by Shayla Black
“You might be gorgeous and have the oral prowess of a god, but you’ve got the sensitivity of a doorknob.”
Thorn smiled. “An oral god, huh?”
“You are totally missing the point. A woman can’t relax for a man who doesn’t know her name and doesn’t care that he doesn’t know. She wants to be cared for, cared about, feel that she—”
“Some women just want the orgasm, baby. I find plenty who are more than willing to forego the touch-feely shit in favor of a really good fuck. So all your little speech tells me is that you’re Cinderella waiting for Prince Charming.” He rolled his eyes. “This ain’t my department.”
Before Brenna could question what that meant, Thorn climbed off the bed, grabbed the cell phone at his waist, and stalked out of the bedroom.
Fuck.
“That went fabulously,” Thorn muttered to himself, stabbing numbers into the keypad of his cell phone.
He was hard as hell and in over his head. Normally, a woman with her problems, suggesting he learn to be sensitive? He’d be gone—in a hurry. But this one…no. Not yet, anyway. She’d challenged him, and he planned to deliver.
The way she smelled aroused the fuck out of him. That lily-fair skin contrasted with her honey-brown hair. It fell in waves to her waist and framed her small, curved body. The effect made her look like some kind of fairy, fragile, sensual, mysterious. Not his usual type—he liked women who looked like they loved sex. The loud, obvious ones. But this woman had great tits and hips, both of which he adored. The taste of her bare pussy on his tongue drove him wild. The thought of fucking her sent his hormones into overdrive. He had to, at least once. But it was clear he was going to need reinforcements to do that.
On the fourth ring, he heard a froggy, groggy voice. “Hello?”
Thorn paused. “You sleeping or fucking?”
“Thorn?”
“No, it’s the tooth fairy.”
“Whaddya want. I’m sleeping.”
“Get your ass over here.”
“It’s…” Thorn heard some scrambling on the other end of the phone, “one fifty-four in the morning. What’s up?”
“I need your help.”
Cameron sighed. “Where are you?”
“Curtis’s bungalow in the Foothills.”
“You’re there with Brenna?”
Brenna. So that was her name. It was pretty, like her. It fit. When he came deep inside her, it would roll off his tongue.
“Yeah.”
“Do I want to know why you’re there with her in the middle of the night?”
“Probably not, since I tied her down to the bed and stripped her bare against her will. So you’d better come stop me, Detective.”
With a chuckle, Thorn hung up. That would get Saint Cameron over here in a hurry. And since he already lived on the north side of town, he’d be here quickly.
Goody, the night was just getting started.
Chapter Four
Cameron pounded on the door to Curtis’s love shack. The unseasonably crisp fall wind whipped under the shirt he hadn’t bothered to button and around the bare toes he’d slid into sandals as he’d grabbed his keys and run out the door.
What the hell was Thorn up to?
After a long minute, the door opened. Cameron fought the wind to shove his hair out of his face and behind his neck. He really meant to have it cut and kept forgetting.
There stood Thorn with a tight smile, an impatient tapping of his palm against his thigh…and a hard-on that strained his leathers.
So Brenna had the same effect on Thorn. Cameron didn’t know whether to laugh or pity the poor bastard.
“What do you mean you tied her up and stripped her down against her will?” he asked, barging his way inside.
“Just what I said. We made a deal—if I could make her come, she would tell me everything she knows.”
Not knowing Brenna well, Cameron couldn’t say for sure that Thorn was lying, but it sounded fishy.
“If you couldn’t?”
“I’d leave her alone. But we both know I can’t do that until we have some info on Curtis. We have to run the bastard down, and Brenna is our only lead.”
With the trial in five days? Yeah, he was feeling the heat. Curtis had skipped town and knew a thousand scumbags who would provide him a million places to hide. He didn’t want to play hardball with Brenna. Playing Thorn’s game, whatever it was, might cost him his badge. But when he looked into the faces of the slavers’ victims—old men and women forced to labor in fields or over sewing machines until they dropped, or young boys and girls stripped of their innocence in cruel brothels catering to the depraved—he was determined to give this case his all. Husbands and wives, parents and children, had all been separated, their lives forever changed. The American dream shattered because of greedy pricks like Lawton and his boss, Julio Marco.
Lawton had agreed to turn evidence for the state. The feds wouldn’t comment on the condition of their case, so Cam wasn’t about to leave any stone unturned, just in case they had a big bag of nothing. His job was to make sure the state’s case stuck like Super Glue. That meant hunting down Lawton. Brenna was his only hope at this point.
It sucked when his job played hell with his ethics.
“Agreed,” Cam told Thorn reluctantly. “What do you have so far?”
“Shit. Nothing about Lawton. She keeps swearing she knows nothing.”
“You’re not buying it?”
“Why would Lawton let some woman he barely knows and isn’t fucking stay in his little mountain hideaway?”
“He wouldn’t.” Cameron sighed. “Anything else?”
“About her body, plenty. She’s a hot little piece with a bare pussy that tastes like ambrosia. But something’s wrong, man. She doesn’t just come when stimulated like other women. She’s looking for someone sensitive. That’s where you come in.”
Cameron frowned as a picture of Thorn’s head between Brenna’s slender thighs popped into his head. He wished he could say it disturbed him, but damn it, no. It aroused him. He’d never been the voyeur type and was never sexually fixated during cases. It had to stop.
“You think I’m going to arouse information out of her?” he asked.
“Yeah, do that sensitive shit you do best, she’ll fold like a lawn chair and start singing like a good churchgoer on Sunday.”
“Did you try straightforward questioning, without the fondling?”
Thorn nodded. “I wasn’t getting anything out of her. Then I got…distracted. Besides, interrogation isn’t my thing. I cuff ‘em and bring ‘em in. I leave all that evidence and confession stuff to you cop types.”
Cameron shook his head. Yes, Thorn’s ADD impatience would be an impediment to a good investigation. His insistence on living his life through his dick would be a real issue when it came to questioning beautiful women like Brenna.
“All right, let me see her. I’m not touching her to get information out of her, Thorn. Sex isn’t a bet or a game or a deal. It’s people sharing their bodies and emotions, being close to each other—”
“Oh, vomit. You two are going to get along great.”
Thorn stomped deeper into the dark house. At least he’d had the foresight not to flip on lights, just in case one of Julio Marco’s hit men was looking for an easy target.
Down an adobe-tiled path that bisected the kitchen and family room area, Cameron followed Thorn. A wall signaled a dead end, then Thorn turned left and opened the door.
Soft yellow light glowed in every corner of the room, falling over Brenna’s bound, naked body, exposing every inch he’d been imagining since meeting her. Immediately, the nagging erection he’d been trying to shake for the last fifteen hours returned with a vengeance.
Damn. He had to get his mind off his cock, and what he’d love to do with it to Brenna.
“Too much light in here. If our friend Julio has one of his assassins—”
“Covered,” Thorn cut in, pointing to the floor-to-ceiling
windows to his right that overlooked the backyard. “Metal shutters cover the windows. No light in or out.”
Good. One less thing to worry about. Except now he had nothing to focus on except Brenna Sheridan, her naked body, and how badly he wanted to be inside her.
“Detective,” she cried. “He broke in, tied me up in my sleep, and fondled me without my permission.”
“Not exactly true. I used the key under the flowerpot on the front porch to let myself in, and I touched you with your permission—more or less. I asked you if you’d tell me what I wanted to know if I made you come, and you said yes.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
“How was I supposed to know that? You were wet as hell when I touched you. As far as I’m concerned, our bargain still stands.”
“Even if it did,” Brenna argued, “you didn’t make me come.”
Thorn flushed red. “I came damn close. Besides, you didn’t specify that I personally had to make you come, just that I had to make sure it happened. Cam will take care of the technicalities.”
Cam sighed and opened his mouth to refute Thorn.
“He can’t make me come, either,” Brenna shot back.
Normally, Cameron would let such a comment slide off his back. He didn’t have the chest-beating, macho caveman instincts Thorn possessed. But somehow, Brenna’s bald statement riled him a touch.
“Actually, I think, under normal circumstances, I could. I’m a patient man willing to take the time to discover what my partner needs during sex.” He cocked his head and stared at Brenna. An odd sort of longing crossed her face. He remembered the night by the pool, watching her frustrated attempt to orgasm. “But what you’re talking about is deeper, right?” He crossed the room to sit on the bed beside her. “Have you ever had an orgasm?”
Brenna flushed twenty shades of red then turned away.
He took that to mean no.
An orgasm deficit to most would not be a huge tragedy. Through most of high school and college, Cameron had gone without. Too many people underfoot for self-pleasure. In his mostly white school, too many folks had been unwilling to get naked with someone half Apache, half Hispanic. In Arizona, that century-and-a-half-year-old prejudice against Indians and Mexicans still quietly lived on in more than a handful of people.
But Brenna… Her deficit wasn’t a mere case of going without. It was an inability. Her shamed expression told him. And Cameron ached for her. What would it be like to be an adult and not know the joy of sexual satisfaction?
Tragedy.
“See? She’s frigid,” Thorn mouthed off.
Cameron whirled on him. “Has anyone ever told you what an enormous prick you are?”
Thorn grinned. “No, but I hear frequently what an enormous prick I have.”
Cameron rolled his eyes then turned back to Brenna. “Ignore him. When the phrase ‘son of a bitch’ was coined, they had Thorn in mind.”
“You’re not much better. Pinching me so hard it brought tears to my eyes.”
So he had. Totally unlike him. This stupid plot of Thorn’s wasn’t getting them anywhere, but he may be onto something.
“Key.” He held out his palm to Thorn.
“Ah, shit. Man, you’re going to uncuff her? She looks hot, bound and ready.”
She did. No refuting that. But Thorn couldn’t see the long-term benefit of uncuffing Brenna beyond the short-term benefit the view provided his dick.
“I’d hate to have to arrest you. You’d have to call your brother to bail you out.”
“Oh, hell no!” With another curse, Thorn slapped the key in Cam’s palm. “You ruin all the fun, you know that?”
“I’m the original party pooper.”
With a quick turn of his wrist and a few tugs, Brenna’s hands were free. He untied her ankles. Just as she would have leapt from the bed and reached for the robe on the floor beside it, Cameron placed a palm between her bare collarbones.
“Not just yet.” He pinned her to the bed. “I am sincerely sorry that no man has taken the time or care with you to give you the pleasure you deserve. I’m sorry you have yet to figure out how to bring yourself to orgasm.” He brushed a stray curl from her cheek. “I know it must bother you. You must feel somewhat left out and…defective.”
Tears flooded Brenna’s eyes, and Cameron sucked in a shocked breath. He’d hoped that he was close to the truth, but hadn’t imagined that he was dead on. Her tears and pained expression said, however, that he was.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “You’re not. It’s wrong for you to go on suffering needlessly. We will help you discover what you need to find fulfillment, if that’s what you want. But…” Cameron sighed, hating what he had to say next. “Thorn is right. We need your help in return. Lawton worked with a man named Julio Marco and others to traffic humans across the border and sell them into slavery. I was Lawton’s arresting officer. Thorn is his bail bondsman. We need Lawton to live up to his word to turn evidence for the state so the victims can have justice. He must come in and provide the testimony he promised. You’re our only hope of finding him.”
Brenna blinked. Tears ran down the sides of her face. Cameron hurt for her. She was clearly confused, didn’t know who to trust or what to do. He understood.
Cameron thumbed her tears away. “I would never want to hurt you. I believe we can help. In return, I hope you’re willing to help us.” He leaned down and placed a gossamer kiss across her trembling lips. “Will you?”
Sincerity. It poured from the detective’s soulful dark eyes. That, and compassion. He really understood on some level, especially the “feeling defective” part.
Under the guise of closing her eyes, she stole a quick glance. He was really perfect. How could he imagine for an instant that he was defective? Or was his flaw hidden on the inside, like hers?
What should she do? Logic shouted at her to tell them both to go to hell. Orgasms for information. Crazy! Cameron might look empathetic, but she didn’t know him well at all. And Thorn…he’d been treating her like a piece of ass all night.
On the other hand, why had she traveled from Texas to Tucson? It wasn’t to patch things up with Curtis precisely. Their relationship was likely beyond redemption, and she’d begun to realize that he was more than happy with the status quo. But she had come here to find some peace and closure about this part of her life, in the hopes that when she met a great guy, she could be “normal” and have a decent sex life with him. Her inability to orgasm had already cost her one meaningful relationship. It was only a matter of time before it cost her more. Lord knew her self-confidence had already taken a beating.
In a way, it was a plus that Thorn and Cameron were relative strangers. If she tried three in a bed with any of the local yokels back in Muenster, her reputation would be ruined. Didn’t matter that it was the twenty-first century, small towns were timeless when it came to scandal.
Glancing up again, she caught Thorn’s expression—and frowned. He actually looked somewhere between curious and confused. That was a whole lot better than his confident jackass expression, the one that made her certain that Thorn thought all he had to do was show her his dick and her problems would be solved.
Now, he watched the way Cameron caressed her cheek. When his incredibly blue gaze connected with hers, it was like a punch to the stomach, taking the breath right out of her.
“Brenna, I know you don’t have any reason to agree, other than the fact we could help each other. I’d help you even if I didn’t need the information. That much confusion and pain just doesn’t belong on such a beautiful face.”
Unless the detective dabbled in acting, he meant those words. Wow… Why say no? They were both gorgeous, and having two men at once sounded like a most arousing fantasy. Maybe they could help her solve her problem. Yes, she knew she was probably grasping at straws, but she already had been when she traveled out here, hoping that something in her interaction with Curtis would help heal her. Maybe what she needed was hands-on therapy. She cou
ld do worse than two gorgeous hunks devoted to helping her achieve orgasm.
Why are you hesitating? a voice inside her asked.
Good question.
“A-all right. But there are a few rules.”
Cameron smiled softly. “Name them.”
Brenna shot a glare at Thorn. “No tying me down without my permission.”
Thorn growled but Cameron grabbed him by the shoulder and squeezed. Hard. The bounty hunter winced.
“Goddamn you, Cameron. You know I got shot there a few months ago,” he cursed, pulling away.
“Just so we understand each other. Brenna is laying out boundaries, and we’re agreeing.”
“She wants to take all the fucking fun out of everything…but whatever.”
Cam sighed as Thorn rolled his shoulder with a glare. Then he turned back to Brenna. “What else?”
“Condoms all around.”
“Of course,” Cameron soothed.
“No shit. Like I’d want to be bareback wherever Dudley Do-Right has been.”
With an inky brow raised, Cam turned to Thorn. “You’re the one with the drive-thru sex life. I worry about where you’ve been.”
“This is such fucking—”
“Rule three: you two stop fighting. I’ll never relax enough to orgasm if I have to listen to you two quibble like old ladies.”
They turned to her, wearing almost identical puzzled expressions. Brenna barely held in a laugh.
“Old ladies?” they challenged in unison.
She merely nodded. “Last, it stops when I say so.”
Cameron nodded, and beside him, Thorn scoffed. “Look, I may be a prick but stop means stop. I’m not into rape.”
Handy information. Brenna had wondered if Thorn had any morals. “Good. We’re agreed then.”
“Absolutely.”
“Hell, yeah,” Thorn added.
“I’d like to make a request,” Cameron said. At Brenna’s nod, he continued on. “If either of us does anything you dislike, you tell us immediately. We don’t want you gritting your teeth through any of this.”