Slim To None (Cedar Tree #1)

by Freya Barker

  She could feel his hands slide down the back of her thighs, and as they traveled back toward her ass, her cheeks were spread wide open. The sensation of his tongue between her legs, gave her a full body shiver. This time he licked her front to back, briefly tonguing her pussy before sliding further up. His thumbs slid from her labia into her passage, and she involuntarily clenched down on them. God, she wanted to feel his cock.

  "Patience, my delicious Peach." Gus rumbled from behind her.

  He pulled a thumb from her and trailed moisture up to her ass, started gently probing and pushing through the tight ring of muscle. Never had she been breached there before, and Emma briefly fought the instinct to pull away, but wanting to experience it all, she instead pushed back against his finger.

  "Oh my God, Emma. What you do to me. I have to get inside you."

  With his thumb still firmly lodged in her ass, he slid his painfully erect cock through her folds probing for her entrance. With one big thrust he planted himself balls deep inside her with a groan, causing her to gasp for breath.

  "You okay, my love?" Gus whispered to her.

  "God, yes, yes. So good." She whimpered. "Please move ..."

  She could feel a hand anchoring her hip and then he moved. Pumping slowly at first, but with increasing speed. He matched the movement of his cock sliding in and out of her, with the thrusts of his thumb. She was overwhelmed with a sense of fullness, a feeling of being completely consumed.

  "One of these days, darlin', I want to fuck you here." Gus said, as he twisted his digit in her ass, which woke up a whole new set of nerve endings an jump started an explosive orgasm, causing her to buck and scream his name.

  Using both hands now, Gus grabbed onto her hips with a stronghold sure to leave imprints. Moving more erratically, he pumped into her until he found his own release. Finally collapsing completely spent and gasping for air, on top of her. She welcomed the weight of him, the give of the wedged pillows taking most of it. He had his head buried in her hair and twisting her head slightly, so her lips could reach him, she kissed him. "I love you too, big guy."

  Chapter 20

  "We really should talk." Gus said as he walked into the kitchen.

  Hard to believe it had been only three hours since Kara left. It felt like so much time had passed already. Her plane should be leaving in twenty minutes or so and Arlene should be back sometime soon, although Emma was pretty sure Arlene would wait around with Kara until the last possible minute.

  Then there had been Gus sucking up snippets of time and expanding it a hundred-fold, creating memorable moment after moment. He felt so huge in her otherwise rather limited life. Sweet, bossy, presumptuous Gus; who could bring her to her knees with his thoughtfulness and fierce protectiveness. Not to mention the dirty thoughts he didn't hesitate in sharing and his calm presence.

  But calm was not what she felt radiating from him at the moment. When she turned to him, she could see tension in his jaw and in the balled fists he was hiding in his pockets. Something was wrong.

  "Talk about what?"

  "Us. You and me." Gus stayed on the other side of the counter at a safe distance, looking uncomfortable.

  Swallowing down a ball of nerves that had suddenly taken up residence in her throat, Emma forced her next words out. "Is there a problem?"

  His eyes met hers briefly before looking beyond her out the kitchen window. "I ... um, maybe. I was thinking while I was having a shower. We haven't really had a chance to talk much. About our pasts. Our lives."

  "Okay ..." She was trying hard not to panic at his changed demeanor from earlier that morning. "What is it you're saying exactly, Gus?"

  "Just that there is some stuff in my past that you should probably know about. Before, you know... you make any decisions about me." He looked so uncomfortable, it tugged at her heartstrings. Making a decision to throw caution to the wind, she turned around, grabbed two coffee mugs down, filled them and set them on the counter.

  "Here, you grab these and let's go sit down for a bit."

  Walking right past him, she went ahead into the living room and sat on one end of the couch, waiting for him to follow. It took him a minute to move, but he grabbed the mugs and brought them in, sitting down next to her.

  "Talk to me."

  He still avoided looking at her directly, but hesitated only for a minute before taking in a deep breath and letting it out. "I married young, too young probably. In part to get out of the house, wanting to start my own family. Getting away from mine. Dad was a cop, mom a stay at home mom who really had nothing much going on outside of taking care of us. Dad ruled the roost, so to speak. With a firm hand."

  "He hit you?" She wanted to know.

  "Nah. Occasionally if we'd really stepped out of line, but nothing abnormal for those days. He was just... overbearing, controlling. Had high expectations."

  "You mentioned 'us' and 'we', do you have siblings?"

  "A brother. Five years older. He followed in my dad's footsteps and became a cop. The apple of my father's eye. Two peas in a pod. I was the odd one out, more attached to my mom. More like her too. Too soft for my dad's liking." Gus picked up his coffee and took a swallow. "Still, I followed in his footsteps too. Got hitched young, went to the police academy and ended up joining the Detroit PD along side him and my brother. He always pushed me to join in with some of his 'fraternities'. A bunch of cops hanging out together, trying to find ways to manipulate department policies from the bottom up. I was never one for politics, so I passed. Time and time again. That pissed him right off. Of course my brother was into it, he was right in the thick of things."

  Getting up, he started pacing the room restlessly, and Emma could sense they were getting to the meat of his story. Determined for him to tell her everything, she wasn't going to move or even look at him differently. She simply continued to sit there, sipping her coffee, waiting for him to finish at his own pace.

  "One day two cops were found dead, our colleagues. Murdered. They had also been part of one of my dad's fraternities. No discernible leads were found, but Internal Affairs suddenly showed up asking questions about those. Apparently they had been part of an ongoing corruption investigation. We were all questioned, but when they got to me, they started asking me about my dad and my brother. Wanted to know about their association with the two murdered cops. I told them what I knew about that particular fraternity and mentioned I'd been to one meeting and wouldn't like ever go again. Just not really interested. Still, they came after me hard, basically accusing me of being a corrupt cop. They had nothing on me, since there was nothing to have, but they did scare the shit out of me. During the interrogations they asked me to identify a number of fellow officers who had been present the one time I had joined my dad and my brother at their weekly get together. I didn't think I was doing anything wrong, I simply told them what I knew."

  His voice had dropped so low, Emma had to lean forward to catch every word. Shame and guilt were evident in his eyes, which were completely unshielded. "Turns out their innocent little 'fraternity' was a front for organized extortion from local merchants and small businesses. They took pay offs for covering up crimes and eliminating evidence. The two murdered officers had been informants for the IA, been found out and murdered. My dad and brother were deeply involved. It made me sick. Mom didn't believe it, continued to believe in their innocence. Both were convicted and did time. Dad ended up dying in prison. Mom completely lost it and now lives in a senior's home. It's a small blessing she doesn't recognize anyone anymore, because now I can go visit her from time to time without her kicking me out. After my brother Will was released he disappeared."

  With his back to her, Gus stared out the window as he recounted the tragic history of his family. She simply sat on the couch, with her hands covering her mouth; tears streaming down her face. Her heart ached for him, but still she waited him out.

  "Right after the IA investigation, I started receiving threats. Some were anonymous, but most were right in
my face. I was transferred when it became impossible to work for the department anymore. But each new placement, and later in every new town or city, the stigma of having sold out my 'brothers' caught up with me. My marriage was never strong, so Karen left after the second transfer, having had enough of me and my fucked up family. I bided my time the best I could. Barely made it to early retirement age and hightailed it out of there. That's when I started out on my own."

  Making love to Emma this morning had been mind-blowing, and not just the release after a week's pent up sexual frustration, but so much more than that. Years of restraint seemed to be released when in Emma's arms, something he had no experience with. A need to strip himself of all pretence and veneer and simply share this real honest connection with her had urged him to voice his feelings out loud. But that was not what had set his mind spinning. It was Emma's responding declaration of love that followed their intense moments of shared bliss, that sparked up his insecurity.

  Anyone who had ever professed to love him had ended up turning their backs on him and walked away when the going got tough. So even though he was convinced of his own words and the feelings the conveyed, he couldn't help his knee-jerk reaction to Emma's. It wasn't so much that he questioned her integrity, but he would simply have felt a whole lot better if she knew the dirty truth about his past before she had expressed those sentiments.

  Now he was questioning the wisdom of laying his whole sordid past out there for her. Fuck. He was a hot mess and felt gutted after dragging all that shit back up again. Looking over, he found Emma curled up on the couch, head in her arms, bawling. Now fucking what? How was he supposed to take that?

  Unsure, pissed, and hurting, Gus got up and walked out the front door. He needed some air. Halfway down the steps of the porch Emma's voice coming from behind, stopped him.

  "Where the fuck do you think you're going?" She was leaning against the doorway, hands on her hips, looking furious. "You're going to tell me you love me, fuck me, lay the most horribly tragic story on me, just to walk out the damn door without another word? I don't fucking think so, big guy." Her eyes were daring him to move another inch. "Give a person a goddamn minute to process this shit, okay?"

  Startled, he realized she was right. He hadn't given her any chance to respond, so he sat down on the porch steps. He had made all the wrong assumptions, based on past experiences. That hadn't been fair to Emma. "You're right. I'm sorry." He admitted, when she sat down on and leaned into his side.

  "You realize that's a pretty messed up burden your family left you with, right?"

  "They'd probably argue things the other way around, seeing as my dad and brother are the ones who paid the price."

  That earned him a snort from Emma. "For real? They're the ones who got what they deserved in the first place. They broke the rules; they pay the price. How is that your fault? Any of it? I don't get that kind of thinking. The only people who think like that are criminals; people who don't think twice about pulling others into their shit, or making them pay for it. Face it, you have paid through the nose for all these years. Except you didn't deserve it. All you did was the right thing."

  "Yeah, but they're my family..."

  "If you're gonna throw this on family loyalty..." Emma interrupted sternly, "Then let me remind you that they broke that bond, the moment they expected you to defy the law. Assumed you would lie to your superiors and asked you to risk your own hide in order to save theirs. I call bullshit on family loyalty!"

  During her little tirade, Emma had sat up straighter and moved back from him, her small fists flying, punctuating her fierce words. The entire picture filled his chest with a huge warm bubble and caused a lump to form in his throat. But when she indicated she was done with a cocky little nod of her head, it was all he could do not to burst out laughing. His Peach was a tiger.

  Hauling her back over to him, he curled her into his chest and stuck his nose in her curls, squeezed his eyes shut and breathed her in deeply. He was an idiot.

  Tilting her head back a little, she looked up in his eyes, put a hand to his cheek and smiled.

  "Hey. Gus Flemming, I love you."

  Yup. Idiot.

  Chapter 21

  "Hey Seb, what's up?"

  It was coming up on 4:30 PM. Emma was in the kitchen making some inroads on a marinade for the barbecued steak skewers on the menu for tonight's dinner and Gus was on his cell phone checking in with his team; when the phone rang.

  "Have you heard from Arlene?" Seb's concerned voice came over the phone.

  "Not since she left to drop off Kara at the airport this morning. She had a few errands to run in Durango, but that's all I know. Why? Is she not back yet?" Looking at the clock and realizing it was nearing the dinner hour at the diner, an uneasy feeling started forming in the pit of her stomach.

  "Haven't seen her. She was supposed to be back around one and she is not answering her phone. Have you talked to Kara?"

  "Not yet, but she isn't scheduled to land until sometime around six pm. She was going to call me." The thought of not being able to get a hold of her daughter for another hour or two didn't sit well with her all of a sudden. "Hang on, let me get Gus, he may have an idea."

  Gus had picked up on part of the conversation already, because he was standing right behind her when she turned around, startling her. When he put his hands on her shoulders and leaned down to look in her eyes, she realized how much she had come to rely on him, his touch settling her right down.

  "Talk to me." Was all he said.

  "That's Seb on the phone. Arlene hasn't shown up yet and she was supposed to be back at the diner three and a half hours ago. She's not picking up her phone."

  Taking the phone from her hands, Gus wrapped one arm around her and pulled her tight to his side while getting as much information from Seb as he could. After telling him he would look in to things, he promised to call him with whatever he found out.

  When Gus turned back to her he asked her to pull up Kara's flight information.

  "Why? I can tell you she is supposed to land at a little after six pm. We won't be able to reach her until then anyway." A flicker of uncertainty passed over his face and suddenly the full force of that nagging unease came over her in the shape of paralyzing fear. Raising her hands as if to shield herself, she backed away, shaking her head. "Oh God. Please. No."

  Ignoring her retreat, Gus stepped in and enveloped her in his strong arms. "Easy, my love. No borrowing trouble. We're just checking she got on her flight. That's all. Just making sure. Hush now."

  But it was no use. The thought of anything happening to Arlene or, God forbid, her Kara had her stomach lurching up in her throat. She just had time to pivot around and hit the sink, before throwing up violently. A cold towel pressed to the back of her neck and another wiping her face made her feel moderately better, as she struggled to get herself under control. No falling apart now. She couldn't afford it.

  After Gus installed Emma on the couch with a glass of water, her phone and the laptop, pulling up necessary information, he was on his phone contacting Joe. He quickly informed him of Seb's call and passed on Kara's flight number with a promise to keep each other up to date with any developments. His next call was Caleb, whom he'd hoped to catch in Durango, visiting Katie. In luck, he caught his friend just as leaving the hospital. Caleb promised to check the airport parking lot, ask around at the United Airlines counter and would drop in on the couple of stops Arlene was supposed to make. He too would keep Gus in the loop.

  It didn't take Joe long to call back, but the news wasn't good. Kara had never boarded her plane and Gus felt his own precarious hold on his emotions start to slip. With one glance at Emma's questioning expression, he steeled himself before hanging up with Joe and turning to her.

  "Apparently Kara didn't make her flight, love. That was Joe. He just got word back from United that she never checked in or boarded."

  Expecting her to fall apart, he took her hands in his, ready to promise to find her.
But she surprised him. She yanked her hands back, pushed herself off the couch and made her way to the door without a word.

  "Hey. Wait a minute ..." He barely got the words out of his mouth before she swung around, facing him, her cheeks flushed and her eyes wild.

  "I can't. I don't have time. I've gotta go get my girl." Then she was out the door and almost down the steps before he caught up with her.

  "Darlin', let's hold on here." When he tried to step in front of her to slow her down, she shoved him out of the way, single-mindedly focused on her car. Again he intercepted her, but this time from behind, putting his arms around her body, effectively trapping her arms so she couldn't lash out at him.

  "Let. Me. Go." She struggled to get out of his hold, only making him pull her in tighter.

  "Emma. Listen to me. " Bending close to her ear, he continued quietly, "I'm going to find her and Arlene. I promise you, my love. But I can't have you going off half-cocked on me; you'd slow us down. It wouldn't help. Do you hear me?"

  The struggling stopped and when he loosened the hold on her, and turned her around, he was struck by the determined look in her eyes.

  "My phone. Where is the phone; I need to try and call her."

  Pulling out his cell, he asked her for the number, but even punching them in, he knew in his gut she would not be answering. Judging by the sudden slump of Emma's shoulders, she had come to that realization as well. "Straight to voicemail, Peach. It's out of juice or been turned off." Watching her pull herself together again, he encouraged, "We'll get her back."

  "I hear you. Bring me back my baby, Gus. Please bring me back my baby." The last she forced out on a barely contained sob, and Gus had to admire the fiery strength this woman hid.

  "I will. Don't doubt it." With a kiss to her hair, he lead her back inside, where she headed straight for the kitchen, pulling out bags of flour and mixing bowls.

  Leaving Emma to work through her fear and frustration in her own way, he thanked God for his foresight not to get too complacent and send his team home yet. Then he got hold of Dana, who was still managing their impromptu command centre at the motel. Dana promised to be over within the next half hour, after leaving Neil with specific instructions to dig up what he could on any movement from Silva or any of his known associates.