Doc

by Dahlia West, Caleb

  Things eventually wound down. Caleb noticed she’d won a bit more often than she’d lost, and they grabbed their jackets as they headed toward the driveway. He slapped her ass and she yelped on her way out the front door. She rolled her eyes at him. “I think they bought it, Barnes,” she said. “Don’t oversell it.”

  Caleb grinned at her. “Oh they know you’re not my girlfriend.”

  Izzy stopped and gaped at him. “What?”

  He chuckled. “I told them yesterday afternoon.”

  “So me being all touchy feeling and practically making out with you every ten minutes was—?”

  “Pretty nice, I thought. Best poker night I’ve had in a while, anyway.”

  Izzy gave him a stern look. “Oh, you’re going to get it!”

  She reached out to slap his arm. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her in close so she was pressed against his chest. He leaned down and whispered, “That’s the plan, Izzy.”

  Chapter 22

  He’d broken the speed limit on the way home and now it was practically a race up the front steps. Caleb unlocked the door and stepped inside first. He reached behind him and pulled her in after him. The front door closed with a thud and he snapped the deadbolt. Inside the house, Caleb shed his jacket and Izzy followed suit. He gripped her hips as they passed through the doorway and into the darkened bedroom.

  “You have that look in your eye,” she told him.

  Caleb pulled her close and pressed his lips to her throat. “What look?”

  “The battering ram look.”

  “You deserve it,” he told her, sweeping her hair off her shoulder.

  “With that attitude, you’ll never learn. Here,” she said with a sly grin, “let me show you.”

  Caleb complied as she pushed his hands away. She took hold of the waistband of his jeans and unbuttoned them. “Slow and steady wins the race, Barnes.”

  “I don’t need lessons, Izzy,” he replied as she slid down his zipper excruciatingly slowly. She pushed his jeans and briefs down to this thighs.

  “Just shut up and take notes,” she told him.

  She hooked her leg around his ankles and pushed on his chest. He was hobbled by his state of half-undress and blocked by the bed behind him. He couldn’t stop himself from falling backwards. He landed on the bed as Izzy sank to her knees in front of him.

  “Gently does it,” she told him despite the fact that she’d just thrown him down. She gripped his cock in her hand and stroked him. He groaned. Her hands were surprisingly soft. He wondered how he hadn’t noticed that before. She cupped his balls with her other hand and squeezed.

  “Goddamn,” he whispered hoarsely. She hadn’t hurt him, though. Far from it, actually. She handled all his most sensitive parts with skill and precision. He jerked a little, though, when her hot little tongue touched his slit.

  “Izzy,” he breathed.

  “Shh,” she told him and swirled the head.

  Caleb never asked for blowjobs. It had always seemed like a douchebag thing to do. But he wasn’t paying Izzy. She definitely wanted to be here and he had to admit that from this angle she certainly looked like she was enjoying herself. He watched with rapt attention as she swept her lips along the ridge. A single drop of pre-cum beaded on the head. She let it fall on her tongue.

  “Goddamn, woman,” he said quietly as she took him in her mouth, moaning appreciatively as she slid him in.

  She worked his shaft as her fingertips lightly brushed his heavy sac underneath. Caleb’s hands gripped the sheets on either side of him. This was a serious test of his control right here. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a woman’s mouth on him, but he knew it had never been with anyone as beautiful as the one who was attending to him now.

  She took him all the way and then back out, dragging her lips and tongue along the length of him. It was a gentle, maddeningly slow fucking unlike anything Caleb was used to. He never wanted it to end, but of course it had to, and fairly quickly or he was going to come to his end and he wasn’t quite ready for that. He let go of the sheets and put his hands on her shoulders. “Enough,” he said as he gently pushed her back.

  Izzy licked her lips and smiled up at him. “You sure?”

  Caleb took her by the arms, pulled her up, and laid her on the bed next to him. “I think I got it.” He yanked off her jeans and panties and tossed them aside. Her soft, white skin nearly glowed in the moonlight. He grabbed her knees and shoved them apart roughly. She gasped. “What was it? Oh, right,” he teased. “Nice and gentle, I remember.”

  He lowered himself between her legs and cupped her there, pressing his fingers against her mound. Izzy moaned and raised her hips off the mattress. “Now you slip it in,” he announced, parting her lips with his left hand. “Slowly. Gotta remember slowly.” With his right hand, he ran his fingers across her opening and pushed the middle one inside her, just a bit past the first knuckle. “You want to go in slow and find the sweet spot.” He slid into her by degrees, listening to her sharp breathing. “Hmmm,” he teased. “Let’s see if I can find it.”

  He curled the finger back toward himself until she gasped.

  “Oh, God!” she cried.

  “Finesse it. Isn’t that what you do?” he asked her as he pumped his finger in and out, grazing the pad along her sweet spot each time, he pulled out and pushed back in. “Just gently,” he crooned. “Until it gives way.”

  Izzy pressed her hands on the mattress and pushed her hips up to meet him. Caleb grinned at her. “Oh, I think I’m all in now,” he told her. She thrashed on the bed, trying to fuck herself with his hand. Caleb enjoyed watching her on the edge of out of control. “I think I’m missing something. What could it be? I thought I had it right. Slide it in slowly, feel for the sweet spot.” He enjoyed her desperation as she struggled. “What could it be?”

  “Caleb!” she growled at him, clearly getting frustrated.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, nodding. “I remember now. Tension. I think we’ve got that, don’t we?”

  “Caleb!” she shouted again.

  “Tension and… I’m trying to recall.”

  “Please!”

  “Pressure,” he said decisively.

  He leaned down and fastened his mouth over her mound. He searched the damp curls for the hard nub of her clit. “Oh, God!” she cried as he sucked gently and teased insistently with his tongue.

  Izzy’s whole body tensed, right before Caleb pushed himself away from her, his lips and finger leaving her at the same time.

  “What?” she demanded. “What the hell?!”

  He grinned down at her. Her hair was plastered to her forehead, her chest was heaving. He might have thought she was in the throes of ecstasy if it weren’t for the glare she was giving him. If she had her gun right now, things would end badly. He chuckled. “I’m sorry. Did you want to finish yourself?”

  “You son of a—!”

  But Caleb took mercy on her and planted his lips on hers. He knew she could taste the saltiness of her own desire as he thrust his tongue into her mouth. Maybe it wasn’t mercy, he decided in a moment of honesty. He couldn’t take much more. He had to have her. Now. And there was no way he was going to let that sweet orgasm of hers squeeze his finger instead of his cock. Never taking his mouth off hers, he pulled a condom off the nightstand. With three hands (one of his and both of hers) they frantically stripped him of his jeans.

  He sank inside her within moments, but the wait had felt excruciatingly longer. Izzy’s nails dug into his back, still a bit painful even though he hadn’t bothered to remove his shirt. Her legs wrapped around him and he drove in deep and hard. So much for gentle, a voice in the back of his mind said. Well, he was a man, after all, and a man could only take so much when it came to beautiful, sexy, dripping wet women in his bed.

  His hips ground against hers. His dick, like his finger, found her sweet spot and rode it hard. Izzy came in a surge and he followed shortly after. They both collapsed, drenched in sweat and panting
heavily.

  “You son of a bitch,” she whispered between breaths.

  “Hey, you came,” he argued.

  “Still,” she said.

  He turned his head to look at her. She was smiling at him from across the pillow they were sharing.

  “Are we going to sleep half-dressed?” he asked her, noting they both still had their shirts on.

  “If I could get up, I’d take it off,” she told him. Her eyes were already half-closed and her voice had taken on a dreamy, post-coital lilt.

  Caleb had to admit that he was a little shaky in the knee department as well. He slid off the condom, tied it off and tossed it into the trashcan. Then he turned back toward Izzy. She rolled to her side, facing away from him, and wiggled her bare ass into his pelvis. He smiled. He couldn’t get it back up again right now if he tried, but he figured he’d sleep more soundly with one arm holding her against him and his dick pressed against her cheeks.

  He could tell by the sound of her breathing that she was already almost gone. He closed his eyes and let himself go, too.

  Chapter 23

  Caleb woke in the dark and found himself alone again. He was beginning to dislike the feeling of waking up without Izzy next to him. And he was really beginning to dislike his dislike of an empty bed. It would be easier to dismiss it as becoming accustomed to regular, frequent—and frankly damn good—sex, but he wasn’t hard right now and he hadn’t been reaching for her so they could squeeze in another round before sunrise. He’d just wanted to…what?…cuddle? Jesus, he thought to himself.

  Scowling, he yanked on a pair of boxer briefs and set off to find Izzy. He had a feeling that she hadn’t gone far. He found her again at the kitchen table, in the dark. The soft glow of her laptop illuminated her as she sat in a chair, headphones on, eyes closed.

  He might have thought she was asleep, except it would be sloppy to nod off while you were doing, well, whatever it was she was doing. And in the short time he’d known her, it was obvious that Isabelle Boucher was not sloppy about anything, least of all her work. She took it seriously and she worked hard, because it was more than a job to her. It was who she was.

  Caleb had always done his job well, first in the Army and then on the force, his flexible opinion on the value of rules and regulations notwithstanding. But he’d never had a calling, a passion. He’d never had a drive and determination other than the vague notion that evil existed in the world and because he could root it out, he should.

  Truthfully, and he would admit it to himself, if no one else, he was jealous of Izzy. She had a family and a purpose. He’d had neither while growing up. It did no good to dwell on it, though. The past was the past and he could never do anything to change it. Being jealous of Izzy just made him feel weak by comparison. And if Caleb held his anger tightly in check, he never, ever allowed himself to feel weak.

  He stepped further into the kitchen and she became aware of his presence. She took off the headphones and tossed them onto the table.

  “You keep odd hours,” he told her, while punching the button on the coffee maker.

  She winked at him. “Whatever it takes to get my man.”

  She’d meant him and it was just a joke, but jealousy of a different kind reared its ugly head. This was a feeling wholly unknown to him, and therefore very, very dangerous. He had nearly convinced himself that the whole conversation needed to be shut down entirely, but his brain or his dick or some other unruly part of him wouldn’t let it go.

  “Is there someone waiting for you back home?” he asked. It was a perfectly reasonable question, he told himself. She had a life there, a life she’d be going back to after she found the Paul kid. Caleb was interested in her life. It was only polite.

  “You mean do I have a Denver? Like your Sioux Falls? Yes,” she told him and his grip tightened on the coffee mug he was filling. “But he’s going to be waiting a long time.”

  Caleb turned to her and regarded her for a moment. “You’re… not going back?”

  Izzy shook her head. “Not to him,” she declared. “We had a good thing—casual, fun, no strings.” Her gazed darkened. “But he fucked it up. Big time. The biggest.” She shook her hair out across her shoulders. “I don’t do forgiveness,” she told him, meeting his eyes with a steady gaze. People are who they are and they don’t change. When my trust is gone, I’m gone. There’s no going back.”

  Caleb crossed the room and handed her a mug. “What did he do?”

  He couldn’t think of a mistake so big it could kill a relationship, at least not a casual one, but then again he’d never had a relationship, casual or otherwise. So he couldn’t pretend to be surprised at his own ignorance.

  Izzy wrapped her hands around the mug and gazed into its glossy, dark contents. “He rented a cabin. Weekend getaway kind of thing. I didn’t mind. I like the mountains. I can always use a vacation. If he wanted to spring for it and invite me along, it sounded like a good time. On the first night, I caught him going through my bag. He found my birth control pills and buried them in the trash.”

  Caleb sat stunned, unable to wrap his mind around such a thing. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  “I didn’t let on that I’d seen him. I came into the room and said I was looking for my toothbrush. I pretended to notice my pills weren’t there. He said I’d probably forgotten them at home. ‘No big deal,’ he said. ‘We shouldn’t let it ruin our weekend.’ And surprise, he’d brought two really nice bottles of wine.”

  “Izzy,” he replied quietly. “Jesus.”

  “So I told him I knew what he’d done. That I watched him do it.” She sighed, annoyed, and took a sip of her coffee. “He said it was a mistake. That he loved me so much, that I could love him, too. I just needed a nudge.”

  Caleb slammed his mug down, sloshing liquid everywhere. “What the fuck?!” he demanded in sympathetic outrage. “A nudge? A fucking baby is not a nudge!”

  “I know. How you feel now? Well, I almost fucking shot him. He had no right to do that. No right at all.” She sighed again and leaned back in her chair. “So, he’s done. For good. He knew me, knew I didn’t want kids. But he thought, well I don’t know what the hell he thought. We never did quite mesh. He never really got it. He never really understood. I’m not a mother. I’m no one’s mother. My own mom, Christ, well let’s just say it’s not in my genes. My life is the way I want it. I do what I need to do.”

  “So, you don’t ever want kids?”

  Izzy shook her head. “I’ll take the house and the picket fence, but not the two kids in the yard.”

  “I think the song is two cats in the yard.”

  She smiled. “Kids, cats. Either way. I wouldn’t be any damn good at it. My mother was… well, she was no June Cleaver. She got busted at twenty-two, holding her boyfriend’s stash. Dad posted her bond, believed her story that she was forced into it. He took her in, married her, and I came along about nine months later. She was clean the whole time she was pregnant with me, or close enough, I guess. But she wasn’t the domestic type. It only took a year or so for her to go crazy changing diapers and doing dishes. Dad came home from a two-day trace and she was gone. I was locked in my room, screaming like a banshee. I’d been there for pretty much the whole two days, alone. It didn’t take long for him to track her down. They were holed up in a flea bag about the same as the Rainbow, she and her ex, completely wasted. Dad told her she had to choose, right then and there.”

  “And she didn’t choose you,” Caleb finished quietly.

  She shook her head. “Nope.” Then, “Fuck her. I had Pop. He did the best he could, which was pretty damn good if you ask me.” She smiled ruefully. “Denver never got it. Not really. He never understood that taking evil out of the world is just as important as putting something good in.”

  Caleb nodded. He could definitely understand that. It was the sole reason he’d taken up the badge. It was also the reason he wasn’t wearing it now. “Nothing feels better than taking out the trash.”

 
She grinned. “Well, I can think of at least one thing that might be better, but you’re right. It’s a damn good feeling.”

  “Want to go back to bed and compare them again?” he asked.

  “Absolutely.” She nodded at her laptop. “And I think I’ve found a way to get Paul.”

  “Really? Did the cabin pan out? You did a property search?”

  She shook her head. “No. Unfortunately, the Pauls don’t seem to own that cabin in the photo. My guess is that it belongs to one of their biker buddies. But I don’t know all their names so I can’t do a thorough search.”

  “So, how do we find it?”

  “I’ve got an idea,” she said cryptically.

  Caleb watched as she shut down the program and closed the laptop. “You want to tell me what the plan is?” he prompted.

  “Pretty simple, actually,” she told him. “We’re going to ask their boss.”

  Chapter 24

  Caleb watched from across the bar as Izzy cozied up to Preacher Prior, president of the Badlands Buzzards MC. He set his beer down on the counter so he didn’t accidentally squeeze it too hard and send shards of glass everywhere. Izzy had one hip leaning against the corner pool table and she was caressing Prior’s stick—his pool stick—suggestively.

  “Doc?” came a familiar voice to Caleb’s right.

  “Yeah?” Caleb replied without taking his eyes off Izzy and Prior.

  “Why are you at the bar by yourself?” Easy asked. “You and I could still get a table, even if everyone else is at home.”

  The others were home with their women, as was more often the case these days. Easy still hung around Maria’s every night that Daisy was working to keep an eye out for her.

  Easy followed Caleb’s gaze toward the darkened corner of the bar and gave a concerned grunt. “Isn’t that Izzy? Rubbing on Prior’s cue?” he asked.