by Mary Calmes
Chilly got stuck between the window ledge and the chair, wedged so that his legs crossed and he looked like Tom Hanks in The Money Pit, when he’s stuck in the floor in a carpet.
He got up on his back legs and attacked Hannah’s stuffed bunny, Bunny (so original), and made her shriek.
He deflated Kola’s Spider-Man ball with his claws and knocked down the fan in the kitchen. All of it done within the first hour of him living with us.
Hannah decided she wanted a puppy. Kola thought we should set him free. Sam told me if I took him back maybe I could get a refund.
I told them all if I took him back, he was going to die.
Hannah, still consoling and comforting her bunny, called Chilly.
He sprinted over, flipped a somersault for her, grabbed the bunny, bit it, rabbit-kicked it, and then leaped up and tore off in another direction.
“I hope he doesn’t suffer when they gas him,” Sam cackled.
“Honey,” I whined.
“He looks like a snow demon,” Kola told me.
“The snow is cold,” Hannah informed me.
“Yep, it’s chilly,” Kola agreed with his sister.
“Chilly!” Hannah squealed, clapping her hands.
“Chilly the cat.” Kola nodded, beaming up at me. “Chilly! Chilly!”
And the damn cat came and he brought one of Kola’s green Nerf Blaster balls with him.
“Look, he can fetch!” My son was so happy.
“Little shit,” Sam muttered under his breath, because he knew as well as I did that it was a done deal at that point.
I had concerns—like the way the cat just ran, for no apparent reason, from one end of the house to the other—but over that, Sam just raised an eyebrow.
“He’s a spaz, just like you.”
I scowled at the marshal.
The appointment had been made to have the cat declawed, but the night before the surgery, Sam had come home with an assortment of scratching posts and an enormous house thing for Chilly to climb and sit on.
I had just waited as Sam put everything down in the living room.
He cleared his throat. “We’ll try this first.”
Apparently whatever the marshal had read on the Internet about declawing, he didn’t like. So Chilly, who it turned out really liked his plethora of alternatives to shredding the couch, got to keep the weapons he was born with.
Kola adored him, and Hannah kept calling for him to do whatever trick he was doing again and again and he got so wound up that I thought he would ricochet off the walls. She chanted his name, bounced on her toes, and squealed. My girl was in love.
My boy was in love too. He taught Chilly to fetch on purpose and not by accident.
Hannah taught Chilly that batting things off the counter—spoons, forks, broccoli, pretzels, even yogurt very carefully spooned out—would get him lots of petting as a reward. When she was sticky, inevitably so was the cat, and I ended up having to clean them both.
Chilly never pulled away or leaned out of reach; instead, he allowed grubby hands to stroke him in whatever condition they were in.
The kids loved to carry him, put him in backpacks with his head sticking out, and walk him on the leash, which Sam thought was the height of absurdity—who walked a cat, for crissakes—and sleep with him. The fact that he would sleep stretched out beside them in their beds was hysterical. And the part where my kids would contort themselves into absurd positions because they didn’t want to wake him was even funnier. Heaven forbid we disturb the cat. He was a member of our family, and even Sam was pleased when he was greeted by all of us at the door when he came home at night. Chilly would scold him if he didn’t get his own pat of affection, so Sam and he had their own routine. Sam would walk to the couch, where the cat would run to meet him and leap onto the arm so that my husband could bend down and Chilly could lift up and they could touch noses. I had taken a picture of it once just to show Sam’s mother, and I was supposed to have deleted it afterward. I still had it.
“Why do you have to scent mark the mail?” I asked the cat, who was purring loudly under my ministrations.
As I gathered the scattered correspondence, the doorbell rang. When I answered it, the man there showed me his badge. It was a marshal badge, like Sam’s.
“Good afternoon,” he greeted me. “May I speak to Supervisor—”
“Deputy White?” Sam said, walking up beside me, standing close.
The man held a manila envelope out for Sam. “These came for you, and I remember you saying if anything came from Phoenix that you were to get it right away.”
“Thank you,” he said, opening it up.
The marshal shoved his hands down into his pockets but didn’t say anything.
I was uncomfortable just looking at him and leaned ever so slightly to get Sam’s attention.
He turned to me, and I made my eyes big, and because it was Sam and he knew me, his eyes flicked over to the marshal on my porch.
“Something you wanna say?”
The younger man cleared his throat. “I just—we… if you need us while you’re out there on vacation… not that you would, but if you do… we’re on a plane in an hour, day or night. Just so you know.”
He squinted at White. “No one but you, Sanchez, Kowalski, Ryan, and Dorsey know where I’m going, right?”
“That’s correct, sir.”
Sam nodded. “Good. So just if anything—”
“We’re your team, yeah?” He looked Sam in the eye. “Whatever you need, just call.”
“Understood.”
White took a breath. “Do you really?”
“Yes.”
“’Cause you know if one of those marshals from Nevada wasn’t right, then maybe—”
“I’m going to a family reunion in Phoenix—in Scottsdale, actually, so why are you—”
“We’ve only ever lost one witness on your watch,” he said. “And we all know you never got over it. So when we see you—you, Sam Kage—not using regular channels to have stuff delivered, we know something’s up.”
Sam was silent.
“And you know us; none of us would say shit to anybody about what you’re doing or where you’re going, but we want you to know that we’re ready to move if you need us.”
“I’m not supposed to use you guys to follow up on leads, for hunches and wild goose chases. That’s a misappropriation of—”
“Cut the shit. We—”
“Take another tone with me, Marshal.”
White sighed deeply. “Come on, boss. I just mean that if it turns out that those marshals from Vegas were dirty, even one of them… and the witness is in Phoenix now and something goes wrong… we’ll be there, all five of us. Just call. Promise to call. That last one was—”
“I got it,” Sam cut him off.
Chandler White—I remembered his first name after a minute—narrowed his eyes and looked at me before realization dawned and he smiled wide. “Oh, okay. Didn’t tell your better half about the thing with Rico, huh?”
Sam growled at him, pointed at the street, and told him that he was excused.
“Yeah but—” his smile got goofy—“maybe I should stick around and fill Mr. Harcourt in on the details of that shoot-out if you’re not gonna promise to—”
“I’ll call,” he barked at his marshal before he grabbed my arm, yanked me back, and slammed the door in White’s face.
I was going to say something, but I could hear White laughing from outside, and I had bigger fish to fry anyway. I rounded on Sam.
“No,” he groaned, turning away from me, crossing the floor, and dropping the envelope on the coffee table before falling facedown onto the soft cushions of our brown corduroy couch.
“Sam!” I yelled, charging after him. “What the hell was he talking about?”
He mumbled something into the couch cushions.
“Samuel Thomas Kage!”
His moan was pure agony before he rolled his head to the side.
“I’m fine; you can see I’m fine. What does it matter?”
I flicked him on the forehead and he chuckled instead of yelling.
“Shit.”
“Sam!”
Another groan before he smiled. I only saw the curl of his lip on the left side, but it made my stomach flutter anyway.
“It all makes sense now.”
“Oh God, what does?” he whined.
“Two weeks ago when you crawled home at like one in the morning, said you had a shitty day, took a shower, and passed out naked in bed.”
“Yeah? What about it?”
“You were almost killed that day, weren’t you.”
He grunted before he stood up.
“What are you doing?”
“I’ll be right back.” He grinned before he leaned in and kissed me.
I watched him go up the stairs and threw up my hands.
When the doorbell rang again, I went to answer it. This time the badge that greeted me was a detective one.
“Mr. Harcourt?”
“Detective.”
He was trying to look around me. “Is Marshal Kage here?”
“Yes, hold on. Would you like to come in?”
“Thank you.” He smiled at me before pointing to my eye. “You all right there?”
“I scuffled with a crazy driver earlier. You know how that road rage can be.”
He nodded like I was maybe not right in the head.
I walked to the stairs, yelled up at Sam that he had a visitor, and went to wash the breakfast dishes that were piled in the sink.
Sam came down a minute later, barefoot, in jeans frayed along the cuffs and a pocket T-shirt. I looked at him long enough to admire the way the denim hugged his firm, round ass and clung to his long, muscular legs. The stretch of the cotton around his biceps, the contrast of the white shirt to his golden skin and his fuzzy arms, was also not to be missed.
In minutes he walked the detective to the door and turned the dead bolt behind him.
“What did he want?” I called over to him.
“To talk about the Petersons,” he said as he walked up behind me.
“Yeah, I don’t care about that,” I assured him. “I want to know what the hell happened with you and Rico, and—”
“Your wish is my command,” he cut me off, his lips on the side of my neck sending a jolt of pure heat ricocheting from my stomach to my heart to my dick.
“Sam.” I jerked under the hands now holding on to my hips. “I wanna talk to you.”
He tipped my head sideways, baring the skin where neck and shoulder met.
“Sam,” I whimpered, pushing back into him, rubbing my ass over his groin.
His warm breath touched my skin before his teeth. Gently, slowly, he bit down, and I shuddered from head to toe.
“I—you,” I mumbled as his tongue slid up the side of my neck to behind my ear.
A rumbling growl came from his chest, and I lost it. There was no way not to succumb to the sounds he made, the heat rolling off him, and his big hard body.
I shut off the water, turned with some difficulty because he was pressing against me, and jumped him.
He caught me easily, stepping back so my legs could wrap around his hips, my arms encircling his neck. He fused his lips with mine, blanking every thought I had, only want remaining, only need.
As he carried me from the kitchen to the living room, I writhed in his grip, grinding my groin into his, loving the way his hands were digging into my ass, squeezing hard. His breath caught over the sensation.
“You like touching me,” I told him.
“Always have,” he husked as he leaned in and kissed me again.
His tongue invaded, taking, ravaging. He sucked and nibbled, and
I lost track of everything except pushing against him, rubbing my hard, aching cock into his washboard abs and whining my desire in the back of my throat.
Down under him on the couch I went, and our lips never parted even as my hands went frantically to my belt and he yanked and pulled on my button-down.
I bowed up off the couch when he yanked off my Dockers, felt the cool air on my leaking shaft as he freed it from my briefs and it bounced free. His lips lifted away then, and I would have protested, but they engulfed the head of my cock in the same moment.
“Oh fuck, Sam!” I rasped, arching up, burying myself in the back of his throat, which opened to receive me. The motion was fluid after so long, his technique seamless, the pull back, the swirl of his tongue, and the fierce, hard suction.
The hands on my ass were insistent, and I knew what he had gone upstairs for when I heard the pop of the cap on the lube just before a finger slid between my cheeks.
“Oh God, just fuck me already!” I yelled at him, squirming, wiggling, trying to get his finger in deeper while sliding in and out of his hot mouth.
Two fingers breached my entrance, pressing forward as my muscles began to relax and open for him.
“You’re so tight,” he whispered as my cock slid from between his lips. “And you’re all slicked up for me.”
I could feel my ass grasping his fingers, three now, pushing in and out, deeper and deeper, and finally curling forward over my prostate. “Sam!”
“Yes, baby?” he asked, his voice raw and strained with desire.
“What are you waiting for?”
“I never want to hurt you, you know that.”
I almost cried. “Sam!”
He moved so fast—pulled his fingers from my ass, rolled forward, and flung my legs over his shoulders. I felt the enormous flared head push against my opening.
My heels were on his back, and I leveraged myself up, lifting, aligning myself for his downward plunge.
He tried to ease in, to make the press slow, but I was dying, my body shaking, ready to explode, so I met him as he thrust forward, and stole his well-meaning restraint.
“Fuck!” I screamed when he buried himself to his balls in my ass.
“Jory.”
Never, ever, did it stop feeling good, did it stop being what I wanted and needed and craved. I was stretched and filled, and when he eased out to ram back inside, then again and again, the hammering became all there was.
I was solely focused on my anatomy, on where we were connected, joined, and the throbbing pleasure drowned everything else: the burn, the pinch, and my aching muscles. Only his long, hard, thick cock grinding over my prostate mattered, only his hands clenched on my hips, only his mouth as he bent and sucked and bit my nipples.
“I’m gonna come,” I whined. “I don’t wanna come.”
“You feel so fuckin’ good.” His voice was so low, more a growl than anything else, and I felt his angle change as his rhythm faltered.
“Oh fuck, Jory, I want you to come. I love how your body feels when you do it, how you clench around me….”
When he fisted my cock, stroking, tugging, dragging his thumb through dripping precome, I begged him for harder, faster, and deeper.
“Now,” he snarled at me, and as his shaft, swollen thick and rock hard in my ass, pegged my gland, I cried his name.
“Oh.” He jerked inside me as my orgasm roared through me, my muscles contracting around his shaft, squeezing, I was sure, to the point of pain. “Fuck, that’s amazing, you tighten up so hard, so fast… the heat and the pressure… fuck!”
I was coming and that’s all there was: the release, the euphoria as I spurted over the rippling muscles of his abdomen.
“Jory!” he gasped before he emptied himself inside me, flooding my clasping channel, his hands keeping a death grip on my thighs as he held me against him even as he straightened. He rose to his knees, and hauled me up off the couch so I was plastered to his skin.
We stayed there, heaving for breath, both of us shivering with aftershocks, until slowly, carefully, Sam slid me back down under him and then eased free. I felt hot liquid dripping from my ass, rolling down my inner thighs, before his T-shirt was there, wiping and cleaning.
“This room smells like sweat and come,” he grumbled, bending to kiss me hard and claiming. He sucked on my tongue a moment before pulling back, the look on his face the same as it always was after sex: smug and satisfied. “And you look all used up.”
“You still have to tell me what happened with Rico,” I informed him, bursting his postcoital happiness bubble.
He groaned and stood up, and only then did I notice that his jeans were pushed only to his knees.
“Really, you didn’t even get naked?”
“I was in a hurry,” he grumbled at me, but couldn’t hold on to it.
“What?”
He smiled suddenly, his eyes heating fast. “I never get tired of seeing you all marked up and flushed after sex. It’s so fuckin’ hot.”
I stood up in front of him, head tipped back because, as close as I was standing to him, I had no choice. It was amazing how big he was and how small and fragile I felt every time we stood together. The man was a mountain of hard muscle, and I was not.
“Love?”
“I need you to talk to me.”
“I promise, right after you get out of the shower.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but his hands encircled my hips and he tugged me close. He bent his forehead to mine and closed his eyes.
“Sam?”
“I’m so lucky you love me, that the kids love me, that the stupid cat loves me. My life is perfect, and I won’t do anything to jeopardize that.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t love Kevin Dwyer. That’s why it ended. I’ve only ever loved you.”
We were standing together, quietly breathing, and I felt the calm wash over me.
“Lemme look at whatever is in the envelope that White dropped off, and then I can explain everything, okay?”
I nodded, and he kissed my nose before I eased out of his grip and darted naked through the living room to the stairs.
“Hey!”
I turned at the landing. “What?”
“You look good running around bare-assed.”
“That’s charming, thank you,” I teased him before I ran up to the second floor.
I could hear him laughing.
Chapter Three