Haynes, K. R. - The Light in Her Eyes [In Her Eyes] (Siren Publishing Classic) (21 page)

Seeing his eyelids flicker, Chloe leaned back
so she wasn’t crowding him.
His bright, sky-blue gaze latched onto hers.
Her breathing hitched when he reached up to trace a fingertip over her lips. This was
the man behind the voice she craved to hear, the man behind the most tender words she had ever heard in her life.

He was the only man to own her heart and capture her very soul. He had made a claim to own them both a long time ago.

Jon Randall would forever have her heart.

He would forever own her.

Her love for him might be an unspoken one, but it was a true one.

In the short time they’d reconnected with each other, Randall had become her whole life.

Gazing down at him now, Chloe knew Randall could see all this and more in her eyes. He would see her crippling fear and the uncertainty of what the future had in store for them. But most importantly, the man who held both her heart and soul in his hands would see the unsaid love held deep within her for him and him alone. Randall would always be her everything. He owned every part of her, just like she owned every part of him.

Pushing back on the sting of new tears threatening to fall, her voice wavered from the emotion rolling through her as she tried to apologise to him. “I’m so sorry, Jon. I never…”

He laid a finger against her lips, quelling the rest of her words. Words that would express her deep sorrow for shutting him out, instead of letting him embrace her fears with her. But none of them mattered now. None of her words mattered. All that mattered, all that was important, was that he was there for her now. That was what mattered most to her.

The two of them were in this together for the long haul, no matter how ugly things got. They both had to learn to lean on each other when times were tough. It was a lesson, and a hard one at that, that Chloe had learnt tonight.

Pressing a kiss to her forehead, he kept his voice low and even as he spoke to her, “I know what you want to say, precious. I can see it in your eyes. I’m sorry, too, lover. I wasn’t the man or the Dom you needed this afternoon and for that I apologise.”

“Jon…”

“Shh, no more words tonight. Enough has been said already today.” Rising from the sofa, Randall pulled her up close to him and dropped a kiss to the top of her head. “Come, precious. Let’s go to bed. I promise in the morning we can talk more, but right now all I want to do is hold you while we sleep.”

Nodding her head, Chloe allowed Jon to usher her down the hall to their bedroom. Standing near the bed, he reached up and unbuttoned her shirt then let it flutter to the floor. Moving around her, he pulled the covers back off the bed then gestured with his hand for her to get in. As promised, no more words were to be spoken tonight, and he was living up to that promise he made to her. Tucking her in, Randall leaned down, touching her lips tenderly with his. Her heart clenched from the love she felt from his kiss alone.

He pulled away from his kiss moments later, to strip.

Her eyes were glued to him, eagerly taking him in as he stripped the denim jeans from his body. Strolling naked around to the other side of the bed, her eyes watched as his cock stirred to life. Randall ignored her eyes on him and slipped effortlessly underneath the covers to lie down beside her. Curling her naked body up against his, Chloe rested her head on his chest. Hearing the soothing beat of his heart was enough to lull her to sleep.

Randall rested a hand on her hip in a possessive hold, his other arm draped around her shoulders, holding her closer to him. Chloe loved sleeping in his arms like this at night. Here in his arms she was safe and loved. She found herself protected from everything including the one targeting her.

Life felt right when in his arms. More than right. It was perfect.

Chapter
Thirty-One

Three days later, Randall found himself back at the station. Mick was covering him on the home front. Going by the conversation he had just had with his old mate, Chloe was giving him all kinds of hell. His sassy little sub was in a mood and she wasn’t giving Mick an easy ride, that was for sure. They had half expected it, though perhaps not to the degree she was giving Mick right now.

The last couple days Randall had spent with Chloe, before starting his next block of shifts down at the station. She had been the perfect little sub. They had talked a lot. Chloe had even opened up about her fears of the stalker getting his hands on her, possibly even raping and torturing her. Upon hearing her fears, Randall had to push back his own rage against the bastard targeting her.

When she uttered those thoughts to him though, Randall found himself at a loss as to how to help Chloe move past them. He wasn’t sure how to ease her mind of her fears. Her fears were valid after all. He wasn’t about to dismiss them. However, he didn’t want Chloe focusing all her thoughts on what might or might not happen if the bastard acted on his threats. So Randall made damn sure Chloe never left his side. Wherever she went, he did, too. Not one minute was she left alone with her own thoughts.

There were, however, pluses in spending every waking moment with each other. The long moments spent curled up on the sofa together, watching one chick flick after another, were the sweetest torture ever. Action movies with lots of fistfights or even some blood and guts would have been preferable. Nevertheless, Randall had given permission for Chloe to choose the movies they watched. Over those last couple of days, he swore they had watched every damn movie Hugh Grant starred in.

Watching sappy romantic shit together seemed to do the trick in easing the tension within Chloe enough for her to finally relax. Plus it had its perks in having her draped all over him, especially when he ordered her to lie naked across his lap. He’d spent hours skimming his fingertips lightly over her naked flesh. There was nothing better than feeling Chloe shudder slightly from his feather-like touch. Or squeezing her taut little nipples with his fingertips and hearing the soft, delicate moans escaping past her lips.

They had made love so many times during his time off, he was amazed she wasn’t sore or sick to death of him coming to her. Now, Randall couldn’t wait to see Chloe again. Even if it was to simply talk to her while he held her in his arms. Hell, he’d be quite content to simply to lose himself in that sweet, fresh scent of hers. Feel her bare skin rubbing up against his.

Or to hear her soft little moans and whimpers when she begged him for release. His lips curved at the thought of making them both hold off their impending orgasm until it was no longer humanly possible next time he took her. The wave after wave of euphoria would be unbelievable, he’d bet.

Everything Randall had commanded of Chloe over the last few days, she had obeyed with barely a grumble. Now, though, it appeared she had her rebel boots on and was raising all kinds of hell on the home front. Maybe she just missed him and hated having a babysitter do his job. Who knew with his Chloe? Hell, it could even be that time of the month again. Chloe tended to be hell on wheels during that time. Randall shuddered at that thought. Poor Mick. “Sorry, buddy.”

He had to laugh though when his old mate muttered something about Chloe hiding the damn bloody cookies from him. You never came between his woman and her cookies. Hell, Randall had to make sure there was a spare packet hidden from her. God forbid they ever run out one day because she ate them all. There was no way he would tell Mick where he could find the spare packet, because if Chloe ever found out where he kept his secret stash there would be nothing left of it. And that certainly wasn’t happening. A man needed his own secret sweet stash for himself and to provide for the needs of his woman.

The brief conversation Randall had had with Chloe over the phone had been a pretty one-sided affair. She had seemed distracted. When he broached the subject with her, she had told him she was “fine.” In other words, she wasn’t, and him being stuck down at the station wasn’t helping matters either. As far as he knew she hadn’t received any more messages. However, Chloe had been having nightmares recently. Vivid nightmares of the stalker keeping her locked up and naked in a tiny room with dirt floors.

One night she’d woken him up from screaming at the top of her lungs in her sleep. He had had to shake her awake to stop her screaming her throat raw. He didn’t give a fuck if she woke the neighbourhood up with her screaming.

It had taken hours to settle her back down. Chloe refused to elaborate on what had happened in the nightmare, more afraid of it becoming a reality if she were to voice the context of the nightmare out loud to him. The reality of it, though, was that she handed the sick fuck stalking her more control over her life by letting him invade her dreams. However, Randall had chosen not to advise Chloe of this. She was stressed enough as it was without him adding his, more than likely unwanted, opinion on top of the shit she’d been dealin
g with lately. So he listened to what little information she did disclose about the nightmare.

It worried him to no end that Chloe even had these dreams and thoughts to start with. His only hope was to make sure they never came true, that this bastard never laid a finger on her. So help him god, if the stupid fuck was dumb enough to try…Well, the bastard would be wishing he hadn’t by the time Randall was finished with him.

The main reason, though, Mick had called him wasn’t to tell on Chloe. It was to advise him the PI had been arranged. At the moment the PI was heading down to the station for a private sneaky peek at the evidence gathered so far from Chloe’s place. Randall was to meet the man privately investigating Chloe’s case for them at the side entrance to the station.

Slipping out the side entrance door, Randall waited in the shadows of the late afternoon sun for the dude to show up. A few minutes later an unmarked dark Sedan pulled up a few metres from where he stood and a man exited the vehicle. He wore plain clothing. His longish jet-black hair was pulled back off his unshaven face. Tinted sunglasses shielded his eyes from view and gave his face a harsher appearance.
Randall got the impression he was staring at another Dom, and a hard-core one if the man’s appearance was anything to go by.

Waiting until the other man stood a mere foot away from where he stood, Randall stuck out his hand to him. “Jake Jackson?”

“Yes,” the PI answered shaking Randall’s hand, “and you must be Randall. Mick said you would be waiting for me and he wasn’t wrong. Please lead the way.” Opening the side door, Randall ushered the PI inside and down the long corridor to the evidence room. Punching in the code to the security panel at the closed door, the door clicked open and they both stepped inside. Randall directed the PI over to the steel viewing bench where he had the evidence laid out for him to view.

“As you can see we don’t have much. Other than a dozen or so voice messages and the dead rose with the letter there’s not a hell of a lot here. We’ve run tests on the letter and the dead rose for prints, fibres and any other fluids that may have been on them.”

“Any word from the lab yet?” Jake asked him. Randall nodded his head. “So what were the results then?”

“No prints or fibres. The other tests came back inconclusive.” To a degree that was near enough to the truth. Randall wasn’t about to tell the PI that a minuscule amount of semen had been found on the letter. There hadn’t been enough semen to get a precise DNA match, but what they did have could be traced back to the fucker once caught though. The information regarding the bodily fluid found was on a need-to-know basis. Not even Mick knew about that little discovery. Chloe definitely didn’t know about the semen either. She was freaked out enough as it was without knowing that some freak had ejaculated on the letter he left for her to find.

“Here are the first few voice messages Chloe received from the fucker.” Pressing the play button on the answering machine they both listened to the sinister male voice issuing his first lot of threats to Chloe.

“My understanding is that you have all her phones tapped now?” Jake asked
when the last message finished playing.

“Yes, both her mobile and home phones are tapped. There haven’t been any messages since we tapped them though.”

“Do you have the latest messages left for her here as well?” Jake asked Randall, while viewing the dead rose and letter in the evidence bags.

“Yes.”

Picking up and placing the other small tape into the answering machine, Randall pressed play and they listened to the more recent messages. Every time he had to listen to them, Randall always had the same reaction. An undeniable urge to hunt and kill the one threatening Chloe, to make sure the dumb fuck never threatened anyone else again, including his woman!

“Right, well, Mick’s given me Chloe’s addresses for both work and home. Is there anything else I should know before I head out?”

“Only that she’s currently staying at my place, but the day after tomorrow Chloe will be staying with her friend Mary J for the weekend.”