Chapter Sixteen
Stormy
G od, he is so fucking fine.
Staring at me like I’m the most perfect thing he’s ever seen does my head in. How is it I’ve gone my entire life thinking I knew anything about the male species when men like Copper existed? He’s nothing like I’ve ever known and I’m thankful. With Copper, he wants me. Needs me. Craves me. I’ve never felt so desired by another person before and that’s saying a lot considering most men just see me as someone they’d like to fuck.
Copper wants all of me.
The good. The bad. The ugly.
It’s as though he wants to burrow his way deep inside me, exposing every part of me, and turning it inside out so he can understand it. No one has ever wanted to know the real Brenda Gale. No one. And it’s not always their fault. I’m notorious for keeping people at a distance, but Copper is the only one who shoved past my barriers and stormed inside.
“I found some stuff,” I murmur, whimpering when his thumbs hook into my yoga pants and begins sliding them down.
“Mmm?” he rumbles. “Me too.”
“Probably can’t wait.”
“This can’t wait.” He presses his hard dick, that’s still wet from my mouth, against my stomach. “This is the first thing on our agenda.”
I should tell him what I found today, but he’s right. It can wait a little while longer.
“How are you hard already?” I gasp when his teeth find my neck at the same time his palms grab my ass. “You’re too old to be this horny.”
He smacks my ass. “I’m not old. Especially not in the bedroom. Now hold on so I can fuck you.”
I wrap my hands around his neck and kick out of my pants at my ankles. He lifts me up, urging me to hook my legs around his waist. A yelp escapes me when my back meets the cold bathroom wall. Copper reaches between us to grab hold of his dick and then directs it into my slick pussy. We both moan as he slowly pushes into me, filling me to the brink. My fingernails claw at his neck just below his hairline.
“God, this will never get old,” I rasp out. “Don’t go slow.”
His lips find my neck and he sucks on the flesh while his hips piston in a fast, violent way. He’s so thick and long, I know he’s bruising parts of me inside that don’t normally see this sort of abuse. All I can do is hang on and enjoy the wild ride. His hand holding my ass up digs brutally into my flesh, causing me to whimper.
“Fuck, baby,” he grunts out. “So fucking perfect.”
I melt under his sweet words, giving every thought and pleasure-filled quiver to this man. He sucks me into this vortex that is him and I let him. We disappear together. Lost in the madness. It doesn’t take long before the constant grinding against my G-spot inside me has me keening. I’ve never been with a man so big, he rubs all the good parts of me inside all at once. It’s insanely erotic and beyond my wildest fantasies. Too easily, he drives me to the edge and pushes me off with no remorse. I scream out his name, trembling with ecstasy.
He groans, his body stiffening, and then he rips out of me with a roar. Hot cum jets up between us, wetting my stomach as he slides his throbbing cock between the lips of my pussy. I’m empty without him inside me and I wish he’d never pulled out.
For a long, quiet minute, he holds me up, pressing soft kisses to my neck. I gently run my fingers through the soft hairs at the nape of his neck. This man is going to be the death of me and I’m not even mad about it.
“Get cleaned up,” he murmurs near my ear and then nips the lobe. “I’ll get the grill going. We can have steak and talk about what you found.”
He sets me to my feet, looking completely unaffected compared to my wrecked state. I’ve just been fucked breathless and he’s ready to go cook steak. Unbelievable. And here I thought I’d give his ass a hard time about being old. I’m the one who can’t keep up.
“Cute as hell when you’re just fucked.” He smirks and drops a kiss on my lips before sauntering out of the bathroom.
I shake away my daze, grab a hair tie to pull my hair into a messy bun, and then take a quick shower to rinse off the sweat and cum. By the time I’m out and dressed, I can hear Copper talking to his dogs in the kitchen. I walk into the kitchen to find Hansel begging shamelessly for the meat Copper’s prepping.
“Babies want a treat?” I coo, causing them both to bark.
Copper winks at me, making me melt, as I head to the pantry to grab their treats. Hansel tries to steal Gretel’s, but she nips at his nose, sending him scampering away like the big baby he is. Once they’re both happy to have gotten something to snack on, I grab a couple of beers from the fridge and hand one to Copper.
“How was work?” I prop a hip against the counter as I watch him marinade the steaks.
“Got put on a new case. My superior, Dan, has been holding out on me. It’s a big one.” He cocks a brow at me. “What did you find today?”
I take a long swig of my beer and then set it down. “You’re never going to believe this. So I got to thinking about Dragon and what Koyn said. If he was scared and most likely running from something, that would mean there might be people looking for him. Since Koyn found him in Arkansas, I started there, but then I moved to Tennessee. Koyn mentioned Dragon getting all weird when Memphis was mentioned.”
Copper stares at me in awe, which has me eager to tell him the rest.
“His name is Chase Everett Thomas,” I blurt out. “Missing since he was sixteen. And, holy shit, Copper, he was in a—”
“Male pageant?”
I blink at him in shock. “What the hell? How did you know that?”
“Grab that file,” he says, nodding to the one on the bar. “I found all the same shit out today at work.” He pauses, lifting a brow. “But, I have the resources. How did you figure this out?”
Sure enough, when I open the file, there is a sticky note with Copper’s chicken scratch detailing all he found, which is exactly what I came across. No freaking way.
“Memphis. It stuck out as odd to me when Katana mentioned it before and I even told you and Koyn I thought they came from there. The way Dragon got so pissed that day was a red flag. I started with missing persons reports and did an estimation on Dragon’s age now versus when he could have gone missing. I assumed he was a runaway maybe. Anyway, he has a remarkable face and once I narrowed down a period of a few years when this could have happened, I was able to scour through them all. Once I found out who he was and had a name, it was much easier to look him up.”
Copper nods, scratching at his jaw. “Sometimes I forget you were a Fed.”
“It all makes sense now,” I say to him, still staring at the file. “Vidal and Collins obviously scoped him out and lured him in with promises of making him a big star since that’s kind of their MO. He fell for it because most impressionable kids that age would and ended up in some shitshow they’re involved with. Whatever they did to him traumatized the hell out of him. Somehow, he must have escaped and landed on Koyn’s radar. He took them in. Those bastards are pissed he got away and either want to kill him or just want him back, which is why they were looking into you guys when I came to Collins’s office that day. We need to talk to Dragon so we can pull information out of him.”
Copper sighs as he washes his hands. “We can’t. Koyn is adamant as fuck about not dragging all this shit into the light.”
It doesn’t surprise me that Koyn is so protective over these guys. They’re all criminals, but he treats them like they’re his kids. I saw the way Koyn was when I lived there with my own two eyes. Loyal to a fault.
“Why does he have to be so damn difficult?” I complain.
“Because it’s his way.” He winks at me. “Let me go check the grill and then I’ll show you your present.”
All investigative thoughts dissipate.
“You got me a present?” I ask, dumfounded. No guy has ever gotten me a present of his own free will. I made Filter buy me shit all the time, but he always seemed put off by it.
“Two actually. Sit tight.”
While he disappears, I throw together a quick salad and toss a couple of potatoes in the microwave. I’m just pulling out toppings for the quick-baked potatoes when Copper returns with an Apple sack.
“What’s this?”
“Open it,” he instructs as he grabs the steaks. “Come out back with me.”
I loop the bag over my wrist and snag our beers before following him out onto the back deck. The lake sparkles in the early evening setting sun. So breathtaking and beautiful. I sigh as I sit in one of the comfy chairs and set the beers down on the table. Then, I set to pulling out the items in the bag.
A laptop and a phone.
Brand-new.
My throat closes up and I will myself not to cry. This is ridiculous. I will not get emotional about a damn computer and phone. A tear leaks out anyway.
Copper crouches down beside my chair, a frown on his handsome face. “I thought you’d like them. If they’re not the right color or model, I can return them.”
I swipe at my wet cheek and sniffle. “I love them.”
“Fucking women,” he grumbles. “Christ.”
A laugh bubbles out of me. “I’m due for my period. Shut up.”
“I wasn’t lying, Stormy.” He takes my hand in his. “I said this wasn’t going to be some half-ass attempt at a relationship. I’m putting a lot on the line to be with you, so if I’m going in, I’m going all in. That means when I want to talk to my goddamn girl in the middle of the day, I need to be able to get ahold of her.”
“I just wasn’t expecting this,” I choke out. “I feel so closed off from the world. This feels like a lifeline.”
Guilt shines in his eyes. “You have friends and family missing you?”
“Sadly, no friends.” I sigh. “I miss the twins. They’re used to me not talking to them for long spells, though. All it took was getting accused of trying to be their mom and I backed off. I keep up with them and shoot them the occasional email, but I try not to pry.”
“What do they think now that you’ve gone off the grid for so long?”
“Not sure. Probably just think I’m busy working.” I shrug and cast a glance at the sparkly lake. “I want to call them. Not now but soon.”
Copper stands and presses a kiss to my head. “You’re not a prisoner anymore.”
“Thank you.”
All through dinner, I replay Copper’s words. Here, just the two of us, I may not be a prisoner, but it doesn’t change what happened with Koyn and Filter. I’m sure the bro code protects me from Koyn—barely—but Filter has no allegiance to Copper. I feel like as long as I’m with Copper, I’ll always have to keep looking over my shoulder.
We’re just cleaning up when Copper’s phone rings.
“Hey,” he grunts out in greeting and then scowls. “What?”
Their conversation is short and then Copper ends the call.
“What’s wrong?” I demand, grabbing his hand and squeezing it.
He lets out a heavy sigh. “Something happened at Koyn’s compound. A couple of suits showed up. Pretended to be the authorities.”
“Collins and Vidal?”
“No. Too easy.”
“What did these guys have to say?”
“Not much. When they realized they’d been had, they pulled their guns out. Filter put them both down. Bullets in each of their heads.”
I imagine Filter with his god-like good looks all twisted into a furious glare, a gun in his hand. But instead of them, he’s pointing it at me. A shiver wracks through me.
Copper grips my jaw, angling my head up. “He won’t do shit to you.”
I blink at him in shock that he can so easily read me.
“Now let’s get your laptop set up. We have a lot of shit to dig into. Time to do what you were trained to, little storm. We’re going to bring these motherfuckers down.”