Still, with great care, I worked her slowly back and forth. Her body began to rock with each stroke. Her eyes were closed. She had spread her legs so far I couldn’t resist. Before she could say anything, before her eyes could see through the heated gaze of lust, I was on my knees in front of her.
Gently, I eased her back as I lowered my head between her thighs. Everything smelled sweet like a fresh spring morning. I urged her to her show me everything, and she did.
As my tongue tenderly sought out its prize, Katy groaned. It was like she’d never expected it could be like this. Her breath became shorter and shorter as I tasted her. I couldn’t get enough. I was getting off as much as she was. It was incredible.
You can bet I was surprised when I looked up at her to see she had unbuttoned her blouse and was kneading her breasts. Her eyes were closed, and her skin shined like it did that first night I saw her.
I had to tease her. I flicked my tongue and watched her cheeks redden as she gasped, then caught her breath before I did it again. Over and over I got her closer and closer until finally she sunk her hands into my hair, spreading her legs even farther as I devoured her.
“Zac! Don’t stop! Please don’t stop!”
I didn’t. I couldn’t. To hear her begging me made me feel ferocious and protective. I’d give her exactly what she wanted. Her voice was rose higher and higher as I licked and sucked and kissed her bud.
Finally, if not too soon, she let herself go. Her hips pushed up to me as I buried myself deeper between her thighs. She called my name over and over as I felt every muscle in her body tighten up before releasing wave after wave of pleasure.
My heart was pounding as I looked up at her. I wanted to keep going. I wanted to keep her here all night. The idea of eating her to orgasm over and over until she couldn’t remember what she had been so scared of, until she saw the beauty in herself that I saw, until she collapsed in exhaustion was what I wanted.
But I stopped.
I rose up and snuggled between her still-spread thighs to kiss her mouth. She kissed me back. Then she began to giggle. It sounded like heaven.
“What’s so funny?” I whispered.
“Nothing. Everything. I, uh, never knew that could happen.” She was blushing even more now than she was while I was pleasuring her.
“What do you mean?” I suddenly felt very proud and masculine. “No one ever made you come that way?”
“No one ever made me come, ever.” She looked at me sideways.
“Are you saying you’ve never had an orgasm?”
“I’m saying I never had sex before. I’m a virgin.”
Chapter Eleven
Katy
“My. You sure are in a good mood,” Cindy said to me when she caught me humming as I categorized the books that had been returned from the previous day.
I smiled and nodded but didn’t dare offer up the real reason why.
“Just having a good day.” I offered nothing more. What could I say? I just had the most amazing guy eat my pussy like it was gold plated and now we have a date to go bike riding? And I’m hoping he’ll eat my pussy again? Nope. Didn’t think that was proper information to share with the boss-lady.
“Well, once you are done putting those back, I’ll need you to head up to three to get started on that referencing project,” Cindy instructed before turning to some man in a flannel shirt who was checking out a couple of movies.
I nodded before leaving with my cart of books.
My mind would not stay focused. I kept thinking back to yesterday and how things just happened so naturally with Zac. Sure, I was a little nervous at first. I didn’t know what to expect. But he was a complete gentleman.
I tried to think of how he talked to me. He was funny. The stories he told were absolutely amazing. But it was what he did to me that kept coming back. My body responded to the memory as if it were happening again.
The room felt like it was getting hotter. I looked around, and no one else seemed to be bothered by the temperature. It was just me. That was because I was the only one having sexy flashbacks.
My body tingled as I recalled the previous night. When Zac slid his hand between my legs, I knew it was all over for me. He found that spot that I thought only I knew about, and he worked it just the way I liked it. Back and forth. Back and forth. Even now as I stood in between the rows of books, my body began to rock in that same motion.
I couldn’t stand it. I had to slip away for just a couple minutes. My pussy was on fire, and I needed to do something or I was never going to make it through the day.
The ladies’ room on the second floor was never occupied. I slipped into the first stall and closed the door behind me. I pulled up my skirt and slipped my hand beneath my panties. I was already halfway there with just a few strokes from my fingers when my boss barged in.
“Katy, you in here?”
“Uhm, yes,” I stuttered.
“Now I know what you’re smiling about.”
I clutched my heart and adjusted my skirt.
“What?”
“There’s a delivery for you at the front desk.”
I let out a deep breath.
“Okay, Cindy. I’ll be down in a second.”
It was like a bucket of ice water had been dumped on me. For the moment, anyway. But the delivery had to be from Zac. That was going to get me going again, and I couldn’t say I’d be able to control myself when I got home. I might just have to go to his place and see what happens.
With my lust partially under control, I made my way downstairs to the first-floor front desk. There was a bouquet of red roses there.
“A guy doesn’t purchase a display like that unless he’s smitten,” Cindy offered. “That’s smitten if I ever saw it.”
I blushed and took a deep breath over the flowers. They smelled wonderful. Deep down in the leaves was a tiny white envelope. I pulled it out and read the card. It wasn’t from Zac.
I knew I’d find you. Matt
“Katy, are you all right?” I heard Cindy ask, but I couldn’t answer her. I’d forgotten how to talk. I’d forgotten how to think. I’d forgotten everything but Matt. Nervously I looked around, half expecting him to emerge from behind one of the bookshelves or to waltz right in through the front doors, sure to stay five hundred feet away from me.
“Get these away from me,” I muttered.
“What? They’re so beautiful,” Cindy protested.
“Then you take them!” I shouted, making everyone on the first floor look at me. “I don’t want them,” I hissed.
“Okay. We’ll take care of those things in a second. Katy, go wait in my office.”
What was happening? I felt like I'd just been sent to the principal's office for something the class bully did. Cindy was going to give me some bullshit story about professionalism and keeping private matters private, just like they did in Portland before they transferred me. All the people that said they were my friends left when they thought Matt was the victim. I was the one who should have been asking him for forgiveness after I threw all his gifts away. What was wrong with a guy who wanted to walk you home? Or walk you to work? Or walk you to the Laundromat or the bank or the park? Everywhere. Anywhere. So long as you were never out of his sight.
Nope. I was the crazy one for not wanting this kind of undivided attention until he started threatening things. First, himself. How many times had I been told he was going to cut himself? Did he cut himself? Was he going to cut himself again? When that got no response, he said he was going to show up at work and tell them what a slut I was. That I was stealing. He was going to tell everyone that I was a prostitute and that I had any and every venereal disease known to man.
When it still didn't win me over, crazy as that might seem, he said he was going to get at my friends. He did. He chased everyone at work away. They couldn’t understand why I’d be so hard on a guy who just had a little crush on me.
Matt was careful not to leave any recordings or letters or anythin
g that could be incriminating. He was smart. That lunatic was a genius. He turned it all around and made it look like I was the bad guy.
“You know, Katy, you’re not too good to go out with him,” Beth at work said.
“Give the guy a chance,” Tony at my favorite food truck said.
“He just has a crush on you,” my neighbor said after she had let him into her apartment to wait for me when I was gone all day on purpose to avoid him.
They didn’t know he was following me. They didn’t know he said vile, disgusting things to me on the phone. They didn’t know any of that. They just saw this baby-faced guy who was a little down on his luck but was in love. Didn’t that mean anything to me?
No. It didn’t. I wasn’t interested in a guy down on his luck. I barely knew anything about him. Hell, my friends knew more about him because he sought them out to tell them part of the story. His part. His made-up stories.
Matt Beabe was a sick individual. He needed help. He needed to be locked up. But no one wanted to believe me. Somehow, he got everyone cheering for him, the underdog, the beast to my beauty.
Cindy finally came into her office. As soon as she shut the door, I started crying.
“You don’t need to explain,” she assured me as she took her seat behind her desk. “I think I see what this is.”
“He found me,” I muttered. “I thought I’d done everything right, but it took him just a little over two weeks to find me. I’ll have to move again.”
“No.” Cindy opened her drawer and pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniels and a tiny Dixie cup. “You’re one of the few people I can tolerate. I can’t afford for you to go.” She poured a splash into the cup and handed it to me.
“I don’t really drink this hard stuff,” I muttered but managed a smile. Cindy was trying to help. I could see that.
“Fine.” She took the cup in her hand and threw it back herself. It made me wonder if she didn’t expect that response from everyone, then use it as an excuse to have a nip every once in a while. “Now, is there anyone you can go to who can help you with this? Have you gone to the police?”
I told her about the restraining order and that the police hadn’t really been any help.
“Have you got a method of protecting yourself?”
“What?” It felt like I was always asking Cindy what because I was never sure what she was saying.
“Girl, are you deaf? Do you have a gun?”
“No. I don’t.”
Once again Cindy reached into her desk and pulled out a tiny pistol. Had it not been the most surreal experience of my life, I’d have noted that the pistol was darn cute and actually quite tiny.
“This is my .22 pistol. It might not look like much, but trust me. You don’t need to have great aim. Just hit your target somewhere, and the tiny, unassuming little bullet will ricochet through the guy’s body and tear him to shreds on the inside.”
She offered me the pistol.
For a moment I almost took it. For a moment I felt a thrill up my spine that I might have instantly turned invincible. But I didn’t know how to handle a gun. Unlike the movies, I was sure there was something more to it than flipping off the safety and squeezing the trigger.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m a coward. But thank you, Cindy.”
I stood up like I was in a dream. Collecting my things from my locker and my desk took all of five minutes. I pulled my hood up over my head even though it hadn’t started to rain and began my trip home. I cried the entire way. When I got home, my phone was ringing again.
“Hello?” I snapped. It was quiet. “Hello?”
Then I heard it. It was him. It was Matt’s voice on the other end. He was whispering something. I could barely hear the words but for a few obscenities and my name. Frost coated my veins.
“Matt?” My mouth was dry. The word was like a dart in the back of my throat.
He was doing something foul on the other end of the line.
I wanted to scream, but it wouldn’t do any good. Instead, I hung up the phone and cried some more. It rang again and again.
Chapter Twelve
Zac
I know fried chicken really isn’t good for you. But I can’t think of any better comfort food to eat when the weather is bad.
I also think a bottle of red wine is a nice companion for said chicken. Dessert would have to be improvised.
My God. I could barely concentrate on work thinking of yesterday with Katy. She was all I could focus on, all I wanted to talk about. As a detective, that can be dangerous. But mostly, I wanted to see her again.
There were a couple of breaks in the cold case I was working on. An old witness had a description of a man running away from one of the scenes and it was never followed up on. Those things happen. Sad but true.
But I decided it wouldn’t be any good working a cold case on an empty stomach. I knocked on Katy’s door, holding the red-and-white bucket of fried chicken in one hand and the bottle of wine in the other.
Katy answered the door. Her eyes were puffy from crying. She didn’t unhook the chain.
“Are you all right?” were my first words.
“You need to leave she said, frowning.
“What? Katy, open the door.”
“Get away from me. You need to leave. I can’t see you anymore. Don’t do this. I can’t see you anymore.”
“Katy. You don’t mean that.” I didn’t understand. How could things go from so amazing to so bad in a matter of hours?
“Yes, I do.” She was trying to look tough. I could tell. It wasn’t working.
“Just let me in and tell me what’s wrong—what’s really wrong—and I’ll help you. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you, Katy. Please, talk to me.”
“Don’t you get it? I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to talk to anyone.” Just then her phone started ringing. I looked at her and watched as she squeezed her eyes shut and her whole body slumped as if to indicate she’d given up. “I want to be left alone,” she cried and slammed the door shut.
“I’m not leaving,” I shouted through the door. “Katy?”
Just then I heard the phone ring in her apartment. She groaned, picked up the receiver, and hung up immediately.
“That was him, wasn’t it? Matt Beabe,” I said to the peephole.
There was no answer for a few minutes. Finally, Katy opened the door. Her face was swollen from crying, and her hands were trembling.
“How do you know?”
“Can I come in?”
She stepped aside from the door. She was wearing a long T-shirt and a pair of stretch pants. Her feet were bare.
“I brought food. I didn’t know there was going to be a party crasher.” I handed her the bucket of chicken and the wine. Before she could answer me, the phone rang again.
“May I?” I asked.
“No,” Katy snapped. “Please don’t. If you make him mad, he’s just going to do something worse.”
“He wouldn't dare,” I answered confidently as I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
There was no reply. I knew there wouldn’t be. Matt Beabe was just wondering if he’d dialed wrong. There can’t be a man at his victim’s house. She was his. He’d isolated her and terrorized her. There wasn’t anyone who would put up with this kind of crazy.
“Matt?” I asked firmly. The phone went dead.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Katy mumbled as she chewed her fingernail. “But I’m glad you did.”
Taking the box of chicken from her and carrying it into her kitchen, I explained to her how I had found out about her past and what she had been running from.
“I didn’t do it to spy on you, Katy. Honest. It’s just that there are some telltale signs of a woman on the run from an abusive relationship. Let’s just say out of the ten tips, you fit about nine of them.”
“That’s what I get for inviting a cop into my apartment.”
I han
ded her a plate of food.
“Yeah. Us cops have a way of figuring things out.” I winked at her. “You need to eat something. You can’t think straight when you’re hungry.”
“I don’t think I can eat at all,” she muttered, looking at the food in front of her before setting the plate down on her counter. “You don’t know what I’ve been through. You don’t know at all.”
I took Katy’s hands in mine and led her back into the front room. We sat down on the sleeping bag. I put my arm around her and inhaled the smell of her hair.
“Tell me.”
“His name is Matt Beabe. He’s crazy. That’s all you need to know. Now please, you have to leave.”
She got up, went to the door, and held it open for me. Her whole body was trembling as she stood there looking everywhere in the room but at me.
Inside my chest contracted like I’d been holding my breath for too long underwater. Didn’t she see I wanted to help? Didn’t she see how I felt about her?
I stood up, but I was no longer smiling. I was angry. Not at Katy—never at Katy—but at this Matt fellow. That was a different story.
“I’ll go,” I whispered. “But I’ll be back. I promise you won’t ever have to be afraid of anything again.”
It took everything I had to walk out that door and hear it slam shut behind me with all the locks slipping into place.
I pulled out my cell phone as I hurried down the stairs to the lobby. But before Nathan could pick up, I saw something.
There was a guy pacing back and forth inside the vestibule. You didn’t have to be a cop to recognize the strange behavior. Carefully, pretending to study my cell phone, I walked to the locked door that opened into the lobby. For a few seconds, I stood at the locked door as the man shifted from one foot to the other.
When I opened it, I looked the man in the face.
“Do you live here?” I asked. He had one droopy eye.
“No. I’m going to see a friend.”
“Can’t let you in. They’ll have to buzz you in.” I positioned my body in front of the door. If he was going to get to her, he was going to have to go through me. I prayed he’d try. Just one shove. One push and I’d have him on the floor in a choke hold until the uniforms showed up.
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