by Leigh, Lora
Her lips thinned. “I’m not telling you who it is.”
He shook his head slowly. “My dear, you wouldn’t have had to tell me, if you weren’t frightened of this man breaking your heart. A woman doesn’t hide something so important as the man she’s in love with, unless there’s something holding her back. Or,” his voice lowered further. “Or, she doesn’t love him at all. And if that’s the case, then I don’t want to know who he is.” He shrugged as though it didn’t matter. “I only want to meet the important ones and this one obviously isn’t important at all.”
At that point, he straightened and moved back to his office without saying anything further, leaving Sheila to stare at his back with narrowed eyes as she wondered at what game he could be playing with her. Her father could be amazingly devious when he wanted information. That was why he made such an efficient commander for the Covert Information Network.
She only wished Casey didn’t matter.
She wished she didn’t miss him with everything inside her; missing him was killing her.
She wished the only thing holding her back was the fear of losing the rest of her heart.
It was the fear of losing so much more than her heart that terrified her.
Because what she was beginning to feel, she felt as though it went much deeper than her heart, went much deeper than any other emotion she had ever felt.
It went clear to her soul.
* * *
Casey sat at the bar tapping his fingers against the gleaming wood. His gaze was locked on the mirror behind the bar, giving him a clear view of the entrance.
The large, cavernous building was nearly at its limit with the threat of a line forming outside once they were forced to close the doors against additional customers. Once customers arrived at the Broken Bar, they seemed to stay until last call. Which made it hard for any additional customers arriving unless the owner, Ethan Cooper, used the one-hour limit he was often forced to set.
The band, positioned along the wall at the center of the room on the opposite side of the building, was belting out another of those sensual slow tunes they were inclined to play. Broken hearts, broken loves, and beer drinkin’ nights. He was damned sick of hearing about it. Every wailing note did nothing but remind him of Sheila and the fact that he’d been waiting on her all day and half the night. He reminded himself of a lovesick teenager.
The door swung open again, but the couple that entered wasn’t Sheila. She should have been here by now. It was her job to pick up the information the team had acquired over the past week. Instead, he was still here waiting on her. It felt like he had been waiting on her all his life.
He glanced at his watch before his gaze lifted to the door once more. Yep, that was him; lovesick teenager.
Sheila knew he didn’t work tonight. Son of a bitch, she always showed up on Tuesday nights. Tuesday nights were theirs. Slow loving and her sensual cries as they drove each other crazy with every kiss, caress, and stroke they could bestow on each other.
Casey tapped his fingers against the wood again, his teeth clenching as a surge of hunger and anger struck at his gut. She wasn’t going to show up. He could feel it. She was avoiding the bar and she was avoiding him and he was damned if he was going to let her get away with it.
His jaw bunched in irritation.
If Sheila was going to cut him off like this, the least she could have done was give him a reason why she was breaking off what they had. He didn’t even know what the hell was going on, what he had done, or why she had ended the relationship the other morning as she left.
Hell, he had no idea what had happened, and it wasn’t as though he could talk to her about it. He couldn’t even catch up with her long enough. And now, she was late arriving to pick up the files it was her job to transport to her father.
He had asked her what he had done, something he had never asked another woman and wouldn’t have bothered to even care about with anyone else.
Her reply had been “nothing.”
There had been an odd tone to her voice, though. One he hadn’t wanted to delve into at the time. Something about the sound of her answer had immediately had his stomach clenching. Not in dread, but in an impending … something that still didn’t make sense. What did make sense? He was dying for her.
And he had no idea how to fix any of it.
“Hey, Casey, you look down.” Sarah Foxe Cooper, God love her heart, his boss’s wife. Trust her to get right to the point and thankfully to keep her voice down while doing so.
A charming, shy little thing, he’d once believed. Until she came out of her shell, stole Cooper’s heart, and became a regular at one of the most dangerous watering holes in the state. She was like a breath of fresh air in a trash dump. Pretty as a picture she was, and from the look on her face, determined to get an answer to her question. Determined and firm, she moved through the crowd as though it were a family reunion.
Cooper was never far behind her, either. And if not Cooper, then at least two of his most trusted bouncers were planted on her ass. Cooper never, at any time, took his wife’s safety for granted.
Tonight, as on most nights, it was Cooper following his wife. With an indulgent smile on his face, he kept a steady eye on the woman who had stolen his heart the summer before.
“I’m tired, Sarah,” he answered. “Your husband is a slave driver.”
He was tired of waiting and watching for a woman who hadn’t arrived. She had five more minutes, then he was going after her. Five minutes, that was it.
“Yeah, but such a damned sexy one,” Sarah replied, her smile infectious and filled with warmth as she cast her husband a flirty look over her shoulder.
“I guess it takes a feminine eye to see the sexy part,” Casey snorted as he glanced toward the entrance again and caught himself glaring at it.
“Hmm, that could be possible.” Sarah shrugged as she lifted herself onto the bar stool beside him, drawing his gaze from the door. “But that doesn’t tell me why you’re looking such a grump this early in the week. I thought you reserved the bad moods for the weekend?”
Not lately he hadn’t. Weekends had meant Sheila too. It had meant wild, hot, explicit sex, earthy feminine moans, and sharp little nails clawing at his back.
Fuck, he was hard. His dick pulsed and throbbed in his jeans.
That fast. His erection was all but pushing past the zipper of his jeans and drawing his balls tight against the base of the shaft. It felt as though it had been years rather than days since he had fucked her.
Damn.
He glanced at his watch again. Two minutes and he was going after her.
He couldn’t handle this. He wanted her to the point his back teeth ached with it.
For three nights in a row, he’d existed in a state of miserable arousal and confused anger. There was nothing worse than caring that he’d fucked up and being unable to figure out how.
“I’m fine, Sarah,” he promised as he realized she was watching him expectantly.
He glanced at the door again, then his watch.
One and a half minutes and he was going after her.
“She slipped in the back entrance about three hours ago, collected the reports, and ran,” Sarah leaned forward and informed him quickly, her voice low. “Ran as though the hounds of hell were nipping at her heels.”
Sarah straightened in her seat then and cast her husband a teasing look as he shook his head at her. Sarah was known to matchmake. Or at least, to attempt to. It had been making all of them crazy. They indulged her, were amused by her, but seriously, she made them crazy with it.
Well, all of them except the new guy, Morgan Keane. One of the six new bouncers Cooper had been forced to hire in the past year. He was a former special forces soldier referred by one of the U.S. Marshals who were protecting Sarah’s father. A former Italian Mafia boss who had immigrated to America, now known as Giovanni Fredric.
Morgan was a brooding, grouchy
son of a bitch with an attitude that managed to keep even the most aggressive jackals in the place at bay.
Nothing Sarah or anyone else did seemed to faze Keane much, though. He took it all in stride.
“Did she now?” Casey finally forced himself to mutter, irritation mixing with the lust and surging through his bloodstream with a hit of spiked adrenaline.
Yep, there it was. That shot of elixir that kept him perpetually hard whenever he thought of Sheila.
“She did.” Sarah grinned. “It was all rather curious too. I thought she was running scared, but she swore she was simply in a hurry. What do you think?”
The gleam of knowledge in her eyes was highly discomforting. It meant she was matchmaking.
“Hell if I know,” he muttered, deciding in that second he didn’t need her help.
“Confused on that, are you?” she asked.
He leveled a suspicious glare in her direction. It only received another of her infamous smiles. Those innocent, I’ve-done-nothing-wrong grins.
Bullshit. She was obviously up to something, and he had a feeling he knew what. He was getting into trouble just fine all by himself. He didn’t need Sarah’s help.
“I shouldn’t be?” he asked softly.
She shrugged again as she brushed back one of the thick, heavy brown curls that had fallen over her shoulder.
“Well, it should have been rather obvious,” Sarah sighed. “Most women of Sheila’s ilk refuse to play second fiddle to anything or anyone else, Casey. They’re simply too possessive to be placed in any position but first.”
“She doesn’t play second anything, period,” he informed her. “Where are you going with this?”
Why was he letting her “go with it”? The “it” being the head game she was playing.
“It would depend on where you intend on going with things,” she suggested lightly. “And perhaps that’s all she’s waiting on from you, to decide if you’re worth risking her heart for. Sometimes, all a woman needs is to know she’s wanted for more than what she provides her lover in their bed.”
“Troublemaker.” Cooper stepped forward, growling the accusation in a tone filled with pure adoration. He was damned crazy over the girl and everyone knew it. But he did make attempts to limit her interference in other people’s lives.
“Of course I am,” she admitted as she lifted her face and accepted the quick kiss he placed against her lips. “That’s why you love me so dearly, though. I never let you get bored.”
Casey watched their byplay until Cooper helped his wife from her seat and they headed for the door behind the bar. That door led to the stairs that would take them to the office/bedroom Cooper kept upstairs. From there, Casey didn’t even want to guess what they would be doing. It was better not to.
Because then, he would start thinking of all the things he could be doing with Sheila, and it would just piss him off worse.
He glanced at the mirror again and narrowed his eyes.
He knew where Sheila was. He knew where she lived and he knew how to get to her. And he knew he was really getting tired of waiting on her.
She was his, he’d made that decision a long time before and had been forced to wait far too long to claim her. But he had claimed her, and now, letting her go wasn’t something he was going to do. Not now, not ever.
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FOUR
For the third night in a row, sleep was a hard time coming. For the past months, Tuesday night was one of the three reserved for Casey. At any other time she would be in his bed.
Sheila rolled over to her back with a groan and stared up at the darkened ceiling morosely. What was he doing now? Was he alone in his bed or had he found someone else to share it with? Had she made a mistake? Had she let him go too quickly, before he could have realized she could mean something to him?
Was she letting the past influence the present in such a way that she could be harming the hopes she had for her future? Of course she was, wasn’t that what she was good at? She had already proved it.
Seven years before, she hadn’t demanded the commitment, or the words of love. She hadn’t pressed the issue and she had learned the error of it. She’d been used by the man she’d thought she’d loved. Ross Mason had used her and her heart to get close to her father and to secure a military position that only Douglas Rutledge could assign.
Thankfully, her father had been smart enough to see what she hadn’t, and had managed to turn Ross’s game against him. When Ross had been given that position, he suddenly had no use for her. He’d even smiled at her and told her she had to have been aware of what he had wanted. She had just been a means to acquire it.
Not that she believed Casey was using her, because she couldn’t imagine what he could want from her. But she hadn’t imagined what Ross could want either, until the night he had broken the relationship off.
She wasn’t going to allow that to happen to her again. She couldn’t allow it, not with Casey. Already he meant too much to her.
She hadn’t loved Ross, not really. She had liked him. He had been safe, or she had thought he had been safe. She would have never loved him to the point that losing him could destroy her. Not like she loved Casey.
Kicking the blankets from her legs and blowing out a hard, deep breath, Sheila realized she was going to end up making herself crazy. She was already aroused. That was all the crazy she needed.
Lifting her arm from the mattress beside her, she let her fingers trail along the flesh exposed between the elastic of her low-rise panties and the white silk-and-lace cami tank top she wore to sleep in.
She missed his touch, the warmth of his arms around her, and his kiss.
Her eyes drifted closed and she saw Casey watching her. His expression heavy with lust, his gaze darkening with whatever emotion he kept hidden within his silence. The way he licked his lips the few times she had touched herself as he watched. It turned him on, made him so dominant and hungry for her that his possession stole her breath.
Innocent touches.
When she had smoothed lotion over her arms, stomach, and legs after showering, she would see his eyes narrow, his cock hardening beneath his jeans, or if he was naked, his unashamed hunger for her.
What would he have done if she had touched herself in front of him, as she did when she was alone? How intense and dominant would he become if he had seen her touching herself when she missed him?
Or even now?
Would he enjoy watching her masturbate?
The tips of her nails rasped against the sensitive flesh of her lower stomach as she remembered his touch. His kiss. The way he would use his versatile, wicked tongue to lick and taste her skin.
She wanted to moan at the excitement that suddenly rushed through her. The silent thought that she could tease him in such a way. That the next time she saw him she would have the nerve to be the seductress she always imagined being, but hadn’t yet garnered the courage to be.
Or the chance. The chance to watch his gaze darken and narrow as she touched her nipples or ran her fingers through her juices before circling her clit.
His sensuality overwhelmed her. Once he touched her, all thoughts of anything but being possessed by him, taken and ridden to exhaustion, flew from her mind. She hadn’t remembered to tease him by touching herself; even though she had promised herself she would.
Her fingers trailed to the band of her panties, pushed beneath slowly, then feathered over the short, soft curls at the top of her mound.
Below, the slick, waxed flesh felt flushed and swollen, her juices easing over it as arousal began to build within her. She could feel the inner flesh of her pussy heating, aching, needing him.
She knew better than to go further. The sheer frustration she had found over the months in masturbating was becoming ridiculous. She could never satisfy herself as she once had. She was always left aching, want
ing, her pussy and her clit still throbbing despite the release she found.
Satisfaction could only be found with Casey and she knew it.
With his touch, his kiss, or the heavy, throbbing length of his cock pushing inside her, Penetrating her with a slow, measured surge. Each thrust would draw a cry from her lips and stretch her to her limits. It would burn. Pleasure-pain would fill her, then ecstasy would overtake her.
She bit her lip, a surge of sexual need flooding her system and tightening through her womb.
Her fingers slid lower. Any touch would be better than none, she told herself desperately. Any release better than no release at all.
Her fingers stroked over her clit as her breath caught at the wave of sensation that rushed through her senses. Swollen and slick, the little bud throbbed in desperation as she let her fingers ease through the wet, slickened folds of her pussy.
Her hips lifted to her own touch, her fingers slid lower.
“Keep that up and I’ll come in my damned jeans before I can get them off.”
Sheila’s eyes flew open, a gasp leaving her lips as she stared at the end of the bed where Casey stood watching her. Chocolate brown eyes looked black in the darkness as he finished unbuttoning the shirt he wore, moving slowly, giving her all the time she needed to tell him to go to hell. And that was exactly what she should do. She should never let herself weaken. She should throw him out until he decided he loved her and couldn’t live without her. That was what she should do.
Instead, she let her fingers reach further, one dipping into the clenched, heated entrance of her pussy. Delicate muscles gripped her fingers, spasmed, and clenched as pleasure shot through her.
His jaw tightened and a second later he was shrugging the shirt from the powerful width of his shoulders.
Muscles rippled beneath the tough, hardened flesh. Random scars, nicks, and marks covered the broad expanse, and she knew he carried even more on his left hip and ankle from the wound that had forced his discharge from the army.