by HELEN HARDT
I raised my eyebrows. Not exactly what I had expected, and a jolt of sadness coursed through me. Even though part of me—a big part of me—agreed with him, I didn’t want to stop this.
“We do? Why?”
“The why doesn’t really matter,” he said. “Just trust me. We need to stop this.”
“The why matters to me, Talon.” I walked toward him and stopped when our bodies were no more than two inches apart. The air was thick with lust. Passion swirled around us almost as if it were visible. My heart beat quickly, and my skin tightened. “If you truly wanted to stop this, you wouldn’t have walked in on me in the shower. You would have waited until I was fully clothed.”
He moved backward, away from me, hitting the bed and sitting down. “Just trust me. It needs to end.”
“I don’t accept that.” Slowly I untied my robe and let it fall over my shoulders onto the floor. I stood naked in front of him, like an offering. I licked my lips and cupped my breasts, holding them out. I pinched one nipple and then the other, and a jolt of desire arrowed straight into my pussy. “Are you ready to accept that?”
He pulled me down into his lap. “Please. Don’t make this any harder than it is.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and nudged one breast up to his lips. “Kiss my nipple, Talon.”
He closed his eyes, but he did not turn his head away.
I began undulating my hips, driving my pussy against his denim-clad erection. “I’m wet for you, Talon. I’ve been wet for you since you met me at the office. I turned you away because we were in a public place. I had to keep my head. But I wanted you. I wanted you then, and I want you now.”
He opened his eyes. “This doesn’t have anything to do with that.”
“Then tell me what it’s about.”
He closed his eyes again, and I raised my hips again, nudging his lips with my nipple.
“Jade…”
“Don’t resist me, Talon. I know you want me. I want you too.”
He closed his lips around my nipple and sucked. Sweet surrender.
And it came to me, as if I’d known it all along. I would always surrender to this man. We might not have a future together, but as long as we were anywhere near each other, I would surrender to him, no matter what. He did something to me, something I didn’t understand. Perhaps I’d never understand it. Craving was the word he had used. Maybe that was all it was—a craving that might never be satisfied.
He sucked harder on my nipple, and my skin tingled. My pussy ached for his cock.
“That feels so good, Talon. No one sucks my nipples like you do.”
He bit down, and I let out a squeal. I almost came right then and there. My pussy was swelling. I could feel it against the denim of his jeans.
I would ask for what I wanted.
“Pretend we’re still in the park, Talon. Pretend people are watching, and take me. Take me right here.”
He groaned and stood, lifting me and then laying me down on the bed. He quickly undressed and pulled me up to him. He lifted me, and, still standing, sank me down on his cock.
A sigh escaped my lips as he filled me. Sweet joining. Every time was better than the last. Each time I was sure that he couldn’t fill me more completely than he had last time, and each time he did.
His eyes were closed, but I wrapped my arms around his neck.
“Open your eyes. Look at me. Look at me.”
He opened his eyes, and his gaze blazed into mine. He lifted me by the cheeks of my ass and set me down again and again, filling me with his cock each time. Our gazes stayed glued together, and I swore his eyes were seeing straight into my soul. I never let our eye contact waver, and when the tingling began in my clit, the tickling inside my cunt, and I knew I was on the edge, I touched his cheek.
“I’m going to come, Talon. Come with me, baby. I want us to come together.”
He groaned and began moving me up and down off his cock faster and faster, harder and harder, until, just when I exploded, he groaned and sank me down so deep on his cock I felt like he was touching my heart. So good, such bliss.
My pussy pulsed and pulsed and pulsed, shattering my nerves, making my skin burn. When my climax finally started to slow, I threaded my fingers through his thick locks and brought my lips to his.
He gently laid me on the bed and then lay down beside me. He kissed me again, a sweet kiss. A kiss of joy, a kiss of satiation. Our lips slid against each other, our tongues swirled together.
We kissed and we kissed. Lying naked on my bed. For a long time.
I didn’t remember stopping kissing, but we must’ve fallen asleep. When I woke up in the morning to my phone alarm, Talon was gone. I was still lying naked on top of the covers. I smiled, letting the memories of our passion overtake me. As much as the sex had been satisfying, what I had loved most about last night was lying together afterward and kissing. We had kissed for so long. He had been so sweet, and so gentle, so…un-Talon-like. His kisses had been laced with the spice of his whiskey and his own sweet musky flavor. I let out a happy sigh and stretched my arms over my head.
But enough daydreaming. I had to get to work.
When I got home from work, Talon was nowhere to be found, but Marj was in the kitchen.
“Hey,” she said. “I’m making manicotti.”
“Oh, yeah? Where’s Felicia?”
“I gave her the afternoon off. I felt like cooking tonight.”
I inhaled. “It smells delish. Can I help?”
“Sure. Why don’t you put together a salad?”
I headed to the fridge and pulled out a head of romaine, a tomato, some radishes, and some baby spinach. “Where is Talon?”
“I haven’t the foggiest. I haven’t seen him since this morning.”
She was ahead of me. I hadn’t seen him this morning. He’d left my bed sometime during the night.
“By the way, Ryan and Joe are coming for dinner.”
Good. Maybe Marj and I could talk to them about Talon. “Okay. When?”
“They should be here any minute.”
“But Talon’s not coming?”
Marj shrugged. “As I said, I haven’t the foggiest. His car is gone, and I’ve no idea where he went. I’ve given up on him. After all, he stood us up last time, remember? My guess is he’s gone for the day and evening. He does that sometimes, goes into Grand Junction on business and has dinner there.”
“Did he ever apologize to you about the other night?” He hadn’t told me where he’d been. Maybe he’d told Marj.
She nodded. “Yeah. Sort of. Talon has issues with apologies. But he felt bad. I could tell.”
“Where did he go?”
“Same thing. To Grand Junction. He didn’t say why.”
I let it go. The guys arrived shortly thereafter, and Marj poured us all a glass of Ryan’s Italian blend. The robust aroma of the zesty tomato sauce wafted out from the oven as we sat at the kitchen table to drink wine and munch on skewers of honeydew melon and prosciutto drizzled with olive oil.
We engaged in small talk, until finally the perfect moment arrived for me to bring up Talon.
“I haven’t had a chance to thank you, Jade,” Jonah said, “for getting that good deal for Talon with the city.”
“You don’t have to thank me. I was glad to do it. You guys have all done so much for me, letting me stay here, and you, Ryan, letting me work at the winery the first few weeks I was here.”
“We miss you over there,” Ryan said. “Anytime you want to come back, there’s an open invitation.”
“She has a license to practice law now, Ry,” Jonah said. “I doubt she wants to make wine for living.”
“Actually, that doesn’t sound too bad. Honestly, I’m not sure law was ever my true calling. I knew I wanted to do something where I could draw good pay. My dad and I pretty much lived paycheck to paycheck, and I didn’t want to do that for the rest of my life. Plus, I’m not really happy with my boss right now. It was a clear breach of ethics
for me to even work on Talon’s case, but I’m glad I could help. I’m not sure what Larry would’ve done with it.”
Jonah scoffed. “Larry Wade is a moron. Of course he didn’t see any ethical problem with you working on Talon’s case. He wouldn’t know ethics if they hit him in the head. Honestly, I’m glad you’re working on it, breach of ethics or not. I don’t trust Larry as far as I can throw him.”
I nodded. I didn’t really trust the guy either, and I’d only known him for a couple of days. “Talon originally wanted to plead guilty and get jail time. Did you guys know that?” I said.
Jonah raised his eyebrows. “That doesn’t sound like Talon.”
Ryan shook his head. “It sure doesn’t. Talon hates being locked up.”
“Well, I’m sure no one likes being locked up,” I said. “Is he claustrophobic or something?”
“Well, not exactly…” Jonah looked down at his glass of wine.
Marj piped up. “Then what exactly do you mean?”
“Nothing,” Ryan said. “He means nothing. It’s like Jade said. No one likes being locked up.”
“I don’t buy it,” Marj said.
I didn’t either, but as a visitor, I wasn’t really at liberty to say so. I was glad Marj had.
“What exactly is there to buy, Marjorie?” Jonah asked.
Marj let out a chuckle. “Using my full name? I’ve hit a nerve somewhere.” She turned to me. “Why don’t you guys tell us exactly what’s going on here? Jade’s been asking me for weeks what the story is with Talon, and I’ve been telling her the same thing you guys have always told me. It’s just his way. He’s always been that way. But it occurs to me that you guys have known him a lot longer than I have. He’s my brother, and I love him as much as I love the two of you. What is going on?”
Ryan and Jonah exchanged a fleeting glance. Very fleeting, actually, but I noticed it. I was on high alert when it came to Talon. I would’ve noticed anything.
“Let it go, Marj,” Jonah said softly.
“I can’t let it go any longer,” Marj said. “He’s my brother too, damn it. What are you hiding?”
“We’re not hiding anything,” Ryan said. “Talon probably has post-traumatic stress disorder from his time in the military. We’ve talked to him about getting help for it, but he’s not open to that. There’s nothing more we can do.”
“He went to see a doctor, though, that Dr. Carmichael who was at the ER. So maybe he is open to it.”
“And you saw how that went,” Jonah said.
Marj didn’t respond. I had lots more questions, but I let them go. It was one thing for Marj to demand answers, quite another for me to. When the timer rang on the oven, Marj got up and pulled the manicotti out. She set it on the table and brought over my salad. She passed the salad bowl around, and we each took some.
“This is great dressing, Marj. New recipe?” Ryan asked.
Marj shook her head. “Jade made the salad.”
“It’s just a simple French vinaigrette,” I said and took a bite.
Back to small talk for the remainder of the dinner.
And I was still filled with questions about Talon.
I was lying on my bed reading when a knock sounded on my door. My heart skipped a beat. Perhaps Talon had come back. “Come in,” I said.
Marj walked through my door. Though I was little let down not to see Talon, I was glad to see her. Jonah and Ryan had volunteered to clean the kitchen after dinner, so Marj and I had gone our separate ways, but we still had that college roommate bond. We could each tell that we wanted to talk, but we couldn’t with the brothers there.
“Did they leave?” I asked.
She nodded. “And I got a text from Talon. He’s staying in the city tonight.”
My heart lurched a bit. Why was he staying in the city? Why had he the other night? Did he have a woman there? Probably many women. The thought broke my heart a little.
On the other hand, if Jonah and Ryan had left and Talon was gone for the night, Marj and I could talk.
“So what do you think?”
“They’re lying,” Marj said. “I’ve been wondering about Talon for a long time, and he may very well have post-traumatic stress disorder. I was a teenager when he left for Iraq, but even still, I remember him being pretty much the same way before he left. So I’m not sure it can all be blamed on his service.”
“I guess there’s not much we can do about it,” I said.
Marj gave me a devious grin. “Want to bet? I think we need to do some investigating. We can start with my father’s old files. I’ve always thought about going through them, but then figured it was none of my business. But you know what? I own a quarter of this ranch. And Talon is my brother. I love him. So it is my business.” She grabbed my arm and yanked me off the bed. “Come on.”
Marj led me not to the office, where I thought we would be going, but down the stairway to the basement. The basement was finished into a gorgeous rec room and three extra bedrooms, but she took me to none of those places. In the back was some crawl space. She slid the door open and crawled inside, beckoning for me to follow. I did, hurting my knees in the gravelly dirt. It smelled musty and moldy.
“Marj, do I really need to be in here? Can’t you just find what we need and pull it out?”
“It’s just that I’m not quite sure what we need, Jade. There are a bunch of boxes in here marked private. They’re taped up pretty good.”
“What are they?”
“Old stuff of my father’s. I was always told it was junk, but I’m not so sure anymore.”
My eyes adjusted to the dark. Lots of brown cardboard boxes, well over twenty, sat in the space, taped up just as Marj had said.
“Let’s get them all over here close to the doorway,” she said. “Then we can pull them out one by one and go through them.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
The two of us yanked all the boxes near the entrance. By the time we were done, my knees were crusted with dirt and hurt like hell. I crawled out of the crawl space, and Marj followed, lugging the first box. She pulled it down into the extra bedroom and then repositioned the door to the crawl space.
“We’re going to need something to cut through this tape,” I said.
Marj smiled. “Not a problem.” She pulled a Leatherman out of her pocket. “I always come prepared.”
She quickly cut through the tape and opened the first box. “Just as I suspected. Bunch of old files and records.” She sighed. “Well, let’s go through them.” She handed me a pile.
I opened the first file and went through it. “This looks like mostly old quitclaim deeds. I mean, these go way back, over a century ago.” I leafed through the delicate papers. “There are even some old chattel mortgages in here. You don’t see those anymore.”
“What’s a chattel mortgage?” she asked.
“A mortgage on a thing, rather than on a piece of property. These are old ones, from England.”
“The Steels are originally from England,” she said.
“You don’t see them in the US,” I said. “What we have here are secured transactions.”
“You mean like collateral?”
I nodded. “A chattel mortgage is basically the same thing. For example, it looks like this one is on a threshing machine.” I handed it to her.
She shook her head and gestured for me to put the document back. “I probably wouldn’t understand it anyway.”
“What exactly are we looking for?”
“To be honest, I have no idea. But I bet we’ll know when we find it.”
I let out a giggle. This was kind of fun, like a game, looking for clues. I finished going through my stack of documents and reached for another. “What do you have in your stack?” I asked.
“Some old census documents, it looks like, from when the Steels first came over here from England several generations ago. A couple of birth certificates for relatives I’ve never heard of.” She kept going. “Are these more of those chattel m
ortgages you were talking about?” She handed me some papers.
“Yep,” I said. “We’ve got to be getting to the bottom of this box soon.”
Marj let out a sigh. “Is it worth going through these boxes? This is all ancient history.”
“Yeah, you could be right.” But something in me wanted to continue. “Maybe we should look at one more box.”
“Okay.” Marj put the lid on the first box. “I’ll re-tape this later.” She opened the door to the crawl space, pulled out the second box, and opened it.
She handed me a stack of files and took a stack for herself. I opened my first file, and lo and behold. “I think this is your dad’s birth certificate,” I said, handing her a document.
“Yeah. Bradford Raymond Steel. I wonder why his birth certificate has been boxed up with all this other historical stuff?”
“I think what that means is that this is all historical stuff,” I said. “We may have to go through all these boxes after all.”
“You’re probably right.”
I kept shuffling through the folder. “Hey, I have your parents’ marriage certificate. Bradford Raymond Steel to Daphne Kay Wade.”
“Wade?” Marj bit her lip. “Are you sure?”
I handed it to her. “Pretty sure.”
She perused the document. “I’m not sure what this means, but I was always told that my mother’s maiden name was Warren. In fact, Ryan’s middle name is Warren, after my mom’s maiden name.”
I didn’t see how this could have any relation to Talon, but it was definitely suspicious. “We should probably ask Jonah about it.”
Marj nodded. “Absolutely. If they lied to me about this, they could easily be lying about other things.”
“Hey, look,” I said, leafing through the rest of the papers. “Here’s Jonah’s birth certificate. And Talon’s and Ryan’s. And look, here’s yours, Marj.” I glanced at the document. “How come you never told me your first name is Angela?”
“What?” She grabbed the document from me.
“Be careful. These are old documents.”
I looked through the others. Jonah Bradford Steel. Ryan Warren Steel. Talon John Steel, all born to Bradford Raymond Steel and Daphne Kay Steel, née Wade.