by Lora Leigh
Like a sensual sacrifice she reclined back along her desk, her arms falling over her head as his lips returned to her breasts. First one, then the other. His mouth sucked at her nipples, pulled them deep into his mouth; his tongue rasped over them, the wet heat of his mouth burned them.
“Damn, you’re fucking pretty.” His voice was low, sensual, wicked as his head lifted again and he pulled her camisole over her head. “So sweet and hot. Can I taste you, baby? Taste you all over and get drunk on you?”
Oh God, she had never heard anything so sexy in all her life. This wasn’t fair. How was she supposed to retain any control when he talked like that? When his lips moved lower as he spoke, spreading a line of kisses along her abdomen to the band of her panties.
“Zeke. Oh God. I need you.”
His fingers hooked in the elastic band. She didn’t have to worry about him pulling them off her legs. The elastic snapped and his fingers brushed the material aside from the heated, aching folds of her pussy.
That was it. At the rending of the material Rogue swore she lost her mind. Sensation surged and exploded inside her as her hips jerked up and a shattered moan fell from her lips.
She was so turned on she wondered how she could breathe. Pleasure lashed through her system as desperation began to take over. Her arms lifted, her hands moved to his head, her fingers curling into the short strands of hair as she tried to push him lower, between her thighs.
She’d dreamed of this, fantasized about it, ached to know what it would feel like. Her eyes opened as she watched, watched as he kissed his way to the flushed mound, then breathed a heated breath over the sensitive flesh.
Her thighs fell apart at the urging of his broad hands. Breath suspended in her lungs as she watched his tongue lick, slowly, so slowly around her hard, distended clit. His eyes were on her, watching her as she watched him lick. Watching her as her lashes drifted closed and ecstasy took over.
A second later a light sucking kiss had her crying out. Then his tongue became ravenous. Hard hands slid beneath her rear to lift her closer as he licked through the wet slit, circled the opening, then plunged inside in one hard, hungry stroke.
Rogue felt the explosion detonate inside her. She felt her pussy clench and spasm around his tongue, felt her clit implode with rapture, and lost herself in the fiery cataclysm that overtook her.
She was drowning in a pleasure that bordered on pain as he continued to fuck her with his tongue, drawing her juices from her as he groaned into her tender flesh. Each searing sensation seemed to tear something loose in her soul. Each stroke of his tongue fueled an orgasm that didn’t seem to want to stop just as his fingers brushing against her clit rocked additional stimulus through her nerve endings until she was near screaming. She wanted to scream. She tried to scream. All that emerged were breathless whimpers and desperate moans as that last shattering wave of pleasure tore through her.
Zeke leaned his head against Rogue’s thigh, lust barreling through him until he felt as though he’d shatter from the need to fuck her.
His hands went to his belt. He had to have her. He was tearing at the clasp when the cell phone at his side began to beep imperatively, the tone emitting from it assuring him it was an emergency.
He wasn’t on duty, but he couldn’t ignore it. There was too much going on, too many things beginning to come to a head for him to ignore the summons.
With a throttled curse he jerked up and tore the phone from its holster.
“What?” he barked into the receiver as he watched Rogue’s lashes lift, saw her eyes, the violet color darker, more intense than he had ever seen them as she stared back at him in confusion.
“Zeke, we have a problem at Joe and Jaime’s mobile home,” Gene stated. “The state police are here and you’re needed.”
“What’s the problem?”
“It’s a ball of fire,” Gene stated. “It’s burning to the ground as we speak. The damned thing exploded like a bomb as I pulled up in the Tahoe after we received a call that there were vandals here. It’s the Fourth of July on this mountain.”
Zeke felt fury burn inside him and saw the desperation in Rogue’s gaze, felt it in his own body.
“I’ll be right there,” he snapped. “Have the state boys wait on me.”
“We’re all waiting,” Gene promised. “I’d hurry though, because one of the neighbors thinks they saw someone in here just before we showed up. We could have a body.”
“I’m on my way.” Zeke snapped the phone closed and shoved it back into its holster as Rogue eased up until she was sitting on the desk.
Zeke clenched his teeth as she pulled the bra over her breasts and secured the little clip before pulling the silky top back down and smoothing her skirt over her upper thighs.
“Are you coming back?” She didn’t look at him as she asked the question.
“Eventually.” Not tonight. If he came back tonight, God only knew how he’d handle the lust tearing through him. He needed time to consider this, time to figure out how he could protect her amid the danger he could feel brewing in the county.
“Eventually,” she breathed out as she lifted her head, her lips parting as a caustic smile shaped her lips. “A few hours? A few days? A few years?”
“There are things going on that you don’t understand, Rogue,” he said, trying to keep his voice low. “Things I have to deal with first.”
Her head nodded jerkily. “Fine, deal with your things.” She jumped off the desk and stalked to the door as he watched her, fighting the heaviness in his chest and his body’s demand that he stay.
She jerked the door open and stared back at him furiously. “Don’t come back until you’ve made up your mind whether or not you can stay long enough to at least supply the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am that any other woman would get. I don’t like being played with, Zeke.”
She didn’t like being played with, but by God, he didn’t like games, either. At the moment, the game he was involved in wasn’t one he couldn’t step out of.
“Don’t push this, Rogue,” he warned her gently. “Don’t push me where you’re concerned. There are things you don’t know and don’t understand. Until I can fix that, then I don’t have a whole hell of a lot to offer.”
“Did you hear me asking for anything?” she asked sweetly. The sweet part was a dead giveaway. Rogue was pissed. And she was hurt.
“I’ll be back.” He strode to the door and stopped in front of her. “And the next time I catch you getting cozy with any other man, no matter who he is, Rogue, there’s going to be violence.”
He didn’t give her a chance to respond. His hand curved around her neck and his lips took hers in a quick, hard kiss before he released her and strode from the office. He was out the back door in seconds and loping to his truck as he fought himself and his desire to walk right back inside where she waited.
She was his weakness. A man in his position couldn’t afford a weakness. Especially now. Zeke could feel it beginning to come together. Whoever they were looking for was getting scared. The questions he’d been asking about Joe and Jaime’s death had gotten a response. This was the response. Someone was scared the two men had left something, anything, hidden that would reveal what they were doing or why they were killed.
Now, Zeke just had to figure out what it was, without the hope of finding more.
SIX
Zeke walked into his office the next morning, paused, and stared at his visitors before shaking his head with a bemused acceptance that was beginning to grow inside him.
The file in his hand was the coroner’s report on the Walker boys. The forensics report was due in any day. But it wasn’t looking good. And now, staring back at the four men waiting on him, he could feel his gut burning.
“What the hell do you and your sidekicks want, Cranston?”
Special Agent Timothy Cranston was supposed to be on suspended leave from the Department of Homeland Security. Zeke knew better. Timothy had never been suspended anywhere but on pa
per. The investigation running now was a time bomb waiting to explode with the same power that had been used on Joe and Jaime Walker’s mobile home. And Timothy Cranston was smack in the middle of the whole damned thing.
Short, round, his face more often than not wreathed in a smile that rarely reached his eyes, the agent had been Zeke’s nemesis for too many years. Anytime Cranston was around, trouble was sure to be there. And anywhere in Pulaski County that he found the Mackay cousins, he was damned sure to find trouble.
Douglas “Rowdy” Mackay, James “Dawg” Mackay, and their younger cousin, recently married to Homeland Security agent Chaya Dane, Natches Mackay.
Rowdy, Dawg, and Natches Mackay, and Timothy Cranston. Hell, he didn’t need this. His own investigation was beginning to come to a head after the years that Cranston had kept him pushed to the sidelines, unaware until too late that Homeland Security was working to take down the Freedom League without him. Cranston and the Mackay cousins had cut off the head, now Zeke was going for the backbone. Alone. He wouldn’t be pushed out of this one. Not after all these years, the nightmares, or the evidence Cranston had against him personally.
“When the four of you show up, there’s trouble. I don’t need trouble this week.” He strode across the office to take his seat behind the wide, wood desk that sat in front of the shuttered bank of windows.
Pulling his chair close to the desk, he slapped the file on it and stared back at the four men. The Mackays were tall, muscular, and dark. Rowdy, the middle cousin, was the most clean-cut, the thinker of the group. Dawg, the oldest, was more clean-cut than he had been before his marriage. He was no longer scruffy, but his wild days reflected in his light green eyes and his hard expression. Natches, the youngest, now, he was the wild one of the group. The ringleader of most of the trouble and unapologetic about it.
Dawg and Natches had worked with Cranston for several years. As far as Zeke knew, Rowdy had just been dragged into it lately.
“The Walker boys,” Natches drawled. “You have anything yet?”
Zeke leaned back in his chair. “They involved with DHS?” He stared back at the agent. Of course they had been, he knew it and Cranston knew it, but he wasn’t so sure the Mackays knew it.
Timothy grinned. A flash of teeth, like a shark, and a sparkle of brown eyes. “Not to my knowledge. They weren’t one of my contacts.”
Timothy was a consummate liar. Zeke knew the Walkers fed information to DHS because they’d brought the information to him first.
Zeke looked at the Mackays.
“They helped us pull in information on that mission last year,” Natches revealed. At least Natches wasn’t lying to him. Yet. “Joe and Jaime were always reliable sources of information.”
“You think their deaths had something to do with that operation?” Zeke asked. He knew it did, in part. Their murders had been too similar to others over the past twenty years.
He hoped for the Mackays’ sakes that it didn’t. Zeke was approaching his limit where their complete disregard for the chain of information was concerned. Running ops in his county, without his knowledge, not just once but twice, had pushed his level of endurance to its limit. And Cranston just took the damned cake. That son of a bitch had recruited Zeke ten years before when he had been with the FBI and Zeke had gone looking for an agent he could trust. When he’d chosen Cranston, he’d fucked up. Cranston had begun the investigation without Zeke’s knowledge and then had the gall to draw in three other citizens of the county instead of coming to him. Ex-marines known for their wild ways.
The Mackay cousins had spent the past two years on an investigation into stolen missiles and homegrown terrorists that Zeke had been waiting on Cranston to begin taking down. And before that, Rowdy had been too damned quiet about a stalker that had targeted his wife. They hadn’t told him shit about their activities; now here they were, wanting to know about his.
They were wild and arrogant, and they made his life hell when they got involved in trouble. He’d hoped marriage would have settled them down.
“We don’t believe it should have,” Cranston answered as Dawg’s lips parted to answer. Dawg flashed the little man a brooding glare. Evidently, Dawg was aware he was lying, too.
“You don’t believe?” Zeke kept his gaze on Dawg. “Dawg, you boys are newly married. The three of you have babies on the way. Do you really want to spend a few nights in jail for withholding information on me again?”
Three Mackays glared back at him. “Your jail wouldn’t survive it, Zeke,” Rowdy stated. “Don’t threaten us. Joe and Jaime were friends and their families are close to us. Grandma Walker and their sister, Lisa, and her two boys are pretty much alone now. The twins took care of them. We need to know what happened.”
He stared back at Rowdy. Normally, Zeke would have believed him, but several years back, Rowdy had pulled his own bullshit over on Zeke. He hadn’t forgotten it. There were times he wasn’t sure he had forgiven it. He used to believe he was friends with these men, until he learned how easily they would hide the threats to the county he was duly sworn to protect.
They were here, and they didn’t know shit about what he was doing; only Cranston was aware of it, and only because the other man was well aware of who and what Zeke was looking for. While they were here, he may as well get what information he could.
“I don’t know what happened yet. Not fully,” he lied as he leaned forward and stared back at the cousins. “Did those boys do hard drugs that you knew of?”
They looked at each other in confusion before Rowdy shook his head firmly. “Joe and Jaime were hell-raisers, but they didn’t do the hard stuff.”
Well, hell, that didn’t help him much where the coroner’s report was concerned.
“Do you have the forensics’ or coroner’s report yet?” Special Agent Timothy Cranston leaned forward in his chair, the wrinkled material of his cheap gray suit jacket shifting loosely on his shoulders.
“Cranston, what’s your business in this?” Zeke leaned back in his chair with a brooding look. “If this has anything to do with another operation in my county, then now’s the time to give me a heads-up. Otherwise, I’ll stop playing nice.”
And that was Cranston’s only warning. The agent was hiding too much information from him and Zeke was losing patience with him.
Timothy grunted. “You stopped playing nice when your buddies in the Justice Department kicked my ass last year. Now, I’m being nice.” His smile was all teeth. “Janey’s upset over this. Rogue’s her friend and mine. Those twins were her friends, and Janey asked me to see what I could find out. I’d prefer not to pull in my own favors in D.C. at the moment, Sheriff. Might need those favors to get my job back.” The lying bastard. “So why don’t we all just play nice, and see if we can help each other here.”
Which pretty much meant Cranston was involved up to his beady little eyes in Zeke’s business. Playing along was easy enough, for the moment.
“Well, hell,” he growled, lifted the file, and tossed it closer to the edge of the desk. “Initial report. Joe was pumped on heroin. The city’s investigative coroner still has the bodies, but this is the county coroner’s initial findings. Joe was pumped, walked in, shot Jaime, then himself.”
Natches lifted the file from the desk, sat back, and opened it. Two cousins and one portly Homeland Security agent read over his shoulder.
“Not possible,” Dawg murmured. “Joe didn’t do this shit, Zeke. And he wouldn’t kill Jaime.”
“Dawg, I’m doing my best with what I have here.” Zeke sighed. “Forensics hasn’t come up with anything yet. No vehicle tracks were found outside the twins’ trailer, other than official vehicles that arrived that day. There was rumor of a fight over a girl, but no one knows who the girl was. There’s just nothing to stand on here but my gut and your suspicions. That’s not going to get me far.”
Natches tossed the report back to the desk before breathing out heavily and raking his fingers through his shaggy black hair.
“If we hear anything, we’ll let you know.” Dawg shook his head at that point. “But I know Joe or Jaime wasn’t doing heroin. That’s a promise. They weren’t exactly upstanding citizens, Zeke, but they didn’t do trash, either.”
Zeke could only shrug in response. “I need proof, Dawg. You know how it works. I’ll wait until forensics and the coroner’s investigator finish their reports. But initial calls to each aren’t promising. Until then, I’m asking questions and trying to piece this together. If Joe and Jaime were murdered, then someone knew what the hell they were doing, because I can’t find so much as a whiff of suspicion. It’s that simple.” And it was a message to Cranston. Zeke knew who he was after; the agent could stay the hell out of his way if he didn’t intend to play fair with Zeke in this little game.
“Damn.” Dawg rubbed at the back of his neck in a rough gesture.
Zeke’s gut went haywire when he knew things weren’t as they seemed. Dawg’s and Rowdy’s neck itched. Natches just became a time bomb with an assassin rifle. Who the hell knew what Cranston did; Zeke sure as hell couldn’t figure him out.
The Mackays weren’t happy, Zeke wasn’t happy, Cranston was smiling, and Zeke knew that this was a bad sign. Welcome to Lake Cumberland, he thought caustically. The last few years had been hell, for law enforcement as well as citizens. Pulaski County was a quiet little place, despite the tourism to the lake.
The mountains, vibrant forests, fishing, and hometown atmosphere hadn’t made up for the realization that a dark underbelly had been existing for decades beneath their notice. The operations Homeland Security had conducted, using the Mackay cousins as agents, had revealed a festering evil that Zeke had been fighting far longer than the Mackays could ever guess. It had become his own personal battle, the only way to make up for his sins as a child.
“What about the explosion last night?” Natches asked. “Their mobile home went up like fireworks. If it was murder-suicide rather than two homicides, then why would anyone bother to blow the place up?”
Zeke lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “I went over it with the state police and the arson investigator. We didn’t find jack. There was a call made here to the office that there were vandals at the place. It went up in flames as Gene pulled into the driveway with the state police. There was no sign of a body.” He lifted another file as he glanced at Cranston. “There was a gas stove in the mobile home that the arson investigator believes must have been faulty and caused the explosion.”