He scrubbed his hands up and down his face. “Of course not. She came on to me after a long draining case. We arrested a guy for killing a little kid, and we were both feeling kind of . . . raw. Reckless, I guess. We went to a bar, had a few beers. I slept with her one time and never saw her again.”
Jesus, he was tired. He trudged to the end of the bed and sat. “In Longdale, we’re just a handful of country cops, and no one gives a shit about rank or who you sleep with. We don’t have a team of detectives, or a separate vice unit, or drug team; we do it all. And when something big happens, highway patrol gets involved.”
Jordan sat next to him. “I know you’ve slept with other women, and I don’t care about what happened in your past. I don’t care if you’ve been with ten other cops. But you tried to hide it today. That tells me there was more to it back then . . .”
When her voice trailed off he knew, just fucking knew, what she was implying.
“. . . and maybe there’s more to it now.”
He stood and stomped away because the only other option was to go postal. Only Jordan could draw such a fucked-up line from point A to point B. How the hell could she still doubt what was between them?
“I don’t even know what to say to that. There wasn’t really time to explain a one-night stand with Isobel in the two minutes you stopped by my office. And this conversation”—he motioned between them—“right here? This is exactly why I didn’t offer up the information. I had a brief encounter with her that lasted roughly as long as it takes to brush your teeth and wasn’t quite as exciting. Oh, screw it. I’m taking a shower.”
He stripped, walked to the bathroom door, and then turned back. “I’m not gonna lie, I’ve have had sex with a lot of women. But I’ve only ever been in love with one. Let me know if you ever figure out the math.”
***
How did he always do something completely stupid and then make her feel like she was the idiot? Of course, he had to go and say something that made her whole chest ache. How could she stay mad with him being so . . . so Ty?
Plus he’d walked past her buck naked. It would be a whole lot easier to stay pissed if he wasn’t built like a god.
The ass.
Maybe she was an idiot, but the thought of going to bed while they were still mad at each other made a dull ache settle in her stomach. In the short time they’d been together, she’d become shamelessly dependent on having him wrapped around her at night. She’d slept better in the last few months than she ever had.
She blew out a giant sigh and flopped back on the bed. Navigating a relationship wasn’t her specialty. Maybe there were times when she needed to suck up her pride and apologize. Times like tonight.
After peeling out of her clothes, she went into the bathroom and stepped into the shower behind him.
His big arm was propped against the wall and his head was hanging down. Steamy water trailed along the muscles in his back. It was embarrassing how fiercely her body responded to the sight of his. In awe of the picture he made, she laid her hands on his back and then smoothed them up to his shoulders and squeezed.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
After pumping out a few handfuls of soap, she massaged it over his back. The tension in his shoulders eased. Ironically, her insides began to coil tightly.
She remembered the first time she’d felt the sensation.
The very first night she met him, he turned to walk away and her body had physically ached with something so unfamiliar she had no words to describe it. Nothing much was different now. Except that now she recognized the sensation to be so much more than the simple lust she first dismissed it as.
“Nothing pisses me off more than you doubting how I feel about you,” he murmured through the steam and the water.
“I know. I don’t doubt you, and I don’t want to fight.” She also didn’t doubt that Isobel Riley wanted him, but it was time to let that go before she caused more damage to their relationship than Isobel ever would. She slid her arms around his waist, lowered her hand to stroke him, and found him steel-hard already. Fighting didn’t appear to be top on his priority list, either. She pumped her fingers up and down his length until all the muscles in his back tightened again.
He groaned and spun around, then lowered his lips to the curve of her neck and licked all the way up to her ear. God, there was just something about the way Tyler McGee used his tongue that made all of her bones turn to liquid.
Placing a hand under her knee, he lifted her leg and propped her foot on the edge of the shower seat. He opened her, gently teasing her clit with one clever finger before spearing it inside her.
“Ty,” she cried out, arching against his hand. She wrapped an arm around his neck and brought his mouth to hers. His tongue moved and teased just as shrewdly as his fingers. In and out. In and out. An erotic rhythm causing a deep thrumming pleasure to pulse from her core.
She wanted to touch him. Needed to touch him. Now. Right now. She ran an unsteady hand down his chest, down his stomach, straight down to his shaft with the intention of gently stroking him. But he tightened his big hand over hers and urged her into a tighter, quicker rhythm.
When his mouth moved back to her neck, his breath rushed in and out. He added another finger to the one already inside her and rolled the pad of his thumb around and around her clit.
Not to be outdone, she fisted her hand up and down his length until he groaned against her ear.
He moved his hand away, and she thought she might lose her mind. She wanted to scream, wanted to beg. “Please,” she ended up whispering. They both had to be just seconds away from . . .
He caught her thighs, pinned her ass against the wall, and drove inside her.
The orgasm ripped through her the second he sank in. “Thank God. Oh, thank God.” She was vaguely aware of the gasping chant rising from her chest, but damned if she could quiet it. Her fingers clenched in the dark silk of his hair and held on while her body continued to vibrate and splinter.
It was as near a religious experience as she’d ever come. If heaven offered anything close to the blinding orgasms Ty delivered, there wouldn’t be so many spirits driving her crazy at night.
Still, she hung on. Wrung out. Breathless.
“Again,” he growled, never slowing the pace. Faster. Harder. Deeper with every thrust. “Again,” he demanded.
Too sensitive and too spent, she knew she couldn’t come again so soon, but the determination in his voice warmed her veins like an expensive shot of tequila. Damned if her body didn’t begin to tighten a second time.
Okay then. Hell, yes, again.
She thought the words, couldn’t begin to speak them through the tight clench of her lungs. The hot water heated her skin until she was mere seconds from combustion. Clenched muscles in her arms and legs burned with the exertion of clinging to him.
But her core, her core raced, begged, pleaded for another release.
“Come for me, baby. One more time. Squeeze that pretty body around me over and over, Oh God, yes. I fucking love that . . . ohhh . . .”
His erotic plea drop-kicked her into another vicious climax. That and feeling his huge body pound hot and wild inside her. She pulled his mouth to hers and devoured him until he drew back for air.
“Holy shit.” His breath heaved in and out. He flipped them so that his back was leaning against the wall. Then, like the rivulets of water, they slid down and onto the shower floor. “Holy fucking shit,” he grumbled against her neck again.
She laughed. Neither of them were poets, but Ty’s words pretty well summed up the moment.
After a minute or two, he opened his eyes and looked at her. “Did we just have make-up sex?”
“Not sure.” She was still wrapped around him, straddling him on the shower floor as hot water sprayed around them. “I think we just had I’m going to look past your tumble with Skanky-bell but if you touch her again I will cut your nuts off sex.”
He chuckled. “Fair enough.” He brush
ed the wet hair back off her face. “You can’t logically believe after the last ten minutes that there’s any chance I’d look at another woman.”
“Since when has logic ever entered into this thing between you and me?”
“True.” His head dropped back against the shower wall. “Although right now, I can’t even stand up. How the hell do you think I’d have the energy to juggle two of you?”
She narrowed her eyes but couldn’t help grinning at the jerk. His smartass statement touched off an idea that wasn’t half bad. Another round or two of sex like the one they’d just had, and she was quite certain he wouldn’t have the energy to get out of bed in the morning, much less give anyone else a second glance.
“I’m just saying that maybe whatever happened between you and the redhead didn’t mean anything to you, but I have eyes. Skanky-belle wants a round two with you.” Afraid she might be on the verge of heatstroke, she scooted back and reached up to adjust the water temperature.
Ty cupped her breasts as she fiddled with the nozzle. “In my own twisted way, I find it kind of hot that you’re jealous and all. I just think you might want to be jealous over someone I actually wanted a round one with.”
“Not helping.” She wrapped her hand around his dick and gave it a warning squeeze. “Just remember, I own this. Don’t you ever forget it.”
He surprised her by pulling her close for a soft, tender kiss. Then he lifted her hand and laid it on his chest, right over his heart. “This is the body part you own. And don’t you ever forget it.”
Chapter 7
“Die?” The girl mumbled the word as tears and blood streaked down her face. “What are you talking about? You’ve had too much to drink. David, you’re scaring me.”
Casually, he shrugged. Then pulled the blue baseball cap down tighter on his mop of blond hair. “I haven’t had a drop of alcohol.”
He stepped closer.
She scrambled to her feet and backed away.
“Do I look drunk, Hailey? Do I talk like I’m drunk?”
“I know you’re drunk. I saw how much you had to drink tonight.” She turned to run.
He lunged, slamming her face first into the snow, then flipped her over.
“David, stop,” she cried as he pinned her arms to the ground. “Don’t do this! We can fix whatever is wrong.”
“No, we can’t.” He straddled her body and moved one hand to her slender throat. “But I can.”
***
An odd sensation made Jordan blink her eyes open. Her hands and feet were frigid, but her lungs were on fire. She drew in a greedy breath—once, twice—and then it happened again. A moist, rough lick streaked up the side of her cheek. Warm breath panted in her ear. Unless Ty was trying some different moves to pull her out of a dream, she suspected—actually, hoped like hell—Beauty was sharing some affection.
She reared back in her desk chair.
Beauty scurried away and whined.
“It’s okay, girl. I’m fine.” She reached out to reassure the dog. “You’ll get used to it.”
The dog cocked her head as if challenging Jordan. Beauty was wise beyond her years. “Okay, you may not get used to it, but you’ll cope. If I can, and Ty can, then you can, too.”
Of course, last night she hadn’t coped very well. Even though she’d made love to Ty until well past one, it was barely a couple hours later when she’d woken struggling for air. For the second night in a row, she dreamed of the girl who had been strangled in the snow.
The dream hadn’t been loud enough to wake Ty, but it had been vivid enough that she hadn’t felt like risking another one. In lieu of sleeping, she studied her father’s file in the spare bedroom. They were transforming the space into an office, and Ty had installed a killer computer. Unfortunately, even slick, high-powered electronics couldn’t make sense of all the crap in her father’s file.
“You’re awake.”
She swiveled around in the chair. Ty was walking toward her with a blanket in his hand.
“God, you scared me. I thought you were gone. What time is it?”
“Almost six.” He draped the blanket across her shoulders and leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “I woke up and you were gone. I heard Beauty whining and carrying on, so I looked in here. You okay?”
She pulled the blanket tighter around her. “I am now. Thanks.”
“Did you have a dream?”
She didn’t want to get into the dream with him. “No, I just couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about my dad’s file and how much I still don’t know.”
He leaned back against the desk and crossed his arms with a disapproving expression. “I’ll be done with this case soon, babe. Why don’t you wait until this murder investigation is over? We’ll figure out what happened with your dad together.”
She shrugged. “I’m on vacation until next week. Might as well use the time I have left.”
For a moment he didn’t respond. Finally, he said, “Don’t get mad, but I don’t think it’s wise to look into this alone.”
Annoyed, she leaned back in the big leather chair. “I solve most of my cases alone.”
“Not the ones involving people you love. Trust me, I’ve been there. You know I’ve been there. Investigating Tara’s murder almost ate me alive.”
She preferred working solo. Always had. Being emotionally connected to a case only made her wish more strongly than ever that everyone would just back the hell off and stay out of her business. “I’m fine. You better get going.”
He looked down at the desk that was littered with documents from her dad’s file. “Give me a brief rundown of what you’ve found out so far.”
She wasn’t stupid. He was trying to judge how emotionally strung-out she was. But she couldn’t deny that she wanted his take on things. “My dad was deep inside a drug cartel with another agent named Ben Steel. They were assigned to pick up a truckload of cocaine and move it across two states. The street value was almost a million.”
She grabbed a report and handed it to Ty. According to the date, it was notes written by her father just hours before his death.
“There was no problem delivering the truck. Of course, my dad and Agent Steel had to inform the Feds and DEA of a shipment that huge. The truck was seized and a couple of high-up distributors were nabbed. Might have gotten a slap on the wrist, but I haven’t gotten that far yet.”
“Sounds like a test,” Ty murmured while scanning the document. “Someone suspected they were cops. They were willing to sacrifice a large amount of drugs to pinpoint the narcs in their ring.”
Ty’s quick mind and wicked instincts appealed to Jordan in a way a great ass might appeal to another woman. There was something oh-so-sexy about a guy who could talk shop one minute and fuck you mindless the next.
He looked down at her. “What?”
She grinned and shook her head. “That was what I thought, too. It’s easy to draw that line with the hindsight we have. We know that my dad and Agent Steel were both murdered within the following forty-eight hours. But they didn’t see it coming.”
Ty glanced at his watch. “It’s six. I’ve got to roll.” He laid the document down on the desk and tilted her chin up. “Let this be for now. Go back to bed and get some rest; you’ve been up all night.” He smiled and touched his lips to hers. “It’d be very disappointing if you were too tired for a repeat performance of last night.”
She rolled her eyes. The man was a walking hard-on. Every sexual area on her body ached from last night’s sexcapades. “Even you couldn’t manage a round two of last night.”
“No?” he said, walking to the door. “I guess we’ll see about that.”
She watched his splendid backside walk away and tried not to think about the next several hours he would be spending side by side with Cherry-bomb.
On second thought, she’d find the strength for a round two if it killed her.
***
Ty parked his truck in front of the brick building that housed t
he Longdale Police Force. Surely today would have to be better than yesterday.
Longdale only had five cops and a chief. He knew every one of their cars. The car he parked next to wasn’t one he recognized. It wasn’t Isobel’s, either. So already someone was there that he had no desire to see. Not at 6:47 in the morning.
He walked inside and down the small hallway to his office. A large man with graying hair and overalls sat in one of the rickety chairs in front of his desk. Ty was pretty sure he was Hailey King’s father. Hailey’s dad hadn’t been home yesterday when he and Isobel had gone to the King residence to break the news, but he’d noticed the family pictures when they spoke with Hailey’s mom.
Ty shut his office door behind him. “Good morning,” he said.
The man’s eyes were damn near swelled shut. Ty was pretty good at recognizing grief when he saw it. “You’re Mr. King?”
The older man nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“I’m terribly sorry for your loss, Mr. King.” Ty walked to his chair and sat behind his desk. “I will do everything in my power—”
“Did you arrest him yet?”
Ty paused. He had a feeling he knew who King was talking about, but he decided to play dumb. “Arrest who, Mr. King?”
The big bear of a man leaned forward. “I don’t have the energy or the patience for this. You know as well as I do that David Benson killed my daughter.”
“Mr. King, we don’t have the evidence that supports an arrest yet.”
King’s face flushed a furious red. “That’s bull. You don’t want to arrest David Benson because his father has more money than God. That’s complete bullshit. We may not have a lot, Hailey may not have been rich, but Benson has to pay for what he did.”
Ty moved around to the front of his desk and leaned against it. “Mr. King, I couldn’t care less how much is in the Bensons’ bank account. But I do care about evidence.”
“David Benson followed her like a stalker for months. He was obsessed with my daughter. Her friend said they had a big fight the night she died. What else do you need?”
“I need solid proof. Some DNA, a witness, a fiber, something. We’re being careful so that when we arrest someone, it’ll stick. My job is to make sure I give the DA enough evidence to not only arrest, but to convict, as well. Sometimes that takes more than a day.”
Dream Caller (A Dream Seeker Novel Book 3) Page 7