Reinstated Bond

Copyright
Holley Trent

Published
11 January 2013

All
Rights Reserved.

Reinstated Bond
is a work of complete
fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance
to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cover images
available at 123rf.com and stock.xchng.

WARNING
: this story
contains adult situations including sex and strong language. It is not intended
for consumption by minors (age of majority as specified by your territory of
residence).

CHAPTER ONE

"Come on, Nicola. I don't want to be here any more than
you
want
me to be. I took the file because I'm going to be a lot more gentle with
Marilyn than Jeff or Lee would be. Just consider this a favor to her."
Carter Aiken ran his palm over the day's worth of auburn stubble on his jaw and
gave the green-eyed
bruja
what he hoped was a look of contrition.

Nicola folded her arms over her chest. A muscle in her jaw
twitched as she locked her unflinching gaze on him. "Right. A
favor
."
She mumbled something guttural in Spanish.

He took a tiny step back and braced himself.

Nothing happened.

He blew out a breath and shifted his weight.

Nicola Skinner had been murmuring oaths at him for a decade,
and the rumor around Chowan County was that she was some kind of witch. She'd
always hated him, and him standing there in her laundry room's doorway wearing
a bond enforcement badge probably didn't improve their relationship any. He was
trying to snatch her daughter. His ex.

"My family left El Salvador to get away from people like
you."

"Oh, come off it, Nicola. I'm just doing my job. I'm not
picking on her. Marilyn missed an important court date and now the judge thinks
she's a flight risk. Her bond got yanked. You were the cosignatory. You should
care."

Nicola mumbled some more, and he could feel his brows arching
up to his hairline. Back in high school when he and Marilyn had been an item,
Marilyn had always told him to ignore her mother. That she was just
overprotective because of her own tumultuous childhood and that she didn't mean
him any
real
harm.

He wasn't so sure. Like most people living in the rural county,
she probably had a shotgun propped up next to the door. Nicola's husband Harold
was a long-haul trucker and frequently away from home. Harold would have made
sure she kept it handy
and
that she knew how to use it.

Carter took another step backward.

"She's not here," she repeated, leaning against the
washing machine and cocking her blonde head to the side as she squinted up at
him.

Get
a grip, Aiken. She's five feet tall and over fifty.

"I'm sorry to sound skeptical, Mrs. Skinner," he
said, straightening up and puffing out his broad chest, "but I'm sure you
understand why I need to take a look around. Her car is here and this is the
boondocks. It's not like she's going to take off on foot down the
highway."

A wicked smile spread across her face. There was a loud creak
at the far end of the ranch house followed by a slam, then a thud as something
hit the ground. When Carter turned his head to the left, he saw a tan blur with
dark wild hair and a shapely pair of stems darting into the neighboring
cornfield.

"Fuck."

*

Marilyn had been hiding out in the stalks as a stalling tactic
since she was a child trying to flee bedtime. The field was actually owned by a
farmer who lived down the road, but she was so lithe and careful gliding
through the rows of tall cow corn, she rarely ever snapped a stem. The farmer
never had been one to plant densely. Once she got inside and disappeared into
the middle of the field, it was nearly impossible to catch up to her.

She sat there in the stalks until dusk at which point she
carefully stood and wiped the loamy soil off the seat of her short-shorts.
Visibility was growing poor and the last thing she wanted was to have to be
taken to the county hospital for snakebite treatment when she was trying her
damndest to avoid arrest.

She was innocent, but because everyone in Chowan County knew
everyone else, she doubted she'd be afforded a fair, unbiased trial. She'd
asked her lawyer to request a venue change but it had been denied and the judge
had flat-out asserted that she was paranoid. Add
that
to her list of supposed crimes. The
reason she was arrested in the first place was because her last boyfriend's
house burned down. "Foul play," they'd said, and pointed to her
because it had been a
bad
break-up.

She hadn't even cared for her ex all that much, and the straw
that broke her back was having his
other
girlfriend allude to Marilyn's supposed
bedroom inadequacies.

About six weeks past, Marilyn had been in Edenton, walking down
Broad Street toward the hardware store. She was in search a new garden hose
sprayer for her mother, and had paused to study a seasonal display in the craft
store's window, when a ballsy little bitch named Amber Evans yelled from her
parked Jeep: "Hey, Marilyn? Do you know what they say about a woman who
can't ride?"

Marilyn had stopped in her tracks and turned around to find the
brazen strumpet leaning onto the track of her open Jeep window and resting her
chin atop her folded hands. Amber was smiling sweetly behind her pink lip-gloss
and blinking like a coquette.

Marilyn sighed and took the bait. "What do they say,
Amber?"

Amber had sat up and let her smile to spread wider to show off
all of her impressively triangular teeth. "They say if you can't ride, get
off and
walk
."

Marilyn had pulled the little preppy bitch right through her Jeep
window and smashed her onto the ground between the parked cars.

Before she could do any real damage to the minx, the hardware
store owner ran outside, grabbed Marilyn around the waist, and hustled her
inside the store. "No need to be getting yourself in trouble, Mar. He
ain't worth it. Amber's had her hand in nearly every pair of boxer shorts in
the county, mine excluded."

And he wasn't worth it. Marilyn knew it. Still, the split had
been so public that everyone in town had taken sides without even knowing what
had preempted the break-up in the first place. It had been because he was
screwing Amber, obviously, which eventually got spun into an accusation Marilyn
hadn't been able to keep up with the insatiable dolt. The opposite had been
true, actually, but she was a nice enough girl she'd kept trying new positions
hoping they'd mitigate his "small stature." Didn't work. It'd been a
year since she'd gotten off, except by her own hands.

She blew out a breath and zoned back in to the present. After
stepping out of her safe haven, she paused at the perimeter to allow her eyes a
few moments to adjust to the change in light. She heard the clamor of chains
being shifted followed by a long, deep yawn, and stalked off in the direction
of Terry: the three-legged adopted pit bull.

Terry turned himself around and around into a circle, barking
cheerfully at her approach. She laughed and reached out a hand to scratch the
pitiful beast between the ears. "Ready to go in, guy?"

His response was a lick of her hand.

"Why don't you finish that kibble in your bowl? Shit's too
expensive to leave out for squirrels."

Terry cocked his brindled head to the side and stared.

"Fine. Let me get the key."

She let herself into the garage and felt around in the dark
atop the worktables where her father liked to take things apart. He let other
people do the putting-back-together.

No key. She could have sworn she left it there earlier…when
she'd put Terry outside after lunch so he could keep watch on the yard. He
wasn't much of a guard dog, and really was more of an oversized lap pet, but he
was friendly and liked to bark whenever strangers pulled into the drive. She
had been counting on that. Foolishly.

"Shit, where is it?"

"You mean this?" came a deep voice from the door.

She yipped and wrenched herself around to discover her only
point of egress was blocked by six-feet two inches of buff brawn, cocky smile,
and dark red hair that looked burgundy in the dim light.

Carter crossed his arms over his broad chest let the key ring
dangle from the fingers of his right hand.

"Some freakin' guard dog…" she mumbled.

"Oh, he's just a pussycat with lofty ambitions."

"You gave him a treat, didn't you?"

He shrugged. "Why don't you just come along with me and
we'll handle this like civilized folks, Mar."

She picked up a nearby socket wrench and tossed it in his
direction.

He dodged it easily.

"Don't you
Mar
me, you prick!"

"You didn't used to mind when I called you that."

She grabbed a hand full of wing nuts and tossed them, too. They
fell short.

He didn't move other than to feign a yawn.

"It was high school. That lovey-dovey shit was tolerable
back then."

A dangerously sexy grin that reminded her of one time under the
bleachers crept across his face as he took a step into the garage. "So you
do still love me?"

She rolled her eyes. "You always did hear what you wanted
to."

Another step. "When you were sixteen you said you loved me
all the time."

She folded her arms over her chest and stuck out her chin.
"Yeah? Well, I'm pretty sure you said it back. Didn't stop things from
going all pear-shaped, did it?"

Another step. "Aw, baby, don't be like that. It was high
school. Guys do stupid shit in high school…"

"And girls let them. Not anymore. You step back, Carter,
or so help me I'll…" Her hands slapped the workstation behind her and felt
around until one fist tightened around the handle of a hammer. "I'll knock
you into Thursday."

His laugh was deep and his smile even wider. He took another
step, regardless of her new weapon of choice. "You wouldn't hurt me. It'd
break your heart."

"Too bad the feeling isn't mutual."

"I don't want to hurt you, Mar. I'm just doing my
job."

"You proud of that job?" She took a horizontal swing
in the vicinity of his chest.

He leaned back to dodge it on one beat and grabbed her wrist with
his free hand on the next. He tossed the padlock key onto the table and pinned
her other arm behind her back.

"You're hurting me."

"I know how to do my job, baby. You're lying. You want to
hold real still while I grab my cuffs, or do you wanna wrassle?"

She growled and tried to wretch herself away from him, but his
grip was too strong, his stance too steady. She sighed. He had always been an
unmovable force. He'd actually weighed more back in high school when he was
playing football, but had slimmed down to around one hundred seventy-five
pounds after graduation. He was all muscle. Delightful, lean muscle that she
could see flexed inside the sleeves his dark tee shirt. Nice, firm muscles that
cinched nicely inside the waist of his belted jeans. She swallowed hard.

"Like what you see, Mar?"

Her gaze trailed up to his face, ruggedly handsome with square
chin and cornflower blue eyes that she knew would look gray when it was dark.
He'd grown his hair out since high school. The high and tight conservative shear
of his younger days was replaced with hair down to his shoulders. She wanted to
rake her hands through it, ask him if he brushed it a hundred times before
going to bed each night, it was that silky. She didn't remember it being silky.
She didn't remember a lot of things, maybe.

He gave her a gentle nudge. "Do you?"

She swallowed again and blinked. "I'm sorry, what was the
question?"

"I asked you if you like what you see." He loosened
his grip on the hand he held behind her back and instead pinned both her arms
between their two bodies as he crushed her front against his.

She let out a little whimper at the feeling of an unsated cock
against her belly.

He twined his fingers in her curls and pulled her head back,
tipping his face up to his. "Do you?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"God, I missed you, baby."

His lips crushed hers, and she stood there in the dim garage,
eyes wide, frozen in place while this near-God nipped at her lips and circled
her tongue with his. She moaned and closed her eyes. Damn, the man could still
kiss her boneless just like he did when he was eighteen. And just like she did
when she was sixteen, standing under the bleachers at the middle school where
they regularly met to neck, she hooked a leg around his, and ground her crotch
against his thigh.