She's Gotta Be Mine (36 page)

“I’m not giving you up,” she whispered, “just because Mr. Fry, or anyone else, didn’t like seeing us together.”

He closed his eyes. God, this woman knew how to use words to get to him, did she ever.

“Nick, will you do one more thing for me?”

“What?” He made it sound as bad tempered as possible.

“Let me make love to you this time.”

He couldn’t help it, he opened his eyes and licked her gloss from his lips, savored it. She took that as a yes and put her fingers to task at his belt. All trace of fight went out of him. He wanted her to make love to him more than he’d ever wanted anything. “What are you going to do?”

Her hand stilled on his zipper. She looked at him, and for the first time since they’d walked through his front door, uncertainty dulled her eyes. Filled her voice. “I want to...
ummm
...you know.”

“No. I don’t. Tell me.” He wanted to hear her say it.

“I want to make you...
ummm
...” She bit her lip, then gulped a breath. “I want to make you come in my mouth.”

Holy shit. “Ah, well, gee, okay.” He helped her ease the zipper over his cock.

She switched off the lamp on the side table, plunging them into darkness, hiding them from prying eyes. Then she shoved his jeans over his hips and down his legs. He still had his boots on. She bent to unlace them. Nick held his breath.

* * * * *

Oh my God, what am I doing
? Bobbie asked herself. What if she couldn’t? What if she wasn’t good enough? She’d never been good enough for Warren. This was the dumbest idea she’d ever had. Of course, she’d been saying that for days now, but each time she told herself it was the last time, she came up with another even more stupid idea.

But oh, she wanted him. Wanted to feel him in her mouth, wanted to taste him, wanted his hands in her hair, wanted him totally out of control. To heck with Cottonmouth.

“You okay down there?”

She looked up. His hands hovered near her head, and his penis bobbed in front of her face. She wanted to cry. Or laugh. “I accidentally made a knot in your lace.”

He reached down, his hair brushing the side of her face, yanked, and the lace broke loose. “All fixed. Need any more help?”

She tugged off one boot and almost fell on her butt. Then she did start laughing, a bit of her tension easing.

“I think you’re trying too hard. Relax, baby.” He finished her task, toeing off the other boot and kicking aside his jeans. Then he flopped back on the sofa. Putting one hand on his enormous erection, he stroked, his eyes dark, his teeth white with a smile. “Now, what was that about making me come in your mouth?”

She parted his legs and wriggled between them. “Aren’t you afraid I might just be saying that so I can bite it off?”

“No, baby, I can tell you’re way too hot for me to want to ruin a good thing.” He took her hand in his and wrapped it around his penis, moving their fingers together, showing her how to squeeze him just right. “Here, like that.” Then he let go, giving himself up to her rhythm. “Shit, that’s good.”

He was saying it because she needed to hear it. Just the way he’d talked to her last night, giving her words because she needed them. She believed them gratefully.

She took him in her mouth. Hands to the side of her head, he guided her. The couch creaked as he put his head back, then he groaned into the dark and the heat.

Salty, musky, male, he was hard between her lips. She pushed her hand all the way to the base, dove down to meet it. On the way back up, she grazed him with her teeth. At the tip, she circled her tongue, testing the small crevice. His hips lifted to drive into her again. She took him, swallowing the tiny droplets that emerged. When he groaned, she repeated, harder, faster, then softer, slower. Again and again.

All the while, he talked, words about how good she was, how good her mouth felt, how he thought he was going to die. Then his hands fisted in her hair, just short of pain, and he cried out her name and a litany of swear words, and spurted into her mouth.

She swallowed all of him, savoring the taste, the triumph, the vindication. He stroked her hair, the shell of her ear, let her suck and lick until the last of his tremors faded away, then he pulled her up to look at him.

“Christ, where’d you learn to do that?” He hauled her onto his lap and kissed her. After he’d been in her mouth. Didn’t seem to care. Just the way he’d kissed her last night with her taste still on his lips.

Warren had never...would never. But then he hadn’t really liked any of that stuff anyway.

“You’re thinking about him. Stop it.” Nick stuck his tongue in her mouth, wrapped his arms around her until she felt crushed, caressed, wanted.

I will not say it. I will not ask for validation
.

“Did you like what I did?” Darn.

Nick jerked back to stare at her. As if she had Medusa’s snakes snarling on her head. “
Like?
You drained me dry, sweetheart.” His head flopped against the sofa, and he closed his eyes. “I don’t think I could get it up again for a week.”

Maybe some women would have been looking for something poetic. What he said was exactly what she’d hoped for. She snuggled against him. His shirt still intact, he was naked from the waist down. She was completely clothed. Gee, this was deliciously dirty and decadent.

Feeling enormously pleased with herself and totally unwilling to contemplate Warren’s situation, at least right now, she licked Nick’s cheek, then kissed it. “When are we going to watch
Buffy
?”

He cracked one eye open. “Definitely not now.”

Something romantic then. “How about
Laura
?”

“You’ve
gotta
be kidding.”

She wriggled in his lap. “You could show me your paintings?”

“How about we work on orgasms ten through fifteen instead.”

Hmm, that had a nice ring to it, too.

* * * * *

They fell asleep in his bed with all the windows open.

Princess started barking at two.

Nick rolled over, pulling Bobbie into the spoon of his body. Warm and smelling of hot sex and even hotter woman, he buried his nose in the hollow between her neck and shoulder.
 
Still asleep, she muttered and burrowed her bottom into his groin.

He’d lied about not being able to get it up again. Several times.

“Hmmm,” she mumbled into the pillow. “What’s that noise?”

The high-pitched yelping became frantic. “It’s Princess.
Reggie’ll
yell at her in a minute.” Just like he had the other night when she’d gone ballistic.

The night
Jimbo
died.

The night the shovel went missing from his shed.

Nick bolted out of bed.

“What are you doing?”

“Someone’s outside.” Searching for his jeans, he remembered they were on the living room floor. He grabbed another pair from the drawer, yanked them on, then took the stairs two at a time.

Throwing the back door open just as Reggie cussed at the dog, Nick took the back steps in a leap, then slid to a halt.

No one was out there, but the metal door of the shed yawned wide. He’d left it closed. Princess yelped once more, whimpered, then shut up. Reggie slammed his back door, still cursing, “the damned noisy little mutt.”

Nick sprinted through the gate to the front of the house. He’d catch the bastard, he’d write down the license plate, he’d...the road was empty, the neighborhood quiet now that Princess had gotten her wallop.

Shit.

He returned to the backyard, dread hollowing out his gut.

Bobbie hugged the doorway, eyes wide, wearing one of his paint shirts, white tails reaching her thighs. “What is it?”

“I need the flashlight.” He pushed past her to the kitchen drawer, then marched back outside, Bobbie in his wake.

Sliding the shed door all the way open, he flashed the thin beam of light around the inside.

“What’s there?”

Christ. “My spade is back.”

“The one that was missing?”

“Yep.” He stepped fully into the shed, hunkered down beside it and ran the beam from handle to blade. “And if I’m not mistaken, there’s dried blood all over it.”

Dried blood and
Jimbo’s
gray matter.

Chapter Sixteen

Oh my God. He couldn’t have done it.

Could he?

The beam of Nick’s flashlight hit Bobbie full in the face. She shielded her eyes.

“You think I did it, don’t you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Only for the tiniest second, wiped clean so fast in the next, it didn’t even count. “Take that light out of my eyes.”

He did, but only dropped the beam to her chest so that she still couldn’t see him behind it. Like he was interrogating her.

“I didn’t do it.”

She answered quickly. “I know that. What I was thinking,” she paused, wondering what she really had been thinking. “This proves Warren couldn’t have done it. He’s in jail, so he couldn’t have put that shovel there.”

And neither had Nick. She’d known in her heart he was innocent. Now she could prove it.

“No, he couldn’t,” Nick growled, low, almost menacing. She had no clue what he was thinking.

“Then again,” she went on, “somehow, I can’t imagine Cookie driving around with a bloody shovel in her trunk and sneaking into your shed in the middle of the night.”

“Right.”

Those terse answers made her nerves jump, especially when she couldn’t see his face or read his eyes. “So that means someone else is helping Cookie.”

“Looks like it.”

“Would you stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Agreeing with everything I say.”

“Don’t you want me to agree?”

“No.” She wanted some emotion.

“All right.”

That wasn’t any better. She wished she had on more than just his white shirt stiff with paint spatters. “Then this shovel is...what do you call it?” He didn’t help her. “Exculpatory evidence in Warren’s favor.”

“I suppose it is.”

She bit her lip. He was agreeing again. She wanted to smack him. “We need to call
Brax
.”

This time he didn’t say anything at all, and instead lifted the flashlight beam once more to her eyes. She squinted. Telling him to drop it again would be pointless. “It’s got to have the real killer’s fingerprints on it.”

“The only fingerprints on it will be mine.”

“But—”

“Do you think they’d be stupid enough to bring it back if they’d left
their
fingerprints on it?”

She knew she was grasping at straws. “And
Brax
knows you’re not stupid enough to call him if you’d actually killed
Jimbo
.”

“
Brax
isn’t going to care one way or the other. He’ll have the murder weapon with
my
prints on it.”

“Well, then, we’ll wipe it off before we call him.”

The flashlight clicked off, completely blinding her after the brightness of the beam in her eyes. “I’m not going to jail to free your husband.”

“I know, but—”

“Choose. Now.”

“This isn’t about choosing—”

“Which one of us will it be, Bobbie?”

Her hands were solid blocks of ice. She stuck them in her armpits for warmth. It didn’t help.