Goes down easy: Roped into romance (9 page)

“Who said I’ve changed my mind?” he asked, tossing her the sponge and turning around.

She scrubbed the width of his shoulders, circled her way down his back, across his hips, up his arms. The pressure was perfect, the massage soothing, the sponge soapy soft and damn arousing.

“Why are you so hardheaded?”

“I can get harder.”

“Get as hard as you like.” She shoved the sponge between his legs, and he jumped. “I think Della did see something. And you not wanting to talk about it is proof.”

He turned around before she did any permanent anatomical damage. “Proof that I don’t want to talk about it. That’s all.”

“Why won’t you tell me?” She asked the question with such petulance, he expected to see her stomp her feet.

“There’s nothing to tell.” Though he wondered what would happen if he did tell her, what she would do if he counted up the number of men he’d killed and laid it out—the truth, in stark black and white.

“Is it because you don’t trust me?”

“No,” he said, steeling himself against her pleas.

“You do or you don’t?”

“Doesn’t matter.” He shook water from his face. “That’s not the reason.”

Her chin went up. “Then just tell me the truth.”

He felt a big, fat Jack Nicholson moment coming on and had to stop himself from blurting out, “You can’t handle the truth.”

Instead, he said, “I’m not going to tell you because it’s none of your business.”

That shut her up. Or so he thought, until she said, “She did see something, didn’t she?”

“Perry, do me a favor.” He jerked the sponge from her hand, tossed it to the floor of the tub behind him. “Let it go. Just let it go.”

He didn’t want her to know any more than he’d told her about the dysfunction that had plagued his biological family. He didn’t want her to drag out details of the covert missions that had taken him to Chechnya and to the Sudan.

And he sure as hell didn’t want her to find out that the case before Eckhardt’s had nearly killed him. That the family who’d hired him to find their daughter had ended up letting him go. That nothing he’d done had brought him close to discovering the six-year-old’s fate. That even now, in his downtime, he continued to turn over the same clues again and again and again, thinking of that little girl, her blond curls bouncing, her eyes so bright and blue. Thinking, too, about the predator that might have her, about her parents imagining the worst.
Thinking, most of all, about his inability to give them the closure they sought.

Moisture threatened to well in his eyes. His throat begin to ache like raw meat. He rinsed his face, doused the memories, shook away the ugliness along with the water, before looking down.

Perry considered his demand for several long seconds, weighing her nosiness against his nakedness, her voice trembling a bit when she finally said, “Make me.”

It was exactly what he needed. The light in her eyes. The breathlessness in her words. The invitation to lose himself in her body.

“My pleasure,” was his only response, before he bent to kiss her.

He laced their fingers together, held their hands against the wall shoulder high, and refused to let her move. He was done with talking, done with plotting and planning and all this digging around in his psyche, where he didn’t let anyone else dig.

She opened her mouth willingly, met his tongue as if she’d been waiting all this time for him to ask. No, not to ask. To take. To do so with her permission, for her enjoyment. Much the way she’d taken him.

It was a kiss of heavy heartbeats and labored breathing. A kiss of high expectations, rampant need and joy. His cock jutted boldly from his body, and he smelled the rising musk of her desire.

He wanted to taste her, to drink her in; he dropped to his knees and held her hips while he buried his face in her belly. Her skin was spicy and sweet and soft, and he nipped at the flesh around her navel.

She threaded her fingers into his hair and groaned, spread her legs to give him access. He took it all, brushing aside her curls and kissing her plump lips.

She was soft and she was swollen, and he parted her with his thumbs to lick through her folds, drawing the hard knot of her clit into his mouth and holding her while she shuddered.

She didn’t shudder long. Before she was even finished, he was back on his feet. But when he got there, he wasn’t sure what to make of the longing in her expression. He couldn’t tell what she wanted. He didn’t know what to do.

“Please,” she whispered. “I want—”

“What? Anything.”

“I know it’s silly.”

“It’s not.”

“I’m nervous.”

“Don’t be.”

“It’s not that I don’t like—”

“Tell me. Show me.”

“I don’t want—”

“I do. You. Now.”

He could hardly speak for how much he wanted her. And in the next moment she blew him away by turning around, bending over, and bracing one foot on the edge of the tub.

He reached for the condom he’d left on the counter and moved in, grabbed her by the hips, dipped his knees and guided his sheathed cock to her entrance. She was ready, and she pushed against him, urging him to meet her halfway.

Water beat against his spine, swirled around his feet. Steam rose to the ceiling. The smells of sex and spices followed. He noticed everything. Noticed all that he could.

He had to. If he didn’t get his mind off the reality of his throbbing cock, he was going to come and be of no use to her at all.

He played with her clit, pressing where she showed him to press, rubbing when her fingers asked. And all the while he thrust. Slow strokes. Deadly strokes. Long, even strokes meant to kill a man.

She was so tight and so wet, and he wasn’t talking about the water from the shower. He was talking about the way she wanted him, how her body told the truth, and then he couldn’t even remember why he was trying to wait.

He groaned. She cried out, shaking and shivering, reaching between her legs to where their bodies were joined and stroking him in turn. The pleasure was almost more than he could bear.

But he didn’t want to come this way. He wanted to make this personal. He wanted to leave his mark. He pulled free from her body, waited for her to stand and turned her, backing her into the slick tile wall and hooking her thighs with his hands.

He lifted her, spread her, drove up and into her again. She gasped, gripped his shoulders, held on while he thrust. He kissed her neck, sucked her skin between his lips and nipped, drinking the water that sluiced over her, finally finding her mouth.

He kissed her, his tongue sliding over hers, their
breath mingling as they wheezed and huffed. Her fingers bruised his shoulders. His bruised her thighs. But still he held her, thrusting, pumping, the base of his spine burning with his need to come.

And then it happened. Perry pulled her mouth from his and cried out, “Jack! Oh, Jack. I’m coming apart.” He let go, unloading, filling her with all the frustration and pent-up need and sense of loss she demanded.

He gave her his all; he ached with it, fearing that it was too late to stop from giving her his heart.

T
HEY WRAPPED UP IN
matching towels and returned to the bedroom, both beyond exhausted and showing it. Perry could barely walk. For that matter, she was having trouble standing up straight. And all this time she’d thought she was in such good shape.

Then again, sex seemed to be a great equalizer in the fitness department. Jack had collapsed on the bed, his legs spread, his towel parting to show a whole lot of muscled thigh and a teasing hint of the dark hair at his groin.

She couldn’t resist, smiling to herself and feeling strangely, wonderfully bold as she reached up and pulled the edges apart, dropping the towel to the bed, baring his scarred body, drinking her fill.

Having never been a voyeur, it surprised her how much she liked looking at him, just looking—at the hair in his armpits, the flat discs of his nipples, the bulge of his triceps, the ripple of his abs, his penis at rest on the thatch of thick hair that also cushioned his balls.

Surprising herself further, she whipped off her towel, liking the way he looked at her, too—even if she was too sore to do anything about it. Not to mention she had to get to work.

He stayed still for several seconds before pushing up onto his elbows and staring at her. Taking her in. Up and down. Over and over until she could no longer breathe.

“It’s not going to work, you know,” he said, “seducing me into telling you all my deep dark secrets.”

“Who said anything about secrets or seducing?” Brow arched, she dropped her gaze lower, to his penis, lying limp between his spread thighs. “Besides, it was working fine five minutes ago.”

“Very funny,” he grumbled. “You’re not taking into account that I’m out of shape.”

“Your shape is just fine.”

This time he growled. “Out of practice, then, okay? Out of practice.”

Hmm. Interesting. Especially the part where he sounded less than pleased for telling her.

She crossed the room and pulled a bra and panty set from her bureau drawer, making an admission she should have already shared. “I’m out of practice, too.”

He snorted. “Right.”

What was that supposed to mean? “Seriously. It’s been, uh…” Gah, did she really want him to know? “Uh, years.”

He waited a moment, narrowed his eyes as he watched her dress. “How many?”

“You tell me, I’ll tell you.”

A brow went up. “Isn’t this the conversation we were supposed to have before?”

Men. Always so…manlike. “Better late than never, I always say.”

He snickered at that. “Something about a horse and closing a barn door is bothering me here.”

Infuriating man. Still, if they were going to take this…this…what they’d done further, she wanted him to know. “All right. It’s been six years.”

“Hmm. Well. It’s been…a while for me.”

“A while?” she asked, snapping the elastic of her panties into place.

“Yeah, you know. Here and there.” He gave a shrug that didn’t come across as quite as careless as she thought he’d intended. “Nothing important. Always protected.”

Right now, she didn’t have time to process all that his admission—or his attitude—implied. “I suppose we’re doubly safe, then.”

“You’re on the pill?”

She sighed, reached back to hook her bra. “Does it make me seem pathetic that I am? I mean, celibacy’s as effective as birth control gets. Why the overkill, you know?”

Jack reached up, punched a pillow beneath his head, cleared his throat before saying, “Because celibacy doesn’t take chemistry into account.”

Was that all this was? Physical chemistry? Was that really what he thought? “So why nothing long-term for you? Have you been in Tibet?”

He frowned. “Tibet?”

“At a monastery. Or at the South Pole studying penguins and their bad habits?”

One corner of his mouth lifted. “That was bad.”

“Really?” she asked, grabbing her towel and squeezing what water she could from her hair. “I thought it amazingly clever.”

He shuddered. “Do you have any heat in this place? I’m freezing my balls off here.”

She tossed him the duffel bag she’d brought into the room before she’d climbed into the shower. “Guess you didn’t get used to the conditions while you were away, Tibet and the South Pole both being so cold and all.”

He sat up, covered his lap with the blanket before digging for clean clothes. “I haven’t been out of the country since my discharge.”

Facts. Good. They were getting somewhere. “When was that?”

“Eight years ago.”

She canted her head and considered him. “How old are you?”

“Then, I was thirty.”

“I’m thirty now.”

“Good. That means you’re old enough.”

Uh-oh. “For what?”

He paused, paused, and paused another few seconds, then said, “To not think that showering together means anything more than conserving water. Or that sharing a bed is about more than sleeping.”

“Actually,” she began, working for flippant, feeling
the heat of embarrassment rise, “I’ve been waiting for you to suggest we start shopping for rings. I’m free today if you are.”

Jack sighed. “Think about it. It’s been a while for both of us, and we met under pretty strange circumstances.”

Fine. Whatever. God, she couldn’t breathe. And why was her chest aching? “Oh, hey, don’t worry your pretty head about it. Strange circumstances always have me horny and getting naked in the shower.”

“Don’t do this, Perry.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Make this into something it’s not.”

“Then tell me, Jack. What is it?”

“It’s sex, Perry. That’s all.”

She wasn’t going to let him hurt her. She wasn’t. She wasn’t. This wasn’t a romance. It wasn’t too late to back out.

She was such a liar. Such a liar. Still…“C’mon, Jack. Don’t you think I know that without you giving me some shit about conserving water? Like you said, I’m old enough to know what I’m doing.”

She was also old enough to march into her walk-in closet and close the door behind her without once looking back. And that’s exactly what she did.

L
YING WITH ONE
arm beneath his head, the other draped across his bare stomach, Book Franklin stared up at Della Brazille’s bedroom ceiling. He couldn’t see much of anything as dark as it was, the only light in the room peeking through a gap in the heavy blue drapes.

The lack of visibility wasn’t a big deal. He could only think of one thing—one woman—he wanted to see, and since Della was at his side sleeping, that was good enough.

It wasn’t as if, since seeing them last, he’d forgotten anything about the tiny dimple in the hollow of her throat or the patch of freckles on her shoulder or the knot above her ankle from a poorly set break. And the way she’d looked up at him, the tears she’d cried as they’d made love, sure as hell hadn’t slipped his mind.

Thinking of everything he’d learned about her during the night had more than his heart aching. The fact that someone wanted to hurt her weighed large on his mind, making sleep impossible. It was time to get up anyway, or would be if he could bring himself to leave her side.

He couldn’t. All he could think about was the reality that if she’d been standing three feet closer to the door when that brick had come sailing through, he wouldn’t be in bed with her now.

He was still having a hard time believing that after all this time she’d been the one to make the first move. He’d never talked to her about his feelings, figuring there wasn’t any need, that more than likely she knew as much about them as he did.

The last two years had been trying, not knowing if she felt the same, if they would continue to see one another only as cop and psychic.

Until last night, he hadn’t realized how very much he wanted them to share more than a professional relationship. How waking up to her every morning was about the most perfect life he could imagine. He just couldn’t figure how making it happen was possible.

Call him old-fashioned and a chauvinist, but he hated the idea of subjecting the woman he loved to his schedule and his life. The hours were brutal, the situations in which he often found himself even more so.

Sure, he could be driving to an office job and get hit by a tractor trailer, but the odds of not coming home in one piece were a whole lot higher as a member of the NOPD than if he’d belonged to an organization of CPAs.

Then again, maybe he was being a prick about it. He knew plenty of guys who made it happen. He just didn’t see himself being one of them. Not after having his own father gunned down in the line of duty.

Book had been fifteen when it had happened. His
mother had never recovered, and he’d been thrust like a big fat cliché into a role he wasn’t ready for. How many fifteen-year-olds, whose previous focus had been how to get that baseball scholarship, would be?

The man of the house. What a joke. He’d been the survivor of the house. The level head. The only source of sanity or common sense. It had been a hell of a jump from being a kid intent on playing ball to bearing the weight of the Franklin world on his shoulders.

He didn’t want to put Della through anything like that. Or worse, to imagine her suffering the same fate as his mother.

He needed to go see her. It had been way too long since he’d visited her in the nursing home where she’d been living for the past two years. It was hard to see her so frail, so forgetful, most times not even recognizing him.

“Yes. You do,” Della whispered at his side.

Damn uncanny woman. “I do what?”

“You need to check in with your mother.” That was all she said as she scooted closer, cuddled up to his side, and placed her hand over his. “She might not know you now, but you don’t want her to worry about the boy she remembers.”

He didn’t think he’d ever been so grateful for the dark as he was now, what with the way his face was burning. “How do you do that?”

“I try not to. At least, when it’s a situation where my insight hasn’t been sought out.” She laced her fingers through his. “You were so still and so quiet. I knew you weren’t sleeping, and then I picked up a sense of
conflict between you and your mother. That mostly she doesn’t know you any longer, and that keeps you away.”

“It’s complicated,” he said, then snorted. Complicated wasn’t a strong enough word. “Aren’t most relationships between parents and kids?”

“I don’t think so. Though I imagine you see more than your fair share.”

He tightened his grip on her fingers, as if it would keep her close. “Did you ever want kids of your own?”

On the pillow beside him, she shook her head. “I knew a long time ago I wasn’t motherhood material.”

“Having Perry with you didn’t change your mind?”

Della’s laughter was as soft as her skin. “Oh, no. I was a horrible parent. Instead of trusting my instincts, I studied how-to guides and followed each and every instruction. Try doing that when every third thing out there contradicts the first two.”

“Huh. Seems strange, considering that you can see so much about others.”

“It’s like the cobbler’s own shoes always being in need of repair.” The bedcovers rustled as she shifted to lay her head on his shoulder. “Besides, who purposefully seeks out their own faults?”

“Most of us don’t need to. We face them on a daily basis.”

She was quiet after that, letting several long seconds tick by lost in thought. He wondered if he’d said something wrong. Or if she’d started counting all of his shortcomings and had already lost track.

So when she finally spoke, she caught him off
guard. And what she said set his heart to pumping. “It wasn’t your fault that your father was killed. And putting in the hours you do won’t bring him back.”

He breathed in, waited, breathed out, paused. And then he swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat. “I put in the hours I do because of the scum on the streets. The more I can scrape up, the fewer bricks and broken windows and kidnapped computer gurus to deal with.”

Della sat up, moving behind him to massage his shoulders. He couldn’t relax, couldn’t find the peace of mind to enjoy the soothing touch of her fingers.

He got to his feet before she could “sense” anything else about him, and hunted on the floor for his clothes. The phone rang when he was zipping his pants. Della turned on the bedside lamp and answered.

The conversation was short, and obviously with her niece. He picked up just enough from Della’s side to figure out Perry wanted them to meet her somewhere. As long as Della was up to it, he’d welcome the distraction.

He preferred working in the present, focusing on the here and now. The past was long gone; it couldn’t be changed—even though he wished every day that it could.

T
HAT KISS
to the neck had been a mistake. It was a kiss she had known would never be enough. It was a kiss that should never have happened.

Drake wanted more. Always more. He couldn’t get his fill of her. And getting what she wanted of him had begun to be a problem more than a joy
.

Big Bruiser Babin didn’t like the idea of his wife making her way home alone. He liked even less her doing so in the company of another man.

Drake had seen her safely away from the club that first night. He’d walked her through the courtyard and up to her own back door.

Big Bruiser had been in the kitchen. He’d seen them walk up. He’d met them on the stoop. He’d been polite to Drake. He’d been a sweet potato dumpling to her
.

And then he’d told her he’d be stopping by the Golden Key every night when she sang to take her home himself. He hadn’t listened to her objections—he was too busy to have to play nursemaid to her—he’d simply put his foot down
.

He’d never cottoned to the idea of leaving her there unchaperoned, but he knew what it meant to her to sing. Being the chief of police allowed Big Bruiser Babin the freedom to do just about anything he wanted to do
.

It also meant he never worried about his own coming to harm. He considered himself untouchable, higher than the law he upheld, immune to the misfortune that befell the men whose rehabilitation rested on his broad shoulders
.

That particularly arrogant trait had first brought him to Sugar’s notice. But it had soon caused her admiration to drift, her affections to drift as well
.

After all, when she’d said, “I do,” to Big Bruiser, she hadn’t expected to find herself wed to a man
already married to the police department for the city of New Orleans
.

D
ELLA AGREED TO
J
ACK’S
request and arranged to meet him later that morning at the warehouse Eckton Computing had once leased. Perry had come along, leaving Sugar Blues in Kachina’s hands, and now sat with Jack in his SUV, the heater running on high while they waited for Book and Della.

The cold had settled in to stay, and Jack had left his bomber jacket at her place. Watching him shiver in his sweatshirt tugged at her heart. He’d obviously packed light before leaving Texas, basing his needs on the unseasonable heat wave rather than the cold snap that had blown in as predicted.

Then again, he’d probably grabbed what was closest and hopefully clean. He didn’t seem concerned with much beyond simplicity. Except when it came to his equipment. Both his laptop and his SUV were tricked out with gadgets she’d never imagined existed.

To break the drive’s uncomfortable silence, she’d asked him about all she could see. He’d told her about Becca, his assistant, and how his Yukon was his office on wheels. But he hadn’t been particularly chatty. And soon she let him be, deciding he’d retreated into his man cave and was feeling the need to brood.

Parked in front of the empty warehouse, one of many in a long, unattended row, they soaked up the heat in a silence broken only by the sports radio station he’d tuned into. It was a distraction more than anything, keeping them from having to talk. Keeping
him from having to admit she sat less than three feet away.

Obviously, she’d hit a hot button…or two or three or four…while ferreting out his scars. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the damage inflicted hadn’t all been to his body.

She hated this new tension that had sprung up between them. Tension was supposed to happen before sex, not afterward, making the air when they were together even harder to breathe. Sharing the front seat of his vehicle shouldn’t be as unsettling as waiting for the results of medical tests.

And didn’t that serve her right for thinking his invitation to sit in his lap was about more than sitting in his lap? Why she’d thought Jack would be different, that he’d finally be the one to think about sex with the head on his shoulders, still escaped her.

Men were all the same. They’d take their sports any way they could get them. On the field, the bed, the radio, grrr. She reached over, punched the buttons until she found a song that didn’t make her think about drowning her sorrows in either a bottle of beer or the river.

She turned her head, stared out the window where the water of the Mississippi was as flat and gray as the sky above. And it wasn’t until the one song had finished and the next began that she realized Jack was singing.

Straining to listen, she frowned, then closed her
eyes to focus. He didn’t miss a beat. Not the lyrics. Not so much as a single note.

His voice was gruff, deep, a rock star’s voice without the distortion of a mixer or a mike. It was a sexy sound, one that had her squirming in her seat, one that turned up the tension and the heat.

“You can sing,” she finally said, glancing over.

“I can also play bass,” he said, never looking her way.

“You didn’t tell me.”

He shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”

“I never had reason to.” She waited, and when he said nothing more, she added, “Until now.”

His mouth twitched, and he gave her a smile. “Does that mean you’re asking?”

She couldn’t believe the relief that came with that smile. “Yes. I’m asking.”

“What exactly do you want to know?”

Why everything with you is a battle, for one thing
. “When did you learn? How did you learn?”

“The bass I picked up listening to John Paul Jones, then I played it in band in high school.”

She had no idea who John Paul Jones was and didn’t care enough to ask. “What about the singing? Did you sing in school, too?”

He didn’t say anything for so long that she didn’t think he’d heard her, and she started to ask the question again. His shifting in his seat stopped her.

“No.” He flexed the fingers he’d draped over the steering wheel. “I sang with a band for a while after getting out of the service.”

The way he said it, “getting out”, turned the expression into a statement. One that reminded her of Della’s dismay at his suffering.

“A band I’d know?” she asked, when she didn’t care about that either. What she wanted to know was what had gone on during his years of enlistment. If what Della had seen had happened then, or happened earlier.

“I doubt it. We played a lot of small clubs across the Southwest. Stayed on the west coast for several months.”

“Did you record?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Just gave a lot of drunks music to pass out to.”

Was that really what he thought? “You have a great voice. I’m sure you had fans.”

“If we did, no one told me.”

Or maybe you couldn’t see them because that big chip on your shoulder was in the way.
“Do you still play together? You never did tell me the name of the band.”

“No. Our drummer took off on a trip with Mr. Ellis Dee and never came back.” He reached down for the controls to his seat and moved all the way back, stretching his legs. “They called the band Diamond Jack.”

“I’m sorry. For your friend.”

He rolled his shoulders; she took it as a shrug of indifference. “We played together, traveled together. We weren’t die-hard friends.” And then he gave a soft chuckle.