by Christa Wick
Every Last Secret
- His To Claim series: Sutton & Maddy -
Christa Wick
C.M. Wick
Copyright © 2019 by Christa Wick
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, this book and any portion thereof may not be reproduced, scanned, reverse-engineered, decompiled, transferred, or distributed in any print or electronic form without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Participation in any aspect of piracy of copyrighted materials, inclusive of the downloading and obtainment of this book through non-retail or other unauthorized means, is in actionable violation of the author’s rights.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, media, brands, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and registered trademark owners of all branded names referenced without TM, SM, or (R) symbols due to formatting constraints, and is not claiming ownership of or collaboration with said trademark brands. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is purely coincidental.
Published by Evergreen Books Publishing
Copy edits and line edits by GBI Author Services
Proofreading by Rosa Sharon
Cover design by Violet Duke
Previously published as Sutton Lee (c) 2018 by Christa Wick.
Contents
Book Description
1. Sutton
2. Maddy
3. Sutton
4. Maddy
5. Sutton
6. Sutton
7. Maddy
8. Sutton
9. Sutton
10. Sutton
11. Sutton
12. Maddy
13. Sutton
14. Maddy
15. Sutton
16. Maddy
17. Sutton
18. Maddy
19. Sutton
20. Sutton
21. Sutton
22. Maddy
23. Sutton
24. Maddy
25. Sutton
26. Maddy
27. Sutton
28. Sutton
29. Sutton
30. Maddy
31. Sutton
Epilogue #1
Epilogue #2
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Also by Christa Wick
About the Author
Book Description
He’s my boss’s brother. Intense and stoic. Humble, disciplined ex-military. And built like a gorgeously rugged tank that somehow manages to make me feel dainty.
I’ve been keeping a very big, very necessary secret from his entire family for years now. I’ve never liked having to do it. In fact, it’s why I’ve been avoiding him from practically the first day we met.
Because strangely, I want to let him in. But being an FBI agent is the only thing I’ve ever felt was my true calling. Losing everything I’ve spent years building would just decimate me.
Problem is, I don’t have a choice anymore. I’m desperate for the kind of help only he can provide. Like I’ve always told my sister, I’d have to be no-other-choice desperate for it to come to this.
And I am.
The HIS TO CLAIM Series
Book 1: Every Last Doubt (Adler & Sage)
Book 2: Every Last Touch (Walker & Ashley)
Book 3: Every Last Look (Barrett & Quinn)
Book 4: Every Last Secret (Sutton & Maddy)
Book 5: Every Last Reason (Emerson & Delia)
Previously published as Sutton Lee (c) 2018, revised throughout with newly added content, and a different extended ending.
1
Sutton
Finished with my quad curls, I swivel on the weight bench and stare at the scars running from the middle of my right thigh to where they disappear into the sock. Time has lessened the leg’s Frankenstein appearance. Gone are the once swollen red welts stitched together. The dents in my flesh have filled in, dark auburn hair returning to lightly dust my skin.
Only the white lines remain. They will always remain, mocking me on the loss of a life filled with action, purpose and concrete results.
My mood jumps from dark lament to guilt. I didn't lose a life—I lost a lifestyle. I’m still breathing. Gimp leg or not, I’m still kicking. Others in my unit were not so lucky. Three of them have died in the time since a mortar round shredded my parachute in a country I am forbidden from naming.
Grief chases away guilt. The emotion rising up is not for my fallen comrades. I never met two of the men. The third I knew only loosely. He transferred into the unit to fill my spot after the Army pushed me out on a medical discharge.
The grief suddenly grinding me down is for the father and sister I lost a few months before my injury. It is for all the family they left behind, especially my sweet little niece who must grow up without a mother or a grandfather. The preschooler’s cherubic face reminds me daily of what real loss looks like, reminds me why I can’t sit on my ass whining because the military no longer finds me fit to serve.
So I get off my ass, put the weights away and head into the kitchen. Scooping up a Gatorade I left out, I crack the seal and chug it down. When the bottle is empty, I toss it into the recycling bin and grab a cold one from the refrigerator.
Drinking the second bottle more slowly, I stare at the warped reflection of my body in the appliance's shiny metallic surface.
My first year home, I lost weight, all of it muscle. Recovery took massive amounts of calories as bone modeled itself back together. Therapy concentrated on getting me on my feet, walking with crutches and then a cane, progressing from there to an off-loading brace and then to walking without any assistance.
Now I am busting my ass to put the muscle back on—all so I can risk taking my first jump since the injury, a jump the Army doctors proclaimed I would never be able to make again.
I don't plan on anything fancy or dangerous. And I definitely won’t do it close to home. My widowed mother has enough problems to stress and fuss over. Maybe after the first few jumps, I’ll let her know what I’ve done.
First, however, I need to strap my balls back on and book a date for the jump before my brain conveniently wanders off to some other task and I’m left looking for my missing testicles all over again.
Mind firmly set, I take the Gatorade into the living room and plop down on the couch. My sweaty back immediately suctions to the leather. I shift, unstick, then stick again.
Abandoning the attempt to get comfortable, I balance my laptop across my legs, open the browser and click the link I favorited for a skydiving company in Whitefish. The little city bordering Glacier National Park is in-state but nearly four-hundred miles away. I can book a jump and not worry about the news reaching any of Willow Gap’s gossips.
Yep, I coax my restless thoughts. All I have to do is click the reservation button, pick a date, enter my bank card number, and then I’ll be good to go.
Fingers strumming against the computer’s edge, I glare at the button. It’s nothing more than pixels, just a rounded rectangle filled with a green background and white text waiting patiently to be clicked.
I skim a finger across the touchpad until my mouse hovers over the button.
Fresh sweat dots my face.
It’s just a booking. Worst case scenario, something comes up and I lose the deposit. And if I show for the jump, it’s not like anyone will shoot at me. I won’t be staring at a pre-dawn sky while the shredded ribbons of my parachute flap at terminal velocity.
It’s just a bo
oking…
Three short raps sound against my front door. I slam the laptop shut, but don’t move to answer. I don’t recognize the knock, didn’t hear any footsteps on the porch beforehand.
Silly for me to think someone is sneaking up on the place. My house is on the edge of a town that itself feels like it teeters at the edge of the world. The only danger in Willow Gap comes from the kind of hard work some folks have to do—handling horses and cattle, logging, working the oil fields. It doesn’t come from home invasions or ISIS death squads.
The three raps repeat. I slide the laptop onto the coffee table and quietly approach the front door from the side. My heart shouldn’t be pounding in my chest, but it is. I shouldn’t be able to hear the tattered strips of my parachute from that distant morning, but I do.
Footsteps sound at last on the porch, their direction heading away from the door. Still moving cautiously, I turn the knob and pull.
The way I’m sweating, my soldier's instinct expects an assassin. For one flashing second, I am instead treated to the shapely backside of a woman dressed in a summery skirt. Soft flounces of the material play around the middle of her calves as a lustrous cascade of dark red hair spills down her shoulders and the center of her back.
Her hair is gorgeous, but it cannot compete with her plump hips that my eyes lock on. I want to reach out and touch that backside, palm one rounded cheek and give a little squeeze.
Okay, more than a little squeeze and more than once.
Burying the impulse, I clear my throat and speak.
“Can I help you?”
The woman slowly pivots in my direction. My gaze doesn’t make it up to her face before she answers. I’m too hooked on the sight of her full breasts bouncing against the same gauzy fabric as the skirt.
“I really hope so,” the woman replies in a hesitant, yet familiar, voice.
I shake my head a couple of times. There’s no way that soft, breathless voice belongs to Madigan Armstrong. Especially coming from a body wrapped in so much allure. Far as I’ve been told, no one is getting married today—and weddings seem to be the only occasions for which Maddy leaves behind her rugged jeans or the understated, oversized pantsuits that scream FBI before she ever whips out her handgun or flashes her badge.
Familiar voice or not—my brain refuses the possibility that the woman I’ve been lusting over for almost two years is standing on my porch with her luscious, plentiful curves so clearly outlined.
Look up, genius.
“Hey…are you okay?” she asks, now looking concerned.
I nod, my hand lifting to rub furiously at my forehead, the gesture nothing more than an excuse for avoiding her gaze.
“Yeah,” I mumble. “Sorry about that, Agent Armstrong. Fell asleep on the couch after working out. Then I got up too fast…or something.”
Already pinched tight, her beautiful, freckled face puckers another degree as Maddy quickly closes the distance between us. Her voice, so hesitant before, sounds strong as she takes control.
“You need to sit back down,” she orders, gripping my shoulders.
Her fingertips are cool to the touch, or I’m still hot from the workout—or from staring so hard at the fabric cuddling her breasts. She hasn’t really touched me before, not on purpose. I've delighted in the unintentional graze of a shoulder or curvaceous hip. That magnificent backside offered an achingly brief caress once when she had to slide past me in an overcrowded room to reach her seat.
That single ass-to-groin moment had been painfully erotic. The way she touches me now is nearly the same, the skin-on-skin contact sending little waves of pleasure rippling down my back.
“Did you re-hydrate?” she asks, steering me onto the couch I just vacated.
I point at the bottle of Gatorade on the coffee table.
“What’s gone plus a full one right before it,” I answer.
Looming over me, her heavy breasts bouncing in front of my face, she nods, scoops the bottle up and thrusts it into my hands.
“Finish it.”
Lips twitching over her fierce expression and cute, bossy tone, I do as she commands. Now that I lied about feeling dizzy, I have to play along. I can’t very well admit that my real issue is that she caught me in a locked-and-loading position, with all the blood rushing from my now useless brain to a cock that’s getting harder the longer she’s here touching me.
“Drink,” she demands when I don’t take the bottle.
“Not while a guest is standing,” I reply. “In fact, can I offer you anything, Agent Armstrong?”
A stubborn frown is her immediate response, before she reluctantly drops down in the nearby club chair and answers politely, “No, thank you. I’m fine.”
Buying time for my burgeoning dick to go down, I sip at the Gatorade and cast surreptitious glances across the coffee table.
I still can’t believe this is Maddy.
Not in this outfit.
Not acknowledging the fact that I exist for maybe the first time ever.
When the harsh, anxious expression doesn’t ease from her otherwise soft features, I start analyzing what exactly is going on here. Maddy has never been to my place. Hell, we’ve never been alone, not even when I stop by the office she shares with my brother.
“Emerson okay?” I ask abruptly, realizing for the first time she might have come to my house on a Friday afternoon to deliver terrible news.
Her head bounces, then her hands curl around her knees.
“It’s nothing like that. I didn’t mean to worry you…I…”
My brother might be unharmed, but I know a woman on the verge of crying when I have her sitting in front of me. Still, I don’t have the right of familiarity. I can’t just get up and wrap an arm around her shoulders, comforting Maddy until she is ready to talk.
“Why don’t you collect yourself while I grab a shirt,” I suggest, rising from the couch and heading for the hall.
She doesn’t stop me. I slip into the bedroom. If her problem requires immediate action, it won’t do to be in just a t-shirt and shorts. So I take an extra minute to slide into jeans and boots and grab my wallet.
Returning to the living room, I bypass her and go into the kitchen. Pulling a gallon jug filled with water and mint leaves, I pour a glass and carry it out to her.
She accepts it with a wan smile. “Betty Rae make this?”
I wince as she mentions the town’s biggest gossip. I’ve known Betty Rae almost as long as I’ve known my own mother. No denying the woman does a lot of good around town—but she’s also an information merchant. I’m not in the market to buy or sell, so I am constantly hoping she decides to spread her help somewhere else.
But it’s not like I can share my opinion of Betty Rae with Maddy. I can’t really share anything with her. After nearly two years of my trying, we aren’t any closer than when we first met.
“Betty Rae brings some by every few days,” I answer as I take a seat on the couch. “Be nice to have it all gone before the next batch arrives. I think her feelings were hurt the first time she returned and the container was only half finished. I’ve been dumping a little bit since then.”
Madigan nods and then we sit in silence as she takes a few sips of the mint water. She stares at the glass in her hands, studying the way drops of condensation form on the outside. I focus on her face, reasonably certain she won’t catch me looking because she hardly ever bothers to meet my gaze.
Her lashes and brows are a darker shade of red than her hair that flows past her shoulders. Hiding beneath her lowered lashes are yellow-brown eyes that glow like topaz catching sunlight. A straight nose and strong cheekbones balance out her softly rounded chin. Her cherry pink mouth has fueled more dirty fantasies and hand action than I care to admit, even to myself.
My attention is locked on her full lips as she finally places her glass on a coaster. I look at the fireplace behind where she sits, careful to avoid any glance at the clock lest she think I’m eager to have her go.
&n
bsp; She clears her throat. The sound borders on a whimper.
I sit up straighter, silently urging her to start.
“My sister moved in with me,” she begins, the words stilted. “You probably don’t know that.”
“Didn’t know you have a sister,” I answer, fighting with myself to force a neutral tone.
I’m probably overreacting, but I feel like my chest is caving in from a sharp kick or punch. Family is basic information, information that is shared with friends and acquaintances. I apparently rate as neither in Maddy's estimation.
“Go on,” I urge, hands folded in my lap, one thumb scraping at the opposite wrist in irritation because, for all my attempts at more, the woman treats me little better than a stranger.
“Delia is seven years older than me,” she says.
I nod and store the information away. I'm not certain exactly how old Maddy is, but the range she has given suggests Delia is mid-thirties.
“She lost her husband two months ago,” Maddy continues.
I nod again, but the timing immediately bothers me. If she means two full months, then her brother-in-law died a week before my brother Barrett got married. We were both at the wedding and reception. As much as I looked at her, I saw no evidence of grief on her face at the time.