Chapter 8 #3
My knuckles go white on the wheel.
"That tells us something," she says. "Whoever broke into my car has access to that image. It wasn't released to press. It wasn't in any public record. Whoever has it was at Las Cruces and had access to the arena floor or the camera footage."
"Merrick's people."
"Merrick's people. Which means the intimidation is coming from the top, not from a low-level handler trying to cover his tracks."
She's right. This isn't some nervous bull handler sending a message. This is coordinated and calculated, the same operation that killed Grant and Tyler and made Vic disappear.
Back in Albuquerque, I park close to the entrance, under a working light. We walk to our room in silence, and I stay close enough that my arm brushes hers with every step.
She unlocks the door and turns to face me in the gap before I can follow her inside.
"Are you going to spend the rest of tonight hovering over me because you're worried, or are you going to take me to bed?"
"Yes."
The ghost of a smile crosses her face, a real one, brief and unguarded, and the sight of it lands somewhere deep in my gut.
I answer her by backing her through the door, kicking it shut with my boot, and turning the deadbolt without taking my mouth off hers. The lock clicks and my hand is already in her hair, pulling her head back until her throat is exposed and her pulse is hammering under my teeth.
The first time I touched her was about wanting. This is about keeping.
I bite down on the tendon in her neck. Not gentle. She hisses and grabs my belt with both hands, yanking me closer, and the sound she makes when I press her into the wall with my hips is permission and demand rolled into one.
"You're not leaving my sight." I say it into her throat. "Not tonight. Not tomorrow."
"That's not a conversation. That's a decree."
"Take it up with management." I strip off her clothes. My hand is between her thighs before the denim hits the floor, and she's already wet, already there, her body answering the threat the same way mine does — with adrenaline that needs somewhere to go.
I don't ease into her. I work her hard and fast with my fingers, my palm grinding against her clit, watching her face while the pleasure overrides the fear. Her back arches off the wall and her mouth falls open on a sound that bounces off the cheap motel ceiling.
"That's mine," I tell her. "That sound. Nobody else gets that."
"Possessive bastard."
"You're just figuring that out?"
I drop to my knees. Not to worship — to own. My mouth replaces my hand and I pin her hips to the wall when she tries to buck against my face. I take my time with it because making Kenna fall apart with my tongue is the one thing that shuts my brain off completely.
She comes with both hands fisted in my hair and my name cracking apart in her mouth. I don't let up. I keep going until her legs are shaking and she's pulling at my shoulders, oversensitive, trying to get away from the pressure.
I stand, lift her, and she wraps around me on instinct. I carry her to the bed and drop her on the mattress hard enough to bounce.
"Colt—"
"I'm not done." I strip my shirt, my belt, my jeans. She watches from the bed with flushed skin and dark eyes and her chest heaving, and the sight of Kenna wrecked and waiting in a bed I put her in does something territorial to my bloodstream.
I cover her body with mine and push into her in one stroke. Deep. She gasps and her nails dig into my shoulders, and I hold there, letting her feel every inch, letting the fullness register before I move.
When I move, it's not slow. The headboard hits the wall on the first thrust and doesn't stop. She wraps her legs around me and takes it, meets it, her hips rising to match the pace I'm setting.
Someone put a photograph of a dead man in her car as a warning. Someone out there thinks they can touch what's mine and I'll stand down. They’re wrong.
I drive into her harder and she cries out and pulls me closer, and every sound she makes is proof they're wrong.
She comes again, clenching around me so tight my vision whites out, and I follow her over with my face buried in the curve of her neck, my body locked against hers, emptying myself into her like I can leave something behind that marks her from the inside out.
After. Her breathing against my collarbone. My weight on her, too heavy, but she holds me there when I try to shift.
"Stay," she says.
I stay.
She presses back into me, laces her fingers through mine, and the last thing I feel before I fall asleep is the beat of her pulse against my forearm, steady and alive and close.
Tomorrow we’ll move faster and chase Rainey Weathers across state lines. We’ll dig deeper into Thornton's operation and get the evidence to the one person who can turn it into a case.
Tonight, the photograph in my jacket pocket burns against the back of the chair where I hung it, and the woman in my arms is breathing, and that's the only thing keeping me from driving to Merrick's house and ending this with my bare hands.