Chapter Twenty-Three
RHYS
I MEANT it when I told her I don’t bring women to my home. Not this one, anyway. Before Dad gave me this house, I had a modest apartment close by that saw quite a few women. I didn’t need anything big since I spent most of my time at work.
But the one time I brought a date back here, it didn’t feel right.
My parents bought this house while I was still in the Rangers and was rarely home.
Dad said Mom loved it when she saw it, and he bought it for her the same week.
She had stopped touring and was playing with the Performing Arts Center in Tulsa, and Dad had his job at the University, so they decided to stay in Tulsa for a while.
Because this was my mom’s oasis, it didn’t feel right to bring one-night stands here. Or women I dated but wasn’t serious about.
Kinley feels right.
She belongs here with me.
The early evening sun is casting orange light through the bedroom window, and she’s lying half on me, her long, slender leg resting between mine and her cheek on my chest. We haven’t been able to get enough of each other since I brought her in here this morning.
Holding her hand against my chest, I ask about something that’s crossed my mind more than once. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask.”
“Yeah?”
“How in the world did you get three special ops soldiers in your family?”
She sighs like it’s a boring question. “Well, Mason was forced into the army after he almost killed the guy who raped Marley at their senior prom.”
I read his enlistment paperwork when I first investigated the family, it was tied to a criminal court case, but not all the details were available for me to read because they were still minors and it wasn’t important enough to get the special permission required to look into it. “How bad was it?”
“Bad. The guy beat her up before he raped her. Marley was traumatized for years because of it. She wouldn’t leave the house, and she refused to be around strangers. If you ask me, the guy didn’t get half of what he deserved, but his dad was a DA in Tulsa, so Mason got the shit end of the deal.”
“I guess Mason wasn’t interested in the service before he enlisted?”
She huffs. “Pffftt. All Mason cared about was running the ranch with Dad and Gray, but he was always a damn good shot and, to hear him tell it, he was so pissed off that he surfed his way to the top on a wave of anger to be a sniper.” She tilts her head and looks up at me with a smirk.
“I can’t tell you anything else, or I’ll have to kill you. ”
With a laugh, I lift her palm and kiss the healing scrapes. “That’s fair. What about Marley’s husband, Jax?”
This time she snorts. “Well. Jax is almost as much of a mystery to me as he is to you. All I know about him is that he and Mason have worked together for years, and he spent, like, almost a year trying to win Marley over because she wouldn’t have anything to do with him at first.” She huffs a small laugh during a pause.
“He says that the first time he set his eyes on Marley, his heart was hers.”
I know exactly what he means. The first night I met Kinley at that bar, when she spilled water on me and I looked into those beautiful eyes, I felt something. I wanted to talk to her, but I was working, so I had to watch her walk away.
“What about your other brother?”
“Tuck is super smart, it didn’t take him long to work his way up through the ranks.
Everyone was surprised when he chose the military instead of college after high school, but he’d told me a million times when we were young that he didn’t want a boring nine-to-five job.
He’s kind of an adrenaline junkie, but at the same time, he’s an introvert, we both are, that’s why we get along so well.
“We spent a lot of time playing in the woods when we were younger, a lot of paintball, archery, and camping. Dad made sure we all knew how to shoot a gun and survive in the woods if we needed to, but I’ve never cared for the ranch life.”
Trying to imagine Kinley doing anything that might break a nail makes me smile. “Then why do you stay? I’ve seen your work, you have talent, why not leave the ranch?”
She looks over my shoulder and sighs. “I love my family, and I like my space, so the cabin is perfect. Dad would never ask any of us to leave, he likes to have his family around him.” Her eyes meet mine again with a chuckle.
“He comes across as an old curmudgeon, but he loves us and will do whatever he has to do to protect his family.”
Setting her cheek back on my chest, her fingers are alternating between tracing the edge of my pec and swirling around my nipple. Sliding her hair off her neck, I trace the edge of her jaw. “Are you trying to find a ticklish spot? Because you’ll be disappointed.”
“No.” She sighs quietly, her breath sliding over my skin. “I’m just wondering when you’re going to tell me what’s going on.” Her fingers stop moving, and she tips her head to look up at me again. “Why was one of your men at my house telling me you sent him?”
The pillow I just fluffed earlier behind my back is suddenly hot against my skin. I try to hide the tension that grips me when I think about Sanders trying to get her to leave with him.
Where was he planning to take her? And how did he know she was at the ranch?
“Rhys?” She pulls on my chest hairs, making me flinch, and I grab her hand.
All the covers on the bed were pushed onto the floor hours ago, except for the sheet, it’s twisted around her slim body, exposing the soft skin of her hip. Thinking about what I want to tell her, I slide my palm across that skin and over the globe of her ass.
My ass.
“Hey.” She props herself on her elbow next to my side and looks at me.
Her eyes are more green right now, and it makes me wonder what that means. I’ve noticed that when she’s angry, the gold hides almost all the green. Maybe more green means she’s happy.
Sliding my thumb across her lip, I take a breath. “I don’t want to scare you.”
She sets her fist on my chest and rests her chin on it. “It takes more than you’d think to scare me, Special Agent.”
Taking my time to formulate what I want to tell her, I look at her face. Her golden skin is glowing in the warm light of the setting sun, she’s so fucking beautiful I could stare at her all day.
“The day I came home late and was planning to tell you we should take a step back,” She tenses, and I grip her hip and hug her body to me, “I found out we have a mole on my team, everything we’ve done for the past year has been one step forward and two steps back.
I’d just found out that day why it had been happening.
“One of our undercover agents from a different team had somehow been discovered, and they almost killed him. I was at the hospital the entire evening. That was when he told me it was a mole that outed him.”
Her body tenses again, and she sucks in a breath. “You think the mole is the guy who came to my house.”
“I suspect, but I’ll need to find out more at work tomorrow. But that means that you need to be extra careful. I don’t know why he was at your house, and I don’t want you by yourself until I do.”
She moves one shoulder closer to her ear in a half-hearted shrug. “Okay.”
Taking her hand again, I press her fingertips to my lips and then hold her hand over my heart. “I need to ask you about some things you told me last night.”
“Shoot.”
“He said my name? He told you I sent him to your house?” I tap my finger on my chest.
“Yes, he said, ‘Agent Abbot sent me to check on you,’ and then he said you wanted him to ask me if I could go in with him to give a report on anything new. I remember thinking that the whole encounter felt odd, but I was so angry at you for sending him I was distracted.”
Sliding my hand into her hair, I tug just enough to get her full attention, and her eyes lock on mine. “But you know I wouldn’t do that, right?”
She doesn’t hesitate. “I know.”
I look over her face, her smooth skin and full fucking lips. I have to swallow my anger as the same question scrolls through my mind. Where was he planning to take her? To do what? “Anything else?”
Her eyes fall to my chest, and she shakes her head while keeping her chin on her fist.
“Hey.” I slide my knuckle down her cheek, and her eyes meet mine again. “I really am sorry that you were put in that position.”
Her smile comes back before she pushes up on her elbow again. “Are you going to confront him?”
Taking a deep breath, I tuck my hand behind my head and slide my other hand across her hip again, her skin is like fucking silk.
“Sanders is arrogant, but he’s not stupid.
I’m going to assume he knows I picked you up last night, especially since I don’t know who I can trust, and who knows, the tail I put on you could be working with him.
“He’ll know you told me he was there. I think the best course of action is to play it by ear when I go to work tomorrow, see how it plays out.”
“But can’t you do anything? Can you fire him?”
“On what evidence? The man who told me I have a mole is in the hospital unable to defend himself, and all Sanders has done that’s suspicious, that I know of, is go to your house and lie about who sent him.
That’s nothing, I need more. And the last thing I want to do is put the agent in the hospital in more danger. They already tried to kill him.”
Laying her head back on my chest, she’s quiet for a few moments. Her long blond hair is fanned across the pillow and the bed behind her. Blood starts moving south when she drags her fingertip across the skin of my stomach and around my bellybutton.
“So, I’m stuck in your house again?”
My cock stirs when she slides her finger through the hair under my bellybutton. “Just until I can figure this out. I can’t focus and worry about you at the same time.”
Turning her head, she kisses my peck before she tugs the skin between her teeth, making me flinch again and my dick hardens. Fuck, I can’t get enough of her. I’ve come enough times today to last me a week, but I can’t wait to sink into her again.
“You know what that means?” Her voice is sultry as she pushes herself up and throws her leg across me to straddle me. My hands automatically grab her hips.
The curves of her body are perfect, she’s soft in all the right places. Her belly is flat between hips that curve away from her slim waist, and her tits jiggle at all the right times.
I’ve kissed every inch of her body today and will do it again tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after.
The synapses in my brain are short-circuiting since all I can think about is her hot, wet pussy sitting on top of my dick right now. “Tell me.”
She swivels her hips to rub against me and leans over so her lips are just above mine. “I’m going to be bored all day, so you’ll have to come home and entertain me.”
My cock is trying to hijack all logical thought, but hearing the words ‘come home’ from her lips makes me even harder. For the first time in my life, I want to come home to someone. I want to come home to her.
Something about knowing she is part of my daily life, that I’m providing for her and protecting her, is making me fucking hard as stone.
Sliding my hand up her side to run my fingers along her jaw, I thread them in the hair at her nape and close my fist, holding her lips just above mine. “I wouldn’t want you to be bored.” I squeeze her hip with my other hand and slide her down and back up my length.
Tilting her pelvis, she takes the head of my cock inside her and slowly sinks onto me, her heat swallowing me inch by inch. The tiny moan that crosses her lips makes me twitch inside of her, and her eyes half close. I could come just listening to her little moans and sighs.
Focusing her eyes on me, she tries to kiss me, but I hold her head, so our lips are close but not touching. I like to watch her face, even her facial expressions are sexy as fuck. She’s like a goddamn drug, and I’m addicted.
Setting her palms on my chest, she moves her hips on me like she’s a stripper on a pole, grinding her clit onto me with each rotation. “I tend to get destructive when I’m bored.”
Grabbing her wrists, I roll us and pin her hands over her head. Like it’s instinct, her thighs grip my sides, and her heels press on my ass. Pulling out, I shove back in her, shaking her tits and making her moan.
Lowering my head to her neck, I nip her skin and kiss it. “Babydoll, you can destroy whatever the fuck you want as long as I can sink into this pussy every night.”
A breathy moan escapes her lips when I pull out and shove back in her again. “Deal.”
Taking her mouth, I increase my rhythm. When she sucks my lip between hers and bites me, the animal in me takes over. Pushing up onto my hands, I set her leg on my shoulder and start pounding into the fucking heaven I know I won’t be able to live without.
Her fingertips sink into the skin on my biceps, and I can feel her walls squeezing me. Locking eyes with her, I touch our foreheads together. “Fucking perfect.”
“Rhys.” The way she moans my name tickles my balls, and I reach between us to help bring her to climax before she has me coming in her before she finishes.
Pressing my thumb to her clit, I rotate over the hard little nub. “Come for me, babydoll.”
Her back arches as she moans. “Fuck, yes. Rhys.” Her fingernails bite into the skin on my arm painfully, but it’s only fuel for my hunger for her.
When she starts pulsing on me, squeezing my cock, I can’t control it anymore. I push into her as deep as I can go, emptying inside of her with a growl. “Fuuuck.”
I twitch inside of her a couple more times and let go of her leg to lower myself onto my forearms. She palms my jaw on each side of my head and pulls me to her, her soft lips devouring mine.
Just as I think she’s going to make me hard again, she relaxes her head onto the bed and looks up at me. “I’m gonna make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you want one?”
With a huff, I chuckle and kiss her again. “No way, that shit’s all for you.”
Her face gets serious, and she says, “I wondered if you would throw everything away when I left.”
She doesn’t like to show her vulnerability, I’ve learned that about her, so her need for reassurance from me right now doesn’t go unnoticed. I slide my thumb across her lip and smile. “Did you think I was going to let you go that easy?”
Her eyes move between mine for a moment before she drags her fingers across my beard, over my jaw. “Don’t.”
I shake my head and kiss her again. “Not a chance.”