Her Devoted HERO (Black Dawn Book 2)

by Caitlyn O'Leary

  Her soft laugh tinkled like bells. It also told him that she was with him.

  Thank God!

  Soon they were in the room that he had commandeered. Kenna was clutching his neck so tightly he thought he might lose circulation. When he looked into her sweet face, he could see panic laced with determination. That was his woman. No matter her fears, she would never back down, but that wasn’t he wanted for them. For her.

  Dex kicked the door closed with his foot, then went to the bed and sat down with her in his lap.

  “Lasagna.”

  “Huh?” he queried.

  “I always order lasagna. With meat sauce. I wear Navy T-shirts to bed with comfy shorts.”

  His head went quiet. The world stopped spinning. “Why do you wear Navy T-shirts to bed?”

  “My dad was in the Navy. He wore dress whites when he married my mom. I wear Navy T-shirts to bed.”

  “Is that why you responded to my e-mail? The dress whites?”

  “That, and you’re a big brother to a boy who needs you and your eyes. You have beautiful eyes. I thought maybe you could be someone I could trust with a piece of my heart.”

  “Ahhh God, you kill me.” He pressed a kiss against her temple, then feathered his lips down the line of her jaw until he could capture her lips. So good, she tasted so good. He laid her down on the duvet, strands of strawberry blonde hair fanned across the blue pillows. Her hazel eyes looked mostly gray as they stared up at him.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “I want this,” she whispered.

  “I’m glad.” Her fingers went to the buttons on her blouse, he brushed them away. “I want to undress you. I’ve dreamt of taking it slow, savoring every moment.”

  Her voice was hushed. “Really?”

  “Truly,” he whispered the word against her lips. His fingers slowly slipped first one, then another and then another button from their holes until he was able to part her shirt and look at the sensible white bra that encased her generous breasts.

  It broke his heart when he saw her waiting for his judgement like there was a possibility that he would find her lacking. “Lady, you take my breath away.”

  A smile, like the sun cresting the ocean at dawn, broke over her face. He dipped down for another kiss and was soon lost. The woman was as potent as Kentucky bourbon. He felt her hands under his T-shirt, her nails scraping up his back, and the caress was going to make this moment go a whole lot faster than he wanted.

  “Off,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “Your shirt off. Now!” Her nails bit deep, and he liked it. He pulled it over his head and was gratified when he heard her sigh of satisfaction.

  “Now you.” He eased her up, so he could pull off her blouse and unfasten her bra. Thank God, he was lying down. Otherwise, she’d bring him to his knees.

  “Fuck. You’re gorgeous,” he rasped.

  She stilled. Her eyes got wide. Then she threw back her head and laughed.

  ***

  “Woman, there better be a damn good reason you’re laughing.”

  Kenna wound her arms around his neck and tried to pull him down for a kiss. He was having none of it. “You really think I’m beautiful,” she said grinning.

  “No. Get it right, I think you’re beyond beautiful. I said you’re gorgeous.”

  She laughed harder. “Now kiss me.”

  He looked put out. She grabbed his ears and pulled. His lips met her smile, and it was a glorious, beautiful, gorgeous kiss. It was the best kiss of her entire life. Each one of his kisses just kept getting better. She felt his hands move up her ribcage, up and up, then he was cupping her breasts. She closed her eyes even tighter so she could relish the sensation. Tendrils of heat coiled outwards, her legs started moving of their own volition. Her thighs squeezing together, trying to assuage the fire that Dex had started.

  She didn’t know when her hands had moved, but once again she felt the strength of Dex’s strong back under fingers. She pressed deep into his flesh, savoring the resiliency of his muscles. Dex moved his mouth, she felt the rasp of his beard against her cheek, then he moved lower, and...

  Gods, Yes!

  His tongue circled her nipple. Hot, wet, sublime.

  “Dex,” she gasped. “I need...I need.”

  His eyes shot up and caught hers. “I have you. I’ll take care of you. Always.”

  He bent back to taste her and she couldn’t think, she could only feel. His flesh against hers, his arms beneath her back, she was wrapped up in the heat and scent of Dex, and she gloried in it.

  Kiss after kiss, caress after caress, and then she found herself lying on the bed without her jeans, looking at him wearing just her panties. Her plain white cotton panties.

  “No thong.”

  “These are now my favorite type of panties,” he whispered.

  His fingers traced the elastic of her waistband, back and forth, shooting tingles through her body. Then he slid his hand underneath the cotton, and she held her breath. His eyes met hers.

  “Breathe Baby.” One finger found her wet flesh, and she gasped for air.

  His eyes glittered with passion and tenderness as he coaxed a response that had been waiting just for him. Just him. He pressed and swirled and she arched against the heat of his hand.

  Was that her making those sounds?

  Then all thought flew out of her head as her release exploded.

  He got off the bed and stripped. Her eyes widened as she saw him naked for the first time, his body was a work of art. But she saw scars. Before she had a chance to fully comprehend what those meant, he had grabbed a condom from his duffel and whisked her panties off her body.

  “Are you okay with this,” he asked.

  Where was her resounding ‘yes?’ She could only give a small nod. But he understood, his fingers trailed down her cheek.

  “We’ll go slow. Snail’s pace slow.” Then his fingers continued a path to her breasts.

  “Fuck slow,” she said finding her words. “I need you now.”

  He grinned. “There’s my girl.”

  She pushed up on her elbows and parted her legs, anxious to start. He cocked an eyebrow, and cupped her breast, his thumb rasping against her nipple. She gasped. He bent down and sucked the other one, and she moaned. Soon he had her writhing on the bed. Thank God, his room was far from the others, was her last coherent thought as he slid down her body between her thighs.

  He wasn’t.

  He couldn’t.

  His thumbs touched and caressed and parted her needy flesh. Then his tongue was there, and she cried out his name as she found rapture.

  Soon she was locked in his arms, her face smashed against his chest. Her hand moved to his cock and found him sheathed.

  “Please, Dex.” She moved her leg so that it circled his waist.

  “Slow, Baby,” he admonished.

  “Now,” she said as she guided him to her. “Now, now, now.”

  He thrust deep. She winced.

  “Goddammit, Kenna.”

  “I’m good.” She clutched him with both legs when he would have pulled away. “It’s been awhile,” she reminded him.

  He remained still, and she absorbed the fullness, the closeness, the intimacy. She kissed the underside of his jaw and surged against him.

  She squeezed, then squeezed again. He groaned.

  Gently he moved. It felt good.

  “Again,” she pleaded.

  He did, he kept moving, and soon they were locked in a rhythm that took her breath away. It was perfect. Every time she needed something, he gave it to her. She stared up at him, hoping that she was providing even half as much in return.

  “Hey, stay with me,” he admonished.

  How had he known?

  She closed her eyes and then felt lonely, missing the connection. She opened them again.

  “That’s it, Kenna, look at me. I need you.” She saw he wasn’t lying. Their emotional link was as deep and powerful as t
he joining of their bodies. He smiled, and she saw his pleasure, his joy.

  She undulated against him.

  “Again. Oh God, Kenna, do that again.”

  She did. Their passion became frenzied. He was taking her even higher than before. How was that even possible? Then she understood. It was because they were together.

  “Kenna?”

  “I’m here. Please. Now,” she cried out.

  She looked into the eyes of the man she loved and catapulted into bliss.

  Chapter Ten

  Austin, Penny, and Kenna were safely ensconced behind the gated estate of Rosalie Randall. He wasn’t going to allow them to go to Rosalie’s place until she had offered a Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows to go back and forth through her secured gates and up to her mansion. The school was e-mailing Austin’s assignments, and under protest, Kenna had agreed to take two days off from work. That left Dex with some leeway to sort out Warren and Sanchez.

  “What the fuck were you thinking?” he demanded when he arrived at the precinct.

  The two detectives had taken Dex into a small conference room. It was probably used for interrogations, he thought. Which was perfect.

  “We were checking into the flowers, then tapping and tracing her phone. We were doing our jobs.” Warren was pissed.

  “Well, if you had called Clint Archer like I’d requested, you would have found out that he had already tapped and traced her goddamn phone so you wouldn’t have had to do double work!”

  “Mr. Evans―”

  “I’m not done,” Dex interrupted Warren. “For a solid day, you left my woman swinging in the wind. This guy knows things about her that only someone who has really studied her would know.”

  “We know this,” Sanchez said patiently.

  “It’s the dating site,” Dex started.

  “We get that!” Warren bit out. “You all are part of that goddamn site. Just how many women have you contacted anyway?”

  “If you’d made a fucking phone call to Clint he could have explained exactly what the fuck was going on. You’ll also notice that my profile was pretty fucking recent, and I checked, Jean wasn’t one of the women contacted. But that was just blind fucking luck.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Sanchez asked politely.

  “Yeah, explain it to us,” Warren growled.

  “So, this good cop, bad cop, is a real thing?” Dex asked. He was getting sick of this.

  “Clive, take it down a notch,” Sanchez said to his partner. “No, this isn’t a real thing. We’re kicking our own asses for not calling your friend. There isn’t an excuse. We fucked up. We were going to talk to Ms. Wright yesterday after we checked some things out. We wanted to make sure that you weren’t a suspect. Explain to us what you mean it was just blind luck that you hadn’t contacted Jean Baldwin.”

  Shit. Fuck. Piss. He was so going to kill Clint.

  “It was a practical joke. Clint set up a profile for me on CaliSingles. Then he sent out an e-mail to I don’t know how many women saying I was interested in them. The blind luck part was that Jean wasn’t one of those women. Two hundred and twenty-eight of them responded. It took me three goddamn days to respond to them all.”

  “You actually responded to them?” Warren said, his disbelief plain.

  “Well yeah.” Dex rubbed the back of his neck.

  “What did you tell them?” Sanchez asked.

  “I told them my profile had been hacked.”

  Sanchez laughed. “That must have gone over well.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “And Ms. Wright?” Sanchez prompted.

  “She was the one woman I didn’t blow off. She wrote the funniest damned response. I couldn’t pass her up.”

  Warren leaned forward. “Did you tell her that it was a set-up?” he asked menacingly.

  Great, she’d managed to find another protector.

  “Yep, I fessed up on our first date. She rolled with it. Another reason that I’m keeping her.”

  Sanchez grinned. Warren looked disgruntled. Well, the man would just have to deal.

  “Could you please get back to the point that Archer tapped her phone. Are you saying you have a recording of the call? Do you know where it originated?”

  Dex pulled out his cell phone and prided himself on not slamming it down on the table. “You can listen to the call right now. Kenna did her best to keep him talking, but when you listen, you’ll figure out he was planning on saying everything he did.”

  “He meant it to last as long as it did.” Sanchez rolled his head.

  “Listen for yourself.” Dex played the recording. He was satisfied to see that both detectives let themselves show anger when Austin was threatened.

  “Let me guess, when you traced the phone, it was a burner,” Warren said disgustedly.

  “You got it in one,” Dex agreed. “Clint was on it when it came in. But the area he was able to triangulate it to was pretty fucking large. It was smack dab in the middle of the five, eight-oh-five and fifty-two freeways.”

  “That doesn’t give us anything.” Warren slammed his binder shut.

  “You listened to the recording, you heard how short it was. Could you have done better?”

  Warren opened his mouth, then shut it.

  “No, we couldn’t have done better,” Sanchez admitted.

  Dex’s phone vibrated. Austin’s name came up on the screen. “I need to take this.”

  The cops nodded.

  “Yo,” he answered.

  “Dex? You need to get here now.” The kid sounded wrong.

  “What’s going on? Are you all right? Is your mom okay?”

  “Dex! Please man.” He heard the kid swallow. He put his phone on speaker. “You gotta come to Rosalie’s. I got an e-mail. I can’t let Mom see it.” Austin’s voice stuttered. “Dex. He killed her.”

  Dex didn’t think he heard him right, he was talking fast in the end.

  “What did you say?”

  “I didn’t watch it all. It’s a video. It came to me from school. He’s hurting her. Bad. Get here!” The last was an order. “Mom can’t see this.”

  Then he choked out again. “I don’t know what to do...There was so much blood.”

  “I’ll be there. Hold on, Son.”

  The phone went dead.

  “What the fuck?” Warren said.

  “They’re holed up at Rosalie’s.” Dex’s hand was on the conference room door. Sanchez and Warren were up and following behind him.

  ***

  Austin was waiting for him outside on the front steps at the top of the circular drive. He was pacing back and forth. His eyes immediately took in the second car that pulled in behind Dex’s jeep.

  “Who are they?” he asked as Dex bounded up the stairs.

  “They’re cops. I was at the police station when you called.”

  “Mom will figure out something’s up.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s in Rosalie’s office.”

  Dex nodded. “Got it. We’ll go around the back to the verandah. You go in and bring your laptop to us.”

  “I didn’t think of that,” Austin said.

  For the first time since he’d met him, he seemed like the fifteen-year-old boy that he was. Dex cupped the back of his head. “It’s understandable, Austin. You’re doing great.”

  “It’s bad,” he whispered. Dex heard the tremor in the boy’s voice.

  “We’ll get through it together,” he assured him.

  Austin nodded. “I’ll meet you in five.”

  Then he was gone.

  Dex turned around and faced the detectives. “Let’s park around back with the other cars, so we’re not so obvious. We’re trying to fly under the radar for the time being.”

  “We’ll follow you,” Warren said.

  Dex moved his jeep back behind the garages. When he got out, he motioned for the detectives to follow him.

  When they got to the verandah, Austin
was standing there holding his laptop in his hand. The four of them huddled up. “We can’t look at it out here. You need to hear the sound, and anybody could come by.” The kid had a point. Austin pointed across the yard to the greenhouse.

  Dex looked at the house and calculated. The office was on the other side, looking out over the side lawn, not the back lawn. They should be good. They made their way over to the greenhouse. One gardener was in it. Dex asked him to give them some privacy. He looked at him confused. Then he and Sanchez repeated the request in Spanish at the same time. Sanchez grinned at him. Dex didn’t give a shit that Sanchez was impressed he spoke Spanish, he was just happy the gardener left, and they could see what was on Austin’s computer.

  “Did you say you got this e-mail from school?” Warren asked.

  “Yeah, I’ve been getting a lot of my homework from school. This had my school’s address, so I opened it. I didn’t recognize the teacher’s name, but I figured it was just a substitute. There was a video attached. Sometimes it’s like that.”

  He opened his laptop and clicked to his e-mail files. “Here it is. Mr. Forrester.” Austin’s finger trembled as he pressed the button to open the e-mail.

  “Austin. You’ve already watched it. Why don’t you go outside?” Dex said quietly.

  “I should watch all of it. I can handle it.”

  “Austin, I don’t doubt it. But this shit eats away at your soul. Life’s going to scar you enough over the years. If you can hold out a little longer so that you can take more hits later...well...you’re better off.”

  “Won’t it help Mom, if I watch? Try to get in this bastard’s head?” he asked grimly.

  “If there is the slightest, the tiniest way you can be of service to get this fucker, I’ll call you back in. You have my word.”

  Hazel eyes might have shown relief, but there was also resolve. He was his mother’s son.

  “I’ll be on the lookout for Mom or anyone else.”

  “Good man.”

  He watched the door close behind Austin, then he went back to Warren, Sanchez and the computer. Sanchez had the video queued up.

  A man was wearing a black leather mask that was found in sex stores. His eyes and mouth were cut out. His face filled the screen.

  “Hello Austin,” he said with the same raspy voice they’d just heard in the police station. “It’s time for a biology lesson. Or shall we call it psychology and anatomy?”