by Danae Ayusso
This isn’t good.
“Where are you?!” Colt called out, heading into the parking lot more, his head sweeping from side to side, his gun low but at the ready.
When he stepped around the corner of the building, he saw an idling car, the getaway car he surmised, and cautiously approached with his gun leading the way. The driver’s side window was shattered, and glass was littered across the asphalt. The driver was slumped forward. The side of the young man’s head was bleeding, his forehead already swelling from where it made contact with the steering wheel, and his arms were pulled through the steering wheel before being handcuffed around it in a way that wouldn’t allow for him to steer if he somehow regained consciousness any time soon.
“Very impressive,” Colt mumbled and continued looking around for Cat when something pulled his attention to the ground. He bent down and pressed his fingers into the darkened spot on the asphalt then pulled them up into the light: blood. He followed the trail as it led away from the bar and down the road before it veered off behind the post office, disappearing into the thick woods surrounding town. “Oh god,” he choked when realization hit.
Colt holstered his Glock and ran as fast as he could back towards the Paterson Estate.
If something happened to her I’ll never be able to forgive myself. No man would allow a woman to put herself at risk as I allowed Cat to do! Then again, if I would have mentioned that little, insignificant in her opinion, point, it would have started an argument and we both would have been caught with our pants down, in essence. Never in a million years would I have allowed Vicks to put herself in danger like that. But without question, I simply allowed Cat to go off by herself with a gun, to watch my back while I took care of the obvious threat in the front...
Damn it. I trust her without question and know she can take care of herself, and that she would take care of me, if needed, so how did it go wrong? She’s shot or injured...the blood trail is going right to the cabin. Damn it. Why aren’t I feeling guilty about this in the least? I’m more pissed that she took off before I could tell her it was clear!
I’ve always wanted an independent and self-sufficient woman who I trusted without question, that I could put my life in her hands and know that she’d protect me just as I would protect her, who respected my position just as I respected hers...
I have something with Cat that I’ve never had before, with anyone: mutual respect. And that’s purely because I trust her unequivocally and that only happens when you...
“I love her,” Colt whispered, slowing for a moment. “I love her?!” he repeated, pushing his hand through his hair. “Huh. How in the hell did that happen?” he mumbled.
“Rossi!” Colt called out, forcing the door open and stumbled into the living room.
Cat lowered her gun and glared at him. “Goddamn it, Fury. I nearly shot you!” she snapped at him.
“You took off and there was blood...” his words trailed off and his eyes widened when he finally noticed that she was standing in the bathroom doorway in only a pair of low riding jeans, shoes, and a bra. Her right arm was bleeding from where the bullet grazed her bicep; blood flowed down the length of it and dripped from her fingertips to the floor.
“Man up,” she huffed. “It’s merely a flesh wound. Nothing some butterfly closures can’t....” her words trailed off and she raised her gun, her eyes narrowing. “What did you call me?”
Colt locked the door behind him and raised his hands, showing he was unarmed. “I called you by your name.”
Cat pulled the hammer back. “No, no you didn’t.”
“Lieutenant Catalina Rossi of the NYPD,” he said and her nostrils flared.
“What did you do?!” she hissed.
“I wasn’t looking for your true identity, I swear it,” he said. “I did some research on D'Avanzo-”
“Why?!” Cat demanded, struggling to keep from shooting him.
“You were crying out ‘D'Avanzo, no!’ in your sleep. I thought he hurt you-”
“Frankie would have never hurt me!” she yelled before she could stop herself.
“I know!” he yelled back. “I was trying to find a way to help you! I wanted to know why you cried and whimpered in your sleep, why you’d flinch every time I caressed or got close to your right side, why you’d get so upset after a nightmare that you’d spend twenty minutes with your head in the toilet! Sorry if I was trying to help the woman I love. Instead of finding the sonuvabitch that hurt her, all I found was a blueblood family in the NYPD and a Francesco ‘Frankie’ D'Avanzo who died last year with his partner on the streets of NYC. And low and behold, that partner was Lieutenant Catalina Rossi, or as I know her, Cat Rogers.”
Cat glared at him, her jaw clenching. “Take one more step and I swear to God it won’t be a flesh wound,” she snarled through clenched teeth.
Colt took another step towards her. “I didn’t run your name, not in any database,” he promised her. “But this amazing thing called Google told me more than any police database could have.”
The corners of her mouth twitched.
“You graduated top of your class from the NYPDPA in Center Point, Queens, also known as the New York Police Department Police Academy. You were ranked number one out of twenty-five hundred graduates that year. You and Frankie were beat cops for the 84th Precinct, one of the toughest beats in Brooklyn. You were the NYPD rookie of the year even, the first time it was awarded to a woman,” he said, taking another step towards her. “You spent a year in Internal Affairs with Frankie, by choice mind you, before both of you moved onto homicide. You had a nine month stint on the SWAT team...I think you might have simply been bored and wanted to shoot some shit up, but that’s just one man’s opinion,” he said with a shrug and the other corner of her mouth twitched, fighting a smile. “After SWAT you went onto the NYPD Organized Crime Control Bureau where you quickly made the rank of Lieutenant,” he said with a smile and took two more steps towards her. “It doesn’t matter if your name is Cat, Catalina, Rossi, or gigantic bleeding pain in the ass, there is nothing that I wouldn’t do to protect you.”
He quickly closed the remaining distance between them and pushed the gun to the side before taking Cat’s face between his hands then pressed his lips against hers.
Cat was stunned, and that didn’t happen often, but the feel of his lips against hers caused her breathing to catch in her throat, and when she opened her mouth in an attempt to draw breath, the tip of his tongue caressed along the inside of her mouth. Her soft body effortlessly molded to Colt’s strong form, and the evidence of his arousal pressed against the juncture of her thighs.
Colt’s breathing shuddered in his chest as he pulled away, his eyes closed. “I’m sorry but I’ve wanted to do that for-”
His words cut off and his eyes snapped open when Cat knotted a hand in the back of his hair and pulled him down to her mouth and she passionately kissed him. Colt’s lashes fluttered and his eyes rolled back in his head as her tongue aggressively sought his. Absently he took the gun from her, ejected the magazine and un-chambered the round before dropping it to the ground, then wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight against him again.
The taste of her mouth—warm, slightly salty yet strangely sweet, and moist—caused his body to react in ways that only she could seemingly do. The pressure of her breasts against his chest, the way she straddled his strong thigh and rubbed against him, the aggressiveness in her touch, the passion in her kiss...it’s what Colt had been waiting to experience his entire life.
It didn’t matter if her name was Cat, Catalina, Rogers, or Rossi. It was her as a person that Colt loved. She was aggressive, brusque, determined, argumentative, and always had to be right, but was open minded enough to attempt to see things from someone else’s point of view before correcting them since she’s always right, in her mind. But at the same time, she was the opposite of all that; she was caring, considerate, protective, selfless, delicate, warm, and nurturing.
Catalina Ro
ssi was exactly what Colt wanted in a woman, everything that Vicks could never be, and everything he’s tried so hard to be himself.
Colt pushed her back slightly and she bit his bottom lip as he pulled away causing him to groan before she released it.
Cat licked her lips as her eyes moved over his face many times.
“I love you,” Colt said.
“I heard,” she said with a small, sad smile.
“You’re going to argue with me about it, aren’t you?” he surmised.
She shrugged slightly. “The thought had crossed my mind,” she admitted. “You’ve lost so much and with Pope coming back it’s causing you to relive your worst nightmare over and over again.” Delicately she pulled her fingers down his nose as she watched what she was doing studiously. “Fury, I’m nothing but trouble, you know that. I…as much fun as it sounds and could be... I can’t be that physical outlet until Pope is locked up and you come to grips with Vicks and your loss. Sorry, I can’t do that. I can’t be your temporary Vicks, Fury. I won’t.”
Colt smiled. “I know, and that’s one of the reasons why I love you.”
She gave him a look. “Huh?”
“You’re true to yourself, even when hiding all the way out here in Montana,” he said and carefully pulled her wig off and tossed it on the floor. “I’m over Vicks. I have been even before her death, I realized that just recently, and there is no way that anyone, especially me, could possibly compare the two of you. She was weak and immature, closed off to the world and the darkness that it could become, and thought that everything would work out in the end with smiles and rainbows. You, on the other hand, see the gritty reality of life, of the world, but most importantly, of me. You don’t…you see the real me that no one else ever has. You don’t judge me, you tell me when I’m being a dumbass, and you listen and don’t judge anything I say or how I feel. You are strong and grounded, dedicated and fearless…you are everything I have tried my entire life to be.”
Cat cocked an eyebrow. “You know, you could have just said that I’m hot and it would have worked.”
He chuckled. “Can I get a do over?”
“No,” she grumbled, making a face at him.
“You’re beautiful on the inside and out,” Colt said, navigating them towards the bathroom. “Let’s get you out of his makeup and get you bandaged up before they start looking for me.”
Cat smacked him. “Goddamn it, Fury. You can’t leave a crime scene!” she snapped at him and he smiled. “I’m serious. You aren’t getting laid if you bring the Montana goon squad to our front door.”
Colt cocked an eyebrow. Our front door, not hers? he wondered with something as foreign to him as the feelings she effortlessly causes within him: hope for the future.
“I’m not trying to get laid,” he assured her, trying to keep from pointing out that she said our door and not her door.
She smirked and caressed her fingers down his chest and over his crotch.
Colt gasped and jerked away from her, angling his hips back.
“One head wants to get laid even if the other doesn’t know it…yet,” she amusingly informed him.
“Rossi, I’m not that kind of guy,” he informed her, pushing her into the bathroom before picking her up by the hips then sat her down on the sink. “I didn’t tell you that I love you to get laid, I told you I love you because I realized as I ran over here that if something happened to you I could never forgive myself, but it wasn’t because of guilt. It was something else, it was because you are the type of…you are the woman that I have been looking, without actually looking, for my entire life. Women like you don’t exist,” he said, examining the bleeding wound on her arm. “At least I didn’t think they did. To find a woman who is as strong, if not stronger, than you is a rare thing, and you can’t pass up the opportunity to hold her when it’s presented.”
With the tenderness of a doctor, Colt cleaned her arm and used butterfly closures from the first aid kit next to her wigs to close the wound. Cat watched him with admiration; his words were soft and filled with raw truth and emotion, concern was clearly visible in his eyes, and that hardness of his mouth was purely from anticipation of her rejection or dismissal of his feelings for her.
“I don’t think you’ll need stitches, but if you do I know someone that can do it without asking questions or filing a report,” Colt said and delicately wiped away the blood streaked down her arm.
Cat continued to watch him; she was torn for the first time in years and she didn’t exactly know what to do about it. There was something intriguing about a man that was as large and wide, rugged and that screamed mountain man, as Colt, tenderly seeing to her. It made him even more handsome in her eyes. The last man that had tended to her was Frankie, but he was cracking jokes and whining about having to marry her or else his mamma would kill him before Jesus could send him to hell. No one had ever tended to her with such softness that it made her tear up.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she whispered before swallowing the lump in her throat.
Colt looked up at her. “Are you mad at me?”
She sighed. “God, I wish I could be.”
He cocked an eyebrow.
“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” she huffed and looked away from him.
He caressed her head, coaxing her to look at him. “Let me wrap up the scene at the bar and we’ll talk when I get back?”
“Do we have…can’t we just hit the sheets and get it out of our systems?” she huffed.
“No,” he said with a chuckle. “‘Hitting the sheets’ isn’t going to make me stop loving you, Rossi. And I have a feeling that you feel strongly for me as well, you might not love me, but you can see yourself getting there.”
Her mouth fell open before she smacked him in the arm and he laughed. “Fury, that has got to be the cockiest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“What can I say?” he said with a shrug. “I’ve been spending too much time with a certain mouthy Lieutenant from New York.”
“Yeah, I guess you have,” she mumbled. “This isn’t going to end well for either of us, Fury.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said and finished dressing her arm with gauze. “But nothing in life that is easy and meant to end well is worth taking the safe road for. You taught me that.”
Cat made a face. “Damn it. I hate it when I make a good point and it gets thrown back in my face. Why can’t you be like other men and just pretend to listen?”
Colt smiled and tenderly caressed his thumb over her pouting bottom lip. “Because you wouldn’t love me if I did.”
“You’re probably right,” she admitted. “Stop having me make your argument for you and shut up and kiss me before you go clean up the mess we made at the bar then bring your ass back here so we can talk.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” he said before his lips pressed against hers, effectively taking her breath away.
“Bout time you showed up,” James grumbled from in front of the bar; his hands were shoved in his pockets, cowboy hat sucked down on his head, jacket collar pulled up tight to fight the late evening chill.
Colt looked at him, trying to keep the smile threatening to fill his face back. “Evening to you too, Jimmy,” he said in an equally clipped tone, trying to play the part, then looked around the area to distract himself; they went a bit overkill in his opinion. “I take it no one could sleep so they decided to join the party.”
James shook his head. “Since you left the party someone had to clean it up.”
Colt nodded, covering his mouth with his hand as if in contemplation; James was pissed that he took off from the scene of the crime.
“I called over a dozen times,” he continued. “I was worried that the blood trail was yours and that someone had killed you and an army dragged your big ass off into the woods.”
Colt snorted. “Sorry, Jimmy. I left my phone in the truck and was following the blood trail, not leaving it,” he eventually said with a shrug. “Thought one
might have gotten away, but it turned out to be nothing but a stray dog nursing a wound.”
Again, the smile was threatening to break across his face.
James looked at him, the corners of his eyes crinkling in amusement. “Did you bring him in for questioning?” he asked.
Colt chuckled. “No, the bastard tried to take my hand off when I reached for him so I figured I’d let nature take its course…Chelsea always had a hankering for dog.”
James nodded. “What in the hell happened here?” he asked.
Four cruisers had the front of the building surrounded; their flashing lights illuminated the walls and windows, painting everything in dancing blue and red light. Yellow police tape marked off the perimeter, and evidence markers peppered the ground. Paramedics were tending to handcuffed suspects while others were in the back of cruisers pouting.
“Mitch didn’t kill anyone this time, did he?” Colt asked.
James shook his head. “He showed amazing restraint for once. I can’t wait to see the security video…oh yeah, I can’t,” he said, his tone heavily laced with accusation. “For some reason it just happened to go out earlier in the evening. Now isn’t that convenient?”
Colt shook his head. “Most inconvenient if you ask me.”
“Uh huh,” James said in a clipped tone. “Three of them are saying that they were attacked by some crazy woman with a gun. Did you have a date tonight?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Do you honestly think that I would let a woman carry a gun? Let alone act as back up or to secure the back entrance while me and Mitch watched the front? Do you not know me at all?” he asked.
Jimmy gave him a look. “What were you doing at the bar? I thought you had turned in. Grandmother said you went to bed early because of a headache.”
I’ll have to give Emma a hug tomorrow for covering for me.
“I was until Mickey came over with the news. He was upset, obviously. And I’m not good with upset women, let alone upset men, so I suggested the bar. Mickey didn’t argue when I suggested grabbing a drink, he just nodded and sulked to his cruiser. Obviously he was shook up about Raven, not that I wasn’t reeling over that one myself, so we sat in silence and drank Cokes.”