by D. D. Ayres
His eagerness must have shown in his gaze because her eyes flared and she stepped up against him, slid her arms around his neck and pulled his head down until his lips met hers.
The power of his need blew away any possibility that he was going to back down now. He reached out to skim the back of his hands down her bare upper arms before cupping her shoulders and drawing her in hard against his chest.
She surged into him, pushing her hips against his groin, directing him backward toward the sofa. And then she was following him down, climbing into his lap before his butt hit the cushions. She pushed back his jacket and began tearing his shirt from his waistband. Her hands were everywhere, giving him no time to enjoy what she was offering. Her mouth engulfed his, wide open and too rough for genuine pleasure.
She made love like a teenage boy, zero to eighty with no shifting. It was as if she were trying to outrun something.
Isn’t this what happened last time?
Crap. His brain kicked in. He’d been a cop too long not to weigh the evidence presented to him.
This seduction felt like a distraction. At the moment, sex was a distraction for both of them. They needed to slow down, start over.
He reached up and took her face in his hands and, after a quick hard kiss, held her off. “Hold up, Shay.”
She jerked upright in his lap, staring at him with golden-brown eyes blinking in instant wariness. “What’s wrong?”
Damned if I know. James sucked in a breath to slow the jackhammering of his heart. It had been a dumb-shit idea to stop. But he had, and she was waiting for an explanation.
He leaned forward to push his forehead to hers. “I like you, Shay. I’d like to screw you, too. But I don’t have a plane to catch. We have time.”
She leaned away. Caution shone in her eyes. “For what?”
He knew better than to toss Eric’s name into the mix at this particular moment. To gain her trust he needed to build back up to that, as any good interrogator would. That thought made him feel like an asshole. Okay, so maybe that’s what it took to get some answers. He still needed them.
He kissed her to gain a few precious seconds in which to switch gears. Maybe not the best tactic. Her lips seemed to connect directly to his dick.
Reluctantly, he leaned away from her. “Ah, hm, how about we ease into the thing? Slow down. Take time. Try some, some…”
“Foreplay?” Her voice was sharp with surprise.
“There you go. Foreplay.”
He dropped his hands from her face and reached down to lift her off his lap. Instead he encountered the smooth skin of her thighs. His hands slid up the firm warm flesh until they encountered the edge of her panties. This was not going the way he needed it to go.
Reluctantly he dragged his hands back down the soft plush skin of her thighs. “I must be out of my mind.”
“Are you playing hard to get, Mr. Cannon?” She smiled a lot faster than he’d thought she would.
“Hard, yes.” He didn’t break eye contact until she blinked. Then he looked away, desperate for ideas that would reboot the moment. “TV?”
“Fine.”
She slid off him, pulling her skirt down over her very nicely toned thighs and reaching for the remote. The TV sprang to life. An I Love Lucy rerun appeared. Okay, that would work.
Under the cover of adjusting his clothing James tried to make an appropriate mental adjustment to calm himself down. It wasn’t working. Had he really just backed her off his ready-to-go johnson? He needed his head checked. Yes. Definitely. Maybe if he just …
As she sat back down, Bogart jumped up on the sofa and wedged his hairy body between them, rump toward James and his big head in Shay’s lap. The result was a pretty damn effective barrier.
James glared at his partner. Bogart seemed to have an uncanny way of reading his handler’s mind and emotions. Spooky, actually.
Shay stroked the big doggy head, the rhythm helping to ease the frustration of wondering how to move on from a moment she had desperately wanted to finish. She noticed James was petting his partner, too.
She didn’t have a whole lot of experience with men, besides Eric. He thought she should always be ready for him. Once he was in the mood, nothing stopped him from jumping her and pumping away until he, at least, was satisfied. Foreplay had disappeared long ago. She often felt like a whore. Nothing in that relationship seemed useful when dealing with James Cannon.
She glanced cautiously across at him. He was staring at the TV like he’d never seen one before. He must be weirded out, too. If the silence between them didn’t end soon, she knew they would never get back in the mood.
Desperate for the sound of his voice, she said, “Do you always work the night shift?”
He didn’t look at her but kept stroking Bogart. “Most K-9 patrols do.” He paused to chuckle at something Lucy Ricardo did. “We patrol an area each night, unless there’s a special event we need to attend during the day.”
Shay cocked her head to one side. “You sound like a night watchman.”
That drew a smile from him. It was exactly how his sister Allyson had sized up his career path, night watchman with a pooch. Her spouse was a narc.
“It’s a little more complicated than that. I don’t just rattle doorknobs. You get to know your areas, the people, the look and smell of places. There’s a feeling when something’s not quite right. On top of that, we can be called out for any reason on any day, even our days off, for anything from crowd control to tracking a criminal, for a search-and-rescue operation, whatever support we can provide.”
“Like finding the baby tonight. That was so cool.”
“Yes.” The memory gave James a happy buzz. “From the first I prepared to become more than a patrol officer. I got a bachelor’s in criminology with a minor in psych and trauma studies before I attended the police academy. How about you? Where’d you go to school?”
She swiveled her head toward him. “Why?”
James kept his expression bland. “I share. You share. It’s called conversation.”
“North Carolina State.” The words sounded as if they’d been mined from somewhere deep. “Community college first. It took me six years because I worked my way through. I don’t like owing anybody anything.”
“You don’t have any debt?”
She glanced at him warily. “No, why?”
He shrugged. “I’ll be paying off student loans for a while, especially since I’m enrolled part-time again.”
She looked down, shielding her very expressive gaze.
He clicked off the TV. “So, it’s time to tell me about Eric.”
Shay glanced at him. His voice sounded normal, too normal. Law enforcement calm. Her hands began to tremble with frustrated desire. How could he sit there so proud, so closed, so unemotional? She felt as if she’d been caught up in a class 5 erotic twister that left her bereft, unfinished and unsatisfied.
She snuggled back into the sofa cushions, needing a little more space than she anticipated from him.
Bogart whined and lifted his head, dark molasses eyes staring into hers. Of course he could detect the tension. The air practically vibrated with it, like the moment before a lightning strike.
“Shay?” James’s expression was closed, shutting her out. But his gaze still scorched her skin. She could feel it sizzling under his blue-eyed stare. “You need to tell me about Eric. Why you’ve let him rough you up and make threats, and yet have never called the police for help.”
The accusation stung. “That’s not true. I did call the police. Once.”
“Want to tell me about that?”
Shay bit her lip and shook her head. If she did tell him, she suspected he would walk out and never come back. Damn it to hell. Eric was still ruining her life. Or maybe she’d done that all by herself a dozen years ago. If James was going to leave, maybe it was better he did so now, before she began to count on his being around.
She turned to him suddenly, her chin cocked in defiance. “Fine
. What is it you want to know?”
Everything. Yet. James realized she was moving out of her comfort zone by even offering to talk. He’d take it slow. “Let’s start with how you and Eric met.”
She took a deep breath. “A little over a year ago I was working a job at Halifax Bank, the main office. I was doing a real IT job, not just answering phones like now. Eric is the area manager for a dozen Halifax Bank branches in the state. We met when he came in to meet with the Operational Risk and Compliance team. He asked me out to lunch with the team. The next time he came through he asked me to dinner, alone.”
She quickly went through their get-together time. She’d been flattered by the attention of a senior member of the bank. The fact that he was mature, thirty-four and divorced, and sophisticated made it thrilling for her to flirt back. She was a temp, after all, not a full-time employee who would have to worry about interoffice consequences if the relationship went nowhere or, worse, went bad. Besides, she didn’t think he could seriously be interested in a twenty-five-year old still looking for job security.
James waited until she took a breath. “Did you ask any of the other staff about him?”
“Not really. I didn’t know them. I wasn’t permanent. Besides, I thought he’d stop asking me out when I left.”
“Why did you continue to see him?”
She looked away. “He had invited me on a trip.” Memory kicked in, reminding her of how charming Eric was in the beginning. Quite charming.
Eric had stopped by her desk at closing her last week on the job.
“You got a passport?”
She did, from a senior trip to Mexico.
“Pack light. Two nights, two days of sun, sand, surf, and me.”
She had thought he was teasing. But then he’d laid a plane ticket on her desk. When she opened it she saw it was for the Cayman Islands.
“He said he was supposed to go with someone else. But the person canceled at the last minute so this was my lucky day.”
James’s voice was calm, nonjudgmental. “So you went.”
Shay nodded. “We went on several trips even after I no longer temped there. He was nice, at first.”
“Bought you things?”
She glared at him. “Showed me things. Took me places. Let me experience how the wealthy live and play. Stuff I could never have seen or done on my own. He was really kind, at first.”
“But there must have been signs. Or were you so grateful you overlooked the other things?” She nodded so slowly that he knew she didn’t like his characterization of her motivation. “But that changed.”
Shay glanced down. “I feel so stupid. How could I not see what was coming?”
James turned to stare at a spot halfway between the sofa and the TV. “What happened?”
Shay surprised herself by telling him. The many little humiliations. The way Eric could twist her words. How he stopped complimenting her but always found something wrong, however trivial, with her appearance. She even told him about their last trip, about the exhibitionist dancing that ended with his rage. That was the first time he forced her to have sex against her will.
When they got home he became distant. He hardly ever called her or took her anywhere. Then a month ago, he’d invited her to his apartment where he’d set up what he called a special evening for them. That was the night she called the police.
“He had S and M stuff, whips and sex toys and … stuff.” Shay closed her eyes. “I thought he was joking. He just…”
She glanced furtively at James. He was no longer looking at the floor. His eyes were riveted on her. She would have thought telling so intimate a story to this man would be the worst humiliation possible. Yet the way he just sat there, not touching her but watching with an intensity that surrounded her in a cocoon of intimacy, walled off the pain for the moment.
Even so, she was whispering at the end. “When he let me go to the bathroom I palmed my phone and called the police.”
James’s gaze flickered with curiosity.
Shay shook her head. “It didn’t help. Eric had a story ready that made everything sound plausible. It was my idea. I’d been reading those ‘50 Shades’ books and wanted to try something kinky. He was so sorry. He’d never done anything like that before so he didn’t realize he was really hurting me. I wasn’t beat up or anything, and I could tell the police officers believed him. So I changed my mind about pressing charges.”
James was silent for several seconds but his gaze never left hers. “Law enforcement doesn’t always get it right. Domestics are hard to sort out. But I’d say they did less than their best by you. You should have asked for a female officer.”
Shay looked away, a little shocked by his neutral tone. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“It matters.”
Bogart suddenly got up and left the sofa. He resettled under the TV, his gaze directed at his partner, as if to say, I’ve done what I could. You’re on your own.
James watched Shay closely for signs of emotional overload. She had twisted her arms together under her bosom. Did she know how nakedly her emotions shone on her face when she looked at him? He ached to reach for her but that wasn’t going to happen until they finished this. Even so, he couldn’t resist sliding closer to her until they all but touched as they sat side by side. “When did you break up with Eric?”
“That night. It’s been a month.”
“And yet Eric’s still harassing you. You can go back to the police, have them look up the initial call you made about Eric.”
She hunched her shoulders, trying to shrink further into the sofa. “I don’t need the hassle.”
“Is that the only reason?”
Shay slumped back against the cushions, exhausted and a little sick. “Just leave it, James. I’ve told you enough.”
“I don’t think you have.” He reached over and placed his hand over hers where it lay on her thigh. “I get it. You’re scared. You’ve been the victim of abuse. Douche bags like Eric wouldn’t stand a chance if their true natures were obvious. Now that you know what he’s capable of you need to protect yourself.”
She gave her head a tight little shake. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
She made a little sound of misery. “You don’t understand. You don’t know anything about me. About my past. What I’ve done.”
There was a beat of silence. “Tell me.”
Shay twisted away from him, feeling something dark and ugly rip open inside her, something so horrible that she had not been able to face it at the time. “I’m not worth your effort. I’m broken. Screwed up.”
“Maybe you need to see—”
“A shrink?” She whipped back around to face him. Here it came, all the things she had hoped to spare herself, and him. She felt her world collapsing inward, the walls of years of effort crumbling beneath her feet as she free-fell into darkness.
“Shay?” Hands framed her face and lifted it. And then she was gazing up from that dreadful bottomless place into the blazing summer blue of James’s eyes.
“I stabbed a man.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Shay wondered how long a person could hold her breath and not pass out. James hadn’t reacted to her confession. It was as if he, too, were waiting. The only difference was he was breathing slow and even, just as before.
After several heartbeats he said, “Who was he?”
Shay gasped softly before speaking. “A friend of my mother’s.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen.”
She felt James shift to angle his body toward hers on the sofa.
“Tell me what happened.” His voice was little more than a breath.
“It was a mistake.” Even as she said the words Shay gave her head a little shake. She’d started all wrong. This wasn’t the way to tell it. But she really didn’t know how. She hadn’t actually said the words out loud to anyone in a long time. When her world blasted apart, she couldn’t. Ever since those years, s
he hadn’t wanted to.
“Does Eric know about this?”
“He guessed something. I have nightmares sometimes. Like the night you were here.”
James nodded. “I remember. Go on.”
Shay rocked her head in the negative against her palm. She really really didn’t want to say more. But James was getting close to her very fast. If he was going to bolt, he needed to do it before she started counting on him to always be there for her.
He shifted closer and raised a hand to cup her cheek. “Just say words, Shay. Whatever you’re thinking. Just say that.”
“I don’t remember it. No, I do. Some of it. But then it gets all weird and crazy.” She strung the last word out as if it caused her pain.
“Where were you?”
“We lived over a Chinese restaurant in Raleigh.” She swallowed. “I’ve hated Chinese food ever since. Dad had been in the army, a lifer, died in 2000. Nothing heroic. Service copter went down on practice maneuvers out in Arizona.”
James let out a rough sound. It caught and perfectly reflected her feelings.
“Mom was an LPN. She brought us back home to live but work wasn’t easy to find. She took double shifts at a nursing home. At first, she didn’t date much. Then she met Andrew. He was nice to us for a while. But after he moved in, to help with the rent, he would sometimes get drunk and break things. And he looked at me in a way that made me feel funny.”
“Yeah.”
“Mom said that I was just not used to having a man around the place. But she put a lock on my bedroom door when I asked her to. When she worked night shifts I would lock it and never get out of bed in the middle of the night. Only one night I woke up and had to pee really bad.”
Shay swallowed. Things were getting confusing. She could feel a pressure building like two hands clutching her heart. She was opening the door to a horror-movie basement that everyone knew never to go down into. Only, for her, the horror had been all too real.
“I was on the toilet, in the dark, when I heard…”
James’s arm tightened around her. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
