Final Surrender: The Surrender Series, Book 1

by Jennifer Kacey

  “Are you trying to distract me?”

  “Yes, is it working?” he asked with a playboy smile she didn’t know he still possessed.

  “It always works, Clay. Anybody else I can tune out. Everybody else is on the outside, except for you. You’ve always been my Achilles’ heel, but you know that.”

  Angela laid her head back against the couch cushions and decided she needed to stop talking. Her insides were already feeling hot and needy, and wanting this man beside her wasn’t going to help her heart or her life stay in one piece. She was brave last night in the near darkness of her bedroom. This morning, not so much.

  “I’m nothing special. You could have any man you wanted, and that’s the God’s honest truth.”

  He got up and took his cup back to the kitchen and didn’t hear her whisper, “Not every man I want, apparently.”

  After he sat back down he asked, “So, want to go out and take a walk, or do you want to stick around here, order in and watch reality TV?”

  She lifted her head off the couch with a scoff and said, “You don’t really watch that crap, do you? Every moment you watch is more brain cells you’ll never get back.”

  “Please, what do you watch, almighty TV guru?”

  “The Big Bang Theory, which is the only sitcom that should be allowed on TV. It is fantastically funny. Always makes me laugh no matter what I have going on. Have you ever seen it?”

  “Nope, but if it makes you laugh, with that perma scowl you’ve got going on, then it must be pretty good.”

  Clay got hit with a pillow out of the blue and he turned to see Angela hiding a wicked grin behind her hand.

  “Oh, if you didn’t have a concussion, it would so be on.”

  “Well, see, there’s the silver lining of being blown off those steps. I win a pillow fight with you by default. My day is complete. Oh no, not yet. I haven’t had any chocolate.”

  “Chocolate, the way to every woman’s heart.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “So you want to venture out?” he asked again.

  “I don’t know,” she answered softly.

  “Scared?”

  “Little bit. I feel like I’ve got a big target on my back. I don’t want to hunker down and hide from the world, but maybe today we could keep a low profile. I’ve gotta call Mark and my parents.” She stammered again at the thought of being alone with Clay all day and the rest of her breath left her lungs in a rush as Clay’s knuckles brushed her cheek.

  “How about we’ll dress you up.” His voice was soft and seductive. “That way you can feel safe and still get out for a little while.”

  He stood and looked down into her wide doe eyes and without thinking, she took his hand and let him pull her to her feet.

  He mesmerized her with a simple glance. He was two different people, one when they were alone and another when others were around. But she was too, if she really wanted to admit it. They were more alike than she cared to recognize.

  The head injury had left her weak and a bit dazed, but Clay standing in front of her threw her completely off balance. He pulled her into his arms and she rested her cheek on his chest as he stroked her hair.

  “We’ll fix this.”

  “My stalker or us?” she asked before she could clamp her mouth shut.

  “Hopefully both before you get completely sick of me and kick me out, like you’ve been threatening.”

  “It’s no threat, Clay,” she said, pulling away from him so she could wander back to her bedroom. “It’s a promise,” she added with a snicker.

  “Ah yes, but I know the secret to making you happy now,” he said as he moved to follow her.

  “What’s that?”

  “Chocolate.”

  In the middle of the afternoon, Angela sat on a park bench at her thinking spot in huge sunglasses, one of Clay’s hoodies that completely hid her body beneath and a pair of pants she normally only wore when she was painting. She didn’t look anything like herself. It was odd and exhilarating all at the same time.

  Clay sat next to her, trying nonchalantly to fold and discard the newspaper he had been reading.

  “So how bad is it?” she asked.

  “How bad is what?” he innocently questioned as she grabbed his arm before he could get up and make it to a trash can.

  “Clay, just give me the newspaper and I won’t have to hurt you.”

  “Please,” he snorted, “you think I’m too pretty to hurt.”

  She snatched the paper from him and was very glad her sunglasses were covering her eyes or he would have seen them rolling.

  Page two was a picture of her lying lifeless on the ground with Clay leaning over her. The caption at the top read Bomb in New York. Terrorist Attack or Vendetta?

  “Well, at least they captured my good side,” she joked. Knowing just how bad her other side had looked at that moment. Not that it looked or felt much better now.

  Clay ground his teeth at her humor and was about to berate her for downplaying the incident when her cell phone rang.

  It was her parents. She answered the phone and elbowed Clay as he tried to take it from her.

  She spoke to them for a few minutes and then clicked over to talk to Mark, who was calling on the other line. Forty-five minutes later she finally closed the phone and Clay took it and stuck it in his back pocket before she could put it back in her purse.

  “That’s enough for now,” he declared as he settled his arm behind her on the bench and rested his hand on her shoulder after sliding in next to her.

  “Stop being so pushy,” she managed as the heat flooded her face from his touch and she turned her head around to face him.

  “Pushy is my middle name, didn’t you know?” he asked with a smirk.

  “No, trouble is definitely your middle name, if I’ve ever heard it. Seems to follow you.”

  “It does seem to find me,” he admitted with a nod of his head.

  She leaned into his side without thinking better of it and he slowly rubbed her arm in more than a friendly caress.

  Angela turned to face him again and opened her mouth to speak when something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye.

  A flash of something. A bird or the flash from a camera? She turned around to look all around her. Clay stiffened and said, “What is it?” as he looked around in earnest. Not like he hadn’t been doing that anyway every five seconds.

  “Nothing, I guess,” she answered unconvinced. “Just a bad feeling. I’ve never had a bad feeling here before. I think I’m ready to go home now.”

  Clay immediately pulled her to her feet and her entire body shook from head to toe. He pulled her under the shelter of his arm and actually growled at her when she tried to pull away. He held her closely and they walked to the edge of the park.

  After they got into a cab, the corners of her mouth turned up as she whispered, “Pushy.”

  He pulled her close again and agreed. “Yep,” he whispered in her ear as his tongue peeked out and licked the bottom of her satiny earlobe.

  Her breath caught in her throat and it remained there for the remainder of the cab ride.

  She was exhausted again and knew she wasn’t going to get rest any time soon as they pulled up to her apartment to find Detective Wyatt standing outside her building.

  “Sorry we’re late,” Clay apologized to James after greetings were made. “Went for a little outing and I lost track of time.”

  “No worries at all,” he offered with a nice smile. “We’d only been here a few minutes and Maddy showed up carrying something that smelled wonderful. She let us in and left a Tupperware container on the counter.”

  Clay helped Angela into the building where she went and recovered Maddy’s wonderful chicken soup waiting for her.

  “I totally forgot to call her last nigh
t or this morning. I’m such a bad friend,” she chided herself.

  Clay caressed her back, took the soup to carry, pulling her alongside him. Detective Wyatt led the way upstairs.

  “You’ve been through a lot in the last twenty-four hours. Cut yourself some slack. I’m pretty sure she was one of the people who called this morning. You can talk to her tomorrow after more sleep and more food.”

  Angela reached the top of her stairs and had a foreboding sense of déjà vu. Boxes of tracing equipment lay across her living room floor, with the detectives wiring everything together.

  Clay deposited Angela on the couch and went to warm the soup for her. She spent the time removing the hood and sunglasses and running her fingers through her hair. The smell of Clay on the shirt was captivating. She inhaled deeply, hoping no one saw what she was doing.

  He brought her a bowl back and told her, “Eat, you’ll feel better.”

  She took the bowl and tried to set it beside her before Clay caught it and held it in front of her again. “It will just make me sleepy,” she whispered.

  Clay rested a hand on her thigh and Angela looked up into his eyes. They made her feel lost and found all in the same heartbeat. “If you eat, I’ll rub your back later, and then you can be as sleepy as you like.”

  Something akin to pure fear and raw lust bubbled under her skin. His hands on her would be her undoing. She knew it. Had always known it and still she couldn’t tell him no. Her sorrow was dulled by how he took care of her when she needed him. How he was there to protect her and find the person so hell-bent on killing her.

  “Are you bribing me?” she whispered as her eyebrows drifted down towards her nose. She tried to sound pissy, but her body was having a hard time staying awake, so she really only managed to sound confused, which she honestly was.

  “Yes,” he answered as she took the bowl from him and inhaled the warm broth.

  She weighed her options and decided as he stared back at her, with how sore she was, she would do just about anything for him to rub on her.

  Her first bite was wonderful and she retorted, “Do you know how strange it is when you actually answer a question directly?”

  With a smirk on his face, Clay stood without an answer and walked back towards the detectives. She knew he heard her mutter under her breath, “Really strange.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  As the sun started to set, Detective Wyatt and his crew were all done as Angela dozed on the couch, refusing to drift off until the men were out of her home.

  After his crew was packed up and rolling, Detective Wyatt hung back to ask, “Did you tell her about the package with her name on it?”

  Clay prickled at the thought of something so monstrous being addressed to her in any way.

  He wiped a hand down his face. The day was finally catching up with him, too. “This morning, and she definitely didn’t know. Who the hell is behind this? She’s terrified to leave the house. Every time the phone rings she jumps a mile. We’ve got to get to the bottom of this and fast. I feel like she’s living on borrowed time.”

  “You care for her?” Detective Wyatt asked with what Clay could feel were good intentions, but he wasn’t asking about a purely client basis either.

  “Yes,” he admitted for the first time in his life.

  “Then keep her close, man. She’s special.” And then he turned away and walked back towards his car with a knowing look.

  “Did you guys ever…date?” Clay asked through gritted teeth, unable to bury the need to throttle his friend if he had touched Angela in any way. Just them being on a first-name basis rubbed him the wrong way, and it made no difference that he had no right to feel that way.

  James turned back around with a knowing look on his face. “She loved someone else, so all of my suave moves have gone unnoticed. She’s a friend, nothing more. One in a million, that’s what she is,” he added as he opened the door to his vehicle.

  Before he stepped inside, James paused. “I don’t know what you did last time to break her heart, but I’ll tell you this much. She needs you now more than ever. Don’t hurt her again, or she won’t make it, and I will beat your ass into the ground.” He got in, shut the door and drove away, leaving Clay standing there shocked and slightly amused.

  Anyone else and he would have laughed in the face of that threat. James Wyatt…it’d be a fair fight if nothing else.

  “Are they all gone?” Angela asked as Clay entered the living room, looking just as tired as she felt. Her eyelids just wouldn’t stay up, but she fought it.

  “All gone,” he answered on a yawn as he flipped all the lights off then scooped her into his arms before she could protest.

  “What in the world are you doing?”

  “Taking you to bed…”

  She tensed and he couldn’t help but chuckle deep in his chest. “To sleep, not to have my way with you. Duh.”

  Angela relaxed a bit and he sighed as she laid her head on his shoulder.

  “Will you still rub me, even if I drool on you?”

  He laughed, kissing her head. “Even if there’s slobber involved.”

  “I was actually more thinking about drooling on my pillow after you rubbed me to sleep.”

  “And I thought I was finally getting somewhere.” Angela relaxed, letting herself smile. A real grin he could feel from the pit of his stomach to the soles of his feet.

  Clay walked through her room, stopping in the bathroom to set her gently on her feet. He flipped the light on and Angela buried her face in his chest.

  “What are you doing? I want to go to bed,” she complained.

  “Warm shower and then a lotion rubdown. You’ll be asleep in two seconds. Come on, Ang, arms up,” he prompted, lifting his hoodie to reveal her flat abdomen.

  After a second of hesitation, searching his eyes for an answer to a question he didn’t know, she held her arms off his chest, raising them slightly over her head so he could remove the material covering her.

  He tossed it to the floor and made quick work of her pants as well.

  Sooner than he would have imagined she stood before him in nothing but a small lacy turquoise bra and matching panties.

  “Can you hand me a clip, so I can put my hair up? I’m too tired to dry it and I don’t want to go to bed cold.”

  A look of pure sex graced his face as he looked down at her. “The last thing you’re going to be tonight is cold.”

  With that, he grabbed a towel for her, turning on the water, before handing her the clip she needed.

  When she finished putting her hair up she found him with his shirt off, pushing off his shoes and undoing his pants.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as her nipples stood out hard enough so he could see them pressing against the satiny material cupping the mouth-watering globes.

  “I’m going to shower you,” he answered matter-of-factly as he pushed his pants and boxers down his legs.

  He’d bet any amount of money that sugary wetness coated her pussy lips. The mere thought of which caused his thick cock to stand up almost to his navel.

  She couldn’t take her eyes from it as he stepped close to her and reached around to unclasp her bra. He peeled it from her, letting it fall to the floor with the rest of her clothes.

  Her nipples were pink and needy and Clay’s tongue throbbed in need to lick them until she screamed his name.

  “You’ve seen it before if I remember correctly,” he reminded her roughly as she swallowed visibly.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve seen it in the flesh,” she retorted back.

  He hooked his thumbs on the sides of her thong, but stilled when Angela reached up and held his hands in place.

  “What are we doing here? Are we friends, are we friends with benefits that we have to hide from everyone else? Or a two-night stand with a decade in between
? I’ve got to know what to expect before this goes any further.”

  Her whole body trembled. He could feel it beneath his hands. “I don’t know,” he admitted low and sexy as the engorged head of his cock grazed her abdomen, eliciting a groan of pleasure from her.

  “All I know is I’ve thought about you every day since you walked away. Every day. You’re the one who got me through the nights overseas. And when death was at my door, after the explosion, you’re the reason I didn’t let him in.”

  “I can’t love you again and have you regret it, regret me. I don’t know how I got through it the first time. I’ve been broken for so long. You’re the piece that’s missing and I don’t know how to make us fit together. How to convince you that we’re worth fighting for…”

  Clay held her close, careful of her abrasions.

  His cock nestled against her soft skin and she sighed as her hands made contact with his chest.

  Clay reached around, smoothing his hands up her bare back, leaving heated trails everywhere his fingers touched. Like an electric path of lightning trying to find the quickest path through him to the ground.

  He drew her thong down her sweet thighs and she stepped from it when it was low enough.

  “Let’s take this one moment at a time, okay? You and me for right now and everyone else will just have to wait.” He pulled her to the shower and stepped in before her.

  “I’ve never showered with anyone before,” she admitted as he soaped her body after they were both wet and slick from the water.

  “Oh I’m sure Detective Wyatt wouldn’t have minded,” he grumbled under his breath.

  “Why Detective Wyatt?” she asked, completely clueless.

  “You have no idea your appeal. You are so gorgeous any blue-blooded American man would stand in line for eons to share a shower with you. Much less anything else a little more horizontal.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her. It wasn’t a sweet and gentle kiss. It was a kiss filled with longing and barely restrained need for more.

  Her hands seemed to have a mind of their own and she couldn’t keep them off his skin, which he sure didn’t mind. His shoulders shifted restlessly beneath her hands and her mouth when she finally pulled her mouth away from his lips, leaning down to lick his flat nipples.