“A quick one,” I answered. “I don’t know what time the bar opens.”
I heard the lock click, and then the door opened. Her hair was a wild mess, and I had the sudden urge to tangle my fingers in the curls and see if they were as soft as they looked, as soft as I remembered. Her cheek bore the faint red lines of a raised pattern, and her eyelids were still half-closed. My gaze automatically dropped, and I saw she was wearing a simple t-shirt and a pair of shorts, neither one tight or sexy, but desire still clenched my gut hard enough to hurt.
“Did you say we’re going to a bar?”
I forced my eyes up to hers. “Do you want the explanation before or after you shower?”
She sighed. “After.” She took a step back but didn’t close the door. “You can wait in here if you want. I won’t be long.”
That was a horrible idea.
“I need to get directions,” I said. “I’ll grab us some coffee too. Meet you at the rental out front?”
* * *
From the outside, The Black Cat looked like a dingy little hole in the wall, and the inside wasn’t much better. Dim lighting and a haze of smoke made it difficult to see much as Tess and I made our way inside. I was a little surprised that it was open so early, but I didn’t know what alcohol laws there were here, and considering how shady things looked, this place could’ve been operating outside of those laws anyway.
Tess walked next to me, close enough for our hands to brush, but I suppressed the urge to take hers. I wasn’t sure how she’d respond, and the last thing we needed to do here was draw attention to ourselves. People would probably still think that we were a couple, and that worked well for a cover, but we didn’t need physical contact to make it believable.
It didn’t stop me from wanting to touch her though.
We claimed a little table in a shadowed corner, and I pulled my chair closer to hers to make it look like we were angling for privacy. I had to admit, the two of us being here together was probably less conspicuous than me alone. We’d probably also have a lot less interference. There weren’t any other couples here yet, but if I was here by myself, the scantily dressed women at the fringes probably would have come over to offer me the same thing they were offering the other men here.
The waitress who came by the table looked exhausted, as if this were the end of her shift rather than the beginning. As Tess ordered a beer, I wondered if the bar was open twenty-four hours a day. I didn’t ask though. It wasn’t important, and I needed to conserve my questions. Too many and we’d alienate people. We didn’t know how long we were going to be here, and I didn’t want to ruin things simply to satisfy my curiosity.
Fourteen
Tess
When Clay had said we were going to track down a lead, I’d assumed we’d be interviewing people, interrogating suspects. At the very least, I’d thought we’d be doing something. Sitting in a corner in a dim bar, pretending to be Clay’s girlfriend while we both breathed in the stench of cigarettes, was not what I’d had in mind.
“It’s been hours,” I said finally. I spoke in English though I didn’t doubt there were plenty of people in here who could understand me. We were clearly American tourists. Using too much Spanish would be suspicious.
“The note didn’t say how long it would take,” Clay said. “Stakeouts can last for days before something useful finally pops up.”
Days?
I shook my head. “We need to start thinking of some alternate solutions. This isn’t going to work for days.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think anyone is going to believe that a couple of American tourists are going to spend days on end in a bar like this?”
His face grew tight. “Shit.”
“Yeah, shit,” I said. “Haven’t you done a stakeout before?”
“Not in a while,” he admitted, scratching at the stubble on his jaw. “And it’s generally been waiting in a car for twelve hours at a time, then being relieved by the next guys on shift.”
“We need to sell our cover,” I said. “Something to give us a reason for being here.”
“I have an idea,” he said after thinking for a minute. “I’ll be right back.”
I watched him walk across the room and tried not to think about how good his ass looked in those jeans. He leaned across the bar and said something to the bartender. The other man shook his head, but Clay reached into his wallet and pulled out a couple folded bills. After a moment’s hesitation, he took the money and pocketed it. He disappeared into the back and Clay looked over at me as he leaned on the bar. The easy grin he wore made my heart give an uneasy thump.
I was here for Brianne, I reminded myself. Brianne and Mom. This was not a vacation, and it definitely was not an excuse to fall head-over-heels for Clay again. When we were done, we’d go our separate ways, and I didn’t intend to have a broken heart when that happened.
The bartender returned and handed something to Clay. The latter came back to the table and held out a hand.
“Come with me,” he said.
I didn’t want to take his hand, but I knew it’d look strange if I didn’t. I braced myself for the shock and then slid my hand into his. As his fingers closed around mine, the electricity that ran through sent goosebumps racing along my skin. He threaded his fingers between mine like he’d done dozens of times growing up, but this time I knew his motivation behind the gesture wasn’t romantic. Still, it didn’t keep the heat from spreading through me, but it did keep my mind from going down a road I’d vowed I’d never take again.
Instead of Clay taking me outside, he led me through the doorway a few feet from our table. By the time my eyes adjusted to the darker hallway, we were going through another door and into the women’s restroom. Clay checked both the stalls, then locked the door.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Clay pulled a small bag of white powder out of his pocket, and for one terrifying moment, I wondered if he’d been lying to me again.
“I wasn’t just watching for the guy with the birthmark,” he said. “I watched everyone who’s come in and out of here since we arrived. Participating in the local economy seemed like a good way to maintain a cover.”
“You bought drugs.”
He went into one of the stalls, and a couple seconds later, the toilet flushed. When he came back out, his hands were empty. “I made us seem like a couple of American tourists who wanted to party but had to work up the nerve to make a purchase.”
I didn’t like it – and I doubted that he did either – but it was brilliant. We weren’t here to bust dealers, so if we kept our heads down and didn’t ask too many questions about where the drugs came from, we shouldn’t have any issues.
“When we get back out there, you need to pretend to be high,” he said. “We’re going to dance for a bit and see what happens. This bought us some extra time, but not all night.”
I nodded my agreement, but my brain was stuck on the word dance. I’d danced with a couple guys at various weddings, but never with Clay. I’d wanted to, imagined it numerous times as a teenager, but it hadn’t happened until now.
The song playing when we emerged from the restroom was in Spanish, but the sultry tone and rhythm transcended language. It wasn’t just a slow song. It was a slow song made for sex. If I needed any further proof of that, all I had to do was look at the three couples who’d arrived less than an hour ago. They were already dancing, their bodies plastered together without a sliver of space between them.
Clay swung me around without a word, his hands coming to rest on the small of my back. My own arms went up, hands resting on his shoulders. I was wearing two-inch heels, but that didn’t really do much when there was a foot of height difference between us. Still, it didn’t feel awkward like it should have. Instead, it felt like the entire world had narrowed down to just the two of us, moving together now as naturally as we had before.
The years fell away, and I found myself wanting to lean against him. My
head on his chest, the sound of his heart beating in my ear. What would he do if I acted on what I wanted? Would he take advantage of the situation or would he push me away?
Through the next two songs, I tried everything I could think of to keep myself distant, but my treacherous body was responding to his proximity like it had never done with anyone else before.
Desire twisted tighter and tighter in my stomach. My pussy throbbed in time with my galloping pulse. The soft cotton of my shirt rubbed against my hard nipples until everything in my body felt as if it would explode with the slightest provocation.
Clay pulled me closer, reducing the space between us to only our clothes. He lowered his head until his breath ghosted over my ear. I closed my eyes and tried not to breathe too deeply. Even the acrid smell of smoke couldn’t overpower the scent of him.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I nodded, not trusting my voice to stay steady if I spoke. I wanted him too much. For years, I’d assumed that I simply had a low sex drive. I’d had no desire to have sex with any of the men I’d met, even the ones I’d found attractive. I didn’t even masturbate that often.
Now, I knew that my previous assumption was inaccurate. It had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the man holding me. His body was the only one I wanted…and the one I could never have.
“Excuse me,” I said as I extricated myself from his embrace. “I need some air.”
I walked away at a natural pace, but it didn’t fool me. No matter the speed, I was running away.
Fifteen
Clay
What the hell just happened?
Things had been going well, I’d thought. We’d passed hours talking about nothing much, but it had been friendly conversation, almost as if we’d slipped backward in time to the place where we’d been the closest of friends. A time when I hadn’t been able to take my eyes off her and didn’t know how to tell her how I felt.
I kept making excuses to touch her. A brush of fingers as I passed her salt. Knees bumping when I turned to offer her some of my sandwich. Holding her hand. Asking her to dance.
Even under the smoke, I could smell the clean mint scent of her shampoo. She liked flowers well enough, but she’d never gone with floral shampoos or soaps. No, she’d always smelled like mint. Peppermint, more specifically. Even after more than a decade, there were certain things I couldn’t eat because they’d reminded me of her.
Our dancing wasn’t anything special. In fact, it was little more than swaying, but it wasn’t the movements that had my body at attention. It was her. It had always been her.
Maybe we were picking up where we’d left off, erasing our time apart and seeing the path we could have taken. The path we should have taken. Having her in my arms felt natural, right, and I was certain she felt the same. Then the expression on her face changed, and I asked her if she was okay.
Instead of talking to me and telling me what was bothering her, she ran. Not literally but running all the same. I went after her, our business in the bar momentarily set aside.
I reached her side just as the cab she’d flagged down pulled up in front of her. We’d driven here, but I could come back for the rental later. Losing her was a bigger risk for me than the car getting stolen or broken into.
“Hotel Santo Tomas,” she said to the driver.
I caught the door before she could close it and gestured for her to scoot over. She didn’t look happy about it, but she didn’t complain either. Something twisted inside me when she moved as far away from me as possible, and I searched for something to say to fix whatever it was I’d broken.
Finally, I sighed. “I can’t help if you won’t tell me what’s wrong.”
Silence met my statement, and she continued staring out the window. Whatever it was that had gotten between us wasn’t something she wanted to get into.
Tough shit.
I was tired of her going back and forth, fine one moment and angry the next. If I’d done something, I wanted to know what it was, and if I hadn’t, I wanted to know that too. If she was being like this and I hadn’t done anything, then I’d quit trying to go back to something that hadn’t existed in the first place.
The one thing I would give to her, however, was a quiet car ride. Even if the driver didn’t speak English, having an audience for this conversation wasn’t something I wanted any more than she did.
I followed her up the stairs, then over to her door rather than to my own. She opened the door, and I stepped forward, putting my hand on it before she could close it behind her.
“We need to talk, Tess,” I said. I didn’t speak loudly, but I was firm. “If we’re going to keep working together, we need to discuss whatever’s going on.”
I expected a resigned sigh, but what I got instead was a glare and a scowl.
“Fine,” she snapped. “You want to do this now? I suppose it’s long past time.”
I went into the room confused by her comment, but I hoped whatever it was we had to talk about would explain things. I leaned against the dresser and waited until it became clear that Tess wasn’t going to sit down. From the expectant look on her face, she was waiting too.
“You’re going to need to start, because I have no idea what’s going on,” I finally said.
She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “I’m trying to decide if you’re lying, or if what you did didn’t even register. If you’d done it so many times before that it wasn’t a big deal.”
I rubbed two fingers across my forehead. “Tess, I need you to speak plainly. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Fine,” she snapped. “You want it plain? You fucked my sister and wanted to fuck me. How’s that for plain?”
My jaw dropped, and I stared at her. I had to have heard her wrong because there was no way Tess thought I’d had sex with Brianne.
But it was the only thing that made sense.
The moment that realization hit me, everything snapped into place. Well, not everything, but enough that I could speak.
“Is that why you never contacted me after you moved? You thought I slept with Brianne, and then I kissed you that night?”
Color appeared in two spots high on her cheeks. “She told me about you and her being ‘friends with benefits,’ and then she told me that you were just trying to get in my pants. It seemed pretty pointless to try to carry on a long-distance, one-sided friendship.”
I pushed myself off the dresser, anger at Brianne burning up my frustration at Tess. No wonder things between Tess and I had been strained. Brianne had lied.
A lot.
“I didn’t have sex with Brianne.” That was the first lie I needed to set straight. “I’ve never done anything with your sister that’s remotely sexual. Neither one of us has ever been attracted to the other. She lied to you.”
Tess’s arms dropped to her sides, and her hands curled into fists. The fire in her eyes had turned her irises nearly black.
“Brianne wouldn’t do that.”
I raised an eyebrow and took a step toward her. “You think Brianne would sleep with me, but not that she’d lie to you about it?”
“Why would she?” Tess asked. “What reason would she have to lie?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I swear to you that I didn’t have sex with your sister.”
Something shifted in her this time, and I watched her expression fall. “What about me?”
I remembered now the other part of what she’d said, about how I was going to fuck her. Since she’d said it alongside the accusation about Brianne, I knew she hadn’t meant anything positive by it.
I’d fix that now too.
I reached out and brushed back some hair. “I’m not going to lie and say that I didn’t want to have sex with you back then. It was pretty much all I thought about for two years.”
Her head shot up, eyes wide with surprise.
“That night, Tess…I’d been trying to get up the nerve to tell you how I felt about you
for such a long time. I almost couldn’t believe it when I kissed you, and you kissed me back. I wanted to tell you then, but Brianne came in before I could.”
“Clay…” Her voice shook. “Why…what…”
“Why did Brianne come to get you?” I asked. “Maybe the reason she told you those things was related to why you had to leave so suddenly.”
She tilted her head, studying my face. “Why do you think we moved? I always wondered what the story was about why we left.”
“Most people knew Darius was a piece of shit. We all assumed it was something to do with him.” I didn’t tell her how many nightmares I’d had about Darius killing them.
She nodded. “He used to rough Mom up, and that night, he hit Bri too. Mom finally called the cops, but we knew he wouldn’t stay in jail for long. We had to leave right then.”
I still couldn’t believe Brianne had done this.
“Shit,” Tess breathed. “That’s why. That bitch.”
I touched her shoulder. “Care to share?”
“When she told me we were leaving, I wanted to go back to you. That’s when she told me that she’d had sex with you, and that you were just trying to get me into bed.” She shook her head, her lips in a tight line. When she looked up at me, her eyes were wet. “Bri knew the only way I’d leave you and never look back was if I thought you’d betrayed me, used me.”
“She was trying to protect you,” I said softly.
“She did a shit job of it. I lost you both that day. I never forgave her for what I thought she did.”
I moved closer and brushed my thumbs underneath both eyes, ready to catch some of the tears that threatened to escape. “When we find her, the three of us are going to have a talk. That’s something to look forward to, right? Getting to yell at your sister?”
She laughed, a weak, watery sound, but it was better than her crying. “I’m sorry, Clay.”
“For what?” Any anger or frustration I’d had toward Tess had vanished. What had happened was Brianne’s fault, whatever her reasoning. All I wanted to do now was take care of Tess, touch her, taste her.
Finding Brianne: New Pleasures Book 4 Page 7