bed and do some work.”
“Hmm,” Yates teased. “A girl who wants to look at evidence while naked in bed. Wow. That’s sexy.”
“And indescribably sick,” she suggested. “How about we put clothes on and see what we got from last night’s raid on sleazy Dean’s apartment?”
“All right, gorgeous.” He kissed her lightly. “You win. We’ll mix some work with our play.”
“You know, you’re really cute when you’re trying to be humorous,” she observed.
He put a finger to his lips. “Shh. Don’t tell a soul.”
“Yeah. Yeah,” she mused, “or you’ll have to kill me.”
He grew strangely somber. “Never.”
Note to self. Humor is slightly off kilter and certain topics are way off limits.
Chapter Seventeen
Yates banged on the door between the room he was sharing with Tasha and the room where Romero and Cassidy were staying. He heard someone scrambling to get out of bed. There was a loud thump, a curse, and then a riot of giggles. A strange wave of positive feelings spread slowly through Yates. Even in this moment when things were tense and uncertain, it was nice to know that his friend had found a bit of solace in the woman he loved.
Or perhaps Yates was just feeling particularly open to such things because he had Tasha. It was more than he could have ever expected. It didn’t even matter that Tasha’s presence in his life meant a whole list of complications that transcended his ability to describe them. His service with the Navy as a SEAL would never work if he were to pursue a relationship with Tasha. And why didn’t he care about that?
“What?” Romero flung the door open, looking disgruntled.
Yates was momentarily at a loss. His mind was filled with thoughts of Tasha.
Romero snorted. “Seriously? Did you just get me out of bed to tell me you got laid last night? Yeah. Believe me, we know. The two of you brought the house down.”
“Jealousy is such an ugly thing,” Tasha quipped. She had gotten out of bed and was now emerging from the bathroom with a robe covering her delectable curves. She was glaring at Romero. “We found some interesting things in the stuff you guys rescued from Johnny Dean’s apartment before it blew up.”
“Oh.” Romero’s frown eased. “Give us a second to get some clothes on. Cassidy is in the shower. How about we order some room service or something? I’m starving.”
“Ooo!” Tasha said eagerly. “That’s a good idea. I’m famished!”
Yates gazed at her, at the tousled hair, bright eyes, and wide smile, and he felt the most incredible sense of contentment. “Breakfast it is,” he agreed. Then he turned back to Romero. “Ten minutes.”
“Yes, sir. Drill sergeant, sir!” Romero teased.
Yates shoved the door closed right in Romero’s face, grumbling under his breath about smartasses and what they needed to do with their sarcasm and mockery.
“Calm down,” Tasha told him.
Her teasing tone actually soothed his agitation. Yates watched as she walked toward him. Her hips swayed with an open invitation, but it wasn’t physical need that made him feel almost giddy as she approached. It was something else entirely.
Yates held out his arms, and Tasha snuggled in close. She tucked her head beneath his chin and rested her cheek again his bare chest. There were no words. It didn’t seem necessary to say anything. It was enough to just stand there and be close.
TASHA SPREAD THE photos on the desk and tried to carefully smooth Johnny Dean’s wrinkled notepaper beside them. The man’s chicken scratch was practically indecipherable. If Tasha hadn’t had five or six years’ worth of experience in dealing with Johnny Dean and his wacko investigating techniques, she probably wouldn’t have understood a thing.
“So what does this mean?” Cassidy was leaning far over the photograph. “It’s definitely Rachel.”
Yates shoved a piece of fruit in his mouth. There was a cart laden with breakfast items sitting in the middle of the room. Romero had already inhaled a plate of pancakes, and Tasha had eaten some waffles. Yates and Cassidy seemed to be the splitting the fruit between them.
“Look at the buildings surrounding the photograph,” Tasha urged. “According to the notes that Dean jotted down on this paper, there is a ship up in Baltimore called the Brazen Belle.”
“Like a tanker or something?” Cassidy’s expression suggested she was having a hard time digesting this.
“A cargo ship,” Yates clarified. “But we can’t be sure that means that the ship isn’t still in port.”
Tasha pointed to a sentence on the crumpled sheet of notebook paper. “Right here Dean speculates that they’re waiting for what amounts to a tour of the East Coast to end before the ship leaves port.”
“Do we know what cities they’re hitting?” Romero grunted.
Yates nodded. “On this other paper, Dean had a list of cities.”
The four of them stared at the list. Savannah, Richmond, DC, and Baltimore. Baltimore was the last on the list.
Tasha suddenly frowned. The pieces were starting to fit, but the puzzle was also getting bigger. It was frightening. “So how does this work then? The two women in the first cases I investigated have been missing for over a year.”
“From DC, right?” Romero waved his hand over the entire haphazard collection of evidence. “What if these guys did this tour every single year? It wouldn’t even have to be the same clubs. If you think about it, these cities are big enough that they each have multipl
e hunting grounds. So what if they do a yearly tour to search out new merchandise?”
Yates seemed to consider this. “That would fit with most of what we know already. That’s why these clubs don’t really pop on the law enforcement radar. They have a string of disappearances, but then everything settles down, and that particular club doesn’t see any more action for, say, two or three more years. In that time, maybe another club in another part of town has a few disappearances, but nobody makes the connection.”
“And I bet they don’t do the cities in the same order every year either,” Tasha said suddenly. She grew more animated as she continued to speak. Everything was starting to come together. She’d made more progress since meeting Yates than she had in the last year by herself. “What if they stagger their time periods? That way it isn’t like women go missing in Atlanta every spring. It’s more random than that.”
“I think you’re on to something,” Yates murmured. “We’re putting it together.”
Romero pursed his lips, looking tense. “Which means they’re going to start getting nervous that we’re close to figuring it out.”
Cassidy gingerly picked up the photograph of Rachel. “I feel like if we finally find the top of the food chain we’re going to run across some bizarre schedule that would show us exactly what this asshole has planned for the year. It’s eerie.”
YATES COULD FEEL the mood in the room shift. It was as if the four of them had experienced a brief sense of exhilaration that revolved around putting the pieces of information together to form a picture, but once they actually got a good look at what was forming, the results sucked.
“Do you think Rachel is really still alive?” Cassidy whispered.
Cassidy’s face was pale. Romero put his arms around her and rested his chin on top of her head. “Yes. I do. I think Rachel will be alive until they find a buyer for her.”
“That’s harsh,” Trisha muttered. “The girl looks like she’s about to vomit.”
Romero frowned at Trisha. “At least I’m being honest.”
“Okay, enough.” Yates racked his brain. Where should they go next? “So we found the drug supplier. Fine. We need to look at those invoices we got from that weasely accountant guy. Then we can compare them to Dean’s notes and see if we find some overlap.”
SEAL INVESTIGATIONS: A 5-Books SEAL Romance Series Page 26
