Preach to me Baby

by Hazel Parker

  It wasn’t until I was out in the cool night air that reason sank in. Twenty minutes ago I was escaping the reality of having no tangible leads left, and then a new one wrapped his fingers around my arm and I walked away.

  The brisk air was chasing away the remaining fuzz from my head and with it came the very real regret of letting my stubbornness get in the way of my goal. Dean may have been an ass, but I also knew he might hold what I needed.

  My steps slowed.

  Shit.

  I hesitated under the canopy of a storefront. I didn’t want to go back, but I couldn’t let him slip away. Before I had time to figure out what I was going to do, strong hands gripped my arm once again. My heart beat heavy in my chest before the already familiar cologne wrapped around me. I turned to face Dean.

  “Is that your thing? Grabbing people you don’t know?”

  “Oh, I know you, Sera,” he said, not letting go. “I’ve seen you at the police station, and at Ashley’s funeral. I’ve seen you sitting in that bar for hours. I know enough about you to know whose side you’re on.”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  Dean cut his eyes away from me, letting his hand fall from my arm and sweeping his gaze along the sidewalk.

  “We should talk.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s what I’ve been trying to do this whole time.”

  “Not here. Come on.” He hitched his head down the street and started walking. I hated that he expected me to follow him, but I was left with little other choice than to pick up my pace and follow.

  The ceaseless wind pushed against me, but I managed to keep pace with Dean until he stepped up to the passenger door of an old pick up a couple blocks down. When I stood unmoving behind him on the sidewalk instead of taking his silent invitation to enter the truck, he turned to face me.

  “Are we going to have an issue with this now, too?”

  “It would be stupid of me to not even ask where we’re going, don’t you think?”

  “To my hotel.”

  “Well then, yes. We’re definitely going to have a problem with this. And if you don’t see why, then you have bigger problems than just your bossiness.”

  Dean’s scowl faded quickly and he nodded.

  “Yeah.” He lifted his hat off his head and tunneled thick fingers through his hair. “This isn’t normally how I operate. People usually just follow my lead. Or my orders. I keep forgetting that I can’t always proceed like I normally would. Asking you to just blindly follow me is one of those times.”

  Like he had been since he first opened his mouth, I had no clue what he was talking about. Not until he pulled the identification card from his pocket. His picture looked up at me from the police ID card. My eyes flickered between his face and the offering in his hand.

  I figured he meant for this to be an act of faith. That once I knew he was a cop, I would be happy to be following him around like a lap dog. He was mistaken. The last thing I needed was help from a man wearing an SPD badge. They didn’t want to help me months ago when it mattered and I didn’t image this man would be much help to me now.

  “You don’t seem relieved.”

  “Can you blame me?” I bristled at his assumption. “I begged your department to take another look at this case. I camped out in the waiting room with the letters I had been sent, the ones warning me away from the case, the ones that told me Ashley’s death wasn’t an accident. All you ever did was look at me like a lunatic. So no, I’m not relieved. If you think you’re going to help me or play the hero, then you’re hugely mistaken.”

  “I didn’t do those things. Don’t lump me in with them.” His ever-suspicious gaze drifted over the street again and when he spoke, it was quieter. “Let me explain. We don’t have to go anywhere, but I don’t want to lay it all out on the street.”

  This time there was no pushiness, no assumptions. This time I got in. Dean shut the door after me and went around to his side. When we were closed in to the quietness of the cab, he turned in his seat to face me.

  “I see why you’re wary of my department. I saw what you went through to try to be heard. I was trying to be heard too. I was at the scene after Ashely’s accident. It was my case. Up until it was pulled from me. Something went on that didn’t feel right, but I was never given the opportunity to figure out what. I wanted to keep the case open. The captain wanted it closed. He won.”

  “Why are you here then?”

  “I couldn’t let it go at that. I don’t have a single unsolved case on my record. I still don’t, technically, but that’s not good enough.”

  “So this is about proving a point?”

  “Not entirely. I won’t lie to you, Sera: that part of it pisses me off. But more than that, this is the first time in my career that I’m not happy with how justice was served. I don’t think Ashley’s case was given all it could have been. It was a case pushed to be closed in the face of a record crime rate and election year. Politics isn’t why I wanted this job.”

  “So you’re on your own here? Not as part of the investigation?”

  “As far as my superiors are concerned, there is no investigation. I took a leave of absence to be here.” Dean ran his hands through his hair again and turned to look out at the street ahead of us. His face was shaded in frustration, vulnerability. Seeing this side made him seem so much more reachable, and I held myself back from moving closer to him. “I just needed a little more time to follow up on things that weren’t given enough attention. Like your letter.”

  “Letters,” I corrected him.

  “You’ve received more than one?” I nodded. “I’d like to see them.”

  “They’re in my hotel room.”

  I didn’t expand on that. I didn’t invite him to look at them. He watched me for a minute, waiting, and I relished every second that I had the control. Finally he lifted his mouth in another half-smile and shook his head.

  “You’re stubborn.”

  “I’m not the only one.”

  “I didn’t say it was a bad thing. Listen, if you want to team up and figure out where to go from here, then we can head back to your hotel. We’re both banging our heads against the wall and I think it’s our best chance of getting some answers. But if not, then we’ll go our separate ways here.”

  He made a lot of sense. Again. And if I was being honest, I wanted to go with him, and not only because of his investigative skills. His body pulled me towards him and I knew that if I managed to pull myself out of this truck, I would feel the loss.

  With my mind made up, I reached behind me and pulled the seat belt across. With a nod and that smile, Dean did the same. Trusting him seemed easy but I had been fooled before. I hoped I was right to let him into my world, because once I let him into my room, there would be no going back.

  *****

  The drive to my hotel was quiet and quick. Dean navigated the streets with ease and before I had time to process how completely my night had turned around, we were standing outside my door. I scanned the pass key and let us in.

  The hotel was dated and the room was small, but I chose it for its proximity to the meeting place, not for its amenities. I’d hardly looked at it since checking in earlier that day, but with Dean practically filling all the free space, sucking all the air out of the room and out of my lungs, I wished I had picked a nicer hotel. One with enough room for a table and chair, instead of only the bed for us to sit on.

  I shrugged off my jacket and threw my purse onto the floor. My suitcase was at the foot of the bed and I rifled through it until I found the envelope I had stashed at the bottom. I handed Dean the envelope and sat at the head of the bed and watched him.

  He gingerly turned the envelope over in his hands, his sharp eyes looking over the whole surface.

  “Were they sent to you in this envelope?”

  “No. Each note was slipped under my door. No envelope.”

  He lifted the flap and looked in. “You put them in plastic bags?”

  “Yes. A
nd I didn’t touch them with bare hands.”

  His eyes flited up to mine with a small look of approval. It was the first thing I’d done all night that made him happy. I liked how pleased that made me.

  He turned the envelope out onto the middle of the bed and came to sit beside me. Shoulders touching, we both looked them over. I had studied them hundreds of times, analyzed their meanings, guessed at their intentions.

  All three were brief. Three different versions of “it was an accident; let her rest in peace.” All I could assume was the person who sent them knew more than I, and their only intention was to deter and raise doubt. Beyond that they had been useless to me.

  Apparently Dean thought the same thing. “Not much help, are they?”

  “No. The only one that gave me anything solid to go on was a bust.” I pulled out the note I had received two days ago, the one with the date, time, and address of tonight’s failed meeting on it.

  “Have you had any other leads?”

  “Not since I tracked down Ashley’s dad.”

  “Right. We were looking for him too, but we never turned him up before the case got closed.”

  “Sal is pretty good at staying hidden if he wants to.”

  “If he wanted to stay hidden, that’s a good sign he has something to say.”

  “Not necessarily,” I said, remembering with a sad, strange fondness the man who used to take us camping. The same man who, it turned out, practically had a PhD in criminal activity. “Sal has always walked the line between legal and otherwise. It’s not uncommon for him to disappear for months, or even years at a time. He lived with Ashley and her mom until she was 8, then she only saw him a handful of times after that. When Ash died I tried to contact him to tell him what happened in case news hadn’t gotten to him.”

  “Sometimes news travels faster underground than anywhere else.” His tone told me exactly what he thought of a man who abandons his family in favor of his nefarious ways. I couldn’t say I blamed him. Or disagreed.

  “I had another reason for wanting to talk to him,” I said with a shrug. Dean looked at me expectantly, like maybe I was holding an important piece of the puzzle when really it was another dead end. “Ash had mentioned Sal to me a few times in the last couple months she was alive, which was uncommon. Usually she never talked about him, but she mentioned they met up for coffee awhile back and that she might be seeing more of him. She never elaborated on it, and it wasn’t until after she died that I made any connection.”

  “And you think Sal might have something to do with what happened?”

  “No, I can’t imagine he would be involved, but I thought maybe he would know something I didn’t. That Ash mentioned something to him when they last met. I was grasping at straws.” I heaved out a sigh and shrugged again. “But it was a bust too, just like tonight’s note. He was broken up about Ashley, and when I told him it might not have been an accident, he assured me he would get his guys looking into it. I never heard back from him after that.”

  Dean nodded, his eyes back to studying the notes. After a minute he pulled a slip of paper from his pocket, a duplicate of the one I was sent.

  “I’m not sure if these notes are entirely a bust. It was sent to both of us. That’s got to mean something.”

  “Yeah, but why not show up then?”

  Dean leaned back against the headboard and ran a hand across his unshaven chin. “He wanted to watch us, maybe, or have both of us occupied for a couple of hours. Or he just chickened out.”

  What Dean was implying was much more sinister than I had imagined when I started out the night. Between my single-trained focus on getting answers and a reluctant admittance of my naivety, the thought that someone lured me to that bar to watch me—or worse—was a distant thought. Until now, that is.

  Unease slid along my spine and I drew my legs up to my chest, wrapping my arms around my knees. I rested my head on my knees and closed my eyes as the heaviness of the day settled on my shoulders. I had a feeling Dean knew as little as I did. If he knew more, then he wouldn’t have been sitting beside me staring a hole into the same pieces of paper I’d been staring at for months.

  I focused on my breathing on the things I could feel and hear, staving off a panic attack. When I tried to focus, however, all I could sense was Dean. I felt the brush of his shoulder against mine, the sound of his gentle breathing, the smell of his cologne. It was working to reduce my panic, but not necessarily calm me down. My body seemed even more restless than before.

  When I opened my eyes again, Dean was looking at me and not the notes anymore. His unwavering stare was fooling with me, making me think my body’s reaction was justified. He was confusing me further when I didn’t think I could be any more so. I didn’t know that I could be scared and aroused at the same time. But I was.

  “You’re freaking out,” he said in his low rumble.

  “Do you always sound so sure about everything?”

  “Not everything. Just things I’m sure about.” I raised an eyebrow at him and he shrugged. “I’ve watched enough people to know what freaking out looks like. Even the quiet kind.”

  I turned my head back into my arms. It wore on me then, the exhaustion and the doubt, with an understanding face recognizing it in me. I didn’t want to talk anymore; I didn’t want to make a plan on where to go from there. I just wanted this feeling to go away.

  Dean touched his hand to my lower back and my focus was drawn to that one small connection. The warmth from his touch spread out through my body and amped up the beating in my chest.

  His touch could have been construed as platonic, as one person trying to soothe another, but that’s not where my mind was taking it. I wanted more of his touch. I needed the sureness and the strength that Dean possessed. I needed to let go of the doubt, at least for this fleeting moment. When his hand moved lower with that same sureness, smoothing the top of my jeans, there was no mistaking the intention behind it.

  My chest constricted, the blood pounding through my body harder at the offer issued. I pulled my arms away from my legs and looked to see the desire reflected back to me. I tucked my legs under myself and kneeled in the middle of the bed, knees touching his hip on the small bed. I faced Dean and his unrestrained heat.

  I couldn’t deny that the booze still humming in my veins was pushing me forward, but I didn’t think I would regret the added boldness. I was pushed forward with more of a craving than I’d had for anyone—anything—in a very long time. My body buzzed with the anticipation of his hands on my bare skin, of his lips on mine.

  With that thought in mind, I pulled my shirt over my head with no hesitation. I relished in the way his eyes watched me. He was confident and unapologetic and I loved how that was making me feel.

  With his eyes never leaving me, Dean pulled his own shirt over his head and leaned back against the headboard. His body beckoned me, and I couldn’t turn down his silent invitation. I swung my knee over his body, planting my hands on his chest. His skin was warm under my fingers and I could feel his muscles contracting under my touch.

  His eyes remained unchanged, but he brought his warm hands up and wrapped them around my waist. Just his simple touch was enough to send a shiver along my nerve endings and a heat growing between my legs. I bent and took my first taste of his perfect skin. He smelled like heat and rain and the spicy notes of his cologne. I pressed my lips to his shoulder, but couldn’t stop there. I worked my way up his neck, to his chin. I breathed him in as I went, and I felt his fingers grip me tighter with the slightest press downwards onto the erection I could feel growing beneath me.

  It wasn’t until I had worked my way up to his lips, just before I touched mine to his, that I saw a new look in him. A restraint that hadn’t been there before. And before I had a chance to do anything else, Dean took over. In a rush, I had lost my ability to control what was happening. His one hand left my waist and threaded into my hair, holding me tight against his lips. Those lips pressed into mine, a mash of teeth
and tongue and wet heat. His other hand slid down to grasp my hip, this time pushing my ass firmly into his rising hips.

  His tongue and hips worked in unison and I moved into him with my limited range of motion. I met each of his nips and ground against his cock when I got the chance, not willing to let him take me over completely.

  A growl of appreciation left his throat before his hand at my hip abandoned its post in favor of unclasping my bra. I was more than willing to pick up where he left off and meet his seeking hips just as hard as he had been pushing me. The straps of my bra slid down my arm, and before I was fully free from it, Dean’s hands were gripping my shoulders and rolling us, pushing me back onto the bed.

  He pulled at my pants while his mouth peppered kisses along my tits. A ribbon of pleasure danced through me and I ran my fingers through his hair, holding him to my chest. Once my pants were discarded, though, he pulled away from my grasp.

  My disappointment was short lived when I propped myself up to see his hands at his belt. With his eyes on mine, he unfastened it and slid both his pants and briefs down at once. My eyes were drawn to his full and erect cock, as sure and confident as the rest of him. As he moved up the bed to cover my body with his own, my breathing became shallower, anticipation building.

  Dean moved in to resume kissing, but I was far too distracted. With nothing between our bare skin, my mind was focused elsewhere. His cock nudged at me between my legs and all conscious thought left my head in a rush of blood to my center. My hips bucked up in response and I felt Dean smile against my mouth.

  I exhaled my relief when he understood what I needed. In one swift motion, he guided his erection to my entrance and pushed himself fully into me. My walls constricted around him, muscles clamping tight. Dean’s face was fixed, his body rigid, but only for a moment. When he started moving, his rhythm was fast and unwavering. I balled my hands into the sheets beside my head and braced myself against him.