Made for Breaking

by Lauren Gilley

  27

  “She’s not dead,” Sly told them before the wail of approaching sirens drowned out all other sounds.

  Dead or not, Lisa felt a cold shudder move through her as she pressed her heart pendant between thumb and forefinger and tried to control her erratic pulse. In the chaos of finding Danielle, as the guys had leapt into action and startled gossip had gone ripping through the crowd, Lisa had been able to think of only one thing: Somehow, this was connected to them. If not for their presence, there wouldn’t be a dead – or, almost dead – girl in the Smyths’ upstairs hall bathroom. And her heart wouldn’t be knocking inside her chest like a trip-hammer.

  An ambulance pulled up at the curb, spinning red lights blasting through the dark. Ray stood in the front yard, hands on hips, waiting for the paramedics; Harold Smyth had been too rattled and white-faced to protest when Ray had taken charge of the situation. Scattered around the yard, alert and tight-faced, tendons standing rigid in their flexed arms, Eddie, Sly and Drew looked military and professional.

  Too obvious, Lisa thought. They were much too obvious and involved to escape questioning when the police arrived. And all of them had rap sheets; none of them could afford to get caught up in this.

  Ray thought the same thing, apparently. As the paramedics rushed toward the house, he turned and headed their way, expression grim.

  “Time for you two to go home,” he said when he reached them. “Sly and Drew will go with you.”

  Cheryl folded her arms beneath her breasts and fired a scowl at him. “What happened to that girl?”

  “Later,” he dismissed, and started to walk away.

  “Raymond,” his wife hissed. “I’m hosting a party here.”

  “Your party’s dead, sweetheart. No pun intended. Go home.”

  Lisa found her voice. “I have work.”

  “You quit that job,” he reminded her.

  “I took a few days off,” she corrected. “I’m not quitting until I have something else lined up.”

  He gave her the kind of glare that turned men to stone, his meaning plain. If someone had slipped into a party full of guests and nearly killed a girl, then she wasn’t safe at work. She wasn’t safe anywhere, save at home, under lock and key and armed guard.

  But the mystery of it all – the inexplicable chain of events that didn’t make a damn bit of sense – left her feeling so helpless that she just couldn’t submit to lockdown. This was not a movie. No one was out to get them. She hoped…

  “You.” Ray snapped a look to Drew. “Go with her. If so much as one hair – ”

  “She’ll be fine,” Drew said with such conviction in his voice that Lisa almost believed him.

  Drew was starting to understand why her fiancé had cheated on her. Lisa was the kind of brave, the kind of stupidly stubborn, that infuriated most men. He wanted to be furious with her now; she had one hand on the wheel, the other propped on the console, watching the road and listening to Pearl Jam through her fuzzy truck speakers.

  But he could read the fear in her. The tension. The tremor in her delicate jaw and the nervous flash in her green eyes every time the headlights from an oncoming car washed over her. She looked beautiful, and small, and fragile, and too proud for her own good. Her fiancé had looked at her and then looked elsewhere. Drew looked at her and wanted her face pressed against his shoulder, her nails biting into skin, as she came with him inside her.

  He was at that stage: wanting her in vivid, detailed fantasies that he wished more and more had a chance of coming to fruition. He didn’t just think she was pretty and he wasn’t just watching her for Ray’s sake; he liked the girl. He wanted her. Tonight had solidified that knowledge, left him more desperate. Someone was strangling girls and if Lisa was on that list – and he knew she was – then she had to realize that she could trust him. That she needed him to keep her safe.

  His attention jerked from her profile to the window as the truck slowed and turned up over a curb. They were at King Customs.

  “I need to change for work,” she explained as she pulled up to the dark office and killed the engine. “You can wait here.”

  “Like hell.”

  Her head snapped around, eyes wide. “What?”

  “If you think you’re going anywhere in the dark by yourself, you’ve lost your damn mind.”

  A smile ghosted across her lips. “Look at you, getting some balls.”

  “I’m not kidding, Lisa. You got attacked; one of your friends almost just got killed – ”

  “Dani Britton is not my friend.”

  “Whatever.” His voice cracked through the truck, sharper and angrier than he’d intended. She sat back against the window. “Somebody obviously has it out for you, and you aren’t taking stupid risks on my watch.”

  “What do you mean ‘out for’ me?” She frowned, but he saw the doubt twist her delicate features. “We don’t know that what happened tonight wasn’t an accident. She could have slipped and hit her head.”

  “Someone choked her out,” Drew said, and her eyes flared big as half dollars. “Does that sound like an accident?”

  She turned away from him and released a shaky breath. When she popped her door, he popped his, and she didn’t protest. He waited while she gathered up a tote bag and then followed at her heels, close as a shadow, to the door of the garage. When she unlocked it and moved to step inside, Drew caught her by the arm, gently, and held her back while he went first, flipping on the lights and scanning the office for anything out of place.

  “Yes,” she snapped as she pushed past him. “I’m sure the murderer let himself in and then relocked the door.”

  “He could have come in the back and been waiting in here.”

  “You’ve watched too many movies,” she complained, and headed for the door that led into the work bays.

  His pulse gave a jump to see her in the dark threshold. “Where are you going?”

  Her scowl was a fearsome thing. “To change into my hoochie clothes. That alright with you?”

  “Be careful.”

  “Yeah. My pushup bra’s gonna push my boobs right up and poke my eyes out. Real dangerous.” And she slipped into the shadows of the garage.

  She was bluffing, covering her nerves with her smart mouth. It was so laughable he had a hard time being angry about it. But he just wished…

  A voice.

  Drew registered muffled sounds from the parking lot and the indistinct murmur of more than one voice.

  Fuck.

  In a soundless rush, he went through the door into the working part of the garage to find Lisa…and then froze.

  A shaft of moonlight fell through the high, round window set in the roll-top door and it landed on Lisa like a spotlight. She stood with her pushup bra in her hands, naked to the waist, her cutoffs unfastened. Her tanned skin had turned to alabaster in the blue wash of light, shadows carving the lean contours of her arms and flat stomach. He spotted a flash of dark, lace waistband in the deep V of her unzipped shorts before his eyes went to her chest and stayed there. Her breasts were high and round, her nipples peaked in the cool evening air. Her hair flowed down over her shoulders and brushed the tops of them. No stripper had ever looked so tempting in his eyes.

  “What…?” she started, and he shook himself off, went to her and put himself between her and the door, crowding her at the hood of Big Tom’s Fastback. She clapped her hands over her breasts and tried to whirl toward him.

  Drew grabbed her hips, her skin silk-soft beneath his hands, and dropped his head until his mouth was even with her ear. “Be quiet. Someone’s out there.”

  They both stopped breathing. Drew could hear his own pulse. Could smell her perfume, and something else that was just her skin. Was more aware, than anything, of her almost naked in front of him.

  The voices floated through the door.

  “…I’ve told you that at least a hundred times…”

  “…sorry…next time…”

  Lisa released a deep brea
th. “I know them. They own the deli next door.”

  Her hipbones were sharp against his fingers; she didn’t eat enough. “What are they doing here this late?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t care.”

  As his fear-fueled adrenaline faded, it was replaced with a different kind. One that swirled hot and hungry through his veins. Lisa, he realized, was going to have to make the first move if she wanted him away from her. He’d watched and wondered for too long, and he was too invested at this point, to pass up an opportunity like this; he might never get another.

  She didn’t move, though. He heard her take a deep breath. “You’re touching me.”

  “Yeah. You want me to let go?”

  Another deep breath. “Not really.”

  His hands left her as she shifted and turned, and the moonlight sliding over his shoulder turned her big eyes to emeralds. For the first time that night, all her guards were down and every ounce of fear was showing. “Someone’s playing games with us,” she said, and he waited. She blinked. “I am so damn tired of playing.”

  Her hands fell away from her breasts and she spread them over his pecs.

  “Tell anyone and I’ll kill you,” she warned.

  He kissed her.

  It was the gentlest thing, like he was afraid of her reaction. His lips touched hers and they both went still. For a moment, Lisa held her breath and wondered if, inside the rippling body leaning over her, Drew was tentative and skittish. She’d watched him watch her, had thought – had hoped, even – that beneath his quiet, careful exterior, something vibrant and hot-blooded waited to be turned loose.

  But maybe she’d been wrong.

  She eased back, hands sliding down the hard swells of his pecs to the ribbed stretch of abs below, a shiver starting in her fingertips and rippling all the way up her arms just at this bare contact through his shirt. It was a shame it wasn’t going to go further. She became aware of her nakedness, and pulled back further. Such a shame…

  “Wait.” His good hand caught the back of her head; his other stayed at her waist, his cast rough against her skin.

  The moonlight was behind him, and she couldn’t read his face, saw only the outline of his head limned in silver.

  You have to step up, she thought, a desperate twinge pulling at her insides. I need you to be the man here.

  She heard him take a deep breath. His fingers threaded through the hair at her nape; they felt solid and strong, just like the rest of him. She wet her lips. “Drew -- ”

  He cut her off with another kiss, and this one was nothing like the first. This one slanted hotly across her mouth; it pressed her head back into his hand, made her feel small and vulnerable, and…wanted. She hadn’t been wanted like this in a long time.

  Her lips parted beneath his and his tongue flirted between.

  Oh, thank God.

  She hummed a quiet note of pleasure in the back of her throat and he reacted; he cracked her lips wide and went in deep. The kiss became a frenzied, artless thing, all tongues and teeth and shattered breathing.

  His hand left her head; it slid through her hair and half-curled around the side of her throat. Their lips came apart and his mouth trailed across her cheek – he pressed a kiss just beneath her ear – and went to her neck. He held her to him as he sucked at her skin, grazed her throat with his teeth.

  Her fingers were knotted in the front of his shirt and that wasn’t enough. She gathered it up and slipped her hands beneath the hem, flattened her palms against the washboard flat of his stomach. Damn. To hell with her dignity; Morgan was right: he was hot. And his lips were sweeping down to her collarbone. And his hand was sliding down the curve of her breast and cupping it from beneath.

  Her breath caught at the contact and her chest lifted against his touch. His fingertips played across her, working inward until it was her nipple he teased to distraction. With only one good hand, he had her shivery and breathless. She raked her nails lightly through the deep grooves of his abs, knees liquid, trapped in the dark silence with this intense and quiet shadow of a man tweaking all her senses.

  His head lifted and she thought he meant to kiss her again; she stretched up on her toes in anticipation…

  But instead his face hovered over hers and his hand went flat against her belly, slid down into the open waistband of her cutoffs and cupped her through her panties.

  Lisa staggered back and the Mustang’s grill caught her across the backs of her thighs. She let her legs go limp, let the car support her, as Drew’s fingers found just the right spot through her lace bikini bottoms.

  “Mmm.” She hooked her fingers into his belt and held tight, hips tilting as he stroked her. The window was bright as a spotlight, the blue moonbeam falling across her, them, giving her a visual that doubled her pulse. His face was still in shadow, his breath rustling against her hair. But she could see herself – her naked skin pale in the surreal moonlight, her nipples peaked, her breasts covered in gooseflesh – and his vein-laced arm going all the way down to where his hand worked against her through the open, parted fly of her cutoffs.

  Feeling selfish, feeling so flushed she thought her ears would burst, she leaned back and braced her hands behind her on the car’s hood, watching the spectacle of his hand in her pants, hips lifting.

  Then his fingers swept her panties aside and he made contact with bare, slippery skin.

  Lisa closed her eyes, her head fell back on her neck, and she let it happen.

  With hands that had seen such violence, he balanced her against the car and delivered her nothing but pleasure. His middle finger slipped inside and went deep, crooking, sending a shudder through her, while his thumb worked magic on her clit.

  She shocked herself; she let go of all her tension and committed to the moment. Let him push her all the way to climax. She came with a little gasp, and then a sigh, and then she lowered herself back across the hood and went boneless as his hand withdrew.

  The moonlight was on her; it pushed at the seal of her eyelids. She didn’t care.

  “Come here.” She cracked her eyes and reached for him, ready to return the favor.

  But Drew hung back in the shadows. He was breathing hard, but his voice was even when he said, “That was probably a bad idea.”

  Lisa groaned. “Why? Please do not tell me you’re thinking of my dad right now.”

  “Well, he – ”

  “He doesn’t have a say in this!” She jackknifed upright. Her old friend shame began a slow-build in the pit of her stomach. “If you don’t want to be with me, then just say so, but don’t use my dad as – ”

  As she made a move to stand, he blocked her in, hands on the polished steel on either side of her hips. She could see his eyes now; they looked black and wild, white-rimmed and glinting. “I’m thinking,” he said in a quiet voice that left her skin prickling, “that you’ll hate me if things go any further. And I don’t want that.”

  “You’re an idiot,” she accused.

  “No argument here.”

  He was a sweet idiot, though. Lisa laid her hands on the taut cords of his neck and kissed him like he’d kissed her.

  He responded, easing her back down onto the car, crawling up over her. She unbuckled his belt, thumbed open the button of his jeans, unzipped them. When she took hold of him through his boxers, his whole body gave a great leap: all finely sculpted taut muscle moving against her. Their lips broke apart and his breathing was ragged as he reached between them with his good hand, the other braced beside her head, and tugged her cutoffs down her hips. She braced her heels on the front bumper and lifted up, taking them the rest of the way down and then kicking them free. In a rush, her legs went around his lean hips and his boxers were pushed down, his erection springing free between them. She wrapped her hand around him, guided him to her entrance; they both caught their breath.

  And then he was pressing in, and she was already slick and hot and ready for him, primed by his fingers.

  Lisa murmured a wordless thanks
as he sank deep, filling her up. Her thighs gripped tight and her spine lifted and she basked in the sensation…and then he started to move.

  His belt buckle rattled as he withdrew and plunged in again, his thrusts deep and sure; there was no need for delicate pretense and he seemed to know it, setting a pace that rocked the Mustang on its struts.

  Lisa gripped tight, her nails sunk into the smooth skin of his back; she lifted and strained beneath him, chasing another release like he’d given her before.

  Above her, inside her, he was nothing but leashed power and sleek, flexing muscle, pinning her to the hood of the car, taking her body in an almost desperate way.

  She could tell when he grew close – the pace intensified, the soft insides of her thighs were rubbed raw by the jeans he still wore. Climax gripped him; he thrust in hard, and she followed.

  They clung, panted, waited, as the end came with a great crash.

  Then Lisa became very aware that she was almost totally naked on top of a customer’s car, her bodyguard’s cock inside her. The harsh sound of their breathing echoed in the empty garage bay, almost obscene. Regret…it was what she should feel – what she wanted to feel, on some level – but it was drowned out by the pulsing that echoed through her limp body. Her heartbeat thumped wildly and it knew only pleasure, not shame. Not yet, anyway.

  With a deep breath, Drew withdrew and rolled away from her, lying back against the car beside her.

  “That was…” she started.

  “A mistake?” he wondered.

  “I was gonna say ‘good.’”

  She rolled her head to the side and thought she could make out his eyes on the other side of the moonbeam that played between them.

  They stayed still a long moment, until finally, she eased upright. “I guess I gotta get to work.” As she leaned forward to retrieve her cutoffs, he pushed off the car and walked toward the office. The door shut behind him.

  She sighed. “Thanks,” she muttered. “You couldn’t even say that?”