BRINGING BENJY HOME

by Kylie Brant

  She curled her fingers around his hard length and urged him closer. One hand moved to his hip, the other to his shoulder. Trey didn't wait for any other signal. He could feel her readiness in the slick, moist heat that greeted his entrance. His back teeth clenched as he inched into her, feeling her tight inner muscles stretch to accommodate him. His muscles bunched as he retreated a little, then he entered her completely with one long, smooth stroke.

  Jaida couldn't prevent a wild cry from escaping her. That brief, tearing pain was sharp, but immediately faded. It was a dizzying welter of other sensations that had elicited her cry. She could feel him, tense and still, his body quivering as he rested his weight on his strong forearms. He was throbbing inside her, but remained unmoving.

  "Jaida." His voice was raw, and full of regret. She refused to listen to that note, refused to allow him to feel it. She clutched at his shoulders and raised up to kiss him, trying to force him to surrender his flagging control. There was a moment when she was unsure of her success, before his weight pressed against her and his mouth ground against hers. She stroked his chest, his back, down his sculptured biceps and, daringly, across his hips.

  "It's all right now." His voice was dark velvet in her ear, and she shuddered wildly when he nibbled at the skin beneath the lobe. "It's going to be fine." She didn't understand the meaning behind the words, but she responded to his soothing tone. Something began to flare within her again, something raw and frightening, and it warred with her response to his stinging wet kisses. She abruptly stilled, trying to regroup, afraid of losing herself completely to another body-shattering experience. But he wouldn't allow her to hold back. One hand slid beneath her and lifted her into his next thrust.

  She tensed, but the anticipated spasm of pain was absent. Instead there was fullness and heat and the slick glide of flesh. She felt him stretching her with each movement, and an answering pressure was building inside her.

  Trey's other hand crept between their bodies and pressed firmly, a seductive temptation to succumb to the racking pleasure anew.

  "No," Jaida whimpered, her head twisting on the pillow. "No more."

  "Yes." His voice was low and hypnotic and totally entrancing. "Again, Jaida. Take more. Let go." His fingers touched her, practiced and inexorable. He rocked his hips against hers, over and over. His breath was coming in great gusts, blackness forming before his eyes. When he heard her cry, felt her body's release, he grasped her hips and lunged into her, again and again. There was a moment of awareness, just before his explosive climax, that this act had tied him to Jaida in a way he didn't want to admit. And then the shock waves of release flooded over him, and conscious thought ebbed away.

  * * *

  "You should have told me."

  His words filtered through Jaida's haze of drowsy contentment. She lay on her side, facing away from him. His body was curved around hers, his arm across her waist, keeping her close. She didn't know how long they'd been lying like this, his other hand smoothing rhythmically through her hair. She caressed the arm at her waist. The meaning of his words was clear, and she'd known they'd be spoken.

  "You might have stopped." She hadn't wanted to chance the possibility that he would regain his famed control and leave her. If this was all she would have of him she'd been determined to have it all, while she could.

  Her whispered response had his hand stilling in her hair momentarily. She couldn't possibly know how impossible that feat would have been for him. "No," he refuted wryly. "But you should have said something, Jaida. I could have hurt you. Badly."

  She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. "You didn't," she assured him softly. He urged her body to face him, and she willingly complied. A soft kiss was pressed to her lips.

  "Are you sure?"

  She nodded.

  He wasn't completely satisfied with her answer. Control was something that he prided himself on, but it had been noticeably absent in this instance. He knew that realization should bother him.

  The first to lose control loses. The voice from his past hissed across his mind.

  "Trey? Who was Colonel Lambert?"

  He looked at her with stunned surprise. An instant later shock turned to an all-too-familiar wariness, and she could have bitten her tongue in half. She was pressed against him, her breasts against his chest, their legs entangled, and his random thought had passed to her so instantaneously she'd spoken without thinking. His body was completely still against hers, and she knew he had retreated in all ways but the physical. She could have wept at her clumsy probing.

  Odd, but he'd almost forgotten the way that weird, mystical link between them could work. He doubted he'd ever get used to having her take these psychic peeks into his mind. Everything inside him recoiled from her ability.

  "I'm sorry," she mumbled, trying to slip out of his arms. She hadn't felt so mortified since she'd been nine and the horrified looks on the faces of her mother's guests had told her better than words that she'd just mentioned something unacceptable. She wanted to do nothing more right now than hide.

  His arms tightened automatically around her, preventing her escape. The shocked dismay he'd felt a moment ago at her question was nothing to his emotion at witnessing the look on her face now. He'd embarrassed her; no, worse than that, she was humiliated, in a way he'd bet she hadn't been since that witch of a mother of hers had made her feel like a freakish act of nature. He couldn't forgive himself for putting that look on her face.

  What, after all, was a few answers from him? Especially after all she'd given to him, offered freely, without reservation? A couple of answers was no more than she had a right to. The fact that it was more than he offered most of the women in his acquaintance was another fact he didn't think about.

  "Shhh, come back here." He restrained her feeble attempts to slip away from him and dropped a lingering kiss on her lips.

  "I'm sorry," she mumbled again, as soon as he raised his lips. "You don't have to answer. I wasn't trying to, honest. I never try. It just came through and I asked without—"

  "It's okay, Jaida, really," he assured her, trying to inject a note of humor in his voice. He wasn't going to let anything taint the time she'd spent with him here in this bed. When she remembered them, he wanted her to think of the pleasure they'd found with each other, pleasure he had the experience to know wasn't going to be found elsewhere. "I just get tired of talking about myself all day long, that's all."

  His joke surprised a gust of air from her. "Yeah, Garrison, you're a real chatterbox."

  He smiled involuntarily, as much at her relaxed drawl as at her words. Still, it took him several moments to gather his thoughts. He really wasn't familiar with this kind of give and take. "I guess you can say that Colonel Lambert saved my life." He could read her reaction in the way her gaze flew to his. "Not in a dramatic sense. He didn't pull me out of a flooded river or anything. But he saved me from the path I was heading down, just as surely as if he'd tossed me a life jacket." One of his hands went to her spine and rubbed up and down the delicate vertebrae there. "You'll find this difficult to believe, but I used to have a whale of a temper."

  She didn't have much difficulty believing that. Once she had become convinced that his cold exterior was a facade, it hadn't been hard to realize that his rigid control hid emotions that burned much too hotly.

  "I was mad … at just about everybody. Everything. And I let the world know it." Mad seemed an insipid word for the rage he had carried around inside him for so long. Rage at his mother, for being weak and ineffectual, for dying and leaving him and Lauren at Hank's mercy. Rage at a father whose biggest concern was drinking himself into a stupor, and who used his kids for punching bags whenever he was sober. Rage at a social system that had taken him and his sister out of that house, then made it impossible for them to stay together. When Lauren had been adopted, his whole reason for being was gone. And he'd gone about making the world pay for that.

  "I was fifteen when I met Colonel Lambert. He walk
ed up on me while I was inside his car, trying out my new skills at hot-wiring." The colonel had been remarkably calm as he'd pointed out to the sullen-faced tough that he'd been trying to join the wrong two wires. Trey shook his head in remembered admiration. "He gave me two choices. I could answer his questions or wait for him to call the police."

  He slid her a sideways gaze. "I didn't like answering questions any more then than now, but I chose that option. The police were already way too familiar with me and my escapades." Certainly they'd turned him over to the social agencies on enough occasions. He'd never known what the man had heard in his short, surly responses, or what he'd seen in the teenage hood who'd spent most of his last eight years on the street. What the man had offered next still had the power to stun him. "After we talked, he was quiet for a while, and then he gave me two more choices. Be taken to the police station or go home with him. I was big for my age, and cocky as hell. I didn't doubt my ability to take care of myself. I went home with him." His gaze grew pensive, faraway. "I lived with the colonel and his wife, Cora, for three years. They made me go to school, something I'd never done with any regularity. The colonel taught me … a lot."

  Respect. The knowledge came flowing through her fingertips, where they were pressed against his chest, swirling through her mind with utter certainty. Jaida didn't doubt that Colonel Lambert had been the first man in his young life that Trey had respected. And that he'd been the one to teach Trey about control.

  You did your job much too well, she said silently to the colonel. No one could accuse Trey these days of not keeping his emotions under control. She'd often damned that rigid front of his, and despaired of ever reaching him on any level.

  But perhaps she was doing the colonel a disservice. The events from Trey's childhood must have started that wall he kept around his emotions. Each disappointment, each loss, had been another block in the fortress. The colonel had merely given him a socially acceptable way of dealing with the world.

  Because he looked as if he was regretting his uncustomary verbosity, she kissed his chin to distract him. Conversation was forgotten. She didn't want to argue, and she didn't want to talk. She only wished to fill the remaining moments she had left with him with memories such as these. When the time came for him to leave her she would have nothing else, but she'd have this.

  An intuition totally unrelated to her gift told her that time was coming quickly.

  * * *

  Trey stared hard at Sergeant Garven's ruddy-complected face. "What do you mean, Maria Kasem is gone?"

  "I mean she's gone. She's been extradited to California. Two guards were sent for her, and they left about an hour ago. I was going to call and let you know."

  "Damn!" Trey bit out the curse.

  "It wasn't as if she was cooperating with us, anyway," Garven said fatalistically. "Maybe LAPD will have better luck with her, especially with the Feds involved."

  Jaida tossed Trey a concerned look. He'd been visibly unhappy at her insistence on accompanying him this morning. Only her threat to take a taxi to the precinct alone had him grudgingly concede to bringing her along. Even then, she had spent the entire ride listening to his warnings, as he forbade her from even attempting to see the kidnapping suspect.

  This news washed away all Trey's concerns about her involvement today. But it seemed to frustrate him just as much. "You say you didn't get any more information from the woman?" Jaida asked Garven.

  "Nothing she gave willingly. We ran a check and found she had a rap sheet. Prostitution, bad checks, that sort of thing. She even did a few months' time on the last bad-check conviction."

  Jaida swallowed. This woman had had Benjy in her care for a month, and all they knew about her was her name and that she was an ex-con. No wonder Trey was frustrated.

  "Tell you one thing, though," grunted the sergeant. "If anyone can convince her to talk, it'll be the Feds. Kasem was definitely shook up at the news they were waiting for her. Maybe when they get done leaning on her, she'll feel a little more talkative."

  There was nothing more the man could tell them, so Trey and Jaida returned to the motel.

  "Now what?" she wondered aloud.

  "I'm going to call L.A.," he responded. "I'll talk to Detective Reynolds there and tell him I want to be notified if Kasem gives them any information. It's the least he can do," he muttered. "He was sure worthless while we were tracking Benjy down."

  After a moment, Jaida went back to her room and picked up the phone there. Trey had been checking daily with the lost-and-found office at Kids' Kingdom, inquiring about her purse. After a brief conversation, she hung up the receiver with a sigh. Still no luck. There was no use in holding out any more hope. If it was going to be turned in, she had a feeling it would have been. She'd already canceled her credit cards and made arrangements to have replacements issued, but she called the credit companies anyway. There was no record that someone had tried to access her accounts. She then made a call to Arkansas, but as she'd half expected, there was no answer. When she hung up the phone, Trey appeared in the doorway.

  "Who were you talking to?" he inquired.

  "I was just trying to reach Granny, but there's no answer at the cabin. I'm not surprised. She had been planning to visit her sister Nora and her husband. That's probably where she's at."

  "Have you checked today with the lost and found?"

  She nodded. "No luck, I'm afraid."

  Trey frowned. "I'll replace the money that was in your purse, of course."

  She immediately bristled at his words. "That won't be necessary."

  "Yes, Jaida, it is." His voice was firm. "You've already put yourself through enough. There's no way we can repay you for finding Benjy, but I can make damn sure you don't incur any personal expenses along the way."

  She stared at him, her chin squared. Trey hadn't mentioned compensation since the day he'd been determined to pay her off and send her home. She'd told him then she wouldn't take anything, and if he knew what was good for him, he wouldn't bring the subject up now, either. Especially now, when this experience had become so much more than a missing-person case.

  Especially now that she was in love with him.

  She had to turn away then, afraid of what he'd see in her face. She knew what was in store for her. Trey was grateful for her help in finding Benjy. And in spite of her inexperience, he'd given every sign of a man satisfied by their lovemaking last night. But she didn't try to fool herself into believing that it meant anything more special to him. Although he'd been concerned about her last night, and gentle once he'd learned she was a virgin, she didn't dare allow herself to hope for something that didn't have a cotton ball's chance in a windstorm of coming true.

  She thought she was prepared for what it would be like back home in Arkansas alone and without him. No doubt it would be worse than she even expected. But she was determined to return to the valley with her pride. There would be no uncomfortable scenes when it was time for them to part. Despite his gratitude for Benjy, Trey owed her nothing. She wouldn't be able to bear it if she suspected he felt otherwise. Gratitude wasn't an emotion that would be enough from this man. Not nearly enough.

  She'd rather return home shrouded in her tattered pride than make demands on him he couldn't hope to meet. When the time came for them to part ways, she'd do it with nonchalant dignity if it killed her.

  Lost in her morose thoughts, she was startled by his presence behind her. He took her shoulders in his hands, and she was jolted anew by those tiny pinpricks of electricity that accompanied his touch. She'd awakened this morning, a slight achiness the only thing to remind her that she would no longer feel like the only twenty-seven-year-old virgin in the country. She'd been unable to summon any regrets.

  "Are you tired?" The words were spoken into her ear, low and sensual. He pushed her hair back over her shoulder and kissed her lobe.

  She shook her head, then stopped to arch her neck under his wandering mouth. "No."

  "You didn't get much sleep last
night." She didn't need his words to remind her of the hours they'd spent exploring each other. By the time she'd fallen into an exhausted slumber, the sky had already begun to lighten.

  "Neither did you," she reminded him in a shaky voice. He made a sound of agreement, his mouth otherwise occupied. Her breathing grew unsteady.

  It was a moment before she identified the ringing coming from his bedroom. Trey stiffened for a moment, then, cursing, straightened. He strode through the open door to snatch it up.

  It was a few more moments before Jaida recovered. It took a concerted effort to calm her pulse, but she made the attempt before she joined him.

  When she walked through the doorway, she was pleasantly shocked by the look of frustrated possessiveness in Trey's hooded gaze. The next moment it was gone, and his face was blank as he listened to the caller. After a few minutes he hung up, his expression remote.

  "That was one of the FBI agents who has been tailing Penning. He was calling from Logan International Airport. Penning went there to pick up his parents, and they're on their way to the Cape."

  "Will they be followed?"

  He nodded. "The Feds are unwilling to give up, even now that Benjy's been found. They're still hoping to get something on Penning to put him away, which suits my purposes just fine. I doubt they'll be allowed to spend much more time on the case, though. Benjy is safely home, and there's nothing linking Penning to his kidnapping."

  She watched him pace to the French doors. "Now what?"