by Diane Saxon
“You want to read them their rights? Go ahead. I’ve got your back.”
He stepped back. The man remained where he had fallen on the floor. Michael glanced at Kenny, who was still on his knees, blood streaming down his chin and dripping on to his grubby T-shirt.
“I don’t think the lady will be taking you up on your offer.”
Cold as a chip of ice, he laid the pool cue down on the table a little regretfully, leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest, and waited for her to do her thing.
The police car was already rolling down the drive to the bar, lights flashing as Bill and Michael waited silently in their corner with the injured. No one else had stepped forward to either help or hinder. They probably figured Michael was more than capable of taking the rest of them out before they could breathe.
“Looks like you had a busy night, Deputy.” Glancing around the room, Jack touched his hand to his gun. “You do this all on your own?”
“No, the government paper-pusher there is responsible for most of it.” Her voice was low and harsh.
Jack assessed his brother-in-law. Michael leaned on the pool table looking like he’d just stepped out the pages of a fashion magazine, not a hair out of place, not a bloodied knuckle in sight. Eyes cold and deadly.
“Good to know whose side you’re on.” Jack nodded.
*
Michael inclined his head and straightened up.
“Can we go now?” He glanced at Bill. Her fingers had a slight tremor. She wasn’t as tough as she tried to make out. He’d been warned…several times.
He simply wanted to get her out of there now. She kept flicking furtive glances toward him, her jet-black eyebrows lowered, mouth tight. Blood had sprayed all over her. He needed to get her alone before she ran.
Removing the keys from her shaking fingers, he pushed her into the passenger seat, walked around the front, and slid into the driver’s seat of the truck. He glanced at her frozen features as he fired the engine and drove off in silence.
“Jesus, Michael…Jesus Christ, where did you learn to handle yourself like that?” She stared at him across the divide of the front seats. “I’ve never seen a massacre like that one before, and you didn’t raise a sweat, your shirt looks like you just ironed it, and you didn’t even get your hands bloody.”
He didn’t answer, just let her talk. It was her way. His was to keep quiet. His jaw was set, and he stared straight ahead, and his hands were steady on the steering wheel.
“Last week in the gym, you could have taken me any time you wanted, couldn’t you?” His only response was a quick sideways glance. “Well hell, I thought I was good. I really thought I had you, but all the time, you were just playing. You could have slayed me where I stood.” He shrugged. He didn’t want to admit it, but she was right. Any move she made, he could have counteracted. He’d chosen not to. After all, she wasn’t the enemy, just the competition, and the prize had been worth having.
“You’re a hell of a dangerous man, Michael.” She burst out.
He shrugged again. There was no reply. It was the truth. He was a natural-born killer.
*
She fell silent, reflecting on what had happened. Running through in her mind the swiftness of Michael’s reactions, his effortless brutality. It had all happened so fast, he’d left her breathless. The fierceness of his expression when it was done, and the complete control over every movement he made, every emotion he should have had, but didn’t had stunned her to the core. The man was iron.
He’d told her he’d been in a war zone, and it was pretty obvious he worked undercover from the silence that greeted any questions about his job, but it had never occurred to her he was a stone-cold killer until she saw it for herself in his eyes.
She chewed on her lip as he pulled the truck up in front of her house. He turned off the engine and just sat with his forearms crossed over the top of the steering wheel and stared straight ahead. The silence was heavy.
Studying his face in the shadows of the car, excitement rippled through her veins at the thought this cool, sleek, beautiful man could possibly be so deadly. And he was hers. For now. She shuddered with delight.
“So.” His voice was quiet in the darkness. “What do you want to do, Bill?”
He made her mouth water. She wanted to crawl into his lap and lick him all over, head to foot. His aloofness confused her. Perhaps his emotions had been turned off, but her adrenaline was revving.
“I don’t know what you mean. Don’t you want…?”
He turned his head and stared at her for a long moment, his eyebrows pulled down low as he studied her. His eyes were as cold as ice and yet somehow, when he narrowed them at her, she could have sworn she saw a flicker of something there.
“Do you want to call it quits?” His sharp question took her by surprise. She stared at him long and hard, and then heaved a sigh and glanced away from him out into the pitch-darkness of the night.
“You want to know, if after everything that’s happened, all that we’ve done, I’m turned off by the fact you can kill a man using just your thumb?”
His heavy frown said it all as she glanced back at him.
“You think I don’t already know what you are?” She snapped her seat belt undone, kneeled on the seat to get closer to him, and leaned her face in. “I think you underestimate me. When a county sheriff’s office gets government blocked in their request for information, it usually means we’re dealing with an undercover operative.”
She lifted her hand, smoothed her fingers along his clenched jaw.
“To tell the truth, I’ve seen a lot of violence in my job, but I’ve never seen anyone as coldly efficient as you.”
He breathed in deep.
“But I know you’re not cold. Not really.” As he held his breath, she wondered if there would be any give in him, or if he was capable of walking away.
So she did what any self-respecting girl would do and launched herself across the cab into his arms, grinning like a loon. She wrapped a hank of his hair around her hand and yanked his head back to gaze deep into his beautiful, surprised green eyes.
“Hell no, Michael. I can’t call it quits. You just made yourself sexier than hell. If you think you turn a girl off by giving her that kind of knowledge, you’re mistaken.”
She bit his bottom lip sharply, and then ravaged him with a kiss.
“And besides, you’re too good at the sex thing, tiger…”
He tore his mouth away from hers to breathe, and his green eyes almost glowed at her.
“If I’d known it would have that effect, I’d have used that one years ago.”
“It may not have had the same effect on other women, but you just got my adrenaline pumped up. Perhaps I need to cool down.”
She plastered her mouth firmly against his.
“I like your adrenaline just the way it is, Bill, molten hot.” He gasped under the onslaught of her kisses. “We’d better go inside before we get arrested for indecency.”
“I don’t think it’s indecent when it’s in your own front yard, but let’s go in anyway, I need to get out of these bloodied clothes and besides, it’ll be more comfortable than sitting on the gearshift.”
They dashed through the house stripping clothes off as they went, with her eagerness and his raging hormones lending them speed.
As they hit the bed, he rolled himself backward away from her.
“Hold on Bill, hold on. I never brought a condom with me.”
She leaped over him and opened her bedside drawer.
“It’s okay. I managed to liberate one of the boxes before Mac took them away.”
“But I thought they were for perverts.
“Oh yeah, hold on.” She ripped open the box and grabbed a foil packet. “I think I got the one with extra-lubricated, supersensitive ribbing with whistles, bells, and lights.” She tore open the packet with her teeth, and like a complete pro, had him sheathed in a blink of an eye.
He was inside her in l
ess time than that.
* * * *
“It wasn’t extra-lubricated.”
“No.”
“It didn’t have supersensitive ribbing.”
“None.”
“There were no whistles, bells, and lights.”
“If there had been, there wouldn’t have been enough time for them to toot, ding-a-ling, and flash. You were real fast, tiger.”
“Too fast?”
“Hmmm…” Sliding her long fingers across his hot, muscular chest she gave him a lazy contented smile. “No.”
“Where did you get them from?”
“Mac.”
“What?” He sat up abruptly tipping her off his chest as he stared down at her in horror.
“Lie down. I knew you would react that way. That’s why I never told you.” Her voice was slow and lazy, almost replete. “It might have affected your performance.”
He reclined next to her, lying on his side to face her. His adrenaline was still pumping, even if hers had slowed down.
“He took all the others, and then he left me a large box on my bedside table. I think they’re the same ones you used. Super thin.” She smiled slyly up at him, running her long, nimble fingers over his shoulder and scratching a pattern across his chest.
“Why would he do that?”
“Because he’s my mother, my father, and my brother. He left a note saying ‘take care’.”
Falling onto his back, Michael ran his fingers through his hair.
“There’s no bloody privacy here.”
She raised herself up on her elbow and peered down at him.
“We have privacy now, tiger.” She quirked him one of her bad-girl smiles. “What you going to do about it?”
He returned her smile with a long, slow one of his own and reached for the box on the bedside table.
Chapter 14
It wasn’t that he’d actually moved in with her. They simply spent so much time in her bed, keeping a few of his personal items at her place seemed practical.
He kept himself busy while she was at work, stayed at his sisters’ houses, worked out in Bill’s gym, ran with the dogs, but when she was free he was there.
Her brothers had stopped turning up without calling first after catching them in clinches too many times to mention.
As the weeks rolled past, Michael’s hair grew, curling down his neck onto his shoulders and bleaching even blonder in the Southern sunshine. He started to tie it back with a black elastic band, and when Bill offered to cut it, refused saying he liked the new look. The stubble on his face had grown into a full beard.
She preferred him clean-shaven but when she’d offered a razor there’d been a remoteness to him and, she gathered he had to grow it for his job. She’d noticed he spent quite a while out in the sun too, and when she’d told him to take it easy, he’d just given her a long, sideways look. Perhaps the darkened skin was part of the work requirement too. She didn’t ask any questions, and he never told her anything further about his job since the night of the fight.
A cool, light breeze skimmed over their bodies as they lay in her bed. The first night-time breeze they’d had in months.
She could hear the gentle snore of her two dogs as they lay in the corner of her room on their shared bed. She felt the slow, deep rhythm of Michael’s breathing as he lay in the dark. She knew he was still awake.
“Are you okay?” She caressed his lean, bearded cheek.
“Yeah.” With a sigh, he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, turning his back to her, he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.
“I had a phone call today. I have to go away.”
“Okay. When?” She tried hard not to sound desperate.
“I have to leave in an hour.”
Shock and fear rippled through her. But he didn’t want to know that.
“When will you be back?” She had no right to ask but had to all the same.
He turned his face to stare at her through the darkness, and then he shook his head. “I don’t know.”
She stood on the doorstep and watched his car disappear down her dusty drive and realized she hadn’t said a thing to try and make him stay. Not a word. She knew she couldn’t hold him…if she tried, she’d lose him. Not to another woman, that was never her worry, but his devotion to whatever his work far exceeded the feelings he had for her, and she knew if she made him choose, the choice would be work.
*
From the moment he left her, Michael wanted to be back with her again. He’d never felt like this about any other woman. Had never formed enough of a relationship with anyone before. He’d never minded when he left a woman behind. But Bill had him, with her confusing combination of sexual naïveté, refreshing enthusiastic childishness, and brash toughness, she’d caught his interest from the word go. He knew the worst thing he could do was get involved with her. He also knew it was possibly too late.
He scrubbed at his dirty, dyed-black hair and peered at the men around him. He needed every ounce of his concentration right now, and Bill was encroaching on that. He was sure it wasn’t her fault he kept having visions of her naked body in the shower, but he felt the flickers of annoyance curl through his gut while his mind tried to coldly cut her out of his thoughts.
He leaned forward and started the brief. Planning was everything, and every single man around the table depended on each other for their lives. They all depended on him for his accuracy and planning of the mission. He had no time to allow a woman to wind through his mind. He had no place in his heart for her either. So he cut her out.
* * * *
Ten days he’d been gone and Bill sat on her porch swing thinking about him, and wondered when he would be back. A cloud of dust rose in the distance and as she stood, a Black BMW four-by-four appeared, speeding along her driveway.
As it pulled up in front of her house and her blond god stepped out and slammed the door behind him, she launched herself off the top step of the porch straight into his arms, laughing with sheer joy. He staggered back two steps before he gained his balance, and she smothered his face with kisses, heart racing as she wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist.
“You’re back.” She yanked his tie off over his head and dropped it into the dust.
“I wasn’t expecting you.” She ripped open his shirt as he attempted the porch steps. Small white buttons skidded across the wooden deck. Lust raced through her as she bit his neck, wanting to eat him alive. She gurgled as she made his knees buckle, and he almost fell as she writhed against him, an overwhelming flood of hormones rushed through her entire being.
Gaining his feet, he staggered toward the door as her hands, rough and desperate, ran down his ribs and grabbed the front of his trousers. Her fingers fumbled as she tore at his belt, ripped open his button, wrenched at his zipper, and pushed her hands deep inside his pants. As she grabbed his hot, hard penis with her hand, his breath whooshed out of him in a long, lusty groan.
He lost his legs completely at the door, collapsed on top of her, tore her trousers off, and ripped her panties in two. He plunged inside her, her writhing body making it easy for him to hammer into her fast and furious, hot and desperate as she wrapped her limbs around him. Her legs slid up his back and pulled him in close. She bit the lobe of his ear and chuckled wickedly against his neck as she felt the lust in the back of her throat, her chest, her loins. It filled her, overwhelmed her, and he thrust into her, desperate and needy like it was the first time, the last time.
Matching his frantic rhythm she pulled him closer, deeper, harder into her and screamed as he joined her in an explosive orgasm while she bucked under him and took all he had to give.
His breath heaved in and out of his lungs as he collapsed, deadweight, on top of her. She was still wrapped around him, reluctant to let go. She stroked his back with one hand while she ran the fingers of her other hand through his long, silky hair. She chuckled warmly, seductively, into his ear and whispered.
“I think I’ve got a splinter in my ass.”
Nuzzling her ear he replied, “I can’t move yet, but when I can, I’m sure I’ll be able to pull it out with my teeth.” He chuckled, and she felt the vibrations of his laughter deep within her where he still lay embedded. She purred against his neck.
“I love you, Michael.”
There was a moment of utter silence, stillness, before she felt him stiffen in her arms, withdraw. She could have bitten her tongue for saying it, cried out in pain at his response. Instead she lay underneath him, quietly waiting for his reaction.
As he lifted his head and studied her, she knew. His eyes were flat and cold, like an arctic sea, he removed himself, first emotionally, and then physically from her.
“Well,” his coolly polite smile cut through her more deeply than any words possibly could, “that was some welcome. Umm, thank you.”
Pain shot behind her eyes. Breath halted in her throat.
He still had his shoes and socks on, his trousers were around his knees. He stood and yanked them back up, rushing to fasten them as he pushed her jeans toward her with his foot. He straightened his shirt, tried to fasten it, but found only two buttons left. He glanced around for his tie, obviously realized it was still in her front yard.
All the time she sat on the floor, silent and devastated as she stared up at him. A lump formed in her throat, and she hoped to God now wasn’t the time for her to cry for the first time since she was eight.
She swallowed hard, blinked, and tried to think of something to say to make it better. Anything. But all she could think that would make it better would be to take back the words that caused him to freeze over. It was too late. There was no going back, and she was too proud to throw herself at him. No matter how desperate she was.
He searched around for anything else he might have lost in the rush to get his clothes off. He scanned the floor around her, glanced out of the doorway onto the porch. She followed his gaze and saw the scattered buttons winking in the early evening sunlight.