CHASING PEPPER (Gray Wolf Security, Texas Book 5)

by Glenna Sinclair

  But I didn’t care. In this moment, I was selfish. I just wanted to forget I was that girl. I wanted to forget what I’d done—or failed to do—and I wanted to feel a touch of that salve on my soul.

  We didn’t say another word to each other. He touched me and I touched him, tugging at his clothing in a desperate effort to get it out of my way. I needed him inside of me like I needed the air I was breathing. I needed to feel him in places only two other men had ever touched. I needed…I just needed.

  I tugged at his belt, pulling it free as his fingers slipped down the back of my jeans, pressing their way to my ass, to the flimsy lace of the panties that barely covered my bottom. He took great handfuls of my ass, tugging me closer to him as he deepened my kiss. My hands were stuck between our bodies, but I managed to find enough room to maneuver. I tugged at his zipper, slipped my fingers inside his jeans, and touched him through the thin cotton of his briefs. He groaned, but he didn’t pull away. In fact, he moved closer, pressing his erection hard against the backs of my fingers.

  He wanted me. That idea was almost too big to wrap my mind around. He wanted me, this girl he barely knew, this girl who could destroy his world if given half a chance. And that was almost as overwhelming as the feel of his hands against my ass, against my back.

  I broke our kiss and pressed my mouth against his throat, tasting the heat and the sweat of his day, tasting the flavors of his skin, his cologne, tasting what made him—him. He pushed at my jeans, forcing them down over my hips with just the movement of his hands, keeping his back stiff so that I could continue to explore his throat. I vaguely became aware of someone coming into the bathroom as he lifted me up, forcing me back against the wall again. But it no longer mattered. We couldn’t stop even if we wanted to.

  A little tugging, a little adjusting, and he was pressed against me, his hard cock pulsing against my tender cunt lips. I moved my hips, sliding up against him until his head found my opening. I cried out, my breath catching in my throat as he slid inside, filling me with just a single movement. I wrapped my legs around him and tugged him close to me, moaning as we slid into a quick, easy rhythm.

  I was relatively inexperienced. I’d never had sex standing up and I’d never had sex in a bathroom—though I’d come close to doing it in a shower once. I was twenty-five and had the experience of a teenage girl, really. But this…it didn’t feel like anything I’d ever experienced before. I’d thought the last time, the last guy, was something special. I thought he would be the one I’d waited so long to find. But I regretted it, now more than ever, letting him so much as look in my direction. If not for him…but again, I wouldn’t be here with Nolan if not for him.

  I thought I was smart, waiting for love to be with the next man. But no one had taken the time to tell me that love could, at times, be completely one sided.

  But this…if there was love in this fucked up world, maybe this was what it felt like.

  And, again, maybe it was just really, really good sex.

  His hands moved along my thighs, tugging my legs higher around his waist. He thrust kindly, but deep, his movements moving the wall against which we were pressed. His cock touched me in all the right places, this tension building deep in my lower belly, against my clit, shoving me onto a dance floor I’d never been on before. We swayed together, rocked to a music only we could hear. And then…the sounds coming out of my mouth weren’t words, weren’t lyrics, but they went with the music perfectly. Until they didn’t.

  I bit my lip to keep back the scream that wanted to escape as that tension in my lower belly exploded into something else, something much more intense. Until I thought I’d lose my mind with the need to release the pleasure that had nowhere else to go.

  My legs shook as I came, my hands clutching unconsciously against his skin, in his hair. I was aware of him still moving against me, aware of his cock swelling just a little bit more. I was aware of him biting down on my shoulder, his moans vibrating through my flesh. And then the heat, as he released his pleasure deep inside of me.

  We clung to each other for a long time, holding each other as the moment slowly released itself and we came back to ourselves. I kissed his throat a few times, closing my eyes as I buried my face against his shoulder.

  “Are you okay?” he asked after a time.

  “I don’t know.”

  He didn’t say anything else, and for that I was grateful. He just held me until he wasn’t holding me anymore. We straightened our clothes and left, not needing to discuss it. We slipped away without seeing the others, drove in silence back to his little cottage, and disappeared inside of each other again.

  I couldn’t imagine a better way to end such a horrible day.

  Chapter 13

  Nolan

  I woke late in the night, my arms immediately seeking out the soft curves of Pepper’s body. She should have been right beside me, but there was only emptiness there. I rolled over, still lost enough in the oblivion of sleep that I didn’t really register that she wasn’t there. I touched the pillows and ran my hand along the edge of the mattress, eventually sitting up. Maybe she was out on the porch, getting a little fresh air. I’d done that many times after a nightmare woke me in the middle of the night. After the day she had…I could understand if she’d had a nightmare.

  I felt bad that I was in Houston when everything went down this morning. I should have been here for her; I should have been here with David and the others. Ricki was a pretty important part of this company. I was still new, still feeling my way through, but even I knew that.

  And Pepper was her sister.

  Annie said that it was a kidney infection that had caused the seizure. I wasn’t sure how that worked, but I wasn’t a doctor. I was just glad that it wasn’t anything more damaging, more permanent. I’d seen men blown apart in Afghanistan; I’d seen grown men, who could face down the enemy in hand-to-hand combat, turned into puddles of weakness after an IUD blew off a limb or tore away the side of their head. I’d watched more than a few of my buddies end their tour of duty that way. Not to mention all the men and women I’d grown up with who suffered injuries that were just as devastating while trying to best a wild animal.

  I got up and pulled on a pair of shorts that happened to be sitting on a nearby chair, pushing open the bedroom door silently as I made my way into the living room. I was going to get a bottle of water from the kitchen before slipping out the front door to check on Pepper, but I didn’t have to go that far to find her.

  She was sitting at my little desk, a video playing on my laptop illuminating her face.

  “What are you doing?”

  She jumped, slamming the lid of the computer down. She turned, her face lost in shadows now.

  “Just…watching YouTube.”

  “You weren’t.”

  I moved up behind her and opened the lid of the computer. Security footage from the robbery here in Austin filled the screen. The girl looked over her shoulder, her face revealed quite clearly to the camera.

  “Why are you watching this? This is from my case.”

  “I know.”

  I was confused, but there was something about the look on her face. She got up and walked across the room, tugging the sweater she’d pulled on—my sweater from inside my dresser drawer—closer around her body as she settled on the couch.

  “What’s going on, Pepper? What do you know about my case?”

  She didn’t say anything, she just stared at the carpet. I went over, settled on the edge of the coffee table as I reached for her hands. She pulled away, refusing me even the slight comfort of touching her.

  “Pepper? Were you curious? Did you want to know what I’m working on?” I tilted my head slightly, studying her. “Why didn’t you just ask?”

  “Because I knew you wouldn’t tell me what I needed to know.”

  “And what’s that?”

  She didn’t answer me again. She stared at her hands, at her feet, at the carpet. At everything but me. I touched her kne
e, sliding my hand under the edge of the sweater. Her eyes filled with tears, and my heart felt as though someone had pressed a cold hand against it.

  There was something going on here, something I wasn’t going to like. And I thought I was just hanging out with a girl who needed a little distraction. Somehow I knew that wasn’t really the case.

  I stood up, turning my back to her.

  “Look, I know you’ve had a bad day. Ricki having that seizure…it couldn’t have been pleasant to witness such a thing. And waiting at the hospital all day…” I walked to the front door, pulling it open. From there I could see most of the other cottages and part of the back of the main house. Lights were on in some of the windows, people clearly only recently returned from their vigil at the hospital. I felt kind of bad for not hanging out longer, but figured I would be more help to Pepper than anyone else. Now I was beginning to regret that line of thinking. “What happened between us was just me trying to make you feel better. If you had other reasons to seek me out, I don’t really want to know about it.”

  “Okay.”

  I glanced at her, a little surprised at how easily she accepted that.

  “I don’t have time for a relationship, especially with my boss’s sister-in-law.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  “I’ve really fucked up my life, Pepper. I can’t go home; I have nowhere else to go. I don’t want to mess this up.”

  “Okay.”

  “Whatever’s going on with you—”

  “Would it help your situation here if I could tell you what the thief looks like? Your notes say that none of the women will turn on him, that none of them have offered a description or any information that could help law enforcement apprehend him.”

  “How long have you been up?”

  She stood, pulling the sweater back down over her ass, but it wasn’t quite long enough to hide the tops of her thighs. She was naked underneath, her warm skin smooth and begging to be touched there. I bit my lip, turning to push the door closed in order to redirect my thoughts. Now was not the time to let my hormones dictate my next move.

  I moved to stand behind her, watching over her shoulder as she turned on my iPad and began scrolling through my notes. She touched a spot on one page.

  “You said that the women you talked to in Houston refused to give any information on him, even now. You say here that you’re surprised by how loyal they are.”

  “Those notes are for my information. I never intended for anyone to look at them.”

  “You say that the second woman you visited, Alicia Morgan, acted as though she expected him to turn up at any moment, to rescue her from her prison sentence.”

  “She talked about him with a certain amount of reverence, what little she would say about him.”

  She nodded, her fingers moving over the document she was reviewing. “Do you have these interviews on tape?”

  “They wouldn’t let me take anything into the visitor room. I just wrote notes the moment I got back out to my car.”

  “What about the other one? Did she mention how they met? Did they all meet in bars? Were they all impressed with the expensive bottles of champagne he bought them? Did they talk about the hotel room he took them back to, or the piles of money he liked to pull out of his pockets whenever he had to tip some waiter or bell boy?”

  I pulled up a chair and stared at her, trying to read her expression. She refused to look at me, but the light from the iPad lit her face. It was disconcerting, the information flowing from her lips. I didn’t understand how she knew until…until…

  “You’re the girl from Dallas.”

  Her finger stopped moving, her body tense as she sat perfectly still.

  “You’re the girl from Dallas. They haven’t sent the security camera footage yet. The Dallas Police Department isn’t thrilled to share information with Austin on this thing. I thought maybe they had something on this guy, but that’s not it, is it?”

  She shrugged a shoulder, my sweater shifting on her body, exposing a little more skin along her collarbone. I sat back, watching her, admiring the way she looked there in the dim light, how sexy she was with nothing but my old, cable knit sweater covering her slight, petite, curvy, sexy body. I wanted to pick her up and pull her into my lap; I wanted to touch her in places I’d only discovered a few hours ago. I wanted to touch her in ways I’d once thought I’d never be capable of again. When I got back from Afghanistan and realized that I’d done too much, that I’d hurt too many people to return to my home, I thought I’d never want a woman quite like this again. I was damaged by what I’d done. How can you love and promise to protect a woman when you couldn’t do that for a stranger, for your buddies, or yourself? But there was something about Pepper that made me capable of those things again, even if it was in a temporary sort of way.

  I reached over and slid my hand over her thigh.

  “Tell me what the fuck is going on here.”

  She looked up, cringing a little at my choice of words. But my tone might have softened the blow a little, made it easier for her to focus on me, to maybe even trust me a little.

  That was the goal, anyway.

  “I don’t want David or Ricki to find out about this. Ricki already thinks I’m a screw up. There’s no reason to hand her the proof.”

  I slid my hand further up her leg, hooking it around her hip and tugging, pulling her and the chair closer to me so that we were face to face.

  “There’s no one here but you and me. What happens after this…it really depends on what you tell me.”

  “Why you? Why are you investigating this case?”

  I shrugged. “We don’t investigate. We protect. But in this particular case, David felt that it would help strengthen Gray Wolf’s relationship with the local police department if we offered our assistance, especially since the owner of the business that was robbed here in Austin hired Gray Wolf for personal protection and a review of their security procedures at their offices.” I slid my hand up along the small of her back, tugging her even closer. “I don’t think he expects me to solve the case. He only wants Detective Snider to see that we will cooperate as much as possible on cases that involve the Austin Police Department.”

  “He wanted you to show Detective Snider that you could do things he can’t. Right?”

  I tilted my head slightly. “I suppose you could look at it that way.” I studied her big, bright eyes, still slightly illuminated by the iPad. “I guess his brother’s original office for Gray Wolf in Santa Monica has a strong relationship with the local police departments. He mentioned a Detective Warren to me once or twice. I think he wants to create something like that here.”

  “Do you trust this Detective Snider?”

  I thought about that for a second. He didn’t seem like a bad guy. But I didn’t know him well, just what I’d learned in our one meeting together.

  “I think he’s a very good cop. And that makes him trustworthy.”

  Pepper laid her hand on my knee, studying her slightly paler skin against mine. Then she sat back, forcing my hand back against her thigh.

  “I don’t want you to think I’m a slut, or something.”

  “I don’t think you’re a slut.”

  She shook her head. “You haven’t heard my story yet.”

  “We’ve all done horrible things, Pepper. I’m not exactly a great guy, either.”

  “Why? What have you done?”

  Our eyes met. I felt my ghosts rattling around inside my head, threatening to come out, to vomit their truth all over her beautiful body. I pulled away, pushing my chair back, not wanting that to happen. I didn’t want her opinion of me to change. We knew each other all of a few days and already we were here, pushing the envelope, threatening to tell each other the darkness that created the sludge covering our souls. I couldn’t do that to her. And yet, I couldn’t expect her to do it without getting something in return.

  “I was in Afghanistan. Things are not as simple there as people seem to
believe.”

  “I can imagine. You must have seen some pretty dark things.”

  “I did. And I did some dark things.”

  She took my hands, tugging them into her lap. “You were fighting a war. I’m sure those other guys, Ingram and Alexander and Elliott, I’m sure they saw some of the same things you did.”

  “Yeah, well, I doubt they made the same mistakes I did.” I pulled away from her, running my hands over my face. “I’m not like them. I know Kipling was a hero. I know that he and Ash Grayson were involved in some pretty impressive operations over there. But me? All I’ve ever been is a fuckup. The military was no exception.”

  “You want to hear about a fuckup? You haven’t quit everything you ever tried to do. You didn’t go running to your brother at every sign of trouble. You didn’t come to your estranged sister because you knew that the cops would eventually figure out that you helped the guy you thought you loved steal thousands of dollars’ worth of financial information, forcing an entire company out of business because they had to tell their clients what happened. Who’s going to trust a financial planner who can’t keep private information private?”

  There was pain in her voice as she spoke. I moved close to her again, took her hands much the way she’d taken mine.

  “Tell me about it.”

  Tears filled her eyes, but she nodded.

  Chapter 14

  Pepper

  I walked into the bar with the intentions of asking for a job. I’d been on the road for more than six months. It was time to settle down somewhere, to find a steady job and a place to live that didn’t require crashing on some friend’s couch. I’d already worn out my welcome most places. Terry wasn’t responding to my texts or the calls I’d made to his office. Mom was dating a new man, one who was younger than she was, so the last thing she wanted was her daughter around, physical proof of her age. Besides, I was really getting tired of moving from place to place, of always feeling a little unsure of where I was going to lay my head the next day, where I’d take my next shower.