by Penny Dee
“There’s nothing to tell.”
Again, my eyebrow shot up. “You’re secretly meeting with prostitutes. I think that’s newsworthy.”
“For no other reason than to find out what the hell is happening.”
There was no need to rehash his reasons for meeting with Rosie and Nancy. They had been very straightforward in what they were doing for Cade. He needed them to be his eyes and ears on the street. He bought them pie.
“It’s not just that,” I said, my heart thumping in my ears. “There’s a gap between us and it’s widening every day.”
He lifted his brows. “What gap—?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.” The fire in my eyes met the darkness in his. “I had to fuck myself the other night because you weren’t there to do it. You’re never there to do it.”
“Jesus Christ, Indy.” He shook his head and sat back in the booth.
I glanced around the room. Apart from a mom and her two kids down at the far end of the diner, and a lone lumber worker nursing a cup of coffee a few tables away, the diner was quiet.
“It’s the truth,” I said.
He shook his head. “We’re not doing this here.”
“Fine.” I stood up. “We’ll do it at home.”
He stood up, too, and threw a couple of twenties onto the table.
When I walked away, he stopped me, gently placing his hand on my wrist. His eyes softened. “I love you, you know that, right?”
“That’s not what this is about,” I said, stepping away from his touch. “See you at home.”
He followed me home in his car, and he was behind me when I ascended the steps to our front door. And when I walked into the kitchen, he was right there, behind me. I stood on one side of the island and he stood on the other. Two coffee cups left over from earlier still sat on the countertop between us.
“Do you blame me for not saving Isaac?” I asked, the idea suddenly occurring to me. “Is that it? Do you blame me for him dying.”
Not that Isaac could have been saved. Even if his injuries had happened in a fully equipped ER, he would’ve still died.
“No!” he said.
“And Tex? Do you blame me for his death, too,” I snapped.
“What? No!”
“Even though I wasn’t the one who worked on him. I suppose it was my goddamn fault that he started his car before running inside to grab something. My fault he slipped and knocked himself out—”
“Stop it!” he said darkly.
“My fault he fell on the garage door remote so it closed, trapping him inside with all those car fumes —”
“Stop!”
“Well, it wasn’t my fault. Just like it wasn’t your fault Isaac was shot dead—”
“I said stop!” he yelled, slapping the coffee cup across the countertop and sending it smashing to the floor.
He was angry.
But so was I.
So I slapped the other coffee cup and sent it flying, too.
“You don’t get to do this!” I yelled at him. “You don’t get to blame me for Isaac.”
“Blame you? I don’t blame you. I blame me!” he roared, pointing to his broad chest. “It’s my fault he died. It’s my fault he was there. If I hadn’t called him that night he would’ve still been sleeping in his bed.”
“Isaac was killed because he was fucking with the heroin trade.”
“No! He was killed because I was pissed at him and wanted to fuck with him by getting him out of bed at 2 am. Maverick was on callout with me. Not him!”
He fell forward, his palms slapping against the flat plane of the countertop.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said with a shaky voice.
He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the pain to subside. I could see his guilt had gotten the best of him. It had festered inside of him. It had been chewing him up for weeks, rotting his usual, easy-going nature.
“He wouldn’t have been there if I hadn’t called him,” he rasped.
“If they didn’t get him then, they were going to get him another time.”
He looked up, his face pained and my chest was heavy with emotion when I saw the torment burning like wildfire in his agonized eyes.
“Isaac died because of me,” he whispered.
“Stop,” I said. “You know that’s not true.”
His fist pounded the countertop, veins as taut as ropes winding around his wide forearm.
“That’s the thing, Indy.” His throat worked as he swallowed. “It is.”
He turned his back and began to walk away.
“Is that it?” I called after him. “Is that the reason you haven’t been around? Or do you just not want me anymore?”
Cade swung back to face me. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“You haven’t touched me in weeks. And the one time we do start to make love, you pull away from me and hide in the bathroom.”
He brows shot in and his tight jaw ticked.
“I’m mind-fucked, in every way,” he said darkly.
I shook my head. He didn’t get to brush it off that easy.
“Stop pushing me away,” I begged.
“I'm not," he said gruffly.
“If you don’t want me—”
“Not want you?” He stalked back to me and grabbed hold of my arms. “You’re the reason I fucking breathe!”
“Then why won’t you let me back in?” I cried.
“Because I’m fucking terrified!” he yelled.
He let me go and took a step backwards, stunned by his own admission. His eyes were wild, his chest heaving, his mouth wet as he dragged his tongue over his lips.
“Of me?” I asked. “Of us?”
The emotion was bright in his eyes. His pulse thumped against his throat. As he ran his hand through his hair, he sucked in a deep breath to steady his nerves. Energy bounced off him.
“Losing Isaac broke my heart,” he said, the agony in his voice as evident as the pain on his face. “But losing you would end me. Do you understand that? It would kill me.”
I reached up and smoothed my fingers across his beautiful face. His admission slowly tempered our fight.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
“Neither was Isaac. Now he’s dead.” His face softened, and for the briefest of moments, he looked pained and . . . tormented. He turned away, his broad shoulders almost blocking the light from the window.
“I miss him,” he said hoarsely.
We stood across from each other, only a few feet separating us, but the distance seemed much greater.
“Please don’t push me away,” I pleaded softly. Tears burned in my eyes. “I love you so much.” I wrapped my arms around my waist and let the first tear fall. “Because I couldn’t stand losing you for a second time.”
CADE
I turned away from the window and looked at my queen with her arms wrapped around her waist, and shame rolled through me. In my grief and guilt over Isaac’s death, I had abandoned her because I was so distracted by my lust for revenge and my own self-loathing and blame. I had shut her out. I had hurt her. I hadn’t touched her in weeks, and now she thought I didn’t want her anymore. And why wouldn’t she think that? It’s what anyone would think.
Fuck, I was an asshole.
I was spinning out of control.
She was the most important thing in the world to me and I was torturing her every time I walked away from her. With every missed kiss. With every missed night in our bed.
My anger dampened and I went to her. I closed the space between us, and when she turned away, I turned her back to face me and lifted her chin so she had no choice but to look at me.
“There is nothing more important in this world to me than you,” I said softly.
Tears slid down her cheeks and I gently wiped them away with my thumbs, feeling my own heart shatter with her pain. I bent my head to kiss her damp face. She exhaled deeply and I felt her body soften against mine
.
“You’re such an asshole,” she whispered.
I held her face in my hands and pressed my lips to hers, opening her mouth with my tongue and taking command of her lips. She melted against me, but I could feel her anger and the hurt in her kiss and I hated myself for the pain I was causing her. Words weren’t going to fix this. I was going to show her how I felt about her.
I wiped away a lock of hair from her face and looked into her big brown eyes.
“I’m sorry I’ve been shutting you out.” I cradled her face in my hands and kissed the corner of her mouth. “I’m sorry for hurting you.” I kissed the other corner. “I could live a million years and never deserve you.” I slid my tongue between her lips teasingly and felt my longing for her take up inside of me. “But I love you so damn much it hurts.” I thrust my tongue in and felt her melt into me. She moaned against my mouth and my body raged with need. My cock hardened as my fingers tangled through her hair and I kissed her hard until she was breathless.
When I broke away, I raised her hand to my lips and brushed them against the silver and turquoise band on her ring finger. It was the ring I had put there when making love to her on her return from Seattle.
“This should be permanent,” I said.
She looked up at me and blinked away her tears. “Don’t even think about asking me to marry you after you’ve made me cry.”
A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. Damn, she was cute.
I loved her so fucking much.
I pulled her to my chest and held her tightly, dragging in the scent of her deep into me. “What about after the orgasm I give you?”
She looked up at me and raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t —”
I kissed the words from her lips and then pulled back, giving her a dark look. “Not yet. But I will.”
The flame ignited and I lifted her up, my cock throbbing as she wrapped her lovely, long legs around me, and I carried her into our bedroom. And when we reached the point where my guilt about Isaac’s death usually took over and dampened my desire with blame, I pushed it away until all I was consumed with was my desire for her. I took my time and removed her clothes, one item at a time, replacing them with kisses, until she was naked. She moaned restlessly beneath my touch, her fingers pressing into the nape of my neck as I moved lower, my tongue leading a damp trail down her warm body until I buried it in her slick and perfect pussy. Her hands dragged through my hair and lifted my head. Buried between her thighs, I had no choice but to look at her.
“Don’t even think about stopping,” she breathed.
I cocked an eyebrow at her. “Oh, baby, I have no intention of stopping.”
With one lick into her slippery flesh I sent her head back into the pillow and a powerful moan rasped from her lips. Her hands tugged at my hair and her hips drove up to meet every lick as I fucked her with my tongue. And when I made her come, her thighs caged me in their warmth as she clenched and writhed in ecstasy, her fingers and toes curling into the sheets.
I rose up from between her legs and eased up her body, blanketing her in my heat.
“See,” I growled, desperate to be inside her. “No stopping.”
I kissed her then. Mindless with need. Wild with arousal. And because I couldn’t wait one more minute to have her, I pushed deep into her, right to the very hilt, my cock throbbing at the sensation of her body tightening around me.
“I’m going to make you come until you beg me to stop,” I warned, driving my hips into hers and snapping free from the chains of guilt I’d shackled to me for weeks.
She arched her back with the pleasure and dug her nails into my shoulders, her body squirming hungrily for me. I thrust into her again and again, my mouth devouring the moans escaping her lips. My body heated with lust and I was drunk on the sensation of her tight pussy gripping me, milking me, licking at the length of me. I grabbed her wrists and pinned her beneath me, rocking hard into her, losing myself in the bliss of bringing her to one orgasm after another. I kissed her jaw, her neck, the soft spot just below her ear, and felt her tremble beneath me. My body blanketed her, moving against her, grinding into her, my mouth and tongue fucking her mouth as I drove into her body, over and over again, until the tension burst and I came with so much force it blinded me. For a moment, I was suspended in nothing but euphoric white light where everything else but my ecstasy was gone. The world. Time. Everything. Simply gone as I floated in a blissful, ethereal light. I collapsed against her with a moan and sank into the mattress, my body drained, my mind delirious. I drew her to me and kissed her again, this time slow and leisurely, my head foggy and vague after such a powerful orgasm.
The heat of her body engulfed me and my eyes grew heavy. Beside me, I felt my queen relax and her breathing slow down. Entangled in each other, we slept, and for the first time in weeks I felt my entire body relax and my mind grow still. I don’t know how long we slept for, but it was still light when we awoke and began to make love again. We lost time in each other. Neither of us interested in leaving the room. We fucked. We made love. We talked and kissed and fucked some more until our bodies were soaked in sweat and slick from our lovemaking.
When my phone started ringing I ignored it. I just wanted an afternoon where nothing but Indy existed. No pain. No grief. No psychopath out to destroy me and my brothers. Just me and my girl lost in our own little bubble of pleasure.
But as soon as my phone stopped ringing, it started again.
Again, I ignored it. Because Indy was sliding down my body, leading a trail of kisses from my chest to my stomach, her tongue sliding over the bumps of my abs as she made her way toward my cock. And call me insane, but no fucking phone call was going to interrupt what was going to happen next. Thankfully, my phone stopped just as she wrapped her perfect, full lips around the head of my cock and fuuuuuuck—I loved the way she gave head. Nothing, no one, compared to her.
When my phone started again, it was easy to ignore because my entire body was alive with sensation as the love of my life expertly fucked me with her mouth.
A fucking bomb could’ve gone off in that moment and I could not have cared less.
Except Indy cared. She ripped her mouth from my about-to-come cock and frowned at my ringing cell.
“I think you’d better answer that,” she said.
“And I think you’d better finish what you were doing, baby, unless you want to give your man a serious case of blue balls.”
When my phone stopped, she paused to look at it, then satisfied it wasn’t going to ring again, resumed what she was doing, which was making me crazy with her lips, tongue, and her warm mouth.
When my pleasure rose I raised my hips to meet the torture of her mouth and she sucked me in deep, taking me right to the hilt. Indy didn’t have a gag reflex, which meant she could take all ten inches without batting an eye, and damn, it felt good driving all of me into her mouth and into the back of her throat.
When my phone rang again, she tore her mouth off me in frustration and reached for it.
“No!” I breathed desperately. I was about to come. But Indy ignored me and handed me my cell. It was Bull.
“This better be fucking important,” I snapped into the phone.
“Get your ass over to Irish’s now,” came his abrupt reply.
“It’ll have to wait.”
“You get yourself over here now. Someone shot Irish in the head.”
CADE
Irish was dead. His brains splattered across the wall he was slumped up against.
“What the fuck happened?” I asked Buckman.
“Would it mean anything if I said you couldn’t be here?” he asked as he watched us walk into his crime scene.
The look I gave him told him no, it wouldn’t matter.
We wanted answers and we weren’t leaving.
He sighed. “Suicide. By the looks of it.”
Bull and I shared a look of doubt. Granted, Irish held a gun in his hand, but it could easily have been placed there afte
r someone had shot him.
This didn’t make sense. Irish wasn’t suicidal.
“Oh, for crying out loud!” came a familiar female voice. Bull and I looked up in time to see Sheriff Pamela walk in. She was the Sheriff based over in Humphrey. She gave Buckman a stern look. “Why don’t you invite the whole goddamn town into the crime scene?”
“What are you doing here?” Buckman asked.
“You know the Watermelon Fields are considered No Man’s Land,” Pamela said.
She was right. Irish’s home was in a part of town just past the watermelon fields known as No Man’s Land. The area had been the subject of great dispute between the two towns of Destiny and Humphrey since the late 1800s. Because the towns were both located in different counties, it also meant No Man’s Land fell under the jurisdictions of both county’s sheriff’s departments. I’d heard stories of the sheriffs flipping a coin to see who would take on an investigation.
“We were here first, Pamela. We were first on scene, so—”
Sheriff Pamela didn’t give Buckman a chance to finish. Instead, she looked at us. “You boys know better than to creep around a crime scene. Now you skedaddle out of here.”
Two nights ago, she had been on her knees in front of Bull. Neither of them would admit to what was going on between them, and it was amusing to see them pretend to not know one another when they were in public. The affair was a smudge on both their reputations. At first, it had been a one-night stand. But that one-night stand had been going on for weeks. Bull simply smiled at her, one of those secretive smiles full of promises about what he was going to do to her later, before he led me outside.
It was ironic to see Bull pussy-whipped by the police.
“What the fucking hell happened?” I asked him.
“Freebird and Irish had a disagreement back at the clubhouse last night. They left separately, but neither of them showed up this afternoon.” He nodded to the prospect who was leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette and looking a little grey. “The prospect found him about half an hour ago. Freebird is still missing.”