“Are you still mad at me?” Her words shredded his heart.
He rose to an elbow, turned her to face him, and held her cheek in his hand. His eyes shifted from one of hers, red and swollen, to the other. He’d done this. She’d trusted him with her secret, and he’d made her feel wrong.
“No. God no, Lacy.” He slid his hip over her body, pushing her flat to the bed and straddling her. He kissed below one eye, tasting the salt of her tears, then the other, reassuring her. Reassuring himself. “You’ve done nothing to be mad about.” He laid a kiss across her forehead, easing the worry lines he’d put there. “If I made you feel that way, then you’re the one who should be mad.”
Her body shook with a sob. Mitch shut his eyes, tight. He’d made her feel guilty about being kidnapped. Made her feel wrong for protecting her family. What kind of damn fool did that?
“Come back to me, Mitch.” Her hand on his cheek pulled him from the thought.
He twisted off her and landed on his back with a groan. Even now, when he should be the one assuring her, she was comforting him. He didn’t deserve her. He only knew how to hurt women.
To his surprise, Lacy took control. She straddled her leg over his waist. The fullness of her bottom sank into his erection. His cock flinched under his boxers, and she smiled. No doubt pleased with herself and what her body did to his. She undulated her hips into his hardness. Her wet heat permeated the thin fabrics between her legs.
He could have her bare naked and stuffed full in mere seconds; his answer to all of life’s problems, sex.
But with Lacy, sex took on a deeper meaning. It was an act of trust. Trust he hadn’t earned.
Lacy took one of his hands from the bed and wrapped it around her waist, then the other. When he didn’t grab hold, she stilled.
“You are mad.” Her mouth drew into a tight pouting line.
Mitch sat up, pushing her down to his lap, facing her. “Yes.” His stout breath blew her bangs across her face. “Yes, I am mad, but not at you.” He brushed the hair off her forehead. “I want to be the kind of man you deserve. The kind that can kill your demons and protect you. Tell you everything is going to be all right. Take care of you the way a woman like you should be taken care of.”
His thoughts where coming out in fractures of tangled lines. Why couldn’t he just say what he really wanted to? What Lacy really needed to hear? “I can’t love you the way you want to be loved.”
Lacy’s pout turned to a frown, shredding his heart even more. She pulled her lower lip in her mouth and shut her eyes.
“Don’t,” he mouthed and held her face between his palms. He rubbed his thumb over her reddened bottom lip.
She put her hand on his chest and pushed him back to the bed while she dismounted and stood. She turned her back to him.
Panic burned a path from his chest to his heart. Shit, if he didn’t say the right thing — right now — he could lose her, maybe forever.
“Lace I....”
Her shoulders squared. “What exactly does that mean?” Her voice shot through him like a hollow tipped bullet. “Can’t love me the way I want to be loved?” She pivoted to face him. “Tell me, how exactly do I want to be loved?”
Mitch ran his hands over his forehead and through his hair, pulling the strands until the pain in his scalp equaled the surge of panic gripping his chest. He shot up from the bed, his bare body facing hers. “Damn it, Lace. You just confessed your terrifying secret to me about being kidnapped and almost dying, and my first instinct was to grill you with questions?” He raked his fingers through his hair again, gripping the ends with a tug before throwing them to his sides in exasperation. Emotionally unavailable, that’s what the department physiologist called it, but how could he make Lacy understand? “It’s not you...” he started, realizing his mistake the second her nose flared with anger.
“It’s not you, it’s me. Are you really going with that line, Mitch? I thought someone of your dirty talking caliber would have thought up far better lines than that. Have them at the ready for whenever a good lay demanded something more than sex.” Her face seared crimson heat.
He caught her forearm. “You know that’s not what you are to me.”
Lacy reached for her shirt on the floor and tugged it around her neck before he could grab her wrist.
Fuck. He was missing this up. He pulled her flush with his chest. He had to dig deep. Tell her something to make her understand. To make her stay. “This is the only way I know how to take control of a situation, Lace. With force and action.” He caught her other wrist and pressed her arms into his chest. The shirt balled in her fingers was the only barrier between them.
Her eyes grew wide, fearful. The look would have brought him to his knees if it wasn’t so important for her to hear the rest.
“I don’t do sweet. I don’t do caring. I take charge, and I take people down. If you were anyone else, I’d be drawing up a statement for you to identify Wray as your kidnapper and end this case. That’s all I know and that’s all I cared to know. Until you.”
Lacy wiggled in his hold, but he didn’t let go. She needed to know what she was up against. She needed to see him for the asshole he really was. The emotionally unavailable asshole who’d fucked her when she needed to be held and soothed. “You deserve better. Roses and champagne and wooing.” Had he really just said wooing? That proved just how much she undid him. “Not a detective that can only use you to solve a crime.”
Lacy twisted one hand free from his crippling grip, but instead of pulling away, she flattened her palm on his chest. “You’ve said a lot about what I deserve.” She tipped her chin up, daring him. Knowing she had him on the edge. “What about what I want?”
He laughed. The sharp sound was harsh to his ears. “You want a man who can’t give you compassion?”
Her other hand broke his grip and reached for his chin. Her eyes searched his face. God, if she didn’t step back, he’d press himself into her right there, again taking what he needed without a second thought to what she deserved.
“What I need is to not feel like a victim every time a man touches me. I need to feel like the things I want, the things I feel, are right. Not dirty. Not wrong. I need to feel safe, and I do with you.
“That’s the kind of man you are to me, Mitch. The kind that doesn’t wax poetic about fake love, or leave me guessing about what he wants or how he feels. You just come out a say it. Blatant honesty.”
His chest heaved under her hand. Her emotions were still raw, and for now, his kind of no commitment sex blinded her to the pain of the past. But what happened when one day she woke up wanting more? More than he would ever be able to give, even to the only woman he’d ever had feelings for beyond the bedroom.
She searched his face for reassurance. The burning pain from before returned to his chest. “I want to be the person to give you everything you just asked for. God, Lacy, you can’t know how much I want to be that guy for you.” His voice cracked under the thick emotion coating his throat. “But I’m not a savior. And I never will be.”
He turned to let her dress alone when her fingers encircled his bicep. She stepped in front of him, her eyes daring him to look away. Something hot swelled in them. He’d mistaken it for anger at first, but once she spoke, he knew it was determination. “I never wanted a savior, Mitch.” She pressed her breasts against his chest. The rise and fall of her sharp breaths pushed into him. A sob threatened to break through her throat. It unraveled him.
Mitch wanted to reach out for her and encase her in himself, take away every ounce of pain he’d just caused. Shit, he could be roses and champagne if he had to. He could do it for her. Or at least he wanted to believe he could.
“If you start crying, I’ll hate myself forever.” He dropped a kiss to her hairline.
Mitch told himself, curling his arm around Lacy’s back and pressing her breasts into his chest, a kiss would defuse the sexual undercurrent they’d danced around for the last several minutes. He thought, c
upping the back of her neck with his palm, that a simple kiss would be balm to Lacy’s tattered nerves. He convinced himself, running his tongue long her bottom lip, tasting her, that this kiss was a good idea. That he’d be able to stop before he lost himself in her. That he’d be the one to keep a level head.
But the second her lips parted and a sigh escaped so soft and low the hum melted into him, Mitch knew his clever plan of comforting her had just exploded against his mouth.
Her lips quivered under his. The sudden quake of surrender triggered a dominating need in him deeper than any he’d let himself admit before. Regrettably, it also triggered a far-gone memory of Sadie, standing on the bank of the river, waiting for him to find her.
Rocked to his core, Mitch drew back. When Lacy leaned in closer, eyes still closed in a sign of trust, lips still moistened and parted in invitation, he almost yielded, but Lacy wasn’t looking for sex. The thought made him step back. She was searching for forgiveness.
When she leaned in again, Mitch cursed under his breath and sat her back with a hand on each shoulder. A second later, her eyes fluttered open and the hurt look sent his heart racing to the heel of his foot.
Her body trembled under his arms. “Whatever it is that keeps you from trusting yourself...I wish it had never happened.” Her head sank into his shoulder.
Realization, cold and stabbing, seared through him. Wrapped up in her scent and the warmth of her body, he could almost forget he’d been in this place before, in charge of protecting an innocent girl who counted on him to keep her safe. Sadie’s screams echoed in his ear. Fear fisted around his already depleted heart.
He wouldn’t do the same to Lacy. Whatever this relationship between them was, he never should have started it. He cursed himself. But she’d felt too good, been too willing, and made him feel too... He couldn’t even think of a way to sum up how she made him feel. Whole was the only word that scratched the surface, but without Sadie, he’d never be whole again.
“Let’s just call this whole thing a mistake and forget about it, Lacy.”
Her body sank into the bed. “The mistake being this conversation, or the past two nights?”
He bit the raw spot on the inside of his cheek. She wasn’t going to let him win without making it damn hard. “Get dressed, Lacy. I’ll take you home.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Lacy stood fully exposed to the harsh air conditioning from the vent over Mitch’s bed and wondered how she’d become the victim in this argument.
Her skin prickled, and her body shook, but it wasn’t from the chilly air. Had he really just dismissed her? “So that’s it? Sex and a cold shoulder? I knew all you guys were the same.”
He was blaming her. Judging her. And why not? It was true. She hadn’t come forward about her kidnapping. Hadn’t alerted the town to the dangerous Richard Wray in the area. Hadn’t saved Wray’s last victim when she could have.
Lacy’s stomach clenched. Her thoughts were too scrambled to make sense of anything right now beyond Mitch.
“This never was for the long term.” He brushed a hand over his chin. “It’s time to end it now before someone gets hurt.”
“Hurt?” Lacy blurted out. It sounded like someone else’s voice. Connie’s maybe or even her father’s. Strong and confident. “Too late, Detective. You can’t fuck a girl then send her packing without at least a few hurt feelings.”
He moved his hand to the back of his neck and rubbed until the skin turned red.
When it was obvious he was too chicken-shit to answer, she went on, unsure of where the sudden burst of confidence came from, but the power of it was intoxicating and pushed her on. “So you’re just going to stand there and say nothing? I dropped thirteen years of pain and guilt and regret here, and all you have to say to me is this was a mistake?” She pulled back the tears burning her eyes and the emotion clinging to her throat. He wasn’t good enough for either.
“The mistake was being a stupid kid who fell for a murderer’s plan. The mistake was having a mother who couldn’t handle family life enough to keep her kids safe and a father who couldn’t separate the job from his family.” She went on with the second breath.
The pain in his eyes would have cut to the nucleus of her existence if she wasn’t so raving mad over his dismissal. “This wasn’t a mistake.” She laughed, dry and tight. “I know how cops think. I was the mistake.”
She turned on her bare heels to retreat back to the bedroom, but before she could clear the door, he wrapped his fingers around her elbow.
He spun her around and pulled her close enough the speeding thud of his heart pounded against her chest. “You are not a mistake.”
Something hot burned in his eyes as his gaze washed over her from the stubborn frown she fought to keep on her lips to her bare toes she tried to curl under her. The cold air blowing over her was no longer an issue with the heat in his gaze. “You could never be anyone’s mistake, Angel.”
She shook at the gravel undertones in his voice. The deep, masculine sound of him. His dominance again present between them. “It’s the only explanation for this. Earlier you couldn’t wait to get my panties off and torture me seven ways from Sunday, but I drop Wray on you and you choke.” Damaged goods, echoed in her head.
Mitch dropped his hands to her shoulders. “Earlier, you weren’t one of Richard Wray’s victims.”
She shook her head and tried to pull away. “And that makes a difference?”
“Yes.” He said it loud. “It makes a shitload of difference. I’m working the case, and you’re one of the victims.”
“And a relationship with me could debunk your creditability. I get it.”
He squeezed tighter, and he pulled her closer until his forehead touched hers. “I don’t give a fuck about my creditability.”
“Then why?”
“Because a relationship with me would expose your secret.”
If he hadn’t been holding so tight, she should have stumbled backward into the wall. She blinked hard to clear her vision. “You’re making this about me? That’s not fair.”
Mitch finally let her go. He ran both hands through his hair and turned his back to her. The faint echo of a curse caught her ear before he turned again. “If we keep seeing each other that’s what the press will turn this into. A rag-mag tell-all about the small town chief who let innocent girls die. Is that want you want for your father?”
“Of course not. But he didn’t let them die. He didn’t know keeping my kidnapping a secret would lead to another girl’s death.”
Mitch’s face pinched in pain. Tormented pain from someplace too deep for her to touch. “It doesn’t matter. He had to choose between the lesser of two evils, and the way the news will spin it, he took the easy way out. Obstruction comes with a heavy sentence.”
Lacy backed a step. “Is that how you see my father? He took the easy way out when he chose to save my life?”
“It really doesn’t matter what I think.”
“But it does. I want to know…I need to know. Did my father do the wrong thing when he saved my life over others?” She glared into his eyes. “Tell the truth. I trust you. Did my father’s choice kill Sadie?”
Mitch stood silent. His only movement the sharp rise and fall of his chest.
What had happened to this man to make him think he could never be loved for who he was-imperfections and all? Hell, his imperfections were the best part of him, and the fact he tried to hide nothing about the way he felt or the way he thought made her feel closer to him than she had any man.
She trusted him, and she’d said it out loud. That thought sent sparks of fear-laced realization flashing around in her head. Besides her father and John, she’d never trusted a man, much less one who demanded total control the way Mitch did.
He still sat there, lips tight, eyes focused on hers, saying nothing.
Angry tears burned the backs of her eyes, but she forced them down. If he saw her cry – thought he’d brought her pain – he’d bolt.
She’d lose her chance to make Mitch realize she didn’t give a damn about his past. It was the man he was now that made her hotter than hell and most importantly, made her feel safe. Loved even. He’d done what no man had been able to do for her. She wasn’t going to let him just walk away.
The worst thing he could do would be to continue their argument. At least that’s what she thought until he released her arms and turned his back to her, shutting her out. She wanted to sweep her arms around his back and bury her face between his shoulder blades, hiding from the searing pain of his rejection, but if she gave in and did, she’d never let him go again.
This is what she got for telling her secret. Damaged goods, she’d heard officers call her when they thought she wasn’t listening.
She lowered her head, her vision blurred with unshed tears. “I never should have told you about Wray. It was too much.”
Before she could finish, Mitch spun on her. He kneaded her shoulders between his big fists. “God no, Lacy. Don’t say that.” He looked at his hands as if he’d thought better of touching her again and let go. “That’s not why.” He raked his fingers through his hair and over the back of his neck. His throat strained with unspoken words.
The tension between them made her muscles cramp. She wrapped an arm around her middle, hoping to calm the pain. “Then why, Mitch, because right now I’m feeling like telling you my secret was the biggest mistake of my life, and I really need you to tell me it wasn’t.” Lie to me if you have to, but please make this pain stop.
Mitch sank to the bed, emotion pulling every visible muscle on his body tight, and she guessed all the ones she couldn’t see as well. If she could do anything to ease his agony, she would.
Anything.
He dropped his head into one hand, his dark hair falling over his fingers. “Come here,” he commanded and Lacy did as told. He took her hands and led her down to kneel before him on the floor. She watched him struggle for words. ”I wasn’t given this assignment. Truth is, if Nashville found out I’ve been searching for this killer, they’d take my badge.”
Confess (The Blue Line Series Book 1) Page 15
