Secrets that Simmer (13 page)

“Okay so you were there. Where were Eric and Kyle?”

He walked her through the scene. He told her where the tent was and how they had moved around the scene as they tried to make sense of what had happened. He told her the approximate times as best he could remember about when the General had arrived.

“So you are 100% certain that no one called the police?” Maggie asked.

“No way, no how. The General specifically said that none of the local officials were to be notified, and no one could ever know what happened here. I don’t even think they told the headmaster at the school. They didn’t want anybody else to know what happened, especially since we didn’t have any bodies.” He almost choked on the word. It just sounded so cold.

Maggie stood there with her arms across her chest. She looked around the quarry. “Something just doesn’t make sense about all of this.”

“I’ve been saying that for eighteen years,” Tony admitted.

“No, it’s just this isn’t the kind of place that I would think somebody would try and go camping,” she said. “You said there was a torn up tent over here and clothes strewn about and then you found those three driver’s licenses on the ground. It just doesn’t make any sense. This is not where I would go for that kind of thing.”

“Forgive me for saying so, Maggie, but until you told me that you used to go on camping trips with your family, I wouldn’t have pictured you as the camping sort at all.” Tony hoped that didn’t offend her. What he was trying to say was that she was classy in an old-fashioned way that he truly admired.

Maggie seem to breeze right over what he said. “No, that was what makes this so weird. You didn’t say that you guys came out here to camp, right?”

Tony had to chuckle at this thought. It was a fair question, but he was amused by it for a completely different reason. “No, even back then, Eric preferred the finer things in life like a pillow top mattress and an orthopedic pillow under his head. We weren’t planning to be out past curfew. That was another thing that my father had to smooth over with the headmaster. He said we skipped out to the nearby town to go to one of the dance clubs and ended up passing out in our car after having too much to drink.”

“Lies upon lies upon lies,” Maggie said. He could tell that he was treading into territory that made her angry. Maggie had a strong moral compass when it came to what she believed was right or wrong. He supposed he should have felt honored that she was trying to at least give him the benefit of the doubt.

“That was not what I asked him to do,” he said softly. That drew Maggie’s eyes to him. He stepped toward her. It was important that she understood what had fully happened that morning. “I told my father that I wanted to take responsibility for what had happened. Even if Kyle and Eric didn’t want to admit their parts, I wanted to go to the police. I wanted to know what happened. But my father said it was committing political suicide for both of us. He would not let me do it. And in the end, I didn’t have a choice.”

Maggie looked at him incredulously. “You always have a choice,” she said.

Deep down, Tony knew that she was right. He had taken the coward’s way out, even if he said he had wanted to do the right thing. That wasn’t the kind of man that a woman like Maggie would want to be with.

“There’s nothing I can do or say that can change the past now. The only thing I can do is try to make things right now, if That was what you want me to do,” he said. Suddenly, Tony felt in his gut what was right. “If you want me to go to the Croftsborrow Police Department now, today, and tell them everything that happened, I will.”

He saw Maggie’s mouth drop open. “Why would you do that?”

Tony touched her on the shoulder. He was hesitant to touch her now. He could feel his wolf wanted to break free and take advantage of the situation, but he couldn’t do that. He needed her to know the simple truth. “If you asked me to do that, I would. For you.”

There. He had said it. He had exposed yet another part of him to Maggie. He could see the wheels turning in her mind. The tone of the whole interaction had changed, and she was looking at him like a woman looked at a man. He felt a sudden flair of hope. Perhaps the breakthrough that they had been looking for by coming to the quarry was an entirely different kind.

“I think I want to go back to the hotel,” she said suddenly. She seemed agitated now. “I need to think.”

Tony was stunned. He had exposed the deepest part of him to her, and her reaction had been practically nothing at all. He didn’t even think about the fact that he had offered up going to the police.

They drove back into the school in silence. It seemed as if it stretched for an eternity. Once they had procured their car and were headed back to town, he tried to make small talk, but she only gave him one word answers. It was as if she had disconnected from him completely. He had read the situation totally wrong. He thought by admitting to her that he was willing to fess up to his part of what happened to that night that she would see that he was a better man now than he had been back then. He had been young, brash, and stupid. He was none of those things now. At least, he didn’t think so.

The car service dropped them off at the only motel in town. It was one of those motels that a person expected to see in B-rated horror flicks. It was two stories and shaped like an L. All of the doors were on the outside and a narrow walkway followed the path of the rooms. She looked at him with a slight grimace.

“There aren’t a lot of options around here,” he admitted. They checked in and the manager gave him two room keys. As soon as he handed hers to Maggie, she picked up her suitcase and disappeared down the walkway toward her room. He didn’t know what else he could’ve expected. She had seen the darkest parts of him, and it appeared that she had judged him guilty.

Tony dropped his suitcase off in his room and then walked across the street to the liquor store. He bought two bottles of whiskey and made his way back to his room. He briefly considered going to the rally, but he wasn’t in a celebratory mood. There was only one thing that would make him feel better, and she seemed forever beyond his grasp.

An hour later, one of the bottles of whiskey was almost empty, and Tony still felt stone cold sober. It was as if no matter what he did, the ugly truth was going to stalk him and make sure that he would never feel any kind of comfort or happiness again. He was angry and wanted to smash his fists into the wall, but he knew giving in to his baser instincts was the wrong thing to do. He was tired of always doing the right thing, but he couldn’t quite give himself permission to let go. Not yet.

Tony lay on the bed staring up at the ceiling wondering what he was going to do next when he heard the soft rap at the door. He sat up. His heart sped up a moment in his chest. He sniffed the air, and he knew then who was on the other side of the door. He moved across the room with lightning speed and opened the door.

She stood framed in the moonlight, a vision of loveliness. He could tell that she had deep thoughts on her mind by the frown on her face. Maggie’s mind was always working.

“Just give me a chance,” he whispered to her harshly. There was nothing else that he wanted from her.

Maggie stepped across the threshold and pushed herself up onto her tiptoes. She dragged Tony’s lips down onto hers, and he was lost.

It had all overwhelmed her at the quarry. Maggie had gone into it with the intention of staying calm and keeping her judgments to those based on fact and logic. She would ask her questions and make her diagrams, and then she had hoped that she would be able to see the missing piece that would make all the puzzle pieces fit together. She had almost made it.

But then Tony had said something so utterly unexpected that it blew her carefully crafted plan all to hell. He told her he would confess to a crime he wasn’t even sure he had committed if that was what she wanted him to do. He wanted to please her by doing what she thought was right. He was willing to give up everything…for her.

The responsibility of that kind of decision was overwhelming in and of itself. But having Tony staring into her eyes and into her very soul offering himself to her will was too much. She couldn’t maintain the boundaries that she had set up to guard against the emotions that flooded through her. This was supposed to be a simple business transaction. That was what Maggie had said it would be from the moment that she invited Tony into her life. Now, it was far from a business transaction. She had been naive to ever think otherwise. From the night of the benefit, it seemed as if invisible threads were tying her to him, and it had nothing to do with business.

After she got back to the motel, she had laid on the bed in her room and mulled over everything in her mind. She had struggled with it. She didn’t know what she was going to do. But that was when it came to her. In this instance, logic and rationality were not the tools that she should be using, because she was diagnosing issues of the heart. She felt something for Tony that could not be denied, and she needed to express it. He had opened himself up to her, and she needed to let him know that he could trust her in the same way that she intuitively trusted him. Those were the thoughts that led her to his doorstep.

She stood there in uncertainty for a few moments. She couldn’t hear anything inside the room and didn’t even know if he was inside. She thought it was possible that he could’ve gone to the rally. A breeze caught the edges of her flimsy robe and pushed her to knock on the door.

When he opened the door, her first thought was how incredibly gorgeous he was. He wore only the slacks that he had been wearing earlier. His chest was bare. The planes and hard ridges that were exposed to her eyes were everything that she had imagined in her mind and more. He was beautiful. She itched to touch him in the way that she had imagined deep in her sleep.

She knew that, because of the way that she had reacted earlier, she would have to be the one to make the first move. Since the night of the benefit, outside of a few lewd innuendos, he had respected the fact that she wanted to maintain professional boundaries. But now, she needed something different from him. She was being driven by something far more primal, and she didn’t even have an animal as part of her being to blame it on.

The moment her lips found his, though, Tony didn’t hesitate. He drew her up against his hard chest while his fingers dug in her hair, and her heart began to sing. She couldn’t understand why she had had made this so difficult on herself. Tony was everything that she had imagined and so much more. He pulled her into the room and slammed the door shut behind her, but she barely noticed.

When he lifted her up into his arms, her toes left the ground. She was slightly amused by this. He was so strong and so tall. She loved it. His hands began to explore her body, and she willingly let him go wherever he wanted to go. As he sat down on the bed, he maneuvered her onto his lap. She eagerly straddled him as she cupped his face and planted more kisses along the side of his neck. He growled in appreciation and pushed her backward so that he could return the favor. Her head fell to the side as his lips found the trail of her neck to her collarbone, and a small sigh escaped her lips. This was exactly what she had been hungry for; this was what she needed.

Maggie felt a sense of urgency now. She had denied herself for so long that she wanted him badly. She pushed against his chest so that he fell backward on the bed. He seemed slightly amused by her need for dominance. She pulled against the buckle of his pants, and he seemed to understand what she was looking for. He pushed the sides of her robe off of her shoulders, and she saw by the way his eyes widened that she had surprised him. Maggie had been entirely brazen in this aspect. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath it. As his lips and hands found her rounded curves, she moaned in delight. Tony’s hands teased her nipples before sliding down her sides, and she leaned over him to give his mouth better access as well.

It was as if his slacks seemed to disappear. As Maggie straddled him and placed her palms flat against the planes of his chest, she gazed down at him. She felt powerful and in control. Tony was unlike any other man she had been with. Surprising, she felt as if they were equals. She watched as his eyes began to glow a soft amber, and she felt the slightest bit of hesitation. She knew that he had a wolf inside of him, but it wasn’t as if the wolf was putting up any argument in the matter.

In fact, as she watched his eyes travel along her body and his fingertips found that intimate place between her folds, she knew that both of them desired her with equal measure. There was something that set her insides a flutter at that thought. But she didn’t have a lot of time to think because Tony’s fingers were doing things that were causing waves of pleasure to build in her core. She felt his hips buck beneath her, and she knew what he wanted. She wanted it too. She slid down on to him, and he fit her like a glove. He gave a low growl as his eyes closed in pleasure. She knew exactly what he felt. She felt as if they belonged together, as if they had been designed to fit together so perfectly.

All of those thoughts blew away as his hips began to move. He thrust deep inside of her, which drew out long, lusty moans of pleasure. His fingers found that sensitive nub between her thighs again, and Maggie knew that her climax was close. It was as if Tony sensed it too, and he grabbed her hips to hold her tightly against him even as she tried to move. Then he flipped her over and drove into her hard, and Maggie was lost. Waves of pure bliss overtook her, and she knew there would be no more going back. There would be no strictly professional relationship anymore. No, this was taking their relationship to a whole new level, and she enjoyed every moment of riding it to its highest peak.

As she began to descend from that place of ultimate pleasure, she felt Tony wrap her up in his arms and draw her closer against his body. She nuzzled into his chest and drew in a deep breath. She memorized his smell. Tony placed small pecks of kisses along the ridge of her nose. It tickled.

“What are you doing?” she asked

“I made myself a promise the night of the benefit that I was going to count and kiss every single one of those freckles on your nose,” Tony said.

Maggie hated her freckles. She thought they made her look significantly younger than she was. She hated her pale skin and the red of her hair. But with Tony, she felt like the most beautiful woman in the world. It was a feeling she was starting to think she could get used to.

“So much for attorney-client privilege,” he said with a chuckle as if he had read her mind.

Maggie felt it was important for him to know what had changed for her. “I don’t want you to turn yourself in,” she said.

He kissed her lips to silence her. “We can talk about that in the morning,” he said. “Right now there are lots of different things that I would like to discuss with you, and none of them have anything to do with what happened in my past.”

His lips found hers and drove all thoughts of the past or the future from her mind.

Maggie woke up and stretched her arms over her head. She felt more relaxed than she could remember feeling in ages. She heard the sounds of the shower running in the next room. She had fallen asleep in Tony’s arms. It had been illuminating to her. She knew that she should feel some hesitations about what had transpired between them, but she didn’t. It had felt right. She couldn’t explain it, and it wasn’t logical, and it wasn’t the way that she ever approached anything. She should have been terrified. But instead, she felt like the pieces of the puzzle were starting to fit together now.

As long as she and Tony worked together, she was completely confident that they would figure it out. What had happened back in 1999 had nothing to do with their present or future. She believed that in her core. She was confident that whatever she found out would completely exonerate Tony from any blame or wrongdoing.

She heard a tap at the door and wondered if Tony had possibly ordered breakfast while she was still asleep. Then she remembered they were in the type of motel that didn’t have room service. She looked at the bathroom door again and then back at the door. She got up out of the bed and wrapped the sheet around her. She thought that perhaps someone was coming to find Tony to give him a message. She felt bad that he had missed the homecoming rally the night before, but she figured she more than made up for it with their late night activities.

She looked out the peephole, and that was when she had the craziest sense of déjà vu. There was no one outside the door. No one had called out anything about housekeeping, which was the other option she had considered. She backed slowly away from the door. She heard the bathroom door behind her open. “Somebody at the door?” Tony asked. “If it’s housekeeping, tell them to go fly a kite.”

Maggie turned and looked at him. He saw the expression on her face, and he came toward her quickly. “Babe, what is it?”

Maggie shivered despite the warmth of the room. “There’s nobody out there,” she said. She watched Tony’s expression turn serious. He gently pushed her behind him as he looked out the peephole. Then he undid the chain of the door and opened it. She saw that there wasn’t anyone outside, but then she gasped at what she saw lying on the floor on the other side of the door. It was two black roses.

Tony picked up the roses with a roar of frustration. He slammed the door shut and tossed the roses in the garbage.

“It appears my stalker has followed us here?” Maggie asked softly.

Tony moved over across the room. He pulled his phone off of the charger and dialed a number. She watched as he turned away from her. She could tell by the heaves of his back that he was barely keeping a hold on his temper. Whoever was on the other line must’ve picked up because Tony started to bark into the phone. “I want these goddamn stalkers found. Today.” The way he said the words were a demand that brokered no argument.

There was a short pause. “He was here, Samuel. Outside my motel room. I don’t care if you have to pull every string that we have in the government. I want satellite photos. I want police reports. I want to know who the fuck this person is and why they think that they can mess with me.”

Tony disconnected and threw the phone on the table in frustration. Maggie approached him cautiously. “You have to stay calm,” she said. She wasn’t quite sure what else to say.

Tony took a deep breath and then turned to pull her into his arms. His hands cupped the back of her head as he stroked her hair. “I told you I am not going to let anything happen to you, and I mean it.”

“They were left on your doorstep, though, and not mine.” Maggie stated the obvious difference between the last time. She looked up at him and saw Tony take this information in. He didn’t seem to know what to say. He ran his hand through his still damp hair. It caused it to stick up in various directions, which she thought made him look all the more dashing.

“I suspect that whoever is doing this is using you to get to me,” he finally said.

Maggie frowned. “Why would they use me to get to you? We didn’t have any kind of relationship prior last night.”

Tony carefully pushed her backward until the backs of her knees hit the bed, and he settled her onto it. “There’s something that I need to tell you. I haven’t been entirely honest with you, and I think it is part of the reason why this is happening to you.”

Maggie felt the fluttering in her stomach again. Tony suddenly seemed very serious. It was yet another side of him that she was seeing for the first time. It was almost as if he expected her to run away from him. Surely she had heard and seen all of his worst secrets, and she hadn’t done that yet. What could he possibly say that would cause her to run now?

Tony dragged a chair over to sit across from her, but their knees still touched. It almost felt like it was a kind of mini-therapy session. Maggie knew then with a sense of foreboding that what he was about to tell her was something that she might not like very much. “Maggie, what do you know about shifters and the mating process?”

This was an odd way to start the conversation, Maggie thought. They had had sex once. She corrected herself. One night. Three times. It wasn’t like she was expecting him to get down on his knee and propose to her. “I don’t know much. I know that shifters mate for life like what you told me.”

“That was what happens afterwards. But how do you think the process starts?” Tony asked. He seemed to be trying to take a very clinical view to the conversation.

Maggie had a sense now of where this might be going, and she couldn’t believe it. “You’ve talked about it in your books and in your testimonies on the witness stand. You said that when a shifter meets the person they believe is their mate, it’s like that person becomes their entire world. They would do or say anything to be with them, despite their better judgment at times. Surely you aren’t trying to tell me that you think I’m your mate?”