As expected, her brows clashed and her chin lifted. Lifting her head, she stuck a fingernail in his pec, her tough chick back in the fight. “I’m not scared of anybody. Not even you, Buster.”
Buster? Me? Great! Isaiah’s need for Roxy in his life took control of his brain. “Then tomorrow, we prove Randall wrong. If he wants the money from that armored car robbery so bad he’ll kill for it, let’s give him what he wants. The Bureau’s got a couple million on hand for cases like this. I say we leak the word—somehow that—”
“That we found it? Good plan.” Hope sparked back to life in Roxy’s eyes. “Maybe Tucker could hold a press conference to get the word out?”
Isaiah nodded, his hands smoothing over her shoulder blades and down her sleek back to her sweet, plump bottom. He couldn’t get enough of this woman, not if he lived to be an old—but horny—old man. “That’s my girl. Tucker’s got just the big mouth for the job.”
Roxy quirked a tiny smile. “I didn’t like him at first, but he kind of grows on you, doesn’t he?”
“Like a fungus,” Isaiah admitted with a grin. “Tucker’s fighting his own demons, but he’s one of the best men I know.”
Roxy’s slender fingers fluttered over Isaiah’s chest, and there went his heart. Ker-thump. Ker-thump. Ker-splat. Right at her feet.
“Stay,” he begged, his heart so damned full of love for her that it might burst before he was brave enough to tell her. “Darrin and Kitty need you here. Believe it or not, Mrs. Bratton needs you, and…” He swallowed hard, struggling with the truth storming in his heart. “I need you, Roxy.”
Chapter Eighteen
Bratton didn’t need her. The kids might, but their mother? That was a laugh. Roxy wasn’t falling for that line. But Isaiah shouldn’t have said he needed her, and he shouldn’t have looked into her soul like he did. The second she felt him pouring his heart into her, Roxy’s resolve to remove herself from this case went up in smoke. Tipping to her toes, she planted a kiss on his lips that should’ve curled his toes. It surely curled hers.
He took over then, his powerful arm sweeping her off her feet as he ducked out of the shower and took her to his bed. Every last reason she had for leaving melted in the tender way he anointed her mouth, chin, cheeks, and eyelids. It seemed he couldn’t get enough of her. How well she knew the feeling.
She’d seen the fine lines of scars running up his arms and over his chest. Someone had done despicable things to this man’s body, but the sight of them spiked an internal trigger she hadn’t realized she possessed. She longed to soothe Isaiah in ways no one else could. She’d give anything to crawl inside of him and heal him from the inside out. She wanted to be the one he came home to at the end of a hard day, the only one he laid down with at night. Every night.
Desperate for the searing connection they’d shared before, her naked body arched into his of its own accord, stamping the contours of his hips on her inner thighs, and that luscious six-pack of his on her belly. More, more, more…
His fingers touched everywhere, smoothing and probing, pinching and urging the ragged edges of her heart into the fray. Combustible. Roxy was frantic for his body and on the verge of flying, if she didn’t burst into flames first.
At last his skillful fingers trailed down her belly, while his tongue made soft sweet love to her mouth. Hunger spurred her on as he probed her most feminine secrets. So many sensations! Everywhere! She couldn’t keep up.
“You’re wet,” he murmured into her mouth. “So freakin’ tight.”
“For you,” she answered, her voice tight and so, so needy. “Stop playing. Now, Isaiah. I want you inside of me now.”
The man lived to serve. Entering her body with one ardent thrust, his teeth clamped down on her shoulder at the same time. Her pleasure spiked. Like a damned rocket.
Groaning, he amped up the action below while she matched him thrust for thrust, crazy with needing him. Not one to wait until he got it right, she showed him what she needed and where she needed it, stroking him until at last… at last…
“Coming,” she cried as the pleasure built to a screaming crescendo, climbing up her back and thighs and her core and… “God, oh God. Now. Now. Now!”
Her body bowed in sweet surrender to the man filling her to the hilt with heat and passion and—love. Yes. She knew it now. This was love, purely and simply the most exquisite branding of one soul to another. Committed to the intimate privacy between a man and a woman who cared more for the other than they did for themselves.
“More,” she mewled, her snarky MPD personality thoroughly subdued and smitten with this darling, charming alpha male in the palms of her hands. Submission. That was what this was, only this kind of submission made her smile. It was good and wonderful, and she wanted to go again.
He hadn’t climaxed yet, so she dragged her fingernails down his back to his buttocks. If he thought he was getting away with being that unselfish, he had another think—yes, think—coming. Thinking too hard was always his problem. The man was too cerebral. He needed to let go and live for a change.
Digging her fingernails into the muscles of his taut backside, she quickly got what she wanted. With one last pounding beat, he stretched her to the point of the most delicious pain. When he shuddered, growled and roared her name, she knew he was the only man in the world for her. And oh, yes, her man was happy, and she’d given him that release from the demons that haunted him.
Roxy purred like a cat, still shuddering with waves of her own aftershocks. The perfection of this moment knew no bounds. Could anything be sweeter than lying in his arms and loving this man? Her man?
Drained of all energy, Isaiah sagged into her arms, his head heavy in the crook of her sweaty neck. She tugged her hair out of his way so he could breathe, and she let her fingers skim up the back of his neck and into his damp hair. Threading her fingers through the short lengths of it, she cupped him to her. Tears came to her eyes, but they were tears of joy. No one had ever given her a gift like this before.
“It’s been a helluva day,” she whispered, like he didn’t know that?
His head bobbed and he murmured, “It has,” into her neck, but he didn’t move.
Satisfied for the moment, Roxy held onto her man. This was what she wanted more than anything, a good man who looked out for her and who put her needs before his. A man who loved children and dogs and his country. A man she could respect and love—yes, love—for the rest of her life. God hadn’t made many like Isaiah, and she wanted him with every last passionate beat of her heart.
Softly, she hummed a lullaby that her mom had once hummed to her. It took seconds before Isaiah’s breathing grew even and steady. A smile curved her lips. He’d fallen asleep in her arms, pinning her to his bed. Right where she wanted to be.
“Sit!” Tucker’s voice rang out sharp and stern.
“What now?” Oh, oh, this can’t be good, Isaiah thought to himself as he straightened his tie and took a seat at the formal dining table in what had become FBI Central now that Tucker was on the job.
Isaiah picked at an invisible piece of lint on his jacket cuff just to enforce the calm he meant to project. After waking up with Roxy’s delectable warm ass pressed against his very horny body, they’d made love like a couple rabbits, showered together, and even brushed their teeth with the same toothbrush—his.
He had nothing to be ashamed of and there was nothing to tell. He loved Roxy and he meant to tell her. Soon. So there. Let it rain.
Roxy took a seat one chair away from him. She folded her hands like a prim old-fashioned school marm. “What’s up?” she asked, her brown eyes clear and her chin stuck out. For a female officer, she had the street-wise, nail-eating machismo of a beat cop, down pat. She also made that uniform look good. Especially the pockets. Damned good.
Isaiah dropped his gaze before it rolled over her chest, feigning disinterest when he really wanted to tear that meticulously pressed garment out of his way and drag her bac
k to his room for a little game with the cuffs she’d snapped on her belt this morning.
“Explain.” Tucker slapped two eight-by-eleven glossies across the table. Like trained little tattletales, they slid under Isaiah’s nose. He leaned nonchalantly forward to peruse the evidence, which he already knew was against Roxy and him.
Shit. One showed him in all of his black-and-white glory entering Roxy’s bedroom with the lady in question in his arms. Time stamped five fifty-three pm. Yesterday. Yep. That was about right.
The other showed Roxy at his bedroom door, looking like a thief—or a lover—as she entered without knocking. Time stamped in the wee hours of this morning, right before she’d joined him in his shower. Again, spot on. Whoever back at FBI Headquarters had supplied Tucker with these photos was just doing their job, and damn it, Isaiah knew there were cameras throughout the mansion, but did he care? Not anymore.
His feelings for Officer Thurston weren’t negotiable. If Tucker threatened to fire him, so be it. But he doubted Tucker would go that far. As bullheaded as his boss could be, Isaiah sensed mischief stashed up Tucker’s rolled-up sleeves along with his hairy arms, not discipline. Certainly not politics. He just wasn’t that guy.
“Well?” Tucker asked, one brow spiked in that bossy way he projected when he chose intimidation.
Isaiah shrugged without batting an eyelash. “Well, what? Looks like someone caught us on our way to a strategy meeting.”
“Strategy meeting, my ass.” Tucker leaned his big chest over his clenched fists on the table and grunted. “You always carry your co-workers to strategy meetings, Zaroyin?”
Roxy led with a grunt of her own. “We were just goofing off. So what?”
“On duty?”
She lifted her shoulders. “Shit happens.”
“What’s that on your neck?”
Isaiah let his gaze roll across the table to where Roxy sat. Damn. He’d marked her with a raspberry in more places than just her neck, but just the one showed. A wave of pure lust smacked him upside his hard head. He wouldn’t have done that if she hadn’t tasted so unbelievably sweet, but once he started, well, he could no more stop branding her than he could cease breathing. She’d become part of his soul. And now she was his.
The woman handled the nosy question with ease. Instead of nervously fingering her collar, which Tucker had obviously expected her to do judging by the disappointment that flitted across his face when she didn’t, the MPD Officer intertwined her fingers and leaned into Tucker’s direct line of attack. “I cut myself shaving. So sue me.”
Tucker kicked one booted foot under the table, amusement glimmering in his eyes. “You’re a woman,” he bit out. “Please tell me you don’t really shave.”
“What if I do?” Her chin came up, and Isaiah could’ve laughed out loud when Tuck’s icy veneer crumbled.
A genuine smile curved the former SEALs lips that time. The man had laugh lines deeply etched at the corners of his eyes, and at the moment, they glowed like a sunrise off the Atlantic on the first day of summer. It was no wonder women swooned when he walked by, not that he noticed. As good looking as he was, Isaiah also knew Tucker was not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree when it came to understanding the intricate workings of the female mind.
Yet he seemed to be enjoying this game of cat-and-mouse with Roxy. Reaching across the table, he brushed the glossies back into his possession. With his sharp eyes trained on his subordinates like the famous sniper he was, Tuck tore the photographic evidence against them into halves. Then fourths. Finally eighths before he tossed them aside and growled, “Get the hell out of here.”
Shoving back from the table, Isaiah lifted to his feet, but before he could make a break for it, Tucker rapped his knuckles to the table. “You do know CCTV is everywhere but in the bathrooms and bedrooms, don’t you?” Closed Circuit Television.
“It’s too damned bad we aren’t using them to locate Randall instead of wasting time on…” Isaiah sniffed. “…stuff like this.” He would’ve held Roxy’s chair for her, but she was already halfway out the door.
“See you later, Boss,” she shot over her shoulder.
Tucker’s gaze followed her even as he motioned Isaiah to sit back down. “We need to talk.”
Chapter Nineteen
“What are you doing down here?” Roxy asked the magnificent male specimen seated at the table in the kitchen wolfing down a humongous bowl of oatmeal sprinkled with walnuts, brown sugar, and drowning in what looked to be heavy cream and enough cholesterol to gag a moose. “Who’s on the roof?”
Tall, dark, and built like a bear, he glared at her from beneath dark, bushy brows, whether in disgust or amusement, she couldn’t quite tell. This FBI agent dwarfed the elegant wooden table, and he held that spoon in his fist more like a weapon than an eating utensil. Instead of a reply, she got a grunt, his piercing dark brown eyes devoid of humor as his spoon hit the bowl under his chin once more and ladled a hefty portion into his mouth.
When he failed to reply, she soldiered on. “You must be Special Agent Tate Higgins.”
“And you’re Officer Thurston,” he mumbled around the mush in his mouth. “Glad we got introductions out of the way.” And just like that, he’d dismissed her.
We’ll see about that.
Not one to accept a brush-off, Roxy flipped the chair across from him around, straddled it, and folded her arms across the wooden back. “That was a decent thing you did last night, doctoring Darrin’s dog until the vet got here. Where’d you learn that?”
One burly shoulder lifted. He grunted and kept on eating.
She tried again. “So which FBI deadeye’s up on the roof if you’re down here stuffing your face?”
It’d sure be nice if he made eye contact when he was spoken to. Might make her heart go pitter pat—on a good day. But this was not that day. Agent Higgins ladled another spoonful into his mouth and swallowed, ignoring her.
Intent on rattling his stalwart composure or to die trying, she lifted her butt up from the seat, leaned forward and stuck her hand in his face. “Sure nice to finally meet you, Special Agent Higgins. Any guy who’ll put his life on the line to save a dog he doesn’t know, is a friend of mine.”
Scowling like a bastard, this formidable Special Agent wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and set his spoon to the table beside the bowl. He picked up the napkin she hadn’t noticed he’d wrinkled in his other hand, and he wiped his mouth before he folded it into a neat rectangle and set it across his empty bowl. A quart carton of milk stood at the upper right of his bowl, and somehow, Roxy knew he’d drained it dry straight out of the carton.
“I like dogs,” he said, his upper lip twitching with definite male attitude, and his unspoken words—more than I like people—clear.
Roxy gave one curt nod of acknowledgment. Of course he liked dogs. He was one of those sheep dogs standing guard over his flock. One of the few. The brave. The best.
As if he agreed with her assessment, very deliberately he reached across the table and shook her hand, his massive grip swallowing her fingers. Day-am! With one touch, he’d turned her fingers into pretzels. This was a man to watch out for. The more he gripped, the harder she squeezed back, totally ignoring the pain in her fingers and glimmering teardrop building at the corner of her eye.
He cocked his head. She did him one better and stuck her chin out in defiance. I may be a woman, but no man bests me with just a handshake. If he wanted to play good cop, bad cop, she meant to be the baddest cop he’d ever met.
And just like that, it was over. He let go, and she didn’t whine or flex her knuckles like a silly woman when he did, either. “You like dogs more than people.” She made it a statement, sure to keep her throbbing fingers in sight so he’d know that she’d won, not him.
He gave her his chin, his lips pursed tight. Yep, she was right about Tate Higgins. He’d rather be anywhere else than sitting here talking with a woman—or anyone else f
or that matter. She got his drift. Most days she didn’t like people, either. Like clowns in a circus, they chased after fads, rainbows, unicorns, and their own asses.
“You want a beer to wash that oatmeal down?” she asked, egging him on. Funny. Here sat one of the hardest FBI agents to crack, and he’d breakfasted on oats instead of raw meat, which Roxy could so see him doing.
With another grunt, Special Agent Higgins pressed both palms flat to the table beside the empty bowl and lifted up from his chair. Roxy found herself craning her neck just to maintain eye contact. She jumped to her feet. A massive wall of coiled muscle strained the shirt at his chest, his biceps, and his shoulders. Tate Higgins was built like the Hulk, and a tiny part of her wanted him to sit back down so her fight-or-flight reflex would back off and calm the hell down.
“Morning, ma’am,” he said, his voice rumbly and rough like a grumpy bear fresh out of hibernation.
“Name’s Roxy,” she told him, not blinking.
Tapping two straight fingers to his forehead, he shot her a half salute, and because she was who she was, Roxy turned her back on Higgins and walked away first. The encounter put a definite spring in her step. Damn, that was fun.
“Hey, Tate,” Isaiah said as he pulled up a seat at the kitchen table. It turned out Tucker’s concern echoed Isaiah’s. This safe house’s cover was blown. He wanted the Bratton’s moved as early as possible, but he also wanted Tate in on Isaiah’s scheme of luring Randall. “What’s up?”
Tate stood with his hands on his hips, looking down the hall toward the Brattons’ suite where Roxy had gone. “I like her.”
“Who? Roxy?” Tucker asked. He hadn’t taken a seat, but watched from the opposite doorway where he could see straight down the hall to the Brattons’ suite. His gaze followed Tate’s. “She’s a spitfire, that’s for damned sure.”
One-Eyed Jack (The Deuces Wild Series Book 3) Page 16