by Trent Evans
He paused, looking at her, studying her face as if it were the first time he’d laid eyes on her. Her hot tears tracked down her cheeks, and one thought blared in her mind over and over as she watched him.
Say it! For God’s sake, say it!
His immensely strong hands pulled her still higher, giving her a shake again, and she was crying, even as she reached for him, twisting her fingers in the lapels of that tan shirt that looked so good on him.
“You have to go, I know that, but I also know you’ll go taking a part of me, the only good part of me that’s left. You go. Take it! Keep it and remember me as someone better than I am…”
“Ford, say it, please. Just say it. Let me hear it!”
Tears welled in his eyes, but they didn’t fall, his voice thick, ragged now. “I don’t have to say it, because you already know. You already feel it — the same thing we both feel. This is wrong. All of it!”
His lips were against her forehead now, and she wept, hot tears scalding her skin, the despair, the hope, the longing for him spilling out of her in great floods now. “Please, Ford, please…”
“I’m wrong for you. You deserve someone, something… better. Go now, while you still can.”
“I don’t want to go! But I…” She looked up at him, his image distorted by her tears.
He let her arms go then, and took her face in his hands, his thumbs smearing the tears across her cheek, wetting her lips with them. “If you stay, I have to have you. All of you, Falon, every atom of you. You understand? Nobody could want that, not even you.”
“I could — and I would.”
He smiled, such great sadness in his eyes that she began to weep once more. So much hurt. How she wanted to take it all away for him, show him that there was still something good for him in this life.
“The worst part though, is that I want all of this, all of you, and yet I have to let you go. I have no choice.”
“Why!” She beat at his chest with her fists, laying her head against the hard, cold buttons of his shirt, despair threatening to drown her now. After all they’d done, the deep connection, her surrender to him in every way a woman could, it was still not enough.
It would come to nothing.
“Because I love you. I love you, Falon Moore.”
She looked up at him, not quite believing what she’d just heard, the pain and odd sense of relief plain in his dark gaze now, his smile one of rueful resignation. She wasn’t letting him off though.
“Now, you listen to me. I may be just a simple girl, but I know at least one thing: what we had — what we have — is real. It means something. It means everything, you big dumb cop.” She wiped her tears away, and touched Ford’s lips with her wet fingers. He kissed them with a gentleness that made fresh tears splash down her face. “I don’t care what I am to you — what you’ll make me into. I don’t care how much pain I have to endure, what ordeals you have planned for me. It doesn’t change one thing, the only fucking thing that matters.” She swallowed, hoping her voice wouldn’t break. “I love you. I’ll always love you — even if you send me away. Neither one of us is alone anymore, Ford — we’ve found what we both needed. Now we have to be smart enough not to let it go!”
She buried her face against his chest again, sobbing, and he held her in silence. She had no idea if anyone watching them out there on the street could hear, if anyone cared. Only his arms, only her man, her Master. That was what she cared about, more than anything in the world.
Finally, her great torrents of tears dried to a trickle, and he gently raised her chin. His gorgeous eyes, as always, holding such warmth, such dark promise, gazed down upon her. Then he smiled at her, touching the corner of her mouth.
“Let’s go home.”
Chapter 25
Sitting at his table once more, Ford tried to swallow down the pleasing richness of the dark roast, the hot coffee warming his belly but doing nothing to wash away the bitter taste of defeat, a helplessness as alien to him as it was infuriating.
Somehow he’d known it would come down to this. The secrets of White Valley were as old and immovable as the Cascades themselves. What was one man — a seriously flawed man at that — going to even hope to accomplish against arrayed forces he could never so much as touch, let alone bring to justice?
That was the worst of it too. The one time he wasn’t confused about the right path… was the exact one completely closed to him.
If identifying Corddray for what he truly was held a sort of satisfaction, it was fleeting. What good did it do when there was so much Ford didn’t yet know? None of it would matter though if he couldn’t keep Falon safe. That came first, even if it cost him everything else.
The Council was closed to him now, that much was clear — even if Von was on his side. The power of two was all it took in White Valley. It always had been thus, and it always would be, long after Ford Mathis was gone.
“So, what the fuck are you supposed to do now?” Ford’s bitterness crept into his voice. “Civilian.”
He’d been a cop his entire life. Now? What was he, really, without that badge?
Then the front door opened, and Falon appeared, her mincing gait —all her ankle chain allowed her — making him smile as she moved toward him. He’d never tire of having Falon under his thumb, his captive.
Just as much as his heart was captive to her.
Mushy idiot.
He’d had her outside gardening, releasing her hands for the task, but refusing her request to remove the ankle chain. She’d never know how much pleasure he took in keeping her hobbled like that. She was his, in every sense — and he enjoyed reinforcing that fact in the most concrete ways imaginable.
Dressed in nothing but a snug black t-shirt, and shorts so brief, her tanned thighs seemed to stretch all the way to heaven, she cut a fetching sight rubbing the dirt from her knees. The shirt was one of the several he’d promised to have made for her. Printed on the front, blatant across the well-presented swell of her full breasts, was a single word: MY.
When she turned to close the door behind her, the words on the back of the shirt were revealed, in the same blocky, white letters.
GOOD GIRL
Setting his coffee down, he reached for her, and she came to him, her eyes bright. But rather than drop into his lap the way he so loved, she took his hands with a nervous smile.
“Almost done with the planters? I’ve got more out back, when you’re ready. Nice to have a little gardening wench around the place.”
“I, um — I think you’ll need some bone meal for the roses.”
Ford looked at her in silence, and she winced slightly, quickly adding, “Sir.”
He rather thought she forgot that on purpose now. Any excuse to feel his hand on her ass, painful or not.
Insatiable.
She glanced back toward the front door, and he squeezed her hand. “What is it?”
“There’s… someone here.”
Ford tried not to spring up, not wanting to frighten her, but he was on his feet in an instant anyway, Falon’s eyes going wide.
“Who is it?” he said, striding toward the safe. He hadn’t really thought that they’d start trying to make his life difficult so soon, but part of him wasn’t surprised. Perhaps it was the new Sheriff coming to arrest him?
Over my dead fucking body.
He opened the black painted steel gun safe, pulling out the Beretta and stuffing it in the back of his jeans. Just in case.
“Recognize them?” he asked, walking to the door.
“Two dark SUVs. Maybe Mercedes.”
The only person he knew who drove — or more accurately, was driven in — a Mercedes was…
“You stay here,” he said, waving her toward the table. “I’m locking this behind me. Nobody comes in, okay?”
“Yes, sir.” Falon’s eyes betrayed, for just an instant, the same rising unease Ford felt. Then it was gone. “I’m sure it’s fine… but be careful.”
Giving her a wi
nk, hoping to project a confidence he didn’t feel, he walked out onto the porch.
The SUVs had parked diagonally across the driveway, one to the left, the other to the right, blocking any hope of exit. Their windows were tinted an opaque black, the sort he always hated on vehicles he pulled over on traffic stops.
The passenger door of one of the trucks opened, and Leigh Harcourt stepped out. Her gray-blonde hair was pinned up, exposing her tanned neck and back. She was well-preserved, despite fifty being in her rearview mirror. Wearing an elegant deep green wrap with a small matching jacket, she looked set for a night on the town — or a board meeting. Perhaps both.
Two men also exited, the requisite black-suited guards, one taking station at the front of each SUV. A familiar and friendly force when he was still Sheriff, the guards projected a decidedly icier mien now, the mirrored lenses of their sunglasses catching the late afternoon sun, rendering them into ovals of orange fire.
“Surprised you didn’t send whoever you replaced me with. Anders?”
Leigh only gazed at him, one long finger tapping against an elegant clutch purse she held in one hand. “I didn’t come here for that, Ford.”
“This isn’t right. Any of it, not even by our standards. But you’re just going to let it lie, aren’t you?”
Leigh looked across the river for a moment. “Miles left town this morning for Seattle. I don’t expect we’ll see him back here for… a while.”
“Does that mean he’s not welcome here anymore?”
Leigh’s smile held a note of resigned sadness he knew only too well. “I think you know the answer to that. Some things we can’t change. Right and wrong matter less than seeing the world for how it is, distasteful or not. Fair or not. Accommodations are made where they must be. It’s always been that way here, and you know it.”
“You can’t let this happen, you just—”
Her eyes flashed the cold calculation she only showed when it was needed. “You should remember where you stand, Ford Mathis — and be careful about telling me what I can’t do.”
Regarding him for a moment, she stepped closer, opening her purse. She pulled out his badge, the metal catching the waning sun. “I think you forgot this in the Council chamber. Your gun too — but I don’t carry those. Deputy Anders has it waiting for you at the station.”
When he didn’t move, she hissed at him. “For Christ’s sake, Ford, take it.”
“What the hell is this?” Reluctantly, he held out his hand and she dropped the metal star onto his palm.
“This is your resignation officially not being accepted.” Her lips quirked into a half smile. “We both know you’re not even close to being done yet. Get back to work.”
“It’s not that simple, Leigh.”
She tilted her head, meeting his gaze for one long moment, then turned on her heel, and headed back toward the waiting Mercedes, the gravel crunching under her high heels.
Before she slipped inside, she looked back one last time.
“Nothing here is simple, Sheriff. Nothing. You may be infuriating sometimes, but this town needs someone who doesn’t quit.” She flicked a glance toward the house behind him. “You didn’t give up on her. Don’t give up on this.”
She got in the truck then, closing the door behind her, the goons following, the engines starting with twin roars. Leigh’s window slid down slowly, and her long, slender fingers drummed upon the top edge of the glass as she peered out at him. “Ask yourself something, Sheriff. Have you discovered the disease — or just the symptom?”
“Where are you going?”
She donned her own pair of sunglasses, her smile pure steel. “Seattle. You’re not the only one who’s got work to do now.”
# # #
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Other Books by Trent Evans
Published by Shadow Moon Press
A Message of Love
What She’s Looking For
Captive, Mine
(with Natasha Knight)
Taking The Human
The Chronicles of Muurland Series:
The Fall of Lady Westwood
The Dominion Trust Series:
Becoming Theirs
Her Troika
Expecting Surrender
Quinton’s Crucible
The Valley of Surrender Series:
Maintenance Night
Maintenance Week
Lacey’s Surrender
Falon’s Captivity
Published By Stormy Night Publications
The Doctor and The Naughty Girl
What The Doctor Ordered (Box set)
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