Ideal Image: Snapshot, #2

by Freya Barker

  “There,” she says softly, wiping the remaining shaving cream off my head and neck. “All done.”

  When she runs a final cool hand over the smooth surface of my head, my barely held control snaps.

  My cock has been painfully hard since the moment I sat down between her legs, and I’ve been able to smell her arousal since not long after she first put her hands on me.

  I swing around and get up on my knees, my hands finding her hips.

  “I believe I owe you an orgasm,” I growl, her scent thick as syrup to my senses.

  A sharp gasp is my only response when I find the waistband of the soft lounge pants she’s wearing, and manage to strip them down to her ankles. With my hands behind her knees, I pull her to the edge of her seat and wide open. I only give my eyes a moment to take in the neatly trimmed dark blonde curls, framing her deep pink pussy, slick with arousal, before I let my craving take over.

  “Nicholas,” she hisses when I stroke her with my tongue, tasting her deeply. Her hands clasp the back of my head, her nails scraping the skin, pressing my face deeper.

  I feast, sucking her small bundle of nerves between my lips before sliding my mouth down to her opening, and fucking her with my tongue. Her essence covers my face and still I can’t get enough. If I couldn’t draw another breath, I’d happily die here.

  Her release comes on fast, her thighs clamp tight around my ears, as her hips buck to find more friction. The moment I insert two fingers and curve them up and latch onto her clit, she shatters under my touch.

  I lift my head and rest my cheek on her belly, gasping for air much as she is.

  Also, I’m pretty sure I just came in my pants.

  CHAPTER 12

  Stacie

  “How’s the face?”

  Typical of Ben. No subtle or particularly tactful inquiries, not even a proper hello, but straight to the point.

  “The face is fine, although it’s a bit itchy, and I’m getting really tired of staring out one eye. How was today?”

  Ginnie’s funeral was this morning and I’d been sitting by the phone, waiting for his call. I’d talked to Isla over the weekend a couple of times and she sounded like she was doing okay, but I knew today would be tough.

  “Sad,” he says, sounding tired. “She went down for a nap with Noah, but I’m waiting for the wheels to come off at some point.”

  “Any idea when you guys will be home?”

  “Isla’s talking about staying for a bit, helping Al sort through Ginnie’s things. He’s been talking about selling his place. Coming back to stay in the trailer until he finds something in Dolores or maybe Cortez. Says he wants to be closer.”

  “Makes sense,” I point out. “Isla’s here, his grandnephew is here, he’s got friends here—why wouldn’t he?”

  “It’s fine by me. It’ll make Isla happy,” he says and I have to smile.

  The change in my brother in the past year has been nothing short of shocking. I always had Mak to keep me anchored, but Ben, he moved through life rudderless. Whenever the wind would blow him in our direction, he seemed to soak up his niece’s adoration. Like a recharging of his batteries before he took off again.

  That restlessness is gone. I never thought I’d see him settled and held in place by the love of a fireball of a woman. The roles appear to have reversed, and I’m the one floundering now, while he is the North on my compass.

  “Anyway,” he concludes, breaking my train of thought. “I’m catching a flight on Thursday.”

  “I can come pick you up,” I offer with a knee-jerk response, not quite considering I will still only have one eye to see. Ben has, judging by the snort on the other side.

  “Left the SUV at the airport, Sis. I’ll pop in when I get to town, say hi to Mak, before I head up the mountain. Your appointment Friday is at eleven?” he refers to my post-surgical, follow-up appointment with Dr. Ashrad in Durango.

  “Yes, it is, but I’ve got a ride organized,” I try to explain. Nick already assured me his day was clear and he fully expected taking me.

  “Nonsense,” my brother barks dismissively. “Why do you think I’m coming back Thursday? I’m driving.”

  I guess that’s that, since he immediately hangs up after, not giving me a chance to argue.

  Instead of diving back into the book I was attempting to read when he called, I glance outside, where I can just see the shimmer on the water of the Dolores River.

  It’s a nice day. A cool sixty-eight degrees out there, but with only a few clouds in the sky. My face may still be healing but my legs are fine, and I haven’t been outside in days.

  I grab my jean jacket off the peg in the hallway and my keys, slip my feet into a pair of Chucks, and head out.

  The river is literally steps from my house, and when I sleep with my window open, I can hear the rush of the water. The noise is much louder when you’re walking right alongside it, and drowns out any normal small-town sounds. It is truly an oasis where you can imagine yourself far removed from civilization. The trail along the water runs through brush and trees, blocking any view from the street just beyond. Something I appreciate even more now, with my head still swaddled in bandages.

  Out here, with my feet moving, my arms swinging, and my heart pumping vigorously, I’m able to let my mind wander, and it has only one direction: Nicholas Flynn.

  I haven’t seen him since he left here Sunday night. I couldn’t believe when he got up from the floor, looked down to where I was splayed out like a stranded jellyfish on the couch, where he’d just quite thoroughly devoured me, snagged his shirt, and pulled it over his head.

  “I should go,” he said, and I couldn’t help feel rejection. He must’ve read that on my face. “Mak is just down the hall,” he clarified. “I don’t want anything holding us back the first time, but we would have to for her sake. Besides, if the way I feel now is any indication, I couldn’t hold back even if I tried.”

  Now that I had liked. The idea that, even in my current state, I was able to cause him to lose control, made me feel pretty damn good.

  I watched as he sadly pulled the shirt back over his torso, hiding the nice, solid chest covered with the perfect amount of chest hair, which narrowed as it trailed down, disappearing from sight behind his waistband. He was not sculpted, like some of the men I’d been with over the years. I could tell he worked out regularly, but he wasn’t all hard planes and sharp angles.

  The man is real, and the fact he’s perhaps not perfect, makes him even more attractive to me. So much so, I find myself wondering what it would be like to be cuddled against a chest like that: strong but comfortable. Sadly, I never had a chance to find out Sunday night, or yesterday.

  He called first thing yesterday morning to see how I’d slept, and if Mak had gone off to school okay. I found that unexpectedly endearing. Before he hung up, he made me promise I’d call him if I needed anything, but that he’d likely be tied up all day with work.

  I’m not surprised, that’s often the nature of our profession, the demands continue, even if you take a day off.

  He called again last night, right after Jen had dropped off a lasagna and some Caesar salad, which he’d apparently ordered from her. I could hear the regret in his voice when he explained a merger he was involved with had hit some snags, and he’d be busy well into the night.

  I haven’t heard from him today, though.

  I’m coming up to the edge of town where the path disappears, when I notice the trailer park, where we dropped off Mak’s little friend, Becca, recently. There’s a chain-link fence almost butting up to the path, and when I get close, I can make out Becca’s trailer through the trees.

  The woman who’d almost dragged Becca inside that day—her mother, I presume—is standing on the steps of the trailer, lips locked with some guy sporting a substantial beer gut, wearing a trucker hat. The guy steps back, tucks something down the front of the woman’s shirt, and gets into the delivery truck parked out front.

  I’m not sure wh
at to make of the scene, and although it could well be simply a woman saying goodbye to her man, there is something unsavory in the way she plucks whatever he tucked there from between her boobs. I watch her shove it in her pocket as she watches the man drive off. Money for services rendered? Or maybe a drug deal? It might be my years in the DA’s office that has me go straight for something shady, but the whole scene just makes me worry about Becca more.

  The woman turns around to go inside, and I turn too, back toward home, when I feel the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I look back over my shoulder at the trailer and find the woman still standing there. Her head turned this way, and despite the brush and trees between us, her eyes are zoomed in on me, with pinpoint precision. Even at this distance I can feel the venom in that stare.

  It’s enough to send a shiver down my back, and even though I watch as she finally steps inside and closes the door behind her, the feeling that I’m being watched follows me all the way home.

  The feeling is so strong that I’m almost running by the time I finally unlock and push open my door. I slam it shut right behind me, and instantly turn the lock, something I haven’t done since moving to Dolores. I peek out the small window beside the front door, but don’t see anything, and already common sense returns.

  That was stupid, judging from the throbbing in my face. I’m just jumpy from that woman’s eyes on me. Besides, looking at the world through only one eye is a little unsettling. It can skew the way you see things, and maybe mistake one thing for another.

  But when I turn and walk into my kitchen, there’s no mistaking the bouquet of tiny little blue flowers sitting on the counter, in a vase from my own pantry.

  NICK

  “There’s no card. Nothing. They’re not even real, they’re plastic.”

  I’ve got Stacie on hands-free as I rush down the road to Dolores.

  I had just been saying goodbye to James Marx, who’d come in for an emergency meeting this morning to salvage his deal, when my phone rang. The panic in Stacie’s voice was thick, and a cold fist closed around my heart as she asked me if I’d been by to drop off some flowers. I immediately grabbed the landline with my other hand and dialed the sheriff’s direct line.

  “Stay right where you are and stay on the line. I’m calling the sheriff,” I told her when Drew answered his phone after the second ring. “Someone was in Stacie’s house, left flowers inside in her kitchen.”

  “I’m actually just down the street at the high school. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

  I drop the landline in the cradle when he hangs up, and with my cell phone to my ear; I snag my keys off my desk, and beeline it out of my office.

  “Just don’t touch anything,” I remind her, which is met with a loud snort.

  “I’m the criminal lawyer here, remember?” she scolds me, which only makes me smile. That fire is a whole lot easier to take than the sheer panic I heard in her voice earlier.

  “Is that Drew?” I ask when I can hear knocking in the background.

  “Yeah, it is,” she says, once again a little shakily. The bravado gone with the reminder of the gravity of her situation standing right outside her door.

  “Okay, put him on the phone for me?”

  I hear rustling when Drew’s voice comes over the line. “I’m here, it’s all good. I’ve got it,” he says, instinctively knowing that that’s the reassurance I was looking for.

  “I’m on my way, tell her I’ll be there shortly,” I instruct him before I hang up and concentrate on driving.

  THERE ARE TWO PATROL vehicles from the sheriff’s office parked in front, when I pull up outside Stacie’s house. There’s also a handful of gawkers on the street, drawn by the commotion.

  I walk up the path to the front porch where I see Jen sitting on the rattan bench, her arm around Stacie. The moment Stacie sees me, she’s on her feet and coming toward me. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel my chest swell a bit when she reaches me and wraps herself in my arms.

  Jen, who also got up, is standing at the top of the steps, her eyes locked on mine over Stacie’s head. A small smile forms on her lips before she starts down the stairs.

  “You’ll stay?” Jen asks me when she gets close, and Stacie immediately steps out of my arms.

  “Not going anywhere,” I confirm, earning a nod of approval from Jen and a look of concern from Stacie.

  “Good, because I came running the moment I found out something was up. I left the customer who told me standing at the counter,” she says, starting to move down the path. “Keep your fingers crossed he didn’t take off with all my damn pastries.”

  “Talk to me,” I tell Stacie, grabbing her hand and walking her back to the bench on her porch.

  “Nothing much to tell that I haven’t told you already,” she says, shrugging as she sits down. “I went for a walk, came back home, and found the flowers.”

  “Looks like someone came in the window in your daughter’s room,” Drew says, interrupting as he steps out the front door. “Unless your daughter wears a size eleven men’s shoe and makes it a habit to climb out the window, I’m pretty sure he left a print on the window sill.”

  “I always keep a safety bar behind the sliding part on all the windows,” Stacie pipes up, her back straightening. “We just use the vents at the top for circulation.”

  “I know. The bar is still there,” Drew says. “But apparently the stationary panel can easily be removed when you pull away the stripping on the outside. Not the best construction, these windows.”

  “Why the hell would someone want to come in here just to put some fake flowers on the counter?” she wants to know.

  “Is there anything else you can think of?” Drew asks Stacie, ignoring what was obviously a rhetorical question. “Anything else happen? Strange phone calls? Things out of place?”

  I watch with curiosity as what is visible of her face first pales and then turns a fiery red, stark against the white dressings. Her eye flits between Drew and me before firmly settling on the sheriff.

  “No phone calls, but now I’m thinking there was something that happened Sunday that I initially dismissed. An item I had taken out before I took a nap, had been placed neatly in my night table when I woke up.” I see one of Drew’s eyebrows jerk up ever so slightly, but the rest of his face stays impassive. “I thought perhaps I’d done it myself, but that never really sat well with me. You see, I never store it in my bedside drawer.”

  I have to give it to the man; he certainly keeps a straight face, when I realize both he and I know exactly what item she is referring to by now. Not so much by what she said, but by what she didn’t say. Her vagueness speaks volumes, as does the bright blush on her one visible cheek.

  It’s not appropriate at all, but I still can’t help wonder if it was me she was thinking of when she was playing with herself.

  “Where do you normally store it?” Drew asks, dispassionately, and I have a renewed respect for the man. Any sign of emotion, of interest, or even of amusement on his part, and I think I would’ve planted a fist in his face.

  “Bottom drawer, old metal lunch box,” Stacie says, her gaze now focused on the floor at her feet. I put my hand on her knee and give it a little squeeze.

  “I’ll see if my deputy can get some prints off your nightstand. Just in case,” Drew says, turning to go back inside.

  “One more thing,” Stacie says, stopping him in his tracks. “When I found the flowers, I’d just come back from a walk along the river. From the moment I turned back home, I swear it felt like I had eyes on me.”

  “See anything?” Drew asks.

  “No. Just had the hair stand up on my skin.”

  “Anyone in recent memory who might hold a grudge? An ex-boyfriend? Someone you prosecuted?” I ask, looking first at Drew, who nods in agreement, and then at Stacie.

  “I used to have many, it’s par for the course when you make a living putting people in prison. No ex-anythings,” she says pointedly, pausing br
iefly as she holds my gaze. “And you know I’ve not been involved in any cases since before last Christmas.”

  “Could be someone who simply hasn’t been able to track you down. You did pick up stakes quite suddenly,” Drew suggests. “I don’t necessarily think it has to be recent”

  “Why do you say that?” Stacie wants to know.

  Drew throws me a concerned look, before he focuses on her.

  “Because those flowers in there?” he says, waving his hand in the direction of the kitchen. “Whoever it was didn’t leave you forget-me-nots by accident.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Stacie

  “You’re coming home with me.”

  This has been going back and forth since the sheriff cleared out. Nick wants me to pack a bag and tag along with him, but I’m not about to tuck my tail and go running over some fake flowers.

  I’m not sure why I’m so stubborn, but I’m sick and tired of being a victim. I’ve been dragging my ass since my accident and am just starting to feel some solid ground under my feet again. I’m not going to let myself disappear into the shadows again. What would that teach Mak? Someone says boo really loud and you scamper off? That’s not what I want to impart on my daughter.

  Drew and Nick already reinforced the strip on the window by nailing a board all along the bottom of it. A temporary fix, because no one could come out today. The earliest was tomorrow afternoon. We were lucky that the windows in the bedrooms are standard sized; otherwise it would have been longer.

  “Nick, I’m tired, I’m sore, Mak is coming off the bus any minute, and I really don’t want to traumatize her anymore than I absolutely have to,” I plead my case this time, instead of just giving him attitude. “The kid’s been through enough upheaval, and unless it is absolutely necessary, I really don’t want her to worry about something that might turn out to be nothing.”