Book'em Sadie (Iron Badges #1)

by Danielle Norman

  18

  Sadie

  “Hello? Hello?” I disconnected and slid my phone back into my pocket as Harley handed me the paper cup of Wawa coffee. I stared at my phone. That was my fourth call since yesterday.

  “You look happy, Ryan must be doing something right. Is he good?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?” She looked more appalled than anything.

  “I mean, that we haven’t had sex.” I held up one finger, not allowing her to continue to rant so I could answer my phone. “Hello? This is Deputy Lazar, who is this?” Someone was on the other line, I could hear them, but they weren’t saying a word, so I disconnected.

  “What’s going on?”

  “No clue, these started yesterday afternoon, the number is blocked. If it weren’t on my personal phone, I’d have the station track it.”

  “Probably one of those automated telemarketers,” Harley rationalized.

  I didn’t want to tell her that I highly doubted it, since telemarketers didn’t call in the middle of the night and you usually didn’t hear a television in the background. When my phone rang again, Harley snatched it.

  She answered it and pressed speaker. “This is Deputy Scott, how may I help you?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m not sure how I dialed you, but I was trying to reach Deputy Lazar.”

  That’s Ryan, I mouthed.

  “Is this Ryan?”

  “Yes it is.”

  “It’s Harley, hold on one second, she’s right here.” Harley handed the phone to me. “Holler at me if you want to do anything tomorrow or Thursday. I’m heading home.”

  “Bye, talk to you later.” I took the phone off speaker and turned my attention to Ryan. “Hey, sorry about that. We had a massive wreck on the 408 and I’m just now getting off work.”

  “Sounds rough. Was everyone okay?”

  “Everyone but the cars. I’m headed home now.”

  “Why don’t I bring you something to eat and you can relax?”

  I thought of his words from yesterday, next time. Was this next time? “Okay, I’ll be home in fifteen. See you soon.” I disconnected and then popped my coffee into the holder before grabbing my helmet and heading to my house.

  I had just walked inside when I heard my doorbell. Snatching Wasabi up to try to curb his barking, I headed for the door. I was still in my uniform and hadn’t even put away my gun yet.

  Which had Ryan smiling. “You are so fucking hot in your uniform, have I told you that?” I shook my head. “You are.”

  “I hate to break it to you, but I’m getting ready to take it off.”

  “Do you see me complaining?”

  “Haha, I’ve been sweating all day, this vest is heavy, and my pants don’t breathe. I know none of that is incredibly sexy.” Ryan bit back a smile and set the food in my kitchen while I unlocked Wasabi’s doggy door so he could go outside. “Do you care if I take a quick shower?”

  “Not at all.”

  I headed back to my bedroom, feeling like a complete ho. Why? Because all I could think about was him following me into the shower. Hell, I wanted him to take me . . . now. We’d been playing this cat-and-mouse game, and I wanted him.

  I’d never tire of the sound of cracking leather, it was that noise when leather was real thick and not pliable. In other words, it fit right in with the rest of my uniform. I unsnapped my holster and slid out my gun then placed it into my nightstand, making a mental note to get a gun safe in case Callie ever came over.

  Wait. What? Who the fuck was I? When did I start thinking about kids and childproofing my home? Harley was going to kill me.

  I set my radio on the charger and then got to work on my pins, tossing them into the dish I kept on my dresser.

  I was unbuttoning my shirt as I walked into my bathroom when Ryan cleared his throat and I looked up, locking eyes with him in the reflection in my mirror. My bathroom wasn’t big, so when he walked in, he seemed to engulf the space. Our warm breaths filled with desire immediately fogged up the mirror. I dropped his gaze and bent to turn on the shower so the water could warm up, and when I straightened, he was there, his hands on my waist, pulling me back to him, his erection pressing into me. Every hair on my body was standing on end as I leaned against him, wanting to get closer, wishing we didn’t have clothing separating us.

  “Are you joining me?” Good god, my voice was so low and sultry that it even turned me on.

  His answer was to pepper the side of my neck with kisses as he toed off his shoes and slid his hands up my body to the row of buttons holding my shirt closed. The warmth of his palms followed the fabric as it slid off my body before his fingertips traced along the waist of my pants. They joined my shirt on the floor a second later.

  Nope. This wouldn’t do at all. If I was getting naked, then so was he. Since he didn’t seem all that inclined to strip, I would just have to help him with it.

  I spun, bit back a smile as his attention dropped to the swell of my breasts, and then tugged his T-shirt off him. The man was nothing but defined lines of smooth skin and muscle, and it was making my mouth water.

  My reaction to him only got worse when I dropped to my knees in front of him, my fingers catching on his belt and working to free it, working to free his button and tug the fabric down his hips.

  “Holy shit, Sadie, I’ve told you this before but you’re going to kill me.”

  “I think you have that the wrong way around.”

  Because he might just kill me if he made me stop. I needed to taste him.

  So, I leaned forward and ran my tongue up his length before closing my lips around him and taking him in so deeply he hit the back of my throat.

  “Fuck!” His hands were in my hair, fisting as if he needed something to hold on to as he watched me.

  Again and again, I slid my lips and tongue over him, his guttural cries telling me that I was doing a fucking great job. When I looked up at him, his head was thrown back and he had his bottom lip trapped between his teeth. If I had a camera, I would take a damn photo of how the man looked in this moment and frame it in my bedroom.

  “Stop.” But I didn’t. “Sadie, stop. You, I want inside you.” Okay, at that, I acquiesced. He reached for my shower door, and I thought he was going to turn the water off, but he didn’t. He pulled me inside and pressed my back against the cold tiles.

  Then his lips were on mine, and they weren’t soft or gentle. No, it was the kiss of a starving man who had just sat down at a feast. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling his body tight against mine as I sank my hands into his short hair. If I hadn’t been holding on to him as tightly as I was, I probably would have fallen when he shifted just enough to hook his arms under my knees and lift me so I was spread for him.

  I didn’t care about the cold tiles against my back. I didn’t care about the waste of water running down the drain. I didn’t care that my dog was probably sitting by the door, wondering why he was locked out. The only, only thing that mattered right then was the hard press of his cock against me. Well, that and the fact that he wasn’t inside me yet.

  “Ryan, stop playing.”

  His chuckle was deep. “Oh, this isn’t playing.”

  Then he was nudging his way into me, and I didn’t have the words to argue. When he was balls deep, we were both breathing in jagged bursts. It was too much and not enough at the same time. I knew he was waiting for me to adjust, but I didn’t want that. So, I nipped his bottom lip.

  “I need more, Ryan. Please . . .”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” And, holy hell, I’d never felt anything like him. He fucked me with long slow thrusts that hit all the places that made my toes curl. No matter how badly I wanted to rock against him, to urge him to take more and take it faster, I couldn’t. I was completely under his control.

  I held on to his shoulders as he shifted and then started to drive into me harder and faster as he kissed and licked along my jaw and neck. “Ryan.”
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  “What, baby?”

  “I don’t know, just don’t stop. Whatever you do, just don’t stop.” I could feel his lips pull into a grin as he shifted again, pulled almost all the way out of me, and then slammed into me so hard I wanted to cry at the pleasure of it.

  When he rolled his hips against me, against my clit, I shattered. “Oh, god, Ryan, I’m coming. Holy shit.”

  “I’m right behind you, baby.” Again and again he pushed into me and rolled, forcing my climax higher and higher until I was shaking and he was spilling inside me.

  He was just as breathless as I was as he slowly lowered my feet back to the shower floor, but when I wobbled, his arms were there to steady me. His lips were there to catch my whimpers. “Sadie,” he said between slow kisses. “You are incredible.”

  “You’re pretty impressive yourself.” This time I was the one smiling. “You know what would really be awesome, though?”

  “More awesome than hot wall sex in a shower after a long day?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  His mouth dropped to my shoulder before he asked, “What?”

  “Food.”

  His booming laughter seemed to echo inside the confines of the shower. “Well, it’s a good thing I brought you dinner.”

  “You know how I told you that I didn’t want flowers or poetry just food?”

  “Don’t tell me that you’ve changed your mind?” Ryan swept my hair away from my eyes.

  “No. Well, sort of. That, what we just did wasn’t sex, that was naked poetry, I’ll take that anytime as well.”

  Ryan placed a quick kiss on my head. “Me, too.”

  “Shit!” I pushed him back and slammed the water off. I hadn’t actually washed anything, but I could take another shower later because I had something more important to deal with.

  Ryan was frozen in place, looking at me with wide eyes.

  “What?” he asked as I grabbed two towels and tossed one to him.

  “You didn’t set it on the table, did you? Wasabi, the little motherfucker, will jump onto a chair and then onto the table if there is something up there he wants.” I bent forward and wrapped the towel around my hair before straightening. Ryan hadn’t answered me, so I turned to look at him. He was staring at my ass.

  It was nice to know he appreciated a good view, but . . . food.

  “Ryan?”

  He blinked away the dazed look in his eyes and cleared his throat as he wrapped the towel around his hips. “No, I set it on the kitchen counter.”

  “Thank god. He is worse than a Hoover vacuum. That dog will suck down anything and everything.”

  “But he’s so little.”

  “Sure, but don’t let that fool you.” I grabbed a T-shirt from my top drawer and slipped it on. “You get dressed while I reheat everything. Okay?”

  He nodded, and I pressed a quick kiss to his lips before heading to my kitchen. “Wasabi, you little asshole, you better not be on that table.” I clapped my hands and heard the sound of his nails. “Ha, the chairs were all pushed in, you couldn’t get up. Serves you right, you little shit head.” If dogs could talk, he would be telling me all the ways he planned on violating my boots.

  When Ryan joined me, he was in his jeans, which were left unbuttoned, and nothing else. I almost dropped the empty to-go container I was holding. “When do you find time to work out?”

  “A few times a week, why?”

  I handed him a plate and then waved a finger up and down to indicate his body. He just grinned. “I have to thank genetics for this, but age will eventually catch up with me.” Ryan took a bite of spaghetti before asking, “How about you, you have to stay in shape?”

  I pulled apart a breadstick and dragged it through sauce before eating it. “I eat like this, so I have to work out a lot.” I took a sip of Coke before continuing. “I try to make it to the gym every other day, and I run—and I don’t just mean within my job. Although, I do less of that now than I used to.”

  “Why less?”

  “My motorcycle makes it so that I don’t really have to since it can go more places than a car.”

  “Why motors? Why not detective or something like SWAT?”

  “When I was little my dad had a bike. After my mom passed, it was our thing. We’d put on our helmets, I’d hold on to his waist and then go for a ride through the country. No words, just the wind on our faces. For me it was feeling his heartbeat under my hands.”

  “How old were you when your mom passed?”

  “Four.”

  “May I ask how, or do you not like talking about it?” Ryan looked somewhat apprehensive.

  “I don’t mind. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer but it was too late by the time they found it.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Ryan reached forward and squeezed my hand.

  “Your mom lives with you, I figured that your dad must be gone. What happened?”

  “He passed away just before Callie was born. He was an investment banker and was just sitting having breakfast with my mom when he had a heart attack.”

  “Poor Kathryn.”

  “Tell me about it. She called 9-1-1 and then called me, but by the time paramedics arrived, it was too late. We had just bought the house where I’m living now, and Deirdre had just found out that she was pregnant. The pool house needed to be redone anyway, so we decided to have it remodeled into a small apartment and have my mom move in to be close to us.”

  “She seems very happy, and I’m sure it helped having her there after Deirdre passed.”

  “It did.” We were both quiet for a few moments. “So, is that why you volunteer at Kidz Klub, to help children with what you didn’t have?”

  “It’s more to give kids what I did have. When I was seven my dad met Margaret and she was wonderful. She loved me for me. I don’t think a day went by that she didn’t thank my mom for allowing her to be a part of my life. I always felt my mom was still there.”

  “She sounds very special.” Ryan’s words were soft.

  I thought about the night of my senior prom; Margaret had been my stepmom for ten years at that point.

  “Sadie, you’re so beautiful.” Margaret’s words were always so sincere, her cheeks wet from her tears.

  “Will you stop crying?” I asked Margaret as I grabbed yet another tissue from the box on my counter and handed it to her. “If you keep this up, I’m going to run out and have to let you use the tissues I’ve stuffed into my bra.”

  “You do not have any stuffed in your bra, do you?” Margaret looked dumbfounded. I had to admit, over the past ten years, shocking Margaret had become one of my favorite things to do, maybe because it was so easy.

  Even at eighteen I was already practicing my cop-stare. “Keep crying, and you’ll find out,” I warned her before cracking up laughing.

  Margaret dried her face. “It’s just that . . . well, I’m so lucky to be here today, helping you get ready for your prom.” I pressed the sides of my index fingers underneath my eyes to catch any pooling tears before they had a chance to make my mascara run. “You’re just so beautiful, and when I look at the photos of your mom, I swear that I’m looking at you.”

  “I love you, Margaret. You’ve been more than a mom to me; you’ve been a friend. I’m so glad that you and my dad found each other. You’re kind of like Maria in the Sound of Music, you know? You swept in and stirred our world up. In a good way, of course.”

  “Of course.” Margaret squeezed my shoulders but was smiling instead of crying. “You better hurry or you will surpass fashionably late and go straight to ‘I’ve decided to ditch prom.’”

  “Oh, now that’s an idea.”

  “Nope, you promised me that you would go, and I want pictures. I need to play doting stepparent and try to improve our image, you know we stepmoms get a bad rap.”

  “Oh, sorry, maybe I should take that blog down.”

  “Cheeky brat.”

  I smiled at that memory. Margaret had been a lifesaver not just for me but also
for my dad, which made me think of the gorgeous man across from me. Whoever Ryan married, I hoped that she would treat Callie just like Margaret treated me. And be the helping hand that Ryan wanted. At that thought, a slow ache began to grow in my chest. Maybe I’d been wrong, maybe I could do this just like Margaret did. Maybe I could be that lifesaver for Ryan and Callie.

  When dinner was done, we moved to the couch and watched the best of James Corden car-karaoke. “What are we watching?” Ryan had Wasabi in his lap and was absently rubbing behind his ears.

  “What? How have you never seen this? It is so funny. James Corden is hysterical.”

  “Is that George Clooney? Oh my god, I just lost so much respect for him, ‘Yo, George, I’m so disappointed in you.’ I can’t believe that Batman sang karaoke of Hollaback Girls. What is this world coming to?” Ryan was laughing the entire time.

  “You stop making fun of this or I’ll invite you to karaoke night and force you to be one of the Hollaback Girls.”

  “Hey, if Batman can do it, then I’m golden.”

  19

  Callie

  It couldn’t be true, it couldn’t be. Grammy and Aunt Sonya are wrong. Sadie did love me. I picked up a picture that Daddy had placed next to my bed, Mommy and me were finding Easter eggs. “Angel mommy, is it okay that I love Sadie? That doesn’t mean I don’t love you or will forget you, I won’t, never ever, ever. I promise. Cross my heart. Grammy said that if I love Sadie then that means I don’t love you, but I do.” I put the picture down and grabbed another, one that was on my dresser, it was of me when I was still in Mommy’s tummy.

  I pulled my phone out of my backpack and then stared at the few phone numbers listed. Daddy said not to call Sadie’s number unless it was an emergency, but this was an emergency, wasn’t it? Sadie wasn’t at school Monday or Tuesday, and I needed to know that she was okay and that she still liked us. Pressing the number, I waited.

  “The number you’ve dialed is not a working number.”

  “Sadie?” But there was nothing, Sadie wasn’t there. I hung up and tried again.