by Kara Lennox
“You were magnificent. I’m lucky to have you on my side.”
“I’m so afraid I’ll fail you.”
“The system might fail me, honey. But not you. And if you don’t let go of me and move away, like, now, I’m going to kiss you again.”
She didn’t move a muscle. She just stared up at him, her lips slightly parted. He could feel her breathing, her heart beating.
“Fair warning.” He wanted to give her every opportunity to walk away from this.
Instead, she stood on her toes and closed the gap between them, pressing her delectable mouth against his.
Mitch had enough adrenaline floating around in his bloodstream that an alligator could swim through it. Now instead of fueling his anger, it all went straight to his libido. He was already half-naked, and ten feet away was a pile of hay, and all he could think about was getting Beth horizontal in that nice hay, which his fists had already softened, and getting down to her bare skin.
He broke the kiss long enough to push out a few strangled words. “I want you. And I don’t want to even think about any more bullshit excuses why we can’t be together.”
“Billy’s waiting for us.” She still sounded dangerously close to crying.
“Is that your only objection?”
Her hands were all over him. “Yes. God help me.”
“What about…you know.”
Somehow, despite his lack of clarity, she understood. “I’m protected.”
“Then Billy can wait.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SOMEWHERE IN THE BACK of her mind, Beth knew she was making a colossal mistake. But she’d wanted Mitch for so long, and the tension between them was like a violin string tightened to the breaking point. Either they were going to have to have sex, or the string was going to snap.
Truly, it wasn’t him snapping that worried her so much. It was her. She felt out of control. She needed to let off steam, and unlike Mitch, she didn’t think punching a hay bale senseless would do the trick.
Before she knew what was happening, she was flat on her back in a pile of soft, dried grass. Mitch was considerate enough to remove the baling wire that he’d cut his hand on and toss it aside, but then all intelligent thought fell by the wayside.
There was no time for leisurely undressing. She yanked her shoes off without even undoing the laces and wiggled out of her jeans and panties. Mitch was even faster than she was. In seconds flat he was beside her in the hay, kissing the breath right out of her, and all around them was the pleasant, pastoral scent of alfalfa grass.
She’d managed to get her shirt half-unbuttoned. Mitch finished the job and pushed it off her shoulders. For a moment her arms were trapped inside the sleeves and she felt a spark of panic. But then Mitch was so gentle as he helped her off with the garment that she let go of any lingering fear.
She quickly unclasped her bra and her breasts, achy and sensitive, sprang loose.
Mitch made a noise in his throat which she took to mean approval. His pupils darkened as he gazed at her, then gently, reverently caressed her breasts with his fingertips.
“You’re more beautiful than I ever imagined.”
It warmed her all over to know he’d pictured her naked, just as she’d done with him. And yes, the reality was far better. She felt his arousal against her hip, and she reached between their bodies to explore, wanting to experience him in every way possible.
As soon as she touched him he groaned, and all she could think about was having his erection inside her, filling her. She wanted not just the physical sensations of sex, but the intimacy.
She wanted him to be part of her.
Shifting slightly, she parted her legs and invited him inside, but despite the furtive nature of their coupling, he didn’t rush. As he kissed her breasts, first one, then the other, and her nipples puckered into hard, rosy peaks, he trailed his fingers along her inner thigh.
When he finally touched her sex, she whimpered with the force of her red-hot desire. He brushed one finger between her slick folds and made another of those low growls of approval.
She tried to relax and savor his warm breath on her skin and the gentle exploration between her legs, but her body was primed for completion and she wanted him inside her when that happened. If he so much as touched her a quarter-inch to the left… She wiggled away slightly, then spread her legs wider, practically sobbing for him to put her out of her misery and enter her.
She didn’t care if Billy wondered where they were. Right then, she wouldn’t have cared if he walked in on them dragging the entire population of Coot’s Bayou with him to have a look. She just wanted to join with Mitch, because she knew that for those few moments, he was hers.
Liquid heat pooled between her legs. “Mitch, I want you inside me,” she whispered. “Now please!” Before they were interrupted. Or he came to his senses and changed his mind. She would die on the spot if anything stopped this beautiful, perfect moment.
“I can’t refuse you when you beg, honey.”
Finally, finally, he plunged inside her, and she took the length of him in one long, firm stroke. Nothing had ever felt so right. Before this moment, she’d thought she knew what good sex was, but nothing in her experience had prepared her for the delicious fusing of body and soul. With the suddenness of a pile of gunpowder igniting, they were one. He was in her body, in her head, in her heart, and her eyes filled with tears at the utter beauty of that singular moment.
His thrusts were not gentle; his control was slipping, and it should have scared Beth. But she didn’t care. She raised her hips to meet each thrust, her arms wrapped around his neck holding him fast as if he might escape from her.
He would, she knew. She couldn’t ignore the troubling thought that he wasn’t hers to keep. Maybe his spirit was too wild for any woman to claim. But she had this moment, and no one could ever take that away from her.
I love you, Mitch. The thought came to her clear and clean as a cold morning breeze. He’d shown her his dangerous side, and she didn’t care. Falling for him was probably the most knowingly reckless thing she’d ever done, and she didn’t care.
The physical sensations built, bouncing off her emotions until it was all mixed up in one giant ball of hallelujah. She wanted to scream with joy when she climaxed, but still conscious of their less-than-private location, she pressed her face into the corded muscles of his neck and made a noise that sounded like a strangled groan.
I love you, Mitch, she thought again. Don’t say it aloud, don’t say it aloud.
“Sweet heaven,” he murmured just before his whole body stiffened and he reached that same summit she’d just visited. She’d heard men make all kinds of outbursts during similar moments, but Mitch’s words were the most moving of them all. If she could give him a little sliver of heaven during this awful episode in his life, she would make whatever sacrifices that entailed.
For him. “I love you, Mitch,” she whispered. But she did it very quietly, and she was pretty sure he was so far into his own world that he didn’t hear.
WHEN MITCH AND BETH RETURNED to the house, Billy sat at the kitchen table with Myra, entertaining her with some wildly exaggerated yarn. Mitch couldn’t recall ever hearing his mother laugh like that, and for a moment he just stood at the door and watched, his antagonism toward Billy melting away.
Billy could tease a laugh out of anyone.
“Guess we needn’t have worried Billy would come looking for us,” Beth whispered. “He seems perfectly content.”
Billy and Myra both looked over when Mitch and Beth entered. “Oh, there you are,” Billy said. “I was about to go on a search.”
“Except you wouldn’t want to get goat poop on your new boots,” Mitch couldn’t help saying.
“Is everything okay out there?” his mom asked. “Is Snowball…I mean the kid okay?”
“Yeah, fine.”
“That baby goat is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” Beth said, which served as a decent excuse for why she’d
spent so long in the barn. “I need to go, um, wash my hands.” She made her escape up the stairs.
Mitch washed his hands at the kitchen sink, using a dish towel to wipe his face and neck. He didn’t recall if Beth had been wearing any lipstick, but he wanted to remove any traces of it from view.
He was still trembling with the enormity of what they’d just done. But he’d never felt an urge as powerful as that. The intensity of the encounter had fully dowsed Mitch’s lingering anger, leaving a curious, mellow feeling.
Warm. Sweet. Dangerous.
She’d said she loved him. It had been barely a whisper, but he was almost positive he’d heard it. He’d been thrilled for about ten seconds. Then he’d come down from the physical high of his climax.
Lord in heaven, what had he done?
Beth reappeared. His mother, knowing they had business to discuss, retreated to the living room to watch TV with Davy.
“So, what’s the scoop?” Beth asked Billy. “While we were stuck getting interrogated by Lieutenant Humorless, I assume you were running around collecting evidence to free our client?”
“I’m working down the list you gave me. Caught up with Amanda, the old girlfriend. Since the old days she’s married, divorced, married again. Has a couple of kids. Seemed sad about Robby’s death, in a nostalgic sort of way. I didn’t sense any lingering anger, and she didn’t seem to be hiding anything.”
“She’s had twelve years to prepare for the moment she would be questioned,” Beth pointed out.
Billy just shook his head. “She’s a nonstarter. The night he disappeared, she was working at her fast-food job. She’s the kind of person who keeps everything, even work schedules from twelve years ago. She was at work that night.”
“Could be faked,” Beth said. “Who keeps a work schedule for twelve years?”
“She had boxes and boxes of records in a back bedroom, all neatly categorized and labeled,” Billy said. “I could track down her supervisor, see if he remembers her going home sick or trading shifts with someone, but I think my time could be better spent.”
Beth sighed. “Okay. What else?”
“I also talked to the original owner of the Monte Carlo, Harvey Clayton.”
“Jeez, you get around,” Mitch commented.
“When the car was stolen, he’d been hiding his key under the mat and leaving his door unlocked for months, telling anyone who’d listen that he’d done so, hoping the car would get stolen. He wanted the insurance money a lot more than he wanted the car, and he was ecstatic when it was not only stolen, but never recovered. Made his life easier.”
Beth put her head in her hands. “Dammit, we need something to work with.”
“This should cheer you up.” Billy reached to the floor by his chair and produced a brown paper bag with an evidence tag. The tag had been carefully signed by Dwayne, then Billy.
“My Q-tip?”
“Yup.”
Beth added her name to the card as she took possession, her spirits mildly buoyed. She couldn’t wait to get back to the lab and find out what the stain was. Maybe it meant nothing; a homeless person’s clothes were apt to be stained with anything. But the overall-clad man from the homeless encampment had made a point of mentioning that Larry had put on a clean T-shirt, so it was more than likely a fresh stain.
“What’s on the agenda for tomorrow?” Beth asked.
“I have an address for Studs the Fence,” Mitch said. “I emailed it to Billy.”
“I’ll try to roust him out of bed in the morning,” Billy said. “What about you, Beth?”
“I’m hoping the police will release the crime scene and I can do my own search,” Beth said. “Those guys couldn’t find a clue if it jumped up and bit them in their collective butts. I want to return to the shack, as well. Wish I had a metal detector. There were a lot of areas that got skipped in previous searches.”
“I think Davy’s got one you can use,” Mitch said. “Saw it in the barn.”
“Excellent.”
“Beth…” Billy looked like he had something unpleasant to say.
“What?”
“It’s just that…there’s a murderer out there somewhere. And you’re not really trained for fieldwork.”
“Daniel told you to keep an eye on me, is that it? I keep an eye on Mitch, you keep an eye on me?”
“Something like that. He worries.”
“Like a mother hen,” Mitch groused, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers behind his head.
“I don’t think you should go to remote areas by yourself,” Billy said. “That’s all.”
“She won’t be alone,” Mitch said. “I’ll be with her.”
“Mitch, you’re supposed to steer clear of the investigating,” she reminded him.
“Now, who’s gonna know I was there unless you tell them, huh?” he pointed out.
She sensed this was an argument she wouldn’t win. If Raleigh were here, she would take charge and sling orders. But if Beth tried to give orders, the two men would probably laugh at her.
“If you want to put the investigation at risk, I suppose that’s your choice,” she said tartly. “It’s your neck on the line.” What else was she going to do? Tattle to Daniel that the boys weren’t playing nice?
“That’s settled, then,” Billy said. She’d been hoping he would take her side against Mitch. But the Y chromosomes were hanging together. “You want a ride to the hotel, or do you have your own car?”
“I’m, um…”
“She’s staying here,” Mitch said.
Billy raised one eyebrow. “That so doesn’t look good. Would you stay at the home of any other Project Justice client?”
“Mitch isn’t just a client. He’s a friend. Anyway, Daniel said I should…” Hell, might as well admit it. “Daniel said I should keep Mitch out of trouble.” Something she had so far been dismal at.
Billy and Mitch both laughed at her expense. All right, so she wasn’t particularly suited to the job of enforcer. Did they have to make a big deal about that?
Especially Mitch. He shouldn’t be laughing at her, given what they’d just shared in the barn. Unless it didn’t mean as much to him as it did to her.
“I know I’m about as effective as a wet dishrag at making Mitch do anything, but I have to at least try. I’m going to bed. It’s been a long day. Mitch, give me your car keys.”
“Wh-what?” He looked as if he was about to burst out laughing.
“I don’t want you going on any more midnight rambles. If you can’t sleep, read a book.”
“Midnight rambles?” Billy asked.
“I went for a late-night drive last night, the night Larry was killed. It might have compromised my alibi.”
Billy shook his head. “You have a GPS cuff that could prove you were home when a crime occurred, and you blew it?”
“I know, I know. Guess I should have known someone would get killed that night and I’d get blamed, right?”
“Give Beth your car keys.”
Seeing that neither of them was going to back down, Mitch reached into his jeans pocket, extracted the keys and handed them to Beth. “I can get them from you anytime I want, you know.”
Oh, she didn’t doubt that. It appeared he could pretty much get anything he wanted from Beth.
FOR THE FIRST TIME since he’d been arrested, Mitch slept well. Maybe it was just knowing that Project Justice was on the case. Or maybe it was the mind-blowing sex with Beth, which had at least temporarily lessened the tension between them. Even knowing she was sleeping just a few feet away in the guest room didn’t keep him awake for too long. His imagining what Beth might be wearing to bed transitioned pleasantly into erotic dreams, and he awoke rested.
But as he pulled on a pair of jeans, niggling doubts needled him. Making love to Beth might have eased the tension between them, but it had stirred up a hornet’s nest of other problems. Like, where did they go from here?
He wasn’t ready for a relationship with her
. Maybe he would be if he could get out from under all criminal charges. But until then, it was totally unfair to grab on to Beth as some sort of lifeline to everything that was sane and beautiful.
If he wanted Beth, he needed to earn her, to become the sort of man she deserved. He wasn’t sure he could do that; but what he could do was treat her with more respect.
Having his way with her in a barn was not respectful. Neither was coming on to her like a raging rhinoceros. He’d told her he wanted rose petals and a feather bed, yet he’d settled for hay.
Telling her he was sorry wouldn’t be adequate. Actions spoke louder than words, which meant that he had to prove to Beth that despite what she’d seen of him lately, he was essentially a gentle person who wanted, above all, to treat her right. To do the right thing, for once in his life.
As he headed for the bathroom, he met Beth on her way out. She had just showered, and she wore only a thin robe. She was clearly damp and naked underneath. His resolve immediately started to crumble around the edges.
“Hey. Beth. Good morning.” Under the circumstances, he thought that was pretty good, stringing four words together coherently.
“Oh, hi, Mitch.” She looked down shyly. He wanted to capture her, put her up against the wall and press his body against hers. But he’d learned his lesson about manhandling her and wouldn’t attempt it even in a playful way.
“Sleep okay?”
Good manners forced her to pause long enough to answer him. “Not the best.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” What would that sweet, gentle, easygoing man of her dreams say? “Is the bed okay? Do you need an extra blanket or a different pillow?”
“No, the bed is fine.” She lowered her voice. “It would have been better with you in it.”
Oh, Lord in heaven. He could smell her soap now. Today it was a heady combination of vanilla and lavender that made him lick his lips.
Was she saying she was okay with what had happened last night? It would be so easy just to fall into a casual sexual relationship with her. But he couldn’t. He simply couldn’t allow that to happen. What if it leaked to the press? Being with Beth could compromise any work she did on his behalf.