Twelve
Iwas standing outside getting the mail, after being on the phone with Caleb Reid for half an hour, waving at the uniformed policeman sitting in the cruiser in front of my building, when I heard the roar of Sam’s SUV behind me.
Even though I was in nothing but jeans and a T-shirt, I waited for him.
It was nice that, as soon as he saw me, his smile was huge.
I watched him parallel park his monster vehicle, which I was always amazed that he could do, and saw him climb down out of the cab.
“What are you doing out here?” he called over to me as he started across the lawn that kids played on in front of the building, waving to the patrol officers just like I had.
“Just enjoying the view,” I said, hearing the alarm chirp as he pocketed his keys.
He gave me a look like I was crazy, gesturing around at the gray sky, barren trees, and slushy sidewalks. “What view, baby?”
I pointed at him. Just looking at him made me happy.
The swagger in his walk, the fluid way he moved, the easy-to-spot confidence, and the heat that just radiated off the man.
I should have been embarrassed that I was standing there sighing like a lovesick schoolgirl, but I had no pride where he was concerned.
His wicked grin nearly stopped my heart.
“Hi, baby,” he said as he reached me, hand instantly on my bicep, rubbing gently. “Let’s go inside before you freeze.”
I looked him up and down. He looked really good. “Jeans to work today?”
“I’m on a stakeout.”
“Oh.” I nodded, unable to take my eyes off him.
“Baby, you’re not even wearing any shoes.” He scowled, turning me around and gently shoving me toward the front door of the building.
“I’ll live, Sam.” I chuckled, letting him move me through the door, grab my hand, and tug me toward the stairs. “I promise I won’t freeze to death before your eyes.”
He leaned in close to kiss the side of my neck. His warm breath made me shiver. “See? You’re cold. You shouldn’t be out here in just—”
“You’re making me shiver, not the cold.”
He nodded as we started up the stairs. As we walked down the hall, my neighbors, Lisa and Steven, came out of their apartment. Odd that they were there in the middle of the day. Maybe it was a little afternoon delight.
“Jory,” Lisa called out to me, smiling big.
“Hey.” I smiled back at her, not making any move to stop.
“Hi.” Steven stopped Sam, putting out his hand when he was close enough. “I’m Steven Warren, this is Lisa Tate—we live across the hall.”
“Good to meet you,” Sam said, taking his hand, shaking it. “I’m Sam Kage.”
“I’ve been seeing you around a lot, Sam.” Lisa smiled at him. “Are you the man in Jory’s life now?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said huskily, and I saw her take a breath. The man was gorgeous; she’d have to be blind not to notice. “I’m the old…new guy.”
She smiled. “Sounds like there’s a story there.”
“Yep, there is.” His grin was wicked, and she lit up like a Christmas tree.
“Well, I’m so pleased. Jory’s a wonderful guy—he deserves to be happy.”
“Thank you,” I said gently as Sam shoved me forward.
“Nice to meet you,” he said absently, kissing the side of my neck. “Hurry up.”
I didn’t turn back around.
Once we were inside the apartment, I locked the door behind us and watched him walk through the living room to the kitchen. “You didn’t leave the house dressed like that this morning. I would’ve remembered.”
“You didn’t see me this morning—you were dead to the world. I was hoping you’d sleep a lot longer.”
“You should change before you go back to work.”
“Why’s that?” He wanted to know as he shed his peacoat to reveal a henley that could have been mine for how tight it was.
All I saw were bulging biceps and rippling abs, the material clinging to him like a second skin. The gun holster with the Glock in it just added to the whole presence of the man. He was dangerous and sexy, and I felt the blood racing to my groin. I had trouble breathing. “Christ.”
“You all right?” He glanced up at me as he pulled lunch out of the brown paper bag he’d carried in. Little did he know I was using quite a bit of willpower to not cross the room and lunge at him.
“Fine.”
“I got Italian,” he explained, giving me a quick smile. “You’re not eating like normal lately, so I thought some fettuccine, since it’s your favorite and… What?”
“What?”
“I dunno. You’re lookin’ at me all weird.”
“Am I?”
“Yeah. Are you sure you’re all right? Do you need to lie down?”
“I—”
“Do you need me to hold you down?” he teased me, smiling wickedly, one eyebrow arched.
“Sam—”
“What, baby?”
“Can you come here, please?”
He moved fast, crossing the floor to me, and I liked that—loved that he was eager to be close to me.
“What’s the matter, J?”
I didn’t answer; instead I leaned up and kissed him, capturing his bottom lip gently between my teeth.
The soft growl from him made me smile. He was a very sensual creature, my detective, and I enjoyed that to no end.
“I think you need me.”
I smiled up at him, my hand on his belt buckle.
“Stop, or you’ll be sorry.”
“Never sorry. Ravaged before lunch hopefully, but never sorry.”
“J…you’re tempting fate,” he said, his hands moving to my hips, his fingers slowly slipping under the waistband of my jeans, around front to the fly.
“God, I hope so.”
“You should be more careful.” He tipped my chin up with his nose, leaning in to kiss my throat as he undid the buttons on my jeans.
“Sam.” I shivered.
“Shouldn’t have teased me… Warned you not to,” he growled in my ear before he let out a soft groan when he cupped my ass. “No underwear—definitely tempting fate.”
“I didn’t want you to go to work today.”
“And I didn’t want to go,” he told me. “Look at me.”
When I lifted my head to look at his face, he bent and kissed me. He wasn’t gentle, the kiss instead deep and claiming. I barely got out his name before I was dragged to the kitchen table, spun around, and bent over it, face down. My jeans were yanked to my ankles, the T-shirt roughly pulled off.
“Don’t you move.” It was a threat.
I didn’t want to move, so I stayed there, frozen, as he rifled through a drawer behind me.
“Did you know I keep lube in the kitchen?” he asked cheerfully as I heard the pop-top open.
I had to smile at him in the middle of our torrid sex scene. The man was just too cute.
“What?”
“You’re just always prepared, Sam.”
“I’m trained to be that way,” he said with mock seriousness.
“I love you.”
“I love you too,” he said before he bit the back of my neck.
The moan that tore out of me went right through him, arousing him like I knew it would, his hands hard and demanding on my body.
Sam loved all the noises I made, loved my submissiveness and how I craved him.
I loved how rough he was with me, manhandling me, how he bit and licked and kissed me, my skin under his hands driving him wild with a need to mark it all as his.
“Look at you,” he breathed against my ear. “Head thrown back, trembling, all ready for me. You’re so beautiful, J, and you’re mine.”
“Please, Sam…please.”
I didn’t have time to think before he moved, his slick hand going around my cock, taking hold of me, his mouth on my shoulder, over his name, biting down gently, his chest pressed to my back. I cried out when he thrust forward, sliding all the way into me.
“Jory,” he groaned, and it came from his gut, down deep. “Baby.”
“Sam.” I whimpered, arching back into him, impaling myself deeper, grabbing the hand he had braced on my hip and using it to pull his arm around my neck. I wanted him to clutch me tight, hold me close.
He drove into me, forcing me down onto the table, bending me in half and lifting me off the floor as he thrust deep. I called his name, and he told me to yell louder, kissing down the side of my neck, his body molding to mine.
His name bounced off the walls of our apartment.
Afterward, he gathered me close and kissed me until I thought my head was going to explode.
I was sure, I told him, that not having air caused brain damage.
He couldn’t have cared less. He sacrificed one of our dish towels to clean me up, then dragged me to the couch and pulled me down, still naked, into his lap.
I felt so good. I never wanted him to leave.
“I had no idea tight jeans made you so hot, J. I’ll hafta file that away for future reference.”
“Sam, I—”
“God, I love having you in my lap.”
I simply stared at him.
“You know what the sexiest thing about you is?” he asked, massaging my ass, shifting me forward over his groin.
“My ass?” I teased him as he kissed my nose and my cheeks and my forehead.
“No.” He pulled back to look at my face. “Your eyes. They’re never completely open, always half-open like you just got fucked. Like minutes before, you were in bed.”
I smiled at him. “That’s lovely, thank you.”
“You’re being sarcastic, but I’m serious.”
I grunted.
“They’re sexy as hell, your bedroom eyes.”
“As long as you think so.”
“And your mouth… You have the most beautiful lips…”
I put my hands flat on his chest, feeling the sculpted muscles under my palms.
“And your skin and your ass.”
“See?” I scoffed. “I knew you’d get around to my ass eventually.”
“But seriously,” he said, hands on my face as he eased me forward, tilting my head at the last moment so he could kiss up my throat, “your eyes kill me. They burn me up every time.”
I trembled under his hands. The man was so sexy, and he had no clue.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I got a call from Aaron Sutter today.”
“You did?”
“Yessir, I did.” I smiled at him.
“And?”
“And nothing. He just wanted to make sure I was all right, and he wanted to apologize for the fight we had the last time he saw me.”
“What else?”
“Nothing else, he just apologized. It was nice of him.”
He nodded. “I don’t want him around, Jory.”
“He won’t be.”
“He didn’t want to see you?”
“I told him I’d be back to work next week and that he could gimme a call then.”
“And he just let you blow him off?”
“I didn’t blow him off. I just told him that we could talk next week.”
He smiled before clutching me to him, pressing me to his chest, his hands on my back. I wrapped my arms around his neck, holding him tight. His warm skin felt like heaven.
“It’s nice that he was worried about you, J, but I repeat, I don’t want the man around,” he said as his fingers slid up the back of my neck into my hair.
“I know, don’t worry.”
“You belong to me. I say when, and if, he can see you.”
I snuggled in tighter against him. “I should hate that, but I don’t.”
“Hate what?”
“You telling me what to do.”
“Like I fuckin’ care what you like or don’t.”
He was adorable. “Don’t swear.”
The backs of his fingers slid under my chin, and when it was lifted, his mouth settled over mine. He kissed me lazily, his tongue tangling with mine, and I was content not to move and let him.
“Hey, hold this.”
I couldn’t stifle my chuckle as I was passed the lube. “You are seriously scary.”
“You talk too much. Lift up,” he said as he pushed his jeans and briefs down to his knees with one hand and took the lube from me with the other.
“Don’t you hafta go back to work?”
“After.”
When I lowered myself over him, I watched his head roll back on his shoulders, the way his chest constricted, and the slight tremble that ran through his frame. There was a sense of power that came with knowing that I caused all that. His reaction to me was honest. He couldn’t fake it.
“You like me.” I smiled, looking at his closed eyes, watching him wet his lips, hearing his shaky breathing. “You like doing this to me.”
His hand ran down my abdomen to my cock; the fingers stroking me felt incredible.
“My beautiful baby,” he said softly. “Love being inside you.”
I loved it too.
“You’re never gonna leave me.”
And there was something solid and comforting about his declaration, because I tended to test the limits of what I could do, and he was telling me that whatever drama or stunts were thrown his way, he would endure.
He was strong. I wouldn’t wear him down.
I couldn’t get him to stop loving me like every other guy had before.
“Kiss me.”
And when I did, when I slanted my mouth over his, kissing him hard and deep, I heard the sigh of contentment come up from his gut.
“God, I love you,” he groaned.
I told him the feeling was mutual.
Two hours later, after I had him cleaned up and changed into a long-sleeved button-down shirt over the T-shirt, I walked him back down to the front stoop.
I received a bruising, thorough kiss that left me breathless, and waved like a crazy person when he got near his car.
I heard the chirp of the alarm… and then the SUV exploded.
It was so fast. It was there one second, gone the next—the flame turning into a fireball that blew over the top of the next car and died in the snow beyond it.
I heard dogs barking and every car alarm on the street blaring as I ran in the sneakers he’d made me put on across the lawn to the sidewalk, then to the street.
The two patrol officers were already there, one checking on Sam, the other on his radio.
My heartbeat was pounding in my ears. I was conscious of my panting breath and the way my heart felt—like a knife had been driven through it.
There was a smell like rubber burning, and the truck itself was now a charred, twisted piece of metal.
Sam was lying on his back in the street, and I fell to my knees beside him.
I put my head on his chest, but I couldn’t hear anything.
The officer was talking to me, but I couldn’t understand a word.
I touched Sam everywhere at once, checking for signs of life.
It was surreal, and I kept looking around for something I could point to and know I was dreaming.
I had bruises on my skin that he’d put there just an hour ago, my lips were still tender from his kisses, and now he barely had a pulse as he lay there, unconscious and bleeding in the street.
I rifled through his peacoat, but when I found his cell phone, it was smashed, the display black.
I started screaming then, and the officer crouched down beside me.
I should have run back inside, I should have left him to get help, but I couldn’t.
I couldn’t leave his side. I could only sit there. It was a relief to hear all the sirens.