“Or tipping our hand.”
“Exactly.”
“So, where does Hart intend to question him?” Certainly not at CIB if he wanted to keep this from Weston.
Unless, of course, Joe Cawfield was our stooge and Weston didn’t give a shit about us finding out, hence Cawfield using his own login and password for the GPS system at Central Police.
God, I felt sick. I pushed my half eaten omelette away. Damon poured a glass of red and pushed it across the bench toward me, silently. It wasn’t whisky, but it might just dull the pain a little.
“We plan to corner him at his house in the morning.”
“Bad move,” I said, swirling the merlot about in the glass and watching it coat the sides. “Last time I cornered Joe at his house, it blew up.”
“Good point. Maybe I’ll get Hart to meet me at his gym. Cawfield goes there each morning at six.”
“He works out?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. He’s quite fit actually. Runs marathons.”
“He does not!”
“You really should get to know your coworkers, Keen. It’d make life go a lot smoother.”
I’d already got to know one coworker so well that when he faked his death, I still kept hearing him telling me how to live my life inside my head.
“Yeah,” I said, not sounding convinced.
“You can’t live life in a vacuum, Keen,” Pierce said sagely. “Otherwise you end up sucking at it.”
“You read that on the back of a cereal box or something?”
“Or something. Might have been Carl.”
I heard the ice clink in his glass as he no doubt lifted it in silent salute to our fallen comrade.
I held up my wine glass and then clinked it against Damon’s, whispering, “To Carl.”
Damon watched me closely as he took a sip in honour of my ex-partner.
I’d mourn my mentor after we caught Weston.
“So,” I said to Pierce. “Which gym?”
“Oh, no,” Pierce said fiercely. “You are not invited. Suspended from CIB, remember?”
“How could I forget?” I said dryly.
“Come on, Keen. You’re likely to shoot first and ask questions later. We need him alive if we have any chance of flipping this thing back on Weston.”
“But you’re not even sure it’s him, and besides, I don’t have a gun; Hart took it from me.”
“Taser. Just as lethal if used enough times.”
“Tasers need to recharge,” I told him.
“How many do you own exactly?”
I didn’t reply.
Pierce grunted.
“Look, Ryan,” I said.
“Oh, bringing out the big guns, are we?”
I smiled. “Maybe having me there would throw him off his game a little. Make him sweat enough that we can break through the hypnosis. The spooks at ASI said that if there’s a connection between the brainwashed and somebody, say the somebody present at his interrogation, it might be enough to break the PSYOPS. I think Eagle’s been trying to break through it to me.”
“The fedora hat and trench coat,” Pierce guessed.
“Yeah, but I just don’t know yet what Eagle’s been trying to tell me.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
Hopefully, before it was too late for Carole and Stretch.
“What do you think?” I asked instead of commenting on that. “About me being there. You can’t deny that Cawfield feels something for me. Even if it’s hatred, it might be enough for him to break the training.”
Pierce was silent for a while and then said, “OK. But you follow my lead. You glare at him all you like, but you let me ask the questions; I’m quite good at it actually.” Said dryly. “And for God’s sake, if we do end up arresting him, don’t you do it. A false arrest is just what this fucked up case needs.”
I smiled grimly. All these reminders that I was suspended were starting to get to me.
“You’re on,” I said. “What time?”
“He works out from six to seven-thirty, so let’s make it five-thirty at Les Mills in the city.” He muttered something under his breath. “It’s late,” he said; he must have been looking at his watch when he muttered incoherently at me just then. “Get some sleep.”
“You too.”
“I was. Thanks for that, by the way. Now I’ll be too knackered to wake up Marie early.”
I made a choking sound. “Too much info, Sarge.”
“What?” he said, innocently. “I’m married. I’m allowed to.”
“Yeah. Whatever,” I said and closed the call out. I stared at the blank screen. I could just imagine Pierce thinking he was clever getting me to end the call like that.
I waited for five minutes, while I helped Damon clean up the kitchen, and then texted Pierce just to be ornery.
You asleep yet?
Fuck off! came the immediate reply.
I grinned as I stepped into the shower.
Damon slipped in behind me and reached for the soap. He started lathering up my back, while I let the hot water soothe me.
“You don’t think it’s Cawfield,” he said softly, letting the sound of the water surround us. It was intimate, even if the topic wasn’t. But the slow stroke of his hands over my body and the constant rhythm of the water as it fell made the moment private.
I needed that privacy because it had been a hell of a day and tomorrow wasn’t looking any better.
“I’ve always thought it was him,” I admitted, turning when Damon indicated I should. He started on my front, not saying anything. “Cawfield is a chauvinistic pig. He hates my guts, and the feeling is mutual. He goes out of his way to get a rise out of me, and I go out of my way to avoid him. But this is too convenient. Too… easy. When nothing about this case or Weston has been easy.”
“You can say that again,” Damon muttered.
I looked at him, this larger than life man who took up too much space in the shower stall and yet his touch was so gentle, so caring, so soft. Water sluiced off his bronzed skin, ran in rivulets over his defined muscles. Firemen worked out, and just because Damon spent a great deal of his day in his office or the lab at HEAT didn’t mean he wasn’t still buff.
I loved his body. I reached for it now, returning the favour and carefully cleaning him.
“How’re you holding up?” I asked.
“I’m stretched pretty thin, love.”
I nodded. I understood.
“And you? Carl?”
I shook my head. “I can’t think about that right now.”
“Lara…”
“I know. I will need to. But if I stop now to mourn him properly, I’m not sure I’ll be a functioning human being by the morning.”
He reached forward and wrapped me up in his arms. We stood beneath the shower spray, water running down our bodies like tears from God. I closed my eyes and rested my cheek against his chest. He kissed my temple and hugged me tight. We held each other together, wrapped up in steam, wrapped up in our love.
Damon feared that he’d have to mourn his sister.
I feared that I couldn’t survive mourning Carl.
But together, we could hold on for a little longer; stay strong for just one more day; one more hour.
“Make love to me,” I whispered. “Help me to forget.”
He ducked down and looked me in the eye, and then he murmured as if a vow, “Whatever you need, love.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“We All Have Baggage, Sport. Some Of Us Just Require A Forklift To Carry It Around With Us All Day Long.”
Damon made love with single-minded focus. The world could have been exploding outside his bedroom window, but he wouldn’t have cared; Earth’s end would not have had him lose his focus. He ran sure hands over my body, lighting off electric-like shocks of sensations across my skin. I arched my back in response, and he took advantage of the position to wrap his lips around a nipple.
His fingers dug into my hip on one side when I moaned my a
ppreciation. He licked and sucked and then slipped a hand between my thighs, finding exactly the right spot to rub.
I came apart far easier than I had thought possible. With the day we’d had, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to let go so quickly. But Damon knew my body, he knew it intimately. He’d made a career out of making it hum. And he was determined to see me hum like a maestro.
A bite on my nipple, the scrape of teeth across flesh, a stroke of fingers through my moist folds and then a thrust as they entered me. My skin pebbled, the heat of his body seared me, hot breath coasted over sensitive flesh; I writhed and moaned as if I couldn’t get enough, wouldn’t survive another minute without another touch, another kiss, another stroke of a probing finger.
“Again,” he said when I started to crest that mighty mountain of euphoria for a second time in as many minutes. Damon could be very demanding in bed, and when he knew I was needy like I was right then, his will became inexorable to resist. “Again, love,” he rasped against my stomach.
His head dipped lower; my legs parted without hesitation. He ducked between them and licked me up the centre. I gasped. He thrust his fingers in a rhythm that matched the sucking of his mouth on my clit.
“Damon!” I cried.
“Yes,” he growled. “Now!”
I burst apart in a million tiny shards of light and heat and sizzling electrical pulses. I felt loose and relaxed and almost ready to roll over and sleep the best sleep I’d ever had. But Damon was having none of that.
“We’re not finished,” he murmured, positioning my legs over his shoulders as he looked down at me.
An Adonis hovered in the air above my sated body. Rippling muscles and shiny bronzed skin. His cock jutted out, weeping pre-come. I reached for him, and he hissed a breath through clenched teeth when we touched. Gripping him tightly, I stroked slowly, watching the tendons on the side of his neck tighten. I mercilessly teased him, knowing that it would probably come back and bite me in the butt.
His beautiful eyes closed and he hung his head low, savouring the moment.
Damon was the most magnificent sight to behold when luxuriating in sensual pleasure.
He quickly lowered my legs from his shoulders, surprising me. I was sure he was about to thrust in deep and take me hard the way I loved him taking me. But instead, he moved up my body, kissing the skin below each breast and then licking a line of heat up to one of my nipples. He sucked briefly but moved on before I could respond to that pull that went directly from my breast straight to my core.
And then he straddled my shoulders, his lower legs holding my arms in place, as he reached for his dick and stroked it above my face.
“Your touch is like a lick of heat,” he murmured. “It sets my body on fire. I’m addicted to you, Lara. I can’t get enough.”
He didn’t move from his position above me, and I couldn’t budge his legs from where my arms lay pinned down the side of my supine form.
I struggled because it is not in me to lie compliantly when so restrained. He grinned at me, his eyes heavily lidded as he watched me try and fail to buck him off.
“Damon,” I growled.
“No,” he said firmly. “You started this by touching me, teasing me. Now you’ll finish it.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, and then he leaned forward, loomed over me, tipped his cock down toward my mouth.
I turned my head away, smirking.
He gripped my hair gently, but meaningfully, and moved my lips back to his cock head.
“Lick it,” he said.
I glared up at him.
He smiled down at me. “You know I love it when you look at me like that.”
“Animal,” I huffed, knowing this was Damon playing; demanding but still playing.
“But I’m your animal, Lara. Lick it.”
I let out a huff, which parted my lips, and his cock pressed between them. I tasted pre-come immediately and stifled a groan; I wouldn’t let him see how turned on I was.
“That’s it. Take it,” he encouraged.
My tongue darted out, just a flash, just enough to lick the tip.
He growled and pressed himself farther between my lips.
“Suck it,” he instructed.
Bossy Damon was definitely Sexy Damon. His body was on fire. His skin shone like a bronzed statue above me. His heavy lids let me know just how turned on he was. Damon was not a one-position-between-the-sheets kind of man. He’d opened my sexual world up to so many possibilities. And he constantly surprised me.
I’d known for some time that he was a closet dominant. I’d seen how well he fitted into that world with such apparent ease. He reined it in for the most part. Not all of our sexual encounters were as electric as this; not as controlled; not as demanding and consequently freeing. I fought back; it’s in my nature. He dominated - just a little; it was in his.
And somehow it worked. I could only assume because in my day-to-day life I had to be so in control of my emotions. I had to put on a façade of cool, calm and collected to hoof it with the boys at CIB. But in our bed, when Damon sensed I needed it, when he could see I was responsive to it, he took over; he took control. He let me give myself up to someone else completely, and he took me to the very edge of sanity and back. Again and again.
I spread my lips wider. He slowly slipped between them. I watched his board chest rise and fall swiftly. Sweat glistened on his pecs, down his biceps. He shook ever so slightly. Having this sort of control over me in bed did something to Damon. Maybe because out of it, he didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of dominating me.
I kept my eyes locked on his and sucked, hollowing my cheeks around his wide girth. He started a rhythm, panting slightly. He might be the one calling the shots, but I was the one making him unravel completely.
“Lara,” he rasped. “That’s it, love. Take all of me.”
The dominant mask was slipping. Even if it was still an instruction; when Damon called me ‘love’ there was no mistaking the meaning. He loved me and would never hurt me, in or out of bed.
It had taken a long time to accept that. It had taken too long. And now we played with fire, not just between the sheets, but out of them. If we couldn’t stop Weston, couldn’t get Carole and Stretch back, then our world could burn to cinders all around us.
“Lara!” he snapped. “Focus on me. On my cock. On the way I taste and feel. Focus on me.”
And not the turmoil of thoughts inside my head.
I scraped my teeth down his length.
He hissed and thrust himself back in a fraction too deeply. I made a slight gagging sound, and he pulled back immediately.
“You can take more,” he ordered.
I opened wider, tipped my head back at the right angle to take all of him; obeyed him without thinking.
And it was liberating. Freeing.
I made him lose all semblance of control and when I thought I had him; really, truly had him so close to that beautiful edge - face taut, skin flushed, breaths uneven - he pulled out, shifted down my body, lifted my legs back up over his shoulders and then buried himself inside.
The rest was a frantic dance of forward and back, in and out, thrust and withdraw. I came again. Spectacularly. He forced yet another out of me with the demanded word, “Again!” Until I was nothing but a humming, loose, exhausted puddle beneath him as he thrust one last time, burying himself as deeply as he possibly could, almost bending me back on myself, and groaned out his release in what had to be the sexiest sight of my entire life.
After a suspended moment, Damon collapse down my side, smoothing out my legs as he slipped out of my thoroughly well-used pussy. I couldn’t lift a muscle, but Damon carefully positioned me against his side, resting my head on his chest, and one of my legs over his thigh. I heard his heart beating too quickly. I felt his chest rise and fall faster than it would normally. I heard the sated sigh that slipped out between kiss-swollen lips.
“Cardrona,” he said. “I’ll make love to you every morning a
nd night. I’ll work out your tired muscles from skiing on the slopes all day and make you hurt in a much more pleasurable way.”
“Every day and night,” I mumbled, almost asleep already.
“And maybe a quickie in the middle of the day as well,” he promised.
“You’re a machine,” I grumbled, snuggling in deeper to his furnace-like body.
“We’re parts of the same machine, love. You and I fit together as if we were made for each other.”
My eyelids fluttered, so I let them close. I was too tired to look at all that glorious skin any longer.
“Hmmm,” I hummed contently. “Even if I fight back?”
“Especially if you fight back,” Damon murmured, sounding just as sleepy as me.
“Sleep,” I mumbled.
“Sweet dreams,” he whispered.
I was almost there, almost asleep when I thought I heard Damon whisper, “And I’ll ask you to marry me.”
Thankfully I was too far gone down that slippery slope to slumbering that I didn’t fixate on what I thought I had heard.
I wasn’t the marrying type; Damon knew that.
But then I wasn’t the relationship type either, and here I was, blissfully cohabitating - even if in two different houses - with a man who could light my body on fire and promised to do it on a daily basis.
Suffice it to say, my dreams were of the sensual variety and not the nightmares I’d been having lately.
The scent of coffee woke me. I rolled over and stretched out my worn body, feeling aches I hadn’t felt in quite some time. Damon and I had a healthy sexual relationship, but last night was definitely one of the special ones. The ones that brought out the master in Damon; the ones I particularly liked.
I pushed the inherent embarrassment I felt at that thought aside and shuffled into the bathroom. By the time I was dressed and ready to face the day, Damon had finished preparing breakfast. We’d burned off quite a few calories last night, so I didn’t baulk at the eggs and bacon. I did restrain myself to just one strip of bacon, but I downed the entire juice glass before I savoured my coffee.
Sitting back in the chair at the dining room table, I watched as Damon brought himself up to speed on the morning news on his tablet.
A Lick Of Heat: H.E.A.T. Book Four Page 22