by Shirl Anders
“Never believed that thing you were throwing down about being a bad gang buster,” Link said. “Knew something was up. And I was right, like usual.”
Finn nearly snorted at Link’s intact ego, which was funny as hell. He felt something that had been rolled up tight inside him since he’d been undercover ease a little.
No one in town knew what he’d been doing—the act he’d been playing. No one had known the outcome, either. There wasn’t a big spread in the local newspaper declaring, “Multi-agency sting nabs twenty-five bad guys. Special Agent Finn O’Neil saves the town.”
“Hell,” Finn muttered under his breath. Then louder, he said, “Thanks, man. It was hairy at times.”
“I feel you,” Link said. “I hate undercover work worse than anything. Love the rest of it, though.”
Finn nodded as they had a shared moment. Then he said, “So tell me if you have any insight into Creed or where he may be headed.”
Link cut him an intense gaze. “That mother is the definition of armed and dangerous. What worries me is what is a hard-ass like Creed afraid of that would drive him to the edge of armed, desperate, and dangerous because of it?”
“Yeah, what worse bad guy has he got on his tail?” Finn asked, following Link’s thinking, because he’d been thinking that too.
What Angel had said about Creed using her to replace the girls he’d lost made Finn realize there were still other bad tangos out there. Tangos that were even higher up the bad-guy food chain.
“Damn mess isn’t over,” he muttered, turning his Jeep up the long driveway to his lake house.
“It’s never over,” Link said. “Life just keeps pissing tangos.” But then Link split a grin. “But now that fact makes me rich, bringing them down, instead of having some lightweight state pension. You need to try it, my man.”
Finn stopped his Jeep right next to a long black limo in his driveway, which was next to a sweet Cadillac Escalade SUV. That Caddy showed the amount of money Link was talking about making.
“I’ll think about it,” Finn said, to Link’s suggestion, and he’d surprised himself by saying it.
He had to admit, getting the filth of dirty undercover work off him sounded very tempting. He could use his skills for a lot of cash.
“A healthy cash influx would be justified with your new babe.” Link smacked Finn’s upper arm. “If she ever gets too rich for your blood, I’m ready to step in.”
Finn’s smile was deadly. “She’s taken,” he growled.
Link smirked. “Just making sure. Looks like a whole lot of fun, man. I envy you.”
They shook hands standing by Link’s SUV. Link offered bodyguard services for Coco’s curves anytime they were needed. Finn said boldly that they weren’t going to be needed any longer.
Right then, the door to Finn’s place opened and Jagger prowled out of the house.
“They are drunk, beautiful, and more than this young man can handle,” he said.
Link started toward the house at that obvious challenge, but Finn grabbed his arm.
“You aren’t needed, my man,” Finn said.
Link allowed himself to be stopped, then he laughed. “Just giving you a hard time.”
Finn lifted a hand to Link, gesturing his goodbye as he stalked to his hand-carved front door. Over his shoulder, he threw at Jagger, “Your ass stays right there, in that limo, until every babe is back in it but Coco. You hear me?”
He didn’t wait for an answer he knew would be affirmative as he knuckled open his front door. Why the hell did he feel as if he was walking into a den of lionesses and his ass was the meat they wanted to gnaw on?
But when he expected to find Coco, as he stalked inside, instead he found Tess.
As if she’d been waiting for him.
“I knew it,” she muttered, as she clicked her heels through his front foyer, which was in the middle of a never-ending remodel job, since he’d inherited the place from his uncle. Jacob O’Neil, former U.S. marshal and the only family Finn had ever had growing up.
“You know she’s going through a hard time and she might not be quite herself, right?” Tess said.
Finn’s eyes narrowed on Tess, who was beautiful, but not quite as hot as he’d always thought, compared to Coco.
“I’m not oblivious, babe,” he muttered.
“You like her a lot. I can tell,” Tess informed him.
He gave her a look.
Then she advised him, “It’s not always necessary to be able to read all women all the time, you know.”
To which he said, “With my history, it damn well is.”
She grasped his arm over his leather jacket, giving him her very serious blue eyes. “I don’t know Coco well, but what I see, she does not hide who she is at all.”
He couldn’t disagree with that, with only two problems. One, Coco might not even look like the woman he’d been lusting after to fuck twenty-four-seven. Or number two, she kept lying and telling him what he wanted to hear, then doing her own thing. Which could make her an unpredictable and exciting woman, except for the vague threats of danger she was under. And that added to his need to keep her safe.
Tess must have read some of his thoughts as they passed through him, because she pulled him closer and whispered, “If it was easy, it wouldn’t be worth everything.”
Hell.
He grabbed her hand on his arm for a squeeze, letting her know he’d heard her deep, then he let go and he asked something different.
“How’d you know I’d be on edge?”
She shrugged and smiled. “I’m getting good at predicting badass guys’ attitudes. Comes with the best things I’ve found in life.”
His return lift of lips wasn’t necessarily happy, but it was real. “So you heard we got Angel safe.”
“Yes, thank God.” Tess nodded, then she muttered, “That girl is the definition of high strung.”
Now he nodded, and then he imparted the newest gossip, to help ease fears and, well, maybe to get the ladies to take Justice’s back on the matter.
“Justice was Angel’s glue when he got there,” he said, making Tess’ eyebrows rise. “Went so far, not one hundred percent sure, but I think he demanded she marry him so he could tie her ass down and keep her safe.”
Now Tess’ pretty blues snapped wide with surprise.
“Wow,” she whispered, then he saw her mind turning like a speedway.
He cleared his throat. “Babe, before you get the wedding all planned out, could you grab your girls? Jagger is outside waiting and I need some privacy with my woman.”
Tess slapped his arm, being playfully indignant. “I am not planning a wedding,” she denied.
He shook his head. “Any mention of any wedding and you are.”
She smiled up at him as if she were an angel, and then she didn’t waste any time disagreeing with him a second time. Instead, she went in for the heart-slam kill.
“You called her your woman. Love it!”
After he’d said goodbye to Carly, Rusty, and Tess, he went in search of his elusive woman. Who, if he didn’t think better of her, seemed as if she could be hiding from him. Or she could be waiting for a grand fucking reveal, which he found out seconds later, when his jaw literally dropped off his damn face as he saw her for the first time in the master bedroom.
She was not exactly hiding, but naked and blond, all the fuck over—even that little trim above her pussy. And if he’d ever wondered if going blond meant top and bottom, he didn’t wonder any longer, because it was displayed right before him. Draped over his bed, rocking a nude calendar pose.
He got instantly hard, and all his confused anger sort of choked up.
But then his gaze landed on her damn feet, and his body tensed as if getting ready for an explosive cock-thrusting motion.
The stilettos she wore were black, like slick leather poured over the cream of her flesh, and they had sexy spiked heels with fucking chrome-looking buckles and a little chain, which he instantly wanted to
wrap somewhere on her voluptuous nude body, to chain her ass to him.
He got fucking harder.
So damn hard, he throbbed, and his eyesight blurred as he just caught himself and pulled back from pouncing on her. Damn blond hair and all. Which he did not like. And it was a shame, but her luxurious dark hair had been like filthy hot sex poured over him.
He caught his breath—he caught his cock, and he caught his damn lust-infused attitude. Which was not directed at the passionate side of lust, but rather the tensely edgy side, and was close to angry domination.
“What the fuck,” he growled, not able to better articulate the massive conflicts thrashing through him.
He saw Coco’s nude body flinch, while his fists hit his hips and her unnaturally blond hair floated around her breasts. Shit was long—and her breasts were ... fuck him ... big.
“Don’t you like it?” she whispered, and she ran a hand through her hair, posing more on the bed.
If he’d had a normal brain not taken over by lust, anger, and doubt, he’d have noticed her hesitating. But all he noticed, besides her hard nipples, pink wet slit, and fuck-me heels, was how dare she ask him that kind of no-win question. A question about something major she’d done without asking him.
So he belted her with words. “Fucked-up question and you know it, Coco.”
That got her sitting upright with alarm, and it showed how really bothered he was, with all that naked glory right in front of his nose and how he could ignore it and his hard-on to keep being pissed.
“I did exactly what you asked and came right home,” she declared. “You don’t have to be mad about that, sugar.”
His jaw tightened. “I agree, babe,” he said sharply. “But what the hell about this.” His hand raised and he gestured to all of her. “Such a fucking major change without asking me.”
It was a demand, and he meant it to sound that way. Problem was she didn’t even look like the woman he’d been fucking, and, he would add, fucking better than anything he’d had in his life.
All kinds of hurt entered Coco’s face and eyes. Then she cried the strangest comeback and whirled off the bed.
“You never like it!”
His mind was trying to wrap around what the hell that meant as he watched her round, perfect, and fuckable ass swing to his closet. He knew that ass. He’d had his hands all over it. Looking at her from that direction, he felt he knew her. Maybe he should keep her turned away from him, he thought as his palm itched to swat that sassy and stubborn bottom.
“Did you fucking get permission to move?” he snapped, forcefully.
She stopped nearly to his closet with her fake blond hair swinging around the inward curve at the small of her back.
“Are we not in the damn bedroom?” he demanded harshly. “My domain. And, I’ll add, with you fucking nude.”
She swung around with those spiked heels she wore, arching everything on her body like sex. “Deek,” she said.
“Yeah.” He took off his jacket, his shoulder holster, and gun, and swung them over the chair. “That’s what you call me in this situation, because your ass is mine in this damn bedroom.”
And he walked toward her. When he got closer, he could see that she trembled. He knew that look of instant lust on her. She was upset, but way turned on. Still, it was hard to look at her with all that blond going on and think of her as the same woman.
Then he walked past her into the closet and he grabbed a robe, which he brought back out and handed to her. She looked confused, disappointed, and hurt as she slammed the robe on.
“I don’t think you get to be angry-dominant with me,” she said.
He shrugged his shoulders, trying to loosen them as he went to plant his ass on the end of the bed. “Close it,” he said of the robe.
She pouted, and that gesture of hers he knew very well.
“I’m just trying to live up to all your hotness,” she muttered, with her head down and her eyes pointed to the ground as she closed her robe and tied it.
Damn, he’d not expected that. What the hell did she mean by live up to him? Then he remembered Tess saying that Coco might not be acting quite herself. He folded his arms across his chest and looked at the woman he wanted to be his in so many ways.
But every time he thought something like that about her, it scared the hell out of him. Maybe it scared her too.
“You know I thought I damn well knew my wife. Then one day I wanted to fool around and she was avoiding me, and I suddenly realized she wasn’t teasing me by trying to play hard to get; she really meant it. She didn’t want to fuck me.”
“Deek,” Coco whispered, and her eyes rose to his.
He cleared his throat. “So I got this thing about women not being who I think they are.”
Coco grimaced, and he saw her eyes get bright with tears, and then she tiptoed to him in her high heels and planted her ass next to him.
“I would have a problem with that too,” she said, and grabbed his hand. He let her, and he squeezed her hand back. “He never liked anything new I tried,” she whispered.
He glanced sideways at her. “Hell,” he whispered. Then he rubbed his chest, while still holding her hand. “It’s not that I don’t like new things, really,” he muttered.
She interrupted, “No, I get it. I shouldn’t have been so stupid not asking you.”
Their fingers intertwined, and he looked at her face and in her eyes and not at her hair. “Maybe I should have told you how much I loved your damn hair.”
It shouldn’t have made her smile, but that was damn Coco through and through. And her kissable lips lifted in a small smile. “I thought I was too suburban housewife and needed to be a hot Playboy Bunny for you.”
He was dumbfounded. “Bella, you’re the hottest babe I ever touched.”
Then he had her in his arms and she clutched him. “I could be having some ‘left for another woman and getting divorced’ crazies, Deek.”
He chuckled a little and rubbed her back.
“I get that, baby. After I left mine, I bought a damn Harley I couldn’t afford, which I’ve since sold. Then I let my hair grow down to the middle of my back, and got a damn earring, which I thought looked cool. But that shit’s just not me.”
“You might be right about the ‘just not me’ stuff,” she said into his neck. “I just didn’t want to be the wife who was so stupid and not hot enough to keep. And I kept thinking you’re so hot, and I needed to be hotter.”
He stroked the strands of her hair, and he really liked the feel of it.
“That’s a couple ideas there, babe. We are not stupid because they fucked around on us, but we could be stupid because we didn’t see who they were, and then we tried to be all this different shit to make them want us ... when we should have just dropped them, right then and there.”
She sniffled and kissed his neck, rubbing her hand on his back. “You think, Deek?”
He gave her a tight hug and released. “Yeah, definitely, baby.”
“I can undo the blond hair,” she whispered.
“We’ll make a deal,” he said. “You take it back to the original color I fucking love, but you keep it as long, and I’ll only spank you for not staying here, like you damn well said you were going to do, and I won’t spank you for the hair change too.”
She semi-tensed against him when he’d basically advised her she was going to get a spanking, and then he decided he might as well get some enjoyment out of it, because those heels combined with her bare ass were going to get his come all over them.
No way to stop that shit.
Thirteen] He Branded Her Deep
“Lift your ass higher. Gimme that hot pussy,” Finn growled, and Coco tilted the burning cheeks of her spanked behind up to his deep thrust.
Coco’s eyes rolled back as the entire bed rocked from where she held the headboard. The heels of her stilettos pointed to the ceiling on either side of Finn’s powering hips. She’d thought the banging was him fucking her so hard,
but it was probably the bed hitting the wall. Each driving thrust slapped his thighs against the red on her buttocks and stung deeply, which in turn did that amazing thing that stoked her arousal to new heights.
She moaned like a crazy Southern woman who’d just found Jesus in church, while Finn used the new length of her hair like a leash to fuck her.
Brilliant.
When she came all over his cock and orgasmed for the second time that night, because after he’d spanked her butt red he’d worked his fingers on her until she’d come then sprawled over his lap, he still hadn’t ejaculated.
Instead, he was ready for another position.
The new position was with him on the bottom and her on top, his eyes blazing into hers. The difference was he wasn’t allowing her to move with him or move her hips. Instead, he was powering up into her, while holding her to his thrusts as she gripped his wrists for balance.
The strength and determination to fuck her rippled through his body, as her breasts leaped with each drive and her black-tipped gold nails dug in deeper. Through her squinted eyes, which were filled with pleasure, she’d never seen a man look more dark or passionate.
Finn was more than desirable—he was like the air, she wanted to breathe.
“Deek, fuck me!” she cried.
He hated her blond hair, but he didn’t hate her. Her he fucked as if he couldn’t get enough of her, never wanted to let go of her, and maybe she was the air that he breathed too.
“Touch it,” he demanded, a barked command that shot through her body.
And she did, she touched her clit, and then screamed his name. That was when he came while he drove up into her, sweat slicking his chest, his eyes raging with desire for her, his hair plastered to his forehead, and his lips drawn back as a groan rolled from his throat.
She felt his heat fill her, brand her, and drive the intense pleasure of her climax higher. It was so amazing, so overpowering, she wasn’t sure how much longer it was later that she found herself sprawled over his chest.
They were still connected, and he was stroking her hair, with his hard, muscular chest moving up and down as he caught his breath.