I crack my jaw to the side. Click. “My dad died when I was young. He was a Marine. Training accident. Bad luck.”
“I’m sorry.” She says it immediately, and everything softens. And then she doesn’t say anything else. She doesn’t try to make it better, doesn’t stumble over trying to make sense of the thing that is insensible.
“Yeah,” I say gruffly. “So there. That’s another secret you’ve got of mine.”
“Were you an only child?”
I bark a laugh. “God, no. Middle of five kids. My youngest sister was born after my dad died. All girls, except for me. And they all lost their shit on me when I joined the Corps.”
“You followed in your dad’s footsteps?”
I nod. “He wanted to be a cop, too. That was his life dream.”
“Undercover?”
“No, not that. That’s…my dad was a family man. Everything was for my mom, us kids. She tells us that all the time.”
“Hard to lose a spouse like that.”
“Brutal. She never re-married.”
“So it was a house full of women growing up?”
I smile softly. “Yeah. I love them, of course, but I’ve been a solitary man since moving out. Still recovering from all the love, maybe.”
“I have three siblings, but our family didn’t really feel like a big family like other people described. I’ve never had to share a bathroom with anyone. Maybe I was missing out.”
“You’re sharing a bathroom with me,” I point out.
“First time for everything.” She opens her mouth again to say something else then snaps it shut.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Taylor.”
“You’ve busted my slumming it cherry, okay?” The corner of her mouth twitches up in a reluctant smile. “That’s what I was thinking. And given…our accidental thing, I thought maybe it was best not shared with the class. But you dragged it out of me, so there you go.”
My neck heats up.
It’s a weird feeling, one that’s hard to place at first.
When she flicks her hair over her shoulder, though, I recognize what this sensation is—she makes me feel like I’m in high school. Which is fucked. I’m the one in the position of power here.
Maybe she really is a pro at tying men up in knots.
Maybe I want her to get under my skin, because even as I think about it, I can’t shut down the visceral reaction she tugs out of me.
I change the subject again. “You’re a good listener, you know that?”
“Literally my job, Detective, but thanks.”
The heat crawls higher, from my neck to my cheeks. “Right. Sorry.”
She shrugs. “It’s fine. I’m a bit of an enigma, and I’m fine with that.”
But she can’t hide the tiny twitch at the corner of her eye. Liar, liar, pants on fire. She wouldn’t have corrected me if she didn’t care. Taylor cares more than she’ll ever let on about the one-eighty she’s done with her life.
That’s fine.
She keeps showing me who she is, and soon enough, that’s going to lead me to the heart of why someone might want to hurt her. Eventually, I’ll figure it all out, with or without her help.
She thought she could drag me to Washington and I’d end up thinking it was a fool’s errand. Instead, we made whoever is stalking her—and I’m now convinced that’s probably what we’re dealing with—come out of the woodwork again. Hastily.
Now it’s just a matter of time before the puzzle pieces slide together.
The joke about busting her cherry sticks in my subconscious, though, and I wake up in the middle of the night, disoriented and turned-on.
Flashes of a disrupted dream rocket through my mind as I lay in the dark, staring up at the ceiling. Taylor pretending to be an innocent young woman.
Hey, Luke.
Breathy. Curvy. Naked.
Biting her thumb and licking her lips.
Me holding her down, spreading her legs.
With a groan, I roll over. My cock presses hard against the mattress.
Go away.
But it’s not that easy.
As the filthy dream fades into the ether, the memory of the kiss replaces it in my mind. And a different conversation than the one we had launches bright and dirty, a feverish radio play in my head.
We can’t do this.
I won’t tell anyone. I need you. Please, Luke…
With a violent start, I jump out of bed. My heart is pounding. I can’t entertain those kinds of ideas. It’s unprofessional. It’s dangerous.
It’s far too enticing.
Get some water, and get over yourself.
When I ease my bedroom door open, I’m surprised to see that Taylor’s light is on, a skinny slice of yellow shining out from under her closed door.
And then I hear a quiet vibration.
Her toy. That little palm-sized sex toy.
My cock strains, hard and heavy.
I step back, closing my door with me on the right side of it. The private side of it.
Fuck.
Fucking no, fucking yes. Fuck fuck fuck. I close my eyes and groan again, swallowing the pained sound because she can’t know that I’m awake.
I can’t be awake right now.
Quiet as a mouse, I climb back into bed.
Then I shove my sweatpants down my hips, jack my cock three times, squeezing at the head each time. It doesn’t take anything else. I can see her perched on my lap, holding that toy between her legs.
It doesn’t count if our parts don’t touch, Luke.
And I’m lost. I come all over my hand, a sticky spray of warm fluid. My weakness in corporeal form.
18
Taylor
I can’t sleep. And I can’t come, either, which means I’m horny and grumpy and stuck in a too-quiet house, where I can’t watch porn.
This must be hell.
I close my eyes and let the image I’ve been avoiding slide more freely from the back catalog of my dirty girl fantasies.
Detective Vasquez.
Luke.
No, better if he’s the detective. Pressing me against the brick wall in the alley in D.C. Demanding to know what I’m hiding in my shirt. Rough hands molesting me as he searches, coming up empty, and punishing me anyway.
My pulse jacks up as the image spirals. Now we’re here in this house. He’s in a cop uniform, though. All buttoned up and official. I’m naked. Wet, splayed out. Showing him my pink pussy, my tight asshole, my eager wet mouth. All the holes I want him to violate.
His jaw flexes as I writhe around, his arms tightly crossed, and then, just when I think he won’t touch me, he drops to his knees and latches his mouth on my bare mound, his tongue ruthlessly working my clit until I climax hard.
I come for real at the same time as I do in my fantasy. It’s shaky and good and bad at the same time because now my sheets—his sheets—smell like sex and I have to face him in the morning.
But I got to come.
And now I’ll be able to sleep.
One thing at a time.
I don’t wake up again until nearly noon. A jolt of panic spikes through me because I think that I’m late for work, but of course, I don’t have a job to go to right now.
Some asshole blew up my car in the parking lot of what should be a place of healing. So someone else is meeting my peer counseling clients, apologizing for the disruption in service, and gently assuring them that it’s safe to talk to a new face.
Everything we share here is confidential.
I was once that client.
And until I met Luke, I hadn’t shared anything outside of those walls. Then he showed up at the right-wrong time, and suddenly my secrets didn’t protect me in the way I thought they had.
Now he’s wringing them from me one by one, getting under my skin, and I don’t know what to do about that. Touching myself to the most perverted version of him I can muster is probably not the best option. But it felt
damn good, and I’m seriously tempted to do it again before I get out of bed.
A knock interrupts that plan.
“Are you up?”
He doesn’t open it, just asks me through the closed door. Perverted Fantasy Detective Vasquez wouldn’t be so polite.
“Yep,” I call out. “Be right there.”
When I get downstairs, he’s wearing his shoulder holster, and his leather jacket is draped over the chair.
“Are we going somewhere?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer my question. “You need to eat something.”
Yesterday was a day of not really eating. As much as I want to be prickly about this again, my stomach is finally ready for a light something. “Fine. Where are we going? Do they have salad?”
“I’ll get you a salad on my way back,” he says, deftly ignoring the part where I clearly want to go with him and get out of this house. “I need to head to the station. So I’m going to leave you alone for a few hours.”
“Alone? That sounds like a terrible plan.”
“If I had a better one, I’d grab it with both hands. I can’t trust anyone, Taylor. You can’t trust anyone.”
“That’s usually my line. And I don’t.”
“Good.” He looks at me, his gaze searching my face for God knows what. Then he nods and steps back. “So let’s go over the six different ways I’m going to make sure you don’t go anywhere.”
“What?” That’s not why I think it’s a terrible idea. “I don’t need an electronic babysitter.”
“We’ve been over this. You clearly do because you’ve made a run for it once already.”
“That was before the death threat!”
“But after the bomb. So whether you like it or not—”
“I don’t.”
“Noted. You’re still being monitored. I will know if you leave. I will know where you go if you do. I will track you down and bring you back here for your own safety.”
“Rude. But at least now you’re being creepy out in the open.” And then another thought occurs to me, one that is possibly disturbing but also thrilling with just a side of disturbing. “Are there cameras in my bedroom?”
His jaw flexes. I think I must have Stockholm Syndrome because I’m coming to love that twitchy muscle.
“No. And none in the bathroom. I’m not looking to invade your privacy.”
“As long as I stay put.”
“Yeah. That’s the boundary, and I’m fine with it on an ethical level.” One corner of his mouth pulls up in a rueful smile. “Cameras are down here and outside.”
Secretly, I’m fine with it too. I was panicked there for a second at the thought of truly being alone.
He hands over an ancient looking flip phone. “I’m monitoring this, too, but I won’t leave you without a means to call 911 should something happen. Nothing will, though. But just in case.”
“Can I text my sister?”
“No.”
“Can you text her and let her know you’re still holding me hostage?”
“No. And not because that wouldn’t be fun.” He gives me a pained look. “Fine. Look. I need to tell you something, but it doesn’t change the fact that you cannot come with me. Your sisters are here. In L.A. They’re stirring up trouble at headquarters, threatening to go public with the fact you’re a missing person.”
No. Oh, no. I told Wilson they couldn’t get involved. But then I realize what Luke had said. “My sisters?”
“Yeah. Being missing is not a crime, though, so they’re not getting far yet. But—”
“Both of them?”
“Yes.”
My heart leaps. Sisters? Plural?
And then it shatters because of course; Hailey is only here if she’s worried I’m dead. She’s a good person. That doesn’t mean she likes me.
“They’ve set up a command center at a hotel. I’m going to swing by and see if I can lower the temperature.”
“You should take proof of life.”
“You’re not a hostage, Taylor.”
“You know what I mean. Any chance you have a Polaroid camera?”
His eyes flash. “You want me to take a photo of you with today’s headline and show it to your sisters in an effort to calm them down?”
“Okay, that wouldn’t work.” I click my fingers, trying to think of something, anything— “Wait, I’ve got it. Give me some paper and a pen. I’ll write a note for my sisters. They’ll know it’s from me.”
“You’ll need to show it to me first.”
“Absolutely, Detective Control-o.”
He huffs a quiet laugh, then finds me a notepad.
I scribble the words I know only Hailey and Ali will understand, then hand it over. His face is funny as he reads it. He was probably expecting it to be dirty. It’s not.
* * *
Remember when I said I would run away and join the circus? Yeah, me neither. So I didn’t do that. I did what I always said I would do if Gomez and Morticia lost their minds.
* * *
“Gomez and Morticia?”
“Our parents. Once upon a time, I thought they were very much in love. Maybe they were. They’re not anymore, and I haven’t called them that in twenty years. But my sisters will absolutely know that it’s me, referring to them.”
He frowns as he looks down at the paper again. “When you were a little kid, you had a plan for what might happen if your parents lost their minds?”
“Yeah, well. I didn’t know that it wasn’t normal to have emergency contingency plans at eight. Live and learn.”
His mouth falls open then he closes it again. “Got it.”
I give him a grim look. “I’m sorry in advance if my family gives you a hard time—but the note should help.”
He laughs. “Just a part of the job.”
Right. Where I’m a witness, he’s a cop, and this is all entirely professional.
No masturbating.
No kissing.
The smile on his face falls away, his expression growing serious, and I have no doubt he’s thinking the same thing. That kiss yesterday.
If only he knew what I did last night.
I touch my fingers to my lips. Luke’s gaze follows and settles in there, hot and searching. Does he want the kiss to disappear from both of our memories? Or would he do it again if everything were different?
But he clears his throat and looks away, not revealing anything about how he feels. Because he doesn’t feel anything other than confusion and annoyance that I kissed him. He thinks that I used him for sex and I don’t understand boundaries.
I am a hot mess, and right now I’m his mess, and he has a job to do. Which means handling my hot mess of a family.
There is no reason in the world he should want to kiss me again.
I need to get over myself.
“Go,” I say, putting on an air of indifference. “I’ll be fine.”
He frowns. “I won’t be long.”
“I’ll be fine. It’ll be nice to have some breathing room after a few days of forced captivity.” He narrows his eyes at me, and I laugh lightly. “That was a joke, Vasquez.”
“Jokes are funny, Reid.”
That makes me smile for real. “Triple lock the doors, barricade me in my willing prison cell. I’m going to watch House Hunters International and judge people for their bad taste.”
After he leaves, I make toast and coffee and watch a few episodes of reality TV. The house is too quiet, though, and my pulse is racing.
I try to do some cognitive behavior therapy self-talk, which helps enough to keep the panic at bay. I give myself options for self-care. Tea, a shower, or reading a book.
The shower wins out, although it’s fast and not very relaxing because I decide to leave the door open so I can still hear the rest of the house. The silence is both terrifying and reassuring.
After I’m scrubbed clean, I sprawl out on my bed. Naked. Damp. Scared and, I realize to my surprise, horny again.
Fu
cking brains. They’re wild things, giving us all sorts of intense coping strategies for getting through life.
I squeeze my eyes shut and slide my fingers against my pussy. Just a rub at first, pressure to grind against.
This time I don’t fight the fantasy. I need to come, and I need it to happen fast. Imaginary Luke holds me down, his fingers thrusting inside me as he whispers lurid, dirty promises in my ear. Dark, twisted promises I wish someone would keep in real life, but I’m not that lucky.
With a sharp, gasping cry, I come on my hand. His hand. His words, my words. My fantasy in his house.
Flopping my arms wide, I let my breath recover. I stare at the ceiling and wonder where I could have made other choices—anything else—to avoid having ended up here.
When I get up, slowly, and get dressed, I notice the pager Wilson gave me in the bottom of my bag. It has a message.
Your sisters are in L.A. kicking up a shitstorm about your missing person case. Don’t worry. Cole is going to keep them contained.
As soon as I read it, it disappears. Wilson told me the pager would send him a data packet back, letting him know I’d received the message.
Well, at least I know the pager works. How the rest of that is going to go…who the fuck knows.
19
Luke
The first stop I make is the W Hotel, where the Dashford Reid sisters and their protective John Cena-look-a-like husbands see me in a suite on the top floor.
I’m not going to stay long, so I don’t sit down after Cole Parker introduces me to the others. His wife Hailey. Curvy, pretty, and very quiet. Looks at me with undisguised suspicion. Her younger sister Alison, who looks more like Taylor, but with a frank innocence that hits me right in the chest. That’s what Taylor might look like if she hadn’t bore the brunt of the fucked-up family life.
But they all have to know. Don’t they?
And finally Scott Mayfair, Alison’s husband. Much older, and vaguely familiar looking in that way that a lot of military guys are. Even if we’ve never met, I can spot a fellow service member at a hundred yards.
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