by Kait Nolan
“Head between your knees. Omar, get some gingerale.”
Autumn simply did as she was told. Bent over in the chair, the gray started to recede and her breath began to level out. She’d made it through. Barely, but she hadn’t lost her shit out there. And she’d done it without Judd.
She’d had panic attacks away from him before. Certainly the night terrors in college had been brutal without being able to reach over and touch him. She’d learned to get through those. And up until finding out Jebediah was getting out of prison, it had been years since anything had triggered a full on attack. But she’d faced down the source of her nightmares. She’d faced him down and survived. If she could stand up to her father, she could stick to her guns when it came to Judd himself. She was so much stronger than he gave her credit for.
“Here, sugar.”
Autumn slowly straightened, taking the glass of gingerale from Omar’s big hand. “Thank you.” She sipped, the fizzy sweet liquid quenching her parched throat. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Honey, don’t you be apologizin’,” Mama Pearl chided. “Gotta be a shock. When did he get out?”
“A few days ago. Patty asked Myles to keep it out of the paper.” She worked up a rueful smile. “Guess that’s done now.”
“You already did away with your low profile when you marched in here and made that bet,” Omar pointed out.
“Yeah, well. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Don’t you be backin’ down now,” said Mama Pearl. “Not when the way’s finally clear.”
Autumn’s mouth dropped open. “How did you…?”
“Where else you think she got her breakup pie?”
“Point taken.” She drained her glass. “Thank you. I should go.”
“You go on out the back. Omar will walk you to your car.”
She started to protest, then swallowed it back under Mama Pearl’s gimlet stare. “Yes ma’am.”
Chapter 11
The city boy rookie was an idiot. Scared shitless by one of Mel Bailey’s cows loose in the road, he’d swerved and managed to drive halfway up a tree. Got a broken shoulder for his trouble and likely totaled the squad car. Judd was still waiting on the estimate from the garage. The City Council was gonna love that.
As if that hadn’t been enough, he’d been called in to deal with a bar fight at the Mudcat Tavern. Harley Forbes was drunk off his ass and had gotten in a sucker punch while Judd was trying to talk him down. That was almost a relief because it gave Judd somewhere to funnel his filthy mood. Not that dropping the asshole with one punch had exactly been standard police protocol, but Jesus Christ. The world was conspiring to keep him from getting back home to talk to Autumn. What was she thinking? What was she doing? Packing, probably. He only hoped he could get back to the house before she’d finished.
His cheek ached like a sore tooth as he dumped Harley in one of the two empty cells to sleep it off. Slamming the door shut, he snarled at Cleveland Timmons, the night dispatcher. “Unless the town is outright under attack, nobody better bother me for the next two hours. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, but—”
“I don’t wanna year any ‘buts’, Cleveland.”
“It’s about Miss Buchanan, sir.”
Judd stopped in his tracks. “What about her?”
“There was an incident earlier at the diner. With her father.”
Judd worked his jaw, trying to keep his voice controlled. “Why am I just hearing about this now?”
“You were tied up with bigger stuff. Nothing really happened. He came in to pick up take out as she was leaving. She was understandably taken by surprise. A bunch of folks at the dinner more or less ran him off. Mama Pearl told him he wasn’t welcome back. I had three different people call to tell me about it.”
Autumn had faced off with her dad, and he hadn’t been there? He’d promised her. He’d sworn she’d never have to do that alone. And yet she’d survived it. No panic attack, no cardiac incident. She hadn’t needed him. Could this night get any worse?
No, dumbass. Don’t ever say that. It’s tempting fate.
“Is there anything else?”
“No, Chief.”
“Then radio silence for the next two hours. Get me?”
“Yes, sir.”
He just hoped it was enough time and that he wasn’t too late.
Her car was still in the drive when he pulled up. Thank Christ. After her encounter with Jebediah, maybe she’d changed her mind about moving out.
The sky had clouded up over the last couple of hours and thunder began to rumble as he sprinted for the house. They were in for a gullywasher of a storm. He took off his duty belt on his way through the door, setting it on the table behind the couch as he passed. His service weapon went into the lock box, then he was pounding up the stairs.
“Autumn?” He found her in her room, one suitcase open and mostly full on the bed. No sign of the other one, which meant it was probably already in her car. He dragged his gaze from the bag to her, searching her face. “Are you all right? I heard about Jebediah.”
“I’m fine, Judd.” That excruciatingly calm, polite voice was not his Autumn.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t come straight after you. I got dragged in on a couple of calls and only just now managed to shake loose.”
“Full moon. The crazies are out.” She folded another shirt and laid it on top of the pile, as if he was just giving his excuse for missing the weekly trivia night at Los Pantalones.
Now that he was here, Judd had no idea where to begin. She’d blown the foundation out of his world, and she was obviously serious about leaving if he didn’t get this right. He didn’t want to fuck it up.
“Who is he?” Damn it, that wasn’t what he’d meant to ask.
She flicked a glance in his direction, brows drawing together. “Who’s who?”
“The college guy. The professor. Fletcher.” It was the part he’d gotten hung up on in the last few hours as he juggled the demands of his job. Who the hell was Fletcher based on? When Cooper left, he’d been the one to help Darcy pick up the pieces. He was the one she was positioned to be with when Cooper showed back up in Book Two. Judd wished he’d had time to finish it to see how that ended, not just because he wanted to know but because her work was freaking amazing.
“There is no college guy, Judd. He’s fiction.”
“And yet I’m not.”
She seemed to weigh her words. “The whole reason I started writing it was to get you out of my system. I figured if I could write some story where the heroine got past her crap with the guy she had history with, to see the awesome of the kind of guy that should’ve been perfect for her, that maybe it would help me do the same. But it didn’t work.” She flashed a humorless smile. “I can’t finish the third book because I couldn’t make her go for Fletcher.”
“Why?”
“Really? You’re going to make me spell it out? Fine. I haven’t maxed out my humiliation capacity for the week yet.” She hurled two more pairs of jeans into the bag and closed it. The zipper sounded too loud. “Because I’m in love with you. I think I have been my entire life.”
He’d known. Of course, he’d known. But hearing it out loud gave twin shocks to his system—elation and grief
“In my defense, you haven’t exactly made it easy on me to be anything else. You’ve been fulfilling my rescue fantasies since I was six years old. Time after time, you’ve put yourself on the line to protect me. You took a bullet for me. Why is that?”
“You’re my best friend.” But the truth he’d been telling for years felt hollow now. She was his compass. He’d do anything for her.
Pain flickered over her lovely face. “There was a time when you wanted to be more.” She shook her head and looked away. “You were almost my first kiss, and you don’t even remember.”
Judd couldn’t bear the grief in her eyes. His own throat felt tight. “You changed that part in the book. You were wearing that yello
w dress with the daisies that day. The one that made you look like summer sunshine. It was always my favorite.”
Slowly, she turned back toward him. The betrayal on her face slid into his gut like a knife. “All these years, you said you didn’t remember.”
“Autumn, I couldn’t risk it. After he tried to kill you, I couldn’t risk changing things between us and it not working out. I couldn’t risk losing you and leaving you unprotected.”
She stared at him. Whatever was brewing in her eyes was so much worse than the temper he’d seen flash earlier. “So all these years, you let me think that I was in this alone. That you felt nothing.” Devastation trembled in her voice.
“No, I—it wasn’t like that. I never wanted to hurt you. I just had to keep you safe.”
“He was in prison.”
How could he make her understand? “I knew one day he wouldn’t be. I couldn’t leave you without protection.”
“Is that all I am to you? Some convenient damsel in imagined distress to feed this perpetual hero complex?”
“What? No, I just—”
“I’m not fragile.” Even as she said it, he thought she looked like she could break at any moment.
“Your heart fucking stopped!”
“So did yours!” she shouted.
An enormous boom of thunder shook the house. Rain began to lash at the windows as the storm finally struck.
“Do you think there’s a day that goes by when I don’t have a moment where I see your blood on my hands? Where I don’t worry that somebody, somewhere is going to finish what my father started? But I’ve never tried to run your life because of it. I’ve never made decisions for you because I thought I knew best.”
He was handling this all wrong. He’d been handling everything wrong for fourteen years. “I should’ve talked to you about it.”
“Yeah, you should’ve done a lot of things.” Tears gleamed in her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. “You should have been my first kiss, Judd. You should’ve been my first lover. My first everything. My only everything. It’s what I wanted. And instead you chose to be less out of some misguided sense of duty...because you didn’t trust me enough.”
“It had nothing to do with trust.” He trusted her with everything he had.
“Of course it did. You didn’t trust that we would work, that we were right. That we’ve been right since the day you saved me on that playground. You were so goddamned terrified that I’d push you away, and the irony is that’s exactly what you’re getting.”
The first true spurts of panic flickered through him like lightning from the storm outside. “What are you saying?”
“That I’m done, Judd. I’m done with this half-life. I’m done hanging around begging for the crumbs of your affections. You either love me or you don’t. You’re either with me, completely, or you’re not. I won’t take anything less than all. Not anymore. I deserve better.”
~*~
Judd stared at her as if she’d tased him, so much pain on his face Autumn half expected him to hit his knees. But he said nothing. In all her imagined versions of this scenario, he’d never said nothing. With frustrated disbelief, she grabbed her last bag and moved past him, anticipating with every step that she’d hear him behind her. That her actions would shock him into doing something.
It wasn’t until she stepped off the porch, into the lashing rain, that the grief set in. Her chest seized up and her lungs stopped working, because she was dying. She’d been near enough before that she remembered the feeling. She’d just laid it all on the line, and he’d done nothing. Everything she’d thought, everything she’d believed about them was wrong. And now she had to put her money where her mouth was and leave for real. There was no way she could stay in Wishful after this.
At the next clap of thunder someone grabbed her. For an instant, terror overrode everything else. She dropped the bag, already leading with her fist as she was spun around. Judd caught her hand. Another flash of lightning illuminated him. There was nothing calm or rational about him now. He looked almost crazed with the rain dripping down his face as he speared both hands into her hair.
“I love you, damn it. I’ve always loved you.”
Stunned, she could only stare. His mouth crashed down on hers. It was like being hit with a defibrillator and shocked back to life. Joy and relief shot through her as she wrapped around him, holding tight, tight as she met the fevered assault of his kiss with equal fervor. He hadn’t let her go. She hadn’t lost him.
There was none of the careful reserve he’d shown the first time he’d tried to kiss her. She had, at last, stripped away his restraint, leaving behind only a deep, desperate need. Her body went to flame, and she wondered the rain didn’t steam right off them both.
Judd’s hands slid down her back, under her ass to boost her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist without hesitation, nipping his bottom lip with approval as he headed toward the house. They barely made it inside before he was spinning, using her body to shut the door. Then he was devouring her mouth again, trapping her between the hard plane of the door and the hardness of his body.
There were too many wet layers between them, too much distance. Her fingers fumbled with the buttons of Judd’s uniform shirt as his mouth left hers to trail down the column of her throat. She moaned, dropping her head back against the door to give him better access. She wanted to feel him everywhere. Desperate for skin, she gave up on the buttons, taking a good grip on either side of the shirt and yanking hard. Buttons flew, pinging off the wall, and her hands found flesh. Greedy, she ran her fingers over the defined ridges of his abs, wanting to feel them flex and release as he moved over her, in her. He groaned, pressing his hips harder against her, and she realized she must’ve spoken aloud.
She shuddered as he slid the straps of her dress down her shoulders, tugging until her breasts were bared. He sucked one puckered nipple into his mouth, swirling his tongue as if committing the taste of her to memory. Autumn gripped his hair, holding him in place as he sucked and licked and drove her out of her mind, until she squirmed against the erection she could feel through his pants. So close and yet so far away. With the other hand, she reached between them, trying to work at his belt.
Judd lifted his head, his eyes glazed with passion as they stared into hers. “Autumn.” There was so much more to that single, rasped word. Slow down. Think about this. Are you sure?
“Please.” She wasn’t above begging. Not now. Not when everything she’d ever wanted was a touch, a kiss away.
Seeing whatever he needed to see, he kissed her again, cupping both her breasts and kneading. She needed so much more. Dropping her legs to the floor, she went to work on the belt in earnest, tugging it open. The button took only a moment, then the zipper. And then she had him in her hand, hard and hot and pulsing.
He cursed and slapped a hand against the door to brace himself as she palmed him, rubbing her hand down his length, then back up again, spreading the bead of moisture at the tip around the crown. With quick efficiency, he shrugged out of the shirt. His eyes were midnight dark as he lowered the zipper on her dress, shoving it to the floor, along with her panties.
Autumn slid both her hands inside his boxers and over his glorious ass, until he was bare. She pulled him against her, digging her fingers into the strong muscles of his back, rising on her toes to take his mouth again. Her breasts flattened against the hard planes of his chest and the contrast made her dizzy. And God the feel of all that slick skin against hers was heaven.
He kissed her deep as he lifted her again, pressing her back against the door, the heat of him poised at her center. Autumn dug her heels into his ass, urging him inside. That was all it took. He pressed into her, inch by slow inch, until he was buried, and all she could think was that she’d been made for this, for him. Emotion tightened her throat. Then he began to move and she was caught again in the riptide of sensation.
His tongue thrust against hers as he pumped into her. Pinned against t
he door, she could do little more than hang on for the ride. And what a ride it was. Her hands slipped along his sweat-slicked skin. Dropping her head forward, she nipped at the tendon in his neck. With a growl that made her inner muscles clench, he lost whatever control he had left. He drove into her faster, harder, rocketing her up toward a brutal peak. She shot over the edge, screaming his name. He plunged into her once, twice more, pressing his face into her throat before finally shuddering over the edge behind her.
~*~
Breath heaving, Judd stayed where he was, face tucked against Autumn’s neck, his body buried deep in hers. Every cell vibrated with a primal call of Mine. She slumped against him, the fingers of one hand stroking lazily through the hair at his nape. At this point, it was more physics than actual intent keeping them both upright. He felt hollowed out, emptied of all that pure, unadulterated need. Years of wanting finally unleashed.
He was appalled at his behavior. He hadn’t even made it to the damned sofa.
Autumn stirred in his arms, shifting to drop her legs. He eased back so she could slide down, but didn’t let her go. He had to find a way to apologize.
“Autumn.”
She lifted her hands in the air and stretched with a sound that couldn’t be described as anything but a purr. “That was—”
Too rough. Too crass. Too out of control.
“—the best sex of my life.”
Judd straightened to stare at her, taking in the smug, feline smile curving her lips.
“Not surprising, I suppose. Fourteen years is a helluva lead up,” she said.
“I just took you against the door.”
She grinned in obvious delight. “I know. First time in our lives you didn’t treat me like I was fragile. It was amazing.” Stepping away from him, she headed toward the bathroom. “I think we embarrassed Boudreaux.”
The dog was laying behind the sofa, nose just barely peeking out.
He scooped up his boxers. How could she not be upset? Everything they were to each other and he’d turned into an animal. No care. No finesse. No condom…
Oh shit. The boxers fell from his hand.
