Breathe

by Kristen Ashley

  “Oh God,” I breathed.

  Chace’s arm got tight around my waist. “Baby, it’ll be okay.”

  “Deck sounds kinda crazy,” I whispered.

  “He is. He’s also not stupid. He knows this kid’s been abused, dumpster diving and scared outta his mind. He’ll go soft.”

  “But –”

  His arm got tighter, shifting and tugging me so I had no choice but to come off my forearm since I was back to the bed, Chace looming over me.

  “He’ll go soft,” he whispered.

  “You’re sure?” I whispered back.

  “Yeah.”

  I took in a breath, let it out and nodded.

  “In the meantime, we keep doin’ what we’re doin’,” Chace went on.

  I nodded again.

  “Now, you gonna read or sleep?”

  This meant, I assumed, Chace was tired. Then again, it was past his bedtime.

  “Read,” I told him quietly and he grinned at me.

  Then he bent his head and kissed me, one of his sweet, soft ones, open mouth, lazy stroke of the tongue. My toes curled, both my arms went around him and the fingers of both hands went into his hair.

  When he ended the kiss, his lips didn’t leave mine and he murmured there, “Read.”

  “Okay,” I murmured back.

  He lifted up, kissed my nose and moved a hint away.

  I rolled to my side of the bed and grabbed my Nook.

  Chace’s light went off.

  I turned on my Nook and read. An hour later, I turned it off, set it on my nightstand and turned out my light.

  I barely settled into bed before I was hauled into and mostly under Chace with his arm at my waist.

  “Done?” he mumbled sleepily.

  “Yeah.”

  “’Night, baby.”

  “’Night, Chace.”

  His arm gave me a squeeze.

  I snuggled into him.

  His weight settled into me.

  I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

  * * * * *

  Ten oh seven at night, three days later

  “Chace.”

  “Fuck, baby.”

  “Chace!”

  “Give me that mouth.”

  I gave him my mouth. Half a second later I moaned my orgasm into his.

  When I was done doing that, his hand cupping my head shoved my face in his neck and he kept powering up.

  I was back to his headboard, my legs around him holding tight, my arms around his shoulders doing the same. He was on his knees, his hand was at my behind holding me up and his other hand was in my hair, his arm holding me close.

  And he was powering deep, his hips driving up, slamming into me.

  Seriously, sex… was… awesome.

  One of my arms left his shoulders so my hand could drift down his back to his behind and clench in so I could feel the muscles there working.

  Sublime.

  “Jesus, fuck,” he growled into the skin of my neck through grunts.

  I was learning to recognize the signs. He was getting close.

  I held on tighter.

  “Jesus, fuck, so fuckin’ tight, tight and sweet,” he was groaning now through his grunts.

  I loved that. So much, I ran my tongue up his neck.

  He powered up harder, hips bucking, hand clenching my booty, other hand fisting in my hair and I heard as well as felt his deep, guttural groan against my skin.

  Yeah. Seriously.

  Sex… was… awesome.

  His breathing settled and his hand let my hair go to slide down and curl around the back of my neck.

  I held on tight and didn’t move a muscle.

  “Town’s pretty, cute, sweet librarian wears sexy as all fuck underwear, sexier nighties and gets off on getting banged, back against the headboard.”

  I blinked into his skin.

  “What?”

  Chace didn’t repeat himself.

  Instead, he asked, “How long after I planted you against the headboard did it take you to come, baby? A second?”

  I pulled my head back to stare at him.

  He pulled his back to grin at me.

  “Are you teasing me?” I asked, uncertain how I felt about this.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “Though, I will point out, I’m teasin’ you but it’s the God’s honest truth. Got you up there, you went wild.”

  I felt my eyes narrow and I snapped, “Well, it was hot.”

  “Yeah it was. Got hotter when you went wild for that whole second before you came.”

  I kept snapping but the only thing I could get out was, “Chace!”

  “It’s true.”

  “It wasn’t a second.”

  “A second and a half,” he amended, slightly.

  “It wasn’t a second and a half!” My voice was rising.

  “That’s not true. Totally a second and a half, no more.”

  “I’m uncertain how I feel about you teasing me when I’m naked,” I shot back.

  His smile turned wicked. “Naked, seriously fuckin’ wet with my cock still inside you, you mean.”

  I felt my cheeks heat, I looked over his shoulder and muttered, “Whatever.”

  “Jesus, wettest I’ve ever had along with the tightest,” he went on and my eyes cut back to him.

  “Chace!”

  He pressed me into the headboard, his face got close, his smile died and his eyes went intense. “What you got to give, Faye, here,” his hips pressed into mine, “clean, pure, all fuckin’ mine and that’s beautiful right there. But the rest, how wet you get, how tight you are, you goin’ wild for me like you did just now, baby. Fuck. You gotta know, coupled with the other, that’s beauty that’s off the charts.”

  Hmm. I liked that.

  A frak of a lot.

  I bit my lip.

  His eyes dropped to my mouth and his grin came back.

  Then I was on my back in the bed with him on me, giving orders. “Gonna let you go. You’re gonna go clean up, come back and round two.”

  My eyebrows shot up.

  Round two?

  We’d never gone a second round.

  “Seriously?”

  “Not on-duty tomorrow,” he reminded me.

  “Well I am,” I reminded him. “I have to work.”

  His grin stayed fixed and he reminded me right back, “Yeah, but your day starts at nine thirty. You can sleep in.”

  This was true.

  I held his eyes.

  Then I whispered, “Round two?”

  His eyes got intense and he whispered back, “Oh yeah.”

  Oh.

  Yeah.

  “Okay,” I breathed, he bent his head to touch his mouth to mine then rolled off.

  I skedaddled off the bed and to the bathroom to prepare for round two.

  And yeah.

  Seriously.

  Sex was awesome.

  * * * * *

  Twelve fifteen that night

  I laid in bed snuggled into Chace’s side, his arm under and around me, hand under my nightie drifting a short path up my spine and down to the top of my undies, my arm around his gut, cheek to his shoulder, top leg tangled with both of his.

  We’d had almost a week of us being all the us we could be.

  He worked, I worked. He ran or swam or did weight lifting, I went to the gym. We had dinner together. We walked to Bubba’s from my place after dinner once to have drinks. He watched sports, I read.

  He did not, however, watch any of my shows and stood firm on this even when I semi-begged him to give Supernatural a go telling him Dean Winchester was most assuredly his type of guy. Although I gave up, I decided next week I’d try again. Dean and Sam could lapse into heartfelt, man conversations and there were demons and ghosts and a variety of apocalyptic storylines. But still, I figured Chace would get into it mostly because they drove a kickass Impala. And all men (or most men and the men who were all man were most of them) liked cars.

  Anyway, I had last week’s e
pisode taped. Since I was spending all my time with Chace, if he didn’t watch it with me, when was I going to get my dose of Dean and Sam?

  The sex was regular (after the ban, morning and night!) and got better and better (deliriously so). As Chace guided it, I became more confident and we got to know each other better, in bed and out.

  It had been another wonderful week.

  Brilliant. Fabulous. Amazing.

  The only pall was Malachi.

  He hadn’t shown all week and daily I asked for reports from Chace about what Deck was uncovering.

  Deck, so far, had found nothing.

  Chace had also come up with zip. This included him expanding his search by contacting every school in the county and every surrounding county to see if a boy called Malachi was enrolled.

  Nothing.

  “Kid’s a ghost,” Chace had muttered and his tone eloquently underlined he didn’t feel this was good.

  I didn’t either. How could he not be on the register of any school in five counties?

  “I’m worried about Malachi,” I muttered into the dark silence and Chace’s hand stopped drifting and his arm curled tight around me.

  “I know, baby,” he whispered.

  “This amount of time, he’s running out of food.”

  “Deck’ll find him.”

  I lifted up and looked down at him in the dark. “Chace –”

  His other arm reached across his body and I felt his hand cup my cheek.

  “Faye, baby, Deck’ll find him. Nothin’ we can do. Not right now. You need to sleep. You got work tomorrow. Tomorrow night, we got your family. And Deck’s stymied. He doesn’t like to be stymied. Not ever but definitely not by a nine year old kid. This was a favor he was doin’ for me. Now it’s his mission. He won’t give up, Faye, and he’ll find him.”

  I sucked in breath.

  He was right. There was nothing we could do after midnight on a Friday night. I had work the next day and we had to face my family tomorrow night.

  This was supposed to be a dinner for Mom, Dad, Chace and me. Then Liza found out about it (Dad and his big mouth). Now she and Boyd and her kids were coming and it was a pre-birthday bash for her son, Jarot.

  Don’t ask me about the name Jarot. I told her he’d be teased and called “carrot” and he was. She loved the name and she was Liza, when she loved something she was perfectly willing to pitch numerous fits to get it. So Boyd gave in mostly to shut her up. Luckily, he gave in after demanding the right to name their second kid. His name was Robert. Suffice it to say, Robbie didn’t get teased on the playground.

  Then again, Robbie was a bruiser.

  Jarot played with Legos all the fraking time and Liza, Boyd and Dad were convinced, with the stuff he built, that he was going to be an architect.

  He was almost nine.

  Robbie had been sent home from school three times for punching kids in the nose.

  He was six.

  No one said what they thought Robbie was going to be mostly because the optimistic choice was the next Great White Hope in the boxing ring. But the practical one was he was going to be a drug dealer’s enforcer.

  “Oh, all right,” I gave in on a mutter then settled back in.

  Chace’s hand at my cheek sifted back through my hair before it fell away and his hand at my spine went back to drifting.

  I relaxed.

  “We’ll find him, Faye.”

  It was quiet but it was a promise.

  I pressed closer.

  He knew I was worried and he didn’t like it.

  But I knew he was worried too. Although I didn’t want him to be, I liked that he was for a kid he didn’t know.

  “Okay, honey.”

  “Sleep,” he urged.

  “Okay.”

  “’Night baby.”

  “’Night, Chace.”

  His hand quit drifting and his arm gave me another squeeze then his hand went back to drifting.

  As it moved, my mind quit drifting and my eyes closed.

  Then I did as Chace urged. Tucked close to him, I slept.

  Chapter Twelve

  Family

  Faye’s fidgeting beside him in his truck caught his attention so Chace reached out a hand and tagged hers. He linked their fingers and pulled their hands to his thigh.

  They were on their way to her parents’ house and she was anxious. This was, she told him when he gently pressed it out of her, not because she was worried about what they would think of him. But what he would think of them.

  “They’re a little um… nutty,” she’d said.

  “There’s good nutty and bad nutty. My guess is they’re good nutty,” he’d replied.

  She gave him a cute but dubious look and went on.

  “And loud.”

  Chace didn’t reply.

  “And opinionated,” she continued.

  Chace just grinned at her.

  “And in your business,” she carried on.

  Chace’s arms, already around her, tightened and his grin got bigger.

  “I’m kind of the black sheep. I mean, they all read but none of them are shy, um… at all,” she kept going.

  “You love them?” Chace had asked. When he got her nod he finished quietly on a squeeze of his arms, “Then I will too.”

  This served to calm her and earn him a smile.

  But about a minute ago, his assurance wore off.

  Once they got there, she’d settle in and be okay.

  As for Chace, he wasn’t worried. Getting the invitation to dinner from Silas Goodknight after he came for his visit and the reason he came for that visit, Chace figured he did something of which Silas approved.

  As for the other Goodknights, Faye liked him and he reckoned that was all he needed. If they were good people and they loved Faye, both of which he knew was true, they’d either look deep to see what Faye saw in him or they’d bury their feelings so it wouldn’t distress her. Of what he already knew about them around town and from Faye’s talk, he already knew he liked them.

  Therefore, he wasn’t driving to dinner concerned about how the dinner would go.

  No, he had a variety of other things weighing on his mind.

  The first was Malachi.

  As far as they could find, the kid didn’t exist.

  This came from Chace checking Colorado Vital Records and finding nothing on a Malachi of their Malachi’s approximate age being born in the State of Colorado. It also came from Chace contacting local and not so local schools. Chace, Frank and Deck pulled favors with folks they knew and looked into the school systems in and around Aspen, Grand Junction, Glenwood Springs, Montrose and even as far away as Denver. Although several Malachis were enrolled, none of them matched their Malachi’s age.

  Chace, Deck, Frank and other officers asked around town to see if anyone not only had seen Malachi recently but also if they’d seen him before. Except for a few folks reporting they thought they might have, it was nothing concrete and, outside of maybe noticing him, they had no more.

  It wasn’t surprising that he was good at being invisible.

  It was surprising that it appeared he didn’t exist at all.

  Chace could see him roaming but not very far. In that day and age, folks didn’t pick up kids and give them a ride without having concerns, asking questions and usually reporting it or straight up taking the kid to the authorities. So although Chace could see him making his way to Carnal from another town, even another county, he couldn’t imagine he got there from Denver much less another state.

  He’d set an intern on it and there was no one of his name or matching his description on the missing person’s database.

  This and his disappearance did not bode well. Even if Faye and Chace freaked the kid out with Faye standing by the return bin on Monday or he’d made them sitting in the truck, the kid had to eat and they’d backed off. Faye kept his stash outside by the return bin even when they weren’t watching. She’d also posted a laminated note on the side of the li
brary asking anyone who discovered the bags to leave them for Malachi.

  They’d been left for Malachi. She left the library half an hour before and reported to him they were there. For the last week, every time they came back in the morning, they were still there.

  This left plenty of time for him to sneak to the library when he knew they weren’t watching.

  It could be he’d noticed or heard somehow that Deck was on his trail. But since Deck hadn’t even picked up a scent and the kid made no connections with anyone but Faye, Chace couldn’t fathom how.

  The kid was nine or ten and as far as Chace knew didn’t have superpowers or the capacity for clairvoyance. He was in survival mode and would take chances in order at the very least to eat.

  The longer he remained gone, the more Chace’s, and Faye’s, concern escalated.

  But this was not the only thing weighing on Chace’s mind.

  The town had not surprisingly not rejoiced at Darren Newcomb’s murder.

  It wasn’t that he was well-liked. He was roundly hated. But it was the same as Misty. No one felt he deserved that and further, no one felt his kids did.

  They were braced for whatever might come next after what had already happened. It didn’t take someone with the powers of deduction akin to Sherlock Holmes’s to know that Newcomb’s murder might be the tip of the iceberg.

  As a matter of course in the investigation of Darren Newcomb’s murder, Newcomb’s home had been searched and Clinton Bonar and the men he’d worked for had received visits from Frank.

  It was also not a surprise that they found Newcomb’s house had been tossed and whoever tossed it did a thorough job. Almost the entirety of it was destroyed. Couch cushions torn open. Mattresses slashed. Carpet pulled up. Linoleum ripped away. Dresser drawers broken. Even pockets in clothing turned inside out or ripped out completely.

  Whether they found what they were looking for was anyone’s guess.

  Chace had visited the scene. Even though Frank was primary that didn’t mean Chace wasn’t still looking for his unwanted but dead wife’s murderer.

  What he saw made him come to some conclusions.

  Newcomb and Misty’s murderer, if they were the same person, knew that when he did Misty his tracks would be covered by the dirt at CPD. That didn’t mean he wasn’t careful with everything but his semen. With Newcomb, he left them nothing. Whoever tossed Newcomb’s house also left nothing but a mess. No prints. No one had heard anything or seen anything. Then again, Newcomb lived local but removed, up in the hills at the east of town. The closest house was a wood away. Easy not to hear or see a thing.