by Leigh, Lora
He smiled pleasantly. “I live to make people nervous. Keeps them from conspiring against me.”
“Ah, so that’s your secret.” She grinned back. “So what makes you believe you need to keep me from conspiring against you?”
He grunted at that. “I wouldn’t think that for a moment. You’re too honest to conspire, Ms. Walker. You’d just kick my balls into my throat and laugh at my anguish if you wanted to strike out at me.”
She smiled back at him approvingly. “I do so enjoy an intelligent man, Agent Cranston.”
His smile was smoother this time, more manipulating as he lifted his beer and sipped before asking. “So, is Sheriff Mayes as intelligent?”
What an interesting question.
Rogue leaned back in her seat as the waitress approached and set the chilled bottle of beer on the table in front of her. She continued to regard the agent as she sipped her own drink and wondered where the question had originated from.
“Sheriff Mayes is very intelligent,” she finally answered him. “From what I understand, he’s a master of making certain the family jewels are well protected.”
A wide smile creased Timothy’s lips. “Ah, how very elusive your answer is. Tell me.” He tilted his head to the side as he regarded her. “Is it true you’re sleeping with him?”
“Is it true that it’s none of your business?” She opened her eyes wide and appeared a bit surprised that she had let the words pass her lips. “Forgive me, Agent Cranston, I’m sure that was the bitch in me speaking. I try to contain her as often as possible.”
He tipped his beer toward her in acknowledgment of her not-too-subtle hint that he had crossed the line.
“You’re a strong woman,” he said as he leaned back in his seat and regarded her intently. “I’ve heard there are bets being placed that you’ll be the first woman the sheriff has publicly claimed since his wife’s death.”
“And that’s about as much your business as whether or not I’m sleeping with him,” she pointed out. “Why don’t you tell me what the hell you want, Agent Cranston, and let me get back to work.”
His lips quirked at her demand. “I’m just a curious man, Rogue,” he finally stated. “And one that worries about supposedly unconnected threads. Did you know your cousins supplied information to Homeland Security in the operation that busted Nadine Grace and Dayle Mackay’s little homegrown terrorist group?”
Rogue stared back at him in surprise. “No,” she said faintly. “I didn’t know that.”
But it shouldn’t have surprised her. Lazy and a little shiftless the boys might have been, but all in all, they’d had a patriotic streak a mile wide. Jaime and Joe both had attempted to join the Army when they turned eighteen, but a lung defect that they had shared had kept them out of the service.
Cranston nodded as he leaned forward again and braced his arms on the table and asked, “Do you think Joe killed Jaime, then himself?”
“There’s no evidence to suggest otherwise as far as I know,” she stated.
“And within days of their deaths their grandmother slips and falls attempting to take a bath?” he questioned. “Is that coincidence?”
“Why do you care? Fine, you think Joe and Jaime were upstanding citizens for helping you once. That doesn’t explain why you’re going out of your way now, Agent Cranston, or what makes you think I have any information you could use. So why don’t you get to the point while I still have some patience left.”
“My point.” He sighed. “My point is that I’m worried now. Maybe we get didn’t everyone Dayle was working with last year. The organization we disbanded didn’t have lists of names to guide us to their members. We’ve been shooting in the dark in rounding them up. I want to make sure all the loose ends have been tied.”
That made more sense. Rogue had a feeling Agent Cranston wasn’t the benevolent sort; having it confirmed at least eased some of the suspicion rising inside her, though it didn’t touch the tension knotting her shoulders.
“I’m the wrong person to ask then,” she told him. “The last I heard, Sheriff Mayes was investigating that case, not me.”
His gaze flickered as another smile threatened to curl his lips.
“So he is.” He nodded. “But men like to share things in the dark with their lovers. And you were related to the twins and their grandmother. I was hoping you could tell me more than he has.”
She leaned forward, eyes narrowed as her gaze locked with his.
“If you want information, Agent Cranston, then go to the source. I’ve never seen you as a man that likes to pussyfoot around anything; don’t start playing that game now. And while you’re at it, stop with the little innuendoes concerning your suspicions about my relationship with the sheriff. It’s not your business, nor is it anyone else’s. Now, if you have no further questions, I have a bar to run.”
She rose to her feet, turned, and stepped into a hard male chest that blocked her way.
Damn her temper. Her eyes shot up to stare into Zeke’s annoyed brown eyes as he stared over her head at the agent. If she had been paying more attention, she might have suspected he was there. She realized he must have been there for at least the latter part of the conversation because the agent’s eyes had continually flicked over her shoulder as Cranston fought a smile.
“What are you doing here?” Pushing back from him she tried to still her heart rate, tried to still her hopes.
As Cranston had said, Zeke had never publicly claimed a woman. Had he come here for her or for more information?
His gaze flicked to hers. “Why shouldn’t I be here?”
Great, he was in one of his uncommunicative moods. Answering a question with another question, his gaze flat and hard, his expression honed and savage. She had a feeling he wasn’t there to put his handcuffs to use again. At least, not in the way she would have preferred. Guess that answered the question of whether or not he was there to see her.
“I’ll just let the two of you have your little male-bonding time then.” She smiled back at him tightly. “If you wouldn’t mind though, before you leave, I’d like to know what you’ve learned about Grandmother Walker. If you can find the time for me, that is.”
His brow arched. She hated the arrogance in that smooth, practiced shift of his expression.
“I didn’t come to talk to the rabid little leprechaun,” he told her, referring to the nickname the Mackays had given the agent. “I came to see you.”
She was certain she didn’t hide her surprise.
“Really?” She couldn’t contain her surprise, either. “Why?”
His gaze heated, moved over her face, touched upon the smooth tops of her breasts that rose above the bodice of the bustier that she had paired with a thin violet silk blouse, a leather skirt that almost showed too much, and over-the-knee black leather boots.
The look in his eyes had heat flooding to her cheeks. For a second she could feel the handcuffs around her wrists again, his hard hands on her thighs as he held her legs apart, and the touch of his tongue at her clit.
Wet heat flooded her pussy, her clit swelled, and her nipples pressed demandingly against the lace of her bra.
“Good-bye, Cranston.” Zeke’s voice was deeper, rougher as he settled his hand at the small of her back and he moved to her side. “Tell the Mackays I said hello.”
The hand at her back prodded her to move ahead of him. Surprised, uncertain, Rogue allowed herself to be led toward the bar’s exit before she turned to him with a frown.
“I can’t just leave, Zeke.” She hadn’t spent enough time there as it was. Working at the restaurant to help Janey out and then struggling to put in enough hours at the bar to keep it running smoothly had her stretched pretty thin for the past six months.
“Jonesy’s still here,” he growled. “Leave a message with one of your bouncers that you’ll check back in later. We need to talk.”
The chill in his tone had her spine tingling with warning. Looking around, she caught sight of Ronnie, one of the older bou
ncers, and waved him to her.
“Let Jonesy know I’ll be out of the bar for a while,” she told him. “I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I want him in my office tomorrow at noon.”
Ronnie nodded his dark head quickly, though his hazel eyes were suspicious as he glanced at Zeke. “I’ll let him know, Miss Walker.”
Zeke caught her hand then, twined his fingers with hers, and led her out into the night. The feel of his hand holding hers did things to her that she didn’t want to delve too deeply into. She felt a band of emotion tightening around her heart and a fragile flame of hope burning within her.
He had come to the bar for her. He had taken her out of the bar while damned near every customer in the building had watched them.
“You can be arrogant, you know,” she told him as the hollow sound of her heels clicked against the paved parking lot.
“Really?” he drawled. “And here I thought I was being amazingly considerate. After all, I didn’t throw you over my shoulder this time.”
Her stomach tightened, her breasts felt fuller, swollen and sensitive at the implication in his tone.
“I can’t just go running off whenever you’re in the mood to drag me out of the bar, Zeke,” she couldn’t help but to argue. “Do I interrupt your day like this?”
“Just on a regular basis,” he grunted as she caught sight of the big red pickup he drove parked at the edge of the lot.
“In your dreams,” she retorted. “Tomorrow, I’m showing up at your office, locking the door, and interrupting you. You’ll see what I mean.”
“You’ll see what my desk feels like against your naked back,” he said, his voice rougher as he pulled her around and pressed her against his truck. “Damn you, Rogue, one damned taste of you and you’re like a fucking narcotic I can’t get enough of.”
His head lowered, his lips shocked hers, parted them, and made room for his tongue to slip past.
Holding on to him now was all that mattered. Her fingers gripped his head, her lips moved beneath his, her heart raced in her chest.
What was it about him? What made her crave him to the point that nothing mattered but his kiss, his touch? She had missed him, she’d ached for him. She hadn’t realized how much she needed the comfort of his touch until he was there, holding her, his hands on her ass, lifting her against his chest as her arms wrapped around his neck.
“Zeke,” she whispered his name, desperation clawing at her as his lips moved from hers to her neck. They caressed as his evening beard scraped against the flesh just under her jaw.
His teeth nipped at her, his tongue licked.
“I need you.” She let her tongue flicker over his ear as her legs bent to grip his thighs, her skirt lifting, her sex cushioning the heavy impression of his cock beneath his jeans.
“Damn you.” His fingers threaded in her hair, tugged, and sent heated fingers of sensation to curl over her scalp as he pulled her head back.
His lips met hers again. His kiss was hungry, devouring. It worked over her lips as his tongue stroked past them, thrusting against hers before retreating, only to return again.
It was a hungry, desperate kiss. It was a kiss that fed the hope inside her, a hope that had been so fragile she had refused to even acknowledge it. A hope this need he had for her was more than physical. That emotion fueled him just as much as lust. That he might care for her. That he might need her in the ways she needed him.
Admitting she was falling in love with him wasn’t easy. Letting herself acknowledge that she no longer had control over those emotions was frightening.
Almost as frightening as realizing she had no control over her response to him. She was losing herself in his touch, in his kiss, in his hunger for her. Losing herself to the point that he could take her right there, under the lights that blazed overhead, against the warm metal of his pickup truck, and she wouldn’t offer the first protest. She would revel in the pleasure and the heat he filled her with instead.
“You’re stealing my mind,” he groaned as his lips lifted. She tried to follow, tried to retain the hunger and need she could feel pouring out of him.
“I haven’t given you permission to stop,” she whimpered. “Come back here.”
She received a rough chuckle in reply, but still he steadied her back on her feet before shifting away from her.
Damn him. She wanted more than one of his little tease-fests.
“Come on, get in.” He opened the passenger side door and lifted her into the seat before she could attempt to navigate the running board that ran down the side of the cab.
“Where am I going?” Her lips quirked as she stared back at him, amazed once again that somehow, there was something developing between them. She wasn’t certain what it was, but it was something. Something more than sex, but perhaps something less than emotion.
“For a ride.” He reached out, touched her cheek with his fingertips, and caressed the line of her jaw with his thumb. “We need to talk.”
He backed away before she could reply, shifted her legs into the truck, then closed the door, all without saying another word.
Rogue blew out a hard breath as she watched him move around the front of the truck. Hard-bodied, graceful in that predatory kind of way, dressed in jeans, a dark cotton shirt, and boots. Damn, he made her mouth water. He made her heart ache.
He made her realize all the dreams she had never known she had. Dreams of being more to him perhaps than just his current little pillow mate.
Which was amazingly funny actually. It wasn’t as though he had so much as taken her out to a burger joint, let alone anything resembling something as public as a date. God forbid he would do anything so juvenile at his age.
“That look on your face is scary,” he told her as he opened his door and lifted himself into the driver’s seat before turning his head to stare at her as he pushed the key into the ignition and started the motor.
“Scary?” she asked with a smile. “How do you define scary, Sheriff Mayes?”
He grunted at that. “Equal parts feminine charm and sheer calculation. I saw that same look on your face before you broke Bobby Joe Wingate’s nose last year at the local fair.”
She had broken Bobby Joe’s nose. “There was no proof I broke his nose,” she still reminded him. “He buried his face in the cement; I didn’t put it there.”
“No, it was your cute little fist that plowed into it though,” he chuckled as he pulled out of the parking lot. “I was there, remember? I heard the crunch.”
“And here you didn’t arrest me?”
Bobby Joe Wingate liked to tease and torment those much younger than himself. The twenty-three-year-old college dropout had been picking on a thirteen-year-old child whose father had been arrested on suspicion of terrorism.
The child had been unaware of the reason for her father’s arrest until Bobby Joe had begun spouting accusations at her and her uncle. Rogue had hit before she had thought. And as Zeke said, he had been there. He had come up as Bobby Joe had hit the cement, jerked him up, and rushed him away from the crowd before someone had ended up dead. Likely Bobby Joe, because if he had tried to strike back at Rogue, the six bikers with her would have ripped his head off and used his guts to strangle him.
“The girl’s uncle found me and told me what was going on,” he said. “If you hadn’t hit him, I would have. I hit harder.”
Rogue let a smile curl her lips at that. Yeah, Zeke could hit harder. She’d had the supreme pleasure of seeing him do just that a time or two when he had been called to the bar when things became a little too rough during a conflict or two between customers and bouncers.
“So, you took me out tonight to discuss Bobby Joe Wingate?”
He was driving through town, his eyes on the traffic as he headed toward the heavily forested city limits. Out of town. She watched as the city lights disappeared and the headlights of the truck picked up the black ribbon of the road winding through the mountain.
“Bobby Joe wasn’t high
on my list of discussion topics,” he finally admitted as he signaled and turned from the main road onto a county road that led deeper into the mountains.
“Then what is high on your list of priorities?” she asked, smoothing her hand over the short length of her skirt as they drove deeper into the mountains.
“You.”
That effectively shut her up, for the moment.
Zeke pulled the pickup into a clearing next to the lake several minutes later. The rays of a full moon glistened across the water as it lapped at the large rocks that had been set along the bank.
He stared out the windshield, too aware of Rogue sitting in the seat beside him, too aware of all the things he wanted from her.
“So I’m topping your list of priorities tonight, huh?” she finally asked. “I have to admit, Zeke, I’m a little surprised. I haven’t been your priority before now.”
Her voice just did things to him. It was smooth, melodic; it was a breath of summer heat and a reminder of the sweet sound of her cries as she came around him. It made him fucking hard. It made him want to fuck her, right there, right then.
“You’ve been my priority longer than you can imagine.” He continued to stare out at the water, scowling at the truth of that statement.
“Really?” Suspicion filled her voice. “Damn, you sure had me fooled, Zeke. I guess all those rejections were just your way of making a pass?”
He glanced over at her. “Smart-ass.”
Flashing that wicked smile of hers, she brushed back the long red gold curls that fell over her shoulder and turned more fully to him as she released her seat belt.
She crossed one leg over the other, those damned erotic boots making him crazy with the thought of them wrapped around his back. The leather cupped her knees, skimmed down her legs, and enfolded her feet until the four-inch heels drew his gaze.
Four-inch heels. Thin, stiletto heels.
The toe of her boot tapped against the floor of the truck and she stared back at him, obviously expectantly. The part that worried him was that she wasn’t responding to the teasing little name he had called her.
She was watching him with those odd eyes of hers, a pure violet, not quite blue, not quite purple. Eyes that threatened to mesmerize him. Threatened to strip his control and make him forget exactly why he had brought her here.