Confess (The Blue Line Series Book 1) (3 page)

His mouth worked back and forth, ready to spew more hate speech, she guessed, but Mitch took one step forward and halted the unspoken words.

Anger registered in hot, red marks across his face, and Stetson reached in his jeans pocket and threw a stack of bills on the bar. “Fucking cunts.” Spitting a wad of tobacco on the floor, he shouldered through the gathered crowd and stormed away.

Connie stashed the money in the register and went back to the drink she’d started before Stetson threw his hissy fit; the true professional she was didn’t anger easily.

Despite the tension in the room, Lacy forced a smile, signaling the regulars back to their game.

“And I thought beating you at cards was going to be the highlight of my night.” Mitch draped his coat back over his gun. “Does that happen often on a Sunday?”

“You’d be surprised.” Lacy took the drink Connie offered and rounded the bar to the stool beside Mitch. The bourbon stung going down but did little to ease her frayed nerves.

Connie wrenched the cap off a beer bottle and handed it to Mitch. “That asshole comes here every Sunday. Has a thing for Lace. Always puts on a show to get attention. Probably didn’t like having competition.”

Mitch’s forehead wrinkled like he was letting that little tidbit of information sink in. “And what happens when someone isn’t here to scare him off? He could have taken you both out before any of these guys jumped in.”

“We know how to handle pissed-off drunks.” Lacy put her drink down, hoping Mitch didn’t notice the adrenalin rush still shaking through her fingers. Charlie’s was her job, her life, as unexciting and small as it was. No stranger, even one as hot as the man sitting next to her, making the act of sipping a beer look like foreplay, was going to question her ability to handle the bar. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t have a hunting rifle in his truck after you flashed your gun in his face.”

“Sure looks like you’ve got everything under control.” He cut his gaze up from the rim of his beer. His voice lowered. His eyes heated. “You should be better protected. Connie’s a great guard dog, but what happens when you’re faced with someone who doesn’t back down from mere threats?” A question Lacy had asked herself. “What happens when Connie starts something you’re left to finish? He could be waiting out in the parking lot for you right now. Damn, he could be a fucking sociopath, and you wouldn’t know it until he killed one of you.”

Sparks of ice danced along Lacy’s skin, and she couldn’t stop the tremor that started near her shoulders and worked across her body like a wave. “I’ve served worse.”

“Really?” he answered back fast. He leaned closer, his voice turned to gravel in his throat. “Somehow I doubt you come even close to understanding what a deranged killer is capable of.”

That was where he was dead wrong.

The last thing on earth Lacy wanted, or needed, was another dominant male in her life, shouting orders and setting rules and telling her what she did and didn’t know. She leaned away on the stool. “Look. It’s been real, but before we get too deep—”

“You call this deep? I thought we were just getting acquainted,” he interrupted, his tone mocking.

A rule Charlie taught all his female bartenders flashed to mind.
Flirting sells drinks; stupidity sells pregnancy tests.

“You won at cards, and you saved Connie from a night of scrubbing Stetson’s blood from the wood floor. I’m not in the market for a relationship, no matter how hot I think you are.” Had she really just called him hot out loud? Her cheeks flamed. As if saying it wasn’t embarrassing enough, now she had to wear the irrefutable evidence in bright pink scald marks across her face. She was letting this man get to her. Down deep, under her skin. Why?

Her gaze dropped to his mouth and the way he sucked in his lower lip and bit down. He shifted closer, his knee pressed into the seam of her legs until she had no choice but to open to him and the rounded bone pushed on her inner thigh. He smelled of beer and the strong spice of aftershave, a heady mix of masculinity that left her wondering how a man like Mitch would taste. How his hands would feel on her bare skin. Soft and gentle after all that hard talk? Or would his touch be as rough and grating as his personality?

His eyes sparked, dark and dangerous, though the sultry smile on his lips stayed playful. “You were planning to at least kiss me goodnight.”

Her body felt electrified. Confused. Like the cells beneath her skin were running in all directions and pulling her apart from the inside. She glanced back to Connie for support.

“You don’t need her.” He angled his face to catch her gaze again. “You’re a big girl. Make the decision on your own.”

Conceded much? “
I may have thought about kissing you.” Her gaze hovered on his mouth and the delicious way his lips curved up into one side of his cheek in a half grin.

“Then it’s only fair to tell you kissing wasn’t exactly how I pictured the night ending.” His Adam’s apple jumped in his throat, hollowing out the base of his neck.

She battled the sudden need to run her tongue along the rim of his concaved flesh. To taste him. To feel his heat under her tongue.

He rubbed his knee along her inner thigh. Darkness flashed in his eyes. Gone was the guy who moments ago had been concerned with her safety. This guy looked like he could eat her alive.

“Do you want me to stop touching you?”

Yes.
Don’t let him reel you in, Lace.
She struggled not to glance at Connie again. Connie knew how to handle guys like Mitch. She lived to knock them off their high horse and make them her puppets. But she couldn’t look without Mitch noticing. She had to handle this one on her own. “No.”

A low, rough laugh erupted from his throat.

Lacy pulled her ponytail through her fingers and fanned her hair out over one bare shoulder. The nervous energy building inside threatened to rip her sanity apart. “How did you picture tonight ending?” Playing coy would get her in trouble, but it felt too good, too dangerous to stop.

“You really want to know?” He slowed his knee at the apex of her thigh. He nudged it forward and rocked, sending waves of pleasure-filled panic riding up to her core.

She nodded, her own sharp intakes of breath audible in her ears. Her heart ran marathon sprints through her chest. She didn’t want him to stop, ever. But if he didn’t, she’d fall apart from the inside out.

A loud cry of excitement blasted from the pool table behind them, but Lacy was sure she felt the low rumble of his groan. He leaned forward. His mouth hovered above her ear. His leg pinned her to the sharp edge of the wooden stool, pinching the tops of her thighs.

“First, you’re going to trust me enough to tell me your real name and come home with me. Then I’m going to spread your glorious body facedown over my bed like you did to that pool table over there, and I’m going to tease you with my fingers and my tongue until you can’t remember anything but what that beautiful name sounds like against your ear, the hard feel of my fingers milking you for come, and what it feels like to beg me to fuck you.”

Lacy’s breath caught. She cut a glance to Connie, who’d taken over serving on her own and didn’t hear a word of his explicit offer.

Her head told her this was all wrong. He talked so direct. So forceful. She should be offended. Force him to leave the bar. But her body responded in a different way. Her hips rocked forward and pressed her center harder into the curve of his knee until the wave of pleasure drowned out the warning bells in her head.

He excited her. Being wild and wicked would be thrilling. When he leaned back to get a read on her reaction, she blew out an unsteady breath. “Is that how you sweet talk all your one-night stands?”

“Yes.”

The answer was plain. Somehow it sounded more provocative than his explicit details about how he’d drape her over his bed. A sudden flash of the scene and the movement of his knee sent damp heat down between her thighs.

What the hell was she doing, letting this stranger talk to her in a way that should make her freak-dar flash red? Damn, she was rubbing herself against him in Charlie’s, like a horny teenager restricted to dry-humping in public. This should feel wrong.

But it didn’t. It felt good.

Sinfully good.

Desperate for space to clear her head and regain what sense of self-preservation she still controlled, Lacy pushed him off with a hand to his chest. The thick wall of muscle constricted under her touch. And there was something else. Something hard and oval dangling from a chain around the middle of his chest.

She pressed her palm against the hard shape. All the sensations she’d been feeling turned from loose passion to a tight fear that began in her chest and gripped her heart in a fist.

She should have guessed it, the way he handled Stetson. And the gun.

A damn cop.

“I’m not going home with you,
Detective.
” She crossed the bar and set her attention on something else. Anything else but him. Stacking glasses always helped her think, but they rattled in her hands. “The main bar is full of holster sniffers.” She forced herself not to look into his eyes. Not to give him a chance to pull her back in. “Try your luck there.”

“I’m not into cop chasers.” He reached across the bar and halted her by flexing his fingers around her wrist.

Every place the man touched turned to molten. Minutes ago she would have welcomed finding herself lost in that touch. Minutes ago he’d made her want to throw out every rule in the Lacy Andrews Guide to Dating and take him up on his one-night stand offer. That was before she’d found the badge hidden under his shirt, the way detectives concealed their identity from the masses.

He lowered his head. “I’m into challenges.”

She didn’t look up. If she did, she’d lose control. “Oh, I’ll bet you are. If you knew who I was—”

“The chief’s daughter,” he deadpanned.

He’d known all along and let her think she’d gotten away with lying. Just like a detective. All Law Enforcement Officers were the same. Lying. Manipulating. Using.

She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, stalling for a second of clarity. “I’m not—”

“Backing out on your end of our bet?” His tone teased.

“The bar doesn’t close until two.”

“I’ll wait.” He cocked his head to the side.

That will be a long wait in hell
. “You don’t have to.”

“Yes, I do.”

No.
This wasn’t happening. The hottest guy to enter her life in, well, forever, and he had to be a damn cop. She’d done something to royally piss-off karma, and now she was paying for it.

“Why?” She rolled her shoulders, tried to loosen the tension that had settled there but failed.

He studied her for a second, his eyes hot on her skin. “Because I’m not the bad guy. Stetson is still out there somewhere and royally pissed off at you. Even if you don’t go home with me, I’m not letting you go out there alone.”

She’d seen that primal look of protection in men’s eyes before. Mitch wasn’t going to back down. “We have bouncers for that. I’m safe enough.”

“And the two girls murdered right outside town this month? They thought they were safe enough, too.”

The cold reality of why he’d sat in her bar for the past week, surveying the place like a wolf on the hunt, washed over her in a cold chill. Another detective hoping to make his career of finding Richard Wray. Another threat to expose her secret.

“They didn’t have the chief of police for protection,” she quipped.

He considered her answer and shook his head as if to dismiss its validity. “No. They didn’t. And I bet that makes all the difference to a killer. Have it your way, then. I’ll leave you to it. Thanks for the drink.” He picked up his beer and, with a nod to Connie, disappeared out the door leading to the main bar.

Her heart did a swan dive through her chest and landed smack on top of her stubborn pride. Her lady parts winced at the pain of his rejection.

That wasn’t the reaction she’d hoped for. And now she’d probably just pissed him off for good.

Back in the main room of Charlie’s, Mitch spotted Deluna in a dark corner, his body intertwined with a leggy redhead in a booth. Helms was nowhere to be seen.

Too buzzed to drive, Mitch parked himself on a stool behind a glass of water and thought about licking his wounds.

Maybe he’d read Lacy the wrong way. Come on too strong. Pushed her past her comfort zone. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d mixed his signals, but damn did it suck to have happened with her.

She’d been hot for him. He knew it. The heat radiating off her skin was undeniable, and the way her legs constricted around his knees, she’d been close enough to coming for him he felt the moisture permeate his jeaned knee. Too close to have backed off without a solid reason. Something more solid than him being a cop or the memory of a jilted lover.

The back bar was dark, but he’d clearly seen fear flash into her eyes when her fingers landed on his badge.

With Andrews for a father, she couldn’t have been jilted by anyone still on the force. Maybe a little recon into the department’s recent human resources files would shed some light on Lacy’s trepidation toward the badge. And while he was at it, maybe it would shed some light on Nashville’s accusations that someone in Rebel Rapids was tampering with evidence. He could kill two preverbal birds with one well played stone.

Guzzling the cold water, he used the glass to divert the stare of a young blonde straddling a stool two spaces over and seductively sucking her pointer finger in slow, deliberate strokes.

He turned away and was rewarded with a sharp huff directed at his back.

By his second glass, the fog lifted. Fighting the urge to storm into the back bar and throw Lacy over his shoulder, show her what real cops were like, he paid his tab and made his way to the door.

With a murderer on the loose, tailing her home might freak her out and give her even more reason to distrust the boys in blue. He’d settle for an icy shower.

In the half-full parking lot, he pulled his keys from his pocket at the same time his gaze landed on a women kneeling down next to his Indian motorcycle.