Cutter's Hope (20 page)

“Right I’m with you, Babe.” I gave her a little nudge and she stood up without much urging.

“Kraken!” I shouted over the din, “Return to base!” which for us was our hotel.

“See you tomorrow around noon!” Ruth hollered and I gave him a nod. His guys were laughing at us and I’m sure some of ‘em were calling us pussies behind our backs but this shit just wasn’t our scene, not with a lady present, which Hope
was
, despite her badassery.

She pulled another moment of it out when she called out to Ruth, “Hey Ruth! It all right if I leave my bike? Anybody fuck with it?”

“Go right ahead, Darlin’! Nobody better touch it or I’ll. Have. Their. Ass!” he punctuated each of the last words of his declaration by reaming into his girl’s ass with some particularly rough thrusts. She wailed and the sound was more pleasure than pain to me. I shook my head, to each their own, and raised my eyebrows.

“Come on,” Hope said and we left out the front. She put her helmet on and got on behind me, without so much as a word, twining her arms around me, getting snug up against my back. I put my hand briefly over hers before riding out. Following the hand signals in my rearview to take me and mine to our home away from home.

I bid the guys goodnight and without a word, Hope ghosted along with me up to number six’s door. I keyed it open and let her go first. She set her helmet on a table just inside the door. I flipped the switch on the wall, just inside and the bedside lamp came on and with a gentle shove, I sent the door swinging shut, closing out the outside world. It was just me and her and no one else… finally.

She looked at me, face expressionless which bled into somber and her eyes closed. A wave of exhaustion overtaking her.

“Can I ask you a favor?” she asked quietly.

“You can ask me anything, Sweetheart,” I kept my voice pitched low, soothing and it did something to her. Her face screwed up, anguished, and she pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a broken little gasp. I shrugged out of my jacket and cut and tossed it onto the table and I went to her, pulling her gently into my arms. I tucked her head beneath my chin and held her close as she fell apart against me, petting her silken hair and making shushing noises above her head.

“I’m sorry,” she warbled and I chuckled.

“Don’t be,” I whispered, “What did you want to ask me?”

“For this…”

“To hold you?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

I chuckled, “Aw, Sweetheart, you ain’t never got to ask me for this, I love holding you.”

“Yeah?” she sniffed and wiped at her eyes and let out a shuddering sigh, relaxing into me.

“Yeah. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure…”

“You got a mind towards what comes next? After we get your sister?” I asked.

She let out a bitter, derisive little laugh and pulled back to look at me, “We don’t even know if we
are
going to get my sister back.”

I cupped her face with my hands and smoothed my thumbs through the moisture and makeup beneath her solid brown eyes. I searched her face and what I found there was twisted and tortured with guilt and so many other things, I sighed softly.

“We’re going to get her back, Sweetheart. I believe it and you should too, but you gotta be ready for what comes next…”

“I guess I haven’t thought that far ahead,” her brow furrowed.

“Yeah, well I have. Come back to Florida with me. Your sister is gonna need time and a place to heal, people to look out for her. Let me give you that place at the very least… take all the time you and your family needs to heal.” She searched my face for a solid minute.

“Why would you do that for me? You barely know me.”

“True enough, but I like what I see and I’m enjoying the hell out of getting to know you. I like you, Hope. I want more of this. I want a lot of things from you.”

“Like what?” she asked.

I smiled, “Like more of this,” I kissed her lips lightly and pushed her jacket off her shoulders; she let it fall to the floor and swooned towards me. I untucked her shirt and smoothed my hands against her skin, “And more of this…” I whispered and she sighed.

Yeah… I wanted more and more of Hope until she had nothing left to give. I wanted all of her, and I wanted to keep all of her to myself. I felt like I’d met my match in Ms. Andrews and I wasn’t about to let any of that go.

“What else do you want?” she asked her voice husky, low and sexy.

“I want you to let down your hair, I want to take all this off a piece at a time and I want to lay you back and kiss every inch of you, starting with your heart… if you’ll let me.”

She closed her eyes and savored my words and I could see that she desperately wanted what I was holding out in front of her. She nodded slowly and reached up, unpinning her hair, pulling the tie that held it tight in its bun.

“I want that,” she whispered, “I really do…” her hair spiraled out and frothed around her face and I buried my hands in it, drawing her face up to mine. I kissed her, lingering, dark and deep and smiled against her mouth.

“Relax, Baby. Let me take care of you for tonight, okay?” I asked.

“Okay,” she murmured so sultry and sweet. I drew her against my body and kissed her soulfully.

Okay.

Chapter 21

Hope

Cutter was warm in the air conditioned coolness of the cheap ass motel room. His lips moved carefully against mine and I couldn’t help myself, I surrendered completely. Gave myself over to his care and let myself, my burdens, just everything go. It would all be there in the next hour, or the one after that or just whenever he got through with me, which a part of me hoped that he never would.

There was nothing I could do right now but wait. Wait for the hands on the clock to crawl around the dial, wait for day to break, the sun to crawl across the sky at its snail’s pace, only to set again so that we could head for the titty bar, Objections. To flush out our rat so we could follow it back to its nest. So for now, the best thing I could possibly do, is at least try to unwind. To find a distraction so that the clock would wind down faster and put me that much closer to finding my sister.

“Hey,” Cutter jostled me slightly in the circle of his arms, “Thought you said you were going to let me take care of you.” He arched one brow and smiled at me, his teeth white in his neatly trimmed beard and I closed my eyes shoulders slumping.

“I’m sorry…”

His expression gentled and he touched a finger to my lips, “Don’t be, just let me give you what you need, okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed, once again.

I reached up, twining my arms around his neck and pulled the tie holding his ponytail careful to do it in such a way as to not pull against his scalp. He smiled at me through the curtain of his hair as I combed my fingers through it, parting it from in front of his face. It was much softer than it looked and felt good gliding through my fingers.

Cutter tugged gently on my tee and I let him take it. He whisked his own off from over his head and I took the time to really look at him, not just the chiseled, lean muscles and tan skin, but also at his tattoos. I trailed fingertips lightly down his ribs over the bright rendition of a pirate ship in full sail. He skirted to the side and laughed and it was one of the sexiest sounds I’d heard him make yet. His laughter lightened my mood just enough to keep the weight of it from pressing the air from my lungs completely.

I touched the scar where I was pretty sure he’d taken a bullet in front, just off to the side of the pirate ship and felt a pang of sorrow for him. I glanced up into his face, where he looked down at me, watching me, tranquil and impassive. He was letting me explore and I bet if I asked him, he would tell me the truth of it.

He must have seen the question in my eyes because he smiled with a hint of sadness at the memory and spoke it into air conditioned hush hanging between us.

“Got me just right, a gap in the body armor,” he murmured and pressed my hand to his back and the scar of an exit wound, much bigger out the back, “Damn near lost the kidney but the docs, they saved it somehow. I was lucky.”

“I was hit once too,” I murmured, “Body armor did its job. I was the lucky one, just bruised all to hell for a really long time. Hit so hard I thought it’d bruised my soul…” I smiled but it was a bitter, broken thing.

“Was in transit, wasn’t even in a declared hot zone. Had just finished training a unit of Iraqi men for their police. They didn’t want to listen to me, of course… They were more inclined to listen after that firefight. Only one I’ve ever been in. My friend, mentor, Andres… he didn’t make it. He took one to the face.” I bowed my head. I hadn’t told anyone but the councilors and the superiors who’d I’d had to debrief about the incident after the fact. Cutter pulled me into him and kissed me again, a finer, gentler thing filled with our mutual sorrow and regret.

I’d never been with someone who had been there, either. Who knew just what it was to go through something like that, to lose someone dear in the blink of an eye… The kiss deepened and Cutter’s hands traveled to my ass urging me to jump up, to wend my legs around his hips. I took the invitation. I loved how he’d so easily fucked me against the wall earlier. I was a real fan of down, dirty sex, when the situation called for it, but this time, I don’t know… this time called for something else.

He took me to the bed, and laid me down gently, tapping the outside of my thigh to indicate I needed to let him go. Which, duh, too much in the way of pants and boots to properly get it on this way. He surprised me though, kissing down my neck, down my body, leaving blooms of heat and desire in the wake of the seeds he planted with gentle touches of his lips. He straightened and put one thigh forward. My legs hung off the bed from the knee down and with his gaze firmly fixed on mine he lifted one and planted the sole of my boot against his thigh.

With a gentle smile curving his lips he dragged his eyes down my body leaving a heated blush across my skin wherever his gaze fell before he carefully worked the knots in my laces free, deliberately taking his time, easing them through the eyelets until the leather casing had loosened enough to easily slip my foot free.

He set the boot neatly at the foot of the bed and with a devilish little grin, stripped me of my sock and pressed thumbs to the center of my arch on the underside of my foot. I fell back flat against the cheap mattress and bedspread and groaned my appreciation. That felt
so
good, and the more he kneaded and rubbed the more I sank back into the bed and a relaxed state of bliss. Bastard! He sure had my number. He finished with the first foot and repeated the process with the second and I became putty in his hands. There was no denying it. Cutter had some smooth fucking moves, and I was down to let him try every last one of them on me.

“Help me out, Sweetheart,” he whispered and I smiled at him, he had his fingers hooked into the waistband of my black cargo pants, and had already made quick work of the belt and button fly. I arched my hips and he drew them off, down my legs, and the look in his eyes as they trailed over the skin revealed by the black cloth heated my blood to a pleasant simmer.

I lay in bra and panties and he ordered me, voice roughened by sex and need, “Scoot up, lay on your stomach.”

I did what he wanted and he unhooked my bra, I took my arms from the straps and he whisked it away as I settled back down onto my stomach.

“Don’t move,” he ordered and I had no intentions of it. Rather I lay, head turned to one side and closed my eyes. I had a feeling that the foot rub was just a preview of coming attractions and I was right. After a moment of him rooting through his saddle bags he came back to me. He stripped my panties down my legs and straddled the backs of my thighs, the hair on his legs prickling my skin. I smiled. He’d lost his jeans. I liked that, I liked that a lot.

I hummed in deep pleasure as his hands, coated in oil; caressed my back, lightly at first before he started really digging in, finding those nodes of knotted muscle and easing them free with gentle and consistent pressure. He chuckled as I absolutely melted underneath him, the tension easing out of my body degree by degree until I was all but boneless beneath him.

“What’d you think about what went on back at the club?” he asked softly.

“What, about the chick getting drilled in the ass?”

He laughed out loud, “I like how you just let it all hang out.”

“Do I look like Willy Wonka to you?” he laughed again and god it was sexy. I couldn’t help but smile and laugh a little too.

“Uh, that would be a no, why?”

“Because unlike that bitch I don’t sugar coat nothin’,” I said.

“Look at you all west coast gangsta.” I could hear the smile in his voice and his hands hadn’t quit their kneading so I knew I was on safe ground. God it was hot that he would play with me and that he would laugh at my crude jokes and didn’t seem to want me any less. Still saw me as a woman, as a lady…

“You going to answer the question?” he asked with a playful little slap to my ass, which made me arch my hips and ass off the bed.

“Not my scene, not without careful attention and a lot of lube,” I said quietly. My pussy was tingling with want and I was already wet. I could feel my nipples tighten, and grow sensitive against the rough cover of the bedspread beneath me. Truthfully, the thought of Cutter there turned me the fuck on. It turned me on even more when I felt his cock stir against my ass.

“Good to know, I’m going to leave that for another time, another day, right now I want you to turn over.”

God I love how his voice held that pleasant edge, like he were talking about something as mundane as the weather, even as it held that razor’s slice of command, so sharp, so stark and there it was hard not to cut yourself on it for real. I turned over and he got between my thighs. I arched ready to take him in but instead he grabbed me and dragged me to the bottom of the mattress again, almost to the point my ass was hanging off.

I put my toes against the carpet as he knelt between my knees, gazing up my body deliberately. His expression stoic, eyes liquid, dark and deep with lust and heavier things as he let my anticipation build to feverish heights.