Cuffed & Claimed

by Lori King

  Colby nodded. “Anything else?”

  “Nope.” Abby started out the door and then paused. “Oh, I put in for Family Medical Leave because there were hints that if I kept taking time off, I might lose my job. You should probably do the same. Now that Bran is with that girl out there on the ranch, there’s no telling what he’ll do.”

  “Destiny is a nice person, Abby, and so is Bran. He’d never fire me for taking care of my mother.” Colby rolled his eyes and glared across the room at his sister. “Go take a break. I’ve got this.”

  Abby disappeared without another word, and Elizabeth followed Colby back into the kitchen.

  “Abby doesn’t seem to like Destiny much,” she said, trying to get a conversation going. “Or maybe it’s the ranch in general?”

  “It’s Roman she doesn’t like, and Franki. She was hooking up with Roman when he met Franki, so she’s butthurt that he left her,” Colby said, pulling out two pots and filling one with water.

  “They weren’t in a relationship, though, right? I mean, I remember when Franki came to town, and Abby got in her face. Franki really let her have it. I’ve never seen anything so funny.”

  “Abby’s just lonely. She’s always needed a man in her life to be happy. I think she thought Roman was the one,” Colby answered, dumping sauce into the empty pot and turning on the burner. “I hope pasta is okay. It’s the one thing I’m good at making—well, besides scrambled eggs.”

  “Sounds delicious,” Elizabeth agreed. “You know, back then I had a bit of a crush on Roman, too.”

  Colby’s shoulders tightened, and he turned to look at her with narrowed eyes. “What?”

  “Oh, yeah, I think every woman in Montford had a crush on him at one time or another. It’s the hair and his bad boy ways. Who doesn’t want a bad boy?” She knew she was egging him on, but she liked the way jealousy glinted in his eyes.

  “Really? You think you want a bad boy instead of a sheriff’s deputy?” He turned her way and stalked closer with a sexy glint in his eye.

  “Every good girl wants a bad boy, Deputy. You know that.” She moaned when he tweaked her nipple through her shirt and bra.

  “I’ll have you know, Roman Freemont has nothing on me, baby. I’ll teach you how to play with a bad boy…” he paused, and nipped the skin on her neck. “I can’t wait to fuck you in my bed.”

  Her pussy dripped into her panties, and she squirmed in his arms. “Your mom’s here.”

  “Mama is pretty much catatonic once her meds kick in. She won’t hear a thing.” He grabbed her ass, and squeezed hard. “Besides, I’ve been dying to spank this ass, and I think you need a punishment for all this teasing.”

  Heat rushed through her at the idea of his hands paddling her ass. “Yes!” she whimpered, kissing the underside of his jaw.

  He stepped out of her reach so suddenly she wobbled on her feet and glared at him. “Hey!”

  “I promised to feed you. Eat your food like a good girl, and I’ll treat you to the dirtiest-talking bad boy you can imagine.” With a wink, he went back to fixing the pasta, leaving her high and dry and sulking.

  “Damn it. You can’t do that to a girl,” she pouted.

  Colby turned and pointed at the thick erection in his jeans. “You think it’s easy to concentrate with him around? Don’t worry. I’ll make it worth your while. Grab a loaf of bread from the bread box and we’ll make some garlic toast to go with our pasta.”

  Elizabeth did as asked because she knew Colby Bricker always kept his promises, and she couldn’t wait to see what he had in store for her. The flirting and teasing were both agonizing and stimulating, just as much as their regular conversations. The more she was with him, the more she knew she was going to need to break it off soon.

  She couldn’t keep toying with his heart. Especially now she knew it was well and truly invested. It would be wrong to lead him on when she wasn’t sure she shared the same feelings for him.

  Hell, she wasn’t sure she’d know what love was if it bit her on the ass these days.

  * * *

  “Ouch!” Elizabeth cried out as Colby nipped the soft flesh of her ass hours later. They’d delved into the barest beginnings of BDSM play, and he’d discovered just how much Elizabeth liked having her ass spanked.

  “Lift up for me,” he instructed, reaching beneath her to slide the sheet out and cover them up. “There, that’s better.”

  He loved the way she snuggled into his chest instantly like she was meant to be there. Having her in his own home, in his bed, was powerful.

  “I can’t sleep too long. I promised my mom I’d be at the youth ministries meeting this afternoon. She can’t quit talking about this new youth program she and Dad want to implement at the church. I think they feel like it’s a way to see me more often.”

  Colby stared at the ceiling fan spinning over his bed. “Why don’t you see them? They live ten yards away.”

  “I don’t know. After the miscarriage and the divorce, I always felt like they looked at me differently. Like I wasn’t the same pure daughter they’d once had. My guilt, I’m sure, but things changed for us,” Elizabeth explained.

  “Your dad didn’t seem bothered by us seeing each other.”

  She chuckled. “No, not at all. In fact, he and my mother are excited to see anyone visiting me. I told you, I don’t date.”

  “We should really make plans to meet them for dinner like they asked. It’s been a long time already.”

  Elizabeth stiffened and lifted her head, her expression sad. “Colby, I appreciate you being so wonderful to me and bringing me here tonight. It was a fun change of pace, but it doesn’t change things between us. We’re not a couple, remember?”

  Anger left him feeling unsettled and rattled. “What else would you call two people sharing a bed, and in an exclusive relationship?”

  “Friends. You said we could be friends,” her voice shook as she rolled away from him and pulled on her clothes. “I think I should go.”

  “Go where? Back to your spinster’s cabin? Back to your lonely ways? Elizabeth, look at me, damn it.” He didn’t intend to snap at her, but his heart was breaking. “I love you. I want to be with you. I’m not getting down on one knee out of respect for you and what you’ve been through, but I would in a heartbeat, if I thought you’d say yes. Why do you keep pushing me away?”

  “Because I have plans, Colby. Plans I don’t talk about to anyone. I want to save enough money to buy my own house on a couple of acres outside of town, and then I plan to build a bed and breakfast. A business, a life for myself that doesn’t involve the mistakes I made in the past.”

  Colby watched from the bed, and shock coursed through him. “A bed and breakfast? That’s a brilliant idea. Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I don’t want you to mess it up,” she hissed, and shoved her feet into her shoes. “The last time I gave myself to a man, he stole every dream I had. He made everything about him, and before I knew it, I was pregnant and sitting at home puttering all day so that he could live his life. Then I lost my child. Do you know what that feels like? Of course, you don’t. It’s horrendous. It’s like having your heart ripped from your chest and watching someone pour acid on it. My baby died, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I hated Matt. I hated myself. I hated God. I hated everything. I won’t go through that again.”

  She turned and headed for the door.

  “Bethie, wait. You can’t blow up like that and not give me a chance to respond.” Colby fought to untangle his naked limbs from the sheet and rush after her.

  He’d reached the living room when she stopped on the front porch and looked back through the screen door. “Goodbye, Colby. It’s been…fun. You’ll never know how much it meant to me.”

  “Elizabeth, at least let me drive you home!” he cried into the night as she took off down the sidewalk towards her own neighborhood. His gut clenched in fear. There was a killer on the loose, and his woman was walking in the night alone
. Snatching his cell phone off the table, he called in backup because he had no doubt Elizabeth didn’t want him around her.

  Whether she liked it or not, he loved her, and he was going to keep her safe.

  9

  “Elizabeth?”

  “Yes, this is Elizabeth. Who is this?” She juggled the cell phone against her shoulder as she tried to pull the clothes out of the dryer.

  “This is Sheriff Bowers, Brandon Bowers.”

  Her heart lurched in her chest. “Oh, my God, Colby. What’s happened? Is he okay?”

  “He was involved in an accident, and they’ve taken him to the clinic in town. It’s not serious; he’s going to be okay, but I thought you would want to know.”

  Elizabeth was near crying. “What happened, sheriff?”

  “Going from what Colby said, he spotted a suspect on the highway and gave chase. Before backup could arrive, the suspect managed to U-turn his vehicle and run Colby’s truck into a guard rail,” Bran explained grimly.

  “Did you guys catch him?”

  “No, he got away. When the deputies arrived on scene, they stopped to render aid to Colby. But don’t worry, we’ll find him. If he’s stupid enough to hang around Montford, we’ll get him.” Bran sounded so sure it kept Elizabeth from panicking. Drawing in a deep breath, she thanked the sheriff for the info and assured him she was on her way to the clinic to check up on her man.

  Her man. Yes, no matter what she’d told him, he was most definitely her man, and she was his woman. Heart, body, and soul. Every part of her craved the big man. Being separated from him for the last two weeks had damn near torn her heart out.

  When she’d left his house that night, she’d had no intention of ever seeing him again, but he continued to show up in the diner each day and smile at her from across the room, sadness filling his eyes. Her heart broke every time she watched him leave because she wanted to rush to him and apologize for being a selfish ass.

  Hearing he was injured should have been the last nail in their relationship’s coffin. After all, his line of work was scary as hell, but instead of feeling anger that he’d risked his life, she felt pride. Her chest nearly burst open from it as she rushed to grab her purse and lock the door. Her man had risked it all to protect her and his hometown from a dangerous predator. He needed her reassurance that she was proud of him and loved him.

  The drive to the Montford Clinic was less than five minutes from the parsonage, and she blew through the door like a hurricane. An old friend worked the reception desk and stared at her with surprise as she rushed in that direction.

  “Renee, where’s Colby?”

  “Colby Bricker?” Renee asked slowly, obviously still confused. “He’s in the back with Mark. They’re setting his leg now—”

  Elizabeth didn’t wait for permission, and she could hear Renee’s protests as she headed down the hallway looking in each patient room for Colby. “Colby? Colby Bricker, where are you?”

  She heard him chuckle and followed the sound of voices all the way to a treatment room in the back where he was stretched out on a gurney with Dr. Mark Gillian and a nurse hovering over him. His lip was busted, and a bruise was already forming on the left side of his face, but it was his right leg they were working to set back into place.

  Elizabeth could see the skin was mottled and swollen around the knee joint, as well as lower down his shin, but there was no blood. “Is it broken?”

  Dr. Gillian looked up, smiling. “Yep, in three places. Clean breaks, though, looks like he’ll be able to heal without surgery. We’ll know more when the swelling goes down, and we can cast it.”

  She hurried to Colby’s side and kissed him soundly. “Damn you, Colby Bricker, for scaring the hell out of me.”

  “I love you too, Bethie. I knew you’d come back eventually,” he murmured, grinning at her. “Didn’t I tell ya she was a firecracker, doc?”

  “That you did. Seems to me you’ve got a fierce protector there, Deputy Bricker. Better let her nurse you back to health for the next few days since you’re not allowed on your feet except to take a piss. You hear me, boy?” Mark Gillian was a good twenty years older than Colby, but he still looked young. If it weren’t for the laugh lines around his eyes, no one would have known he had a wife and junior-high aged children of his own.

  “I’d be damned happy to have her as my nurse. I’ll even let her give me a sponge bath,” Colby announced, bringing Elizabeth’s hand to his mouth in an attempt to kiss her knuckles. He missed as the nurse and doctor both laughed, and Elizabeth blushed fiercely.

  “They must have given you some pain meds,” she said, frowning at his glazed eyes and crooked smile.

  The nurse passed her a small bag that rattled with pills. “He can have two every four hours. He probably needs to stay on that schedule for the next forty-eight hours or so to stay ahead of the pain.”

  Elizabeth nodded, and took the bag. “I’ll make sure he does. Does he have to stay here or can he go home?”

  “I’m going home. I wanna be in my bed if I have to be in bed. Or in your bed, sugarlips. I don’t care which.” Colby tried to wink, but his slow reflexes made it comical.

  Dr. Gillian lifted his head from the clipboard in his hands. “He needs to be with someone. I don’t want him putting any weight at all on that leg right now.”

  “I’ll stay with him, I swear,” Elizabeth promised. She looked at the man she loved with all her heart, and gave him a teary-eyed smile. “I’m never letting him go again.”

  Colby smiled as his eyes closed and he drifted off into a drugged sleep, leaving Elizabeth to figure out the logistics of getting him home and settled. She’d been so wrong to keep him at arms’ length. She knew that now. Hopefully, when he woke up, he’d feel like talking, because she had an awful lot to say.

  * * *

  Colby’s head throbbed when he opened his eyes, and he groaned at the piercing light shining through the curtains. Curtains? He didn’t have curtains on his windows. He had blinds. Cracking his eyelids open slightly, he took in the soft beige color of the walls and the sweet scent of lavender and vanilla in the air. He was in Elizabeth’s bed.

  His heart raced as all the memories came flooding back. He’d spotted the car they were looking for and given chase. The next thing he remembered was the suspect spinning his car around faster than greased lightning. When Colby tried to follow suit, his truck tire blew and he hit the guard rail. Everything after that was a blank until Dr. Gillian and a nurse were prepping him for x-rays. By then he already had a needle in his arm pumping him full of fluids and pain meds. Thank God for pain meds.

  In fact, he could use more of those now. Lifting one arm to his face, he rubbed at the grit beneath his eyelids and groaned. The noise was enough to wake Elizabeth who was sleeping in a chair next to the bed.

  “Hey, Deputy, I wondered how long you’d sleep,” she murmured, sleepily stretching her limbs. The sweater she wore pulled tightly across her breasts and when she stood, he noted she was wearing those snug leggings she loved so much. He happened to love them too, but for different reasons.

  “How’d I end up here?” he grunted, his voice hoarse from sleep.

  “The EMTs were still at the clinic; between them and your partner we were able to get you here and into bed,” she explained.

  “My partner?” He frowned in confusion, his brain still feeling foggy. “Oh, you mean Joshua Ayers. We’re not exactly partners, but we keep getting put together because we’re down a vehicle. Tonight he was in a different truck, thank God.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  He started to stretch his own tight muscles and hissed in pain when his leg protested even the slightest movement. “Like I got run over by a wild guard rail.”

  She smiled at his joke and rolled her eyes. “How can you joke at a time like this?”

  “Well, the way I see it, the wreck was a good thing.”

  Her eyes flashed and she frowned at him. “What in the hell are you talking about?
How could a car accident be a good thing? You could have died.”

  “But I didn’t. In fact, I have a feeling I’m going to get to live a little more in the future. That accident gave me back my life.” When she huffed at his vague explanation, he laughed, and tugged on her hand, drawing her closer. She bent and he kissed her gently, brushing his thumbs over her jaw. “It brought you back to me, and made you admit how you feel.”

  Tears welled up in her pretty green eyes, and he managed to wrap his arms around her as she dropped onto his chest sobbing. “I was so scared. When Bran called me, I thought he was going to tell me you were dead. You could have died without ever knowing I love you. I would have never forgiven myself.”

  “Eh, I’m harder to kill than you might think,” he teased, kissing her forehead and wiping her tears. “Keep that in mind so that after I make an honest woman out of ya, you don’t go trying to poison my oatmeal one morning.”

  “You don’t even like oatmeal.” After a pause, her eyes widened. “Did you just…”

  “Nope, I’ll save that for when I can get down on one knee. Right now I’ve only got one in working form, so you’ll have to wait it out.”

  “I do love you, Colby. More than anything. I’m so sorry I said what I did. It was wrong, and the only excuse I’ve got is that I was scared.”

  He nodded. “I know. Wanna know a secret?” Elizabeth nodded, and brushed her hair out of her face. “I’m scared too. I’m scared I’ll let you down somehow like Matt did.”

  “You couldn’t possibly—”

  “Uh, uh, uh, don’t say never. When you married Matt, you probably never thought he’d leave you, either.”

  Elizabeth stood and began to pace. “Matt didn’t leave me, Colby. I left him. I couldn’t take the distance between us.”