by Addison Fox
“Aish? You okay?” His voice was husky in the room. Even with the need that pulsed in his words, she heard the concern, as well.
“I’m good.”
Although he didn’t move away, his hands shifted to settle on her shoulders. “Do you want to do this?”
“Yes.”
Dark eyebrows lifted over those golden irises. “Then why are you crying?”
“For you.”
“Why?”
“You’re a good man, Trey. One of the very best I’ve ever known or will know. And the reason we’re here is because someone has made it their business to make people think otherwise.”
“Do you think that’s why we’re here?”
Although she hadn’t given that much thought, now that the idea had dug in, she couldn’t think of anything else.
If it weren’t for Barton Evigan—and wasn’t that a depressing person to think about while in the midst of sex?—she and Trey would never have even considered the need for a fake engagement. If there was no fake engagement there’d be no forced intimacy. No forced intimacy, no barriers dropped to have sex.
It was that simple.
Even as it was complicated as hell.
“Isn’t it?”
“It’s not why I’m here.” He trailed the tip of one finger over her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw. “Are you?”
It wasn’t but how did she tell him she’d wanted to be here for years? That despite all her apprehension and terror they’d ruin what they have, that she wanted him all the same?
“I suppose not.”
“Suppose?” Trey’s hand fell. “I’ve known you nearly a lifetime, Aish. You don’t suppose anything. You know.”
And there it was, once again. He knew her. “Yes. I want to be here.”
“Me, too.”
“What if we ruin everything?” Her fear spilled out, oozing between them.
“You think I don’t worry about the same? You’re my best friend. You’re my port in the storm and you know me better than anyone. I don’t want to lose that.”
“Me, either.”
“But then I realized something.” Before she could answer, he kept on. “I won’t lose you. I will never lose you, Aish. You matter to me and nothing, no force on earth, is going to change that.”
They wanted each other—of that Aisha was beyond certain—but the sincerity in Trey’s entire manner had changed. He wanted what was between them, yes, but he hadn’t dismissed her questions.
Or how much their friendship mattered to him, too.
And in the end, it was that sincerity that calmed her fears.
Trey Colton was a part of her life and nothing was going to change that. They might be changing the dynamic between them, but in the end, they couldn’t change the fundamentals of who they were.
Of what they’d always seen in one another.
But they might find a path to something more.
* * *
Trey practically held his breath, waiting for Aisha’s response. He ached for her, and his body was strung out on a very thin cord because of it. But nothing—not the physical needs that had exploded between them or the tension that came with sexual attraction—had a damn thing on how desperately he wanted to reassure her.
Nothing would ever change how he felt about her. She was all the things he’d said and so much more. And he wanted her to believe him because he’d meant every word.
But was it enough?
The thought had barely crossed his mind when her arms came around his neck again, her lips soft against his. But it was her whisper that came next, a subtle movement of lips, that confirmed it.
“Please, Trey. Make love to me.”
Need exploded through him once more, cratering his self-control and the tight leash he’d kept on his body. On the desperate need to join with her.
How had they ignored it for so long?
Because here, now, with Aisha in his arms, that was the only qualifier Trey could put on their relationship. Both of them had been so determined to ignore what was there, as if it were some sort of self-defense mechanism to protect their friendship.
Only now, he saw what that restraint had also done. Kept them apart for so very long.
Still in awe, Trey resumed his exploration of her womanly curves, the warm flesh of her back nearly singeing his fingers as he slipped the dress from her body. The silky material floated to the floor, pooling at her feet, and he shifted her lightly so she wouldn’t get tangled up in the material.
That shift in position was enough to press them both against the bed, their thighs flush with the mattress. Aisha sat down, clad in nothing but her bra and panties. A small smile flirted with the corners of her lips as Aisha stared up at him. “I think you’re wearing too many clothes.”
“Your sound, responsible sheriff to the bitter end.”
Although he’d meant it in jest, he didn’t miss the narrowing of her eyes or her understanding of what each day cost him. He was Mr. By-the-Book because he couldn’t afford to be otherwise. He needed people to know he was responsible and worthy of their trust. Worthy of their vote.
Funny how it was Aisha who’d always understood that. While his cousins and friends and fellow deputies always urged him to cut loose, it was Aisha who knew his reasons for walking the straight and narrow.
She reached up and tugged on his tie, pulling him down for a kiss, murmuring as she closed that distance. “You don’t have to be responsible in here.”
“I’m always responsible.”
“I think you’ve just laid down a challenge. A very sexy one.” She stood once more, her hands going to the buttons of his shirt. He’d shed his sport coat and tie when they’d gotten into the car earlier and he was suddenly grateful for the foresight. It took mere moments for her to slip each button from its mooring until the shirt lay open down the front. She ran her hands over his chest and up over his shoulders, slipping the dress shirt from his body before those clever fingers returned to the hem of his T-shirt, slipping that up and over his torso. He grabbed the material, dragging the soft cotton off the rest of the way before wrapping his arms around her, desperate for the skin-to-skin contact of their bodies.
Anxious to feel her.
“You’ve been working out.”
Although he’d always kept in shape, both as a matter of personal pride and as a function of his job, the Avalanche Killer case had him spending even more time in the gym. Their facility on-site at work helped fill random hours when he needed to be alone with his thoughts, puzzling through one aspect or another of what they’d already investigated.
The weights or run on the treadmill had given him time to collect his thoughts, using the physical test to his body as a chance to free his mind. To give himself time to take the random and process it into some form of order and understanding.
It was only now, the admiration shining in Aisha’s dark gaze, that Trey realized there had been another benefit. One far more personal and exhilarating.
“You keep feeding me pizza. What else could I do?”
“Very impressive, Sheriff Colton.”
She leaned in and pressed a kiss to the rounded curve of his shoulder, following the line of muscle to his collarbone and then on down over his chest. Little darts of heat followed the skim of her lips, the heat of her tongue, as she erotically traced his skin. It was sexy and tantalizing, and need pushed up another notch as her lips created a firestorm.
His body pressed insistently against his slacks, his erection straining for freedom. Despite their current situation—and how far things had already gone—Trey sensed a momentous shift in the air as her fingers slipped to the clasp of his slacks. Aisha freed the closure and pressed her hand to thick flesh, and Trey was lost.
And, he humbly realized, pressing his forehead to hers, found.
I
n the physical, yes, but the emotional, as well. The tight rein he’d always kept on his attraction for her lifted, freed at last to explore all of the woman he knew and loved.
A lifetime of need and want suddenly exploded like a fireball. He laid gentle fingers around her wrist, stilling her movements as they grew nearly unbearable. “I want you so damn bad, Aish.”
Her chocolate-brown eyes flashed in the soft light, so deep he wondered he didn’t drown. “I want you, too.”
Easing her hand into his, he linked their fingers together as he pressed his mouth to hers once more. The simple act of kissing, their tongues meeting and mating in the moonlight, was one more example of how good things were between them. How they moved in sync, each understanding the other, from their matched breath to the easy way they sank into each other.
Choosing to savor, even as his body clamored for him to rush, Trey walked a sharp edge. And knew this tightrope hovered over a soft, warm landing.
Suddenly conscious of too much clothing, he made quick work of it all, dropping each remaining piece into a careless pile. Aisha reached for the clasp of her bra before he stopped her, anxious to remove the last few pieces himself. And when her breasts spilled into his hands moments later, Trey knew a bone-deep satisfaction. She was warm. Willing.
And his.
* * *
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Not this good and fulfilling and necessary. Those silly thoughts kept filling her mind, a sort of disbelief that pulsed in counterpoint to the truth.
It was this good.
They’d barely begun and she was more fulfilled than any intimacy she’d ever shared before.
Holding her tight in his arms as he moved them both to the bed, Aisha knew a new definition to the word necessary. She’d always assumed breath, food and water were the only elements to fit that category, but it looked like there was a fourth.
Trey Colton.
They’d both slipped off the last barrier of underwear and now lay nestled against each other naked. It was the most erotic sensation of her life as the heat of his skin seemed to paint every inch of hers. Their breaths met and mingled in the small cocoon of intimacy that wrapped them together. Although she’d had sex since her breakup with Kenneth, Aisha was forced in that moment to admit the truth to herself.
She hadn’t made love.
“Aisha?”
He so often called her Aish that the use of her full name, quietly spoken, pulled at her.
“You okay?”
“I’m good.” She nodded.
“You went somewhere there.”
“Just thinking.”
His eyes widened as his mouth formed an exaggerated O. “I’m doing it wrong.”
“You’re doing everything exactly right. Which was suddenly apparent to me, hence the moment of quiet awe.”
“Quiet awe?” The slightest edge of concern that had teased the edges of his gaze vanished. “That’s quite a compliment.”
“I meant it.”
“Then let me say, without any reservation, ditto.”
“Copying my paper, Trey Colton?” The words spilled out in a tease, made that much sillier by the fact he’d never so much as borrowed her homework notes.
And reinforced by the fact that she’d known him long enough that he could have.
In the end, Aisha realized it was that truth that drove them both forward. Roots, long planted, gave them the base for the change in their relationship. And the strength of them—the sheer, solid depth—would see them through this new dimension.
Buoyed by the knowledge and more than willing to push the last bit of fear aside, she ran a hand over his cheek. “I have protection in the end table. I think it’s time to put all this quiet awe to very good use.”
He did as she asked, pulling the new box of condoms she’d picked up the week before on a mix of intuition and insight.
“They’re new,” she said, her voice low.
“Which only proves how much of a wavelength you and I operate on.”
“Oh?”
“There’s a matched box, brand-spanking-new, in my end table.”
It was silly and not at all surprising as they were two healthy adults, but it was all completely wonderful. And at his words, something inside her heart cracked wide-open at the idea he’d anticipated this, too.
“I think we’d better get busy.”
The double entendre wasn’t lost on him and he wasted no time in proving her right.
The words that always formed the basis of their friendship—the water to those deep, strong roots—faded as they forged a new path. One based on friendship, yes, but on something more.
A new sort of bond that would live between them forever more.
Trey shifted her to her back, his weight settling over her. He mouth was hot on her skin, the heady combination of lips and teeth and tongue tracking a path from neck to chest before he stopped, taking time with her breasts.
Light exploded before her eyes, pleasure curling low and deep in her belly as his mouth explored first one breast, then the other. Luxurious strokes of his tongue hardened her nipples to tight points, that crater of need rocketing through her nerve endings in one continuous roll of sensation.
The quiet man she knew—the one who’d teased about living by the book—clearly had a well of sensuality that he kept firmly tamped down. After a generous and thorough exploration of her breasts, he moved on, his lips teasing the sensitized skin of her lower stomach.
But it was when he moved lower still that Aisha knew a sense of wonder that humbled even as it exhilarated, a steady, insistent pulse beat that grew with mounting force.
Her fingers sank into his short-cropped hair as he pleasured her with his mouth. Wave after wave of mindless sensation took over the moment, pushing away her ability to think.
This was feeling. Raw. Emotional. Essential.
He kept up a steady rhythm, driving her body higher and higher to the point of breaking.
Only when the world finally exploded, it was the opposite of destruction.
It was life. Glorious and wild. Free and open to all that was still to come.
Aisha wanted to lie in that beautiful glow, his arms already cradling her as he lay back beside her. Yet even as her body still rocketed with aftershocks, she wanted more.
Craved it.
Reaching for one of the condoms he’d laid on the end table after opening the box, her fingers closed over the slim foil and she made quick work of the package, shifting her attention to his straining erection. A hard groan escaped his lips as she fitted the condom, and Aisha knew a sense of power that filled her once more with wonder.
He was hers.
And this moment was theirs.
Whatever had come before or would come after had no bearing on the now. On the steady hum of desire that drove them both.
She straddled his hips, moving over him so that she could guide him into her body, then sinking to take him in fully. That glorious sensation of being stretched added sparks to the aftershocks of her first orgasm, pressing on with the greedy intention of having more.
Of taking more.
Trey’s large hands came over her hips to both steady and guide as they set a rhythm between them. Pleasure became the only goal once more, as together they pushed one another on toward a peak.
Toward a summit they’d scale and share together.
She’d expected to feel a little sad, that the relationship they had was passing away. But as the heat and need and sheer demands of her body pushed her toward another orgasm, Aisha realized how wrong she’d been and how misplaced her fears.
As he pushed one final time, filling her completely, she knew a rare moment of perfection.
And the absolute knowledge that their relationship hadn’t faded away. Instead, it had grown to make them both more.
To make friends, lovers.
And to cement the love they had for one another into an unbreakable bond.
* * *
The call came in at 3:00 a.m. Trey and Aisha had just finished another bout of lovemaking, their bodies sated as both were nearly asleep, when his phone rumbled on her bedside table.
An hour later, Trey stood over the dead woman, a steaming disposable cup of coffee in hand as the August breeze swirled around him.
Hell, if he wasn’t staring down at a body, he’d have enjoyed sitting out on his back porch, a beer in hand as the cool mountain breezes kept him company, Aisha at his side.
Aisha...
He tamped down on that, his emotions still raw and wild from the power of making love with her. Of making love with his best friend.
Instead, he focused on the corpse before him.
It’s not Skye.
That thought had kept him company along with the breeze, floating as steady and insistent through his mind as his deputies worked around him, photographing and cataloging the site while they waited for the medical examiner.
The hair and blood sample analysis that had come in earlier in the week on the package they’d received at the station had definitively proved Skye wasn’t the victim. Now, looking down at the woman who’d died, Trey had another quiet moment of relief. He had no doubt the ME would confirm the blood and hair samples received were a match for the poor young woman who lay before them.
It did little to battle the ongoing fear that something had happened to Skye, but there was comfort in knowing she hadn’t been left discarded in the woods like this unfortunate soul.
Aisha had wanted to come with him, but he’d encouraged her to stay warm and in bed. There’d be enough time later to analyze everything. But was it selfish that he wanted her to stay home, untouched by this evil? Even if it were only for a few hours more.
She was his partner in this. She’d proved it, day in and day out since they’d found the bodies on the side of the mountain, and she’d been there for him ever since. He wanted her take on this latest terrifying discovery made by a couple of newlyweds who’d stumbled out of their camping tent. Even now, the duo sat huddled together on the far side of the discovery site, wrapped in light blankets, despite the warm temperatures. A purported late-night craving that required another package of chocolate bars in their SUV parked offsite had sent them out of their tent.