“And she wouldn’t have risked that Carl might not be dead when he hit the bottom.”
Brax stared at her.
“If you’re really, really angry, you just want them dead and you don’t care about making it look like it was an accident.”
He blinked.
“That’s why the death penalty doesn’t work. Because people don’t think first, they just act. At least most of the time.”
“You scare me, Miss Chandler.” She made him hot, actually, the way she smelled, the way her mind worked. Her defense of Maggie. Her belief in him. She could turn any man’s thinking around, and so help him God, he needed that. Now.
“Someday, I’ll write a murder mystery,” she told him.
Putting a hand to her face, he smoothed his thumb across her cheek. “I think you write a mean fantasy. I wouldn’t give up your strong suit.”
“There can be sex in mysteries.”
“Hot sex?”
“Oh yeah. All that threat of danger and lives at risk. Very fast, very hot, and very sexy. Against-the-wall kind of sex where they don’t even have time to get their clothes off.”
He put a finger to her lips to shush her. “You better stop right there or we’ll never finish this mission.”
She pulled his finger away. “You wouldn’t dare. My mother’s out there.”
“I don’t care.” He waited, his gaze roaming her face.
“But you’d be embarrassed when we walked out afterward. Humiliated even. She’d look at you like you were—” She stopped, her eyes wide and bright with glimmering emotion.
“Look at you like you were what?”
She didn’t even seem to notice that he’d used the same pronoun, turning the statement back on her.
“Like you were life’s greatest disappointment,” she whispered.
Her scent screwed with his common sense. He let it. He pulled her hand down to the hard bulge in his jeans. “Does this feel like I’m looking at life’s biggest disappointment?”
She stared at him through wide, disbelieving eyes. More than anything, he needed her to believe. In herself. In her power over him. Last night, her skin had glowed with mortification after she’d lost herself in his touch, in his arms. This morning he wanted to reward her with that same loss of control, but this time he’d teach her its glory, see her revel in it. At this moment, bad as the timing was, it was a gift he had to give her. She’d given him something equally precious, her acceptance and her trust. He wanted to drown out the sound of her mother’s disapproving voice. She needed him. He needed her.
He pressed her hand, rubbed himself with her palm. “This feels like anticipation, like I don’t give a flying rat’s ass who’s out there or who hears or how they look at us afterward. This feels like I’ll go crazy if you don’t do exactly what that story says.”
She worried the inside of her cheek.
“Please. Put me out of my misery,” he murmured, a hairsbreadth away from taking her lips with his. “I’m begging you.”
She looked at him as if no man in her life had ever begged for her touch. “Stand up.”
He did as she commanded, rising, giving her, on her knees, all the power over him.
She undid his belt, slowly pulling the leather free of the buckle, her palms resting on him as she gazed up. Taking even longer to unzip him, she stretched out the thin wire of his tension.
She tugged at his waistband. He helped her push the jeans over his hips until she’d exposed him completely. A groan escaped him as she closed her fingers around him, a long heartfelt sound of desire and need. He gave up the last of his control to her ministrations as she put her mouth on him.
Her cherry-red lips caressed his length until they met her fingers fisted at his base. Then she looked at him with a gaze drunk on her own power over him. He almost came, hanging on only with the knowledge that it was too fast, that he’d rob her of something she badly needed. Her tongue swirling back up, she sucked the tip.
He pushed his fingers through her silky hair, begging her without words. This time she moaned and clutched his hips, taking him deeper, holding nothing back. The soft delicious sounds in her throat vibrated against his nerve endings.
“You’re so beautiful.” The sight of him sliding inside her warmth, then his flesh reappearing, wet with her, the tip of her tongue as she drank from him. He lost himself in sight, sound, and sensation, gave voice to it low in his throat. “Take me to heaven, Simone. Please.” She’d cried out her joy for him last night. He would do no less for her now.
His muscles bunched beneath her touch, a fire built in his belly, then shot low and wide. His hips thrust, filling her. He closed his eyes, grit his teeth until he exploded in light and sound.
He called out her name, cried out to God, and gave her his essence. She took everything he had, everything he was, keeping him inside until his spirit floated back and reentered his body.
He’d wrapped her hair around his hands. She’d left marks on his body where she’d clutched him. He cupped her face, and she nuzzled into his palm.
Pulling her up, he pressed her against him, whispering in her hair. “Thank you.”
“You shouted.” She burrowed into his chest.
“Hell, yes.” He’d do it again, shout out in pleasure and exultation. “Nothing you could ever do to me, and nothing I could ever do to you is shameful or embarrassing. Nothing.”
She burrowed deeper and shuddered. Pushing her back a fraction, he tilted her face until she was forced to look at him. “Don’t take that away from yourself. Or from me.”
He was ready to battle the red stain on her cheeks. Instead, she glowed, her eyes, her moist lips still with lipstick amazingly intact. “That was the most incredible thing a man ever let me do.”
“Let you?” He smoothed back the hair he’d disheveled. ”I begged you.”
She rose on tiptoe to throw her arms around his neck. “I’m special.”
He squeezed her tight. “You don’t even know the half of it.”
* * * * *
I’m special.
Simone looked down at Brax’s head as he gathered the scrolls of her story, tossing the ribbons aside, ordering them, then rolling them all backwards to force them flat.
What they had just done was much more than sex, more than taking him in her mouth. Brax wanted them all to hear. Not some triumphant thing, as if he’d laid the homecoming queen in his backseat. He’d wanted her. He’d needed her. He’d come for her.
“It’s all about me,” she whispered to herself.
He turned, flopped on the bed, his belt buckle flapping, then gave her a shit-eating grin. “Yeah. It’s all about you.”
She had the feeling there wasn’t an exhibitionist bone in his body. Yet he’d cried out for her. He didn’t care that anyone heard.
He fluttered the pages at her. “I’ll take these with me to go over them more fully. You gonna be all right with Mommie—your mother?”
She snorted. In spite of Ariana. Maybe because of Ariana. “I’m going with you.”
“Not.”
She braced her hands on his shoulders and climbed onto his lap. “For sure.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“You think Carl’s killer is skulking around the scene of the crime?”
“They always come back.”
She rubbed noses with him. “You’re afraid my fantasy will be your undoing, and you’ll have to have me six times on the way up there.”
“You’re already my undoing. I let you blow me while your mother was sitting out in the living room. And I’ve got a feeling trailer doors are very thin.”
They were. Little better than wallpaper. She nibbled his lip. “Yeah. You begged me to blow you.”
It was crass. It was crude. It was exhilarating. What she’d done. Sex play. Love talk. She’d never been comfortable with any of it. Except on paper. Always inadequate. Always wondering about the performance. But not with Brax.
“And you were so easy,”
she added.
“You were too damn good. I couldn’t help myself. Think your mother will understand?”
She should have been horrified at what they’d done. At least a little embarrassed.
Instead, she still tasted him, still felt the throb of him in her mouth, the bite of his fingers against her scalp at the moment he filled her, his wholly animal cry that lifted her above herself.
Her mother would understand all right. Brax had staked a claim. He’d drawn a line in the sand, shouted his emotions to the world with an “Ah, God” and an “Oh Jesus” as if he were really saying, Your daughter is the most beautiful perfect creature I’ve ever touched or wanted and I’m damn well going to let you know. Take that, Ariana Chandler.
“Let me go with you, Brax.” She wasn’t silly enough to think that what he’d done for her was love. But it was equally as important, and she wouldn’t willingly let Brax leave her side until the day his vacation ended.
How many days were left?
He bunched her hair in his hand and pulled her head back. “Sweetheart, I—”
She put her hand over his mouth. “I’m going with you. We’re going to figure out who killed Carl. We’re going to save Maggie.” She put her lips to his, a hairsbreadth away, as he’d done to her. “You don’t have to do it all alone.”
He searched her face, then seemed to find his answer. “All right. But you’ll need better shoes than that.” He pointed to her sandals. “And we sure can’t leave this room with your lipstick still in place. It’ll look like I made up all that noise for nothing.” He took her mouth, stroked her lips, then dived deep. She tasted him all over again, his heat, his tang. Then he sucked her lower lip into his mouth and devoured her remaining cherry lipstick.
* * * * *
Brax opened the door, guided Simone before him, then stepped out, buckling his belt as he turned in the hallway. Like the proverbial pin drop in a silent cathedral, the unmistakable clank of metal filled the trailer from one end to the other.
He wondered at the wisdom of his blatant display. He could have done up his belt while Simone changed her shoes. Ariana would find the belt exhibition distasteful. Simone would know it meant he wasn’t ashamed, not of being with her, not for being loud and crude about how damn good she made him feel. What was between them was far beyond the physical. Simone needed a statement and making a statement required drama.
It also required further cementing action. He tucked his fingers beneath Simone’s hair, kneading her nape. “From now on, you can only wear yellow. It makes you glow,” he said, once again loud enough to fill the entire trailer. Then he turned her head with a gentle brush of his fingers along her jaw and kissed her, reveling in the warmth of her mouth, the zest of their lovemaking, and the pulse beating wildly at her throat.
He was damn sure Ariana Chandler had never before been at a loss for words.
Simone had struggled to build her own foundation, and he wouldn’t let anyone—especially not her own mother—tear it from beneath her.
Judge Della Montrose blinked, slowly, like an owl.
Simone fanned herself with the sheaf of papers. “We’re going out for a while.”
“Simone! You cannot leave me alone.” Crumpled silk filled her mother’s fisted hand.
“I’ll be back, MOTHER.” Simone’s teeth snapped on the title.
“But—”
“We’re going for a hike, Mrs. Chandler. A long hike. In the hills. We’ve got things to discuss.” Brax paused long enough to suggest to Ariana that talking wasn’t all they’d be doing.
Academy Award-winning Ariana Chandler blinked as owlishly as Della.
Simone slapped Brax’s arm with twenty pages of pure fantasy. “Stop that,” she hissed, then spoiled the effect by giggling.
Just as quickly, her smile faded. He knew the moment she remembered why they were going up there. Because Carl was dead. Murdered. You wanted to forget, you tried to forget, but as soon as you did forget, guilt slammed home like a battering ram.
It was like the first time he’d laughed after his dad died. When he realized he was laughing with his old man only days in the grave.
Simone turned soberly to her mother. “Kingston and Jackie will entertain you.”
“They’re gone. Kingston looked nearly apoplectic and begged Jackie to accompany him. He practically dragged her out of here by her hair. I’m sure he wanted to save her from corruption.”
Right. Brax had a feeling Kingston Hightower dragged the pretty Jackie out by the hair for a very different reason. There was something between those two. Furtive looks, sideways glances. A smile just between the two. He’d been in their presence perhaps all of ten minutes, but their byplay had set off his radar.
Ariana wouldn’t have let them go if she’d had even an inkling.
“I would have rushed out with them, but”—she glanced at Della—“we have a guest.” Her how-could-you look stabbed Simone.
He wondered if Ariana’s sanctimonious, holier-than-thou attitude was a calculated method of belittling Simone.
He suspected the answer was yes.
Della jumped to her feet, tripped on a buckled bit of shag, then scuttled sideways, like a crab, to the front door. “Thanks for the coffee. Think about what I said. We’ll talk later. Bye.” The screen door slammed behind her.
“If you leave with him, Simone—”
Ariana’s unfinished threat hung in the air. Brax prayed Simone would take up the gauntlet and tell her mother to shove it in no uncertain terms. Yet at the same time, he feared it. Neither woman would win, both of them would lose, and nothing would ever be the same.
Simone wasn’t ready for that confrontation.
He also realized he wanted to be there for her when she was, whenever and wherever the time came. For now, though, she at least ignored Ariana Chandler and left with him.
Chapter Twenty
“This is it. This is the cave. Just like Carl described it.” Simone flapped page twenty beneath his nose, pointing.
“Yeah. Looks like it is.” After two hours of hard walking and two bottles of water, they’d made it.
Glancing over his shoulder for the umpteenth time, Brax couldn’t shake the bad feeling. He noticed nothing out of the ordinary on the way up, but he couldn’t throw off the itch between his shoulder blades.
Carl’s fantasy had been a map all right. Every landmark he’d requested Simone to use matched the long trek exactly. The story ended with the words, And then he took her inside to bestow his final gift.
When he’d first read it, Brax had imagined the gift was of the physical variety. Something sexual that he’d planned for the woman of his dreams—be it Maggie or somebody else. A spectacular ending that only Carl himself could write.
Now, Brax considered that something of an entirely different nature lay inside.
Simone, like a child on a treasure hunt, skipped several steps into the gaping mouth of the cave. “Come on. Let’s find out what’s in here.”
“Bad idea.” Brax wasn’t given to flights of fancy, but he’d often relied on instincts, which had saved his life in times gone by. “We’ll come back later with backup.”
A gun wouldn’t be a bad addition to the party. The nape of his neck prickled. He threw another wary glance over his shoulder. Nothing. The path lay empty until it twisted behind a rock outcropping.
When he turned back, Simone was gone.
Shit.
“It’s dark in here.” Her voice, disembodied, echoed off the walls and came at him in multiples of sound. “I can’t see a thing. Bring the flashlight.”
He’d retrieved it from the 4Runner’s glove box before they left.
“Dammit. Get back out here, Simone.”
“Come in and find me.” She laughed, the sound floating out.
He clicked the light on, then followed the beam, locating Simone in the middle of a large, dank cavern.
“Let’s see, let’s see.” She practically bounced in her tennies.
> He sprayed the walls and ceiling with the flashlight beam. The roof rose thirty feet or so above their heads and the cave extended perhaps fifty in each direction. It wasn’t large, and it didn’t appear to harbor any small offshoots leading to other attached caverns. A dank, musty, earthy smell and cool moist air wafted over him.
At least there weren’t any bats. And no bat guano. Is that what Carl had wanted to prove to Maggie? That spelunking didn’t necessarily mean bats?
“Well, this is sort of disappointing.” Simone slapped her hands on her hips. “It doesn’t even lead anywhere. All that build up for...not much.”
Brax admitted to being mystified as well. Why twenty pages of mounting tension for so little payoff?
He moved the beam more slowly along the walls, wondering if he’d missed something the first time. Like a crime scene, it required a thorough going-over, and more than once.
Simone’s warm hand grazed his arm. “Why do the walls sparkle like that? It’s sort of eerie, isn’t it?”
The walls sparkled, even as he moved the light away, almost as if they absorbed it for a few seconds after the beam hit.
“Brax. Is that,” she gasped, then added, “gold?”
Almost as if he’d been expecting them, he heard the soft footfalls as a shadow passed over the cave’s entrance.
“Yes, Simone, it’s gold.”
Filling the small cavern, bouncing from wall to wall, he almost didn’t recognize the voice. Then he knew.
“Simone, you should have listened to your lover and stayed outside,” Della Montrose said without a single inflection. “Everything would have been fine. Brax, please put the flashlight on the ground. I can’t have you shining it in my eyes and trying to blind me.”
If not for Simone, he would have done just that, shone the beam in the judge’s eyes, then thrown himself at her in the brief moments it would take for her eyes to adjust.
Della had her own flashlight beam—as well as the gun in her hand—fixed on Simone. Jesus Christ. His heart beat loudly in his ears. But he couldn’t afford the slightest miscalculation.
Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) Page 27