The Skeleton King (Dartmoor Book 3) (17 page)

              “You don’t want me to leave, do you?” she whispered. “Because I have nowhere to go. All I have is this farm.”

              “No, love. I’ll never want you to go.”

              Emmie wasn’t aware of moving, knew only that he was suddenly right in front of her, and that she was crouched before him, her hands on his denim-covered thighs. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to cry–”

              He caught her face in his hands and kissed her, drew her up against him and pulled her astride his lap so he could get better access, crack her jaw wide with his lips and taste the inside of her mouth.

              His hands moved down her neck, her shoulders, until they were on her hips and pulling her in tighter. His tongue flicked against the roof of her mouth the same moment his hips lifted into her.

              Maybe he was lying about wanting her long-term, but he wanted her now; she could feel the evidence against the inside of her thigh. And maybe she shouldn’t have, but she wanted him just as badly.

              His hands slid forward, skimming beneath her shirt across the sensitive bare skin of her belly, finding the button of her shorts and thumbing it open. He teased the zipper down, slid a thumb into the opening, found her clit through her panties with devastating accuracy.

              She tilted her hips forward, seeking his touch, urging him to go further.

              He pulled back from her mouth, pressed a kiss to her jaw, beneath her ear, his stubble prickling at her skin. A low, throaty whisper, right at her earlobe: “Do you ride anything besides horses?”

              She didn’t recognize her own voice, the ache in it. “
Yes
.”

              She hated that she had to climb off of him and stand to ditch her shorts. But then she was straddling his lap again, knees against the seat of the chair so she’d have leverage, and his hands were sliding up her bare thighs. “I have a magic trick for you: get a condom out of your pocket while you’re sitting down, ‘cause I’m not getting up again,” she teased, wrapping her arms around his neck.

              He grinned and lifted one hand, Trojan packet held between two fingers. “Way ahead of you.”

              Her fingers trembled with anticipation as she unfastened his belt and jeans, took him in-hand and did the honors with the condom.

              It had never been this way with a man before, like that persistent emptiness inside her shifted, so she needed more than a hug, a kind word, those small tokens she limped along with. With Walsh, it became this acute need; she wanted him inside her, wanted the pleasure to be her comfort, her stand-in for love. Wanted him specifically, just him, his hands on her as she sank slowly down, taking him deep, relishing the sense of being filled, loving his sharp indrawn breath as her sex gripped his cock tight.

              “Jesus,” he whispered, and his fingers bit into her hips.

              Emmie flattened her hands on top of his shoulders and lifted, and lowered. Found a rhythm. It was nothing and everything like riding, and her thighs knew the tension to hold, and her muscles were primed for this kind of joining. The tension built in slow, gossamer tides, and she felt like she could have spent hours building it, little by little, sustaining the teases of pleasure without reaching the crest.

              She didn’t want it to be over.

              But apparently, Walsh wasn’t going to let her do all the steering.

              He hooked his hands behind her knees and pulled her legs straight on either side of his hips, so she was sitting on his lap, fully impaled, the penetration impossibly deep, and wholly within his control.

              “Walsh,” she said on a gasp, not sure if it was a question or a plea. She didn’t want it to stop. She wanted –

              “Trust me, love,” he murmured, and eased her upper body back, back, back…until she was lying across the tabletop.

              Completely vulnerable. Stretched out. At his mercy.

              “Walsh,” she said again, and he rolled his hips, lifting into her, the penetration at a new angle. “Oh,” she said, and then she bit down hard on her lip as he moved again.

              His hands glided up beneath her shirt, bundling it, pushing it above her breasts. He unclasped her bra with an efficient move and pushed it up too, so she was naked to his eyes, bent back like a sacrificial offering.

              She was more than ready to play the lamb, especially as his hands closed over her breasts. He shaped them in his palms, teased her nipples to tight buttons.

              She lifted into his touch, shameless and gasping.

              Endless teasing, petting. And when she thought she’d shatter with waiting, he lifted her with two firm hands on her thighs and surged to his feet, driving forward hard with his hips, pinning her down to the table.

              It was a small table, and her head hung off the far side, but she didn’t care. The first real man to come into her life was about to make her come, and it was going to be earth-shattering.

              She clutched at his shoulders as the spasms hit her, wrapped her legs around his waist.

             
Mind-blowing
was too polite a word.

              And after – after, he was so sweet, and cradled her in his arms, carried her to bed. He stripped naked and climbed in beside her, pulling her in close, tucking her head beneath his chin.

              All her life, Emmie had wondered why women allowed themselves to become entangled with heartbreaking, poisonous men. Law-breakers and chain-smokers.

              Now she knew. As he switched off the lamp and darkness bathed their sweat-damp bodies, she understood completely.

~*~

One second Walsh was deep asleep, dreaming about soft, feminine sounds of pleasure, and the next he was fully awake, staring through the dark, his arm wrapped around a warm, narrow waist.

              “What was that?” Emmie whispered, and he knew she was awake too.

              “Dunno. Sounded like one of the horses maybe.”

              As if on cue, the sound echoed again below them, and it was indeed equine: a short, unhappy snort. Followed by the strike of a hoof against a wooden stall door.

              The covers rustled and Emmie slid away from him, sitting up as a dark shadow against the timber wall. “I better go check.”

              Given Michael and Mercy’s peeping tom complaints, Walsh wasn’t betting on a coincidence. “Not alone you’re not.” His head reeled as he sat up, but he told it to cooperate.

              He fumbled around and managed to pull his jeans on, found his gun in his cut, where he’d left it.

              When Emmie flicked the lights on, he saw that she was wearing his shirt and had tugged on a pair of soft cotton shorts. She pushed her hair back and stepped into her ugly brown clogs. “You don’t have to come,” she insisted.

              “Yeah, I do. And I’m going first.” Belt done up, boots on, gun in hand, that was the best he could do for the moment. “You got a torch?”

              “A – oh, a flashlight, yeah.” She produced one from a kitchen drawer and handed it over. “You’re armed?” Her face compressed and became impossible to read as she stared at the Glock in his right hand.

              “That a problem?”

              “Just unnecessary.”

              “We’ll see.”

              A black stretch of shadow lay at the bottom of her staircase. The moon was up, and pale light lit every window and both wide doors at either end of the aisle, but the center was blackness, filled with the restless shifting of animals, at least most of which were horses. Walsh had a prickling up the back of his neck that told him at least one human was here, too.

              “Stay behind me,” he whispered.

              She snorted. “Yeah. I’ll do that, Hercules.”

              “I’m serious, Em.”

              There was a scuffle of noise like footsteps on the concrete aisle.

              Walsh clicked on the torch and flashed its beam in a fast arc, his Glock at the ready below it, police-style.

              Nothing.

              But still, his skin crawled like someone was watching him, like maybe someone lurked just out of sight. He was never wrong about that sensation, and so he stood, sweeping the aisle with the light, hand tight on the gun.

              “Good Lord,” Emmie said and ducked around him. “We’re not in a detective movie.” She hit the lights and they came on with a dull hum, flooding the barn with fluorescent glare.

              He winced against the onslaught. “I thought I told you to stay behind me.”

              “I need to make sure the horses are alright.” She paused in her walk down the aisle, turned and gave him a wide-eyed look. “Does this sort of thing happen to you all the time? Does being a Lean Dog inspire a lot of nights like this?” She gestured toward him.

              He lowered the gun and torch. “No,” he lied. “But it’s best not to be an idiot about weird noises in the middle of the night.”

              She gave him a funny look, mouth tucked to one side.

              “Check the horses. I’ll have a look around.”

              She nodded.

              Nothing struck him as out of the ordinary as he circled the barn. He flushed a fox from the shrubs around one of the outbuildings, but otherwise all was still. He walked through the back barn doors and found Emmie standing in front of her horse’s stall, tickling at his chin with her fingertips and saying something low and baby-talkish to him. She filled out his shirt in a completely different way than he did, the chest stretched tight, the shoulders, sleeves, and everything else too baggy for her. She looked tan, fit, young and wholesome, with a little edge of freshly-fucked around the edges.

             
Reaching above your means again
, he told himself. So what if she didn’t have any plans now. Was that any excuse to take her future for himself?

              His phone rang, the sound blaring in the quiet, startling Emmie. Her finger-raked curls flared around her head as she turned to face him, and he was struck by the urge to wrap them around his hands again.

              Later.

              The screen ID’d the caller as Mercy and his stomach tightened. It was almost midnight, which meant this wasn’t a social call.

              “Yeah?”

              Mercy’s normally-jovial voice was grim on the other end of the line. “Fisher’s dead.”

              “Shit. How?”

              “Someone put a bullet through his brain. He was supposed to meet Ratchet tonight, and when he didn’t show up, Ratch went looking. Found him at his place, very dead, very fresh.”

              “Ah, Christ…”

              The little dealer had his faults – housekeeping and personal hygiene among them – but they all bore a certain affection for the weasel.               “What’s to be done?” Walsh asked, mindful of the way Emmie’s eyes rested on him.

              “Ghost doesn’t want to call the PD – too many connections with us. And the guy’s got no family to cry for the news cameras. We’re gonna bring him to the property. Meet us there in fifteen?”

              “Yeah.”

              When he disconnected, Emmie stepped toward him. “What’s wrong?”

              “Nothing.” He slipped the phone in his pocket and met her halfway, settled his hands on her hips and pulled her in close. “Club stuff.”

              “Oh.” The way she said it was like cold water across him, her doubt and apprehension.

              But he loved the dewy look of her bottom lip and the way her eyes tracked all across his face like she was trying to read him. She wouldn’t be able to do it successfully, but the effort was nice.

              “You go back to bed, love.”

              Her hands landed on his bare chest, small and warm. “You’re not coming with me?”

              Damn, he wanted to.

              “No, baby.” He leaned in and kissed her. She had a soft mouth, and she liked to kiss. She was eager and pliant. “I’ve gotta go somewhere. Which means” – he reached beneath the shirt, wrapped his hands around the narrowest part of her waist – “I’m gonna need this back.”

              He drew the shirt up so fast she had no choice but to lift her arms free with a startled gasp.

              She didn’t cover herself, though. She matched his stare and hooked her fingers in the front of his belt, titling her upper body so her raised nipples brushed his chest.

              “Will you be back before morning?” she asked in a throaty, thoroughly aroused voice that rubbed hard against his self-control.

              He gritted his teeth against temptation – and then finally gave in a little. He covered her breasts with his hands, kissed her again, let her feel the warm slide of his tongue in her mouth. “Yeah,” he said as he pulled back, feeling out of breath. “Yeah. But you go back up.” The situation pushed back against his lust. “And for Christsakes, don’t go wandering around in the dark by yourself, yeah? Be careful.”