Running to Love 4
Done
Greg Jackson made Lacey Munroe his own, and she loves her dominant cop without reservation. Their world is turned upside down when Greg is traumatized. He retreats in the face of Lacey's patient support, and she finally accepts his rejection and leaves, harboring a secret.
No longer enabled, Greg is forced to seek professional help. He accidentally runs into Lacey and is brought to his knees by what has happened to her. He resolves to make amends, and she hates him for it, fearing he is making penance and will leave when she is back on her feet.
Lacey embarks on her own healing, and Greg declares that he will wait for her always. She reaches out to him during a crisis, and it could be the beginning of a new life together. Will they be able to overcome their turbulent past and find love again?
Genre: BDSM, Contemporary
Length: 51,301 words
DONE
Running to Love 4
Allyson Young
EROTIC ROMANCE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Erotic Romance
DONE
Copyright © 2012 by Allyson Young
E-book ISBN: 978-1-61926-916-3
First E-book Publication: July 2012
Cover design by Harris Channing
All cover art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
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DEDICATION
Thank you to my “first” editor on this series, Alex O’Brien who deciphers my Canadian idioms and appreciates the emotion behind the erotica.
And to three wonderful women I met at RAGT2012: Melanie and Tracy and Julie, who like the idea of smut with a message. Many, many happy years of reading!
DONE
Running to Love 4
ALLYSON YOUNG
Copyright © 2012
Prologue
Lacey Munroe lay on her side facing into the darkness, staring unseeingly, fighting tears. They weren’t tears of pain and sadness anymore. They were tears of hurt and disappointment and finally, of anger. One couldn’t feel so sad, and lost, and guilty without anger finally rising to counter those crappy emotions. Lacey believed it kept her from going crazy and giving into the hopelessness. Anger gave a person purpose, or at least distracted them from feeling horrible. Lacey was finished with feeling that way. Greg’s bulk lay just inches away from her in their bed, but he may as well have been on the moon. She could only vaguely feel the warmth and the strength of him despite their proximity, such was the actual distance of their separateness. He breathed evenly, deep in slumber, and Lacey knew it was because of the sleeping pills he had taken. He hadn’t willingly touched her since that fateful night. Lacey remembered every moment of when he had burst through the door of the home they shared together, her memory stuttering forward like a black-and-white movie, frame by frame, scenes that further kept her awake and watchful. She could only wonder at what Greg thought about, had nightmares about, because he wouldn’t share with her.
Chapter One
Three months earlier…
“Lacey!” Greg’s shout, his very tone, had struck stark and utter fear into her heart. She had jumped up from where she was working on her laptop and run pell-mell from her makeshift office, coming to a screeching halt at the sight that met her eyes. Greg was wild-eyed, his thick blond hair disheveled and his face etched with pain and shock, features stark, his cheekbones seeming to strain at his skin. But it was his clothing that caught her attention the most. His left shirt sleeve was missing, torn right off at the shoulder seam, and he was covered in what could only be blood, blotches and sprays of it. Lacey could smell the stuff, copper-like, bitter, and she nearly retched as he pulled her against him. She could feel his big frame trembling, and it scared her to death.
She spoke into his chest, her cheek rubbing against something ominously crusty and damp. “What happened? Are you all right? Greg!”
He had dragged her up his big body and taken her mouth in a hard, bruising kiss, nearly sobbing his breath into her. Lacey had tried hard not to struggle, wanting to ease whatever was hurting him so badly, but she couldn’t breathe, and his hands were bruising her upper arms. When she could tear her mouth away she begged, “Please, Greg, let go. Tell me what’s wrong!”
Greg had stared down into her eyes, his own dark-blue irises now nearly black with either arousal or rage. Lacey shuddered and fought the urge to flee with everything she had.
“I need you, baby,” Greg rasped. “Now.” And he set her on her feet with a thump.
She stood mute, trained to accept him whenever he needed her, and watched him strip his bloody shirt off and drop it to the floor, then kick off his shoes. She couldn’t see any evidence of a wound that would explain the blood, and her frantic heartbeat dialed back a fraction, although her stomach remained tied in knots. Ever the cop, ever mindful of safety, even given his obvious and very real agitation, Greg had removed his gun from its holster and placed it high on top of the hutch, out of sight behind the raised edge, before dropping his pants and underwear. But it had all been done by rote. His cock jutted from its nest of light-brown hair, long an
d hard and glistening, the head an angry purple. It seemed to beckon to her, and Lacey made to drop to her knees, but Greg impatiently pushed her to the couch until her belly bumped the edge and pressure from his big hand on the small of her back bent her over it. He pulled up the hem of her robe, gently though abruptly kicking her ankles apart and stepped between them, shoving his cock up high and hard into her pussy with no preamble. Lacey bit her lip against the unprecedented invasion and held still while he thrust deeply several times before coming with an agonized groan, collapsing on her and pinning her with his weight. She concentrated on getting tiny breaths, and in time he pushed up and away, slipping from her, his ejaculate flooding out and down her thighs. He hadn’t used a condom, and she didn’t use alternate forms of birth control. Such had been his blind need for her that her dominant man had lost control. It was the last time he had needed her.
He said quietly, “I’m going to shower, and then I’ll tell you what happened.”
She had straightened, turning to watch him walk slowly and unsteadily to their bedroom and adjoining master bath and then made herself move to pick up his clothing. She emptied his pockets and pulled the belt, complete with holster, from its restraining loops, piling all the detritus on the coffee table before wadding everything else up and carrying it to the kitchen trash. She stripped off her robe as an afterthought and dropped it on top of Greg’s clothes before pulling the bag out of the container and tying it off. She tossed it outside onto the deck and then allowed herself to consider what had just happened. Something terrible for sure, but Greg hadn’t been injured. Lacey closed her eyes and sent up a guilty, thankful prayer that her man hadn’t been the one to bleed. She then went to the guest bath to clean up, wincing as she washed her bruised labia. Greg had been nearly mindless, almost brutal in his fucking, and the additional bruises on her arms meant careful clothing choices for the next week or so. The long, red tapered marks that wrapped around her biceps were already turning blue. Lacey shrugged. She’d had worse, although those bruises and other marks were always a result of highly erotic passionate games that walked the line between pleasure and pain with remarkable balance. But tonight hadn’t been about her. She pulled a fine-lawn nightgown over her head and found another robe by the steam shower door.
She had been working on an account she brought home with her, ready for bed, waiting for Greg, when he had made such an unprecedented entry. Lacey recognized the signs that she was slipping into a form of denial, protecting herself from Greg’s apparent trauma. She had been adept at evading unpleasant things in her history, and didn’t want to continue being evasive. They needed to talk if he was in a place to do so. She went to the en suite bathroom door.
Greg was standing in front of the vanity, fresh from the shower, a towel wrapped carelessly around his narrow hips, his hands on either side of the sink as he leaned his weight down on them. He was visibly shaking, eyes closed, and Lacey impulsively went to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. Greg reared up and backed her into the shower door, cracking her head against the glass and knocking the breath out of her when her spine hit the attached towel rack. He’d instantly snatched her up and carried her to the bed, setting her down carefully on the edge, rubbing his hands up and down her arms, and then gently touching the back of her skull.
“Are you okay? God, Lacey, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were there. I just reacted. Baby, are you all right?”
Lacey managed a shaky breath and a smile for him. He knelt beside her and dropped his head onto her lap. She stroked his wet hair and waited.
“KarLynn nearly died tonight,” he finally said.
Lacey tensed. “Oh God, Greg. What happened?”
He sighed and pushed up to sit beside her, staring down at the carpet. “We were called out to a homicide. The scene was secured, the usual. Except the perp came back, and KarLynn thought he was a gawker and intercepted him. You know how she gets.”
Lacey nodded. KarLynn Price was an obnoxious, malicious bitch, who treated everyone she met with abrasiveness that bordered on not-so-casual cruelty. And God help the person who got in her sights for some slight, imagined or not. No one wanted to partner with her, but Greg was the most laid-back of the detectives and had also drawn the short straw. Somehow he was able to let KarLynn’s vindictive and bitter attitude roll off of him. Lacey suspected he tuned her out most of the time and that KarLynn secretly lusted after him, so their partnership had endured. She had met KarLynn at one of the staff parties, although never at the club, and once had been enough. The fact that the other woman had never been invited to the club spoke volumes. No one in their right mind would trust such a nasty person with their secrets or well-being. The only redeeming quality the other woman possessed was her connection to the city councilor who lobbied for more money and better equipment for the force to quiet his niece’s whining.
“Anyway, KarLynn bitched at him and got a little physical to get him out the door. He pulled this huge fucking knife out and stuck her with it. He must have had it in his sleeve, and it was still bloody from before, from the first vic. I rushed him, but he got her again in the neck right up where the little vertebrae are and ran out the door. I had a choice between staying to help my partner or chasing the asshole…” Greg’s tirade trailed off, and Lacey again waited. KarLynn was still alive, so there was more, and it was worse.
He continued, “I ripped off my sleeve and packed it into her gut wound and used her scarf to try and stop the bleeding at her neck. He got her spinal cord, nicked it, and chances are she’ll be paralyzed from the neck down. Once the paramedics arrived, I found out that the asshole also took out a kid, Lacey, a little kid, right when he hit the street, and then the fucker fell in front of a bus.”
“It was a gong show. High on PCP, a horse tranq I didn’t know was still a drug of choice for Christ’s sake! He probably didn’t even know what the hell he was doing. Probably wouldn’t have remembered later. Shit.”
Lacey carefully put her arms around him again, shifting on the bed to do so. Greg leaned into her for a moment and then dragged himself to his feet. He pulled off the towel and started to rummage through the middle dresser drawer. “I have to go back to the station. IA wants a statement, those pricks, and then I need to go see KarLynn.”
“I’ll come with you,” she offered, jumping up to head to the closet for some clothes.
“Thanks, baby, but it won’t work. They won’t let you sit in at the station and KarLynn, well, she’s kind of insane right now. More than usual. I think I’ll take this one by myself.”
Lacey obediently curled up on the bed and watched Greg dress quickly, and then run a comb through his hair. He brushed a kiss across her lips and left. And things hadn’t been even close to the same since.
Oh, Lacey knew that Greg suffered from survivor’s guilt, and guilt that he hadn’t protected his partner, guilt over the child who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was a dominant, competent, able man, and things had been beyond his control that particular time. Greg was always in control and had taken a metaphorical shot to both his ego and his sense of self. Probably the worst thing for him was the realization that he would have willingly left KarLynn to bleed to death rather than sacrifice a child, had he but had the knowledge. Greg was in an impossible situation, not to mention being placed on desk duty until the investigation had run its course. He made himself visit KarLynn each and every day, and Lacey believed that the other woman would see it as her due and the best form of some kind of weird revenge. She didn’t much care how cold that made her seem. The bitch had brought this on herself and taken Greg down with her.
He had become a different person overnight. Her big strong, capable man had been diminished somehow, not that it changed her love for him. She admired him for being able to still feel, still be affected by the terrible things he witnessed every day in his work. But he withdrew from her both emotionally and physically and wouldn’t let her in, even as she waited for him to do so, patiently, never p
ushing him, just as she always had done, for he always wanted to come to her first. It was like living with a stranger, and nothing she did changed that fact. Greg got up in the morning, hit the shower, shaved, dressed, and took a travel mug of coffee with him out the door. He was exquisitely polite to her, refusing breakfast, assuring her he was fine, thanking her for doing his laundry, and all those things set her teeth on edge because they went on and on with no variation.
Lacey went to her accounting job every day, came home and made dinner, a meal Greg now rarely made it home for, although he would thank her nicely when he did show up to push the food around his plate, and urge her not to worry about cooking for him given his erratic schedule. A schedule that should have been predictable. It was as if he was hiding an affair from her, and perhaps he was, except it didn’t involve sex, and his partners were grief and guilt. She never knew what he was working on anymore and only learned about the fact that he had returned to active duty because her friend, Alex, had told her. Alex was married to Jeff and Devon, two of Greg’s cop friends, and Lacey had met her at the club over a year and a half earlier. Lacey had gone to see Alex some weeks after she had delivered her baby, taking the infant boy a gift, and had hoped to talk with Alex about Greg and babies both.
Chapter Two
“Come in, Lacey!” Alex’s lovely face looked even more beautiful with the glow of motherhood, although there were dark smudges under both of her silvery-gray eyes, and her pale-blonde hair was drawn carelessly into a simple knot on her neck. “The little tyrant is sleeping right now, so this is a wonderful time for us to have coffee. It’s either that or I’m going to have a nap!”
Done [Running to Love 4] (Siren Publishing Classic) Page 1