by Leigh, Lora
And he had to fight himself, daily now, not to go to her, not to take what he knew he could have, what she would willingly give him.
Twenty-six. She was twenty-six years old. Slender, delicate. Pixy wasn’t far off when describing her. She barely topped his chest. She was fragile. She wasn’t strong-boned; she wasn’t mountain stock. Hell, she looked like a good breeze might blow her away, but still, she wasn’t skinny. She was slender. Rounded where a woman should be rounded. Curvy and tempting. But too damned fragile, he had to remind himself as he pulled himself into the official Tahoe emblazoned with the Pulaski County sheriff’s seal.
He could fuck all night, most nights. He was so damned testosterone driven that there were times he cursed it. When men he went to school with resorted to taking Viagra, Zeke still had the stamina he had had ten years before. Hell, there were times he wondered if he hadn’t gotten worse as he’d gotten older.
It was a Mayes male trait, his father had once bragged. All Mayes men had a big dick and lots of fire, his father had been known to tell anyone who cared to listen.
It was definitely a Mayes trait, and one he wasn’t happy with at the moment. If he had to take a little something to help his flesh get happy, then it might be better for him and Rogue both. Neither of them needed the complications that would come from the relationship he feared would evolve.
Because the fire wasn’t the only Mayes trait. Zeke loved sex; he just managed to keep his lusts reined in and tried to turn them toward women he knew weren’t looking for commitment or for something more than the hard ride he could give them.
Familiarity could breed a greater hunger. His marriage to Shane’s mother had suffered beneath the desires that often tormented Zeke. Not all women had the hungers or the needs that Zeke knew; he’d realized that with his wife before her death.
He’d had to hide his needs because of her distaste of them. After her death, he’d learned there were more women like her than he’d realized. He was the odd one, the one that needed to put a handle on his unruly fantasies and needs.
He hadn’t thought he was odd when he lived in L.A., when the friends he’d made there had revealed their own darker desires. He didn’t share his women. What was his was his, but damn, he liked to push them sexually.
He liked to play, to tempt, to tease a woman’s body and watch her go crazy as she grew wet and wild. He loved seeing a lover with a black blindfold, his handcuffs circling her wrists, bare flesh between her thighs, sweet syrup glistening on feminine folds, and the heated flush of her flesh from an intimate spanking.
Or better. Ah, even better. A pretty, shapely ass raised for him, clenched rounded curves straining as he invaded a tender, sensitive little rear.
Perverted, his wife had called him. She’d rage for days if he even tried to touch her there. And God forbid he should mention blindfolding her or spanking her. The insults she’d thrown at him over that one had been nearly as bad the ones that had come when he suggested she shave or wax her pussy.
He was a hard lover. It was a part of him. It was something he’d sworn he wouldn’t deny himself after his wife’s death, only to learn that more often than not finding a woman who enjoyed the kinkier sex was easier said than done. The women he’d had affairs with liked their missionary position and their gentle loving, which could be good. But it was like having steak morning, noon, and night. Sometimes, a man craved a little variety, a little spice to his meal, or to his sex life.
And Rogue was definitely spice. All the more reason to stay the hell away from her.
Because all he could see was Rogue stretched out on his bed, her pretty violet eyes hidden by a silk blindfold, her hands cuffed, her little rear lifted to him.
She was a baby compared to him. He had no business fantasizing about her, and he had no business touching her. Despite her air of cynical sexuality, there was a glimmer of innocence in her eyes that warned him that the schoolteacher wasn’t far below the surface.
The soft-spoken, tentative, shy young woman that had come to teach and had learned the dangers of a small town far faster than she should have. She was still there, and she still looked at him the same way she had looked at him at that town hall meeting. With stars and heat in her eyes.
Rogue. She was definitely wild as the wind and bordering lawless. But that schoolteacher still lurked beneath the surface. Soft, delicate, her smile shy, her violet eyes filled with curious sensuality.
She was like a delicate, sensual little bomb waiting to explode in his hands. In his hands, beneath his body, with his cock buried inside her.
And he couldn’t allow it.
He had managed to contain himself over the years. Rumors of his desires had never leaked out because he never gave in to them. He didn’t spank his lovers, he didn’t handcuff them, and he didn’t fuck their asses. He rode them hard and heavy and left them panting and exhausted at the end of the night.
That mark on Rogue’s neck had surprised him. He hadn’t even marked his wife Elaina’s neck. He’d never left a mark on a woman’s flesh. Not beard burn and sure as hell not a bite mark. He’d lost control in those few brief seconds that he had held her. Lost control of his need and his hunger. It was time to rein them in now. It was time to forget Rogue and get back to the business of finding a killer. The same killer that had taken his wife’s and mother’s lives in L.A., and then his father’s, here in Kentucky.
The killer that would have no compunction in wiping out Rogue’s existence if he thought it would serve his purpose. And if he learned Zeke was searching for him before Zeke managed to identify him, then it would definitely serve his purpose. It would destroy Zeke.
SEVEN
There was very little to be found in the remains of Joe and Jaime’s mobile home. Bedsprings, the springs on the couch and chair. Appliances were blackened and melted in spots; the rest was pretty much cinders. Standing at the edge of the burned remains, Zeke could remember what he had seen when he had been there the day he found the twins.
The burned, twisted metal left from the recliner became the chair Jaime had died in. Surprise. There had been an expression of complete surprise frozen on his face. There had been something, someone he hadn’t expected with his brother.
Zeke narrowed his eyes as he imagined how it could have played. Joe arriving, possibly high, not exactly himself, with a friend. They step into the house as Jaime stares at his brother in surprise. A second later, he was dead.
Zeke stepped into position, lifted his arm, and pointed his finger as though it were a weapon, imagined it firing, saw in his mind’s eye where the bullet may have caught Jaime.
Either the killer was a quick aim, or he was taller than Zeke. Taller, Zeke thought. The killer’s arm came up and he fired, dead center between Jaime’s eyes before the other man could raise up in his chair.
Joe was high, but he would have been surprised by the shot. Turned a little, just enough. The gun barrel against his head. Pop. Zeke imagined the shot, saw where it went, and nodded his head slowly.
“Been a long time since I’ve seen you do that.”
Zeke froze at the sound of Gene’s voice behind him. Turning slowly, he found Gene’s cruiser parked farther down the graveled road.
Zeke shrugged in answer to Gene’s comment. “It’s been a while since I’ve had to do it.”
Gene shoved his hands into his uniform pockets and frowned as he stared around the small valley. “Guess you were right about something not being right about those boys’ deaths,” he stated. “Someone made damned sure that fire was hot enough to wipe that trailer out.” He turned and looked at Zeke in confusion. “Why the hell would someone want to kill those two boys?”
Zeke breathed in heavily before turning away and staring out over the valley.
“I figure it had something to do with the girl,” he finally answered, and it struck him that he was having to tell too many damned lies lately in an attempt to protect the information he was looking for.
Gene didn’t say an
ything. When Zeke turned back to him the other man was watching him closely.
“You don’t tell me stuff anymore, Zeke.” He sighed. “We used to share cases like this.”
Yeah, they had, until information had begun leaking from the office, until he had lost DHS’s support and cooperation. It bit his ass that the Mackays had been involved in investigations that Zeke should have been a part of. He wouldn’t have even known why he had been pushed out of it if his contact in Washington hadn’t suggested that was the cause last year.
“It’s nothing personal, Gene,” he told him, though that, too, was a lie. Gene had been a part of the Freedom League along with Zeke when they were younger. Zeke had believed Gene had gotten out after he left, but information he had dug up over the years suggested otherwise.
Gene nodded slowly as though accepting the explanation. “Do you have any idea who the girl is?” Gene finally asked.
Zeke shook his head. “No clue. And that’s damned strange in this town.”
“No kidding,” Gene snorted. “I’ve asked around myself and haven’t gotten any answers. Those boys didn’t seem to trust anyone where she was concerned.”
Zeke felt a pulse of energy at Gene’s statement. If Joe and Jaime didn’t trust anyone with their potential lover’s identity, then it was because they were afraid of someone. A member of her family. Father, brother, or uncle most likely.
The manner of their deaths was consistent with the exterminator’s killing style, or at least one of them. Could the man he was searching for have a daughter? A daughter the boys were messing with?
“Guess they kept her too much of a secret,” Zeke said slowly as he turned back to Gene. “She could be our only clue to who killed these boys.”
Gene nodded. “Yeah.” He ran his hand through his hair before replacing his hat and grimacing. “Too damned bad, too. A man doesn’t deserve to die like that.”
Zeke nodded to that before making his way along the graveled parking lot back to his Tahoe. “I’m heading back to town then,” he told his deputy. “See you tomorrow, Gene.”
“Yeah, sure, Zeke,” Gene answered pensively. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
What the hell was Gene doing following him? Zeke wondered as he pulled away from the wreckage of the mobile home. His deputy hadn’t cared to share a murder case with Zeke in a while. He’d taken patrol while Zeke normally worked with the state or Somerset city police himself to solve the crimes committed in the county.
Gene was hiding something, Zeke knew that. He knew the other man, sometimes better than he wanted to. And he knew Gene was keeping an eye on him for someone else. For the remaining members of the League, Zeke suspected.
Despite the knowledge he could feel burning in his gut, he knew if he didn’t come up with something soon on this case, then he would have to put it aside, close it, and let it stand as a murder-suicide. And that just pissed him off. There was something about this case that had his nerves on edge every time he thought about it. Something he knew he wasn’t seeing, and should.
He’d questioned every associate of the Walker boys that he could think of. He was pushing the coroner to push the investigative coroner, and he was harassing forensics to find something more. The only ones he hadn’t questioned yet were Joe and Jaime’s younger sister, Lisa, and their grandmother. That he would be taking care of soon.
Turning into the graveled lane that led to the Walker house, Zeke grimaced at the sight of the black Harley parked in the barren drive.
It looked pristine and out of place among the straggling weeds and clumps of grass that surrounded the house and the run-down sedan parked next to it.
The house was in need of several coats of paint, maybe a few new boards on the porch. The home itself was sturdy though. Joe and Jaime had always made certain their grandmother’s home was kept in good repair while Lisa oversaw her care.
As he stepped out of the Tahoe the door opened and Lisa, rounded and somber, stepped out on the porch. Grief had ravaged her pretty, pale face. Weariness gave her blue eyes a bruised, haunted look and thinned her lips as she watched him approach.
“Grandmother’s awake,” she breathed tiredly as he stepped up onto the porch. “She’s been demanding that I call you since we got back from Louisville.”
Zeke’s eyes narrowed. “Is everything okay?”
Lisa shook her head. “You mean other than the gossip that one of her favorite grandsons killed his brother, then himself? God, Zeke, this is killing her faster than the pneumonia is.”
Tears sparkled in her eyes as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders for a quick hug and looked inside the house where Rogue was staring back at him silently.
“I need to talk to you, and to your grandmother if she’s up to it,” he told Lisa. “Are you up to that, Lisa?”
She nodded against his chest before moving back. “Whatever it takes to find whoever did this. Joe wouldn’t have killed Jaime. It just wouldn’t happen, Zeke. And now even our memories of them are being stripped. What the hell happened to their home?”
Yeah, that was what everyone else was telling him, too. As for the mobile home, he just didn’t have the answers he knew she needed.
Lisa turned away and led him into the house. To face Rogue. He stared into violet eyes and damned if he knew what to do. He wanted her in his arms, he wanted to lower his head and kiss those shimmering lips, and at the same time he was aware of the dangers that lurked there.
Zeke Mayes hadn’t publicly claimed a woman since his wife had died. He kept his affairs hidden and his desires carefully controlled. And controlling them had never been as hard as it was now.
As he stared at her, the heated wonder in Rogue’s gaze seemed to dim when he did nothing. She turned away, her spine stiff beneath the white T-shirt she wore, her hips twitching angrily beneath her jeans as she moved toward the back of the house.
All those long, fiery curls were restrained in a braid that fell below her shoulders. She looked younger than her age, but that did nothing to cool the fire burning in his dick.
“I’ll check on Grandma, Lisa, then make coffee. You talk to Zeke,” she called back.
Zeke nearly followed her. He almost moved to grab her, to pull her back, and give her what he knew she needed. What he needed. A touch, an affirmation that there was more between them than the simple friendship he had claimed for so long.
“She’s not going to wait on you forever,” Lisa said behind him, her voice quiet.
Zeke turned and narrowed his eyes on her as her lips curved into a sad little smile.
“That’s the hazard of living where everyone knows everyone.” She shrugged. “People start seeing things when they see you every day. And Rogue’s not nearly as good at hiding what she wants as you are.”
He rubbed at the back of his neck, blowing out a hard breath.
“I need to talk to you about Joe and Jaime,” he told her, ignoring her advice. “I’m sorry, Lisa, but if I don’t get some evidence to the contrary soon, then I’m going to have to rule their deaths as a murder-suicide.”
Her lips trembled, but she nodded in acceptance. “I don’t know much, Zeke. I know they were seeing some girl. They fought over her at first. Joe was angry with Jaime for a couple days, then …” She blushed and shrugged. “You know how they were. When they argued over something like that, they either ended up both doing without it or sharing it.”
He moved to the threadbare though clean easy chair as she sat on the matching couch.
“So they were sharing a woman? Do you know who it was?” he asked her.
“I don’t know if it had gone that far yet.” She shook her head. “And they wouldn’t tell me who the girl was. They just said her daddy would have a stroke if he found out. That was a couple of days before you found them.” A tear slipped down her cheek.
“You were close to your brothers, Lisa,” he stated. “You’ve always known what they were doing.”
“And who they were doing,” she said mockingly, b
itterly. “But they weren’t talking this time. They did that sometimes though, if their lover didn’t want anyone to know, then they didn’t tell, Zeke. You know how it is around here. Joe and Jaime knew how to keep their secrets, even from me. Most of the time I only found out by accident when they were dating someone together.”
“Did they say anything more about the father?” he asked.
“They didn’t say anything more, period.” She shook her head. “The next day I was at the hospital with Grandma. There was no time to question them, and I was worried about Grandma. I didn’t think.” Another tear slipped free. “I just didn’t think to question them about it.”
Another damned dead end and a secret that had killed. The story of his life for too many years to count.
“Were Joe and Jaime involved in anything else?” he asked her then. “Any kind of drugs?”
A flash of anger darkened her eyes. “Joe and Jaime didn’t do drugs, Zeke.”
“We found evidence of pot in the house, Lisa; could they have been involved with anything stronger?”
“Hell, that’s like finding a beer in the house,” she exclaimed. “Come on, Zeke, pot’s not that big of a deal around here and you know it. Sure, they smoked a little of it, but never a lot. And Joe and Jaime didn’t do the hard stuff.”
He tightened his jaw for long moments, staring back at her, hating the questions he had to ask.
“Lisa, I need you to think for me, to be very sure. Now’s not the time to try to protect Joe and Jaime, not if you want me to figure out what happened to them. Did you ever know of them doing heroin or anything stronger than a little pot?”
She stared back at him as though he were a stranger now. As though he were accusing her brothers of some heinous crime.
“Never, Zeke,” she finally answered. “And I would have known. Plain and simple, they didn’t have the money or the personalities for that junk. Joe and Jaime liked to play, they liked to have fun, and they didn’t consider hardcore drugs as fun.”