Chapter Eleven #2
Years of frustration and restraint exploded inside her.
Watching her drunken mother’s male friends paw at her mother.
Holding her sister while she sobbed because some bastard had taken advantage of her when she was wasted.
CJ was always the good girl, the one who cleaned up the mess—who did the right thing.
She didn’t want to do the right thing anymore. She wanted to go to that mind-numbing place. To forget everything else. She wanted Braddock to take her there. She’d dreamed of being with him for months even as she’d tried every tactic she knew to forget him.
Jesus Christ, why didn’t he do something? “What’re you waiting for?” Her voice was thick with need.
Those dark, dark eyes clashed with hers. She saw the desire there. He wanted her . . . no matter that he hesitated.
“You don’t want to do this,” he murmured.
A blast of fury ignited in her belly. “You don’t know a damned thing about what I want.
” She tugged his polo up and off. She had needs too.
Plunging her fingers into his hair, she pulled his face close to hers.
“Show me what you’ve got, Braddock. Maybe I’ll find out why my sister thought you were so goddamned amazing. ”
The words prodded the reaction she’d wanted.
He pushed her down on the sofa, tore open her slacks, and stripped them from her legs.
Looming above her, he stared at her panties a long moment, clearly surprised by the frilly, sexy underwear beneath all those conservative clothes she wore.
What the hell had he expected? She was a woman too.
Just because she didn’t screw every man she met, like her sister, didn’t make her less of a woman.
Then he ripped those lacy panties from her body. Anticipation roared inside her.
He kneed his way between her thighs. Wrenched open his trousers . . . and hesitated. “Changed your mind yet?”
“Shut up and do it.” She shoved his trousers and boxers down his hips.
He grabbed her hips, lifted her, then pushed fully inside her.
She forgot all else as she wrapped her legs around his and instinctively ground her pelvis against him. The fight drained fully out of her as they settled into that old-as-time rhythm.
Along with a heart-stopping orgasm that coincided with his, reality crashed around her. What the hell had she done?
He pulled out, righted his trousers, and stumbled off the sofa.
She snatched up her slacks, jerked them on. Tried to pull her blouse back together to cover herself. Obviously, I have lost my mind.
His gaze collided with hers and she recognized that she’d said the words aloud. She turned away, couldn’t look at him. Her face burned with embarrassment.
And she had no one to blame but herself.
“What . . .” He cleared his throat. “What had you running down the stairs?”
That he could back away and move on to business as if they hadn’t just done it sent renewed fury firing through her veins.
The blood . . . the words . . . Shelley’s things . . .
Oh God. CJ grappled for her composure. “Upstairs. There . . .” Pull it together; think rationally. “Someone broke in. Left a message on the bedroom wall.”
“Stay here. I’ll check it out.”
While he was upstairs, she grabbed her ripped panties from the floor. Half the buttons were missing from her blouse. She truly had to be losing her grip entirely.
What the hell had she been thinking?
She hadn’t. That was the point. Months ago, when she’d thought he was so charming and trustworthy, she’d been certain they had a future together. Then she’d discovered that he was not the person she thought he was. She’d tried to forget him completely, but Shelley just kept bringing him up.
Even now, with Shelley dead, Braddock was still an integral part of what was left.
Maybe that was the reason CJ had lost total control tonight. She’d needed a mindless outlet, but mostly she’d needed him. He’d just happened to walk through the door before she regained her senses.
CJ’s fingers stilled in their efforts to tidy her hair. She hadn’t heard him knock; she’d just rushed down the stairs and found him in her living room.
She walked over to the door, turned the knob. Unlocked. His SUV was parked on the street.
Had she left it unlocked when she came in? Did he have a habit of just walking in uninvited? Maybe Shelley allowed him that privilege, but CJ—
The sound of him coming down the stairs had her turning to face him.
“What’re you doing here?” she demanded, her body still hot and quivery from the sex. Ensuring the panties were wadded in her fist, she folded her arms over her chest to hide the missing buttons.
He looked uncharacteristically tousled and too damned good-looking. She hated, hated, hated that she couldn’t not notice that about him.
“I was on my way home and I wanted to check on the house. I figured you would be at Abbott’s or at a hotel.” He gestured to the door. “When I stepped up onto the porch”—he shrugged those broad shoulders—“I heard you scream. I tried the door and it was unlocked, so I came in. You plowed into me.”
This was all too overwhelming. “What about the . . . ?” She pointed upstairs. “Is that blood? I didn’t get close enough to inspect it.”
“Definitely blood. I called for a forensics tech. He’s on the way.”
She worked at not looking at the sofa. Or at him.
“How long had you been home when you noticed the vandalism?”
“I just got here. The person who—he was still inside.” Good grief. She’d gone upstairs without calling the police. Like an irrational fool. The thought of someone touching her sister’s things had pushed her over the edge.
Where was her brain?
“Did you get a look at the intruder?”
Somehow Braddock was closer and she hadn’t realized he’d moved. “What?”
“Did you get a look at the intruder?”
She shook her head. “It was dark upstairs. He knocked me down trying to escape. By the time I got back down here and outside, he was long gone. I barely got a glimpse of a dark figure running into the alley.”
“Jesus.” Braddock pulled out his cell and entered a number. “I’m putting surveillance on your house for the night. You shouldn’t be here alone. And you damned sure shouldn’t be chasing intruders around.” He sent a frustrated glare at her. “Did you even consider calling the police?”
The cold hard facts of what she’d just done—barging up the stairs after an intruder, sex on that sofa—lined up in a taunting row in her head.
She couldn’t be in this room with him.
“I . . . I have to take a shower.” Even as she said the words, she felt his semen slipping down her thighs. “I can’t do this.”
She rushed up the stairs and closed herself in the bathroom. Sagged against the door.
“Oh my God. Oh my God.”
How had she gone so incredibly stupid in a matter of minutes? Unprotected sex! She had to be out of her mind.
Her sister was dead. Murdered.
Of course she was out of her mind.
She pushed away from the door, knelt by the tub, and turned the hot water to full blast. She reached up and snagged a clean towel. Her hands shook. She cursed herself over and over.
Stripping off her clothes, she vowed to burn them.
Then she stood beneath the hot spray of water and let it wash away his touch . . . his scent.
But the images . . . the sensations he’d invoked would not be banished so easily.
Another regret she would have to learn to live with.
If Shelley were here, she would laugh and say that the good girl had finally fallen off her high and mighty pedestal.
CJ closed her eyes. She didn’t want to be here, didn’t want any of this to be real.
The sound of Braddock’s voice downstairs reminded her that it was real, all right.
Shelley was dead.
And CJ had totally lost control.