Turn Me Loose

by Anne Calhoun

  “Which makes it perfect for someone coming and going with drugs or cash.”

  Riva tucked her phone in her back pocket. “Dad said that’s fine. He seemed pleased by your interest.”

  Micah lifted an eyebrow at Ian. “I’m thinking about getting out of my desk job with the city and starting my own business,” Ian said.

  Micah’s laughter boomed down the street, rolling off the brick buildings. “Desk job,” he snorted.

  “Any suspicions?” Ian asked Riva.

  “No. I think I called in the middle of a Cubs game. He wasn’t too chatty.”

  “Have fun, kids. I’ll be in touch. You know how to get ahold of me if shit starts to go south.” Micah got back in his car.

  Ian followed Riva around the corner to the eight-foot-high chain link fence topped with razor wire surrounding the parking lot. “Your dad means business.”

  “It’s a building full of candy and soda. We used to have a couple of break-ins a month before Dad added the razor wire and upgraded security.” She entered a code into the keypad built into the fencing. A click, and the latch gave.

  “What happens if someone destroys the keypad?”

  “It locks, rather than unlocks, an alarm goes off at the security company, and Dad gets a call.”

  He followed her across the parking lot. A row of white box trucks was parked noses out on one side of the building. On the opposite side was a door marked OFFICE. Riva headed straight for it. Another keypad, and then a key to unlock the door.

  She flicked on the lights. There was a desk, a couple of filing cabinets, the usual office supplies, a calendar on the wall, but the room had an air of disuse to it. “Does your dad do much work here?”

  “I think he rotates through the routes so he can stay in touch with customers, but otherwise, no. When things started getting tough in the vending business he started working from his car. He was always drumming up new business, tweaking contracts with clients. Or so we thought.”

  “When did you figure it out?”

  “I was sixteen, maybe. I overheard a few things, put some pieces together.” She unlocked yet another door and reached in front of Ian to flick on a series of overhead florescent lights. Eight-foot-high shelves ran on three sides of the space. Stacked on the shelves were boxes and boxes of candy and soda. In the middle were neatly parked white cube trucks, all with black Henneman Candy and Vending lettering on them. The space was immaculate. Not a single candy wrapper or box on the floor.

  “You were literally a kid in a candy shop,” Ian quipped.

  She didn’t smile. “You’d think, right? But Dad rarely brought anything home. We girls had to keep an eye on our weight.”

  “No offense, but your dad’s some kind of asshole.”

  “I know that now.”

  “Any other entrances besides the office and the bays? A back door?”

  “Through there,” she said, pointing to a gap between shelving units.

  Ian opened the door and peered down an alley. “We’re parked that way?”

  Riva ducked under his arm for a look. “Yes.”

  He was filling in a map of the West Loop in his head, places of interest. “Good. Okay, that’s all I needed.”

  “You’re not going to search his filing cabinets or his desk?”

  “They’re locked.”

  Riva dangled her keychain in front of his face.

  “He really trusts you.”

  “No,” Riva said matter-of-factly as she switched off the bank of lights and relocked the door. “He can’t imagine that I’d betray him. There’s a difference.”

  She unlocked the filing cabinets and her father’s desk. Ian pulled on a pair of gloves and rifled through the drawers. Nothing jumped out at him except a nine mm handgun in the bottom desk drawer.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s registered,” Riva said.

  “Any others?”

  “Maybe. He used to stash a shotgun behind the seat when he ran the routes. He probably still does.”

  “Great,” Ian muttered.

  “He got held up. Twice. Then he bought the shotgun.”

  “I still can’t figure out how he got connected to the Sinaloa cartel,” Ian mused. “Maybe one of their affiliates demanded protection money?”

  “I don’t know. I do know Mom went into hysterics both times he was held up. I was eleven.”

  Ian filed that information away. “Lock up again,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Traffic was light this time of night, a few cars meandering along, souped-up cars drag racing off the stoplights, music thumping from the open windows.

  “Thanks for not calling me an informant.”

  “You’re not an informant this time,” he said.

  As he watched her drive, all the tension seeped from his muscles, leaving him, if not relaxed, then in a strange place of ease and calm. He’d felt this before, during the cancer treatment. It was as if his brain had two speeds; it was either white-knuckled to keep total control of everything, or suddenly just gave up, threw up its hands and let go. Riva was a good driver, cautious and methodical. He wasn’t responsible for Chicago, even the south side of Chicago. Right now he was safe, Riva was safe, they had a plan, and her hair glowed like a banked fire in the streetlights.

  He was so tired of fighting this. So tired. He’d been sitting in cars with Riva Henneman for what felt like years, fighting an attraction that never went away. He was twenty-five again, angry and aching and as turned on as he’d ever been in his young life, wanting her. Loathing himself for wanting her, because as fucked up as he’d been, that was one line he wouldn’t cross.

  It hadn’t stopped. The edge was just as sharp, the ache as permanent as his fear. He’d begun to wonder if pulling out the knife between his ribs would heal him or leave him to bleed out on the floor.

  You could find out.

  The voice of rationalization was familiar. It was the one that said getting blackout drunk didn’t matter, having sex with random women, driving like a demon on speed, lashing out at his parents, his brother, none of it mattered, because he had been sick. He rationalized a lot in those years.

  She parked in front of the house, turned off the engine, and looked at him. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”

  “You still jump a little when I touch you,” he said. “If that happens in front of your father, he’s going to get suspicious and we’ll both be in danger.” What he meant was, I want to kiss you, strip you, find out what this thing is between us I can’t explain or hide anymore.

  “I know.” She drew in a deep breath. “I thought it was fine after the drive. I thought it was better.”

  Brow furrowed, she got out of the car and headed up the walk. Ian followed her, watching her hair swing with the sway of her hips. The house was quiet when Riva unlocked the back door and shut off the alarm system. The light over the stove bleached the kitchen’s Scandinavian surfaces to moonlight, but left the rest of the house shrouded in darkness.

  “We have to deal with this,” he said finally.

  She turned to look at him, and in that single glance he could see all her defenses were down. They were speaking in hushed tones, standing close enough to hear the other without waking her parents, faces as close as lovers’. The hair on his arms quivered at her nearness, the electric connection sending a shock straight to his heart.

  “It goes back a long way,” she said.

  “I remember,” he said.

  Seven years earlier …

  Riva opened the car door and slid into the front seat, unable to stop the soft moan she made when the heated air made contact with chilled skin.

  “What the hell are you wearing?”

  She looked down at herself. Despite the dip in temperatures from cool to cold, she wore only boots, jeans, and a fitted cardigan over a tank top. “Clothes?”

  “You should be wearing a winter coat.”

  She looked him over, eyes skimming the leather jacket, his sprawled thighs in the jeans that we
re thankfully more form fitting than the baggy sweats and tracksuit pants favored by most of her male classmates. “Hmmm,” she said mock playfully. “You’re most definitely not my dad.”

  He looked at her. The dome light faded off, leaving only the dashboard lights and the soft radio program in the background. “Watch your mouth.”

  His voice was low, even, and as chilly as the wind outside. It was a dangerous game she played. “You want me to look like I’ve just run down from my dorm room to make the buy, right? That means no coat.”

  But it could mean more than a thin gray sweater over a tank top and a pair of jeans.

  “You’re too casual about this. Get your head in the game.”

  She got right in his face. “You think my head’s not in the game? Your game is the only place my head is right now. Your game dominates my every waking moment and most of my nightmares. I’m playing your game like my life depends on it, because it does. The only thing worse than death is spending forty years in prison.”

  “Stop acting your age. Nothing is worse than dying.”

  “Like you’d know,” she scoffed. “Like you’ve ever faced that choice.”

  He stared straight ahead. “Every day of my life.”

  “Because you’re a cop. You chose to be a cop! No one sat you down and said be a cop or go to jail!”

  At that he swiveled and leaned over the center console. “You chose to sell drugs to college students.”

  “I know I did!” She was so close their noses were almost touching. All it would take to send them both up in flames was a quick tilt of her head, a slight tip of her weight forward to bring their mouths together. His thin, mobile mouth against hers. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. That would cross a line, send this deeper when all she wanted was to be rid of him.

  Except all she wanted, equally as badly, was to be with him. A hotel, his place, the back seat of his car. Her body pulsed with desire, lighting up her nipples, her skin aching for his hands, her sex slick and swollen for his cock, her hands trembling, her emotions in knots. She hated him. Hated herself for making such a stupid decision, and hated him for catching her at it and for offering her a way out. Once he was done with her, she had plans. She’d be the straightest arrow ever shot from a bow, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. He was both her downfall and her salvation. She could forgive him for being one, but not both.

  “I know I’m here because of my own stupidity. But nothing in our agreement gives you permission to act like my goddamn father, telling me to wear a coat and be home by ten.”

  He hadn’t moved. His face was taut with tight control, a potent combination in a man. “Take your shirt off.”

  “Excuse me?” she said, incredulous.

  Utter astonishment furrowed his eyebrows, then he blinked. He closed his eyes and exhaled long and slow through his nose. When he opened his eyes again, all the fury and desire were gone, replaced with a calm, dark emptiness that broke her heart. “That came out wrong. I’m going to wire you up. That’s all. Sorenson usually does it, but we’re shorthanded tonight. She’s across the park, ready to make the arrests. I’ll call her over.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s fine. It’s almost time for him to call. Go ahead. It’s fine.”

  “How about you just lift your sweater … that’s far enough.”

  She’d exposed maybe two inches of her belly, just barely enough for him to clip the battery pack to her waistband. He straightened the wire, then gave it to her. “Run it up under your top.”

  She managed to work the wire under the hems of her tank top and sweater, then reach down between her breasts and grab the clip. But the tiny mic kept slipping from her sweaty fingers as she tried to fasten it to her bra. “I can’t…”

  His gaze caught hers, hazel, molten, aware of the shattering desire between them, acting on none of it. “I’m going to touch you, okay? Just for a moment.”

  His hands lay on his thighs. He waited until she nodded her consent, then raised them. They were warm on her bare skin, raising goose bumps as he used medical tape to affix the wire to her abdomen. She lost all ability to reply when he slid the tips of his fingers under the lacy cup of her bra to pull the fabric forward and clip the mic to it. Her nipples peaked. She felt it. He saw it. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

  She’d known this before she’d dressed for another fun evening with Officer Hawthorn. She was taunting him the only way she could: with her body. She wanted to make him lose his composure, see the dark red stain on his cheeks, his jaw tighten, his cock strain against his fly. The chemistry in the car was palpable, hot and seething and electric enough to make the hair on her arms stand up, never mind her nipples, or the sweet throbs of heat between her legs, all she could think about when she lay in her dorm bed at night …

  Present day …

  That’s how crazy she’d made him, driving him to the point of thoughtlessly barking out a command without any regard for how it would sound to her. But rather than cowering, she’d called him on it. The confidence was there, just buried deep.

  She rubbed her forehead with the palm of her hand. “Trust me, I remember. I just don’t know how to get past something like that.”

  All she had to do was trust her body, not her brain. Which sounded simple enough. Ian knew it wasn’t.

  “Let’s try this,” he said, and kissed her. All it took was ducking his head a little, angling his mouth just enough to brush his lips across hers. It was chaste, brief and warm and dry, and yet somehow also just like getting a gun pointed at him. His heart rate went fast and irregular, and adrenaline washed into his system like a flash flood. Her mouth, her wide, mobile, indescribably lush mouth was under his lips.

  And then it wasn’t. She’d pulled back a little, as had he. Her gaze locked on his. His brain just stopped and stared, hyperalert, like a deer surprised at a watering hole. This was one way, one very primal, all-or-nothing way to get Riva over her fears, her visceral reaction to his touch. But she had to want him.

  Her eyelids fluttered open. She licked her lower lip like she was chasing the taste of him. “I’ve waited seven years for you to do that.” Another unconscious glide of her tongue, the pink matching the heat rising to the surface of her skin, but her gaze was cloudy, troubled. “Do it again.”

  He wanted to kiss her, touch her, get so deep inside her that he drove those clouds away, but first, he wanted some privacy.

  “Upstairs.”

  She nodded, led the way. In her bedroom the windows were open, the night breeze lifting the gauzy curtains. A fire had been laid in the fireplace, but wasn’t lit. The mound of pillows and thick duvet seemed daunting, like finding the mattress would require excavation equipment and hard hats.

  He closed the door behind them. She stood in the no-man’s-land between the door, the bed, and the fireplace, head high, gaze fixed on him, body tense and poised for movement. “What else have you been waiting for?” he asked, deliberately keeping his voice calm, gentle. Locking down the desire running wild inside him.

  Her fingers flexed and her hand lifted, then relaxed at her side again. Holding back. “Everything,” she said.

  He didn’t respond. The air held that charged-up vibration between fight and surrender, like the outcome wasn’t a given at all. He crossed the floor to stand about a foot in front of her, on the very edge of her personal space, then lifted his fingertips to her cheek. The skin was so soft he almost didn’t register it under his touch. He brushed his thumb once over the corner of her mouth and watched her lips soften. He let gravity slowly drag his hand down over her jaw to her throat, then over her collarbone to the deep V of her henley, where he paused. She was trembling.

  “Riva. Are you with me?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Yes. It’s just…” She heaved in a deep breath. His hand rose and fell with the movement. Her heart was pounding so hard he could see her breast quivering with each rapid beat.

  All the muscles in his body were tensed to take a
step back, end this, when she spoke. “It’s all messed up in my head,” she said. “Can I…?”

  “Whatever you need.” The screaming voices in his head could just sit down and take a number. He’d been waiting for this for years. Another few minutes wouldn’t matter.

  She reached out and put her hand on his hip, right below his waistband. He could barely feel her touch through his jeans, and maybe imagined her thumb rubbing over his hipbone. He ran his fingertips up her breastbone, then back down to hook in the V-neck and the front of her bra. Exerting the smallest pressure imaginable, he coaxed her a couple of inches closer, bent his head, and kissed her again. He kept his mouth soft, enticing rather than demanding, and was rewarded with her lips parting under his.

  The tentative touch of her tongue triggered something in him, too. Time kept slipping like a stripped gear. Riva as a teenager. Riva as a grown woman. Himself as an angry, hot-tempered young cop, trying manhood on for size in a way he’d never expected, even resented. He’d been out of alignment since the diagnosis.

  Then Riva closed the distance between their bodies, and everything snicked into place, key in lock, bolt shot home, brain shut down. She was going for this, all in. No regrets. No hesitations.

  He wrapped his arm around her waist and spun them around, backing her into the door. “Shh, shh,” she whispered as the wood thudded against the frame. “Ow. Hard. Door is hard.”

  He winced and pulled her a little closer. “Right. Sorry. I got a little carried away there.”

  “There’s a nice, soft bed right over there,” she said.

  He caught the edge of the duvet and gave it a big flip. Throw pillows scattered to the wind. Riva toed out of her boots, then knee-walked to the center of the bed, then turned and reached for him. He hastily got rid of his own footwear, then knelt on the bed in front of her.

  It seemed as natural as breathing to weave their fingers together, palms cupped up. He bent to her, capturing her mouth with warm, tempting kisses, waiting, waiting, until his hand lifted involuntarily and slid into her hair, capturing the strands against her jaw. The other hand, still joined with hers, slid around her waist to pull her closer. He kept on kissing her until her fingers tightened in his and her free hand started to roam, trembling and hesitant at first, then gaining confidence to tug his shirt free from his jeans and flatten against his side.