by Maya Banks
“Oh, I will, and trust me, sweetheart, it won’t be a cheap one.”
She tried not to cringe. But whatever amount it cost her, it would be worth it if she could nail this bastard before he harmed Birdie or one of the guys.
As she hung up, another thought occurred to her. One she hadn’t considered. She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. If the lunatic wasn’t targeting her because of her father, and if he wasn’t targeting her because of Hutch (that was still her number one scenario), and he was in fact going after her because he was some pissed-off moron she’d arrested in the past, then not only were Birdie and the guys potential targets, but her parents could be as well.
A groan escaped before she could stop it.
Trying not to let the possibilities send her into meltdown, she punched in the number to the station and waited for Greta to answer.
“Greta, is the chief in?” she asked when the other woman’s voice came over the line.
“Sure, hon, just a second.”
There was blank silence and then the chief’s gruff voice sounded in Regina’s ear.
“Regina, how are you today?”
“Much better, sir. How is the investigation going?”
“We wrapped up at your house. Still waiting for a report on the explosive used in your vehicle. Preliminary suggests a homemade job, nothing professional. We’re in the process of questioning your neighbors and investigating the connection between this guy and you, Birdie, Hutch and Misty Thompson, if there is one.”
“Sir, is it possible that my parents could be at risk as well? Whether this guy is targeting me, them or Hutch or someone else entirely, they would be likely victims.”
“Already on it. Your father is spitting mad, but he’d already agreed to double the security around him and your mother.”
She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “I wanted to let you know that I was leaving town, possibly for a couple of days. I’m going to Houston with Cam, Sawyer and Hutch. They have some work to do, and I thought leaving the area might be a good idea.”
The chief made an approving sound. “Let me know when you roll back in. Depending on what we dig up in our investigation, we’re going to need to question Hutch and possibly Cam and Sawyer.”
“Will do.”
“Take care of yourself, Regina.”
She hung up and glanced guiltily at the door. Then with a firm shake of her head, she stood and brushed away any lingering doubts. Keeping the people she loved safe wasn’t something she’d ever apologize for.
She walked out of the office and hadn’t gotten two steps down the hall when she nearly ran into Cam. She froze and stepped back, hoping he hadn’t been close enough to overhear her conversation.
“Hey,” he said in a soft voice as his hands came to cup her shoulders. “I need to talk to you a second.”
Her brows rose, and her pulse sped up as uncertainty gripped her.
He moved one hand to cup her cheek. “Stop looking so worried.”
He turned her around and ushered her back into the office, shutting the door behind them.
“You’re the one who looks worried,” she said. And he did. There was concern in his eyes, an edge of uncertainty grooved into his forehead.
He reached out to touch her again, his hands sliding up her arms to her shoulders.
“We didn’t use protection last night, Reggie. I’m such an idiot. Are you on something?”
Relieved, she relaxed under his hands. “I’m on birth control, Cam. I get a shot every three months.”
He frowned. “Are those effective? I mean is it as safe as using condoms?” He dragged a hand through his hair. “I could kick my ass over this. I should have done more to protect you, to take care of you.”
She smiled and reached out to touch his cheek. “Stop. I honestly didn’t think about it either at the time. I mean I didn’t go downstairs with the sole intent of seducing you. But if you’re asking if I’m safe . . .”
He shook his head sharply. “That’s not what I was asking. It’s just that this didn’t come up before . . . when we had sex before. We all used condoms then.”
“Condoms aren’t foolproof either, you know,” she said dryly.
“I know,” he said quietly. “I just didn’t want to make you pregnant. I’d never force something on you that you weren’t ready for.”
She walked into his arms, pressing herself against his chest. “About the condoms, Cam. Is there any reason, any health reason for you . . . any of you to need to wear one?”
He pulled her away to stare down into her eyes. “I suppose this is a conversation we all need to have together.”
She nodded. “If we’re really going to do this . . .” She sighed and rubbed her face, feeling a little ridiculous. It was hard to shake. “If this is what we’re going to do, the relationship that we’re going to share . . .”
“Just say it, Reggie. It won’t kill you. If you’re going to be with the three of us.”
“If I’m going to be with the three of you, there has to be trust and openness between all of us, not just between you and me and then between me and Sawyer and me and Hutch.”
“I understand. We all do. Believe me when I say discussing my sexual history with two other guys is not something that thrills me, but what each of us do or have done affects the others. All of us. So we have to address it. But, Reggie? It’s not going to be a long conversation.”
She lifted an eyebrow in question.
“There hasn’t been anyone else for me in a long time. Not since I came to terms with my feelings for you. I don’t know for certain, but given what I know about the way Hutch and Sawyer feel about you, I can’t think it’s any different for them.”
“Are you trying to say you’ve all been celibate? That there hasn’t been anyone in the last year?”
“Not just the last year. Years.”
Shock rounded her mouth. And close on the heels of that surprise came swift and agonizing guilt. Oh God. While she’d been off having her one-night stand and doing her best to prove she didn’t need him, he’d been waiting for her.
Cam let go of her shoulders and turned to the side, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’m not a saint. I can’t speak for the others. There were women. Especially in college. One or two afterward. But when I realized I was in love with you, other women ceased to exist for me.”
Love. The word sizzled through her brain like a fire fueled with gasoline.
She knew they felt deeply for her. Even loved her in a way. It was hard not to love one another when their friendship had run so deep for so long.
But to hear him say, so matter-of-factly, that he was in love with her weakened her at the knees. It called to a long buried need in her that blossomed and strained to be set free.
She wanted to be loved. Maybe she’d always wanted it. But it was something she’d learned to live without.
“You love me?” she whispered.
He gave her the strangest look. The longer he looked at her, the more complex his expression became.
“You don’t know, do you? You really don’t know what I feel for you?”
He moved in close, still staring at her with those intense brown eyes, so dark they made her shiver.
“I’ve always loved you, Reggie darling. Always. But I realized I was in love with you two years ago. I watched you being sworn in to your position as a police officer, and I can still remember the panic that hit me right in the chest as I realized the risk you would be taking. I broke into a cold sweat when I realized that this was something I couldn’t protect you from. And then I contemplated the possibility of losing you, and that’s when it hit me that I didn’t just love you, didn’t feel some deep affection reserved for a long-standing friendship. I was completely and utterly, hopelessly in love with you.”
“I don’t even know what to say,” she said in a lost and confused voice she couldn’t control.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Cam said in his ge
ntle, understanding way. “That’s what’s so great about love. It’s freely given. It doesn’t require understanding or a response. Just know that you have mine.”
She buried her face in his chest. She quaked against him, unable to stanch the raw emotion that raged through her heart.
He rained tiny kisses over her hair as his hands smoothed up and down her back.
“I—I love you too, Cam,” she said quietly. And in that moment, she knew she meant it. She only hoped to God that it was enough to get them through the difficulties that lay ahead.
His arms tightened around her, and he shook as he slowly pulled her away from him again.
“Tell me . . . tell me you don’t regret what happened between us last night,” he said.
She gazed intently at him, not holding anything back. “I don’t regret it, Cam. I won’t run this time.”
He laid his hand against her cheek, and she nuzzled into his palm, rubbing her face over his smooth skin.
“No matter what happens . . . with the others . . . it won’t ever change the way I feel about you, Reggie. I need you to know that.”
“I know,” she said softly even as her chest gave a little squeeze. What he didn’t say, however, was how they could possibly have a future together at the expense of two people they both loved.
It had to work. It was an all-or-nothing situation. One that frightened the hell out of her.
He leaned forward and kissed her brow, allowing his lips to linger for a moment.
“Come on, love. I’m sure the others are waiting for us.”
CHAPTER 22
It was a little strange to walk into a house she hadn’t been in for a year. A place she had been a regular visitor to before that night.
The large home in the upscale Houston suburb doubled as their offices, although they did maintain a smaller office in downtown Houston. Who was manning it now that they had taken up residence in Cypress, and how could they hope to keep the business thriving living an hour away? How much were they giving up to pursue the arrangement they said they wanted?
It didn’t make a lot of sense to her. She wasn’t even important to her own parents. How could three men feel so deeply for her that they’d risk everything they had worked so hard for?
As she walked into the living room, images from that night a year ago flashed before her, heating her cheeks and her body. A warm flush centered in her abdomen and washed through her veins, bathing her in heady desire.
The four of them on the couch. Then the carpet and finally on the bed in one of the master suites.
The next morning she’d awakened amid a tangle of male bodies, their arms and legs possessively entwined in hers. She’d bolted. Run as fast and as far as she could back home.
She’d ignored their phone calls, and when they finally showed up at her door, she’d used work and anything else she could think of to avoid them.
And then the phone calls stopped. The pleas to talk to them ceased. Silence had stretched between them like a chasm. That was when the true pain had hit her, because that was the moment she’d lost them.
Until a few nights ago, when they’d appeared in her hospital room, determination etched into their features like stone.
All the while she’d thought they’d given up on her they’d been moving quietly in the background. Waiting. For her.
She sat down heavily on the large sectional. Unworthy. She felt completely and utterly unworthy of such love and devotion. It baffled her.
“Reggie, are you okay?” Cam asked.
She looked up to see him standing by the couch, concern in his eyes.
“I’m fine. Just thinking.”
He sat down beside her, their legs nearly touching.
“About that night?”
She nodded.
“I think about it too,” he said. “All the time.”
“We all think about it,” Sawyer said from the doorway.
He started across the room and stopped a few feet away from her. She motioned to the place next to her.
“Sit down. You make me nervous standing over me that way.”
“That’s because he’s a big bastard,” Cam said in an amused voice.
Sawyer cast him a dark scowl but sat next to Reggie. His hand came to rest on the back of her neck as he leaned back. He rubbed over the knotted muscles, and she teetered backward from her perch on the edge of the couch, seeking more of his touch.
“You’re so responsive,” Sawyer murmured. “You were that night too. I touched you, and you came alive in my hands. I was so hungry for you. I’m still hungry, Reggie. There’s never been another woman like you for me.”
She rotated, causing his hand to slide down her back.
“Every time I think I know how I feel or what to say, you manage to say or do something that renders it completely ineffectual,” she said raggedly. “What do I say to something like that? That I’ll never feel worthy of the devotion the three of you have shown? That I look at you, and I remember that night and know that no one will ever mean as much to me as the three of you do?”
Tears clogged her throat, and she swallowed against the heavy knot, determined not to break in front of them. She clenched her teeth and sucked in air through her nose.
Shocked silence ensued before Sawyer all but imploded. He reached for her, dragging her across his lap and into his arms. There was no gentleness in his actions. She didn’t expect any.
He framed her face in his hands and locked his lips to hers. He touched her cheeks, brushed his thumbs across her eyelids, dragged a finger through her curls.
“Don’t you know? You’re everything to me, Reggie. Everything. Not worthy? Dear God. How can you even think such a thing? You’ve believed in us, loved us since we were rebellious little snot-nosed brats. You defended us when no one else would. Worthy? We’re not worthy of you, honey, but I’m not going to let that prevent me from having you.”
“Then take me,” she whispered.
A ragged groan worked from his chest. “There’s nothing I’d love more than to drag you upstairs and lock you in my bedroom for the next twelve hours.”
She smiled at the tortured sound of his voice. “I hear a but in there.”
“But all I have time for is a quickie, and you deserve more than that.”
She frowned, but he shushed her with a finger.
“I have to go out to the job site and find out what the hell is going on. But don’t think I won’t forget where we left off here. You asked me to take you, and believe me I’m going to take you. Over and over.”
She shivered at his sensual words. Her gaze fastened on his lips—hard, yet so inviting. She leaned in to kiss him, the bristle of his goatee skittering over her chin. Warm, soft, wet, their tongues glided together.
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” she whispered.
He groaned again. “Me too, honey. My dick is so hard, I’m going to have trouble walking.”
She giggled. Leave it to Sawyer to ruin a perfectly sensual moment by being a guy. Her gaze slid sideways to where Cam sat a few feet away, and she could see the undisguised interest on his face. The desire. And if she wasn’t mistaken, he was as hard as Sawyer reported himself to be.
Interesting. She’d been so worried about showing one of them affection in front of the other. Of kissing or touching for fear of making them jealous, but Cam’s reaction was far from jealousy or resentment. He looked as though he wanted to join in.
It wasn’t as though they hadn’t done it before.
Heat suffused her cheeks. She was going to have to get over her embarrassment about that night. It was obviously going to happen again. And soon, if she had to guess. The sexual tension between them all was at its boiling point, and something had to give.
“You better go before I tie you to the couch,” she said lightly.
His entire body tensed. His muscles contracted and rippled, and a shudder worked across his shoulders.