Shattered Vows

by Maggie Price

  The door to the room opened, then clicked shut.

  Bran moved back to the window. “Yale’s heading down the stairs,” he said quietly. “Making a beeline across the parking lot to the Harley.”

  While Bran spoke, Nate dug a small handheld radio from one of the pockets of his coveralls. Keeping his voice low, he radioed the two cops in the surveillance van parked across the street at the convenience store.

  Tory heard the Harley’s engine roar to life, then the motorcycle drove away in a blast of noise.

  After signing off, Nate set the radio on the table. “I’ll leave this in case you need to contact the surveillance team in a hurry.”

  “Don’t you need the radio?” Tory asked.

  “I’ve got a spare with me. We have two unmarked cars nearby to tail the Harley. I’ll catch up and stay close in case they need me to leapfrog and help keep tabs on Yale.”

  He picked up the toolbox, dropped a kiss on the top of Tory’s head. “If Heath is ‘the man’ Yale and Quest were talking about—and I’m betting he is—we at least know she’s in contact with him. Which means he might show up next door.”

  “I’m hoping he does.” Bran stepped to the door, his eyes narrowed, glinting.

  Nate gripped his brother’s upper arm. “Look, I know you’ve got a personal score to settle with the bastard.” Nate glanced at Tory. “We all do. But no heroics, bro. If Heath shows, call in the troops. They’re right across the street.”

  “Yeah.”

  Just then, the volume of the television set next door jacked up. The audio from what was obviously some shopping channel show blasted out of Tory’s equipment.

  Grimacing, she adjusted the volume. “Let’s hope we don’t have to listen to that for long.”

  “Better you than me.” Nate shoved his horn-rims higher on the bridge of his nose, then slipped out the door.

  Bran bolted it behind his brother, then turned. “So, we wait.”

  “Looks like it.” She took in the lines that fanned from the corners of his eyes, the fatigue in his face. “You were up all night. Why don’t you get some sleep while I listen to the shopping channel? Who knows, I might hear about a bargain I can’t resist.”

  “Hitting the bed sounds good.” He cupped his hand against her cheek. “You want to join me?”

  Her pulse scrambled at his touch. “I doubt you’d get much sleep if I did.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about sleep.”

  “I know.” Smiling, she batted his hand away. “Cool your jets, Lieutenant, and get some rest.”

  “I’ll save you a spot in case you change your mind.” He pressed a kiss against her temple before moving toward the bed.

  Tory diverted her gaze to her equipment. But her thoughts stayed on the gorgeous, sexy man settling on the mattress a few feet away.

  Her husband.

  For months she’d allowed herself to think of him only as a loose end she needed to tie up. Now they were back to having spectacular sex. She wanted the intimacy. Wanted him. She doubted she would ever feel differently.

  But would anything really change when it came to the other aspects of their life? So often during their marriage she had felt he secretly hoped she would somehow transform into the childhood sweetheart he’d planned to grow old with. Quiet and deferring described the Patiences of the world, not the Tory Dewitts. What would happen after Heath was no longer a threat and she and Bran went back to the real world? Would they be able to deal any differently with each other when the problems of everyday life closed in and tempers ran short, as they were bound to?

  Or would they wind up right back where they’d been? Each unable or unwilling to fit into a mold the other wanted them in, with bed the only arena where they were truly in synch?

  She pulled her lower lip between her teeth. She and Bran were both headstrong. Each liked to have their hands on the controls. Run the show. She had to wonder if they could ever bend enough, compromise enough to find a happy medium, discover some way they could live in harmony. And if they had no more success than they’d had the first time around, what then?

  She raked a hand through her hair. More time, she assured herself. Surely with more time they would be able to sort things out. Maybe find some answers.

  Two days later, a swell of moody music flowing out of the surveillance equipment had Bran rolling his eyes while he paced the motel room. The music told him that Leah Quest had just tuned in to her usual noontime soap. He knew that after the current program ended, two more were on her list of regularly watched shows. Later, she would surf to a shopping channel. After that came some talk show where idiots showed up to tell the entire world what moronic things they’d done.

  In all the time she’d been at the motel, Quest hadn’t so much as poked her head out of her room. No one had come to visit. She hadn’t received a single phone call. The only ones she’d made were to order meals from the truck stop restaurant. She’d done nothing to make them suspect she was waiting for Heath—or anyone else—to call or show up.

  Nate had reported that after Wynn Yale had left there, he’d driven his Harley across town to his grandmother’s house. He’d spent some time in each of the past two nights at Chappell’s, but had left and returned to his grandmother’s.

  All of Bran’s cop instincts told him he was standing in the calm before the storm.

  Another swell of music surged from the TV next door.

  He jabbed his fingers into the back pocket of his jeans and continued pacing. In truth, Leah Quest wasn’t the only woman troubling him. His wife was, too, in a far different way.

  He glanced at the bathroom’s closed door. He could hear water beating down, could picture Tory standing in the shower, steamy water slicking down the endlessly long length of her.

  You’re not making headway, he told himself. He paused at the window, inched back the curtain and surveilled the motel’s parking lot. Not a soul in sight. Angling his head allowed him a partial view of the truck stop where big rigs sat at the gas pumps. Business as usual.

  He turned and stared at the bed. Granted, he and Tory were back to having scorch-the-hair-off-your-skin sex at frequent intervals, but he was gaining no ground in other areas.

  He could see it in her eyes whenever she looked at him, the wariness, the uncertainty. The I-can’t-quite-bring-myself-to-trust-you-to-stay look. No one had to tell him that love and trust couldn’t be forced or coaxed out of a woman like Tory.

  When the bathroom door opened, he glanced over in time to see her emerge in a billow of steam. She had one of the motel’s white towels wrapped around her, and she’d bundled her hair up with a clip. Moisture glinted off smooth skin that still held a flush from the warm water.

  She gave the equipment on the table a visual check. “Anything going on?”

  “The usual.”

  A swell of music had her cocking her head. “Ah, ‘Pride’s Passion’ again. Is Alice making any progress with Chuck today?”

  Watching her, Bran felt the desire rise inside him. She looked dazzling in the sunlight that bled around the curtain. He knew if he reached for her, stripped off that towel, they could both lose themselves in the mindless heat they always brought to each other.

  And that was the problem, he realized. They had always taken each other with an almost desperate intensity. Three days ago, they had simply reverted to the way things had always been between them.

  Now, he could curse himself for having been so willing to shove their unresolved problems into the background while they fell into the same hot, boiling sex pattern that had begun nearly the first day they’d met. If he’d learned anything, it was that sex wasn’t a relationship. It sure wasn’t a marriage.

  But that’s what they’d based everything on.

  So it wasn’t hard for him to believe a part of Tory might wonder if steamy sex was all they could ever truly share. Maybe even all he was willing to give her. Hell, he’d walked out instead of staying and dealing with their problems. He could tell her
a million times he would stay for the long haul, but he needed to show her.

  He needed to make her understand that it was so much more than sex tugging at him as he stood looking at her. It was the woman herself. The way she smiled, her distinctive scent, her voice, the throaty sound she made when he filled her. And, yes, even her boneheaded stubbornness and prickly nature that so often scraped at his ego.

  She had been his wife for nearly a year, and for all that time he’d loved her. Yet, only at this moment did he understand—truly understand—what she’d come to mean to him. And now that he knew, he needed to show her. But sex was the only way she had allowed him to get close so far. As a starting place it wasn’t what he would have chosen, but until they got out of this room and back to their lives, it was all he had.

  He gave the surveillance equipment a glance as he stepped to her. “Alice is never going to make headway with Chuck.”

  “Oh, and why is that?”

  “He’s an idiot.” With a fingertip, he traced the soft swell of her breasts just above the towel and watched her eyes darken to green smoke. “He can’t see what’s right in front of him.”

  “So much for Chuck and Alice.” Tory’s mouth curved as she slid her hands up his arms. “I have this niggling fear that I’m already hooked on that soap. That I’ll find myself watching the stupid thing after we get out of this place.”

  His lips brushed hers, retreated. “Think so?” He cuffed his fingers around her wrists and drew her arms down to her sides, held them there.

  “Yeah, I think—”

  “Don’t think.” He dipped his head to nuzzle her long, slim throat and felt her hands flex against his hold.

  Her skin was still moist from the shower and he took his time, savoring the warm, heated taste of her. She shuddered when his teeth nipped the curve between her neck and shoulder.

  “Okay, no thinking,” she murmured while angling her head to give him ample access to her throat. “How about letting go of my arms so I can get those clothes off you?”

  “No.” He brushed his lips with hers once, twice. Then he kissed her lightly, casually. And lingered over it until she swayed against him.

  She made a half-hearted attempt to free her wrists. “I…really…need to get my hands on you, McCall.”

  “Later.” He shifted his mouth to her shoulder and trailed kisses along the hollow above her collarbone.

  “Bran….” Her voice was nothing more than a low, husky flow. “What’s going on?”

  “Something that should have happened a long time ago. I’m seducing my wife.”

  His mouth found hers again and he slipped his tongue through her parted lips to deepen the kiss. It went deeper, still deeper until he felt himself sinking into it along with her.

  Tory couldn’t get her breath, yet she could hear it. He had never kissed her like this before, with such unspeakable tenderness. Her limbs were weak, trembling. She felt as if something was slowly taking over her body. Her senses. Stripping her soul bare. But she was helpless to prevent it.

  She hadn’t realized his hands had released her wrists until he took the clip out of her hair. It drifted down while his mouth drank from hers.

  “I left because you never acted like you needed me.” His fingertips brushed across her shoulders, barely touching her. “And all along I never showed you how much I need you.”

  “Bran.” She gripped his arms to steady herself while her heartbeat echoed slow and thick in her head. She seemed to be floating, clinging to him as she glided inches above the floor. His mouth remained gentle on hers, exploiting weaknesses, frailties she hadn’t known were hidden inside her, weaknesses and frailties that she didn’t want exposed.

  Her heartbeat hitching, she tried to deepen the kiss to take them to more familiar, safer ground. He simply lightened it again.

  “Slow.” His fingers worked the towel loose, inch by inch, his knuckles grazing the swell of her breasts. “We’re taking this slow.” When the towel pooled onto the floor, his hands stroked her face, her shoulders, her back. He settled a palm against her heart. “For the first time we’re both going to feel more than just the heat.”

  His words sent a frisson of panic through her. She wanted the fire, the flashing heat. It was familiar. Safe. But mixed with the fear was a dark, thrilling sense of anticipation at being taken slowly. Defenselessly.

  And so she felt herself yield, knowing instinctively he would guide her to where neither of them had been before.

  He eased back long enough to rid himself of his clothes, then drew her closer. There was no fevered embrace this time when he laid her on the bed, just inescapable possession.

  “I need you, Tory.” His mouth skimmed along the fragile skin just under her jaw. “Not just in bed. Everywhere.”

  Degree by torturous degree, his lips journeyed down her throat to retrace the long length of her collarbone.

  The lingering taste of him, the faint scrape of stubble against her flesh, the background noise of the TV playing in the next room. All whirled in her head like a drug, both potent and possessing.

  His hands patiently, languorously explored every hollow and curve of her body as if for the first time.

  She murmured his name, heard the echo of it whisper through her head.

  She saw the hot flash of desire that darkened his eyes to an electric blue. But his hands remained light, gliding along the curve of her breasts, then ranging down her ribs to the flat planes of her stomach.

  He pressed a kiss to her cheek while his hand cupped her.

  Staggered by his touch, his tenderness, her heart stuttered in her throat. Arousal clouded her mind, racked her breathing, transforming it into a moan. Never before had she felt the same glorious ache that now stirred deep inside her. Instinctively she arched against his palm, desperate for him to ease that ache.

  She nearly moaned in relief when he levered himself over her and slipped inside her, iron into velvet.

  “Slow.” He used his weight to pin her as she moved restlessly beneath him. “This isn’t going to be fast.”

  Her eyes fluttered shut, her breath was nothing but feverish little pants as he moved in her: long, slow strokes. She curled her arms around him. She felt helpless beneath him, open to any demand. His hips moved, a rhythmic rocking that ignited small fires across her heated flesh.

  Time stretched, became fluid. She glided her hands over his bare back, wondering now why she’d never taken the time to truly explore all the intriguing ripples of sinew and muscle.

  “Look at me.” Fisting her hair in his hands, he tipped her head back. “Tory, look at me.”

  Her eyelids felt heavy, drugged, yet she forced them open. She stared into his intense, unwavering eyes while he continued moving, the pressure building inside her, gradually. Deliciously. Achingly.

  He dipped his head, his breath hot against her jaw. “I’ll never leave you again. I give you my word.” The vow was as soft as a wish. “I’ll stay with you for the rest of my life.”

  Beyond words, she felt her hands slide bonelessly off his shoulders.

  Merged, they moved as one, him filling her, she surrounding him. And this time when they fell off the edge, they went together.

  I’ll never leave you again. Her skin still slicked with sweat, her heart racing, Tory lay curled on her side, Bran’s arms around her.

  How could he know for sure he would never leave when nothing had…?

  She halted the thought that had become so automatic over the past days whenever her mind turned to their relationship. Everything had changed.

  In one long, endless erotic sweep, Bran had changed everything.

  With emotion avalanching down on her, she closed her eyes, needing a minute to settle. To somehow get her bearings back now that her entire world had shifted.

  She had never before been seduced. Never would have believed helplessness could be erotic. For a time, she’d had no will, no mind, no reason. No control. Where power had been concerned, she had been totally h
is.

  Now here she was, independent, take-charge Tory McCall, glorying in having turned over the reins of control, at least for a time.

  And having done that, she didn’t feel needy or weak.

  Her eyes opened slowly on the realization. On the knowledge that she was the same strong, confident woman she’d always been. A woman in love. A wife in love with the one man who satisfied her needs. The man whose needs she wanted to satisfy.

  And, oh, why had it taken her so long to understand all that? Bran had left because she’d hurt him by not thinking of his needs, his pride. He had never tried to run her life, or change her. All he’d asked was that she share her burdens with him, turn to him. He hadn’t wanted her to capitulate, merely compromise.

  But she’d foolishly refused, in knee-jerk responses rooted in her upbringing. Why, oh why, had she let her parents’ dysfunctional marriage serve as a guide for her own?

  Well, she was no longer rooted in her past, her fears. Was no longer afraid to open her heart to him again and trust. Simply trust. This man whom she loved had pushed down her last wall of resistance.

  Shifting, she echoed the gesture he’d made earlier by settling a palm over his heart. “Bran?”

  His eyes were at half-mast, his mouth softened with a faint smile. He lifted a hand, brushed her hair away from her cheek. “Hmm?”

  “We need to talk.” Her tone, more serious than she’d intended, had his eyes opening, turning wary.

  “About?”

  “Us. I—”

  Just then, the phone rang in Leah Quest’s hotel room.

  Chapter 15

  Tory and Bran were up and off the bed in a heartbeat. She bounded into the chair at the table and turned up the volume on the surveillance equipment just as Leah Quest answered her phone on the second ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Waiting’s almost over. I’ll be there soon.”

  “Lover, be ready for something really hot.”

  “Countin’ on it. We’re gonna need us some food. Supplies.”

  “I’ll take care of all that, lover,” Quest cooed. “Just like I’m gonna take care of you.”