GRAY WOLF SECURITY, Texas: The Complete 6-Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  I started to stand. I felt like I was drowning. But Kipling grabbed my arm and pulled me back down into my chair. He slid his hand up over my wrist and tugged my hand against his thigh, holding it tight against him. I glanced at him, but he was hyper-focused on Walker.

  “You saw the man who stabbed him.”

  It was a statement, not a question.

  “I did. It was one of the other inmates, Carl Quintos. He’s been charged with the murder, last I heard.”

  “Who was he affiliated with?”

  Walker’s eyebrows knotted together. He was watching me, but his eyes slowly moved to Kipling.

  “Don’t you want to know what they’re doing about his killer?”

  “We want to know who he’s affiliated with.”

  “Dr. Connors?”

  It took every bit of strength I had to look up. Kipling squeezed my hand without looking at me, without so much as acknowledging that he was holding my hand. But it was meant as a gesture of support and that’s how I took it.

  “We really do need to know,” I said, a little embarrassed at how weak my voice was.

  Walker glanced at the door again, a frown marring his otherwise pleasant face. His eyes moved over Kipling. He clearly didn’t trust him. But then he studied my face and leaned forward, a heavy sigh escaping his lips as he ran his hands over his head.

  “I’m not supposed to talk about these things. The warden, he doesn’t like encouraging the inmates to divide up into groups, so he makes us ignore these things, you understand?”

  I inclined my head slightly, trying to encourage him to tell us what Kipling felt we needed to know so badly even though I really just wanted to get out of there. I felt like Mickey’s ghost was standing over my shoulder, screaming in my ear.

  I told you so, I told you so, I told you so, I told you so, I told you so, I told you so.

  I felt sick to my stomach. I just wanted this day to end.

  “We have five major gangs that function inside this prison. The Latin Kings, the Cholos, the Aryan Brotherhood, the Irish mafia, and the Russian cartel. When a prisoner comes in, if he’s not already affiliated with one of those groups, he quickly becomes affiliated. Prisoners without some sort of connection will be a dead prisoner within weeks.”

  I shook my head. “Mickey didn’t—”

  “Mickey was with the Irish.”

  I sat up a little straighter, my grief pushed aside briefly as I processed this information. “My brother was a part of the Irish mafia?”

  “That’s how a man survived in this place. Besides, with a name like Mickey Connors, it was inevitable. And they did a good job protecting him.”

  “Someone had tried to hurt him before?” Kipling asked.

  “Yeah. He was attacked in the showers four years ago. Then again last year, someone tried to stab him in the chapel. Both times he was protected by his gang.”

  “Why wasn’t he protected this time?”

  Walker shrugged. “I don’t know, but there have been rumors that the Russians greased a few palms to get the Irish to back off their protection.”

  “The Russians?”

  Walker nodded slowly. “Quintos was with the Russians from the moment he stepped through those outer doors.”

  ***

  It was a long drive back to Houston. I curled up in the passenger seat of the SUV, my knees pulled up to my chest, thinking about my brother. He didn’t deserve to end up this way. And the idea that it was my fault, that they did this to him because of what I was doing on the outside…it was killing me. If I hadn’t pushed the appeals process, if I hadn’t pushed the DNA testing. If I hadn’t gotten involved…like he told me not to.

  Why hadn’t I listened?

  Because I thought I knew best. I thought my brother deserved more than to be locked away and forgotten. Because I knew that if it hadn’t been for him, I would have just as likely gone to jail instead of medical school.

  My dad’s death hit me hard. And the fact that my mom was never around, that she never seemed all that interested in me when she was there, didn’t help. I was something of a wild teenager, going to parties where I knew there would be underage drinking because I wanted to be where there was underage drinking. I drank hard and heavy, doing things with the boys on the football team that would have brought a blush to my mother’s uptight, too-far-above-the-rest-of-us face. It was Mickey who set me straight, who made me see what I was doing to myself. And it was Mickey who insisted that I had to fulfill my dad’s dream for me because that would be the ultimate insult to our mother.

  You and me against the world, kid, he’d told me.

  I held up my end of the bargain. Why didn’t he hold up his?

  When we got back to the hotel, Kipling handed me the room key and slipped away, heading toward the main desk. I rode up in the elevator, let myself into the room, and then locked myself in the bathroom. I needed a moment. I needed the privacy to let go of the grief that had been turning my stomach into knots from the moment we arrived at the prison.

  Poor little rich girl. That’s what one of my colleagues had said after Mickey died. I was losing it during surgeries, losing control of my emotions at the worst moments. And that’s what my colleagues thought of me, that I was this girl born with a silver spoon in my mouth, therefore I had no right to grieve my only brother.

  Maybe money did make life easier. But it had no effect over love and loss.

  I curled up on the floor beside the door, shoving the end of a towel into my mouth so that Kipling couldn’t hear my sobs if he came back into the room. And I cried more than I had in a very long time. I learned long ago that crying did me no good, so I stopped. Crying didn’t bring my mother to my room. It didn’t change the bad grade on my biology final. It didn’t make Mickey any less a drug addict. It didn’t change the words in the confession he’d offered the prosecutors. So why bother?

  But I couldn’t help myself now.

  I knew Kipling knew about the tears I shed when we lay together in the SUV. I saw the look in his eyes when he tried not to acknowledge them. I was mortified when they began and grateful when he didn’t say anything. But I was pretty sure I’d frightened him away for good.

  I don’t know how long I sat there. I cried until there was nothing left to cry. Then I slowly pulled myself together, climbed to my feet, and washed my face enthusiastically, trying to wipe away all traces of my lack of control. Then I brushed my teeth, disgusted by the mixture of puke and booze that had left fur on my tongue all afternoon.

  I studied myself in the mirror briefly before I finally turned to leave the room.

  Kipling was nowhere to be found.

  He must have gotten another room. I was pretty sure that was the reason he went to the front desk. Could I blame him? Not really.

  I slipped out of my bra—such relief to have that off!—pulling on an oversized t-shirt and a pair of shorts before crawling onto the bed and flipping on the television. That’s how he found me a few minutes later when he finally returned to the room, tossing the room key onto the table on his way to the bathroom. He didn’t say a word; he didn’t seem to care whether I was there or not. I don’t know what hurt more, the anger and indignation he always showed me in the courtrooms, or this complete indifference.

  I sat up, aware that the t-shirt I was wearing did very little to hide my full breasts, especially when my nipples were as erect as they were any time he was near. His eyes moved over me, hesitating briefly on my breasts, before he grabbed his bag and started for the bathroom again. He paused a moment, as if he’d just remembered something he’d meant to say.

  “They have some sort of conference going on. The manager promised to let me know the moment they have a room free up.”

  “Okay.”

  He was talking to the bathroom door as if he couldn’t stand the idea of looking at me.

  “I’m going to change, then we can go get something to eat, if you’d like.”

  “I’m not terribly hungry.”
r />   His head dropped slightly, and he took almost a full step before turning to glance at me.

  “Look, I didn’t mean for what happened earlier…the liquor store parking lot. If there’s a consequence…”

  I snorted. “I’m a doctor, Mr. McKay,” I said, as snarkily as I could. “I know a thing or two about birth control.”

  “Good.”

  “Don’t sound so relieved. The pill is only ninety-nine point eight percent effective. There’s still that point two percent that I could have consequences.”

  He didn’t really respond. He just stood there, staring at me. I’d always prided myself for being good at reading body language. I could usually predict with excellent accuracy what a person was thinking or feeling. It was a skill that came in handy while I was doing my psych rotation. But I couldn’t read him.

  “You should eat,” he finally said. “I can order up a pizza if you don’t want to go out.”

  The thought made my stomach clench again. I shook my head.

  “Mickey always used to say that all my emotions were in my stomach,” I said almost without thinking about it. And then I wished I hadn’t.

  “Harley,” he said, his voice so low and gentle that it nearly brought tears to my eyes.

  I shook my head again. “Please, just do whatever you want. I’m fine.”

  “I don’t think you are. I think you’re broken and everything we did today just crushed you a little more.”

  Was it that obvious?

  I ignored him, flipping through the channels on the television like the twelve cable shows I kept passing over and over again were the most important thing in my world. I heard him drop his bag an instant before he was just there, grabbing my wrists and pushing me back against the padded headboard of the king-sized bed we’d shared once already and were to share again.

  “You dragged me into this,” he said, his face twisted with so much emotion I couldn’t tell one thing from another. “You begged me to come here with you, begged me to see the truth after I’d tried so hard to ignore it all these years. And I’m here. I’m doing this. But you can’t shut down on me now.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are. You think I don’t see it? You think I don’t see the pain in your eyes, that I don’t see the swelling and redness from your tears? You think that I don’t recognize in your face the same things that are tearing me up, too?”

  “Kipling—”

  “Do you realize that I’ve never touched another woman like I touched you today since my wife died? Do you know how fucking lonely I’ve been? I didn’t even realize it until you…why did you have to do this? Why did you have to bring me here? Why did you have to remind me of what it feels like to be touched, to be wanted, to be needed?”

  It took my breath away, not just his words, but also the way he said them. I tried to pull my arms from his grip, but he shoved them harder against that damn headboard, roughly. And then he kissed me, a crushing kiss that was bruising and painful and sexy and hot. I moved into him, kissing him back with all the desire that had been burning inside of me since the first time I set eyes on him. He groaned, lifting my wrists and slamming them against the headboard again. And then he let them go, freeing them so that he could rip at my t-shirt, his hands everywhere all at once. Touching my ribs, squeezing my breasts, tweaking my nipples. It was as if he was desperate to touch me in as many places in as short a time as possible.

  He wasn’t the only one. I pushed him back, climbed into his lap, and tore at his shirt, tugging it up to expose the fucking tight muscles that were his pecs, his abs. He’d had a gun in his waistband most of the day, but it was gone now, left behind in the SUV while we were in the prison. A small part of me almost wished it was still there. That couldn’t have been nearly as dangerous as the taste of his tongue dancing with mine.

  Somehow we managed to get rid of both of our shirts without breaking the rhythm of our kisses too much. I racked my nails down his back, loving the feel of his muscles moving as he touched me, loving the feel of his heat, of his need. I moved my hips and pressed myself against his erection as he dipped his head to take one of my nipples into his mouth. I cried out, leaning back and forcing him to hold me close to prevent me from falling and ending up on the floor. But, again, the floor might have been an interesting place to continue this little game.

  He ripped at my jeans, pulling them apart and shoving his hand deep inside. I cried out as his fingers found all those moist, excitable places that wanted his touch more than anything else. I pushed up on my knees, giving him more space to play, and he took it, sliding his middle finger deep inside of me until a moan that was more like a scream to slip from between my lips.

  I was suddenly flying through the air as he stood. He dropped me onto the bed, tugging at my jeans until they slipped over my hips and landed somewhere near the windows. I struggled out of my panties as he undid his jeans, moving his hips in a quick little shimmy that distracted me for a second. He was quite a sight, this beautiful man in all the glory of his nakedness. I couldn’t help but stare at his narrow hips, his powerful thighs, and that lovely cock pulsing and jumping, anxious to get to know my body a little better. I sat up and wrapped my fist around his shaft, slipping my lips over his head before I think he realized what I intended. He cried out, his hands instantly falling on either side of my head, tugging me closer.

  He slid to my throat and backed off, pushing my head back before I could even try to give him the full test of my talents. I tried again, but he had to be in control; he had to decide what I could take and what I couldn’t. That was something we’d have to work on.

  He pushed me down against the mattress before I was ready, replacing his cock with his tongue, kissing me with the same desperation this whole thing had begun with. I spread my legs, more than ready to welcome him. He found me easily, lifting my hips a little as he thrust against my cunt, slipping inside with something like familiarity. If he needed to be in control, I was okay with allowing him that. I ran my hands over his head but lay still as he maneuvered my body, pulling me into the position that worked best for him. He pushed himself up on his hands as he began to thrust, supporting himself as he stared down at me, moving steadily as he stroked me deeply, in places that had been far too long ignored.

  But I could only take so much. I’d imagined this moment for far too long. I’d wanted this for so long. I bent my knees and pressed my hips up against him, grinding my clit against the root of his cock, my eyes rolling back in my head a little as pleasure burst through my body. My hands moved over his back, his hips, loving the feel of his body, of his working muscles. And then I sat up a little and kissed him as if he was the last drop of water my body would ever taste.

  Something changed for him then. He relaxed his arms, stretched out over me, his mouth sliding from my mouth to my chin, his lips burning a trail down my throat. His hands were suddenly gentler, moving over my hips, not to tug me into place, but to touch my flesh. He groaned softly against my mouth when he found it again, his breath hot and quickened, his heart pounding in the visible pulse on his throat and under my hand where it was pressed to his chest.

  It was…so good. I wanted him to touch me like that for as long as possible. I wanted to feel his lips on mine. I wanted to taste the desire on his lips that was, for tonight, for me. We found this rhythm, this movement that was just ours, just something our bodies could do. For a moment, I knew he was mine. I knew that I was all he wanted, all he needed. I knew I was the only one that he was thinking of, the only one who could make him feel the things he was feeling. For once in my life, I didn’t care what would happen next. I didn’t care what we would say to one another when it was all done. I didn’t care what was going on outside this hotel room door. All that mattered was this man and the way he was making me feel and the way I was making him feel.

  And I wanted it to last for the rest of my existence.

  Of course, it couldn’t. Our slow, gentle beat grew and became a crescendo
that had to find a path back to that slow beat. I felt it crashing in the quivers in my thighs, the pressure in my lower belly. And then the waves came, washing over me, tensing my muscles. My nails raked against his back, my thighs squeezing hard against his hips. I think I cried out, but I’m not quite sure. And then I felt him swell and his movements change as he reached his crescendo, too.

  All movement stopped. He collapsed on top of me, his mouth pressed to my shoulder as his breathing very slowly returned to something like normal. I wrapped my arms and legs around him and held him close, so afraid that I was that he would get up and walk away from me. But he didn’t. He pulled away, but only to tug me up against the pillows with him, his hand running over my face as I lay my head on his chest.

  “Hungry now?” he asked after a while. “Because I’m starved.”

  I nodded. And the real surprise was, I was hungry.

  Chapter 6

  At the Compound

  Ash woke and reached for Mina, but she wasn’t there. He picked up his cell phone off the side table to check the time, noting that it was well after three in the morning when he spotted his wife standing at the windows off to the far side of the room. He got up and went to her silently on bare feet.

  “Hey, beautiful,” he whispered against her ear as he slid his arms around her shoulders. She leaned back against him, sighing, her hands coming up to rest on his forearms.

  “Can’t sleep?”

  “This brings up bad memories.”

  “I guess it does.”

  She fell silent, staring out the window at the property that unfolded beyond the manicured lawn to the cottages David had built for his team. There were lights on in a few of the cottages, but not many.

  “I keep thinking about this thing, this family that was murdered.”