The Southern Comfort Series Box Set

by Clark O'Neill, Lisa

  “I am. I will.” She looked apologetically at where he stood, hands stuffed in his pockets. “I’m sorry, I know this has to be a little uncomfortable for you, but would you mind terribly if I looked around before we head back? Maybe check out my brother’s house next door?”

  “It’s no problem.” Then he smiled, bathing her with crinkles. She thought longingly of that cozy table for two.

  “I’ll just be a minute.”

  She felt the heat of his eyes on her as she headed toward the back of the house.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ROGAN Murphy tried to ignore the pain in his ribs. He had a half hour of sleep left to him, and he damn well planned to enjoy it. It was bad enough that he’d had such a pounding headache last night that he’d ended up popping ibuprofen like a kid with candy. And just when that fun had started to wear off, his ribs had begun aching. It felt like he’d gotten on the wrong side of a temperamental mule.

  “You okay?” The feminine arm sliding around his waist was cool. The throaty-voiced question, warm.

  He angled his head, dark hair tangling with the deep auburn curls spread all over his pillow. From behind him, Kim’s lips floated sexy and soft over the sensitive hollow beneath his ear.

  It was almost enough to make the pain obsolete.

  “I’m fine,” he lied, turning just enough to meet those lips with a nibbling caress of his own. He loved mornings like this, waking up beside Kim. Or on her. Usually some combination of the two. Hand drifting toward the creamy curve of breasts rising above the blankets, Rogan forgot all about discomfort. But when he cupped one supple mound, a surprised curse slid between his teeth.

  “What is it?” Kim asked, blinking drowsily. When she saw his face she pushed her weight up onto her elbow, the sheet falling down to hug her waist. “You’re pale.” Sleepiness fled, replaced quickly by her mothering instinct. “God, you’re sweating.” One slim hand shot out to press diagnostically against his forehead.

  “I’m not sick,” he insisted. And cursed the sudden cramp that had caused this disturbance. “Move that hand to the other head if you really want to help me out.”

  But when he laughed at the quelling face she made, fire danced cruelly along his ribcage.

  “Not sick, eh?” She ripped the sheet down, looked at the arm he’d wrapped around his middle. “Is it your stomach? Your appendix? Tell me if this hurts.”

  She started palpating his abdomen, reminding him she’d been trained as a nurse before switching gears and joining the Bureau. He grabbed her hands. “You should have mentioned you wanted to play doctor.”

  “Stop that,” she ordered, dodging him. Then she growled and straddled his legs. “I’m trying to do something here.”

  “I’m trying to do something, also.” He grasped her hips, sliding her toward the fullness of his morning erection.

  “Rogan Patrick Murphy, do I need to get out my cuffs?”

  “Seems to me we already tried that last night, but I’m game for another round if you are.”

  A laugh bubbled up, but she quickly suppressed it. Then she looked down at him with her most forbidding I’m in charge, here expression.

  It was truly amazing how much that turned him on.

  Lust surged, overriding any discomfort, and he slid into her before she could stop him.

  “Dammit, Rogan.”

  Rogan lifted his hips, watched her surprised annoyance give way to pleasure. Those sharp eyes went blurry, that creamy skin bloomed rose. She bit her lip, fingers digging into his shoulders. Bright curls framed her face, tumbling together as she picked up his rhythm. She looked like a goddess, brave and fierce, and he was her willing servant.

  “Well,” she breathed, and bent down to nip at his chin. “If you’re going to be stupid about this, you can at least let me do the work.”

  “I’m a big fan of women’s liberation.”

  Tugging his hands from her hips, she brought them to her breasts, holding them with her own as she rose, lowered. When she clenched her internal muscles his fingers jerked, mounding her flesh. He angled up to take her nipple, but she was quick about pushing him back.

  “Did I tell you to move?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “Well then, stay where I put you.”

  Cooperative by nature, Rogan considered doing just that. Good things usually happened when he went along. But the sleepless night had left him just edgy enough to be contrary.

  And besides. There were those handcuffs to think about.

  “No.” He flipped them both over, pinned her to the bed.

  Eyes flashing, she bucked once, and Rogan muffled a laugh against her throat.

  “In deference to your impaired condition, I’ll resist boxing you upside the head.”

  Smiling, Rogan lifted his head, took her earlobe between his teeth. “Impaired,” he said between nibbles. “Seems to me everything’s working just fine.” He plunged back inside her, pleased as punch with her throaty moan.

  “You’re pushing it, Murphy.”

  “That’s the idea.” His hips surged again. “Federal agent such as yourself shouldn’t have so much trouble understanding due process.”

  But he should have known better than to pat his own back.

  “Ouch. You little witch.”

  It was Kim’s turn to laugh as she forced him back over, fingers pressed deep above his collarbone. “No hocus pocus. Just some good, old-fashioned self-defense.”

  And Rogan grinned because top or bottom, what the hell was the difference?

  “Now.” Judging his mood, she reached across the bed, pulled open her nightstand. Made his mouth water when she sat up, silky red scarf dripping from her hand like liquid sin. “You have the right to remain naked.”

  “Shucks. Not that.”

  His hands were wrested back, tied to the iron bed.

  Rogan gave no thought to resisting.

  “Anything you say can and will be used against you –”

  “Breasts. Tongue.”

  “ – in a court of law.” Laughing, she leaned down to kiss him, a quick peck that left him wanting more.

  “You also have the right to an attorney –”

  “Can it be a hot chick? Because I’m really not feeling the whole naked thing with a bald guy in a three piece suit.”

  “– but in this case, handsome, three’s a crowd.”

  She moved slowly, teased and tormented, soothed and seduced. Playfulness gave way to need. When she stretched up, took him inside her, Rogan nearly wept from the pleasure. Watching his face, she submerged him in sensation, bringing him to the brink again and again.

  The iron posts were cool beneath flesh that had gone slick with sweat. Any pain he’d experienced earlier washed away on a tide of helpless delight.

  Helpless. He’d always been helpless where she was concerned.

  Her lips found his, tasted, tempted and when he began to plunder, neatly tamed. Her calm control nearly made him lose his. Muscles quivering, he watched her body flow upward. Botticelli’s Venus, rising from the sea.

  She surged, ebbed. Skimmed her nails across flesh to make him shiver.

  He wanted to tell her how beautiful she was to him, but the words never seemed to make it from his brain past his lips. So he worshipped her with his eyes.

  Light shimmered into the room, the golden hue of it setting her hair to flame.

  When he was so aroused that he started begging, she took pity, let herself go. And rode him with the skill of the temptress she hid beneath tailored suits. His kick-ass FBI agent with the siren’s face.

  The crest slammed him, stealing his breath, his body shaking as it emptied. Then he floated back, light as foam skimming across a wave.

  Kim arched, cried out, finally settling against his chest.

  Which started hurting like a sonofabitch.

  “What?” Kim asked, and Rogan realized he must have grunted.

  “Nothing.” He shifted, not about to ask her to move off. He wasn’t that
big a pansy, for God’s sake.

  But she sat up anyway, looked him in the eye. “You’re in pain,” she told him, making quick work of the scarf. “I’ve seen that particular expression on your face enough to recognize it well.”

  “It’s nothing,” he lied again, convincingly. Or at least he thought it was convincing. Hands free now, he crossed his arms. “My ribs hurt, that’s all. I must have banged them on something and not realized.”

  “Your ribs, huh?” She batted at his arms, moving them out of the way so that she could look him over. It was annoying, sometimes, that despite the fact that she was a lot smaller than him, she was well-trained enough to land him on his ass.

  Although that had its benefits, sometimes, also. This morning being a case in point.

  “This hurt?” she asked, pressing her hands against his ribcage. But the odd thing was that direct pressure didn’t seem to affect him.

  “No, I told you, it’s really no big deal.” But then out of the blue the pain was back, and it came tenfold.

  “Okay, that hurt,” he admitted, voice cracking like a little girl’s.

  “I wasn’t touching you.” She waved her hands in the air. Her blue eyes narrowed, pinning him like a bug. He shifted, uncomfortable with all that competent assessment aimed in his direction.

  Why’d he come to Atlanta, again, exactly? He just seemed to keep showing up here.

  “We’re going to the emergency room,” she decided. Then she wriggled that bottom all the way off the bed.

  “Are you crazy?” He sat up, remarkably painlessly. “I have to leave for Charleston in an hour. Dec’s off somewhere with Sadie, remember? We talked about this last night.”

  “Yes, and we also talked about how Declan blew his shift off yesterday, which was why you were supposed to be off today and tomorrow. Not covering for His Surliness again.” She snatched a bra and panty set out of one of her drawers.

  He watched, entranced, as satin slid over skin.

  “It’s not like him,” Rogan commented. And the vague sense of disquiet he’d been feeling came back to him. “Surly, I’ll grant you – Dec’s a pain in the ass – but one thing he’s not is irresponsible when it comes to his work.”

  “Yet he dropped off the earth and left you and your dad to pick up the pieces.”

  “He’s going through… something.” Rogan wished he knew what, wished he and Declan hadn’t drifted so far apart. Not that they’d drifted, really. More like his brother had climbed into a speed boat and gunned the motor.

  Kim strode purposely toward his suitcase, grabbed a pair of striped boxers from his effects and tossed them onto the bed near his feet. “Well he’ll have to go through it at Murphy’s. You’ll be busy at Emory.”

  Hearing the name of the hospital brought him back to his own problems, and he pushed his hair out of his face with growing irritation.

  “I don’t need to go to the emergency room, Kim. I need a hot shower, maybe another couple ibuprofen. A massage with a happy ending wouldn’t hurt.” He offered his most charming smile.

  Kim gave him a withering stare.

  “You had a headache half the night, you have unexplained chest pain, you’re pasty, you’re perspiring, you’re going.”

  Rogan dropped back onto the bed.

  Then somehow, just like the city he kept ending up in mysteriously, he found himself in the hospital. How it kept happening, he really didn’t know.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  IT was the steady cadence of weeping that woke Declan up. The pounding in his head, throbbing in his ribs, and knife-like pain in the hand were just accompaniment.

  Cheerful light filtered through the cabin’s dusty window. The rays bounced happily into the room, indifferent to the inhabitants’ misery.

  “Don’t,” he managed, his voice coming back to him as though through cotton. “Please don’t cry.”

  Sadie let out a sob that was half laugh and all heartbreak. Her back was turned, but he could hear her picking at the handcuff lock with a bobby pin from her hair. She’d been doing that most of the night. Unfortunately to no avail.

  “It’s no use.” Her shoulders slumped in frustration. “Seems like my life has boiled down to watching you sleep and worrying you’re not going to wake up.”

  “I told you I’m not dying.” Although considering the pain, he half wished that he would.

  Sadie shifted to face his direction and a whole host of other miseries set up camp in his chest. Her lips were tinged blue from being cold and damp. Her skin was pale as marble. And her baby-doll eyes, bruised from lack of sleep, were swollen with tears of self-flagellation.

  It pained him to see guilt riding her back this way, a cumbersome and unnecessary monkey.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, for what had to be the thousandth time since the previous night.

  And finally he understood, truly, some of the things Kathleen had told him. “Sadie, honey. Sweetheart.” With tremendous effort he hauled himself to sitting. The room spun and his stomach roiled, but he felt this was a point that lost some effectiveness if he made it while lying prostrate. “I need you to stop beating yourself up. Believe me when I tell you that what they did to me is not your fault.”

  “Okay.” She swiped at her wet cheeks with fingers scraped raw from trying to fight her way free. And her hands had just healed, damn it. “But I shouldn’t have pushed him like that. I just knew he would hurt you to hurt me, and still I went running off at the mouth. I was just so angry, and –”

  “I know, honey.” He would have held up a hand to stop her tirade, but one was chained and the other broken. “The man’s a sadistic bastard. But look on the bright side – you got us water.” He nodded toward the gallon jug of Zephyrhills that the assholes had left midway between them last night. Just out of either of their reach. Luckily Sadie had been able to get hold of one of the broken legs from the table and they’d used it to push the jug back and forth. “You also probably bought us another day or two, if we’re lucky, by pointing out that Kathleen would be expecting us to check in with her. Not to mention the fact that I needed to call Dad to arrange more ‘time off.’”

  A small smile relieved some of the tension. “I can only imagine what he must have thought, given that conversation. That moan you let slip toward the end probably gave the impression that your head wasn’t fully in the conversation, so to speak.”

  A laugh erupted, and he had to stifle another moan. “What about your conversation with Kathleen? Camping?” His tone packed a whole lot of yeah, right. “Like I’d be idiot enough to suggest that. I can just see you walking around the muddy woods in three inch heels.”

  Sadie’s answering smile held just a tinge of tired smugness.

  It was then that her genius hit him. “And you knew that Kathleen would figure that out. Not to mention the fact that you said we took my Jeep because of its suspension, when anyone who has ever ridden with me knows the suspension is about shot. God, I love you.” The words tumbled out just as easily as that. Of course it helped that he wasn’t fighting them. He hadn’t intended to get into this yet, but figured there was no time like the present.

  The present might be all they had.

  He saw Sadie’s flash of surprised disbelief, the glance that indicated she was worried about his head injury.

  “Don’t look at me like I’m demented. We’re crazy about each other, and you know it.”

  Her mouth opened and closed, a lush little fish, and a smile worked its way up from his gut. “God must have been feeling whimsical the day he put that hooker’s mouth on the face of an angel.”

  IT took Sadie a moment to realize what he’d said, as she was still reeling from that I love you. “I do not have a mouth like a hooker.” Debunking that assertion was much easier than dealing with his declaration.

  “Oh honey, yes, you do. I’m sure Eve lured Adam to the apple with a mouth just exactly like that.”

  Obviously, he was suffering from some sort of trauma-induced delirium.
Either that or he really was dying, and this was the world’s most convoluted deathbed confession.

  Her expression must have shown something along those lines, for he rolled his eyes heavenward.

  “Sadie. I’m exhausted. Cold. Hungry. Uncomfortable, to say the least. I feel like I’ve been flattened by an un-neighborly elephant, and I’m so pissed off that I’m mostly blind. But I’m okay, honey, so you can just tuck that guilt away. Believe me when I tell you it won’t do either of us any good.”

  “It’s not that easy,” she confessed “to regulate my emotions.” Under the circumstances it was a miracle she had any degree of control left at all.

  He studied her a moment quietly, then gingerly brought a knee up to rest under his cuffed hand. “Kathleen told you about Rogan’s ankle, right? About how he was injured when Max was kidnapped?”

  Sadie nodded, recalling that he’d been pushed down the stairs at the city’s aquarium so that a pedophile could abduct his cousin’s child.

  “It was a bad break, but it should have been mostly healed by now. His doctors were at a loss as to what was slowing the process; the bones just didn’t seem to be knitting right, and they finally had to re-break it and set it again. Max’s stepdad is a psychologist, and implied it was partly psychosomatic. I figured that was a bunch of bullshit until I started seeing signs of it myself. I caught him putting all his weight on his lame foot, forgetting to use his crutches, walking up the stairs at the bar when he could have sent me. He felt so damn guilty over not being able to stop Max’s abduction that he was actually refusing, albeit subconsciously, to allow himself to heal.”

  “That’s terrible,” she cried. “Why didn’t anyone set him straight?”

  “Everyone tried, believe me. We got Max back, everything turned out okay, but guilt’s a stubborn thing. Your brain might realize you’re not to blame, but your heart… like you said, it’s tough to shut off your emotions. Kim’s been great for him, though. She finally talked him into some therapy a couple months ago. And she’s patient, understanding with him, but only up to a point. After that she just sort of takes over and tells him to stop being stupid.”