Beautifully Damaged (Contemporary Romantic Suspense)

by Faye, Amy

  She forced herself to choose the casual clothes, in spite of her mind immediately latching onto the chance to wear the usual suit. Something about it was alluring to her, even if it took her already decidedly average-at-best breasts and minimized them further until she looked like a man. The comfort, or the repeated self-assurance that she had brought it specifically to impress someone if the chance had arisen.

  Now that it had, she realized how stupid that idea had been. She'd wasted space in her luggage by bringing it. Still, that was, at the very least, a good lesson if she ever took a second vacation. Leave work clothes at home, because no matter how much you like wearing them you're not going to wear them.

  She made her way back downstairs, decidedly unhappy with her clothes. They made her look like a slob. Like the beach-bum kids who wore pajamas everywhere, and thought that was an appropriate look in public. She didn't think that, but she hadn't expected to go out much at all. Room service, nothing more.

  Roy, on the other hand, looked every bit as good as she thought he would. Naturally broad shoulders and just enough muscle to look like he wouldn't run into trouble. He moved with a slow, easy grace now that he was off the skis. His clothes, on the other hand, weren't much better than hers. A sweater proclaiming his presumable graduation from University of Virginia that looked like he only wore it in the cold when he was at home sipping on hot chocolate, and well-worn blue jeans. The look seemed to fit him, though.

  His face split into a grin when he saw that her coming out of the elevator.

  "Hey, you all set?"

  She hefted her purse in one hand to show that she had it, and he halfway-turned toward the resort restaurant, watching to see if she came along. They went through the fifteen-foot-wide door side-by-side. The sign said 'seat yourself,' so they did, settling into a table that would hopefully be visible enough for the waitress to see. Roy gave a small wave the minute she turned in their direction anyways.

  "So, what brought you out here?"

  Erin rolled her eyes. "Boss told me he was giving me a week's vacation whether I wanted it or not, so—"

  "So you thought you'd come out here and take advantage of the season?"

  "More or less. My parents used to live out East, right by a ski resort, so we'd go out every winter. Then my dad got a transfer, and a promotion to go with it, but he was too busy to take us out. By the time things slowed down, I was in college, and too busy for vacations."

  "You sure we aren't related?" He laughed. "I have about the same story, only the other way 'round. We started in Colorado, then moved down to Alabama just in time for High School, so I could stick out like a sore thumb."

  The waitress came up, and they gave their orders. Erin got herself a hot chocolate. Too much caffeine this late, and she'd never get to sleep. She didn't need an early morning, but that didn't mean that she was going to wreck her sleep schedule just because it was a vacation.

  Roy raised his eyebrows when she suggested it, then gave a considering nod and changed his order from a plain coffee with cream to a hot chocolate as well.

  He turned back. "You ever had sweet tea?"

  "I don't think so. Nobody ever called it that, anyway."

  "I'm sorry—I meant sweet-tea." He said it again, so that it sounded almost like it was one word, just running all together. "It's the state drink down there." He made a face and then used a mocking voice. "'You don't drink sweet-tea? Why, what on Earth—…' So I got into U Virginia, and didn't look back."

  She nodded, smiled at the waitress who brought the mugs of hot chocolate over for them, and took a sip. Definitely hot, definitely chocolate.

  "I'm sorry, I guess I should have asked. What did you study?"

  "Oh, this and that." An avoidance. She hadn't read him wrong on the way up the mountain. Whatever he did for work, he sure as hell didn't want to talk about it.

  "Were you good at this and that?"

  "Graduated top of my class."

  "And you still had time to get into the gym?" Erin pinched her lips to keep them twisting into a grin.

  "Well, thank you for noticing, at least. Everyone I know is, aw, I dunno. Twice this big. Half of them, anyway. I'm the little guy."

  "I know how you feel. I'm living in L.A. and it seems like any time you want to go to the beach, you see these guys with chests larger than mine."

  "Oh, I'm sure you do alright for yourself." He smiled. "Don't be so hard on yourself."

  "I'm not," she growled, her mind now stuck on the differences between them. Here she was, looking nothing like the ideal bimbo bodies who the gorillas usually had on their arms. And there he was, looking like he'd been the star quarterback in high school, and then in college, and then stayed in that shape ever since.

  "Well—don't take this the wrong way, but I think you look great."

  She wanted to tell him that he was either wrong or lying. She knew all about this act, since she heard it about once a month whenever someone thought they could get out of an interrogation by buttering her up.

  But Roy wasn't a suspect, and he seemed for all the world like a nice enough guy. She needed to stop thinking about work, but it seemed as if it was the only way she could think about much of anything.

  The waitress came around asking if they needed a refill, and Roy told her that they just needed a check. Erin pushed herself up, ostensibly to go to the bathroom, with every intention of catching the waitress and paying for the whole thing herself.

  She took a step away, and Roy called after her to put it all on his room bill, after all. The dirty rotten scoundrel had beaten her at her own game! Erin couldn't help noticing that his room was on her floor. In fact, more than that, he was only a few doors down. The idea that he had been there, maybe grabbing a shower to warm up after the tumble he took on the mountain… only a few short and easy doors down…

  Erin blushed. No. Down, girl.

  She let her frustration play out in exaggerated strokes across her face as she sat back down.

  "I knew it," Roy said, another smile twisting across his face. "You were planning on trying to take my win away from me, after all."

  "And then you had to go and rain on my parade."

  "How about I let you treat me if you can beat me tomorrow?"

  Erin let a triumphant smile show. "Oh, sure. But this time, we'll be taking the big boy slopes."

  Roy returned her smile. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

  Four

  She didn't like thinking this way. It wasn't love, but she sure didn't like whatever it was. Whatever she was feeling, it was going straight to her head. More worryingly, it was going other places, as well. Places that didn't usually get too excited when she saw a moderately attractive guy.

  None of this was normal, but then again, maybe it was that she wasn't going to see him again after she went back to L.A. on Monday. She wasn't opposed to it, per se, but he was in Virginia, she was in California. They couldn't get further apart without having planned it.

  She opened the blinds. Still dark, but not too dark to see the heavy snow pouring down. Not enough to see the four solid inches that had accumulated just on the windowsill.

  So much for beating Roy down the mountain. She put on another sweater. She had more than one, after all. The chances were slim that he'd see her, slimmer still that he would judge her for wearing the same sweater twice. Most people didn't rise at five in the morning, after all. And sweaters were re-wearable.

  Neither of those things, though, helped her not to worry about it. In fact, they didn't even help a little bit. Erin put her wallet into the pocket of her leggings again. She was looking more and more like she wore pajamas all the time every day. The vacation had been interesting so far, and she still had four more days to go before she had to get back on a plane, but she couldn't afford another one. By the time she came back from a second trip, if she sat down on the curb a minute, people would start dropping change in her lap.

  She pulled the door open and stepped into the hall, turnin
g to check that the door was pulled shut. She was already moving before she turned her head back, and that was how she managed to bump hard into Roy. The liquid covering him looked damn hot, and he certainly reacted that way.

  "Oh, Jesus. I'm sorry. Shit. Um." She fished the key to her room out of her wallet and opened the door. "Come on. We'll get you cleaned up."

  She helped him up from the ground, bending down past him to pick up the now-crumpled paper cup that had been full of hot coffee.

  "Hop in the shower, I'll… um… I can go grab some clothes from your room if you want."

  "I'll be fine," he said, already closing the shower curtain up, still fully-clothed. A moment later, a shirt came popping up over the rail, and then sweatpants, and by that point Erin decided it was better that she left. She called from outside the bathroom. "Jeez, I'm so sorry. I didn't see you, and—"

  "I'm fine, Erin. Don't worry about it. I assume you've seen the alert."

  She hadn't. "Alert?"

  "Blizzard advisory. They're closing down the mountain until it clears up. Could be done tonight, or it could be days. No way to be sure."

  "That's a let-down," she said, as much to herself as to him.

  "I know you were looking forward to getting spanked out there, but it'll be okay."

  She heard the water turn off, heard the curtain going. She imagined what it must have looked like, and then a moment she had most of her question answered when the door opened inches to her right, followed by a brief puff of steam.

  "Are you okay? No burns or anything? We can get a medic if—"

  She turned to look at him while she talked, and only then did she notice that he wasn't wearing anything but a towel held up by his left hand. She had to take back her earlier assessment. He didn't look natural at all.

  Roy looked like he could have been carved out of marble, if Michelangelo had needed a model. He smiled at her. "I'll just borrow this, and then I'll have to go replace my coffee."

  "I needed a cup, myself," Erin confessed.

  "You want me to spill it on you, so we're even?"

  "You just want to catch me coming out of the shower," Erin teased.

  She was treading on dangerous territory, now. She might have seemed playful to him, and that was exactly how she meant to sound, but part of her absolutely wanted to get caught coming out of the shower, if he was going to feel one tenth as aroused by her as she was of him.

  "I mean, if you're offering, I could just step outside a minute, I'm sure the water is still hot."

  She hadn't realized she was getting closer to him, nor him closer to her, until she could feel the hot droplets of water still hanging to his skin starting to sink into her sweater as they stood, her chest pressed against him.

  His free hand tested the shape of her cheek, and then she reached up for his lips and they kissed, and Erin knew that she was already gone, even if it was only for a little vacation fling.

  His other hand wrapped around, taking a grip of her bottom. If she didn't have much pride in her chest, it only made her feel better about the way that men looked at her ass. She liked the feeling of his fingers digging in, and she liked the way that taking the grip brought something out in him, something that made him take the kiss deeper.

  "Do you have protection?" He breathed.

  "I'm safe," she said. She'd been on B.C. since before she moved to California to help deal with the cramps, and now it seemed like she was the lucky one.

  "Are you sure it's okay?"

  She pulled away from him for a moment. She could see the hunger in her eyes, but he had asked for this.

  "I'm on birth control, I'm clean, I don't—" She blinked, the next part making her stumble a little bit in her quest to get him into bed. "I don't usually do this?"

  "Neither do I, but—when in Rome, right?"

  "Shut up and kiss me."

  Roy did as he was told, pulling her up to set her on the counter. The way he did it was like she didn't weigh more than a bowling ball. She scooted her hips up to help him get the sweatpants off, and then he was kissing her again, holding her head up with one hand as his other explored her body.

  His dancing fingers found their way to her core, his palm pressing against her mons as his fingers spread her folds and teased the hard, pleasurable nub at the top. A spasm shot through her, shooting her eyes open wide for an instant before she let them slip closed again.

  He started to probe her depths, finding them already slick with arousal, and then curled his fingers, stirring up pleasure that Erin hadn't felt in any of the exploration she'd done of her own body before.

  She tried to catch her breath, tried to regain her composure. Roy added another finger and kept stroking that spot inside her, her body tightening, her back betraying her and offering her breasts to him in spite of her embarrassment.

  He let her head down just slowly enough to avoid banging into the mirror behind her, and then yanked her sweater up.

  "God, you have great tits," he growled, his voice ragged with arousal.

  "No I don't." She could barely get the words out, as his fingers continued to take her breath away from her.

  "Shut up," he commanded, and she couldn't argue with him any more. He pulled the orgasm forcibly out of her and left her pooled up on the counter for a moment before wrapping his arms around her and carrying her out of the bathroom and dropping her ass-first onto the bed.

  "You're sure about this?"

  Erin answered by pulling her legs apart a little more for him. He took one ankle in his hands and lifted it over his shoulder, then lined himself up against her waiting lips and slid inside.

  God, she hadn't—this was—she couldn't find words to describe any more. She could feel his cock jerk with every deep thrust inside, could feel him hitting her perfectly, deep enough that it almost hurt. His cock stretched her just to the point of pain, the spiral of feelings and emotions driving Erin absolutely crazy.

  Reason tumbled off a cliff, and the delicious feeling of oblivion right around the corner, about to overtake her, forced her hips to push back against him, the sound of skin slapping against skin filling the hotel to harmonize with a voice of pleasure that sounded remarkably like her own.

  Roy pulled hard on her nipples and hit her again right where she needed it, and then her entire body tensed up as an orgasm ripped through her. She could feel his rhythm getting erratic, as well, as he got close. She could feel him much more closely, now, as her body tried to learn every nook and cranny of his cock in the time it took for her orgasm to subside.

  When he finally slid into her, jabbing against something deep inside her, one last time and started to cum, she felt another shock of pleasure run through her, prolonging the orgasm another precious few seconds as he twitched with each potent, ropy shot of cum.

  He looked at her for a long moment before leaning down and kissing her.

  "Is it always like that?"

  Roy smiled at her. "More or less."

  "Can you fit in my suitcase, then? I need to take you home with me."

  He moved his still semi-hard cock inside her and stoked the fire inside her that she'd thought had died down after her orgasm.

  "No, not quite. But I've still got plenty of time left in the day."

  Five

  The phone in her pocket felt heavier now that it had Roy's phone number in it. As if somehow the fact that she could call him if she ever, by some strange miracle, made it into Virginia was a sacrosanct promise. It shouldn't have felt as uncomfortable as it did, but she couldn't make the discomfort go away. So instead she turned it off and tossed it on the couch in her suite and laid back on the bed.

  Nothing to watch on the TV, at least nothing without charging ten more dollars to her room bill at the end of the week. She wanted to see Roy again. Somehow they'd find a way to fill the hours, she knew. She had a sneaking suspicion how they'd do it, too, and she didn't mind that one bit.

  But he was heading back to Virginia in the morning. Something came up, it
was an emergency, so sorry. She thought about texting him for a minute. She even sat up, a few short movements away from standing up to go get her phone.

  What would that have said about her, though? She wasn't trying to be clingy, but with the resort snowed in for what seemed to be the rest of the week, what else was she supposed to do? An old game console was in the cabinet beneath the TV, tied to the wall with a braided steel cable as if someone was going to be desperate to steal the hotel's fifteen year old technology.

  She leaned back again. She didn't need more sleep. She didn't want more sleep. She wanted to have something to do. This was exactly why she never took vacations. There was plenty of fun to be had for a little while, enjoying sex with Roy. Then something came up, like something always does, and that was gone. Now she had a whole lot of nothing to do and a badge in her jacket pocket that said she was special somewhere else.

  That was the other part that frustrated her. Her time on the job had gotten her a little stressed, sure. But being a detective meant that people's lives relied on you doing your damn job. Maybe a little bit of stress was part of the job. Had they ever thought of that?

  Because every time some son of a bitch gets away with murder, gets away with rape, even gets away with a little armed robbery—that's a guy who knows, who's been shown, that the cops can't touch him. The first time is hard. It's scary. You never know. Maybe the police will catch you. Maybe they're going to put a ton of man-hours into the case and put the pieces together.

  There are always pieces. Sometimes they're not the right pieces for a conviction, but the guy who works the case—he knows who did it. That's how it always was for her. Sometimes it was the wrong evidence, but she always knew. The work was making it stick, and that was a matter of combing the scene, compiling evidence, and finding the way that the puzzle pieces fit together into something like a compelling picture that says to the District Attorney, and then says to the jury, that this is the only guy who could have possibly done it.

  Maybe everyone else had a family. Maybe they had their departmental bowling team, maybe they had their damn cocktail parties with the Mayor's office. Maybe those things were more important than making sure another woman didn't get raped tonight. But not for Erin. She sat up again, this time went over and reached for the phone. She had to look up times to get home. She had a job to do, and she had no reason not to be there. Especially not when the slopes were closed.