Playing for Keeps (Hope Valley Book 10)

by Jessica Prince

  “What is it?” he pleaded.

  “The reason I snuck out, the reason I went to Cormack . . . he found out about her,” I finally admitted to him, all these months later. “I don’t know how, but he found out about Cheyanne, and he said he’d track her down and make her pay for me betraying him. Dalton,” I said on a broken sob. “I couldn’t let that happen. I had to keep her safe. When we were little, I’d always promised that I’d protect her, and I was determined to keep that promise, even if what I had to protect her from was me.”

  He shot out of the chair, moving fast to round the table like he couldn’t stand the small distance between us for another second. He yanked me to my feet, stealing my seat, and pulled me into his lap.

  “Charlotte, baby, you have to listen to me,” he insisted, taking my face in his large hands. “You are not cursed. You aren’t dark or any of that other bad shit you think about yourself. You’re good, through and through.”

  He wiped at the dampness on my cheeks with his thumbs as I reached up and dragged my nails gently through his beard. God, I loved that damn beard. I loved him. “I think I’m starting to get that. Because of you.”

  Sliding his fingers into my hair, he gripped the strands gently and pulled my face toward his so he could rest his forehead against mine. “Christ, I love you.”

  “I love you too,” I whispered, emotion clogging my throat. “And I trust you, honey. You’re in, all the way. Please believe that. You have all of me.”

  That gray turned to quicksilver as heat filled his eyes. In response, my nipples pebbled and a rush of arousal centered between my thighs. It had been too long. Sleeping beside him these past couple weeks, smelling his heady masculine scent but not touching him had been acute torture, and having him hold me now, telling me he loved me . . . it was my breaking point.

  Wrapping my arms around his neck, I slammed my lips down on his in a kiss so full of passion it overwhelmed me. “I’ve missed you so much,” I panted into his mouth. Dalton took over, ramping up the kiss, making me whimper. “I need you, Dalton. Please.”

  “You have me,” he growled against my lips. “All of me, Charlotte. Always.”

  I shifted on his lap, throwing one leg over so I was straddling him without breaking the kiss. I was like one of those little characters on a video game who’d gotten extra lives. The longer he kissed me, the more I filled up with happiness until I was fully alive once again.

  I was so consumed by him that I didn’t realize what he was doing until I jumped at the loud crash and pulled back, whipping my head around to see he’d swiped the dishes off the table.

  “Oh my God,” I breathed, even more turned on by his desperation. However . . . I looked back at him, one eyebrow cocked. “You know I’m not cleaning that up, right?”

  “Don’t give a fuck about the mess,” he growled, lifting me up and sitting me on the edge of the table as he stood between my thighs and pulled my shirt over my head. “All you need to worry about is holding on because this is gonna be hard and fast. Need you too much, baby,” he panted, reaching for the button of my shorts.

  “I want it exactly how you give it, cowboy.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Dalton

  Christ, I wasn’t sure I was ever going to have this again, that I’d be able to touch her and taste her whenever I wanted, and it was taking every ounce of self-control I had not to lunge at her.

  Reaching around, I unclasped her bra, revealing those tight, rosy little nipples that were already standing at attention.

  With a growl, I bent forward and latched onto one, sucking hard and deep.

  “Oh God, Dalt,” Charlotte whimpered as her back bowed. Her tiny fingers fisted in my hair, yanking at the strands to keep me close like she was afraid I was going to float away. God, I’d missed her. “Need you, honey, please.”

  I’d never get tired of hearing her beg. Not fucking ever.

  My hands traveled down her ribs, past the feminine dip in her waist, to the waistband of her shorts and, reading my intension clearly, she lifted her hips just enough so I could work them and her panties down her legs, tossing them over my shoulder when they cleared her feet.

  “Lay back, baby,” I ordered gruffly. “I want you spread out on my table like a goddamn feast.”

  She did as told, extending her arms over her head to grip the edge of the table, and just the sight of her like this, stripped bare, trusting me to take care of her, was almost enough to make me come in my jeans.

  She was a fucking vision. A goddess.

  “Hurry, Dalt,” she pleaded, her chest rising and falling with hard, desperate breaths.

  I leaned down, placing a kiss in the valley between those perfect tits before trailing down. Stopping at the scar on her stomach, I pressed my lips to it. The skin was pink and puckered, but just like the rest of her, it was perfect.

  Lifting my head, I looked up to see her hazel eyes, dark with lust, pinned on me. “You wet for me, baby?”

  “Yes,” she breathed. “Please. Now.”

  I wasn’t going to make her wait a second longer. Hell, I was barely holding on by a thread. Standing tall, I unhooked my belt and ripped at the fly of my pants until my aching cock finally sprang free. At the sight of it, Charlotte let out a wanton groan that made it twitch and leak pre-cum.

  Grabbing behind her thighs, I yanked her down so she was nearly hanging off the table. “Ready for me?”

  “Always.”

  With that, I drove in to the hilt, both of us shouting out at the intense pleasure. I gave her a few seconds to adjust to my size, but when she began undulating, rolling those soft hips in an effort to get more, I let loose.

  “Fuck me,” I gritted, sweat beading up on my brow as I powered in and out of her tight, hot pussy. My cock glistening with her arousal was almost enough to send me over the edge, and I had to fight back the need to come as I drove into her hard and fast, setting a punishing pace that made the table scrape across the floor. “You fit me perfectly, Charlotte. Every. Fucking. Time.” I punctuated each word with a brutal thrust.

  “You feel so good,” she whimpered. “I love you so much, Dalton.”

  I felt my balls tighten closer to my body at that declaration. “Love you too, Thumbelina.” I released her hip and reached around to press my thumb against her clit. “More than I’ve ever loved anyone.”

  Her eyes went wide at the same time her walls rippled around me, clenching my cock tighter.

  “Get there, baby,” I commanded, snapping my hips harder. “Come for me. Drench my cock so I can fill you up.”

  My words sent her careening over the edge. Her eyes slammed shut, and every muscle in her body locked tight as she cried out my name over and over.

  Her pussy squeezed so tight I had no choice but to follow after her. She milked every drop of cum from me as I collapsed onto her, burying my face in her neck as I experienced the most earth-shattering release of my life.

  “I love you,” she whispered, minutes later as we came back down to earth, her dainty fingers sifting through my sweat-slick hair.

  I lifted my head, smiling at the dreamy look on her face. “Don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearin’ you say that. Want to hear it for the rest of my life.”

  She grinned brightly. “Then that’s what you’ll get, cowboy.” Then she arched a teasing brow. “After you clean the mess you made of the kitchen, of course.”

  Fuck me, but I loved this woman.

  The sky outside the bedroom window was the darkest shade of midnight, peppered by the glow of countless stars. The only light in the bedroom spilled out from the lamp on the bedside table.

  I was lying on my back, the sheets pushed to my waist with Charlotte’s warm, naked body pressed against my side. One of her thighs was thrown over mine, her arm was wrapped around my middle, her head on my shoulder. This was the position we’d assumed ten minutes ago after ravishing each other for the third time in one night like it had been years since we’d touched, not j
ust weeks.

  I’d been lying there, staring at the ceiling with my free arm cocked behind my head while drawing random, nonsensical patterns on her bare hip, trying to wrap my head around everything she’d confessed to me. She had a sister—a twin—that she’d given up because she thought she was doing the right thing.

  The logic behind her decision might have seemed insane to anyone else, but knowing what I knew now, getting to see the real Charlotte that lay behind those walls, I couldn’t say I didn’t understand. I did, and it fucking killed me to know how bad her life had been before—before Hope Valley, before finding her crew, before me. When you had enough people beating you down, telling you that you weren’t good enough, it was impossible not to eventually believe it.

  I’d have given anything to take that all away, and thinking about that made it impossible to shut my brain off so I could find sleep.

  She’d been silent for so long I thought she was asleep, but then she stirred against me, turning her head to give me those warm hazel eyes. “There’s one last thing I have to tell you, cowboy,” she said quietly. “But I don’t want you to get mad.”

  I gave her a reassuring squeeze. “Whatever it is, I can handle it, Thumbelina. Promise.”

  Her gaze drifted to a spot over my shoulder as she inhaled a long, deep breath. Finally, she looked back at me and let it go. “Micah knows about my sister,” she confessed, and even though I tried to stop it, I couldn’t prevent my body from going solid.

  She pushed up, bringing the sheet with her to cover her breasts as she spoke rapidly. “He knows she exists, but that’s it. I never even told him her name. What I gave you tonight, he doesn’t have any of that. He was the first man I’d trusted in years, so I let him in, but that was before you, and he doesn’t have it all. He knows about foster care and running away when I was sixteen, that’s it. I swear. He was my friend. I hadn’t had a friend in a really, really long time, and I needed—”

  I pushed up to sitting, resting my back against the headboard. Grabbing hold of her waist, I pulled her to me so she was straddling my thighs. The man in me, the possessive, macho, full-of-bravado, jealous asshole part of me wanted to rage that she’d given someone else her secrets—even if only a few of them—before she’d given them to me, especially since it was another dick-wielding member of society. But the other more rational part of me knew I had no reason to be jealous of Micah. He and Charlotte were never more than friends, ever, and he didn’t have even a quarter of the secrets she’d given me.

  “Baby, stop,” I ordered gently, looping my arms around her waist to give her a tiny shake. “It’s okay. I’m not mad.”

  Her eyes went round, full of skepticism. “You aren’t?”

  “No. You needed someone to trust after years of being alone. I get that. And like you said, it was before me.” It was before me, I repeated in my head. That reminder helped immensely in soothing my fragile male ego.

  Her whole body drooped in relief, her hands coming up to rest on my shoulders where her tiny fingers dug in, giving me a massage. “Okay, good. I didn’t want to keep anything else from you. That was my very last secret, and I couldn’t go to sleep until it was out there and I knew we were okay.”

  My woman was incredible. “We’re okay. I promise.”

  “There’s also something else I never gave him that I want to give you. Well, it’s more of a favor I want to ask, technically.”

  “What do you want, Thumbelina?” I asked, breaking in mid-ramble. “Just name it, and if it’s in my power, I’ll give it to you.”

  Her chest rose on an inhale, pressing those lush tits harder against me. “You said you’re good at finding things,” she hedged. “I’m assuming you mean people too?”

  My lungs seized up as she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and bit down. “You want me to find your sister?” The fact she’d trust me with something like that . . . Christ, it meant everything.

  She nodded almost nervously. “I miss her,” she said on a breath. “I’m happy for the first time in my life, and that’s all because of you, but I’m still missing that one last piece.” She placed her palm in the center of her chest. “I need to see her. I need to know her again. But, I’m also scared that something’s wrong.”

  My brows pinched together. “What do you mean?”

  “Micah brought it up, but I wouldn’t let myself believe it, but now . . . I know you’re looking for that guy who attacked me, and I’ve got this feeling in the pit of my stomach that Cheyanne might be the ‘she’ he was looking for. And if that’s the case, she might not be safe.”

  I wanted to take away the concern that filled her eyes. I wanted to make each and every day better than the last. I wanted to make her whole and happy for the rest of her life.

  “I’ll find her,” I swore. “I’ll find her, and I’ll make her safe. You have my word.”

  The relief that slid into her features was instant. She didn’t have a single doubt that I’d do exactly as I promised. She trusted and believed in me, and damn if that didn’t make me feel like a goddamn king.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, leaning in for a kiss.

  “Anything, baby. I’ll give you anything you want, always.”

  “I have you. I have your love. I think I’m good for now.” Then she shot me a wicked wink that I felt straight in my dick.

  With a growl, I flipped her to her back, using my knee to push her thighs apart. “Then let’s see about making you sleep better, yeah? Hopefully I can wear you out enough that you’ll sleep through the night.”

  She smiled up at me, giving me that sweet giggle, and just like that, all was right in my world.

  Dalton

  Two weeks later

  My chest was tight with frustration as I stared through the two-way mirror, looking at the piece of shit currently cuffed to a chair in one of the holding rooms in the back of Alpha Omega.

  It had taken longer than I’d wanted to track down the son of a bitch who’d hurt my woman, and we’d had to resort to some . . . creative methods, but we finally got him.

  And Sage was beside herself that she’d gotten in on the action, getting to wear a disguise to make her look more like Charlotte in the hopes of luring the asshole back to her old apartment. It had worked, and the nutty woman even got to use her stun-gun on the bastard, nearly cooking him from the inside out, so she was riding a serious adrenaline high that I was sure she was currently working off with her husband, Xander, in the copy room at that very moment.

  But as jazzed as she was, I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  My knuckles were busted open, but I barely felt the sting as I clenched and unclenched my fists.

  I’d gotten a bit of relief, beating the shit out of the man. His face currently looked like ground beef, and he was clinging to consciousness by the tips of his fingers, but that relief was fleeting, given what he’d said.

  “How you wanna play this, brother?”

  I looked to Trent who’d just asked the question on behalf of all the men I worked with who were currently standing in the room, waiting for my decision.

  When Charlotte had asked me to help find her sister, I hadn’t hesitated. I went into the office the very next morning, bright and early, to talk to Linc about using the firm’s resources to help with the search. He didn’t even blink. Locating Cheyanne Belmont became an all-hands-on-deck situation.

  And what we found had chilled each and every one of us to the bone. Cheyanne Belmont had become Cheyanne Knightly, the wife of a very prominent politician in Ohio. She had also gone missing three years earlier, and her husband’s face had been splashed across every newspaper and media outlet in that area, pleading with anyone who had information to come forward. As more time passed, the articles on her disappearance grew bleak, and there was speculation that she was no longer alive.

  None of it made any damn sense.

  Then there was the prick who’d broken into Charlotte’s apartment. After I had a little fun
with him, he’d spilled everything.

  I looked back into the holding room. “Anyone else curious why this fucker was paid a small fortune to hunt down the sister of a supposed dead woman?”

  After stories of a crooked, small-town cop and the woman he almost killed started airing, it came to the attention of some very high-ranking officials in Ohio that Cheyanne Knightly had a sister no one knew about.

  “Can think of a few reasons, and not a damn one of them is good,” Hunter grunted.

  That was the same thing I was thinking and the same reason my gut was twisted into knots.

  “We’ll find her,” Lincoln declared firmly. “And whatever the fuck is goin’ on, we’ll get her clear of it.”

  I had to hope that happened sooner rather than later.

  “Drop him at the police station,” I clipped, moving toward the door. “I’m sure Micah will appreciate the special delivery. Not that the fucker’ll spend much time in lock-up. I’m sure once the powers that be who hired him find out we got him, they’ll pull whatever strings they have to in order to keep this prick silent.”

  “Sure you don’t want a few more minutes with him?” Trent asked. “I think he still has one or two teeth you haven’t knocked loose yet.

  I hadn’t thought it possible, given the circumstances, but I actually felt my lips pull up in a smirk. I hadn’t had a good fight since Charlotte and I made things official once and for all, and I hadn’t missed it one damn bit. Things in my life were good—beyond good—and that beast I had just beneath the surface was in hibernation. But I’d look at today as a bit of a bonus.