Gone From Me: Hearts of the South, Book 10

by Linda Winfree

  With his elbow propped on the couch arm, he pressed a finger, hard, into his temple. He fixed her with a long, slow look. “What does fighting do to my mood?”

  That brought her up short, but not for long. She tilted her chin. “So fight with me and then fuck me.”

  A lifetime ago, those words from her mouth would have had him all over her. Tonight, the anger and the weariness lingered too much with him still. “What’s the point?”

  Amy caught her breath, the fury bordering on unleashable. She recognized those words, recognized the simmering anger behind them. In a couple of strides, she was at the sofa, trembling before him.

  “Is that what this is about?” She shoved the remote off the table, out of his reach. Her hands shaking, she seized the pillow and threw it behind her. “I apologized for that. I was crazy upset and stupid that night. Why are you still holding on to that?”

  Because she could see that he was, that the unthinking words she’d wept into his shoulder the last time they’d tried to make love, mere days after the results of the fertility testing, had stayed with him. How much of what she’d said on a daily basis had shoved him deeper into the hole he’d been in?

  She could seriously cut out her tongue.

  He shrugged, and the casual gesture she’d seen so often the past few months sent her anger burning higher. She’d be damned if she’d leave him in that hole tonight. She would make him come back to her, make him fight for her.

  “What’s the point?” She skimmed her pajama pants over her hips and let them fall to the floor. Grasping the hem of her camisole, she pulled it up and over her head so it joined the pj’s. He didn’t react, but rather watched her from his boneless slump on the couch. That apathy, from the husband who’d once been hungry and eager for her, intensified her fear and desperation. “This is the point.”

  “Amy—”

  Her mouth stopped his words, and knees on the couch, she straddled him, tangling her hands into his hair. The muscled warmth of his bare abdomen rubbed the most intimate areas of her body. He groaned under her, and the husky sound, full of longing and surrender, traveled all the way through her.

  His hands found her hips, his grasp rough. She bit his lower lip and drew back, using her hold on his hair to tilt his head, too hard, she knew, but just right also. “This is the point. Fight me. Fight for me.”

  She licked her way down his neck, sinking her teeth into the muscle between throat and shoulder. He shuddered, his hands a painful clench at her hips. “Fuck.”

  The guttural growl sent a heavy ache to her lower belly. “Yes. Fight for me. Let me remind you what the point is.”

  He was already hard, and she was wet for him. One hand still gripping his hair, she wrestled his loose pajama pants with the other, until his erection came free, brushing her thigh. Eyes on his, she sank down, taking him fully on one stroke.

  He yelled, a rough sound torn from his gut, and she exulted in it. He pushed up under her, his hands at her waist pulling her down to meet each thrust. Already, she trembled on the edge of a climax, and she tugged at his hair. She locked her gaze with his, looking for her Rob in this angry man mired in loss and defeat.

  She posted on him, deliberately tightening and releasing intimate muscles, relishing the feel of him inside her and the stunned desire on his lean face. “This is the point, Rob. Us.”

  Face against her throat, he gasped. The base of him rubbed at her aching clit on each stroke, and she muffled a scream into his hair as months of denial exploded into an orgasm so strong it hurt.

  He lunged into her, a final thrust, throbbing within her on his own climax. He collapsed against the couch, winded and his chest heaving. Trying to catch her own breath, she brushed back tangled bangs and leaned forward to stroke his damp hair from his forehead. He lifted a shaking hand to cup the side of her face, the tip of his thumb caressing the corner of her mouth.

  “This,” she whispered, turning her lips into his palm. “This is the point, baby.”

  *

  Amy drifted into wakefulness. Darkness still hovered outside, and she remained tucked into Rob’s sturdy warmth. His arm, a familiar weight, wrapped across her midriff, one hand a soft cradle for her breast. He circled her areola with a lazy thumb. Between her thighs a wet throbbing lingered, a combination of their rough coupling and renewing desire.

  He kissed her neck, then her shoulder, and she sighed, resting her hands on his naked thighs behind her. Afterward, he’d carried her down the hall, pajamas forgotten on the living room floor. He’d wrapped himself around her in their bed, holding her, stroking her like something infinitely precious, until sleep claimed them both.

  She let one hand drift to caress his half-erect penis, feathered her fingers over his scrotum, and smiled at his muffled groan. He jerked against her palm.

  “Remind me.” He murmured the words against her shoulder, his free hand cupping her other breast and pressing her closer to him. She stroked him into hardness, moisture clinging to her palm, and moaned under the welcome nip of his teeth on her neck. With a shift in position, she tangled one leg with his and opened to him, so his erection rested along her wet folds. A heavy ache bloomed low in her belly, and she laid a hand against the head, rubbing herself along his length.

  His harsh gasp rewarded her, and he tightened his hold on her breasts. She pushed into him, the tip of his erection brushing her clit with each slow slide. Tiny shocks of electricity fired along her nerves every time he touched her.

  “Take me,” she whispered. “Remind me I’m yours.”

  One rough male hand slipped to her belly, tugging her into him and rolling them at the same time. On her stomach, she clutched the sheets and waited. The head of him nudged her clit, slid lower, and she moaned. Heavy wanting ached in her belly. She didn’t want his teasing; she wanted to know she was his.

  “Do it, Rob.” She dug her nails into fine cotton. “Take me.”

  He barreled into her, and she cried out. A slow slide almost out, and another thrust. His hands rested next to hers, the weight and heat of him all over her, and in the dim light from the hall, she watched the muscles flex and play in his hands and forearms as he took her, over and over, slow and hard and completely out of her control.

  She dropped her forehead to the bed, from this angle, catching glimpses of him taking her. She burned. “God.”

  Holding himself up on one arm, he slid the other beneath them to press his index finger to her clit. A single touch, the lightest pressure, and she was splintering, screaming his name. He kept up the slow, inexorable pace, pushing her toward a second climax, until the desire arced into tension and pleasure-pain, and she screamed again. On a muffled grunt, he pushed forward, and she felt him swell and spurt within her.

  She collapsed into the mattress, scraping her fingers against the smooth sheets. On his elbows, he kept most of his weight off her, but his chest heaved against her back. His harsh breaths transformed into laughter, the rich, warm sound that came from deep in his chest, the laughter she hadn’t heard in forever.

  “I’d forgotten how loud you can be.” He rested his forehead below her nape, shaking with each chuckle. “We keep this up, and the neighbors are going to call the cops.”

  She elbowed him in the gut. “You can explain it to your buddy, Troy Lee.”

  He guffawed, and she smiled into the sheet. Oh, she loved that laugh. He wrapped her in an embrace, and she simply lay, enveloped by him as he regained his ability to breathe.

  His sigh whispered over her skin. “We needed this.”

  This time, her elbow to his abs was gentler. “Um, yeah.”

  “Definitely something we need to do more often.” He dropped a kiss at the base of her skull. His arms contracted beneath her, and he rolled to his back, taking her with him to lie cradled against his chest.

  “From now on, Rob, you have to talk to me when you’re mad.” Head pillowed on his shoulder, she traced the line of his pectoral. “I never meant to hurt you, and you’ve let i
t hurt you too long. We should have talked it out a long time ago.”

  “I know.” He ran his fingers through her tangled hair. “It’s crazy, like there are two people in my head sometimes—the normal me and this other one. And I lose my way.”

  She linked their fingers together, resting on his abdomen. “I’ll help you find your way back.”

  *

  Ten til seven in the morning and already muggy heat lay close to the ground. Rob swung out of his truck and hustled across the parking lot. He fingered the adhesive bandage covering a cotton ball at the crook of his elbow.

  His duty shoes crunched on the gravel, and Troy Lee, seated in the Charger’s driver’s seat with the door open while he tested lights and sirens, looked up. “About time you got here.”

  Rob rested his hand on the car roof. “Hey, I’ve been up since before five.”

  “You totally could have gotten a run in before you saw the doctor.” Troy Lee jotted a note on the inspection form. “Slacker.”

  A memory flashed through him, the gut punch of his body sinking into Amy’s, her scream of pleasure surrounding him. “No, I really couldn’t. Trust me.”

  Troy Lee’s grunt reeked with skepticism. “What’s more important than your morning run?”

  Rob held up a pair of fingers.

  Male understanding flashed in Troy Lee’s gaze, and he chuckled. “Yeah, I guess some things are more important than running.”

  The metal side door clanged open, and Chris bounded down the steps. “Calvert wants to see us in the duty room before we head out.”

  “Tell him we’ll be there in a second.” Troy Lee ran through the rest of the inspection, initialed the report and jammed the clipboard in the organizer. “Let’s go.”

  Deputies from two shifts crowded the multipurpose room. Rob and Troy Lee slid into empty chairs on the next-to-last row of the makeshift roll-call area.

  “Aw, look, Campbell, Farr has a new boyfriend.” The deputy behind them nudged his buddy and leaned forward to clap a hand on both Troy Lee’s and Rob’s shoulders. “Parker’s gonna be jealous, Farr.”

  “Aw, look, Bennett, Walker’s still a homophobic asshole.” Troy Lee knocked Walker’s hand off his shoulder.

  Chris came into their row from the other side and took the chair next to Troy Lee’s. He slung his arm across Troy Lee’s shoulders with deliberate casualness and patted Walker’s hand still lying on Rob’s shoulder. “Cut him some slack, Troy Lee. He’s jealous because we won’t let him in on what we have going on. Hands off my new bitch, Walker.”

  A bark of laughter escaped Troy Lee, and Walker slammed back in his chair, muttering. Calvert and Cook frowned at them as they moved up the rows, handing out papers. Poker-faced, Chris nudged Troy Lee’s side. “Hush, man. You’re going to get us in trouble.”

  Troy Lee coughed into his fist, eyes watering. Rob’s lips twitched. Face set in serious lines and brow furrowed, Calvert paused beside them and counted out three handouts with deliberate slowness. “Problems, gentlemen?”

  “Ask Walker.” Choking, Troy Lee pointed over his shoulder. “He’s the one feeling left out.”

  Shaking his head, Calvert handed Walker and Campbell copies and walked to the front of the room. Rob leaned forward to catch Chris’s expressionless gaze. “Your new bitch?”

  “That’s the scuttle.” Chris straightened his nametag. “I’m the bitch-master.”

  Shoulders shaking, Troy Lee bent double in the chair. Aware of Walker’s palpable glare, Rob gave an elaborate stretch and laid his arm along the top of Chris’s. Chris snorted and pounded Troy Lee between the shoulder blades.

  “If the peanut gallery can get it together, we’ll get started.” Calvert held the handout aloft. “Emergency management is anticipating our flood risk. We should be all right, other than some minor river and tributary elevation, if the dam at Cordele holds. If the dam gives or they have to breach it, we could be looking at a five-hundred-year flood event. If that happens, we’ll move to these duty rotations. Prepare for doubles.”

  As the meeting broke up and the three of them waited for the rush to clear before rising, Troy Lee stretched out his legs and tagged Rob’s chest with the back of a hand. “So what did the doctor say?”

  “I meet the criteria for a diagnosis of clinical depression.” He didn’t like hearing or saying the words out loud. “My blood work was clear. He agrees with my sister-in-law that it’s probably psychological. We talked about antidepressants, but he suggested therapy first.”

  Chris leaned forward to see around Troy Lee. “He recommend anybody?”

  “I can wait two weeks to get in with…” Rob shifted to pull his wallet from his back pocket and extract the slip of paper there. “Dr. Carlisle. Or Cook’s wife will see me once a week on my lunch break, starting today if I want.”

  Chris nodded. “She’s good. I saw her for about a year.”

  Rob darted a questioning glance at him. “It’s not weird? Seeing her and working with Cook?”

  “No, the weird part was seeing her while I was dating her sister, but I couldn’t see spilling my guts to a stranger. Man, therapy was weird for me, period, but it works. My head was so messed up—”

  Troy Lee snorted. “Boy, was it.”

  Chris ignored him. “I had to relearn how to think through stuff, like putting it in a different frame of reference.”

  That made sense. His old normal had been gone for months, and he wasn’t sure about waiting two more weeks to start framing a new one. Rob flicked the card back and forth across his fingers. “So I should give her a call?”

  “If she’s willing to fit you in that fast, hell, yes.”

  Chapter Eight

  The women’s center where Tori Cook had her offices resided a scant three blocks from the diner across from the courthouse square. Troy Lee had promised to grab him a burger to eat in the car after his appointment, and by the time Rob approached the diner on foot, his undershirt beneath his polo clung to him. Damn, it was muggy, the humidity layering the heat over everything. One o’clock and he already needed a shower.

  The diner door swung open, and two brunettes stepped onto the sidewalk. A nanosecond was all he needed to recognize Amy as one of them, impossibly cool in black slacks and a blue tailored blouse. He loved that shade of blue on her, the way it made her eyes shine darker.

  He really loved the slim cut of those slacks, the way they skimmed over lean hips and cupped her rounded little butt. Memories cascaded over him, and his temperature went sky high. Forget the shower. He needed to be back in bed with his wife, with her pushing that sweet little ass against him and clenching at the sheets while she filled his ears with her equally sweet moans.

  Hell.

  He sucked in a couple of deep breaths, working to get his wayward body under control, while at the same time a sense of joy suffused him. Somehow, last night, she’d switched back on a part of his brain he’d seriously feared was gone for good. Suddenly, he could think of his wife in a sexual way again.

  The relief was indescribable.

  Her gaze skittered over him, and he caught the flash of recognition followed by the way his presence lit up those gorgeous brown depths. Oh, yeah, he liked that too. He’d missed having her look at him like that.

  She touched the other woman’s arm, spoke quickly and moved toward him. He met her halfway, at the corner of the gift shop adjacent to the diner. She smiled, affection softening her expression. “Hey, handsome.”

  The endearment—God bless America, how long had it been since he’d heard her call him that—punched him in the gut. He rested a hand on the wall to keep himself from snatching her against him, cupping that perfect ass, and laying a completely carnal kiss on her right here where every taxpayer in Chandler County could see their newly hired tax dollars at work. “Hey.”

  The syllable came out strangled and hoarse, and her smile widened. She knew exactly what she was doing to him.

  Two could play that game.

  “Honey, you
know you left a bite mark on my shoulder last night. Sucker throbs.” He fingered the spot and gave her a slow grin. “Love it too, because every time it does, it reminds me.”

  “Good.” Her eyes darkened with shared memories. “I want you to know you’re mine.”

  “Oh, I’m yours all right.” He pitched his voice lower, to the growly tone he knew drove her wild. “Baby, you can mark me anytime you want.”

  “I’m taking you up on that later.” She darted a look around and tucked a strand of hair into her messy knot. A low chuckle built in his throat. She fanned herself with a hand. “How did your therapy appointment go?”

  “Weird.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I am.” He levered away from the wall. “I’m supposed to think about what I want and why I want it.”

  “That…makes sense.” Her brows lowered into a small vee, and uncertainty flashed in her eyes. She rotated her wrist to look at her watch. “I’ve got to go, but I’m glad I got to see you.”

  He leaned and brushed a swift kiss over her mouth. “Me too.”

  She caught his hand and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “I’ll see you later.”

  His radio beeped and crackled. “Chandler to C-2-A, 10-81?”

  He lifted the handheld to his mouth to call in the requested location and status. “Beyond the courthouse square, Chandler. Returning in-service.”

  “Can you and C-13 respond to a possible missing person?”

  Another one? Shit, please don’t let this be anything like the last.

  The diner door opened, and Troy Lee strolled onto the sidewalk, to-go box in hand and his own radio at his ear.

  “10-4, Chandler.”

  “10-25 with Dale Jenkins.” The dispatcher rattled off a location to meet Jenkins. Rob and Troy Lee exchanged a frown.

  “Dale Jenkins?” Rob mouthed at Troy Lee and took the proffered to-go box. “10-4, Chandler, C-2-A and C-13, en route.”

  “That’s Zeke Jenkins’s dad.” Troy Lee unlocked the car and jerked open the driver’s side door.