by Chloe Cole
Chapter Six
If there were two things Cade knew about the sleeping woman spread out across his bed like a flat sheet, it was that she was still keeping something from him and that she had an absolutely fantastic ass.
He leaned back in his chair, drinking his coffee and watching her over the rim of his mug, trying to decide which one was of highest importance to him.
From this angle, he had to go with the latter.
Sometime in the night, she’d mostly shrugged out of his shirt, which she hadn’t bothered to button either, so her lightly tanned shoulders were bare. The shirt draped her back, rucked up here and there until the hem just made it over the curve of her butt. She had one knee drawn up, the other straight, which created the most intriguing shadow where her thighs met. He’d spent twenty minutes already, deciding his approach and not coming to any solid conclusions. Either he was going to walk up to the side of the bed and run his fingers along the crease at the very bottom of one succulent cheek or he was going to climb up the foot of the bed and investigate that shadow. With his tongue.
Decisions, decisions.
“Stop looking at my ass.” The grumble from under the pillow was grouchy, yes, but that didn’t bother him nearly as much as the hand trying to pull the shirt hem further down her body.
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
He didn’t bother to stifle the chuckle that rose up his chest as her attempts to snag the shirt end turned into a flapping fight to get her fingers free from the loose cuff of the sleeve. Didn’t she realize when she arched to reach back, she was lifting up and giving him a view that could make an atheist believe in God? “It’s a male imperative. Man sees the Promised Land, nothing short of death is keeping him from staring at it.”
Her inelegant snort relayed her opinion of that right quick. She gave a slow shimmy of her hips for him though, before rolling onto her back and righting the folds of her shirt into some semblance of order. Unfortunately for him, that meant tucking the tails between her legs and killing his excellent view.
Ah well. He went back to drinking his coffee, content to watch as she maneuvered herself into a sitting position against the headboard. Finger combing her hair did almost nothing for it, the black masses swirling down and around her shoulders. He let her get comfortable, still enjoying the simple fact that she was there. Especially since she was probably going to be pissed off in the next couple of minutes.
“So.” He refreshed his mug with the rich brew he could practically see her nose twitching for. “Which bastards were you talking about?”
Slim black brows rose in question, her gaze darting to his for a whole second before skittering away. “Wh-what?”
A deep draught of the coffee, even if it burned the hell out of his tongue. What was a little burn in his mouth compared to the inferno in his gut at the knowledge that she was still lying to him? “You know, last night. When you were telling me you loved me, offering me your firstborn and years of freshly pressed laundry. Those bastards.”
Her mouth pursed, but she still didn’t look at him. Just crossed her arms under the breasts she’d let him lick and suck and nibble all he wanted. Too bad the buttons were done up, he could have gone for more Peek-A-Boo. “You heard that, huh?”
He would have heard her whispered declaration if he were dead. “I never miss an offer for laundry.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. “You’re such an ass.”
She had no idea. “Do me a favor, Tee. Just tell me what’s really going on. I know you’re still keeping something from me.” And she’d better tell him what it was while he was still willing to let the omissions go.
He got a nervous glance for that comment. Good, then she caught the subtext. “Or else?”
“Or else I’ll find another way to get the answers out of you.” They still had a condom left. The prospect of making her beg him to use it made this secret keeping thing infinitely less irritating.
The feminine harrumph just made him smile.
For some reason, her face flushed and her mouth fell open.
“What?” If he didn’t know better, he’d think she was blushing. Because he’d smiled?
“Nothing.” Her teeth clicked together. “But I think I liked you better when you were hard up.”
“Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll get me back there soon enough. ‘Til then, talk.”
She finally glared at him, her gaze heating up with temper. “About what?”
“About whoever it is you think is coming after me.”
“I don’t think it, Cade. I know. Frank told me you were already dead when he was kicking me in the ribs. It was just blind luck you left town today. Once it gets around that you weren’t in your house when they blew it up, they’ll be after you again.”
The crack of the handle in his grip had him juggling the mug before all but dropping it on the table. He braced his hands on either side of it, staring down at the dark wood, willing the rage back into the box it had escaped. Instead, all he could think about were the numerous weapons hidden all over the cabin, any of which would be more than capable of tearing Frank Carter into as many pieces as he could make.
“When I got away from them, the first thing I did was get to your place, but it was…gone. Just a pile of burning concrete.” Her voice shook, just the lightest tremor, but he felt the hurt in it. He knew then why she hadn’t taken any time to care for herself before finding him. He wouldn’t have rested if there was a chance she was alive either.
Every part of him wanted to walk over and wrap his arms around her again. Reassure her. But if he even looked at her, he was going to go to her and get sidetracked. He couldn’t let that happen again. He’d make it up to her later, but right now, this was too important. “You said last night someone from the department cracked. Did Carter tell you who it was?”
“No, but I have my suspicions.” Bitter ones, from the sound of it.
“If you’re going to say Trelane—” Rick had his faults, but he’d been Cade’s friend since before the war. He trusted the other man completely, something Trina couldn’t seem to do. The two of them had been at odds for as long as he’d known her and the animosity seemed to grow exponentially by the month.
“Someone gave us both up, Cade. Someone with access to highest level of security your department has if he told them about me. Next to the Sheriff himself, that limits things to Trelane.”
Cade shook his head. “Rick has clearance, yes, but it’s not exactly Fort Knox over there. There are twelve officers in that office and most of them come and go as they like. No one would say boo if they were up to their elbows in the files that didn’t belong to them. Knowing about your operation isn’t proof he blew your cover. And don’t forget the Sheriff’s secretary has nearly the same access as Rick.” Much as he liked Bobby Jane, the woman wasn’t known for her discretion. When her last boyfriend got arrested on a drunk and disorderly, the man knew so much about everybody in the department and their various failed love lives, his charges were dropped at the speed of shame.
“Frank couldn’t get you on his payroll. He needed someone to check up on you, look for a weakness to exploit.”
Cade almost sputtered a harsh laugh at that. His biggest weakness was obvious to anyone who ever saw him near Trina. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her and his senses—not to mention his morals—were clouded by her. If she’d actually been a criminal, she could easily have gotten him whatever she wanted out of him, whenever she wanted it.
Something about that had him stopping. Thinking.
“Trelane’s been coming to Frank more often than ever,” she continued from her spot on his bed, oblivious. “I don’t know what for, but what else could it be?”
Cade shook off the niggling thought trying to form in his mind. “Rick Trelane threw himself on a grenade for our squad once. Believe me, he’d die before he ever betrayed me.”
True, he’d changed after the war, just like Cade did, but not by that muc
h. He’d hardened. Become almost rigid, definitely more secretive. There’d been a time when Rick had been the one they’d all worried about because he’d been a joking kid in over his head. Now all the others were dead and only he and Rick had managed to come home on their own feet. Of course that had changed him. It would change anyone.
Unlike Cade, Rick had no interest in fighting his way back to feeling human again. Which meant that icy gaze of his when shit hit the fan was still as creepy now as it had been then and on his face more often than not. But it was that stare that actually kept Cade believing his old friend was still in there somewhere. Why else would Rick have contacted him about joining him in Marketta? He’d said he needed someone he could trust and a day in the little town had proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Cade wasn’t going to go back on that trust without damn good reason. There had to be more to this.
“Why do you think I walked away from you after we made love? Frank started getting suspicious about you.”
Of course he had. It wasn’t as if Trina had been subtle with her interest. With anything, actually.
“Someone had tipped him off that you didn’t have a court date the day Shana left and he knows you went out of town. No one else would dare stand up to him, but there was never a way to connect you to her and I wanted to make sure it stayed that way. Do you think it’s been easy to stay away? To make you think I didn’t care when you’re the one thing I care about most?”
Probably just as hard as it was for him to let her keep that distance. Cade watched his own hands curl into fists on the tabletop. The anger at her deception tried to rise again, but he purposely shelved it. She’d done it to keep him safe, however mistaken her intentions. He’d done worse to protect strangers. There was no line he wouldn’t cross to protect the people he loved. Especially her.
“Frank ambushed me because he found out we were lovers. He knows I’m an agent. That’s not information that’s exactly flying around town. The only person who knew either of those things was Rick Trelane.”
He finally turned to her again. “Rick knew you were undercover?”
She nodded, trying like hell to keep an expression off her face. The look on his face went from cool reserve to a black scowl in a millisecond. “Not because I wanted him to. He was my contact in the department if anything went wrong. Well, things went fucking wrong, Cade, and Trelane was nowhere to be found.”
Something cold and repellant formed in Cade’s belly. Suspicion. Against his own friend. He hated it, but she was right. No one else but Rick knew their relationship had ever gotten physical. Still, something she’d said was pulsing in his mind, demanding he sort it out. He just couldn’t figure out what. Until he could, there was only one path he could follow. Instinct. “He wouldn’t lie to me about something like that, not when he knew how much you were coming to mean to me.” Only Rick had known it was killing him to stick to his ethics about getting involved with a woman he might have to arrest. A woman he wasn’t sure he’d be able to haul into the jail.
“How many times do I have to tell you? He’s been lying to you since day one. He lied when he called you to help him in this town, not telling you that he was on Carter’s payroll. He lied about how we knew each other and he lied again when he didn’t tell you what I was really doing there.”
He knew what she was going to say, but he couldn’t make himself believe her.
“He’s not the man you remember, Cade, and now he’s sold us both out.”
“You don’t know that he did.”
“You can trust him if you want, but I’m not taking that chance with your life.”
It was his turn to cross his arms. “I trusted you, when every one of my instincts told me not to.”
Stubbornly, her chin jutted out at him.
They’d just see how long that lasted.
“I trusted you and you were using me the whole time, weren’t you?”
Chapter Seven
Fuck, fuck, fuuuuuck!
“Cade—”
“Weren’t you?” He had no right asking that, looking so clean and comfortable in a pair of worn jeans and a green t-shirt that molded its faded fabric over his chest like paint. She could just make out the dark gray letters that had once spelled “USMC Pendleton” over his heart. His dark hair gleamed, still wet from whatever shower she’d slept through. No right at all, not when she was barely covered in his rumpled shirt, her legs tangled in his still warm sheets. She didn’t want to imagine what her face looked like, not with the bruises she knew now had to be much darker. And her hair. Ugh, her hair… She felt more than naked this way, at a distinct disadvantage. But no one ever said life was fair. He was asking the questions directly and he deserved the answers. All of them.
“Yes,” she answered, hating how her playful lover had gone back to the blank stoicism that felt as if he were hiding from her.
“That’s it? Yes. No explanations, no protestations of innocence?”
Trina shrugged. “I think I gave up innocent when I deep throated you.”
The muscle under his eye ticked, but that was it. Damn it, he was going to make her tell him. She could tell because he was braced in front of his little dining room table like a stone sentinel. Nope, he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Frank only let me in to Wheels of Pain because I was pretending to be a bad girl wannabe with a trust-fund who had a thing for bikers. One of his oldest friends, Ripper, rolled on him when he got busted with ten kilos at the Calexico border. It was a pretty simple transaction, really. Ripper sold him the heroin and threw me in as part of the deal. Frank figured I’d be the dutiful fan girl just looking for some wild times with money to burn his way, so he allowed it. It took a while for him to treat me like anything but a nuisance, but after he caught me talking to Trelane, I had to come up with something fast. So I told him Trelane seemed to like me, which is so far from the truth, it doesn’t even register as a joke.”
Cade gave a tiny, acknowledging nod. Trelane hated her; it was no secret to either of them. Their interactions over the years when she ran into trouble were more like snake fights, with insults hurled at lightning speed and deadly accuracy.
“Anyway, since Trelane wasn’t under his control, Frank saw an opening. I was supposed to seduce him and get him to look the other way, like the rest of the department and most of the judges in this county. He makes almost as much from his extortion ring as he does his drug running. Then you came along and everything got tangled up.”
“How? Sounds like you and Rick had things going pretty well.”
“Rick is not a team player.” Trina gripped the edge of the bedsheet in her hands, wishing it was a certain burly officer’s neck. “I had to pretend I wanted him and he took advantage of that more than once.”
At Cade’s stiffened posture she waved her hand at him. “He never did anything to me sexually, he just used his supposed connection with me to get in with Frank on his own. Suddenly, he was on the take too. I never saw what he did for Frank, so I can’t tell if he’s actually breaking the law or not. I have absolutely no idea what he’s doing and no matter what I say to him, he treats me like I’m the threat instead of an ally. Every interaction he had with Frank put my operation in jeopardy and he had interactions just about every week. I couldn’t keep letting him put me at risk.”
“So you changed targets to someone both men were interested in.”
If she could just see some kind of emotion in his eyes, she’d feel better about telling him all this. But she couldn’t. Miserably, she nodded. “Frank wasn’t really happy about it. He thought he needed me as leverage to control Trelane. Since he still needed the money I was fronting, he didn’t treat me like the other women with the crew. As long as Trelane stayed in line, I could do what I wanted. I came after you to get separation. To save my case and my ass.”
“And when Carter needed someone to exploit me—”
“I volunteered.” She swallowed, wishing her mouth wasn’t so dry. “I’ve been reporting y
our every coming and going to Frank almost since the beginning.” Never sure if what she said might put Cade in the wrong place at the wrong time. Editing as carefully as possible to keep them all safe while she scrambled to find the evidence she needed. Evidence she could never get her hands on. Using Cade to buy herself time, to shape her case back into her control, to maneuver Frank and Trelane both. Worse, she knew she’d do it again. In a heartbeat.
“Because you wanted out from under Rick.”
No. And yes. Oh, who the hell knew anymore? After a few silent moments she nodded, finally looking down at her fingers.
“Woman, you are so full of shit.”
Trina lifted her head to protest, but he was already crossing the planked floor to reach the side of the bed, all but diving on top of her to meld their mouths together. He kissed her almost ravenously, his hands in her hair and holding her in place until he was satisfied she had no bones and no will to speak of.
Spread all over her, he finally broke the kiss, levering up on his elbows. “You really think I’m going to believe you came to me because you were setting me up? I was there when we met, Tee. You were as blown away as I was. This? Us? It was inevitable. If you want to tell yourself you used me to protect your cover, fine, but don’t expect me to let you feel guilty about it. You wanted me, the same way I wanted you. It might not have been the best timing in the world, but we’re here now and we’ll work the rest out.” He kissed her again, slower, softer. “Don’t think for one second that you’re getting away from me now.”
His kisses drew out longer, as if he were drinking from her. His fingers caressed her cheek with softly drawn designs that traveled into her hairline.
“What I will insist on is you getting this idea out of your head that I need you to protect me.”
She could only blink at the nearly feral tension on his face. How could he be so careful, so gentle with her and still be that obviously pissed off?
“You may be a federal agent but last I checked, I was still a Marine under my cop uniform.”