by Jan Coffey
Lacey took another bite of the sandwich and offered him one, too. The way his dark lashes lowered, his eyes watching her mouth, made her insides turn to liquid heat. She was excited. More than anything else, she wanted his hands on her.
“Can I make coffee?” she asked before taking another bite.
“Sure you can handle it?” He leaned down, tasting a piece of tuna that had overflowed from the wrap onto her finger.
The heat of his mouth burned her. She had to put the plate down on the counter for fear of dropping it. The only barrier gone, she was cornered by the cabinets and his body.
“I can handle it. Where is it?”
“Behind you.”
Lacey turned around. The coffee pot sat on the counter. There was a coffee grinder next to it. She should have figured he’d have discriminating taste. She wanted for him so badly to touch her. To take charge of what she hoped would happen next. “And the beans?”
“In the cabinet above.”
She opened the door. The beans were within her reach. He didn’t touch her, but she could feel his heat. Her heartbeat was picking up speed. The anticipation made her deliciously warm.
“Can you get them for me?” she asked quietly.
He moved against her, and she hid a sigh of pleasure as she felt the hard bulge in his jeans press against her hip.
She leaned back as his hands wrapped around her. He slid the shirt against her skin, slowly, deliberately, moving gently until he was cupping the weight of her breasts in his palms. His lips sank to her neck, kissing her. Every inch of her body ached, crying for more.
The soft moan escaping her throat seemed to belong to a stranger. She turned in his arms. One strong hand slid upward on her back, and the other moved down to her bottom.
Then she was kissing him.
Lacey became lost in him. She curled into him, her hips arching upward, wanting more. She soared to the deeply passionate play of lips and tongue. She had no choice but to hold onto his neck while her body surrendered wholly, ultimately wanting the release that was within his power to give.
His hands moved inside her pants, kneading her bare buttocks. She continued to kiss him, too afraid that he’d stop taking her on this glorious climb. Her desire caught fire when she felt the fabric slide down to her knees.
“Step out of them.”
Mindless with passion, she did so. She gasped when he slipped his fingers into her. Their mouths kept up a relentless duel while his fingers teased her wet folds.
She felt herself rising, carried breathlessly higher with every stroke of his fingers. And then she came, climaxing wildly within the protective circle of his arms. Wave after wave washed over her, but he gave her no time for any retreat to sanity. He would not allow embarrassment or common sense to take charge.
She clung to his shoulders when he picked her up and she circled his waist with her legs, his mouth never breaking the kiss, engaging her in an erotic dance as he carried her through the apartment.
He eased her onto the bed, peeling her shirt off as he pulled away.
She breathed deeply, her eyes half-closed, still high with the throbbing ache of passion. Watching him undress, she wanted him inside of her. She had never hungered for someone as she did now. The power of her need surprised her.
He was large and beautiful. Her heart pounded violently against her ribs when he climbed onto the bed on top of her. She wrapped her hand around him and he pulsed in her grip.
“Not yet.”
He took hold of her wrists and pinned them beside her head. He took his time looking her over. Her nipples drew into tight buds under his inspection and he smiled.
“Did I ever tell you about our sessions with Dr. Ruth?”
***
Lacey’s dark curls spilled onto his arm and pillow. The touch of a smile kissed her lips in the aftermath of their lovemaking. Her eyes were closed and her naked body lay safely in his arms.
Gavin fought the knot that was rising in his throat. He’d savored every taste, every touch, every sigh. She belonged to him at this moment, but the thought of ever not having her again scared him—and he wasn’t a man to let fear rule him.
He buried those thoughts. He’d have her again. She’d be his. She couldn’t not be his.
Making love to her was something special. Their past, their futures, their joy, and their grief were all part of the moment. As she’d clung to him, he’d clung to her. She needed him and… as much as he’d never thought he’d need anyone, he needed her.
Her eyes opened and she smiled. “Have you ever had a feeling that you wanted to stop time, to preserve the moment and make it last for eternity?”
“Yeah. Right now.”
She brushed her lips against his. He let his fingers trail over her silky skin, along her arm, down the side of her body, over her hip.
“I’m embarrassed about the scars.” She pulled the sheets up over them. “They’re so ugly.”
Tightness gripped his chest. “They are part of what makes you so beautiful.” He kissed her, gathering her tighter to him.
She came to him, let him hold her. She was silent for the longest moment, her face pressed against his chest. Gavin felt the dampness of her tears.
“I’m sorry for all the pain, for what happened to you. And I’m sorry I reminded you of it earlier.”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t you. It was my mother’s letters.”
“Talking is healing…or so I’ve been told,” he whispered, recognizing his own weakness. But this was her time. Her grief. And perhaps her chance to unload some of the pain. He kissed her hair, caressed her back. “What happened after Terri left Cleveland?”
She waited a couple of heartbeats and then words tumbled out. “After my sister was gone, my father checked into some kind of program. I don’t know what it was or where it was, but he wasn’t around for a few months. And when he got back, he was different. Subdued. Slept a lot. There were no crises to speak of. My parents seemed to be getting along.”
“You must have been missing your sister.”
“I was, but I was old enough to understand that she was in a better place. And she could never come back. We talked on the phone when we could. I knew she was safe.” Lacey rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling. “And I learned to be a good liar. When my father had a meltdown, I wouldn’t mention it to Terri. When my mother’s front teeth were knocked out, I kept quiet.”
“You were just a kid and you had a lot to deal with,” Gavin said.
“I didn’t feel so young. But I was a survivor,” she told him. “I stayed out of my father’s way on his bad days. I had my hiding places. I was a master at zoning out, and I counted the days, thinking someday, when I was seventeen or eighteen, I could move to Connecticut like Terri did. But I couldn’t last that long.”
She pulled the sheets up to her chin. Gavin propped himself on an elbow, holding her.
“It was the night of my fifteenth birthday. My father was drunk, tearing into everything and everyone. My mother was pushing me to go out to a movie with some friends. She wanted me out of the house. But I only made it as far as the front door. I heard him beating her. Punching her. I went back in.”
She stared at the ceiling, reliving the horror.
“I don’t remember much of what happened after I went back. Head injuries with a concussion, broken bones, a shattered hip. Somehow, I had fallen down the stairs from our kitchen to the basement. I think he beat me with a bat at the bottom of the stairs, but my memory of it was wiped away. The doctors told me later that it was a miracle I survived.”
“Only the worst kind of man would do this to his own child, to anyone,” Gavin said angrily.
“That’s true. But the worst of it all for me…and for Terri…was that our mother never told the police. She chose him over me. She lied, saying I slipped on the stairs. That it was an accident. He wasn’t going to contradict her. And then he took off.”
Gavin clenched his jaws tight against the w
ords he wanted to say. Terri had told him how she’d gone to Cleveland after hearing the news, ready to kill the bastard. And she said she would have succeeded this time if she’d found him. But he’d disappeared.
Lacey batted away her tears with a vengeance. “So I did get my wish. I was shipped off to Connecticut. But I arrived here a broken person. Not just in body, but in spirit. And that was when I started doing alcohol and drugs and getting into trouble.”
That was when the murder at the lake had happened. Life had turned its back on her.
“You know I spent three years in the prison after Stephanie Green’s murder? While I was there, my mother sent me dozens of letters. But I didn’t read a single one. I didn’t want to read any excuses or explanations. I knew they were back together. And I knew she didn’t love me.”
Gavin pulled her back into his arms. He wiped away her tears that were flowing freely.
“I was still in jail when they died. She took his shotgun and she didn’t miss. She killed herself a minute later. So by the time I got out, it was too late. Too late to change my mind. Too late for anything. I never had a chance to make peace with her.”
CHAPTER 40
Nothing could protect him. Running away only meant certain death. And not just for him.
Luke Brandt had no idea whose names were on the list everyone was after. But he did know that Bratva was a fucking butcher, and he’d die before he’d let the bastard get his hands on his daughter.
Alisha’s pimp had supposedly stolen the list and was trying to use it for some blackmail scam. He’d been killed. Alisha had gotten hold of the paper, thinking it gave her some kind of protection. She was dead, too. Terri Watkins was the only one that the thirteen-year-old had trusted. It was logical that she’d have possession of it. But that was hard to know since she was out of the picture. But he had to find the damn thing.
It’d seemed so simple when Watkins got dusted. How many places were there to hide the thing? Luke had searched her locker and then her apartment. The only loose end was the mail that was later forwarded to the sister.
He’d even dug up files on Lacey Watkins and done his research, finding out everything about her past. If the sister now had the list, she’d been awfully quiet about it so far. Still, it was time for a visit since there was nowhere else left to look.
Westbury was the kind of town where nothing happened, even on a Saturday night. This was a good thing. He didn’t want to be running into anyone.
The flip side was that Lacey Watkins might be home. He had to get his story straight. Play the good cop, her sister’s friend, running an errand for the department. She might just hand the sister’s stuff over. That is, if she was alone.
At the station house, he’d overheard that Gavin might be hanging around Lacey these days. That was not good. Also, this afternoon Jake had been meeting Gavin for beers. That was bad, too.
But at least Jake had no filter. All Luke had to do was ask a straight question, and the moron would answer.
He drove past the house where Lacey lived. Everything was dark. From what he could see, no cars were parked in the long driveway. He pulled his car to the side a couple of houses away and parked, shooting Jake a text message.
What’s Gavin doing with Terri’s sister?
He didn’t have to wait long when the text came through.
Fucking her from what I can see. Nice piece of ass too. She was with him this afternoon in NH.
That was just what Luke needed to know. Leaving the car where it was, he walked down the driveway to the house.
CHAPTER 41
It was a night that defied time. Defied everything that she knew.
Lacey lost track of how many times they made love. For the first time in her life, she felt cherished, trusted. Complete. Over and over, her body merged with his in a way that she’d never thought possible.
He’d held her so close that they might have been one entity, and she felt safe and protected.
But the first rays of dawn streaking into the room cleared the rosy haze from her head, and the old fears emerged once again.
She had to act, run fast and far, get away before she had to look him in the face and actually voice her fears.
Something very different occurred to her this morning. Something new. Lacey realized that she was afraid of herself. She was her father’s daughter. She had demons that haunted her. She was unpredictable. Changeable. She made bad choices and people got hurt because of her.
And she was a coward.
She crept out of the bed while he slept. Throwing her clothes on, she picked up her purse and slunk like a thief out of his apartment.
It was easy to find a cab in New Haven even at that early hour of the morning. The fare was steep to New Milford, but she didn’t care. And she managed to keep up the pretense of detachment while the cab driver chatted endlessly about anything and everything that was wrong with New Haven.
Paying the cabbie when they reached the police station, she got behind the wheel of her car. That was when the hard reality of what she’d done rushed back. Sometime during the night, they had each spoken about their past. Gavin had told her about his sister Elsie.
Overwhelmed with emotion even now as she drove, his pain had touched her heart. The responsibility that he felt for not being there for his sister was even more intense than the guilt wracking her over Terri’s hit-and-run. Elsie had been only fifteen. She’d been expected to make smart, rational decisions and take the right path to recovery after their mother’s death. Another lost teenager, different dangers, a bad decision, and so much more had gone wrong.
And Gavin had shared this piece of himself with her last night.
After a lifetime of repressing her emotions something had changed in Lacey since yesterday. She couldn’t hold back. The pain couldn’t be buried. The tears were free to fall.
Memories of that night at Sherman Pond came back to her. She’d called her sister, but she’d been too late. Stephanie had already been dead. But those boys at the lake hadn’t been beyond killing Lacey, too, if they’d thought she’d act against them. Her attorney claimed that Stephanie’s murder had been premeditated by the rest and Lacey would have been another corpse in that lake.
And what was it that Gavin’s sister had gotten herself into? Was it love that had made her run away? Had she been kidnapped? Had there ever been a time when she’d realized the danger and wanted to call her brother? If so, it had never happened. She hadn’t trusted him enough or there hadn’t been the chance. And that was another reason why he harbored such pain after so many years. Even as a cop, he hadn’t been able to do anything to save her.
Elsie would have been thirty-four if she were still alive. Only three years older than Lacey. Now she understood the bond that Terri and Gavin shared. Now she understood why he was committed not to fail again.
And what had Lacey done this morning? Run away. Again. And in doing so, she was destroying the slender threads of trust that they had spun last night. She was proving how easy it was for him to fail again.
She was too upset to get out of the car when she pulled into her driveway. Sitting behind the wheel, she forced herself to think rationally about their situation.
Her heart ached for him. She was far from ready to admit it, even privately to herself, but she was in love. Love as she’d imagined it. As she’d seen in the movies. As she’d read in books. Flawed people, perfect chemistry, indescribable physical attraction, great sex. Together they could conquer worlds.
It’d always been a dream. Men like Gavin didn’t exist.
Gavin proved her wrong.
What mattered now was that she couldn’t hurt him. He didn’t deserve to be treated the way she’d treated him this morning.
She took her cell phone out of her bag to call him. There were already six missed calls and four voicemails—all from Gavin’s number. She’d shut off the volume.
She listened to her voicemail.
“Lacey, where are you?” His voic
e was deep, furious.
The next call.
“Lacey…please answer your cell phone.”
The next.
“Lacey, are you okay?” he sounded worried.
Her cell phone vibrated, indicating an incoming call before she could listen to the next voicemail. She stared at his number and took few unsteady breaths, forcing herself to remain calm and coherent.
“Hi. My ringer was off. I’m fine,” she told him.
“Where are you?”
“I had to pick up my car.” She didn’t want to tell him that it had taken her as long as getting back to her house before common sense prevailed.
“Where exactly are you now?”
“Sitting in my car, behind the wheel, with the doors locked. I’m not driving at the moment.” She tried to inject a note of humor into the words. “Paying one hundred and ten percent attention to this phone call.”
“Why did you leave?” He wasn’t buying into it.
Lacey thought about her answer for a moment. “I was being childish. No excuse. Listening to an old voice in my head…but I realize the voice was wrong.”
“I’m coming to get you,” he said softer, much gentler. “Right now. Where are you?”
“No need.” She envisioned the tender way that he would pull her into his arms. How his wide shoulders would protect her, block everything that was wrong in the world. “I’m coming back.”
“Now? You’re not stopping anywhere?”
Lacey looked at her front door twenty feet away. There was a change of clothes, toiletries that she should pick up from the house. But then she thought of the person who was so bold as to leave dead animals on her welcome mat. She wouldn’t take the risk. This wasn’t only about her safety.
“Yes, right now. I’m coming.”
“Lacey, last night was amazing. But this morning when I woke up and you weren’t there…I…”