Irresistible Force (22 page)

And then he made love to her with his tongue.

She held on to him for dear life, fingers digging into the muscles of his shoulders for support because her knees had gone weak. He cupped her butt in both hands, bracing and holding her in place for his tongue fucking. The term had always sounded, well, dirty to her before. But with James it was the most delicious torture. When she flew apart, little cries of ecstasy breaking from her, he held on, loving her with his tongue and teeth until she collapsed against him.

He gathered her to him, kissed her navel and pressed his face into her lower abdomen. “Enough?”

Shay caught her breath, her eyes flying open in outrage. He couldn’t be serious. “More.”

He lifted his head, lips glistening with the essence of her. “Then come here and I’ll give you more.” He pulled her down onto the bed.

Lying spread on her bed with her legs hooked over James’s shoulders, Shay thought her bliss couldn’t be any greater. He was moving inside her, his chest arched high and away from her as he flexed his hips to plunge deeper with each stroke. He worked her slowly, deliberately, pushing her up but not over the edge. With each stroke he gave his hips a little wiggle that made her gasp with pulse-pounding delight.

“Please. Just …
Ooooh.
James!”

James gritted his teeth. He’d been holding himself a little apart, prepared this entire time for her to suddenly change her mind. She’d been through so much. Suffered too much. He didn’t want her to think he was another user, out for what he could get from a woman. He had been prepared right up to the very second her cries of fulfillment filled his head to pull back, if that’s what she suddenly needed.

Now he didn’t have to. The pent-up frustration of balancing on that knife’s edge, for her sake, was released. Her cries turned him inside out and upside down. And stoked his lust to a level he’d never known. And then he lost control, moving high, hard and fast to her sweet little cries of pleasure.

Her body still quivering with little aftershocks of pleasure, Shay lay staring at him through her lashes for a long time before she spoke. “Where did all that come from?”

A tiny smile tugged his mouth as he reached out to brush strands of her hair from her cheek. His eyes still radiated the heat they’d generated. “I don’t know. I just went for it. Too much?”

“I never— No. Just … wow.”

*   *   *

A little after six
A.M.
Bogart pushed through the mostly closed bedroom door and padded over to James’s side of the bed. He didn’t bark but he did move in until his nose was within inches of James’s face. The perfume of warm doggy breath woke him.

Golden eyes stared intently into his.

“Right.” He tossed off the covers and reached for his jeans.

“Where are you going?”

He looked back over his shoulder. Shay was looking at him with a big grin on her face. That was a new and welcome sight.

He grinned back. “Taking Bogart for a walk.”

She rolled over, dragging the covers with her. “I’ll do it.”

“It’s chilly. I won’t be long.”

She gave him the porcupine look. “You forget. For a whole month he was my dog. I miss taking care of him. Please?”

James hesitated. He didn’t want to spoil what would be a normal moment between them. An easy couples moment. “Okay, but don’t go far.”

He looked at Bogart, who was giving him that lolling-tongue doggy grin. “Do you see what you’ve done? I even have to share my girl with you.”

Bogart barked brightly and padded over to Shay’s side of the bed.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Shay sat behind the wheel of her car, trying to get up the courage to drive into work. It was Monday morning. James had already left to report for retraining, but the look on his face as he kissed her good-bye was anything but happy.

“Get a restraining order against Coates. Today.”

Balloons?
Harmless.

After she’d walked Bogart early Saturday morning, James had walked in on her popping the balloons in the kitchen. The sexy sleepy-eyed man of early morning vanished. Pissed-off Officer Cannon was a force to be reckoned with.

Shay thought about lying. But there was a note tied to the bouquet of balloons she found on her doorstep that read “First Anniversary. Think of me.” No name. No need.

James looked at the note a long time before saying in a flat voice that this was the last time he was going to hear Eric Coates’s name without doing something about it.

Then he had gotten dressed and taken care of her car problem.

Someone had yanked out her spark plug wires. The Raleigh police officer who’d volunteered to help them out after he heard about James’s and Bogart’s rescue of the baby on Friday night spotted the problem immediately. The officer said vandalism was not unusual for a car left in an unmonitored car park. The two officers got her towed and then her car fixed in a matter of hours. Free. Professional courtesy, James told her. She suspected he had paid without letting her know.

Shay smiled to herself as she started her engine. She’d always shouldered her own world. Trust hadn’t been part of her vocabulary. She didn’t know what to do with gratitude, either. Thanks to James, the new emotions coming to life inside her were far more than thankfulness. Dangerous, because she didn’t know what to do with that new feeling of
more
. James was more than she ever expected in her life, better, kinder, a good man. But even a good man could only take so much. Their relationship was barely a week old. Already, he knew more about her than anyone else in her life. They needed time.

That’s why she hadn’t told him about the obscene phone call. She couldn’t afford to dump everything on him, even if her heart wanted to. If it didn’t work out, her world would shatter. To have him for now, that was more than enough. Right now, enough felt damn good.

She pulled out of her apartment complex and turned toward downtown and work. Three days ago she had been ready to grab what little she owned and run. Now she was going in to face down her fears. That was because of James. She felt her karma changing over the weekend. It wasn’t just the terrific sex. It had to do with every other moment.

There was the spur-of-the-moment Saturday afternoon picnic drowned out by a sudden shower that had left them scrambling for cover with soggy fast-food fried chicken, and an eat-everything-in-sight dog. Who knew Bogart would gobble up a carton of wet coleslaw? And sofa pillows! Fair enough, she’d offered them to him as a substitute for his bed, which she’d tossed out in a fit of self-pity after losing him. What he did with them was his business. And her mess to clean up.

Shay felt her mouth tugging upward as happy images of the weekend cascaded through her thoughts. No frown could last long when confronted with the memory of James with a skimpy towel wrapped around his hips as he made pancakes Sunday morning. Not wonderful pancakes. But who cared when a half-dressed male was in her kitchen?

She had not known it was possible to have so much easy happiness in her life. Now, more than ever, she wanted to clear away the ugliness she had let rule her life for the past year.

Her cell phone rang. It was James. She put it on speaker to keep both hands on the wheel.

“I made a call to the main office of Halifax Bank this morning, asking for a meeting with Eric Coates.”

“You shouldn’t—”

“I’m talking here, Shay. It’s polite to listen.” He was still in officer mode. “I was told he’s out of the office at a bank conference until Thursday. Looks like I’ll have to wait for a little chat with the asshole until I get back. I just thought you should know you have some breathing room. Meanwhile, you need to get a restraining order.”

Shay frowned as the light turned red ahead. “I’ve already told you why I won’t do that. If my past is revealed—”

“A restraining order wouldn’t cause anyone to check into your past. I’m a cop. I know how this goes. He won’t stop until you stop him.”

Shay sighed. “I know you mean well but I’ll have to think about it. It’s my life.”

James couldn’t argue with that. He knew how to back people into corners and make them say and do things they didn’t want to. Yet Shay was the last person with whom he wanted to use that kind of manipulative bullshit. As worried as he was for her, he wouldn’t undermine her just when he was winning back her trust. But he didn’t have to be happy about it. At least Eric was gone for the week.

“I’ll be back in Raleigh on Friday. Meanwhile, you think hard. If there’s any problem, anything at all, you call me. Okay?” His colleagues would shit their pants with laughter if they could hear him backing down like this. The things we do for … like?

“Okay.” She sounded relieved. “See you Friday.”

“Right. And, Shay? Be careful.”

*   *   *

Not even the sight of the façade of Halifax Bank could ruin Shay’s mood. She wasn’t wrong. Something was shifting in her life. Something better than this temporary pain-in-the-butt job. She could feel it like the touch of the sun on her face as it emerged from behind the last wisps of morning fog. Best news of all, Eric would be absent all week.

She paused to let a car pass by before crossing the street. It slowed as it came even with her to allow another pedestrian to cross a little farther along. A little boy in the backseat waved. She waved back. And then he put a metal handgun to the glass of the window and aimed it at her.

It’s a toy,
her brain said. But her heart leaped and her feet propelled her backward in recoil even before common sense could register. She saw him laughing wildly as the car moved on.

“Kids!”

She looked to her right to find a male bank employee she only knew by sight standing next to her.

“It—it looked so real!” She was stammering.

“Yeah. I could tell you thought so.” He shrugged. “Who can be sure these days, right?”

Shay swallowed and gripped the strap of her bag tightly as she crossed the street. Her flawless day now had a ding in it.

An hour later, she glanced up at the clock. Even for a Monday the calls were coming thick and fast. It was the last full week before Thanksgiving. People were double-checking their balances and moving money from account to account as they made plans to travel and Christmas shop. She didn’t have reason to do either. Angie had invited her to her family’s house, as usual, but she was getting a bit weary of spending holidays with people who thought turkey should be served by noon so that it didn’t interfere with football. Angie claimed she only watched for the close-up shots of all those tight ends.

What would James’s Thanksgiving be like? Not that she would get a chance to find out. He had lots of family to celebrate with. Must be nice. But too intense for her taste. Maybe she would volunteer to serve the holiday dinner at a soup kitchen.

She was only half listening to the next caller when she suddenly frowned.

“Excuse me, ma’am. Did you say you need to move fifty thousand dollars from your account?” Her gaze shifted to the guideline sheet she kept close by for backup. It stated that large sums were to be run by a superior if there was any hint of a possible problem. The caller, who sounded elderly, couldn’t remember her password.

She glanced at the name on the account. “Just one moment, Mrs. Leggett. I will need to put you through to a personal banker. This might take a minute but don’t hang up. I promise someone will answer. Thank you for your patience.”

Shay’s finger punched a key that would put her in touch with a superior. The instant she heard a pickup, she launched into her request. “This is Customer IT. I need verification on a customer’s withdrawal. It’s—”

“Shay Appleton.” Eric’s voice was practically a snarl.

Shay felt herself flush, her heart rate accelerating. “It’s for a fifty-thousand-dollar transfer. And the customer doesn’t have her password.”

She heard him swear under his breath. “Haven’t you learned anything while you’ve been here? Stick to bank policy. Call a personal banker.”

“Transferring call now.” Shay had connected Eric with Mrs. Leggett. The click echoed so loudly in her earphones she flinched.

Oh God.
Shay had stared at the keypad and realized she had punched the wrong extension. Even so, Eric wasn’t supposed to be here. Now he knew she was here, too.

Follow bank policy.
That was what he’d told her.

She glanced around the bank lobby. Two personal bankers were with customers. The third was nowhere to be seen. When the personal bankers were busy, bank policy said she was to move up the ladder. She’d done just that. Even if it was by mistake.

Doing my job.
As much as she wanted to grab her purse and walk out, a new sense of self held her back. She was working. Whatever craziness Eric might come up with after hours, he wouldn’t dare do anything here, in his place of business.

She adjusted her headphones and punched up the next customer.

A few minutes later she was back in full efficiency mode, hanging up from one call to field the next without a hitch. “Halifax Bank IT Customer Service. How may I help you?”

“I seen you talking to the police.” The gruff voice ignited every synapse in her brain. “Told you, keep your mouth shut!”

“About what? Who are you—”

“You’re gonna pay!”

Shay stabbed the end call button and jerked the earphones from her head. Yet she didn’t feel as panicky as she had the first time. The jittery sensation tingling her nerve endings was more like the revulsion she’d felt that time a boy at school had dropped a slug down the back of her tee. It disgusted her but she wasn’t actually hurt.

Sliding her chair back from her desk, she ignored for the moment the two new calls rolling onto the waiting list. She smoothed her hands up and down her sweater-clad arms, feeling a chill at odds with the bank’s overzealous heating.

The caller had made a new threat. Don’t talk about what? Eric? Too late.

Only Eric wouldn’t know that.

She was certain Eric had hired some lowlife to track her moves. It was the only explanation. This way, he wouldn’t be directly connected to the harassment. So like Eric to do things from on high.