I lay back against the rock then, bracing myself. His big hand splayed across my stomach and dipped down, stroked me, stretched me open as I slapped the rock and howled. Because Brody fucking me with his fingers was more than enough to make a girl come. My legs were wrapped low around his hips, trapping him to me, so he couldn’t take his magnificent body away from me. His mouth fixed on my nipple, sucking it hard, making me buck and grab for his meaty biceps for something to hold on to. I wanted to beg or cuss or demand, but he had stolen my breath with his big fingers plunging inside me, working me. I rode his hand like a maniac, bucking forward and back to get what I wanted.
“That’s right, baby, you want it,” he said, his voice husky against my neck. He bit my throat and made me cry out in pleasure, whimpering for him to fill me with his cock. At last, he’d teased me enough. He slipped his naughty fingers out of my soaking wet core, licked them and smiled. Then he slid those fingers, wet from his mouth, right over my clit. I exploded, bucking and thrashing as I came. His hand was behind my head, cradling it.
He kissed me softly, “You taste sweet as can be. I’m not gonna give you a minute to catch your breath though.” I nodded, breathless, really wanting a few minutes of afterglow so I could breathe and really savor this feeling of fucking Brody behind a waterfall.
But he gave me no quarter. He hiked my thigh up high to spread me wider. I felt the big, blunt head of his cock at my opening. I pressed down, eager, and felt my lower lips stretch to take just the tapering head of that massive pipe he was packing. I felt a flash of fear but pushed it down stubbornly. I gasped as the flaring head slid into me, as he worked his way in, tunneling in inch by inch, not giving me time to get used to it, feeding more and more of that thick cock into me. I was riveted, watching his pulsing member tunnel its way into my straining pussy. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, so lewd and magnificent. It felt alive in me, muscular and moving, both foreign and like it belonged there. I held on to his shoulders and he had a look of beautiful concentration on his face, brow furrowed. I knew he was trying to take his time and not hurt me, but the vein at his temple pulsed like the strain of control was killing him when he was this aroused.
“Do it,” I panted. “Stuff me with your cock.” He looked up, met my eyes and with one big thrust, he pushed himself inside me to the hilt, penetrating me more fully than anyone ever had. Any other man I’d ever had was nothing compared to this, to the way my body had to shift and adjust to hold him, the strange pride I felt that I could contain all of him, all that live, wild manhood. I arched into him. He leaned his forehead into mine and asked if I was okay.
“Yeah, are you?” I teased.
“This. Feels. Incredible. God—you’re so tight. Am I hurting you?”
“No, baby this feels so good,” I gasped out. Then he started to move and I saw stars. Every place he filled me and rubbed me inside just seemed to light up. My nipples tightened, my nails dug into his shoulders, my mouth fell open. My whole body went loose and delicious and that orgasm built up so fast it was dizzying. He pulled out a little and thrust back in, slamming into me, his balls rubbing my outer lips sensuously. His tongue filled my mouth. One of his hands was at my jaw and throat, gripping me there, not choking, but intense and possessive, making me open my mouth for his tongue, making me keep my eyes on his as he fucked me. That thumb on my jaw, pressing in, the scrape of his teeth on my bottom lip were almost as intense as his cock filling me so that I thought I’d go insane, thought I’d break. Then he did something with his hips, a forward jerk as the thrust that ground his pubic bone right into my clit. I screamed into his mouth as the sharp pleasure crashed over me. I came and came, screaming, gushing around him.
My head tipped back against the shower wall as I came so hard around my own hand that I thought when my inner muscles clamped down that they’d break the fingers I’d stuffed into myself to try to approximate that big dick I was dreaming of. Ugh. This had been a bad idea. Now I had an elaborate fantasy burned into my brain complete with detailed description of my boss’s dick. I washed up and got out of the shower, embarrassed at myself. I toweled off, put on my nightgown, and I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
10
Brody
The first twenty-four hours were crucial. We all knew it. But when twenty-four hours slipped into day after day with no lead in sight, no strategy for locating a missing girl, a girl who, according to the stats, was probably raped, murdered, and buried in a shallow grave by now. It kept me awake at night. We hadn’t found a damn thing since the phone on the first day. I was edgy, frustrated. I was a grouchy at work, and Mrs. Rook had taken to bringing me coffee without being asked, probably in hopes of appeasing my mood.
It didn’t help that the last three days I woke up hard as steel thanks to dreams about Laura. Correction, thanks to filthy dreams about my lifelong friend’s younger sister who was also my employee and direct report. That was nothing short of infuriating. After years of feeling only rare and muted desire for anyone, of being unable to muster the life force that seemed essential for sexuality, after years of mourning and living half a life, my body decided to come screaming back to full power when faced with the most impossible, inappropriate woman in the world.
She was a hell of a good cop. Her insight and her practicality, and even her joking around had been incredibly valuable the last few days. But I still rued the day she decided to move back to Rockford Falls. Because I wouldn’t have had to face the ache that grew every day, the fact that I looked for her as soon as I entered the station, my eyes seeking her out. I missed her if she wasn’t right beside me when I thought of something I wanted to tell her, to make her laugh or to bounce a theory off of her. I missed her like she was my closest friend, like she was the person I wanted at my side all the time. I missed her like she was mine. And that was the main problem. Not the lust. Lust could be ignored, could be channeled into workouts or a one-night stand with someone I picked up in a bar a couple towns over if it came to that. It was the caring about her, the connection we had from the minute she walked in that office. Her sharp wit and humor and warmth. Her bigger-than-life personality, her obnoxious jokes and the way she just sparkled, lit up from the inside and so beautiful and so increasingly necessary to me. She hadn’t been back a week and I was starting to need her.
I’d never laid a hand on her in all my life, but as soon as I closed my eyes at night I plunged into dreams of making love to her. Dirty dreams, and romantic ones, too. A dream one night where I tied a white silk scarf over her eyes and led her up on a rooftop for a candlelight dinner. I must have seen something like that in a movie once, because in Rockford Falls, we don’t have rooftop dinners. We only go on the roof if the shingles come loose after a storm.
Guilt swamped me. Not just because of Damon—whose calls I was dodging and sending straight to voicemail—but because of Missy. Because in the years since she died, I’d never thought to have another woman in my life, in my bed night after night. I’d hooked up a couple of times but never anyone I went out with them again, never a relationship. Never this craving that was so much like first love, that rush of desperation and greed and longing that chokes you up when you’re sixteen and get a glimpse of the girl you wish you could be with forever. I was ashamed of wanting Laura, of wanting anyone that way. I’d been a lucky man to have a good wife who cared for me, and when I lost her, I’d figured that was it.
She had told me at the end, when hospice came to bathe her and give her pain meds, she’d held my hand and told me to find love again, that I was a good man and a good husband. That I didn’t deserve to be alone. She had wanted me to be happy. That was what she worried about, her thin face contorted with pain. And here I was, face burning with shame because I felt like I’d been unfaithful to her. I’d stood in the church where I grew up and said my vows to her. But when death parted us, I never gave in, never stopped being her husband in my mind. I was married, as much today as I had been when she was still alive. Now, Damon
had told me time and again I needed to go to grief counseling if I needed to. I couldn’t be a hermit, a celibate all my life, according to him. I hadn’t cared what he said. He and I were always roasting each other about something, so if Brody-needs-a-woman was the old saw he fell back on, I didn’t begrudge him. I just didn’t want to consider it.
Then his sister came back into town, flame-haired and smart-mouthed and it felt like she was made for me. Like the top of her head would fit under my chin when I held her. And I had thought about holding her. I’d thought how good it would feel and how right, especially when the call had come from Clint about the phone. I’d had to tamp down the instinct to round my desk and take her in my arms because we both had hope and fear and frustration over the missing girl, and it would’ve grounded me, would’ve comforted us both to hold each other. It had seemed like it would be natural to do it. I wanted to. Even worse than the fantasies, the dirty dreams about Laura, was the longing. The fact that it roared to life right in my face that I was so goddamned lonely. I wanted to hold her and just—sit on the couch and watch TV or argue over what takeout to get for dinner and end up kissing. I wanted to find out if she still cheated at cards like she did as a kid, and if she’d cook dinner with me.
I wanted to make her waffles. I loved breakfast for dinner as a kid. Missy always said that wasn’t a real dinner, so I didn’t push her to do it. But I wanted to make waffles for Laura, pour warm maple syrup over the butter until they were golden and swimming in sticky sweetness. I wanted to see her take a bite and make a big deal over how delicious they were and then kiss her lips. I wanted to lie under the covers and drink coffee out of the same cup and read each other the headlines off our phones.
Imagining a life with her wasn’t just too soon or inappropriate. It was wrong. It was faithless to my dead wife and disloyal to my best friend, and it was a blight on my badge. My heart and my body just wouldn’t listen.
Admittedly, I was brooding about it at my desk when a sharp knock at my door was followed immediately by Laura. She walked in with a file in hand. I nodded for her to sit, but she rounded my desk and opened the file in front of us. She stood so close that I was intoxicated by the vanilla smell of her auburn hair. I shut my eyes for an instant and dragged myself into the present.
“We cracked the passcode on her phone—the one she’d given her parents was fake, by the way—and went through Becky’s call log. Her friend had said she left at 11:30 to go home. There’s a call at 11:35 to her mom’s cell. Kayla said she’d called to say she was on her way. It’s a two-block walk to her house. Then, twenty-five minutes later there’s a call to an unknown number and the location pins it near where the phone was found.”
“Okay, then we know she wasn’t by herself,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “Because there’s no way she could’ve gotten that far on foot in twenty-five minutes, besides the fact that there’s no obvious reason for her to go to a remote bean field in the middle of the night on a weeknight.”
“Right. So somebody picked her up in a car. Somebody she knew or not, and either she made the call or someone else did right at that location.”
“I’m calling Overton. They have a dive team. I want the fishing pond checked. That’s the only thing out there.”
“If they killed her and dumped her in the pond they would’ve thought to find the cell phone and take it with them,” she pointed out.
“Unless they were in a panic and finding a smartphone in a bean field is tricky, especially in the dark.”
“Alright, but there were no signs of any struggle or anything, not where the phone was found and not around the pond. Her mom said she weighs around 135- 140. That’s gonna make a deep print if somebody was carrying her body along with their own bodyweight. There would’ve been some sign.”
“You think we shouldn’t drag the pond?” I said.
“Not yet. We both know something’s going on here. I’m going to go talk to the friend again after she gets off school. Maybe she heard a car or knew about a secret boyfriend or something.”
“I think she would’ve said something by now. Kid’s scared shitless for her best friend,” I said, “but you can bring her in if you want.”
“I thought I’d go to her house.”
“Scares them more if you bring them in here. We’re not like the fire department. We don’t give tours to kindergarteners so they don’t grow up scared. I give Damon shit about it all the time.”
“Well, kindergarteners probably like the fire trucks more than they’d like sitting in a holding cell,” she said, going back around the desk and sitting down in a chair.
I breathed a sigh of relief that she wasn’t standing so close anymore, but I also felt a pang of disappointment at having distance between us. It was confusing and I shifted in my chair, aggravated. I straightened up, realizing I’d leaned away from her in my chair awkwardly while she was beside me.
“We have our first solid evidence that Becky wasn’t alone. She could still be a runaway, but it seems less likely because she doesn’t seem like she’d ditch her phone. I can understand turning off the location setting, but we live in a day and age when it’s not safe to be without a cell phone especially if you’re far from home.”
“When you say ‘in a day and age’ you sound about seventy-five years old, Chief. I have to ask. Do you realize we’re not in Mayberry?”
“Very funny. If we’re in Mayberry, you’re Opie.”
“Uh, hello? I’m a woman.”
“Which makes you Aunt Bee.”
“Shut it Peters,” she shot back good-naturedly. Then she added, “there’s no one and no place on this planet as wholesome as Mayberry and it’s townsfolk.”
“Ouch. Cynical much?” I said.
“Yeah. Aren’t cops usually cynical unless they’re stupid?” she asked with a shrug. “We see way too much of the bad to think the best of people.”
“I see your point there, Vance, but I wouldn’t still be in law enforcement if I believed that. If I thought everybody was basically an asshole, I wouldn’t work so hard protecting them,” I told her. I waited for her to make a joke, to laugh at me for putting it so baldly, that I had seen the worst, but I’d seen the best in people, too.
She shocked me by not snapping back. There was no smartass remark, no laugh. She just looked up and met my eyes.
“Tell me why,” she said, her voice quieter, less brash than I’d ever heard her.
“Because my wife died, Vance. And when a woman’s dying, you find out how many people have a heart for mercy. So many people came to see her and cooked food and brought flowers while she was sick, and the whole damn elementary school made her get well soon cards with yellow all over ‘em because the principal had called and asked what her favorite color was. When she couldn’t fight anymore, every man on this force came to my house and stayed the night, and the next night too. So I wasn’t by myself. Tough guys, men that take pictures of the animals they’ve shot—sat with me while I cried. Your own brother remembers the day I got married and takes me out for a drink every year so I’m not by myself like some sad-sack looking at the wedding album on the anniversary. Because you wouldn’t believe the good people have in them, people you don’t even think ever took notice of you at all. They can be so kind, it’d break your heart,” I said.
Then I stopped staring at my hands, at the place my wedding ring had been. I looked at Laura. She swiped the back of her hand across her eyes, brushing back tears. But I could still see them.
“Goddamn, Peters. You could’ve just said there’s good people in this town,” she sniffed.
Then she got up and came back around my desk. Before I could get to my feet to back away from her, she hugged me. She bent down a little, wrapped her arms around my neck and leaned in, holding me tight. It felt so good that my chest ached. I let myself put one arm around her back and squeeze her. Even though what I really wanted to do was turn just a little and pull her into my lap, hold her close and bury my face in her shoulder.
I could breathe in that vanilla scent and shut my eyes and shut out the world. It wasn’t even sexual. Okay, so it was partly sexual. There was no denying the attraction. However, mostly it was the warmth and physical contact and how close I felt to her right then and how long I’d been lonely. Hugging Laura back was a mistake, and it made everything hurt a hundred times worse than it already had.
After maybe a minute, I let go of her because I didn’t want to make it weird or risk someone coming in to see me hugging the new recruit. I actually rolled my chair back a little to get away from her after I released her when she didn’t step back right away. She sniffed.
“If you tell my brother you made me cry, I’ll tell him you’re lying,” she said.
“He’d never believe you,” I said.
“He wouldn’t believe me crying either,” she challenged.
“You’re probably right,” I said. “How’s your dad?” I asked, needing to change the subject.
“Not great,” she said. “He always feels like crap after dialysis, and he’s cranky about his diet. I got him to drink his water yesterday and managed to distract him by kicking his ass at Scrabble. It gave my mom a break, if nothing else. But it sucks seeing him like this and knowing I can’t do anything to help.”
“I know how that is,” I said, my voice low.
I almost reached for her hand, but I stopped myself. Seeing someone you cared about suffering and knowing that you’re helpless is a special kind of hell. There was a terrible intimacy to the moment. It clawed deep in my chest so that it took all my self-control to hold eye contact with her. The urge to look away was as fierce as it was cowardly, and I wouldn’t give in to it. Her green eyes were clouded with sadness and something like compassion for me. The only thing tougher than meeting her gaze was keeping myself from gathering her in my arms right then.
Hot Cop: A Brother's Best Friend Romance Page 8
