She took him in her mouth. Hands to the side of her head, he guided her. The couch creaked as he put his head back, then he groaned into the dark and the heat.
Salty, musky, male, he was hard between her lips. She pushed her hand all the way to the base, dove down to meet it. On the way back up, she grazed him with her teeth. At the tip, she circled her tongue, testing the small crevice. His hips lifted to drive into her again. She took him, swallowing the tiny droplets that emerged. When he groaned, she repeated, harder, faster, then softer, slower. Again and again.
All the while, he talked, words about how good she was, how good her mouth felt, how he thought he was going to die. Then his hands fisted in her hair, just short of pain, and he cried out her name and a litany of swear words, and spurted into her mouth.
She swallowed all of him, savoring the taste, the triumph, the vindication. He stroked her hair, the shell of her ear, let her suck and lick until the last of his tremors faded away, then he pulled her up to look at him.
“Christ, where’d you learn to do that?” He hauled her onto his lap and kissed her. After he’d been in her mouth. Didn’t seem to care. Just the way he’d kissed her last night with her taste still on his lips.
Warren had never...would never. But then he hadn’t really liked any of that stuff anyway.
“You’re thinking about him. Stop it.” Nick stuck his tongue in her mouth, wrapped his arms around her until she felt crushed, caressed, wanted.
I will not say it. I will not ask for validation.
“Did you like what I did?” Darn.
Nick jerked back to stare at her. As if she had Medusa’s snakes snarling on her head. “Like? You drained me dry, sweetheart.” His head flopped against the sofa, and he closed his eyes. “I don’t think I could get it up again for a week.”
Maybe some women would have been looking for something poetic. What he said was exactly what she’d hoped for. She snuggled against him. His shirt still intact, he was naked from the waist down. She was completely clothed. Gee, this was deliciously dirty and decadent.
Feeling enormously pleased with herself and totally unwilling to contemplate Warren’s situation, at least right now, she licked Nick’s cheek, then kissed it. “When are we going to watch Buffy?”
He cracked one eye open. “Definitely not now.”
Something romantic then. “How about Laura?”
“You’ve gotta be kidding.”
She wriggled in his lap. “You could show me your paintings?”
“How about we work on orgasms ten through fifteen instead.”
Hmm, that had a nice ring to it, too.
* * * * *
They fell asleep in his bed with all the windows open.
Princess started barking at two.
Nick rolled over, pulling Bobbie into the spoon of his body. Warm and smelling of hot sex and even hotter woman, he buried his nose in the hollow between her neck and shoulder. Still asleep, she muttered and burrowed her bottom into his groin.
He’d lied about not being able to get it up again. Several times.
“Hmmm,” she mumbled into the pillow. “What’s that noise?”
The high-pitched yelping became frantic. “It’s Princess. Reggie’ll yell at her in a minute.” Just like he had the other night when she’d gone ballistic.
The night Jimbo died.
The night the shovel went missing from his shed.
Nick bolted out of bed.
“What are you doing?”
“Someone’s outside.” Searching for his jeans, he remembered they were on the living room floor. He grabbed another pair from the drawer, yanked them on, then took the stairs two at a time.
Throwing the back door open just as Reggie cussed at the dog, Nick took the back steps in a leap, then slid to a halt.
No one was out there, but the metal door of the shed yawned wide. He’d left it closed. Princess yelped once more, whimpered, then shut up. Reggie slammed his back door, still cursing, “the damned noisy little mutt.”
Nick sprinted through the gate to the front of the house. He’d catch the bastard, he’d write down the license plate, he’d...the road was empty, the neighborhood quiet now that Princess had gotten her wallop.
Shit.
He returned to the backyard, dread hollowing out his gut.
Bobbie hugged the doorway, eyes wide, wearing one of his paint shirts, white tails reaching her thighs. “What is it?”
“I need the flashlight.” He pushed past her to the kitchen drawer, then marched back outside, Bobbie in his wake.
Sliding the shed door all the way open, he flashed the thin beam of light around the inside.
“What’s there?”
Christ. “My spade is back.”
“The one that was missing?”
“Yep.” He stepped fully into the shed, hunkered down beside it and ran the beam from handle to blade. “And if I’m not mistaken, there’s dried blood all over it.”
Dried blood and Jimbo’s gray matter.
Chapter Sixteen
Oh my God. He couldn’t have done it.
Could he?
The beam of Nick’s flashlight hit Bobbie full in the face. She shielded her eyes.
“You think I did it, don’t you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Only for the tiniest second, wiped clean so fast in the next, it didn’t even count. “Take that light out of my eyes.”
He did, but only dropped the beam to her chest so that she still couldn’t see him behind it. Like he was interrogating her.
“I didn’t do it.”
She answered quickly. “I know that. What I was thinking,” she paused, wondering what she really had been thinking. “This proves Warren couldn’t have done it. He’s in jail, so he couldn’t have put that shovel there.”
And neither had Nick. She’d known in her heart he was innocent. Now she could prove it.
“No, he couldn’t,” Nick growled, low, almost menacing. She had no clue what he was thinking.
“Then again,” she went on, “somehow, I can’t imagine Cookie driving around with a bloody shovel in her trunk and sneaking into your shed in the middle of the night.”
“Right.”
Those terse answers made her nerves jump, especially when she couldn’t see his face or read his eyes. “So that means someone else is helping Cookie.”
“Looks like it.”
“Would you stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Agreeing with everything I say.”
“Don’t you want me to agree?”
“No.” She wanted some emotion.
“All right.”
That wasn’t any better. She wished she had on more than just his white shirt stiff with paint spatters. “Then this shovel is...what do you call it?” He didn’t help her. “Exculpatory evidence in Warren’s favor.”
“I suppose it is.”
She bit her lip. He was agreeing again. She wanted to smack him. “We need to call Brax.”
This time he didn’t say anything at all, and instead lifted the flashlight beam once more to her eyes. She squinted. Telling him to drop it again would be pointless. “It’s got to have the real killer’s fingerprints on it.”
“The only fingerprints on it will be mine.”
“But—”
“Do you think they’d be stupid enough to bring it back if they’d left their fingerprints on it?”
She knew she was grasping at straws. “And Brax knows you’re not stupid enough to call him if you’d actually killed Jimbo.”
“Brax isn’t going to care one way or the other. He’ll have the murder weapon with my prints on it.”
“Well, then, we’ll wipe it off before we call him.”
The flashlight clicked off, completely blinding her after the brightness of the beam in her eyes. “I’m not going to jail to free your husband.”
“I know, but—”
“Choose. Now.”
“This isn’t abo
ut choosing—”
“Which one of us will it be, Bobbie?”
Her hands were solid blocks of ice. She stuck them in her armpits for warmth. It didn’t help.
“Choose,” he said softly, the sound filling the small shed.
“I...” Her bare feet numbed.
“Can’t.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly.” Moving in the darkness, he pushed past her, his silhouette filling the open shed door.
She followed, stumbled over the edge, hand outstretched, but long strides had taken him beyond her. Running, with a prayer that there really wasn’t any dog poop out here, she caught up with him at the edge of the porch.
“Nick.”
He turned, still in shadow under cover of the overhang. “You can’t make this town like or accept me. And you can’t save both your husband and me.”
Epiphany ran its fingers across her scalp, shuddered in her stomach. She wanted Cottonmouth to love her, to accept her, to make her one of its own. But to do it, she had to play by their rules. She couldn’t just be herself. She’d been feeding herself lies for the last week, seeking a belonging that couldn’t be hers. The need was like a sickness inside her; she hadn’t quite realized how powerful until this moment.
Bobbie rolled her lips between her teeth, bit down hard until they stung. “I don’t have to choose, Nick. I can help you both.” She touched his arm. “I won’t sacrifice you for him.”
He glanced at her clutching fingers. “You won’t mean to.”
“I won’t sacrifice you.”
“Fine. Whatever.”
She took his words to mean acquiescence, crisis averted. But a sliver of fear still throbbed in her. “Let’s go back to bed. We’ll work this out. I won’t call the sheriff.” She sounded just like she had with Warren for fifteen years. Placating, soothing. It was a pattern she knew well.
Nick looked beyond her to the yawn of the shed door. “I need to get a lock tomorrow. Until I figure out what to do with it.”
It. The shovel. The incriminating evidence. Bobbie shivered. “Shouldn’t we at least shut the door?”
“What the hell does it matter now?”
That was sort of like closing the barn door after the cow had already gotten out. Or the shovel had gotten in. He turned and went in the house. He didn’t stop her from following, but he didn’t take her hand either.
In his room, Nick shed his jeans. The mattress sagged with his weight, and he pulled the sheet to his waist. At the edge of his bed, she thought about her dirty feet. In the end, all she did was shrug out of his paint-splattered shirt and climb in beside him. They lay on separate sides, not touching.
She hadn’t felt this alone since...well, since the last time she’d asked Warren to make love to her. He’d pleaded a migraine. She’d never asked again. That was five years ago. Another life.
It didn’t bear thinking about now. She had to come up with a really good plan about where to go from here.
Okay. Cottonmouth didn’t like her questions. They didn’t like her choice of lover. Well, she was good at hide-and-seek. She’d been playing it with Warren almost since the beginning of their marriage. Give them what they want, keep them happy, keep a smile on your face.
Maybe it hadn’t worked completely, not in the end, but it had worked for fifteen years.
The mavens of Cottonmouth wanted her for the sheriff. Well, that’s exactly what she’d give them. Date the sheriff, find out everything he knew. And save Warren and Nick in the process.
She just hoped Brax didn’t think sleeping with him would be part of the plan.
* * * * *
“You’re going to do what?”
It was two a.m. Nick had been lying awake, listening for a siren. The bastard who left the damn shovel in his shed would have to call Brax, anonymously, of course. Could Brax get a warrant based on an anonymous tip?
“I’m going to go out with Brax,” Bobbie said. “On a date.”
Christ. He’d wanted her to choose him over her husband. He’d known it wasn’t fair, but he’d wanted it badly. As if it were a declaration, not of love, but ...something.
He’d also known she wouldn’t be able to do it. She’d had a marriage with her little weasel, a fifteen-year relationship. She’d only had a week with him. She couldn’t abandon the old. It wasn’t in her nature. If he were honest, that loyalty was one of the things he cherished about her. Not cherished, that wasn’t the right word. Admired. That was better.
Brax wasn’t one of her choices.
“What the hell are you going to accomplish by dating Brax?” His gut twisted.
“Just for the information value. Since I can’t get it asking questions around town, I’ll question him.”
The woman wanted to have her cake and eat it, too. Date Brax because that’s what people wanted, stop asking questions of everyone on the street corners. She’d let them think she was falling in line, but in the end, she wouldn’t fool anyone. And he’d just bet she’d still sneak into his bed at night.
Damn if he’d let her.
“That’s idiotic.” He managed not to call her an idiot or reveal the fact that he’d rather smash his fist into Brax’s face than let her date the man. “He’s not going to tell you anything. Unless it’s misinformation.”
“But misinformation is information. You just have to decipher it.” Excitement bubbled in her voice. Never down for the full count, she was an eternal optimist. Or she was mentally challenged.
Nick was just a bug on her windshield.
He stacked his hands beneath his head. “Sounds good to me. Whatever you want to do.”
The pillow rustled as she turned her head to look at him, but she didn’t say anything.
All right. She’d date Brax, and Nick would make inquiries of his own. Cookie Beaumont wouldn’t have driven around with a shovel in her trunk and walked into his backyard wearing her high heels, the only kind of shoe she owned as far as he knew. His mind burned with one question. Who was Cookie’s accomplice?
He had one way to figure it out. Tomorrow, after he bought the lock for the shed, he’d go straight to the horse’s mouth.
Cookie would love being compared to a horse.
* * * * *
Bobbie tackled the sheriff late the next morning when he stopped by The Cooked Goose, which was practically empty between rushes. Perfect. “How’s the investigation?”
“What investigation?”
Bobbie jutted her left hip and put her hand on it, holding the coffee pot aloft in the other. Brax’s cup dangled in mid-air, waiting for a refill. “Jimbo’s murder investigation.”
The sheriff looked from the pot to the hand on her hip. “The case is unofficially closed.”
“Closed? It can’t be closed. I told you Warren isn’t capable of it.”
“Are you going to fill this thing?” He waggled his mug.
She huffed and poured. Holding out wouldn’t do much good. “We need to talk.”
“The sheriff’s order is up,” Mavis’s voice rang out sharply.
“Hold that thought, I’ll be right back.”
“The only thought I had was about my food,” he called after her, then added, “Among a couple of other things.”
She stopped, looked over her shoulder. The sheriff’s thoughts were obviously on her butt, if the direction of his gaze meant anything. Which wasn’t a bad thing for her little plan, the one Nick had given her the go-ahead for. Sort of. As if she needed his go-ahead.
“You’ve scared my customers away with your damn questions,” Mavis grumbled as Bobbie put down the coffee, slung a plate heavy with the works on her arm and grabbed the sheriff’s toast.
“It’s brunch, Mavis. No one comes in for brunch. And I didn’t ask a single question all morning.”
Mavis muttered wordlessly and went back to emptying the twenties out of the cash register.
Bobbie slid Brax’s breakfast in front of him, then sat opposite, on the edg
e of the bench seat so she could jump when Mavis noticed she was on her butt again. “Now, where were we?”
“The same place we were yesterday and the day before that, with the case closed and your husband in jail.” He peppered the steak and eggs heavily.
“You said ‘unofficially closed.’”
He glanced up at her, multitasking by cutting his steak at the same time. “Semantics. Mavis is going to fire you if you keep hanging around back here.”
“Mavis can’t fire me, she needs me. Kelly just told her she’s pregnant.”
The sheriff shook his head, a smile crooking the edges of his mouth.
“Has anyone ever told you how pretty your eyes are? A really nice shade of blue.” She cupped her chin in her hands while she buttered him up.
“I’m a cop. Flattery doesn’t work on me.”
“I wasn’t flattering you.” She put a mortified hand to her chest. “It’s the truth.”
His eyes riveted to her hand against her breasts. “What is it you want to know?”
“Well, since you asked.” She twirled the salt shaker between her palms. “Actually, it isn’t what I want to know, it’s what I think you should know.”
He took a healthy bite of steak. Bobbie’s mouth watered. She’d foresworn breakfast in order to get down to The Cooked Goose, just in case the sheriff came in early.
With his mouth full, all he could do was listen. “You know, I think this is all because of the minimall.”
He raised a brow, his jaw still working. Maybe the steak was kind of tough.
“That minimall is ruining the town, and a lot of people were angry about it. Angry with Jimbo. Did you know that?”
He cut another piece. “Bobbie, I’ve lived here all my life. I know all about the minimall and the hard times.”
“Well, do you know about—”
“I know about Beau hating his brother, and Mavis kicking Beau out.”
“But—”
“And I know a few things you don’t.”
She had him. She leaned forward avidly. “Like what?”
She's Gotta Be Mine (A sexy, funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 1) (Cottonmouth Series) Page 24
