Chapter 24
For not the first time since I’d started sleeping in Jared’s room, the alarm was an unwelcome noise waking us both from dreaming. I didn’t mind getting up before the crack of dawn, but this past week … it was almost a physical pain being dragged from the warmth of Jared’s embrace.
He rolled over and the arm that had been slung over my waist, holding me close, disappeared to switch off the alarm. Then he was back, smoothing a hand down my hip as he brushed a tender kiss across my naked shoulder. “Why don’t you sleep in this morning?” he offered, his voice raspy with sleep. “I’ll take care of the chickens.”
It was sweet of him, considering we’d only had a few hours’ sleep because of sex, but I wanted to pull my weight. No one was ever going to accuse me of being a spoiled, pampered princess. I turned my head to catch his jaw with a kiss, his beard tickling my lips. “No, I’m getting up.” At least during the summer it was warm. I could only imagine how much harder it was going to be to get out of bed in the height of a Highland winter.
We conserved time and water by showering together. Though we couldn’t linger, I still enjoyed smoothing shower wash over Jared’s pecs and abs. When my hand dipped lower, he laughed and grabbed my wrist.
“If you keep touching me, I’m going to be late to meet Georgie.”
Granting him mercy, I chuckled and stopped feeling up my husband. It was only serving to get me hot and bothered too. Once we were dressed and out of the shower, however, Jared decided he wanted to play the tormentor. Making breakfast together in the kitchen, he kept pressing his body to mine and trailing his fingertips across the bare skin between my tank and shorts.
“Stop!” I laughed as he leaned into me to watch me butter toast. His cock was hard against my ass.
Instead of stopping, Jared gripped my hips and nuzzled my neck. “I’m thinking I should be late for Georgie after all.”
I gasped as he nudged into me. That’s all it took for the fire of want to ignite. “I think so too.” Pushing the plate of toast away, I fumbled for the button on my jean shorts. Within seconds I’d pushed them and my underwear down.
Jared hissed, cupping my bare ass in his large hands. “You excite the hell out of me.” His fingers slipped down and pushed inside, testing me. “Fuck.” I heard him fumble with his clothing, heard the condom wrapper crinkle as my fingernails bit into the kitchen counter with anticipation.
He nudged my ankles apart as far as they would go with my shorts and underwear wrapped around them, gripped my hip with one hand, and then turned my head up to the side. Jared crushed my lips beneath his, his beard tickling and rasping against my skin, as he surged into me. I gasped into his mouth at the overwhelming fullness. Our kiss broke as this insatiable thing between us exploded beyond our control. Suddenly, Jared spun me, pushing me belly down over the kitchen table. He took my hips in both hands and began fucking me.
I became nothing but my body and how he made me feel. Hot and needy and desperate. I had to push up onto my palms to take the powerful thrust of his cock. “Yes!” I kept crying over and over again in my mindless want.
“Look at you,” Jared’s voice rumbled at my back. “Look at you take me.” His hands cupped the globes of my ass and squeezed. “So fucking perfect. So fucking …” He growled suddenly, his hips snapping faster against me. “Come. Baby, come.”
He was losing it. And the evidence that I turned him on that much was enough to send me over the edge. I screamed my release, my arms giving out as I slumped against the table, the wood cool against my cheek.
“Allegra!” Jared bellowed seconds before he shuddered over me, his cock throbbing inside me as he came.
Suddenly, I imagined what we must look like right now and I began to laugh quietly.
I heard Jared’s amused grunt. “Should I take offense?”
I laughed harder, the sound only broken by a gasp of sensation as Jared pulled out. Pushing up off the table, I turned to him, getting tangled in my shorts. He disposed of the used condom as I pulled my clothes back up.
“I’m just laughing at our inability to get through an hour without jumping each other.”
He grinned as he crossed the room, fixing his own clothes before he reached me. Sliding his arms around my waist, he tugged me against him until my palms rested on his broad chest. “I can’t help it with you.”
Looking up into his eyes, seeing the tenderness in them, made my heart pound. Sometimes I couldn’t believe that Jared had agreed to give our marriage a real shot. Sex with no strings? Yes, I could absolutely see him agreeing to that. But with me, he wanted more. What he said last night were the most beautiful things anyone had ever said to me. He was the first man to make me feel like I was so much more than the face and body I owed to genetics and nothing else.
Whatever he saw in my eyes made him bend his head to press a soft, sweet kiss to my mouth. Soon it turned into more, our tongues touching, licking. With an agitated sigh against my mouth, Jared pulled back.
“I know.” I smoothed a soothing hand over his chest. “We need to get to work.”
“I wish we could stay here all day.”
“I know,” I promised him. “Me too. But we need to adult now. In a different way to how we just adulted on the kitchen table.”
Laughing, he let me go with one last squeeze of my hip. “Let’s get to it.”
Since we’d already lingered too long this morning, we shoveled down our breakfast and I left Jared in the mudroom to go feed and water the chickens.
I knew almost immediately something was wrong because the chickens and I had become best buddies over the last few weeks. I knew their habits well, in particular, a hen I now called Ginger. She was my bird soul mate. She and her best buddy, Babs, adored me and would come running as soon as they heard the mudroom door open. I’d chat away and they’d preen as I cooed compliments at them. They were more interested in following me as I walked around the henhouse than even the food and water I brought them. They’d sit and watch me for hours whenever I decided to sketch in the backyard.
This morning, however, there was no running. No clucking with excitement. In fact, now that I thought about it … the rooster, Cogburn, hadn’t made a sound this morning either.
“Jared!” I called, panic suffusing his name as I hurried toward the henhouse. The sight of two hens lying motionless inside the run had me screaming, “Jared!”
As I opened the main door to the henhouse, I heard Jared shouting my name in return, his footsteps pounding toward me. “Fuck.” I heard him curse, having clearly seen the chickens.
The sight that greeted me inside the house made me burst into tears.
They were all motionless, lying among one another. Stiff and unmoving. Ginger, Babs, Cogburn, all of them.
I reeled backward and turned, smacking into Jared. While he checked out the house, I stumbled away, unable to stop the tears streaming down my face.
Jared straightened. His face was pale and taut with anger. Whatever he was feeling, however, he put on hold. Bridging the distance between us, he pulled me into his arms and I clung to him, sobbing.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he whispered, his own voice cracking with emotion.
“W-what … w-hat h-h-happened?” I stuttered through my tears.
“I don’t know.” His arms tightened around me. “I don’t know.”
The two police constables were pissing me off.
After Jared called the vet out, she examined the birds and said she’d need to do a postmortem on one to be sure, but they displayed symptoms of cyanide poisoning. We found traces of food in their troughs that we hadn’t put there.
“You think the food was poisoned?”
Jared had nodded grimly. “We’ll bag it up, get it tested.”
That had made me cry all over again because who would want to hurt my chickens? The image of them lying dead together in the henhouse haunted me and I kept having to bite back tears. I was a farmer’s wife, for goodness’ sake. Shouldn’t I be better at dealing with this? I wasn’t, though.
My chest ached.
And right now, it also burned with fiery anger at the blasé way the cops were treating the situation.
“I mean, it’s possible someone just left out some food that’s bad for them, right?” The younger of the two police officers shrugged, looking so bored I wanted to slap the expression off his face.
“No, it’s not,” Jared snapped, clearly sick of their attitude too.
“Well …” The older constable sighed heavily. “I don’t really know what we can do here. This doesn’t seem like a crime but an accident.”
“Aye.” The other broke a smile. “And it seems only fair since I can’t count the times I’ve had chicken poisoning.”
He did not just say that.
“Hey!” I took a step toward the young officer. “Show some respect. Those chickens were important to us. To me. And someone killed them. Do you honestly think it’s a coincidence that all our chickens were poisoned within a week or so of one of our ewes having her throat slashed?”
The younger officer blanched as he glanced guiltily at the older police officer. The older PC cleared his throat in embarrassment. “Uh, well, we weren’t aware of that.”
Jared threw up his hands in agitation. “Fucking great. Absolutely useless.”
“There’s no need to be rude.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “Says the police officer who laughed at the mass execution of farm animals.”
“I think you’re being a bit melodramatic. Typical American.” He snort-huffed.
“Don’t”—Jared took a menacing step toward him—“talk to my wife like that.”
“And don’t try to intimidate a police officer.” The older man glared angrily at my husband.
“Get off my farm.” Jared gestured to the front of the house. “And heads-up, I’ll be filing a complaint against you both. I’m good friends with Chief Inspector Jim Rowley at Inverness. I’ll be sure to let him know how utterly useless and disrespectful you’ve both been.”
The younger paled even further while the other PC just sneered and stormed off. His partner followed him with another glance of worry over his shoulder.
I moved to Jared, sliding my arm around his waist. He immediately curled me into his chest as we watched the officers get in their patrol car and drive off.
“What now?”
“I wasn’t lying. Jim Rowley used to be a PC at Tain. He and Granddad were good friends their whole lives. Jim worked his way up to chief inspector. I didn’t want to call him about the ewe because I wasn’t sure it was something. But now with this, I think we need his help. And he needs to know he has two arseholes among his ranks. He’s a good man. He won’t stand for it.”
Worry knotted in my gut. “Who could be doing this, Jared?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s my father.”
I squeezed my eyes closed, hating that so much for him.
“I’m sorry.” The sorrow and guilt in his voice had me lifting my head to look at him.
“Why are you sorry?”
“I know you loved them.” He gave me a sad smile. “’Specially Ginger.”
My eyes flooded with tears. “It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault.” My fingers gripped his shirt, desperate for him to hear me. “And I need to get better at dealing with things like this. My husband is a farmer. I need to toughen up.”
“No.” His voice was sharp as he cupped my cheek. Expression fierce, he insisted, “Don’t ever change. It isn’t weak to care. And nothing should have happened to those birds. Nothing.” Jared glanced sharply back at the house. “Whoever did it was on our land while we were in the house and we didn’t hear a thing.”
Too busy caught up in each other, that’s why.
Guilt flashed through me.
“My grandfather never installed a security system. He has a rifle cabinet. We were the security.” He looked down at me, and I saw the thoughts whirring behind his eyes. “But we need to install a system that includes a few cameras. If it was just me … but I won’t chance anything happening with you in the house.”
Fear flickered through me. “Do you think it could go that far?”
“No.” He gripped my shoulders. “Hamish doesn’t have it in him to physically hurt us. He’s just messing with me. But still, I won’t take a chance with you in the house. Plus”—fury glittered in his pale jade eyes—“I want to catch the bastard in the act.”