Rhett shrugged. “He gets that military guys need this when they come home.”
Her brows shot up. “To fight each other?”
“To readjust to civilian life,” he countered. “You train for years in the military to be a fighter, to respond on instinct, to always be on the alert. It’s difficult to turn that off when you come home. This helps.”
“Oh,” she said. Then soft understanding crossed her face. “Okay, I guess that actually makes a lot of sense.” He liked how she seemed to get him. More than anyone else. “It’s good you all have this,” she added softly. “To come to a place to be together.”
Rhett gave a firm nod then tossed his hand wrappings into the trash can. He turned back to her and took a step closer. He saw the hitch of her breath, and fuck, he got that. Whenever he got close to her, his body responded. Being around her spoke to a very primal part of him. “Other than this, I’m either at work or with your brother and Asher or at a bar.” He took that last step, closing the distance between them, then glanced down into her pink-cheeked face as she looked up at him with those blue beauties. He tucked her hair behind her ear, and the way she leaned into his touch slowly unraveled him. “But there is one other thing I also do for fun.” He lowered his voice. “One other thing I’m very good at.”
Her lips parted, inviting him in for a kiss. But then she blinked, and the heat faded a little from her gaze. A sudden softness crossed her face that had him wondering what was on her mind. “Not interested tonight?” he asked.
“I never said that, but later.” She gave him a little push. “Go shower.”
He held his ground, not moving an inch. “Why?”
“Because you’re gross, sweaty, and stinky, and your mouth is still bleeding.” She tried to push him again. “I want to take you somewhere before I forget I want to take you there.”
He didn’t budge. “Is it going to involve that show you and Remy watch…Housewives of…something?”
“The Real Housewives of Orange County?” She stopped pushing and laughed softly. “No. Why would you even think that?”
“Because you and Remy talked about that show for two years straight.” It had been a punishment to everyone who had to endure it.
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine, we do love that show, but no, I’m not going to make you watch it.”
He grabbed her shirt and yanked her closer, loving the hitch of surprise in her breath. “Does it involve bubble baths?”
“No,” she rasped, wide-eyed.
He dropped his head and dragged his nose along her neck, drawing in her scent, which called to him on every level as a man. When he leaned away, he grinned at the heat burning in the depths of her eyes. He lifted an eyebrow. “Long talks about girly things?”
“Oh, my God, Rhett, you’ll see,” she said, giving him a final hard shove. “I promise it won’t be painful. Go.”
“All right.” He began to turn but then stopped to scoop her up in his arms.
“Hey!” she exclaimed.
“I’ll go shower,” he said with all the heat he felt burning between them. “But you’re coming with me.” And then his lips found her neck, permanently ending the conversation.
* * *
With a steaming hot chocolate take-out cup in her mitten-covered hands, Kinsley sat on a blanket next to Rhett on the tailgate of his truck an hour later, with another cozy blanket over her lap. Her body still hummed from their shower together, and luckily, no one had come in and disturbed them. Rhett wore his black winter hat and leather gloves. She, her cute slouchy winter hat. Acadia National Park was south of their location, but she’d taken him up the summit to a parking lot that led to one of the hiking trails.
“I gotta admit, I wasn’t expecting you to find this place fun,” he finally said after many long minutes of silence.
“Well, there’s probably a lot you don’t know about me.”
Unusual softness reached his eyes. “I’ve got no doubt that’s very much true.” He watched her a moment longer then asked, “Maybe we should change that, so why don’t you tell me what you love about this place so much?”
She tore her eyes off the stars shining down on the Atlantic Ocean. “It’s just…quiet. The type of silence I can’t find anywhere else.” She had started coming here when she was old enough to drive. When she really started dealing with her mom’s absence. The tourists didn’t know about this place, and for the most part, no one else came to this parking lot atop the mountain, unless they were hiking the trails throughout the day.
Rhett drew in a deep breath and exhaled a cloud, leaning against his leather-covered hands. “It is quiet. Peaceful.”
She nodded at him, figuring he would like this too. Rhett’s world seemed so small. Work, fight, go out with friends when they asked. Her heart couldn’t help hurting a little at that. Soldiers were brave and strong, and the world owed them a great service, but there was a price to be paid, and Rhett had paid that price. Hell, he was still paying it. “Whenever things get heavy, this just lessens that load.”
He tipped his head back and his gaze went somewhere else when he looked up at the sky. “If you like this view, you would love the stars in Afghanistan. I’d never seen so many stars like I did in the sky there.”
“God, over the desert, the sky must have looked so black.”
“Yeah,” he agreed with a soft nod. “The blackest black I’ve ever seen. The stars were so bright. The whole world looked different there.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Nothing like here.”
She sipped her hot chocolate, wondering over all the things he’d seen, all the missions he’d taken. “Do you miss the military?”
He tipped his head to the side, his curious eyes on her. “Why do you ask?”
She shrugged. “You were in the Army for a long time. You must miss it.”
He loosened a breath and stared up at the stars again, his jaw bunching. “Yes, I miss it.”
“But are you happy being a detective too?”
“It’s satisfying.”
She swallowed another sip of hot chocolate then laughed softly, shaking her head. “That was a piss-poor attempt at dodging the answer—you realize that, right?”
His mouth twitched before he looked at her again. Their gazes held for a beat. Then a haunting darkness fell over his expression. “I might miss military life, but I also can’t trust myself anymore.”
Her gut twisted at the raw pain in his expression. “What do you mean?”
He glanced back up to the sky, his brows drawn together, and his eyes grew distant, going back to a different time. “I couldn’t trust my shot after I got wounded,” he explained. “I’d go back to Afghanistan in a second if I could repair my shoulder enough to know that if I fired off a shot, I wouldn’t miss. Being a soldier was my calling.”
Her heart squeezed tight. “Even with the nightmares you suffer, you’d still go back?”
“In a heartbeat,” he said in an instant. “I’ve never felt purpose like I did when I was a soldier. To protect, to defend, to lead, I lived and breathed that life, and I was very, very good at my job. But the injury has made my reflexes slower. That could kill the men I’m trying to protect.”
“So, you’re saying that being a detective is second best.”
His head fell to the side again, those intense eyes landing on her. “It’s not second best. It’s just another life, not the one I thought I’d have.”
The pain in his eyes was palpable. It hadn’t been there before he went off to the military. She wished she could remove it. “Well, I think you did your job. You saved lives, and they got a good eight years of your service. But considering how you came home, I’m not so sure that it was a bad thing you got shot.”
His brows rose up. “You wanted me to get shot?”
“No,” she said, nudging her shoulder into him. “Of course not. All I’m saying is that you were different when you came home, and if you’d stayed longer, I’m not sure how that would have been for you, you know?”
She pushed, feeling her blood heat a little. And not in good way. “Ever?”
He gave a firm shake of his head. “I thought I’d die in those deserts,” he said, so cold and distant. “I almost did.”
She reached for him, placing her hand on his arm, and she was so damn glad when he didn’t pull away. “Did you want to come home?”
There was a long pause. He didn’t even look like himself when he glanced at her. “No.”
“Oh,” she whispered, suddenly feeling like the air had been knocked out of her.
He took in her expression then slowly shook his head as if he hated himself for making her look like that. “You have to understand, Kinsley, that when I left for the Army, that had been the life I wanted. It suited me. The brotherhood, the cause to make this world a little bit safer, and to fight for those who can’t fight a bigger evil, it was all I wanted to do, but there was a cost, and that cost was that you turn off a part of yourself to get the job done. You don’t see faces or genders or ages. You see killers wanting to kill the brothers beside you.” His voice changed then, growing harder. “I trained. Hard. I did my job. And I was good at that job. This civilian life…I never thought I’d ever come back to it. My life in Stoney Creek ended when I entered the military.”
She swallowed the emotion that clogged up her throat. He didn’t need to fill in the missing pieces. The short affairs with women while he waited for a new mission. The danger. The risky adrenaline rush. That was Rhett, through and through. And when he returned home for good, he’d been forced to be something he never wanted to be. She nearly kept quiet, but something in her gut told her to push. “So that’s why it was hard for you when you got back?”
“Just changed the direction of what I thought my life would be.” He paused and gave her a quizzical look. “Out of curiosity, what did you notice that seemed hard for me?”
“Smiling,” she said.
He gave her a look that revealed a whole lot of his raw emotions without saying much at all. “Smiling?”
She nodded. “It’s just…different now.” Haunted. When he silently watched her, she added, “Do you remember when you saved my ass at a bush party one night?”
He shook his head.
Her throat tightened. She wondered how many happy memories had gone away. “I’ll never forget that night. You came to the bush party and picked Harry Sanders up by the back of his pants, hooked his belt hook onto a tree branch, and left him hanging there.”
Rhett’s brows drew together. “I don’t remember that.”
“No?” She chuckled at the memory. “We were in the forest down by Old Man Butler’s. Harry had been feeding me shots all night. I guess you and Boone got wind of my being there and being drunk, and suddenly you came over and had Harry hanging like he was a two-year-old.” Warmth touched her at the lightness in Rhett’s eyes that night. It’d been a long time since she’d seen that. But that had been the first night she’d suddenly looked at Rhett differently. Hell, she thought at that time he looked at her differently too, protecting her when he really didn’t have to, considering her brother was also there. But the moment Boone marched up and glared at a very drunk Kinsley, Rhett shut off all emotion on his face.
A cloud of air escaped from Rhett’s mouth. “Shit. Right. Yeah, I remember that now.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “I’d never seen you like that. Or Boone so pissed.” His gaze fell to hers and he broke into a smile. “I gave you a piggyback ride, and you laughed the entire way home.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “See,” she said, pointing to his face. “That’s it. Right there.”
The smile stayed in place. “What’s it?”
She nudged his shoulder with hers again. “That’s the easy smile you used to have. I think that’s the first time I’ve seen it in a really long time.”
He stared at her for a long moment then turned his head and looked up at the stars again. She did the same, thinking that this was the first time in a very long time that Rhett looked comfortable.
Long minutes went by, and she thought that would be the end to the conversation, but Rhett surprised her. He took her hand in his then lifted it up to his lips. Eyes on hers, he pressed his mouth to her hand. “Thank you, Kinsley. For that story. For sharing this place with me.”
Warmth touched everything cold. “You’re welcome.”
Chapter 10
The next afternoon, on the way home from Whitby Falls, Rhett was ready to crawl out of his skin. He’d spent all day with Detective Anderson in the Whitby Falls PD, doing the hard and long detective work that, in the end, usually solved cases. Sadly, nothing had jumped out at Rhett as trouble within the biker gangs in the area. Dalton had recognized the guy in the photograph, and Rhett’s instincts told him to stay there. Bikers knew bikers. While Rhett doubted this was the Red Dragons, he felt that tug in his gut that there was a connection to Dalton. But that connection didn’t lie in Whitby Falls. He found no restlessness within the streets of the city that spoke of trouble. The past month had been full of petty crimes, domestic disputes, and a few minor crimes within the Red Dragons, but nothing that stood out as dangerous or serious.
Frustration cut through him as he drove down the snow-covered two-lane country road heading back toward Stoney Creek. He took the roads slow and easy but wanted to do the exact opposite. He wanted to get to Kinsley. Last night she’d touched on something inside him that still shook him this morning.
Rhett didn’t do shaken.
And with his frustration building over the case, as well as this edginess she brought out, he couldn’t stand it any longer.
Only ten minutes away from town now, he hit the phone button on his steering wheel. His Bluetooth kicked in. “Call Boone,” he said.
The phone rang twice. “Knight,” Boone answered.
“Any updates?” Rhett asked.
“Tattoo recognition is still running,” Boone reported through the car’s speakers. While tattoo recognition software was in the works, it was still in its infancy, and Rhett doubted they’d find anything there. He kept the thought quiet as Boone added, “Asher’s making some calls within two hundred call radiuses to see if any arrests have been made with a similar tattoo, but nothing yet on that front.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nope,” Boone said, sounding as frustrated as Rhett felt. “Nothing on your end?”
“Negative,” Rhett said. “I’ll be back at the station in forty-five.”
“I’ll be here.” The phone line went dead.
When Rhett finally rolled into town and stopped at the stoplight, his gut twisted, his chest impossibly tight. He bounced a knee, tapping his thumb against the steering wheel to the beat of the music playing on the radio, but nothing helped. What he needed to do was shed the restlessness burning through him to center himself again. He considered calling Theo, who Rhett knew would come no matter what he had going on, because that’s what they did for each other. When the adrenaline rose, once Rhett gave up counting on Jack Daniel’s to calm himself, they got into the ring to discharge the excess energy. Though today, Rhett’s agitation wasn’t only about the job or about settling back into civilian life. It had to do with why he could barely sleep last night. Kinsley, and the shit she was making him feel. And instead of driving himself crazy, he decided to do something about it.
He pulled over to park in the first spot he found and got out, locking the doors behind him with a loud beep. The bright sun warmed him as he walked along Main Street, a stark contrast to the brisk air. He shoved his hands into his pockets and kept his head down, not wanting to see or speak to anyone. Only one person was on his mind now.
A handful of minutes later, he found that woman sitting at her desk in her small office. She wore a big cozy-looking cream sweater and dark gray leggings, and just the sight of her hardened his cock to steel. The bar had been busy when he walked in, bu
t the people out there were none of his concern.
Kinsley slowly turned, surprise in her eyes. “Oh, hey. I wasn’t expecting—”
He turned back to the door and locked it. “You have to understand something,” he said, facing her again. Uncontrollable heat slammed into him in her presence. He did well to stay away from anything that made him feel too much, but she’d crossed that line last night, and he couldn’t uncross it. “I get edgy.”
Her chest rose and fell quickly with heavy breaths as she stood from her chair. “Okay,” she said slowly.
He took a step toward her. “I usually manage that restlessness by sparring with Theo.” Then another step, needing to get closer, to breathe the same air she did. “That’s not how I want to manage it anymore. At least, not all the time, and certainly not today.”
She visibly swallowed, her cheeks flushing. “Okay,” she repeated.
He stopped, his boots right in line with her feet. The heat poured off her, and he wanted to absorb it. Every little bit until he only made them burn hotter. He slowly raised his hand and stroked her cheek, finally threading his fingers into her hair. “Because I’ve realized there is something more potent than my restlessness.”
“What’s that?” she whispered, her lips parting, ready for his kiss.
He dropped his mouth close to hers. “How fucking much I want you.” He slid a hand across her lower back and yanked her closer. “The way you feel.” He dropped his head into her neck and slid his nose up her warm skin, feeling a hard shudder run through her. “How it draws me in.” He nipped at her flesh and she pressed herself closer, running her hands up his biceps. He leaned away, tucking his thumbs to angle her chin up. “And the way you taste…it’s so fucking good. All day you’ve been in my head. I want you. Right now.”
“Too much talking. Not enough kissing,” she said huskily.
He didn’t need to hear more. He sealed his mouth across hers, maneuvering her until her back bumped against the wall. Rough, hot, quick, he needed her now. She held on to his shoulders as he opened his jeans, exposing his hardened length. Her leggings were soon down, one still halfway up her leg, the other all the way off. He didn’t hesitate, and by the looks of her hooded eyes, he knew she didn’t want him to. He grabbed her ass cheek with one hand, his cock with the other, and entered her. Slowly, relishing how she squeezed him, he pushed inside her, feeling the drag of her hot flesh against him, until he was seated in deep.
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