Or dropping her.
He dropped his jeans instead, stepped out of one leg, and then, with a knee between hers, he lowered himself down, sliding her skirt up as he went. The material was tight, as though teasing him, and he pushed harder, exposing silk-laced cotton underwear.
The thin silk he’d been expecting would have seduced him. This...this conservative piece of fabric, that screamed “good girl” to him enticed him on a whole new level. He had to stop a second, hold on to his release with every ounce of willpower so that he could give her the pleasure he’d promised this coupling would be for her.
“I need to get a condom,” he said, shocked at the tension in his voice. Like he was being strangled.
“I’ve got one.” She pulled it from the waistband of her skirt. A little pocket there? Or had she been wearing it there, between her waistband and that delectable skin all night?
If he’d known, he’d have been hard all through dinner.
He almost exploded when she ripped the packet open with her teeth, and yanked at her panties as she sheathed him with her delicate hand. It should have been awkward. His big body on that lounger for one, but she moved in tandem with him, doing her jobs while he did his, rubbing her crotch against his hand as he bared her to the openness of his backyard.
He entered her effortlessly. Gloriously. As smooth and tight and right as it had ever been. Expecting it to be quick. Hard. Instead he slowed as he moved. Looking at her. Finding her staring right at him. Into him.
And he didn’t want it to end. Didn’t want to finish. Stilling himself inside her, he kissed her. Softly. Mating their tongues in a quiet conversation that was no less passionate. He touched her breasts, exploring their fullness in a hello that would stay with him. While she held him.
When his lips left hers, she was watching him. Smiling at him.
He smiled back and started to move. Slowly. Drawing out the seconds into minutes until they both moved, coming together so hard he could hear the touch of their bodies.
Her gaze narrowed and her breathing changed. She was close. They were both so close. And...
As soon as she started to pulse around him, he let go. And kept letting go. So much, it was almost embarrassing.
What an experience.
The most incredible sex ever.
He wanted to tell her how special she was. How glad that she’d come into his life. To ask her to spend the night.
Their agreement didn’t leave room for those kinds of words. They weren’t in love. Or starting a relationship.
Scooting to his side on the lounger, he helped her turn to hers, spooning her just while they caught their breath.
Holding on.
Chapter 12
She almost fell asleep. Catching herself just as she was dozing off, with her naked butt nestling against Jayden on his backyard lounger, Emma told herself to get her ass in gear. Her darker side suggested that she just go ahead and doze. See where the night would lead them. Maybe wait to see if there’d be more sex.
Or an invitation to spend the night sleeping in the man’s arms.
She listened for a second. Until she started imagining how that might feel, snuggled up in Jayden Powell’s embrace between the sheets. Then she sat up.
“I have to go,” she said right out loud. She’d tried for her court voice. Managed a weak rendition.
Still, it worked. Jayden was off the lounger, handing over her panties by the time she was on her feet, smoothing her skirt back down her thighs. Stuffing the underwear in the satchel she’d left by the table, she was embarrassed as hell to realize she still had her pumps on. And her blouse was missing a button.
Without another word, she grabbed her keys out of her satchel, flung the bag over her shoulder and walked to the door that would lead through his house to the front door and her car just beyond.
“Thanks for dinner,” she called over her shoulder, briefly aware that he’d followed her, and let herself out.
“Thanks for dinner?” During the entire three miles from his neighborhood to hers, through the gate into her community and then to her house, she stumbled around that last line. Replaying it, out loud, in all kinds of ways.
Not a single version sounded anything but inane.
Thanks for dinner. They’d had mind-blowing sex and that’s what she came up with? Thanks for dinner.
What could he be thinking? That she had sex as nonchalantly as some people ate dinner? You could eat with those you cared about, or just as easily do it alone? Or with strangers? That you were satiated and went home?
That she’d just experienced a life-changing event and was scared out of her wits?
No. Not that. He couldn’t think that. It just wasn’t true. Was it?
She pulled into her garage, pushed the remote on her visor to close the door behind her and got out of the car.
In any event, it didn’t matter what he thought. They weren’t starting anything.
No, they were finishing off whatever waywardness was between them in a practical and emotionally healthy manner—
Ms. Shadow’s hogwash was cut off midstream as she came through the garage door into the kitchen and saw something written on the sliding-glass door leading to her pool. In her private, walled-in backyard. With a locked-gate access in a gated community.
Leave it alone.
The words were roughly scrawled on the glass, as though written by someone who’d just learned to write. Or written backward. They were uneven. Big. Red. Legible.
Retreating immediately to her car, she locked herself in and, willing her garage door to open quickly as she started her vehicle, dialed 9-1-1.
* * *
Jayden was in bed, watching TV since he wasn’t going to kid himself into thinking he was going to close his eyes and go to sleep—rather, he’d be closing his eyes and getting hard as he relived the after dinner feast he’d enjoyed—when his phone rang.
Emma.
“Hey!” He grabbed his phone up immediately, sliding the answer button across the screen with his thumb with the phone already on his way to his ear. “I’m glad you called.”
She wanted to talk as badly as he did, he assumed. Was unsatisfied with the way things stood between them. Deeply so.
“I need you to check Bill Heber’s location from tonight.” Her terse words didn’t fit into the postsex daze.
Sitting up, he muted the TV, some documentary about the way cheese was made, and flipped on the lamp on his nightstand.
“Come again...”
“The locations app, I need you to check it, please.”
She was sounding professional...but...familiar, too...like she had the right to call him at ten at night to ask a favor.
He yanked on a pair of basketball shorts to cover his nudity, stumbling a bit as he tried to step into them while holding them with one hand.
“What’s going on?” he asked, half hopping toward the bedroom door on his way to his office. He could check the app on his phone, but didn’t want to take it away from his ear. To stop talking to her.
“Someone was at my house tonight. They wrote ‘Leave it alone’ on my sliding-glass door in red.”
“When tonight?” She’d only been gone a little over an hour.
Holding the phone with his shoulder, he quickly backtracked to the chair by his bed, grabbed the jeans that were always laid out in case of emergency, pulled them up and reached for the shirt.
“While I was at your house.”
A dozen questions sprang immediately to mind. “Are you there now?” he asked, his unbuttoned shirt hanging on his shoulders as he grabbed his wallet, keys and gun, and slid into the shoes at the bottom of his bed.
“No. I’m at the police station, making a report. They’re there now, checking things out.”
“I’m on my way down,” he told her, disconnecting
before she could even attempt to tell him his presence wasn’t necessary.
Only to himself did he admit that, for once, his needing to be “there” didn’t have a whole lot to do with the case.
* * *
He checked his app and Bill’s whereabouts that evening, while waiting at a red light. Tossing his phone on the passenger seat next to him as the light turned green, and picking it up again at the next red light.
Bill’s phone had been in the same place all evening. His home. Right where he was supposed to be. He’d driven there from work, right at the time that fit the schedule that Jayden had for him. The man was free to come and go, of course, without reporting to his parole officer, but Jayden knew about any scheduled events like church or meetings, just because Bill had chosen to report them to him. And Bill knew that if he went anywhere without the phone app he’d agreed to carry, all bets were off as far as Jayden was concerned.
On his way into the station, he called Bill, just to make certain his phone was on. And with him. He asked Bill how he was doing and heard how the man had been watching a baseball game and his team had won. He chatted about a couple of game-winning plays. Things he and Jayden talked about pretty regularly as they both followed the same team.
The receptionist at the front desk of the Santa Raquel police station was expecting him and directed him to a small private meeting room just feet away from Chantel’s desk. The detective, a transplant from Las Sendas, just north of San Diego—via upstate New York—had worked with Jayden a time or two. And anyone who took her slender, blond frame to mean the woman lacked the strength of a larger officer, or who attempted to test that theory, would find himself hurting. How badly depended on how pissed she was.
That night she was pissed.
“Do you know where your offender, Bill Heber, was tonight?” she greeted him, standing from one of the four chairs at the wooden table—the only furniture in the room. Emma was all business, sitting next to where Chantel had been, leaving him one of the two chairs across from them. She looked expectant, waiting for him to hand over his client.
“I do,” he said, his gaze traveling over Emma quickly, but thoroughly, assuring himself she was okay without alerting anyone to the fact that he knew her intimately.
That she’d left his house dressed in the exact same clothes, but without her panties on, a little over an hour before.
He was sure she’d put them back on. And by the look on her face, she’d put their time on his lounger completely out of her immediate consciousness, as well.
“He was at home all night. Just as he should have been.”
“At home.” Chantel’s tone was skeptical. As if he’d said the man was on the moon rather than somewhere normal—like the place he lived.
“Yes.”
“And someone can verify that?”
“He lives alone, but yes, I’m certain I can get neighbors to verify that he was there. His phone moved from work to home at exactly the time it should have, and never left.”
“I’m sorry, Jay, but you and I both know that that means nothing. He could have left the phone at home,” Chantel returned.
“He never knows when I’m going to call. He knows if I do and he doesn’t pick up, he could be heading back to jail.”
“How often do you call him in the evening?”
“Once or twice a week.” He made a point of checking in randomly, unpredictably, for his clients’ own protection.
Jayden glanced at Emma. Her lips were white, her eyes wide and slightly shocked-looking. Like she couldn’t believe any of this was happening.
She’d been threatened.
He wanted one minute alone with whoever had done it.
“Bill watched the game tonight.” He named the team and the time. “He gave me a blow-by-blow of the game, not just highlights that were on the news.” He knew because he’d watched the highlights since he’d missed the game itself.
He’d been too busy having sex with Emma to even remember the game had been on.
“Whoever did this... We have a prosecutor in danger, and we can’t play around here,” he said, checking himself when he’d been about to make it a lot more personal. “I suggest you look at her other cases,” he continued. “Luke Lincoln comes immediately to mind. He’s also one of my clients. He refused the app, but we all know he’s out tonight...”
Pulling out his phone, silently castigating himself for not thinking straight enough soon enough, he dialed Lincoln, the offender no one had been able to reach on the phone since his arrest.
Luke didn’t answer. No surprise there. Officers hadn’t found him yet, and they’d been searching since dinnertime. At his sister’s house. His job. Talking to people in the area. Law enforcement in Northern California had been notified, as well.
“I’ll put out an APB,” Chantel said, leaving the room as she pulled out her phone. Leaving Jayden alone with Emma.
Her hair was mussed—from his lounger, he knew—but with the wild, curly look she normally wore, and with the fact that it was getting closer to midnight, a bit of disarray would look more ordinary than not.
“You okay?” he asked, trying not to make it personal but failing as her gaze met his.
She nodded. “You think it’s Luke?”
“Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know.” She wrapped her arms around her middle. “He won in court today. What’s there for me to ‘leave alone’?”
“His parole hearing. He’s warning you not to show up at that hearing.” The facts were completely obvious to Jayden.
“I have nothing to do with that. I’m not the prosecutor on that case.”
“No, but you know as well as I do that the parole board will welcome any input you have to give them.”
She nodded but didn’t look convinced. “It makes more sense that it was Bill. You questioned him today. Maybe he figured out that he’s being looked at.”
“Unless he knows that Suzie’s been hurt again, I highly doubt that he’d jump to that conclusion. I check up on him regularly.”
“Asking him to verify things you found on the location app?”
“Not always,” he told her. “But sometimes. I hardly think that would have him jumping to conclusions...”
“Why else would you be asking him about times he was in Santa Raquel?” Sitting forward, her arms on the table, Emma faced him. “He knows I know he got away with murder. And that I’m going to do everything I can to be sure he pays for that.”
There was no reaching her on this one. She was so damned convinced.
That meant that for all three of them—her, Bill and himself—Jayden had to stay on top of every aspect of the case, everything she was pursuing where Bill was concerned, to prevent a grave injustice.
Chapter 13
The last thing Emma needed was to be all alone in a quiet little room with Jayden Powell. A detective’s office that was usually buzzing with energy, activity and noise when Emma visited was mostly dark and quiet on the other side of the glass from where they sat.
It was all too intimate. And emotional. Way too tempting to a shadow side that refused to go away. Her lesser self was pushing her way up and out with such force, Emma was having a hard time controlling her.
“How long were you home before you noticed?” Jayden’s soft voice, that look in his eye, made her forget, for just a second, that she was completely creeped out.
“Less than a minute,” she told him. “I saw it as soon as I walked in the door.” From his house. Where they’d had wild and intense sex. No. She shook her head. “He was in my backyard,” she said, needing him to understand just how dangerous his offender really was. She loved that he gave his guys the benefit of the doubt. Many deserved it.
But some just did not.
“He got in through the community gate, which he could have done by waiti
ng close by and following someone else in. Our gate takes a moment to close because it’s so big and heavy, and there’s time for a second vehicle to slide through...”
“There should be surveillance, then, if that’s the case.”
“Chantel has already put in a request for a warrant to view the tape. Hopefully they’ll have it yet tonight.” And then he’d see that Bill Heber was a serious threat.
“It’s possible that whoever was there climbed a wall to get in.”
“Officers are checking the perimeter of the community,” she said, feeling creeped out about the whole thing. All the manpower on her behalf...it was more attention than she wanted.
And yet...she didn’t want to just go home and pretend it hadn’t happened, either.
“A prosecutor being threatened...that’s a big deal for all of us. For so many reasons. It puts our judicial system at risk.”
“I know. And the fact that he climbed my wall—it’s six feet of brick—or made it over my back gate, which is also six feet...”
“I’m assuming someone checked to see that the lock on the gate hadn’t been tampered with?” he asked.
“It hadn’t been. I wish it had. Then they’d know where to brush for prints. As it is, they’re brushing randomly, hoping to get something...”
Jayden’s hair was askew, like he’d been in bed when she’d called him. She was only now noticing. That told her just how out of sorts she really was. The shirt and jeans? Those she recognized. Figured if she got close enough, she might smell herself on them.
Could Chantel?
Oh, God, if anyone knew what they’d done, she’d...
“I thought I was being followed a couple of times this week.” She blurted the words to distract herself from thoughts of needing to be safely back in his arms.
She could take care of herself.
“I told Chantel about it.”
And she hadn’t told him. Either time. Because it hadn’t seemed professionally necessary for him to know since she’d been certain she’d been overreacting. And personally...well they weren’t...personal. They were just...having sex.
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