by Lora Leigh
Zeke didn’t believe that for a moment. It was too easy and it was too similar to how he knew the League’s exterminator worked. Zeke knew things the Mackays didn’t. He knew things Cranston didn’t. And he knew this was the work of someone from the homeland terrorist group that had escaped the net Cranston had used to pull the others in.
“I have an idea.” Cranston smiled as he leaned forward in his chair. “Right now, whoever you’re looking for, if this was a murder, knows you’re looking for him. Let him think you’re distracted, otherwise occupied.”
“Meaning?” Zeke gritted out. Cranston was a cunning bastard, but that didn’t mean Zeke liked the games he played.
“I mean, let them think a woman has your attention. Concentrate on something pretty, pretend to be totally focused there, give your killer a chance to mess up rather than watching every move and every word because he’s on guard.” He shrugged his shoulders as he sat back in the chair. “It couldn’t hurt.”
“Just use some poor woman as a tool to find a killer?” Zeke snorted. “How did you make special agent, Cranston? Did you cheat on the exam?”
Cranston chuckled at that. “While you’re occupied, myself, Alex Jansen, and the Mackays can watch your back. We’ll see who’s interested, and who’s doing what. We can ask the questions needed much easier, and get more.”
“Forget it,” Zeke gritted out as he saw the mockery in the agent’s eyes.
They both knew exactly who he was suggesting Zeke use. And Zeke sure as hell didn’t like the excuse his lust was trying to grab with both hands.
“Come on, Zeke,” Dawg chided him harshly. “Those were our friends. Let us help with this.”
“I don’t need your help, Dawg, and I sure as hell don’t need to pretend to be focused on a woman to solve this case. But if I learn anything new, I can let you know,” Zeke told them with a complete lack of sincerity. “Unlike some agents and kamikaze rednecks, I don’t mind a bit of cooperating when the situation warrants it.” His smile was all teeth this time. A reminder, a careful warning. He could be a friend, or he could be an enemy. One more operation in his territory without his knowledge, and these men would find themselves on the enemy side. That wasn’t a good place to be.
“You’re worried about kamikaze rednecks when, according to every gossip source in Somerset, you’re consorting with leather-wearing maniacal pixies?” Dawg snorted. “Hell, Zeke, even me and Natches were smart enough not to get mixed up with Rogue Walker.”
“She turned you down,” Natches reminded him as Zeke tensed. “I was just smarter than to approach her.”
All eyes turned to Natches.
“What the hell do you mean by that?” The words slipped past Zeke’s lips without control as a core of possessiveness seemed to slam into his chest. He’d be damned if he’d allow her to be insulted by these men.
Natches grinned. “Hell, Zeke, five years ago, you nearly lost your tongue when you met her at that town hall meeting when she arrived as a new schoolteacher. I have a rule, man. Don’t mess with a buddy’s woman.” He rose from his chair, chuckling as Zeke narrowed his eyes on him. “ ’Bout time you made a move. Personally, I think she should tell you to go to hell for waiting so long. But that’s just me. And Cranston’s idea has merit. Grab Rogue with both hands and hold on for dear life. We’ll watch your back and do what has to be done.”
“No one asked your opinion.” Zeke ground the words past clenched teeth.
“Yeah, Chaya reminds me of that often.” He laughed as he headed for the door, cousins and one special DHS agent following behind him. “Tell Rogue I said hi when you see her.”
They left the office, and left Zeke with a raw, almost blinding sense of need where Rogue was concerned. Son of a bitch, he hadn’t had enough of her last night. He’d wanted it to be enough, convinced himself that he wouldn’t feel what he knew he was going to feel today.
Lust had slammed into him. Even now, in the cold light of day, his balls were tight, his cock hard. The memory of her lips, like hot satin, the taste of her, equal parts liquor and female, the feel of her body, heated and molding to his, haunted him.
Rubbing his hands over his face, he tried to contain it, to push it back where it belonged, where other things he knew were not in his best interests were locked. Unfortunately, Rogue refused to stay locked away.
There were times he swore he could almost feel the silken warmth of her hair between his fingers as he caressed a fiery curl. He could almost feel her lips against his. He could almost imagine her taste. Almost. It was never enough, and the need to experience it again was making him crazy.
Lucinda and Shane hadn’t helped his self-control the other night. Hell, Lucinda and Shane nothing. Damned nosy busybodies in town. Too many people had known he’d gone to her apartment the night before, in plainclothes, and stayed too long. And too many gossips had put two and two together the next morning when it came to that reddened mark beneath her jaw.
Oh hell, he remembered leaving that mark. Remembered tasting her a little too deeply, too roughly. And she had loved it. Her head tilting back, her breath passing her lips in a hard sigh. She had done the same thing last night. Melted for him. Became slick and hot and ready for his touch.
Sweat collected along his spine as he shifted in his chair, trying to find a more comfortable position to accommodate the erect length of his dick. At this rate, he was going to die of a hard-on. It had to be dangerous for a man of his age to stay this hard for so long.
A sharp knock at his door had his attention turning from the need raging through him.
“Yeah,” he called out.
The door opened and Gene stepped in slowly.
Well now, wasn’t this just what he needed?
He stayed silent and waited as the deputy stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
“Can I have a minute, Zeke?” Gene asked quietly.
He was dressed in the black-and-gray uniform, his hat clenched in his fingers as he faced Zeke across the room.
“A minute.” Zeke nodded.
Gene cleared his throat. “I’m still on schedule. I thought maybe we could talk about the other day. I was out of line.”
A frown clenched Gene’s weathered forehead as he raked back his dark hair and grimaced heavily. Zeke remained silent.
“I don’t have a problem with you, Zeke,” he finally said. “I got family issues goin’ on, and I guess I was blowing off steam with the Walkers. I’d like to make up for it.”
Zeke hadn’t filed the report against him, he hadn’t initiated a suspension, simply because he hadn’t had time. He and Gene had once been friends. Zeke had fought for the position as sheriff, and Gene had come on board as deputy for the same reasons Zeke had. Or so Zeke had once believed. To clean up the county, to find a way to eliminate Dayle Mackay’s stranglehold here, and make up for the wrongs their fathers had committed.
He and Gene had promised themselves they would make up for those darker years. Gene was a good deputy, and once, Zeke had known him as a good friend. But Zeke suspected now that Gene’s loyalty might not run as deep as he’d once believed it had.
“Everyone deserves justice, Gene.” He finally sighed as he watched the other man closely. “Walkers are no different from anyone else. Hell, they weren’t involved in that mess last year when some of our leading citizens were. I’d say they were a damned sight better than some around here.”
“I agree, Zeke.” He nodded. “I went off when I shouldn’t have. It won’t happen again.”
Something had changed in Gene over the years, Zeke thought. He wasn’t as compassionate, he wasn’t as patient as he had once been. But hell, had he really ever been as diligent as Zeke knew he had wanted Gene to be? He hadn’t been, and it was a fault Zeke had acknowledged a while back.
It wasn’t as much Gene’s fault as it was his own. He should have known better than to put Gene against his own father and the past he had shared with Zeke’s father. Gene didn’t have the demons
Zeke had; he hadn’t faced hell and turned his back on it.
“We’ll let this one go, Gene,” he finally said. “We’ll both see if we can’t fix things in the future.”
“Thanks, Zeke.” Gene inhaled in relief as he moved to grip the doorknob. “I’ll head out on patrol then.”
“Gene.” He stopped the other man before he left the office.
Gene turned back, his brown gaze curious.
“You said the Walker boys were fighting over a girl at the bar last week. Any gossip as to who they were fighting over?” It was the one piece of information Zeke hadn’t been able to uncover.
Gene lifted his hand and scratched thoughtfully at the side of his nose before shaking his head. “There was no name mentioned, now that I think about it. Just that Rogue had to throw them out because they were fighting, and the fight was over some girl both of them wanted.” He frowned slowly. “I didn’t hear who the girl was.”
Zeke nodded. No one else had heard, either. Just that it was over a girl.
“I’ll head out then.” Gene opened the door, slid from the room, and closed it behind him, leaving Zeke alone to stare at the coroner’s initial report that was lying on the desk.
Joe pumped up on heroin didn’t make sense. Joe and Jaime fighting over a girl didn’t make sense. Nothing about their deaths added up or pointed him in the right direction to look for evidence. All Zeke had was the fact that it was identical to a method the exterminator used. He knew it was, because his father had told him about it repeatedly when he’d been a teenager. When he, too, had been a part of the Freedom League.
He rubbed at his jaw, sat back in his chair, and visualized the murder scene again. The TV remote and the half a bottle of beer. But the television had been turned off.
There had been no drugs in the house, though Joe and Jaime weren’t strangers to a little marijuana. There should have been some.
Jaime hadn’t fought, he hadn’t even tried to come out of his chair.
Joe had put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger within moments of killing his brother.
There were no signs of tears on his face or in his eyes. There were no defensive wounds to indicate he had been murdered. The gun was in his hand, his prints alone marking it.
He closed his eyes and let the scene form in his head. There was something off there. Something more than the lack of evidence for anything illegal, something more than that damned television being turned off, the remote in the exact position it would have been if it had fallen from Jaime’s hand.
There had been traces of marijuana in Jaime’s system, but heroin in Joe’s. The coroner’s report showed a single track mark in the arm. Nothing more. He’d shot up only once and killed his brother while under the drug’s influence.
Zeke knew it hadn’t happened that way.
His eyes opened, his lips compressing as he rose from the desk and jerked his hat from the desk where he’d tossed it.
He wanted to see the scene again, remember the layout of the bodies, and figure this out. The mobile home may have been blown to hell, but the ashes were still there, and Zeke could remember how it had been when he’d found the bodies.
Joe had shot up only once. Just that single time. And that was bullshit. Someone had managed to shoot him up and walk into that mobile home with him. Once there, the unsub had shot Jaime, then killed Joe.
Zeke left the office and headed from the building, walking into the warm April sunshine and ignoring the sharp pang of longing he felt at the sound of a motorcycle purring past the sheriff’s department.
He looked, but it wasn’t Rogue. Wild hellion curls weren’t flowing back from the rider’s face and a fun-loving, devil may-care smile wasn’t aimed his way.
Hell, she was working, he knew. It was her afternoon at the restaurant, and if nothing else, Rogue was damned dependable in what she did.
He was the inconsistent one. He’d lusted after her for years and fought against it. He’d kissed her, then pushed her away. He ordered her not to bring another man between them, but he made damned certain he stayed as far away from her as possible. And when that hadn’t worked he’d at least tried to give her pleasure and satisfaction before walking away again. Staying away from her was killing him.
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.