Damage: (Lakefield Book 5)

by Jennifer Vester

  He shifted, then his mouth met mine, as his hand slid between us. When his fingers found my folds, and slipped so easily down into my wet opening, I nearly wept. How many times had I dreamed about this man, this moment?

  His fingers found a soft rhythm as his mouth slid up to my neck and sucked hard. My hand on his shoulder gripped at the muscles as my other one slid down to his ass. He flexed as his fingers moved out of me and I felt the rippling effect in his muscles.

  I was panting on the edge of an orgasm again, stomach cramped with a need when he finally moved his cock toward my entrance, pushing inside me.

  “Sorry, baby, this is going to go fast. Are you on birth control?”

  “Yeah,” I let out on a sigh as he pushed forward. The answer was apparently meaningless since he was already spreading me.

  “That’s too bad,” he mumbled.

  His hand went around my knee and pushed upward until my leg rested on his shoulder. I cried out as he slipped inside me and I began to adapt to his size. With time, I knew my body would mold to his, but he wasn’t slowing down tonight.

  “A little bit more, baby,” he said as he kissed along the side of my face. “Fuck you’re beautiful.”

  My arms went around his neck and my fingers laced through his hair. A soft keening sounded from somewhere and I realized I was in the middle of a long, moan.

  He began to pull back, but I stopped and tugged his mouth down to mine. Our mouths collided, tongues met, then he slid roughly back into me, and I screamed. The muffled sound didn’t stop as he repeated the action.

  He gripped my hip hard and held my body in place as he slammed into me.

  When he bit my neck I nearly cried out as an electrifying bolt shot down my spine. It only heightened my pleasure as he sucked at me hard, teeth scraping the sensitive part under my ear.

  “You like that?” he grunted on a thrust.

  “Oh, Cade!” I moaned.

  My leg on his shoulder slid off and his hand came up to play with my sensitive nipple. I tugged at his hair and he growled, intensifying his thrusts. He grabbed one of arms and pinned it to the bed in a hold that was almost too tight.

  “Behave,” he commanded, then sucked on the bottom of my swollen lip. His hand gripped the back of my hair and pulled until my neck was completely exposed to him.

  “You’re mine, baby,” he said in a husky voice against my ear. “Every fucking part of you. Say it.”

  “Oh,” I moaned as he moved his hips in a circular motion. “Fuck. Yours!”

  “Good girl. If I want your neck or those perfect tits of yours, I’ll have them. They’re mine to suck, to bite. Say it.”

  I was delirious from his deep thrusts and could barely form a thought. When I didn’t give him an answer, his rough palm squeezed my sensitive breast and his fingers tweaked my nipple.

  “Yours, Cade! Please!”

  He growled and tightened his grip on my hair. “I want to see that perfect mouth of yours wrapped around my cock with my fist in your hair. But not today.”

  The image that his words brought to mind made me moan. I wanted that too. A familiar burning began deep within my muscles, a pulsating that was converging where our bodies met.

  “Cade,” I begged.

  When he increased his speed, I came apart. My legs squeezed around him, my back came off the bed. Instead of pressing me down, Cade lifted me, spreading my legs further, giving him access so deep it was nearly painful as he continued to thrust into me.

  He buried himself to the hilt, then jerked suddenly and shouted my name. Still thrusting several times, he laid me gently on the bed. My body felt like dead weight as I tried to lift my arm around his neck but couldn’t manage.

  “Rest, baby. Sleep,” he said softly as he kissed my face. “God, you’re perfection, pretty girl. A gift I don’t deserve.”

  I opened my mouth to reply, and he gave me a gentle kiss. Slipping out of me, he rolled me over on top of his chest and let out a huge sigh as his arms slid around me.

  I wanted to ask what he meant. Wanted to tell him that he deserved more than the woman in his arms. But as my brain formed the sentiment, my weary body relaxed in his hold and took me down into sleep.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I woke with a start, unsure of what had pulled me from a deep sleep. My body felt sore in ways that I hadn’t known in a very long time.

  The room was still bright from the bedside lamp, and the clock told me it was a little after midnight. Laying on my back, I was still sprawled across the blankets and completely nude. Cade’s heavy arm lay across my chest and tightened. I stretched one of my legs and looked over at him.

  He was on his side staring at me with a troubled frown on his face. His brown eyes met mine then slid down my body.

  “What’s wrong?”

  His hand touched my hip then slid up to my arm. When I looked down to see what he was staring at, I saw a small red mark on my shoulder and another one on my hip. There were little red marks all over my body where his mouth and hands had been.

  “Well, I look thoroughly fucked.”

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have been so rough.”

  “It’s okay, I loved it.”

  His hand came up to the side of my face, and his fingers gently skimmed over my cheek. He tucked my hair behind my ear and kissed my forehead.

  “This is going to sound awful, baby.”

  I tensed wondering what he was about to say. I hoped he didn’t regret our time together. If he said anything like that it would break me.

  “What?” I whispered.

  “It’s just,” he started to say, then sighed. “I know that you’ve been treated badly. That at least one person has laid his hands on you and obviously did some damage.”

  “I’m over it.”

  “He’ll pay eventually,” he growled. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that you’re beautiful with my marks on you. And it sounds awful. It really fucking does. But I haven’t been able to take my eyes off you for the last hour.”

  I frowned in confusion and his eyes met mine.

  “I’ve been trying to memorize the way you look right now with a road map of where I’ve touched you and kissed you. Marks on your neck, my hand print on your hip. I’m an asshole for being so rough, but I don’t ever want to forget the way you are right now. You’re carrying my marks, smell like me, have my cum in you. And I fucking hate the thought of any other man making you look this way.”

  I rolled into him and slid my hand over his large shoulder. “Baby.”

  He let out a sigh of frustration. “I want that too.”

  I felt something pull hard in my chest. Like a deep longing, it cut through me and made me want things that I wasn’t sure I was ready for, much less deserved right now.

  My feelings for this man ran deep. There was no doubt about it. Even after all this time, and all the sadness that he’d caused, I still felt something. And now, more than ever, I felt like I knew who he was fundamentally. Saw the good man that he was inside, no matter how messed up his actions were.

  But we'd been thrown together in extraordinary circumstances. A situation in which two people who felt a strong pull for each other, might fall in love for the wrong reasons. I wasn’t sure what he saw in me, but I felt like the things we'd shared over the past few days were slowly binding us together.

  I knew that I loved this man. That I would do anything to see his rare smiles and know that he was happy. But I didn’t know what it was like to truly live yet. To make something more out of myself. If we did move forward, I'd have to find that first, so that I could be with him and know that I was on equal footing. That the love I gave him was a result of loving myself so much, that I had an excess of that feeling and could invite him in to share in it.

  Giving him a quick kiss, I sat up then leaned over him. His strong hands rubbed down my sides slowly as he gazed at my face.

  “Talking time.”

  He smirked. “Sure you don’t want to go back to
the sex?”

  I laughed. “I’d love to. But I think we need to talk about what you want, versus what I need.”

  “Okay.”

  “I need to stay here and work with this new guy on catching the killer.”

  Cade’s hands stopped in mid-stroke over my shoulders and he tensed. A frown was starting to form on his face, so I continued quickly.

  “It feels like this is the right thing to do, Cade. For both of us. And for all the other faceless women that he might target. You care about me enough to protect me from something that you see coming, but what about those other women? They don’t know.”

  “Suzanne—”

  “They have people who care for them that will end up standing at a grave one of these days, wishing someone did something. I think I should care enough about them, so that they have a chance to be loved, to have hopes, and to live.”

  “Baby, I can’t let you do it. I understand what you’re saying, and I hear you. But I can’t let you walk out there without protection. You might want to help, but you don’t need to help. Mick said that none of us could touch this. And he’s partially right. If we fucked the case up, then this guy could go on killing. The problem is that I won’t let you. Even if he walked in—”

  “That would be weird.”

  “Even if he walked in tomorrow and said fine, let’s have everyone help, I still wouldn’t let you do it. It’s too dangerous. The answer is no. If I have to fucking gag you and throw you in the back of Jake’s trunk, the answer is no.”

  I sighed. “Cade, I know that you think your guys can do a better job. They can do a lot of things and since you have faith in them, and I have faith in you, I believe in you.”

  “You’re not hearing me. This isn’t a negotiation on whether you’ll do this or not. I’m not going to let you put your life on the line. Ever. You don’t know what this guy does to the woman he kills, baby. Do you want those ugly details skipping around in your head?”

  Rolling off his chest I sat up, then swung my legs over the bed. When I looked back at him, he seemed calm. Like the decision was already made.

  “Let’s talk about something,” I said as I got up and put on my panties.

  “Is it going to piss me off?” he asked, still nude on the bed, but now leaning against the headboard.

  “Probably, but it’s important.”

  “I’ll listen, but the answer is still no.”

  I took a deep breath and rolled my eyes. “My life really doesn’t have any purpose.”

  He sat up straighter and glared at me. “Now I’m getting pissed.”

  “Just listen. My only purpose now is to take care of my mom. But I haven’t been doing such a great job at finding something for me. That’s one of the things I was planning to work on when I moved here.”

  He opened his mouth and I held up a finger.

  “If you want a life with me then I have to find that for myself.”

  He shrugged. “Okay. We’ll go do whatever it is that you want. You’re smart enough to find something that gives you that. I don’t care if you want to open a damn pet store. Either way, I’m still going to be there.”

  My head tilted as I studied him. “That’s the problem. If you’re in jail, then you won’t be around to see that. Second issue is that you have to let me make my own decisions.”

  He opened his mouth again and I shook my head. The sound of his teeth snapping as he shut it, nearly made me smile. For a man like him, a dominate one that was used to getting his own way, this must be killing him.

  “Third issue is that I want a life with you too. But I need to be able to look you in the eye and say that I’m proud of myself enough to stand beside you.”

  He moved with the speed and grace of a man half his size as he came across the bed to grab me.

  I let out a small squeal as he pulled me onto his lap and held me against his chest.

  “I’m already proud of you, Suzanne. You don’t have to do anything else to hold your head high. To me, you’re about ten levels above me already in a scale of one to five.”

  “That math makes no sense.”

  “It’s not supposed to. What I’m trying to say is that you’re already something more to me than anything you could want for you.”

  “It won’t matter what either of us wants if you’re in jail,” I said against the soft skin of his neck. “Look, the peace offering is that I help the FBI. Mick said if I helped that you wouldn’t be punished.”

  He nodded. “That’s a maybe, pretty girl. The FBI does what it wants, and I broke a non-disclosure agreement. Mick can say that now, but he’s off the case. This next guy comes in, who the fuck knows what he wants. Regardless, this is a high-profile case. Someone’s career is going to get made, and it’s not going to be made with your death.”

  “I would rather try negotiating then live with the regret of doing nothing. Thinking for years afterward that I could have done something that would save you from having to sacrifice more of your life for someone you care about. And all those women that might come after me? I can’t even imagine what my guilt would be like.”

  His mouth skimmed over the top of my head and he sighed. “So, you know that I care about you?”

  “Of course! I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t know that. I just don’t want to become the new reason why you disappear.”

  “Baby, if you aren’t the best reason then I don’t know what is. Why are you here with me if you knew what you were going to do? You had to know I wasn’t going to let you. And frankly I’m still not convinced. You’re talking about finding something for yourself, like you don’t want to be with me while you do it. And then you’re willing to put yourself in danger to make sure I’m around. Spell it out. Man-speak.”

  I leaned back and smiled at him. “You’re insane.”

  He grinned. “You’re in love with me.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re tolerable.”

  His thumbs dug into the top of my hips and I squealed.

  “Why are you here with me?” he whispered in my ear.

  I settled in his arms again as he moved back farther on the bed. “I guess because this is the only thing I can give you.”

  “What’s that, babe?”

  “In man-speak terms, it means that I want you to know that I care about you. That I want to be a better person for you, and I want you to stay out of fucking jail so that I can share something with you. Eventually.”

  “Hmm. Eventually. I think you just like the sex.”

  I shrugged. “That goes without saying.”

  “You love me.”

  I scooted out of his arms and off the bed, headed toward the bathroom. When I glanced back at him I laughed and said, “Don’t get cocky. I said I liked the sex.”

  He smirked as he watched me cross the room.

  After I shut the door to the bathroom, I glanced at myself in the mirror. There was a different woman looking back at me. Forget the fact that my hair was sticking up all over the place, or that I had a huge hickey on my neck that no amount of makeup could possibly ever cover.

  No, the woman that stared back at me was a little closer to being who I wanted to be. It was a subtle change, but it was lightyears away from the woman who was in the bathroom in Lakefield with a split lip and broken pride. This woman had a purpose, one that would help the man in the next room. One that would help some other woman staring at herself in the mirror at this very moment somewhere in the world. That woman would be saved if I could manage to help bring a killer to justice before it was too late.

  Cade wasn’t convinced. At all. I could tell in the way he was diffusing our conversation with humor. We were alike in that way.

  But the more I stared at myself, the more I knew that I needed to do this. I could give him his life back. And that would give me something else I desperately needed. Him.

  After this was done, I'd go to college or find a different career. Something to make me proud. But for now, this was the best step in the rig
ht direction.

  And even better, he'd be at my side in the end.

  Cade wasn’t going to let me do this, though. I knew that for certain. He would probably call Jake to pick me up tomorrow and that would be it. As much as he allowed me to speak my mind about things, I knew that it was going to war with his sense of protectiveness.

  Mick had left me one of his cards earlier in the day. I had to take my mother to a doctor’s appointment, then I would call him to see if I could contact Agent Kennedy. That was if the new agent didn’t contact me first.

  Either way, I felt like this was the only way.

  The fallout was that I was taking a huge risk with my life. And Cade was going to be pissed. Through the roof angry at me. Which is why this night had been important. After he disappeared, I regretted not telling him how I felt. This time he knew. There were no secrets. Nothing left to the imagination. He knew I cared when I gave him the words.

  If nothing else, I could point to this night and tell myself that I put it out there in plain terms. At least I think I did. Kind of.

  Fuck, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. After all of this was over, I was just hoping he would stick around long enough to hear an apology and maybe see where things went.

  I splashed some water on my face, did my thing, and opened the door. Cade was standing in front of it with both hands braced against the door frame. He was quite a sight. Naked, muscles in his arms bulged and half erect.

  “Oh, sorry. Did you need in here?”

  He shook his head slowly and gave me a devilish grin. “Just waiting to get you back in bed.”

  I blinked as he stepped in and lifted me into his arms. My legs slid around his waist as he carried me back to bed, gently easing us both down on the blanket.

  When his lips hit mine, I knew he was going to take me again. The urgency and raw need that he expressed was evident. His hands were once again roaming all over my body.

  When he leaned back, I thought of something when I looked at his beard and giggled.

  “That’s not exactly the response I wanted, but I’ll take it,” he said with a smirk.

  “Oh, I was just thinking about that first night at the club, and you wanting to be called Mark.”