“How about that coffee?” I suggested. His eyes darted down my body, noting the placement of my hands: hanging ineffectually beside my thighs, not on his chest where they usually would be, if he’d just kissed me senseless, like he’d done right now.
I saw something flicker in his dark eyes. I could have sworn it was fear, but Damon didn’t show fear. Not even to me. I doubted what I’d seen immediately. And then cursed myself internally for a beat.
I’d never been very good at this relationship thing. I’d either throw myself too deeply into them in the past, or not deeply enough. Finding a happy middle ground was not natural for me. All or nothing. That’s how I operated. Black and white. Right and wrong.
But my professional and personal compass was out.
Carl was not dead as I’d once believed. I’d let him go, when I should have arrested him for going on a killing spree. I’d failed to follow the letter of the law, something I’d been raised to do instinctively.
And now I was looking into the beautiful eyes of the man I thought I might just love but couldn’t seem able to fully trust for some reason.
Everything was grey. Everything was hovering between right and wrong. I couldn’t decide. I couldn’t seem to make myself choose one or the other.
Everything was grey.
I closed my eyes, let out a wretched breath of air, and felt utter defeat. I was drowning here, and the one man who had kept me afloat for the past three weeks was drifting away from me.
“Coffee,” Damon said softly.
My eyes opened. He reached up and tucked a portion of hair behind my ear. His gaze resting on the blonde strands, almost mesmerised by them. Damon had thick, dark, curly hair, such a contrast to mine. I had a thing for his hair, but it paled in comparison to his obsession with mine.
“You need coffee,” he semi-repeated. But we both knew the words were a euphemism for something else.
I needed help. And he was trying. He was doing his best. But even that wasn’t enough.
I was drowning.
I nodded my head and let him lead the way into the Station, bypassing the watch area downstairs, and heading up to where the HEAT offices were based on the second floor.
The Hauraki Emergency Assistance Team worked out of Pitt Street Fire, as a branch of the Fire Service. But also as liaison to both the Police and Ambulance when required. They consisted of three divisions: Investigation; Prevention; and Rescue. Today, all three divisions were on station. Possibly not all here to work, but certainly not in any hurry to leave either. They were brothers to each other, that’s why the recent spate of arsonist attacks against them were hitting them hard. And making it harder for me to convince Damon that he needed to look at each member of his collective team more closely.
Damon still believed the culprit was someone from the watch: a front-line firefighter. I couldn’t get him to see otherwise. Not that I had a suspect in mind at all, but to be able to consider other avenues would have been nice. Not to mention, an appropriate way to carry on the investigation.
We entered into the middle of a loud discussion, Gus and Jude from Prevention arguing with Flack and Spence from Investigation. It had obviously started to get heated, but I couldn’t make out what it was about. Several of the men lounging around the periphery of the room were heckling those on centre stage, offering their two cents worth. Marc was in the kitchen with Stretch, banging pots and pans - I was thinking in an effort to drown the argument out - all the while a couple of guys from Rescue were turning the volume up on the flat screen TV in the corner, as though the fate of the world rested on daytime soap operas; occasionally throwing disgruntled looks over their shoulders at the scene escalating in the middle of the room.
It was chaotic, but only in the way big families can sometimes get. I didn’t come from a large family. There’s just my father and myself left. But I’d learnt to go with the flow at CIB, to allow the “brotherhood” a certain amount of free rein. I’d also learnt to enjoy it. That messy, unruly camaraderie. Because once the call came in, the argument would be forgotten, the TV turned off, the pots and pans left where they were, and every single one of these men would be there for the other. Backing them up. Helping to keep them safe. Working as a team.
I stood in the doorway, watching Damon weave his way through the throng as though the upheaval was perfectly normal and acceptable, making his way to the kitchen, sharing a word or two with Marc and Stretch, as he grabbed two cups from the cupboard and began to pour us coffee from a freshly brewed pot. And I realised how precarious this fellowship, this team spirit, could be.
Because I was seeing it at CIB. I was living it. I was walking that fine line between trusting my fellow brothers and doubting them. And I realised now, that was why Damon refused to consider the arsonist as one of their own. Not before all other avenues were investigated, all other possibilities were put to bed. Because to bring doubt into this fine ecosystem, this delicately balanced and intricately woven world, could prove disastrous. For his men. For the HEAT divisions. For him.
Hart had decided to keep the investigation into the traitor at CIB between just Pierce, himself and me. I understood why now. I acknowledged his reasons even as I recognised the horrific position he’d placed me in.
He’d said it could be a career breaker.
He’d failed to point out that it could also just break me.
“Keen, you gonna just stand there and look pretty or are you brave enough to step into the room with the big boys?” Gus called out from the long rectangular table that stood sentinel in the middle of the room. The argument was over, and I hadn’t even realised. Hadn’t even worked out what it had been about.
My eyes flicked over the several amused faces watching me and landed on Damon, still standing over in the open plan kitchen, now holding two cups of steaming coffee and wearing a look that said I was not hiding my emotions at all well.
I’d been trained by the best. Could hold my own with any snide, borderline indecent comment thrown my way by the likes of Joe Gutter-Snipe Cawfield. Could hurl a sharp witted barb back without lifting a finger or having to think.
But the best was now a rogue criminal.
And my training put into question by more than just me.
I ran a hand over my face and the room fell silent. I was breaking apart in a much too public way.
“You’ll never guess what Clarke did halfway up the steps of the Tower,” Jude’s low, rumbling voice said right at my ear.
A plate of chocolate biscuits appeared in front of me, a dark skinned hand holding the offering steady before my eyes. I reached out, mortified to see my hand shaking, a well of emotions bubbling up and threatening to drown. The biscuit had no taste when I automatically bit into it.
“Keen’s not interested in the newbie’s mishaps,” Flack said on my behalf, pulling out a seat beside him and patting it in an obvious invitation for me to sit.
I felt Jude’s large hand in the small of my back directing me as the “newbie” Russel Clarke muttered, “I ate something bad for dinner last night, that’s all.”
“So, it had nothing to do with the thirty plus kilos of firefighting gear on your back?” Spence shouted from across the room.
I took a seat, my legs damn near giving out as my butt hit the chair. Flack pushed a plate of sausage rolls towards me. Then pushed them closer when I didn’t take the hint fast enough. I picked one up and nibbled on it, my breaths settling, before I’d even realised they’d been way too fast before.
“What Lara wants to hear about,” Flack added next to me, “is how slow her old man is.”
Just as Gus said from across the table, “So, how did you get all those chunks of regurgitated carrot out of your BA gear, Clarke?”
Everyone groaned, but no one stopped eating.
Flack leaned closer to me and mock whispered, “Five minutes. Five whole fucking minutes, Keen.” Then louder, “Getting old, Michaels.”
“Or getting soft,” Jude rumbled.
“What do
you feed him, anyway, Keen?” Stretch asked.
“It’s not what she feeds him, it what she let’s him get away with,” Marc added, from his lean against a kitchen bench, a smirk gracing his stubbled face, piercing blue eyes dancing.
I sucked in a breath and found myself saying, “You’re all wrong.” And received a suspended moment of silent anticipation in return. My blood thundered in my veins, but the familiar banter seemed to somehow bolster me. Bring me back from a place I didn’t even know I’d been. “It was the threat of what he’d miss out on if he strained a muscle climbing those damn stairs.”
A beat, then raucous laughter followed, and just like that I could breathe freely again. They weren’t my family. They weren’t my brotherhood either. But they made me feel like I belonged. Like they’d back me, help keep me safe. Let me be part of their team.
Damon ran a fairly tight ship, but this moment was all on the men he’d chosen for HEAT. Their hearts were as big as their oversized fire-fighting bodies. Their friendship as beautiful as their many varied and rugged good looks. I felt as welcome here, maybe more so even, as I did in CIB.
In the Criminal Investigations Bureau I was the lone female detective. The daughter of a prominent South Auckland cop. At HEAT I was simply Keen.
“All right, that’s enough!” Damon shouted, when the dirty jokes started coming out in full force. “I believe I’d like to convince my girlfriend that I am in one piece.” The dirty jokes slipped into the gutter. Damon winked at me and nodded towards the corridor to his office.
For a second, I hesitated.
For a second, I contemplated hiding again.
But I am a good cop. A damn fine detective. Trained by a rogue criminal or not.
I stood up from the table and moved to follow him from the room, ignoring the many jibes. But also feeling completely at home amongst them. This was the world I knew and loved. I may be drowning, but I could see the light reflect off the top of the water when I was with these guys.
I just hoped the same would apply when I walked into CIB.
Damon held the door to his office open, his steady eyes locked on my face as I walked past. I held his gaze, even as my heart rate rocketed. Knowing what was about to come next. Fearing it more than I had ever feared anything before.
It should have been easy. There should have been no doubt. But doubt was smothering me of late. Mixed in with confusion and indecision, and layered in years of mistrust.
Cawfield’s timing couldn’t have been worse. I was aware I was on the brink of losing it completely. Flailing desperately to hold on.
But what was I holding on to? And would it be easier to just let go?
The door clicked shut behind me, and I felt Damon walk up to my back, where I stood staring at his cluttered desk. Running HEAT required paperwork. A lot of it, by the looks of this dishevelled mess.
Hot breath washed over my cheek, as his arms came around my waist and he leaned in over my shoulder nuzzling my hair.
“What happened?” he asked softly, laying a tender kiss against the side of my neck.
I wanted to relax back into him. I wanted to give in and let him take some of this wretched load. But the image of a strangled woman lying on the filthy pavement outside a nightclub on Karangahape Road flashed in front of my eyes. Making the desk disappear and the room feel too close.
My hands fisted. My chest rose and fell too fast. Damon would have been aware of it all. He always is.
He knows me.
Why did I not feel I knew him as well?
I sucked in a deep breath of air and held it. Damon stilled, his arms warm bands around me, the heat from his chest scorching my back.
“What do you know about a members only club called Sweet Hell?” I asked, the room closing in further. My heart rate drowning out all other sounds.
But I heard him. I heard it over the roar inside my head. I heard him.
He sucked in a sharp breath of obviously startled air.
Chapter 5
“Life has a tendency to surprise us, Keen. But it’s yourself you gotta watch out for. Sometimes the biggest shocks come from within.”
I looked down at the floor, but my eyes didn’t make it that far. Damon’s arms were still around my waist, his hands loosely overlaying each other. The knuckles were scraped and some of the skin was torn, as though he’d been in a fist fight.
I pulled out of his frozen embrace, and turned around swiftly to face him. My eyes darting all over his face, trying to see the man I knew there. He couldn’t look me in the eyes.
My stomach plummeted to the floor.
“Damon?”
He brought a bruised hand up to his neck, moving to rub the back of it. But as soon as he recognised the tell-tale move for what it was, he quickly brought it back down again, now in a tight fist that had to hurt. His gaze caught on the cuts across his knuckles, or maybe the clenching drew his attention instead.
Something was going on and I’d missed it. The man I practically spent every evening with had been in a fight and hidden it from me. What sort of detective was I?
“When did you do that?” I asked, nodding at his hands, but he still wasn’t looking at me, so he wouldn’t have seen it. He answered anyway.
“It’s nothing,” he said softly, releasing the fist and moving to scrub the back of his neck again.
He let out a frustrated breath of air and finally raised his eyes to mine.
“I wish you didn’t know my tell,” he admitted with brutal honesty.
Damon always rubbed the back of his neck when he was about to misdirect or hide something. Perhaps he’d been doing it a lot lately and I’d been too fucked up to notice. I didn’t know the answer to that, but twice in the past few minutes was one hell of a tell.
“What’s going on?” I asked, still unable to believe this was happening. That Damon was capable of… what? Being involved in the murder today? Visiting a place like Sweet Hell?
“What happened at Sweet Hell?” he asked instead of answering, moving to sit himself behind his desk in the large imposing chair there.
The tactic was one Hart often used. Intimidation which didn’t work on me anymore. Perhaps it worked on Damon’s team. But right now I was not on his team.
I was Detective Lara Keen, investigating a murder.
Acidic bile rose up my throat. I swallowed it viciously, levelling my gaze on Damon, but not sitting down in the smaller chair across from him.
“How did you cut your knuckles, Damon?”
“Are you asking as a concerned girlfriend or as a police detective?” he threw back, and then barked out a sudden harsh sound full of derision. “Don’t answer that. You’re always a cop.”
“You’ve been in a fight,” I pointed out, my voice devoid of emotion. He wanted the cop. He’d bloody well get it. “Recently. Possibly as recent as last night.”
“It’s nothing, Lara.”
“What did you hit?” Even now, I was giving him an out. He didn’t realise it. But the question, undoubtedly, should have been who did he hit. Not what.
He thought I was a detective first and foremost. But like with most things lately, nothing was so black and white.
“Firefighters always catch their knuckles on things.”
“So, you’re telling me the climb up the Sky Tower in full BA gear was performed without your gloves?” I glared at him. He glared back. “Don’t lie to me.”
The words were out before I could stop them. They hung on the air between us. They clung to an invisible wall that had somehow been erected. It overshadowed my emotional one for now.
“Lara,” Damon began on a wary breath of air.
“It’s easy,” I said, before he could go on. “You tell me everything you know about Sweet Hell, about why your knuckles are beat up from a fight. About why you feel it necessary to keep this from me.”
I sucked in a deep breath of air, felt my eyes sting, blinked through the sudden emotional swell that threatened me yet again, and said the
words I’d never thought I’d say to anyone.
“And we’ll work it out together. Just you and me, if it needs to be. No CIB. No Pierce. Just us.”
Life has a tendency to surprise us, Keen. But it’s yourself you gotta watch out for. Sometimes the biggest shocks come from within.
Shut up, Carl.
Damon stared at me. His normally slightly tanned face pale beneath the layer of stubble he always wore. His dark eyes swirling with some sort of emotion I couldn’t identify. His mouth parted, just a little, as though I’d shocked him more than I’d just shocked myself.
He was up and around the desk within the next split second, his hands finding my body as though I was simply an extension of himself. I didn’t get a chance to prepare. His chest crushed to mine, his fingers delved into my hair and wrapped around the strands in lightning speed, holding me just where he wanted me, and then his lips and tongue were devouring my mouth.
My back met the wall, photo frames of his various awards and qualifications rattling with the movement, a moan escaping, adding to the grunt of desire that slipped from Damon’s mouth. The length of his frame moulded to mine, his whole body enveloping me. But it was more than that. It was his touch, his heated breaths, his eager tongue, the sounds that rumbled up from deep inside his chest.
Damon could make love as though every cell in his body was devoted to the action. As though there wasn’t a piece of him left over to control anything else. In that moment he was entirely mine. Every single inch.
But then, when Damon touched me, held me, kissed me, there was no argument that I was completely his as well.
It confused me, this depth of attraction. It had always existed, even when I was all about the job.
And now, for the brief moment in time he took to show me his gratitude, to tell me through his desire and hunger his want, he wiped all other emotions out. All other doubts and concerns erased with just his touch. Everything white again, not grey, not black. But right.
Damon stopped the questions inside my mind. He stopped the self doubt. He drowned out Carl’s voice.
In just those brief moments in time, Damon made everything so simple. So easy.
A Touch Of Heat (H.E.A.T. Book 2) Page 4