Madison's Quest (6 page)

From coast to coast, 2903 miles mark the distance. By
air, by train, or on asphalt highways, the bounty of the San Joaquin travels.
Two thirds of it is hidden from sight, but offer the first and the rest is
revealed.

“Any thoughts?” Madison asked.

Shane suppressed a laugh. The feel of her against him was
enough to short-circuit brain activity. Not that the big head had ever done its
best thinking while in school.

He grinned. A lot of people would say it still didn’t
outthink the little one.

“My only thought, let’s get out of here.”

They stood. He slammed the locker shut, the same way he used
to do in high school.

She snapped the lock in place and turned, breasts touched to
his chest, eyes connecting with his.

He stopped fighting.

What was the point?

He wanted this. She wanted this.

He’d almost bet money Bulldog expected this. Otherwise why
pull him out of a standing poker game when there were other Montgomerys and Maguires
who could have been assigned the case?

He trapped her with palms braced against metal, heat
thrumming through him with the parting of her lips.

Her eyes dilated and her hands went to his chest, fingertips
finding the nipple ring.

He moaned. “No fair.”

“Weren’t you the one who said
all’s fair
?”

“True.” He leaned in, mouth brushing her cheek, her ear,
returning to her lips.

Pleasure and hunger swept through him like an eraser, wiping
away the memory of all the girls he’d ever kissed in high school and replacing
them with Madison.

Since that night in Vegas, and those hours spent at Brian’s
bedside, he’d been on tilt. But now it felt as if the rub and twine of her
tongue was clearing his head of all the confusion.

She felt good. Right. Meant for him.

He deepened the kiss, thrust and retreat, thrust and
retreat.

His hips mimicked the motion, streaks of ecstasy going from
his nipple to his dick as she rubbed and tugged and twisted the ring.

His hand left the locker.

It went to her side, stroking.

Up. Down.

Up, her moan inviting him to keep going, to cover a breast
and rub the hardened nipple with his thumb.

Fantasy gripped him, of hoisting her up and fucking her
against the locker, of her sliding downward, unzipping him, taking his cock
between her lips.

Need shuddered through him. The temptation to take her back
to his place instead of Tyler’s swept in. Only as soon as it did his gut went
tight, warning him that taking this where it would go before she met Tyler
would be the same as dealing himself a bad hand.

He lifted his mouth off hers, cupped her neck and hip.

Her breath came as fast as his.

The sight of her lips, slick and swollen and reddened, had
his hips doing a quick jerk.

“It’s been a while since I’ve made out in front of a high-school
locker,” he said.

A small tremor went through her. She released his nipple,
her hand flattening on his chest, a quick sadness in her eyes.

“Me too.”

Wanting an answer, not wanting one, Shane brushed his mouth
against hers. “Who was he?”

“A boyfriend. Someone who died before the music world knew what
it lost.”

His lips settled on hers, parting them, his tongue sliding
into her mouth, not to eradicate the memory of someone who’d obviously meant
something to her, but to siphon away the remembered pain.

Her arms slid around his waist. She deepened the kiss,
accepting his comfort and making him feel like a prince, not the man-whore he’d
been accused of being more than once.

His fingers speared through her hair, holding her, the
exchange becoming a round-robin of give and take that he never wanted to
end—though it had to. He didn’t want to put his good intentions to the ultimate
test, not when the press and rub of her body against his cock was making it
scream to get inside her.

Lifting his mouth off hers, he said, “We should get out of
here. Tyler’s expecting us.”

“Okay.”

But he couldn’t help himself.

“One more for road,” he said, closing the distance between
their mouths, the heated merging of his desire and hers widening and deepening
the ache for more.

With a sigh he stepped back, immediately snagging her hand,
then grinning at seeing the things they’d taken from the locker scattered on
the floor because she’d dropped them in favor of touching him.

Gaze flicking to the fifteen-thousand dollar check then back
to meet her eyes, he said, “Am I good? Or am I good?”

She laughed. “Got much of an ego?”

“Hey, I’m self-aware. I thought that was a good thing.”

She snorted. “Right.”

They crouched, gathered the broken sticks and check and
clue.

Standing, he recaptured her hand, held it as they returned
to the Jeep. Taking it again and not releasing it until they’d parked in front
of Tyler’s place, and the man himself stepped out of the house.

Instant hard-on.

Between Tyler and Madison, his dick was starting to remind
him of a yo-yo.

Fucking strike that. It was more like an elephant’s trunk.

Shane choked back a laugh.

“I take it that’s Tyler.”

“Yeah. That’s him.”

“He works for Crime Tells?”

“Part time. He also works for the police as an artist.”

“The two of you are related?”

“Feels like it. We’ve known each other since we were kids.”
Though what he wanted was far different than the simple friendship of their
growing-up years.

“Don’t worry about your stuff,” he told her. “I’ll grab it.”

He needed a minute to get himself under control. Just
because he was mostly convinced that Grandma M had seen something and was the
reason Bulldog had arranged for the three of them to spend a lot of time
together, didn’t mean working out the kinks was going to come easy.

His cock pulsed, putting kinks and coming together, and
warning him that if he wasn’t careful, he’d do the second thing far too easily
and probably in an embarrassing manner.

He opened his door at the same time Madison pushed hers
outward. “For the record, Tyler’s unattached.”

Madison stopped, halfway out of the Jeep.

Why was he telling her that?

She looked back at Shane, tried to get a read on him, but
for the first time since meeting him, he wore a poker face.

Was this his way of saying, no strings, no complications,
she was free to do what she wanted? Or his way of saying he was interested in a
threesome?

Her pulse quickened. Her eyes probed his but he maintained
the poker face.

“Thanks for telling me that, I think.”

What else could she say?

She got the rest of the way out of the Jeep and shut the
door, going ahead of him to meet Tyler on her own—and she
was
attracted.

He might be an artist, but with his long blond hair and blue
eyes, he looked like art, his sharper facial angles making her think of the gay
manga Elijah used to love, the images they’d lie naked together looking at,
talking about.

Tyler’s hand was warm against hers. His voice, when he
introduced himself, was the smooth burn of whiskey, sliding downward and making
her aware of the empty place in her heart that’d been left by Elijah’s death,
by the loss of a dream that didn’t have anything to do with music.

“You okay with dogs?” Tyler asked. “I’m guessing Bulldog
didn’t warn you about my girls.”

“He didn’t, but it’s not a problem. I love dogs. What are
yours?”

“Dachshunds, thanks to a case Lyric took on. You meet her
yet?”

“Heard about her. According to Shane, she has a little
trouble staying inside the lines.”

Tyler laughed. “That’s Lyric, not that Shane’s any better. Come
on and I’ll introduce you to my girls. Kiki’s the black one. Daisy is the red
dapple.”

They entered the house.

Shane breathed a sigh of relief.

Fuck, this was going to be torture.

He’d underestimated the impact of seeing Madison and Tyler
together, close enough that a quick mental strip and shove and their bodies were
flush in his imagination.

He could get off just watching the two of them go at it.
Same as he could get off being watched, if Tyler was the one doing the
watching. Or Madison.

And the thought of all three of them—

Yeah. That was a fantasy he wasn’t going to be able to
shake. That was a fantasy to take with him into the shower for a little
hand-held relief when he got home.

If he paid Grandma Maguire a visit, would she tell him she’d
had a vision starring him with Tyler and Madison?

Probably not unless he was willing to lay some cards on the
table first.

Heat crept up his neck thinking about even trying to have
that
conversation. Not that he really needed to. He had to trust himself on this
one.

He grabbed Madison’s guitar and carry-on, got to the front
door and toed it open, suppressing a groan at finding Madison crouched, her
mouth not nearly far enough away from the bulge in Tyler’s jeans to keep his
mind from going there.

Kiki and Daisy were delivering cheek licks, making Madison
laugh and pull them onto her thighs, though they wriggled too much to actually
hold.

Seeing her like that carved more openings in his heart,
leaving half of them feeling empty while filling the other half with warmth.

He set her stuff down. Tyler said, “You sticking around?”

Bad idea? Good idea?

Considering that Madison and Tyler being in the same room
had the fantasies raging, he wasn’t sure whether having Madison there would
make it more difficult or less to hide how much he wanted to feel the front of
Tyler’s body against his, to see an answering desire in Tyler’s eyes and the
obvious evidence of it in Tyler’s erection.

“I’ll stick.” Truth, he couldn’t force himself to leave. “We
can work on Bio-dad’s latest clue.”

It was as good an excuse as any. And who knew, he might
actually be able to concentrate on it to keep from screwing things up with
Tyler.

“Clue?”

Shane wasn’t surprised by Tyler’s question, not after having
been left ignorant of the facts until he’d gotten Madison to the office. “I
take it Bulldog didn’t fill you in?”

“No, just asked if I could put Madison up as a precaution.
Didn’t even fill me in on the danger.”

“There might not be any,” Madison said, standing.

“You want to bring Tyler up to speed?”

“Sure.”

“Hold on,” Tyler said. “I’m going to grab a beer. You guys
want one? Or something else?”

Not a good idea to start drinking. Not with a couple of
Tyler’s sketchbooks on the coffee table. Not with both Madison and Tyler in the
same room.

Shane said
yes
to a beer anyway and headed to the
couch, unable to keep from brushing his hand against Madison’s on the way there.

Tyler escaped to the kitchen—walking, not running, though
the urge to exit through the back door and keep going was strong.

Madison and Shane were like a one-two punch.

The reaction to Shane he’d been expecting. He’d been living
with it for a long time, long enough to have mastered casual. But Madison made
holding on to that appearance a challenge.

She’d gotten out of Shane’s Jeep and stepped right into his
fantasies. And then Shane had come into the house, wanting her, adding to the
erotic images.

It was too easy to envision the three of them together. Too
easy to capture on paper. And that’d be too damn incriminating, though he knew
he would draw the pictures anyway.

He grabbed three beers, wished he had a walk-in refrigerator
so he could cool down—if such a thing was even possible.

In the living room, Shane had plopped on one end of the
couch. His legs were stretched and Daisy was belly-up along his thighs, Shane’s
hand stoking her stomach.

This is going to be torture
.

Tyler passed off Shane’s drink, careful not to let their
hands touch.

He was less careful with Madison.

When had he turned into such a masochist?

He dropped onto the other end of the couch, Madison between
him and Shane, Kiki on her lap.

He took a swallow of beer.

Madison said, “You’ve got a nice place.”

He couldn’t stop himself from reaching over and stroking
Kiki’s velvety soft ear.

“One of the perks of working at Crime Tells. Bulldog owns
this house and the three next to it. He owns another three around the corner.
Shane and his brothers live in them.”

“Sweet deal.”

“Very. So what do I need to know?”

She filled him in on Bio-dad’s unexpected insertion into her
life. And as she did it, old anger, old pain, old fears welled up inside him.
If his old man were still alive, no amount of money would make him open the
door for him.

Tyler took a long pull of beer and leaned forward, only to
be distracted by Shane.

His head was tipped back. His eyes were closed, his throat working
as he swallowed, the hand that’d been on Daisy now playing with the nipple
ring.

How many times had he seen that move lure a woman over? Too
many to count, which was one of the reasons he usually said
yes
to
outings with Shane and Braden.

It didn’t bother him to see Braden with a pickup. The same
wasn’t true of Shane.

See it enough, and it might kill off the feelings for Shane.
It was a brutal kind of therapy, one he’d come up with early on, when he’d
labeled the thing with Shane a crush.

He’d lied to himself back then. Even known it deep down. But
it’d been safer to believe that wanting Shane wasn’t a permanent affliction.
And at first there’d been a body of evidence to suggest it
could
be a
temporary infatuation.

Hadn’t he imagined himself in love with Cady and Erin and
Lyric? Hell, he and Lyric had played doctor as kids and experimented as teens,
not that they’d ever become lovers.