Change of Heart

by Jenna Bennett

  I went, out the door and across the street to the parking lot with him right behind. My heart had settled down into more of a normal rhythm now, and I didn’t feel like I was running away, or like the chances of pursuit were imminent, but my pulse was still jittery. This time it wasn’t the leather-clad gay guys that worried me, though. It was Rafe. I knew what was coming, and I wasn’t looking forward to it.

  When I stopped beside the Volvo to unlock the door, he grabbed my arm and spun me around. My back hit the side of the car and his body hit my front and kept me there.

  I assumed he was going to yell at me. He didn’t. Instead, he just asked, “What the hell were you doing?”

  I didn’t even have time to answer before he kissed me, but the fact that my mouth was open made things easier.

  The kiss went from zero to sixty in no time flat, blistering with heat and anger and—I didn’t doubt it for a moment—worry. I held onto him, because it was all I could do, and kissed him back, because it was impossible not to. He wouldn’t have accepted anything less, and anyway, I was grateful for my rescue as well as happy to see him.

  The status quo went on until a throat clearing broke through the dizziness that accompanies one of Rafe’s kisses. I clawed my way back to the surface.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” a pack-a-day voice said.

  I halfway expected it to be patrol officers Spicer and Truman, Tamara Grimaldi’s pet minions at the MNPD, who had interrupted us in this kind of endeavor a few times before. It wasn’t.

  I blinked. “Sally?” And Rafe, who had spun on his heel to stand protectively in front of me, relaxed his stance.

  “Evening, princess.” Sally’s voice is as deep and gravelly as a man’s, and the mohawk on her head was as fire-engine red as the last time I’d seen her, last autumn.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to, since the answer was self-evident. She was coming from, or going to, Chaps. Coming from, based on the next question. “You OK?”

  “Fine,” I said, with a glance at Rafe. “Now.”

  “I was just about to get involved when I realized I didn’t have to.” She turned to him. “You must be Collier.”

  He nodded.

  Sally runs a small shop on Franklin Road, on the south side of town, that sells police gear and self-protective stuff. I’d been told of it by Tamara Grimaldi, back when I was snooping around looking for Lila Vaughn’s killer. Sally had sold me a tiny lipstick cylinder with an even smaller serrated blade inside, as well as another lipstick cylinder with a nozzle, full of pepper spray. And while I’d been at her store, I’d seen Wendell Craig, Rafe’s handler from the TBI, arrive. So Sally knew Grimaldi, and she also knew Wendell. And she knew me. It was sort of obvious that she’d know about Rafe. I had even talked to her about him once, I think.

  “I’m sorry,” I said automatically. “Sally Harmon, Rafael Collier. Rafe, Sally.”

  They exchanged a sort of amused look, probably at my excessive concern with good manners in the midst of this situation.

  “What can we do for you?” Rafe asked.

  Sally nodded toward the warehouse. Her cock’s comb waved. “Just wanted to make sure Miss Priss here was OK.”

  “I’m fine,” I said again.

  “They wouldn’t really have hurt you.”

  I wasn’t so sure, and I don’t think Rafe was either, because he didn’t say anything.

  “I heard you were looking for someone?” She glanced from me to him and back.

  “Tim Briggs,” I said. “A colleague of mine. He was here Friday night. Had an appointment to meet someone at nine, according to his calendar.”

  “Did something happen to him?”

  “We’re not sure,” Rafe said. “We’re just trying to discover whether anyone saw him and who he was with.”

  Sally nodded. “I mighta seen him. There was a new guy sitting at the bar on Friday night, got a lot of attention. Nice-looking boy. Blond hair, green shirt.”

  That sounded like Tim. With the caveat that he wasn’t a boy, he was a thirty-something man. But to Sally, he might have looked like a boy. He was a good ten or fifteen years younger than she was, and he looks younger than he is.

  “Do you have any idea who he left with?”

  She shook her head. “Didn’t see him leave. He was there, and the next time I looked he was gone. Wasn’t like I was keeping an eye on him, you know. Not my type. And I figured he was just broadening his horizons. Experimenting.”

  “Who was he talking to?” Rafe asked.

  Sally shrugged. “Nobody I knew. Nobody I noticed. The place gets pretty busy on weekends.”

  “Tamara Grimaldi is looking for him,” I said, “in connection with a murder. So if you remember anything more...”

  “I’ll be sure to let her know.”

  That wasn’t what I wanted to hear, and it must have shown on my face, because she grinned. “Sorry, princess. But if Tamara is looking for him, that’s official business. Trumps your desire to know.”

  It did. I just didn’t want to be out of the loop. But there wasn’t much I could do about it. So I thanked her, and she headed back across the street into the club. It wasn’t until she was gone, back inside the building, that Rafe turned to me. “Keys.”

  I handed them to him. He unlocked my car and opened the door. “In.”

  “What about...?”

  He tossed the keys in my lap. “I’ll follow you. Don’t even think about driving anyplace but straight home.”

  “No, sir.”

  The words were out before I’d thought about them, and I saw something flash in his eyes. His lips tightened. “Don’t call me that.”

  I had my mouth open to ask why not—I hadn’t meant anything by it, after all, other than to tweak him a little over his high-handed tone—when I remembered that that’s how the young waiter inside the club had addressed Earle the bartender. Maybe it meant something I didn’t realize it meant.

  So I closed my mouth again and nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “Not as sorry as you’re gonna be when I’m done with you,” Rafe said and slammed my door. I watched as he stalked to his bike, parked with the others, and then I waited for him to fire it up before I pulled out of the parking lot and headed home.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I didn’t really think I had anything to worry about. He wasn’t really angry with me. He couldn’t be. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Nothing serious enough to really make him upset.

  But because I wasn’t a hundred percent certain, I drove carefully straight home, and made sure I didn’t lose him along the way. If there was a yellow light up ahead, I slowed down and waited rather than making it look like I was trying to ditch him.

  It wasn’t a long drive. One block from Church Street to Charlotte Avenue, then straight east through downtown onto the James Robertson Bridge, and from there across the Cumberland River to the corner of Fifth and East Main. It took less than fifteen minutes, with barely any cars on the road.

  I drove into a spot in the underground parking garage and waited for him to pull the bike to a stop beside me before I opened my door. And then I waited while he took the helmet off and hung it on the handle.

  “C’mon.” He took my arm and headed for the stairs. I didn’t ask any questions, just concentrated on keeping up, since he was motivated enough not to bother adjusting his stride to mine.

  By the time we’d navigated two flights of stairs—basement to first floor, first floor to second—at two steps at a time, I was out of breath and my heart was slamming against my ribs. Not all of it was exertion. Maybe he really was angry. Maybe I did have to worry.

  “Keys.” He held out a hand, and I dropped my keychain into it. He unlocked the door to the apartment and pushed it open. “In.”

  I crossed the threshold and dropped my bag on the floor in the hallway. The door slammed into the frame behind me, quivering, and I heard the sound of the deadbolt hit home. And I gu
ess I should have run as soon as I was able, because I’d only managed two steps before he grabbed me and spun me around again. “Dammit, Savannah!”

  “I’m not sure what you’re so upset about,” I said a little breathlessly. “Nothing happened.”

  “No thanks to you.” But he didn’t object when I slipped my hands under the leather jacket he had on. Maybe that’s what had made the leather-clad men back off. He had his own leather armor, and he looked like he belonged in a place like Chaps in a way that I—in my cashmere coat—never could.

  “I just wanted to talk to them.” I slid my hands up his torso and chest, feeling soft cotton against my palms, and the heat of his skin underneath.

  “They didn’t wanna talk to you.”

  “I figured that out.” I pushed the jacket off his shoulders. He dropped his hands from my arms for long enough to let it hit the floor. When the hands came back, it was to brace himself against the wall on either side of my head so he could lean down into my face.

  I looked back up at him while my hands continued to explore.

  His lips curved. “You trying to distract me, darlin’?”

  “Not at all.” I crossed my fingers and slid my hands back down his chest and around to his back to pull him closer.

  “Sure.” But he didn’t stop me. Not until one of my questing hands found the handle of the gun tucked into his waistband at the middle of his back, and then he moved, quickly as a snake, to snag my wrist. “Careful.”

  “I wasn’t going to shoot you,” I protested, but I let him take the gun out of my hand and make sure the safety was on before he hung it on one of the coat hooks a few feet to my right.

  He turned back to me. “I ain’t worried about you shooting me.”

  “What, then? You think I’m stupid enough to shoot myself?”

  He didn’t answer, and I added, a little miffed, “Why were you carrying your gun in the first place?”

  “Thought I might need it,” Rafe said.

  “You’re joking.”

  He shrugged. “Things coulda gone wrong back there.”

  “They were a bunch of gay guys!” Butch, leather-clad gay guys, but it wasn’t like my virtue had been in danger. And shooting them would surely have been overkill.

  “Gay men’ll kill you just as soon as straight men,” Rafe told me.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Why would they kill me?”

  “Let me think,” Rafe said, glancing up at the ceiling for a second before drilling his eyes into mine again. “Oh, yeah. Now I remember. You walked into their place—their safe haven—and accused them of killing one of your friends.”

  “I did not!”

  He mimicked my voice, quite accurately too. “He was here Friday night. And no one’s seen him since.”

  Oops. Yes, when he put it like that, maybe someone could have taken that statement to mean that I was accusing them of murder. “But Tim isn’t dead!”

  “You know that,” Rafe said, “and I know that, but they don’t. Why’d you go there on your own? Why didn’t you wait for me?”

  I squirmed and looked away. “I was upset.”

  “Why?”

  “I went by Mrs. Jenkins’s house this afternoon, and you weren’t there.”

  He sighed. “I told you I’d be home in time to go with you.”

  He had. I’d just let my jealousy and worry get the better of me. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “I am!”

  He quirked a brow. “How sorry?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Just how sorry are you?”

  Oh. Um... “Very sorry?”

  The corner of his mouth lifted. “How sorry’s that?”

  “Sorry enough that I might be induced to make it up to you?”

  The smile widened. “How d’you figure you’re gonna do that?”

  “I’m sure I can think of something you might like,” I said, skimming my hands back around his waist, under the T-shirt this time. Hot skin and hard muscles quivered under my touch.

  His eyelids drooped and he lowered his forehead to mine. “I like that.”

  “I thought you might.” I tugged on the shirt, and he stepped away for long enough to peel it up over his head and drop it on the floor. As usual, the sight took my breath away, and so did the feel of him against me when he stepped back in. By then, he wasn’t satisfied with being touched, either, but slipped his hands around my waist and began working my blouse up. His hands were hot and hard against my lower back when he pressed me closer to him.

  “You scared me,” he murmured against the side of my neck as he nuzzled my hair to the side. “When I came home and you weren’t here.”

  I tilted my head to give him better access. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t do that again.” His breath was hot against my skin and made a shiver run down my spine. Or maybe that was the tone of his voice, halfway between warning and appeal.

  “I won’t.” The last thing I wanted to do, was make him worry about me. I’d spent so much time worrying about him that I knew the feeling only too well, and I wouldn’t wish it on my own worst enemy, let alone the man I loved.

  Although there was no denying that tonight’s events had put him in an especially amorous mood. Most of the time we made it to the bedroom, at least. This time he didn’t seem to care. He simply worked my skirt up, lifted one of my legs to his hip, and stepped in, pushing me up on my toes.

  “Here?” I squeaked, my cheeks hot.

  “You owe me.”

  “Yes, but... I thought maybe you’d want me to... you know...” Get down on my knees or something?

  “No,” Rafe said. “Not tonight. I want us to be together.”

  We were together. We’d be together even if I were on my knees in front of him.

  But he shook his head. “Later. Right now I just wanna...”

  Right. I wanted that too. So I held on to his shoulders and gave him what he wanted, and got what I wanted in the process, as well.

  It wasn’t until an hour later, when we’d finally made it to the bed and were basking in what the romance novels call ‘the afterglow,’ that he continued the conversation. “It ain’t that I don’t enjoy having you on your knees, darlin’.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s just... not tonight. Not after that place.”

  “Chaps?”

  He nodded.

  “What about it?”

  “I don’t like the lifestyle.”

  I blinked. Of all people, Rafe knows that prejudice is wrong. He’s lived with enough of it. And if he has an intolerant bone in his body, I had yet to notice.

  I scrambled for something to say. Something that might make sense of what he’d just told me. “You mean... gay?”

  He shook his head. “Course not. The leather thing.”

  “You wear a leather jacket,” I pointed out.

  He shook his head. “Darlin’...”

  “What?”

  “It’s a lifestyle. The leather crowd. BDSM. Sadism and masochism. Whips and chains and handcuffs and humiliation.”

  Oh.

  He glanced over at me, and shook his head again, unwilling amusement in his eyes. “And you wonder why I worry about you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just... how do you know that all gay clubs aren’t like that?”

  “Not cause I spend a lot of time in’em. But I’ve been in enough to know the difference. That wasn’t your ordinary pick-up joint. It was a leather club. They probably had a dungeon in the back.”

  “Surely not?”

  He turned on his side to run the tip of a finger down my arm. “Yes, darlin’. And some of those guys mighta swung your way.”

  “They were gay.”

  “Sure,” Rafe said, “but there are always some outliers. And the ones who get off on making someone else bleed ain’t always that particular about whose blood it is. Most play by the rules, and they only hurt the people who like to be hurt—”
/>   “There are people who like to be hurt?”

  He nodded. “—but some take it where they can get it, too. And not always willingly.”

  A shadow crossed his face. His grandfather had rather enjoyed making him bleed, although of course there hadn’t been any sexual component to it. Old Jim had just been a mean old bastard who hated his daughter’s ‘colored’ offspring. But as a result, Rafe knew a little bit about people who hurt other people for pleasure.

  I thought for a moment. “Is that why you didn’t like it when I called you sir?”

  He nodded.

  “I was joking. I just did it because you were ordering me around.”

  “I was ordering you around for your own good,” Rafe said. “To get you outta there before something happened.”

  “Sure.”

  But maybe I didn’t sound convincing enough, because he rolled over on top of me, pushing me into the mattress, and framed my face with his hands. “I love you, Savannah.”

  “I love you too,” I said, just a little bit overcome, both by the nearness and the words. He often said them back to me, but usually I had to say them first. Not that it mattered—I’m sure he meant what he said, either way—but it was especially nice to hear him tell me first.

  “I’m just trying to protect you.” His thumbs stroked my cheeks.

  “I know.” I ran my hands over his back under the blankets and felt him stir against my thigh.

  “I’ll never hurt you.”

  “I know you won’t.”

  “I was only—”

  “I know, Rafe.” I reached up and put my hands on his cheeks, too. There’s something quite intimate and possessive about it, and at the moment I wanted to make sure he knew that not only did I belong to him, but he belonged to me too. “I know you were worried for me. I know you’ll never hurt me. I trust you.”

  He kissed me. And that, as the saying goes, was all she wrote.

  He was gone when I woke up in the morning.

  I hadn’t expected that. Don’t ask me why, because I probably should have.

  But there I was, alone in the bed when the alarm rang. There was no sign of him. His toothbrush was wet, and so was the towel on the shower rod, so he’d both showered and brushed, and I hadn’t heard him do either.