Saul’s Sweetheart

by Dale Mayer

  He groaned. “Not so fast. I want to make this last.”

  “Next time. We’ll make it last next time.”

  She flipped him to his back and straddled him. She quickly pulled off the bathrobe she’d worn to bed, leaving her bare in the early morning light. His hand stroked upward to cup her plump breasts as he watched this Amazon woman slide forward and brace her arms beside his chest before lowering herself onto his shaft.

  Then he couldn’t think at all. She rode him hard and then harder—fast and then faster—until he gripped her hips and pounded into her.

  She cried out, her body arching backward until her hips stilled.

  “No,” he groaned and he lifted hard and heavy, grinding into her heat, shooting up one more time to pierce as deep as he could before his own climax ripped through him.

  She shuddered and collapsed on top of him. He sagged in exhaustion, his breath raspy and hard. “Damn, woman. You want to kill me?”

  She chuckled. “Not yet, but maybe in an hour.”

  He glanced at his watch and realized they had about half that, maybe a little longer.

  She propped her forearms on his chest and smiled down at him. “Ready for round two?”

  He rolled his eyes, but there was no stopping her. She slid down him, her lips and hands busy, enticing, tangling, stroking, caressing, pinching as she explored his body at will. He groaned, holding her in place, but she wasn’t having any of it.

  She whispered, “We don’t have enough time. I want a night with you.”

  “I want weeks with you,” he whispered. “Maybe even a lifetime.”

  But she was wiggling and moving, sliding, kissing him, her hands everywhere, making it hard to stop their tormenting journey. His body was alive with nerve endings as she stroked and caressed, cupped and squeezed.

  When he couldn’t take it anymore, he grabbed her, slammed her to the bed underneath him and entered her in one thrust.

  She stilled, smiled up at him, wrapped her thighs around his hips and said, “Now.”

  And he drove them both to the finish line. A good ten minutes later he lifted his head and collapsed to the side. She made a murmured protest, which he ignored. “I can’t believe I have to get up and face them now.”

  She couldn’t help teasing him. “I don’t have to. I can get up and have a shower.”

  “That’s not fair,” he protested.

  They sat up and looked at the clock, realizing he was late. He leaned over, gave her a hard kiss and said, “I have to get dressed, and my clothes are in my room.”

  She chuckled. “Make sure nobody sees you.”

  He rolled his eyes. He opened the door, snuck from her room and, just as he crept into his suite, a creak sounded on the stairway. He turned to see Dakota standing there with a big grin on his face. Saul rolled his eyes, stepped inside and slammed the door a little too hard. Dakota’s laughter rolled down the hall. Damn if Saul couldn’t hear Rebel’s chuckles too. He got in a quick shower and a shave and then dressed. By that time he was grinning like a fool.

  Life was damn fine.

  Chapter 16

  Rebel sat beside the hospital bed. Tammy had been moved from Intensive Care into a regular room. She had come out of the drug-induced stupor and was now sleeping naturally. The doctors warned it would take at least a day—if not two—for the charcoal treatment to extract the drugs fully from her system. That was good news for Rebel. The last thing she wanted was to think Tammy needed weeks to recover from her ordeal.

  Rebel knew psychologically it would take a lot longer, and that Tammy would need counseling of some kind to deal with the trauma of what she’d been through. Daniel was in a similar position, although he’d taken a bit more of a beating. He looked like he had resisted in some way, as he had a couple broken ribs. Rebel hadn’t been in to see him yet. She kept hoping Tammy would wake up, and Rebel wanted to be sitting beside her best friend when she did.

  Knowing Tammy would eventually be fine, Rebel settled back in her chair and waited. She’d had almost no sleep last night, and just to know that she could relax now was huge. She wished she had brought her laptop with her so she would have something to do.

  Her life had been on hold for eleven days. Even now she wasn’t sure what had happened to her job. Did she have one still? She had phoned her boss, left a message. But nobody got back to her. She’d walked out, taking her week’s holiday, but then should have returned a few days ago, only she hadn’t gone back yet. But she did touch base with her boss earlier, giving him the update on Samantha. Still, that was not the way to keep her job. At the same time, her apartment had been gutted. Now that things had calmed, she should properly notify her landlord. Those crime scene tapes on her door weren’t the first way he would want to find out. Because those repairs would take time, she needed a place to live until then. She also had to notify her insurance company of the loss she had sustained.

  She just didn’t know what to do. She was torn because she knew Saul was a large part of her indecision. She hadn’t expected to find anybody in this crazy world, but she had. She didn’t want to see him go, even while she sat beside Tammy.

  But Saul would be sent back to Texas soon. And Rebel couldn’t leave Tammy in San Diego.

  Even though he had lived in California, his life was in Texas now. She was at a crossroads, but she had probably lost her job and had no place to go. She also had no real reason to go to Texas either—except for him.

  She sniffled. If she’d met him when he still lived in California, maybe she could have convinced him to stay. Then she thought about what she’d been through for the last week and a half. Some things in life she couldn’t go back to.

  She thought about asking for and returning to her job, but everything inside of her revolted. She hadn’t been kidnapped, and she hadn’t gone through any of that subsequent abuse, but several people she worked with had. She was emotionally affected.

  Inasmuch as she enjoyed her job, she certainly didn’t want to work with that same group who had done this to Tammy and Daniel. And Samantha.

  Nothing would replace the ugly memories of the last eleven days. And it would take her a long time to stop seeing Samantha’s battered face and broken body.

  Rebel knew the police would be looking into her employer in a big way, and she didn’t want to be a part of that either. Once her name was linked to the investigation, especially since she had handed over the damning information that would damage her company’s reputation—twice—she for damn sure didn’t have a job to go back to, based on that alone.

  She groaned, picked up her feet, set them gently on the edge of Tammy’s bed and leaned back, closing her eyes.

  What a mess.

  “Rebel?”

  Rebel bolted to her feet and stared down at Tammy, whose eyes were open, a little cloudy, showing some confusion, but actually open. Rebel sat down carefully beside her friend. “Oh, my God! You’re awake!” She picked up Tammy’s hand. “How do you feel?”

  “I feel like shit. Did somebody drop me off a bridge, run over me a couple times, pick me up and throw me in a closet somewhere?”

  “I have no idea. But you have no broken bones, and you’re in relatively decent shape, although you’ve been heavily drugged. However, the drugs are slowly leaving your system.”

  “Maybe you should tell me what happened.” Tammy went to shake her head. Then winced at the movement. “Or maybe not.”

  “You called me eleven days ago from Daniel’s place. You’d planned to go for the weekend, and that Friday night you called me, you were outraged and said you were on your way home. You said you would call me and talk to me as soon as you got there and that you didn’t want anything to do with him. Except,” Rebel took a deep breath and added, “you never called me back.”

  Tammy stared at her in confusion. “Eleven days ago?”

  Rebel nodded. “Eleven days ago,” she said quietly. “I’ve been looking for you ever since.”

  Tammy gently squeezed R
ebel’s hand. “Thank you for finding me.”

  “We made a deal with the devil to get you back. Thankfully it worked.”

  Tammy frowned as she lay in the bed, her face crinkling up with memories. “Daniel was with me?”

  Rebel nodded. “We got him too.”

  “All is well that ends well.” She rolled her head from side to side. “It’s all so foggy, so distant, as if I can’t quite remember.”

  “And maybe that’s a good thing. They kept you sedated so you wouldn’t cause any trouble.”

  “Figures. I remember fighting with Daniel and then being attacked as I left his building.” Her eyelids flew open. “It was two men. I remember them injecting me with something.”

  “Yes, it would make sense to have done so right away. I don’t even know if they kept you that way for the whole eleven days, but I’d presume you were awake part of the time.”

  “We were, part of the time. I remember eating, going to the bathroom. We were allowed to step outside on the deck for a little while. But we couldn’t see anything but trees. Then I was led back inside and tied up again, given more shots.” She stared at her arm. “I feel like a pincushion.”

  “Well, it’s over now. You can forget about it. All we need is to get you happy and healthy again.”

  Tammy stared, shadows in her eyes. “I’m trying to understand what led to this.”

  “Do you remember finding some information you copied on a USB?”

  Tammy’s frown deepened.

  Rebel pressed on. “Information to do with Samantha and Daniel?”

  “Samantha, yes. I asked Daniel about it, but he said he wasn’t doing that anymore.”

  “But he had been?”

  Slowly Tammy nodded. “I think so. That’s the reason we broke up over a year ago. I thought he was doing something illegal. When he came back to me these last few months, he said he was done with it.”

  “And then you changed your mind about being with him?”

  “Something Samantha said at work, just a couple hours earlier. And I thought he either was having an affair with her or was involved with her in some illegal business venture. At his apartment I accused him of it because Samantha had contacted me. He said they weren’t having an affair, and he hadn’t had a relationship with her at all. That’s why I got so mad because I figured he was lying. I tried to walk away, only to end up”—she motioned with her hand—“like this.”

  “Well, Samantha’s not involved anymore. It appears she was selling company info to the higher of two bidders. She was kidnapped by the one she didn’t sell to. He beat her very badly. I was supposed to get you back in trade for the USB key. Instead we got her, and she died right in front of me.” Rebel’s voice dropped from the trauma of the memory. “All I could think of from that point on was that you would be found in the same shape.”

  Tammy just stared at her friend in horror. “They killed Samantha?” She struggled to sit up, then collapsed back into the bed. “I had no idea it would be so dangerous. I left the key in your car because I didn’t know what else to do with it.”

  Rebel nodded. “And a homeless man had his throat sliced for no reason other than he was in the wrong place at wrong time. When we found him, he had your locket in his shoe.”

  “I remember being at a warehouse, but I don’t know for how long.”

  Rebel shook her head. “I haunted Daniel’s apartment for days, thinking he was involved.” She frowned. “Was he kidnapped the same time you were?”

  Tammy shrugged. “I didn’t see him at the beginning. I don’t remember.”

  “It’s okay. We found texts between Daniel and his brother while you were missing, but they may not have actually been sent by Daniel. We think he was taken several days after you were.”

  She shrugged. “You’d have to ask Daniel. He just showed up beside me, but I don’t remember when.” She closed her eyes and whispered, “So tired.”

  “Just rest, Tammy. Just rest.”

  When her friend fell asleep again, Rebel walked out to the hallway and quickly sent a text to Saul, explaining Tammy’s confusion.

  His reply text came back immediately.

  I’m at the hospital talking with Daniel. I’ll come see you when we’re done here.

  With a silly grin on her face, she went back inside the room and sat next to Tammy. She hoped this was all over for Tammy, but, just in case, Rebel didn’t want to leave her friend alone for very long.

  Another fifteen minutes passed before the door opened, and Dakota, Merk and Stone walked in. Tammy’s eyes flew open, and Rebel reached out a hand to her friend. Tammy glanced at the men, then back at Rebel and asked, “Who are they?”

  Saul, the last one in, walked forward and said, “We’re part of the group who found you.”

  Rebel squeezed Tammy’s hand.

  “And, for that, you have my greatest thanks,” Tammy said quietly.

  The men asked a few questions, but they were more about her health than about anything that had happened to her.

  She did say, “I’m sorry. Everything seems to be pretty confused in my head at the moment.”

  They nodded.

  “Chances are it will come back slowly.” Saul motioned to Rebel. “I’d like to talk to you outside for a few minutes.”

  She hopped to her feet and walked out to the hallway. “What did Daniel say?”

  “Apparently she walked out of his apartment late that Friday night. Daniel didn’t know anything about her subsequent disappearance other than she wouldn’t return his calls. When she didn’t show up for work, he tried harder to get a hold of her. He was worried after you raised such a stink about her being gone. At first he thought she had just disappeared because she was so angry with him. But then he made some inquiries to see what else was going on. Samantha warned him how he better stay out of it or else he’d end up like Tammy. Apparently he disappeared the next day.”

  “And then Samantha disappeared after that?”

  He nodded.

  “Was he involved with Samantha at any time, like Tammy thought? Businesswise or personal?”

  “Apparently not. He wanted to try again with Tammy and had tried to cut all ties with Samantha and her illegal activities. But, of course, that’s not so easy to do.”

  “Is it over?”

  “We’d like to think so. We don’t know if anybody else in the company is involved. Chances are good there are others, but that doesn’t mean whatever they were doing was illegal. Daniel also explained that he set up the breakfast meeting with his brother knowing that, if he didn’t show, his brother would go looking for him.”

  She nodded. “Good. Hopefully we can move past this now.”

  Saul looked at her intently for a moment. “What are your plans?”

  She grimaced. “While the contents of my apartment are now garbage, I don’t have very much in the way of belongings anymore. Nor do I have a place of my own to stay in. Although I could crash at Tammy’s apartment, it doesn’t have the same comforting feel as it did before.” She gazed at him and shrugged. “Aren’t you going home now?”

  He nodded. “I’ll be leaving soon.”

  She took a deep breath. “Do we get to spend any more time together?”

  “We’ll be doing whatever it takes to finalize this job today.”

  “I need to stop in at work to see if I still have a job.”

  “You may not have a job? Why?”

  “I took last week off with vacation pay, but, this week, well, I’m not sure. I talked to HR a couple days ago, but it’s not like I said anything about coming back. If I was the boss of the company, I wouldn’t hire me back again,” she admitted.

  He smirked. “You could always move to Texas.”

  She froze, her heart stalling, her gaze widening. Then she relaxed. “You’re just kidding.” Inside, her heart started to beat again. How she wished he wasn’t kidding. But she wasn’t the impulsive type. Okay, not that long-term kind of impulsive anyway. How the hell coul
d she possibly make a move all the way to Texas?

  Her mind told her that, if there was a time to make that move, now was it. No possessions, minimal belongings, an insurance check to start over with, a job she probably had to replace anyway.

  “But Tammy,” she muttered under her breath. “I can’t leave her.”

  Saul grinned. “Bring her. Sounds like she should get away from here after all this too.”

  “I can’t make that decision for her,” Rebel said honestly. “And she’ll likely need a lot of support for a little while.”

  “Maybe,” Saul said. “But what I also saw was a woman already on the road to recovery.”

  “Almost. I’m not sure she doesn’t have something going on with Daniel. So she may want to stay here to see if the two of them could make their relationship work.”

  Saul nodded. “You don’t want to leave her then, do you?” He stared off in the distance, then seemed to take a mental and a physical step back.

  One she instantly hated.

  She shook her head. “Tammy’ll be here all day, possibly overnight. After that I can always go to her place with her.”

  “Or you can leave her to get some solid sleep here, and you could come back to Richard’s to spend the night with me.”

  “That sounds appealing too.” She pursed her lips thinking about it. “Chances are the doctors will keep her overnight for observation anyway.”

  Saul nodded. “Exactly. I’ll see you in a few hours. The guys and I have things to check up on. We’ll be back to look in on Daniel in a bit. I think Foster’s planning a big dinner for all of us tonight to celebrate.”

  She smiled. “That sounds lovely. I’ll stay in touch. I have my car, so we’ll be good here.”

  He nodded. “Okay, if you leave here, let me know.”

  The door to Tammy’s hospital room opened, and the other men came out. There was a bit of an awkward silence as she studied them. She quickly took a few steps toward the room and said, “I’ll see you later.”

  Once inside, she sat down, smiling at her friend and gently squeezing her hand.

  Tammy studied Rebel with knowing eyes. “I see you found someone you’re into.”