Removing my clothes and peeling off his sweats, we lay there for a moment gazing at each other.
His skin against mine, was so familiar at this point. I wanted to feel the warmth of him against me over and over again.
“Missed you,” he whispered, before he buried his face in my neck and inhaled deeply. “Missed everything about you. I can’t do this life without you anymore. Thought I could let you go if it meant you’d be safe, but I can’t. There’s a hole where you were, and I can’t seem to fill it.”
My hands slid around his face so that I could turn him toward me. He gave me a confused look as he stared at me.
“I’m here. I’ll always be here.”
His mouth crashed against mine suddenly. As much as it felt like he was trying to possess every inch of skin and tongue, I was taking and possessing him too.
When he leaned back, it was only to grab my hips and spread my legs around him.
My hands gripped his arms for a minute. He thrust in on a loud groan and leaned back over me to kiss one of my peaked nipples.
When he started to move, I let out a long moan and my eyes drifted shut. He smelled musky and earthy, like some of the forest paths around the lakes. His skin was hot against mine as it slid against me.
My hands roamed the hard surface of his muscles as they moved and strained in his slow, but solid rhythm.
I let out a soft moan as I lifted my hips to meet his thrusts. His hand squeezed and kneaded the flesh on my thigh, before sliding up to cup the underside of my other breast.
My hands slipped around his neck and into his hair as his tongue licked at the small bite marks he was leaving across my chest. His hips circled a couple of times causing a small pain just from my body trying to get used to his girth again.
He was gentle, attentive, and slowly made love to me in the quiet room.
I loved the fierce, explosive sex that we’d had in the past. It was thrilling, passionate, and made me crave this rough man each and every time. This, however, was something different. Very different.
We both needed this soft encounter now more than anything. Feelings were hurt, mistakes were made. It didn’t matter in this moment that both of us had baggage, or that we were two damaged people, made that way by our pasts. Touching and breathing him in as he kissed me gently erased all of it. The way he caressed me, soothed old wounds.
It might be a hard road for both of us to move forward into the new path we’d created. But it was a road that I knew we were dedicated to, and more importantly, one that we’d face together.
“Come for me, sunshine,” he said on a more insistent thrust. “I’m not sure I can hold out. Fuck, I missed you.”
“Cade,” I moaned as he increased his tempo and his mouth landed on my already sensitive nipple. His tongue circled and flicked, before he blazed a trail up to my neck, and started kissing right below my ear.
My back arched under him, my head tilted back as his hand gently ran the length of my thigh and hip. When I let out a long moan, he pinned my hip and thrust a little harder. I could feel the urgency in him as my body responded, clenching around him a moment before my orgasm overcame me.
He kissed along my jaw and down my neck then leaned back. With two last hard thrusts, he swelled and let out a loud groan as he came inside me.
Our breathing in the aftermath was the only sound in the room. The connection of our bodies remained as he slumped over me and turned us both over. I ended up sprawled over his chest, my hair splayed out across his shoulder, and my cheek against his warm skin.
His hands moved slowly over my back as his fingers gently trailed over my body.
“What do we do now?” I asked in a whisper.
He let out a long sigh. “I think we need to leave. That’s what my instincts are telling me. I don’t want you anywhere near this.”
I raised my head to stare into his pensive eyes. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh,” he chuckled, rolling me over onto my back. He gave me a couple of quick kisses down my neck, then started nipping at the soft skin above my breast. “Have sex again. Then eat. Then pack. Then argue because you always argue. Then have more sex so you shut up about it. Then get the hell out of here while you’re in a sex haze.”
I giggled. “I’m never in a sex haze. At least not enough to just agree with everything you want. It kills you doesn’t it?”
He glanced up at me with a devious grin. “Hmm, I’ll have to try harder. Or tie you to the bed until you see things my way.”
I arched my eyebrow at him and pursed my lips. “Who says I need to be tied to the bed? Works both ways here.”
He gave me a lopsided grin before flicking my nipple with his tongue. “I might be interested. Depends on what my devilish little redhead has in mind.”
A throaty laugh erupted from me, imagining all the things I might be able to do with that scenario. If he ever let me, he might regret his willingness.
His eyes narrowed as he regarded the look on my face. “Hmm, maybe I’ll pass on that.”
“Someday.”
“Maybe.”
“I think we should talk about food,” I laughed as his beard tickled my stomach. His mouth was slowly moving down my body, leaving little kisses as he went.
“Sex,” he mumbled.
“Food.”
“I love you.”
My hands slid under his chin and stopped his progression down my stomach. I lifted his face until he was looking at me.
“I love you, too.”
The doorbell rang, and there was a loud knocking on the door in the other room.
Cade frowned, looking both surprised and concerned. “I’m not expecting anyone. Might be Holden but…”
He slid out of bed, grabbed a pair of jeans from his closet and threw them on. When he looked back at me, his eyes slid over my body with a heated look.
“Hate to say this, but get dressed just in case.”
The noise from the front door increased and the doorbell rang again.
“Wait,” I said, as I scrambled for his boxers and t-shirt. “Check to see who it is first. After what happened today…”
“Not my first rodeo, babe,” he said, as he pulled a drawer open in his dresser and removed a gun. “I always check. And I would never let anything happen to you.”
He slid the gun in the back of his jeans after checking it and walked down the hallway.
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” I mumbled, as I grabbed my bra off the dresser and threw it on before pulling his t-shirt over my head.
The knocking and doorbell had stopped, so I assumed Cade had greeted whoever it was at his door. Walking down the hallway cautiously at first, I heard a man’s voice speaking, then Cade respond in an irritated manner.
When I stepped into the living room, Cade was blocking my view of the person at the door. His stance was somewhat defensive by the way his hand was gripping the edge of the door. His voice was growing louder as I neared.
“Again, I’m asking you, for what exactly?”
“Mr. Shepard, please put your hands behind your back. Do you have any weapons on you?” the male asked.
“I’ve got a gun on me. You can’t serve a warrant without telling me what it’s about,” Cade replied.
“You’re being arrested on suspicion of murder, kidnapping, aggravated assault…”
“What the fuck?” I said loudly, yanking the door back and out of Cade’s hand.
“Get back, baby,” Cade said as his hand moved me out of view. “I don’t know what the fuck this is.”
“Get that man in cuffs, Agent,” a familiar voice demanded. Agent Kennedy’s bark was recognizable even without seeing him.
“Oh, this is priceless. I fuck up your sting operation and, let me guess, this is payback?” Cade growled. “This is low, even for you.”
“Mr. Shepard, turn around and place your hands behind your back,” the other agent ordered again.
Cade turned toward me and gave m
e an annoyed glance. He was jerked around, and his arms wrenched behind his back.
“What’s going on?” I asked in confusion.
Cade was moved back, and Agent Kennedy stepped through the door. His presence was just as intimidating as it had been a month ago. The one difference, was the dark circles that had developed under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept in the last month.
“Suzanne, we’re going to have to ask you some questions.”
“About what? No,” I shook my head. “Tell me what the hell is going on.”
He held up his hand and stepped toward me. “It’s going to be okay. We need to ask you some things, and you’ll need to either come with us, or we can talk somewhere else. But we’re going to need a statement. We have a warrant to search the house, so we won’t be able to stay here.”
I stepped around him and ran out the door. What greeted my eyes was something out of a cop drama. There were police vehicles everywhere with lights flashing, but there hadn’t been any sirens earlier. Cops were pointing their weapons toward Cade as he was being led across the lawn toward a black sedan.
“Cade?” I called out. Someone pulled on my arm behind me, trying to drag me back into the house.
Cade craned his neck to look back at me. “Baby, call Aiden. I swear this isn’t what it looks like. Just call Aiden.”
“Suzanne,” Agent Kennedy said behind me.
I spun around to glare at him. “What the fuck is going on?”
“We’re arresting him on suspicion of being involved in the serial murders. Evidence that implicates him in at least two of the murders has been recovered. I need you to answer some questions.”
I wrenched my arm out of his hand as two agents passed by me, headed through the door. “You asshole, you know he didn’t do this.”
“Suzanne, you don’t know what we have,” he said as he glanced toward the street. “It’s pretty damning evidence. These guys are masters of tricking people into thinking what they want you to. Given his background, though…”
“Shove that sentence up your ass, Agent. That’s not Cade, I would know.”
“Are you sure?” he asked as he gave me an assessing look. “How much have you been around him for the last year? Did he tell you about the man he nearly killed in a bar fight five years ago? How about the fact that his mom is a redhead? Seems a little pertinent. Did he tell you that he was abused enough for CPS to step in when he was ten? They couldn’t get anything out of him or his brother. Too far gone at that point. Then it was petty theft, assault. What do you honestly know about Caden Marcus Shepard?”
I grimaced and clenched my jaw. If I could have decked him in front of what looked like the entire police department, I would have. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t have a point. He had a fucking point. Cade hadn’t told me everything. But there were some things people didn’t get to in the amount of time that we’d had. So, we hadn’t shared every single detail of our lives. Some experiences were painful. I had them, and so did every person on the planet. That didn’t mean shit.
“I know enough,” I mumbled, still seething at the fact that the agent had asked such a question.
My head whipped around to see Cade struggling as two agents retrained him. His face was a mask of pure fury as he looked toward us. His glare wasn’t directed toward me, but the man beside me.
“Don’t believe a fucking word he says, Suzanne!” he yelled as the agents finally maneuvered him into the back of the vehicle.
“There’s no way you can pin this on him, Agent Kennedy.”
“Why’s that?” he asked.
“He can’t kill people while being in a totally different city as the murders.”
“You’re assuming that you know where he’s been, Suzanne. He’s been, what, dead the last few months? Did he check in with you?”
“Shut up,” I replied as I watched the sedan carrying Cade pull away from the curb.
“Mick just didn’t want to see it. But now that we’ve got solid evidence—”
“What evidence?” I asked as I turned back to him. “What could you possibly have that would make you think that man could have any involvement?”
“We found some things in his hotel room. Pictures, receipts. One of the maids found it after he left. We’ve been keeping track of him ever since. And ironically, there haven’t been any murders in a month since he’s been here.”
“Where is Mick? I think I’d rather deal with him.”
He pursed his lips and looked annoyed for a moment. “He’s been assigned to a different department.”
I turned away from him and stared at the front of Cade’s house. People passed by the windows carrying bags, as they pilfered what little he had. A small tingle ran up my neck. I didn’t want to doubt Cade, but what person in their right mind would suspect their lover of being a killer?
I shook my head, trying to clear the thought. No, not Cade.
“If you’ll come with me, we can talk somewhere else, and I can get the information I need, Suzanne. I just need some details about your relationship, maybe things you observed.”
By the tone of his voice, I could tell he was trying to make all of this seem calm and normal, even though it was anything but. He was trying his best to put me at ease, but it was his job and I knew it. He'd tell me anything and go to any length to solve his case. Cade said it was a high-profile investigation, and Wyatt Kennedy would be standing out front and center if he bagged the killer.
The worst part was that I needed, and wanted to know if Cade was involved, and that made my stomach clench in the sickest of ways. It felt like such a betrayal to him, to us, and especially to what I felt for him. It just couldn’t be true.
Tires screeched behind me and my head whipped around toward the noise. Some of the police cars had left, some were still there, but without all the armed officers.
Holden stepped out of a nondescript black car and promptly began arguing with one of the police officers that was preventing him from coming any closer. A man in a black suit that came up behind him flashed some papers and waited patiently.
Agent Kennedy let out a long sigh. “That would be one of Aiden’s lawyers. I’m surprised he doesn’t have all twelve of them here yet. We can meet in one of his offices if you feel comfortable there. But we’ll need to meet by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Fine,” I replied, as I walked toward Holden. He turned his head and met my stare. I kept my eyes on him solely as I made my way across the yard. He made a welcoming gesture to come to him when I began to falter. My emotions were on overload with what had happened in one horrible day. The bomb, Cade’s love for me, his arrest. It was too much for one person to shoulder.
When I reached Holden, my knees buckled, and I felt myself floating away into a black abyss as I fainted.
Chapter Twenty-One
Two days later, I still felt disoriented and confused, as I sat in one of Aiden’s conference rooms fiddling with a string on my shirt.
After a series of interviews with Agent Kennedy, Aiden’s multiple lawyers in attendance, the FBI had finally stopped asking questions. They must have either gotten what they wanted, or decided I wasn’t the best person to ask about Cade.
I wasn’t trying to hide things, but it seemed that every response I gave initially, was twisted into something that didn’t sound quite right. They showed me pictures of other women, snapshots of redheads, who they said were other victims. Letters, cards, timelines. At some point, I just stopped talking and let the lawyers deal with the whole mess.
No matter what they said, I had to believe that this was just some sick ploy of theirs to get back at Aiden, his friends, or Cade himself. It just didn’t make sense from any other angle.
The worst part was that none of us had heard from Cade since the arrest. My mind kept drifting back to his fake death. If this was some stunt of his to disappear again, in order to protect his friends or me, I would kill him myself this time.
I waited for Aiden to set up what looked l
ike a complicated video conference system, thinking about the consequences if Cade couldn’t be proven innocent. We were meeting to discuss everything with the guys, and I was sickeningly nervous about what they were going to tell me.
Aiden clicked on a few buttons on a display he'd mounted on his wall. The room felt a little cold, like a place where deals were made, but people didn’t hang around to chat.
Liv sat beside me in one of the conference chairs, in front of a long polished wooden table that I was afraid to touch for fear of leaving handprints all over. I hadn’t expected her to be attending, and it was comforting to have her around on such a strange day. Even though we weren’t terribly close, I was getting the overall feeling that it didn’t matter whether we were best friends or not, it was just her way of letting me know that the door was always open to a deeper friendship if I wanted it.
“Okay, nearly there,” Aiden grumbled. “I hate this damn thing. It’s why I employ tech-heads to figure it out. The guys should be coming on in a minute.”
Liv gave me a look and rolled her eyes. “If you can’t work the damn thing, then why have it?”
“Mouth, princess. It’s necessary for business. And my business supports your reading addiction.”
“I can support my book habits on my own, thank you,” she retorted. “And anything else I want to buy.”
Aiden sat down facing the monitor and smirked, “Yes, but there are a few other things that I’m addicted to, that I like to buy for my wife. We can talk about that later.”
Liv’s cheeks turned red as she glared at her husband, who was clearly ignoring her reaction.
The speakers on the conference phone let out a static sound before two voices greeted us. Their picture flashed onto the screen on the wall, and I could see that it was Holden and Logan.
Behind me the door shut quietly, and Brock came into view as he moved around the table and sat opposite of Liv and me.
He opened a laptop that he was carrying in his hand and began to type as soon as his fingers hit the keyboard.
“So, I guess we can get started here,” Aiden said. “I spoke with our lawyers about what they think on Cade’s case. They met with him yesterday afternoon. To be honest, most of the alleged evidence in this case seems sketchy at best.”
Damage: (Lakefield Book 5) Page 20