As always, the thought of Sadie sent a shockwave of grief through his chest, even more so standing in the house where she’d spent her short eight years of life and just out the window facing the river, where she’d been taken.
He’d only closed his eyes for a second, taking in the warmth of the sun and the breeze under a shade tree by the river while he and Sadie played hide-and-seek near the woods. A second for someone to take her. A second he could never get back. A second and she was gone.
Lacy paused by a set of French doors he started out of, her eyes on him, narrowed in concern as if she could read his somber memory.
She jostled his coat off and revealed those supple, bare shoulders and tight-fitted tank, and laid the jacket across the leather couch. “Great view.” She turned to the doors. “If I owned this place, you’d never get me to leave. Your uncle must have a good reason to stay away.”
Perceptive. He’d noticed it before. Another skill sculpted from bartending and life with an officer. “The place holds bad memories for the family. Hungry?” he hedged.
“Starving.”
Lacy circled the open living room, running her fingers over his aunt’s collection of small wooden angels and family pictures while he took stock of the freezer. His uncle had paid a maid service to clean the place up and stock the food before Mitch’s arrival. He owed him a damn good hunting trip for the thoughtful gesture. “Lasagna?”
He glanced back to find Lacy studying him. “You’re seriously offering to cook lasagna at one in the morning?”
“It’s from a box. Sit.” He motioned to the line of stools on the opposite side of the island.
After a moment to debate his instruction, she slid onto a barstool and leaned her elbows on the counter. “Need any help? I’m not used to being the one waited on. I have no idea what to do right now.” Other than the weary look in her eyes, she’d lost all signs of trepidation.
“Just sit and enjoy.” Mitch selected a foil tray from the freezer, preheated the oven, and turned to find her staring again. “What?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head playfully. “What part of Tennessee are you from?”
“What makes you think I’m from Tennessee?” Then he remembered the license plate on his bike. “Nashville.”
She tilted her head in question. “But you know the back roads here well enough to have lived here?”
He knew a hell of a lot more about Rebel Rapids than just the back roads. “My family vacationed on the river when I was a kid. I lived in this house with my aunt and uncle for a summer. After college I spent a few months here fixing the place up again, hoping to make it a home.” Back when he thought finally having a home would fix him. “You ask a lot of questions, but what do I know about you so far?”
Lacy picked up a goose shaped saltshaker from the counter and studied it. “Not much to tell. Born and bread in Rebel. Home coming queen runner up, top one hundred of my graduating class. The cookie-cutter small town girl.”
He laughed. “Except the desire to put home as far behind you as possible.”
She dropped the saltshaker and moved on to his aunt’s collection of spoons. “You’ve mistaken me for one of those big fish in the small pond girls. I’m totally happy with the size of my pond, thank you.” She glanced up and flashed a sarcastic grin.
“And you’re perfectly happy with tending bar and pissing off your old man for the rest of your life?”
He’d hit a vein. He could tell by the way she slanted her gaze at him. “Is that so hard to believe? A quiet life? A bar of my own one day with Connie.”
“If this is the life you like, then no.”
Lacy shifted her weight on the stool. “What about you. What made you leave?”
The same thing that had brought him back. Catching a killer. “Work.”
She studied him. “What do you do, Mr. Kilpatrick? What line of detective work?”
“Homicide, mostly.” He opened the oven and slid the aluminum pan in. “Wine?”
Lacy’s gaze heated as she ignored his question. “The girl in the woods last month? You’re here about her case?” She leaned over the counter. “Then you should know, Detective Kilpatrick, my father doesn’t like rogue officers butting in on his investigations. You should leave it up to him and his men to solve.”
Mitch held up two bottles of wine, and Lacy nodded toward the red one, a dark Burgundy that paired perfectly with the tomato sauce in the pasta. “Your father’s case is safe, though I’d say he’s a lucky man to have you protecting his jurisdiction.” He smiled and handed her a glass. “I’m working a cold case.”
Her body tensed. “Why worry about a cold case all the way out here?”
“My idea of a vacation, I guess. A murdered girl pops up in a small town fitting the same M.O. as a fugitive serial killer from fifteen years ago. My curiosity piqued.” He’d half wanted to lay all the sordid details out for her about Richard Wray, the murderer who’d taken his cousin. See if she picked up the breadcrumbs and carried them back to daddy like a good little daughter.
Something weary flashed in her eyes.
Mitch covered her hands with his. “But you don’t need to worry. You’re safe in a house with a homicide detective.”
She slid off the stool. “That’s what I’m afraid of. The killer doesn’t scare me.” She held her glass up for him to fill. “And I’d already decided I wasn’t going to sleep with you. I have a hard and fast rule about cops. Couch, locked door, eggs for breakfast. That’s it.”
“What if I said I’d changed my mind?” His lips arched at the slight squirm of her body from his words.
The wine glass shook in her hand, sending waves of red liquid sloshing to the rim. “Can’t go back now. You said you were a man of your word.”
He paused just long enough to relish the shiver moving along her body. “No couch. I have a spare bed, and the bedroom door locks, though I wouldn’t mind if you left it open. The eggs in the morning, however, are negotiable.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The sparse bedroom right off the den mimicked the same dark woods and stone accents as the main areas. The house had a masculine feel with the darker colors and hard surfaces. Definitely a man’s home.
Lacy peeled off her Charlie’s uniform and shimmied into a gray Nashville PD T-shirt and black boxer shorts. Mitch had suggested she get more comfortable when he laid out the clothes on the bed and returned to the kitchen to finish dinner.
More comfortable with a cop? A detective at that. One hungry for sex. She could see his desire in the fevered way he watched her disappear behind the bedroom door. Feel it in the heat his fingers left on the shirt now hugging her body down to her thighs.
Mitch wanted more than to keep her safe from Stetson. He’d wanted an excuse to have her close, and damn if she hadn’t fallen for his game.
In the dresser mirror, she frowned.
What the hell am I getting myself into?
She palmed her phone and clicked on Connie’s number. One call and she could escape. But did she really want to?
Cops, even ones as molten-hot as Mitch, couldn’t be trusted. Especially ones as molten-hot as Mitch.
When it came down to love or duty, they’d choose duty every time. No questions asked. No thought to the loved ones left behind when the job called. No fear of not returning home. Of leaving someone behind to mourn.
Once a cop, always a cop. It was in their blood, their breeding, an extra chromosome in their DNA that made them perfect for blocking everything and everyone out except their badge.
Sure, she steered away from cops like cruise liners navigated around icebergs, but with Mitch, she couldn’t deny the attraction outweighed her fears.
In a twisted sort of way, he was the safest bet for a non-committal fuck session. She’d get what she needed, a night of clearing her head and the heated passion that came with a body like Mitch’s, hard and lean and expertly chiseled from solid muscle, without the commitment of a meaningless relationship.
/> She’d watched him all week in the back corner of Charlie’s. He’d held the place under his scrutinizing surveillance. He’d been serious, unapproachable even. Dominating rang in her head like a warning bell.
But, in that week at Charlie’s, he’d never pulled the detective card. Never forced his questions on the staff or patrons. Never took advantage of his badge or the pull Nashville would have in a small town like Rebel Rapids.
Every time she looked hard into his dark, brown eyes, she saw something detectives weren’t supposed to have. A soul.
The sudden knock on the bedroom door startled her. “Lasagna’s ready.”
Lacy turned slowly to the man she knew stood just beyond the closed door. “Be out in a sec.”
Mitch was too big. Too dominate. Too forceful, but somewhere under the layers of cop, he was something more. A challenge to her norm. Proof she could enjoy herself without the constant fear of failing her family. Someone strong enough to survive her past. Passionate enough to make her forget, if only for one night.
She dropped the phone to her pile of clothes on the bed and grinned in the mirror at the thought of her not being normal. Not doing the standard Lacy Andrews over-analyzing of everything. What harm could one night with this perfectly attractive stranger cost her?
The way her skin sizzled when he touched her. The way his voice sent vibrations dancing through her body. The way he explicitly said exactly what was riding his tongue in a way that made her burn from the inside out.
She had to know him on a more intimate level. She had to step outside her comfort zone in a big way and let the experience wash over her.
With a sharp intake of air, she pulled the hem of the T-shirt up and breathed in the scent of him as the fabric lifted over her head. Bare except for the borrowed boxers that hung low along her waist, she shot a discerning look at herself in the mirror. A shiver of adrenaline shook her hands and made her knees threaten to buckle. Grow up, Lacy. He’s just a man.
She cracked the door open with her toe and watched Mitch work in the kitchen. With a dish towel thrown over one shoulder and knife steady in hand, he appeared almost domestic against the virile backdrop of the dark kitchen walls and stone counters.
He cut two squares of lasagna and tossed the towel next to the sink before he turned toward the bedroom door.
Quickly, she slid her toe from the doorframe. Had he seen her watching? Did it even matter? What the freak was wrong with her?
Everything she’d ever wanted in life, she’d gone after. Walked right up to every challenge and grabbed it by the proverbial balls without letting go until the universe gave her exactly what she’d been after. What made Mitch any different? Where had the fear swarming her belly come from?
Lacy rounded her lower lip into her mouth and sucked it in. Mitch wasn’t any different, and if she wanted him, just like everything else in her world, she’d have to leave her comfort zone and play his game.
By the time she convinced herself to suck it up and open the door, she found him settled into a lounge chair in the wood paneled den. Eyes closed, head tilted to one side. His legs parted slightly, and one arm overlapped his thigh while his hand dangled loose over his knee.
She closed the space to him in slow, calculated steps. His face stayed hard even at rest. The intensity of him, the scope of his chosen profession permeated every layer from the sharp features of his face to the hardness of his body and the bulge rising from under the crotch of his jeans.
With a steadying breath, she nudged his dangling hand with her bare knee.
Mitch slit one eye open. He studied her with the heated gaze of a man fighting the need to pull her down onto his lap and take her in the leather recliner.
Lacy struggled with the urge to tuck tail and run for the safety of the spare bedroom. Instead, she wiggled one leg between his parted thighs and found his swollen cock with her knee. His leg twitched at her delicate touch, but his face stayed stone cold.
“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” His voice was raspy and deep and made butterflies flutter in her stomach. He tilted his head to the side, giving her a full-on once over that licked from her toes up her legs, rolled over her exposed stomach, stopped to apprise each breast lingering a second longer than the rest of her before moving up past her neck to her eyes. She felt the look like lover’s hands investigation her, caressing her skin. Heated and needy. “Don’t start something you’re not willing to finish, Angel.”
A warning signal pinged in her head. This was it. Her chance to back out of the room and lock the bedroom door until morning. He was giving her an out and telling her once he started, he couldn’t be trusted to stop.
But when she looked down at him, saw the raging need filling his eyes, the excitement of the moment shaking in his arms, felt him pulse against her knee, she couldn’t deny she wanted to feel him inside her just as much as he wanted to be there.
The desire to feel him fluttered in her belly. She couldn’t breathe for it. The sensation ripping through her body like hot waves of heat from an open flame.
Mitch closed his thighs around her leg. He reached his fingers around her arm, circled her wrist, and pulled her down onto his lap. “Is this how you like to be taken, Angel? Rough?”
Lacy answered by straddling his lap and sinking down into his erection.
His eyes opened wider, pulling her in until she was trapped in them. Mitch sucked in a blunt breath, pushed up from the chair, with her still wrapped around his waist, and pushed forward, his chest hard on her sensitive breasts. “You really are a little temptress. Are you testing my willpower? Seeing if you can force me into breaking my promise?”
“What would be the fun in not testing a promise?” Shaking with excitement, Lacy found her feet just long enough to stagger backward to the coolness of a bedroom door. Maybe his bedroom door, she didn’t know, but the intimate thought excited her.
She lifted her arms to cover her exposed breasts, but he pulled her hands back down to her sides. “Don’t ever hide your perfect body from me.”
Leaning in, Mitch’s loose shirt rubbed across her bare nipples. The tightness of his muscles underneath pressed into her skin. His hands landed on her hips and pinned her body against the door. “I want to see all of you.” He groaned. “I want to carry a mental picture of you around with me. Think of you when I’m horny as hell and need release. Remember how perfect your body is. How soft your skin is under my fingers. Do you know how many times I’ve jacked off this week imagining what you looked like under that tight-ass tank top and jeans? You’ve driven me mad for days and I haven’t even touched you.”
A shocking sensation unraveled inside her at his admission. She’d wanted this. Needed this. Her darkest fantasies coming to light with a man she barely knew, and in a few days, maybe even a week, she’d never have to see again.
Mitch’s hard gaze raked over her, and a growl of satisfaction followed. “If that’s what you’re sleeping in, a locked door isn’t going to be enough to keep my promise.” He rolled his fingers over her shoulders and traced her neck before moving up into her hair.
A low, nervous laugh bubbled up through her throat. She needed to feel the roughness of his hands on her skin, his heated pant caressing her neck, the low mummer of his voice whispering her name in her ear. She needed the feeling of a man’s arms wrapped around her, taking control. “I wasn’t planning on locking you out, but if you insist.”
Mitch pressed his mouth to hers in reply. A deep growl erupted from his throat as he parted her lips with his tongue and entered. He tasted like sweet wine and spicy tomato sauce and man. Hard core man with one thing on his mind. Sex.
He moved one hand up her shoulder to cradle her neck, and he pressed deeper into her mouth. He wasn’t gentle. His lips hard, needy, hungry. Powerful against her. He molded his fingers into the back of her spine, arching her forward against him, taking her mouth deeper.
God, she’d been kissed before, but never like this with a heat that traveled a
ll the way down to the aching thrum of tight need between her legs.
Keeping one hand in her hair, he parted their kiss just long enough to pull his shirt over his head then returned.
Lacy’s head swam in a fog. She slid down the door, but Mitch caught her, holding her captive in his arms. “Tell me this is what you want.” He spoke against her mouth, pulling her bottom lip between his teeth and biting down until the pain sparked an awakening in her that she could no longer control. “Tell me exactly how you want me to take you tonight.”
“You’re what I want.” The words came out a small whisper when he finally pulled away to stare into her eyes.
She stared back, the insanity of her actions draining away like a forgotten fear. A few hours ago they had been strangers. How did they get from an innocent game of Grammy rules poker to seductively kissing against a bedroom door and hoping for more?
She didn’t know. Couldn’t think. The room was spinning around her. The only constant, Mitch.
His mouth moved to her neck, kissing a line down her throat then nibbling the same trail back up. Trying to rationalize her motives seemed to sink into the haze of her brain along with her modesty.
“If you know what’s good for you,” he pressed his heated lips into the curve of her neck, lifted her to her tiptoes when his teeth sank into her sensitive flesh and nibbled, “you’ll push me away and lock that bedroom door before I go too far and can’t stop myself.”
Lacy let her head roll back so he could move down the front of her throat to the dip above her collar bone. She couldn’t back away now if she tried.
Part of her wanted to heed the warning, push away from him and run for the safety of the bedroom, but a much stronger part urged her to meet his challenge. To relish in the freedom of one night spent in the arms if an expert lover. One uncomplicated night of hot sex. Tomorrow she could go back to being practical. Planning the bar with Connie. Cooking dinners for her father. Playing the perfect daughter. But tonight she wanted to be wild.
Confess (The Blue Line Series Book 1) Page 4
