Restless Spirit (19 page)

Chapter Thirty-five

‘See, he should have known it wasn’t a raccoon. They don’t jimmy basement windows.’ Shepherd pointed to the old painted window frame that had been messed with. Even the ancient, faded white paint was splintered in places. ‘Good thing you kept your top basement door locked. Whoever was down here could have waltzed right up there otherwise. As it stands, he used this to get out when he wanted to.’ Shepherd kicked a stack of old but sturdy orange crates.

I wanted to shiver but repressed it. Freaking out wasn’t going to do a damn thing. And I’d already assaulted an innocent man once.

‘You don’t think it’s Adrian do you?’ I asked quietly.

‘I doubt it. He’s a douche bag but not dangerous. He’s just …’ Shepherd shrugged. ‘Clingy? I mean, from what I’ve seen. He’s a guy who needs–’

‘Stroking,’ I said.

Shepherd chuckled. ‘Exactly.’

‘I don’t see former TV star Reed hanging out in the basement.’

‘Not when he can woo you with money and wine and fine fast cars and all the berries you can pick.’ His mouth was tight again. Every time he talked of Reed. But I reminded myself I’d promised him nothing and had done nothing wrong. It was the going forward that counted.

‘So that leaves?’

‘A local whacko? Someone from your past?’

Now I did shiver. ‘Maybe an ex someone who’s met my bat?’

‘Maybe. Any idea where that charmer is?’

‘Annie – the woman who owns the boarding house I lived at – she said she has no idea where Phil or Stan are.’

‘Phil or Stan?’

‘Phil’s the ex and Stan’s the guy I dated right before I moved.’ I shrugged. ‘The …’ I trailed off.

‘The rebound guy?’

‘Yeah, for lack of a better word.’

We walked around the basement. It was pretty bare and pretty dusty and damp along the foundation in some spots. ‘The beauty of lakefront property,’ Shepherd sighed, toeing the stains. ‘Seepage.’

‘I can live with it. Looks like not much goes on down here but storage and intruders,’ I snorted.

He pulled me close so fast I let out a yelp. His arms were big and warm and strong and I let myself feel soothed for a moment. ‘Don’t make fun. It makes my blood boil to even think about someone being in this damn basement when I was gone.’

He steered me toward the steps and I followed his lead.

‘Is Nan’s potting shed haunted?’ I asked as we headed up the steps. They were horror movie steps. The kind that had treads but were open at the back. Perfect for a malicious hand to reach through and grab your ankle. Perfect to fall to the bottom, break your neck and die.

So I’d spooked myself. I sped up enough to almost run right into Shepherd’s back.

‘You OK?’

‘Fine. Fine. I’m just a little freaked out.’

‘No shit. You’re staying with me until we have this worked out.’

We went to the front door and Shepherd pulled it open and looked at the potting shed. ‘That potting shed?’

‘It’s the only one.’

He grinned. He barrelled down my front steps and grabbed the potting shed door handle. It was locked. Just like last time.

‘May I?’ Shepherd indicated the meagre hasp and lock and I shrugged.

I gave him the bat and he whacked the coupling. It fell away taking the padlock with it. All of Nan’s fancy stuff – her painted pots, some bags of soil, old yellow gardening clogs. Her gorgeous gardening tools she kept spotless for her spring plantings lined the shelf and the counter space. They always looked like they should be decorating a brightly painted wall instead of working in a garden. She painted all the handles bright colours and often would sit and paint flowers or butterflies on them too.

‘She liked prettiness for its own sake, Virginia did,’ Shepherd laughed, picking up a small spade dotted with what looked like Black Eyed Susans.

‘True story.’ I couldn’t look at any of it too long. It made me want to cry.

We turned and looked out the high windows above the door. Through smudged glass an upper window was visible. ‘What’s that?’

‘My room,’ I said, my mouth going dry.

‘You walk around up there with the lights on?’ He stepped back some to examine the view.

‘Well, I do prefer walking around with lights on as opposed to stumbling around in the dark.’

‘Smart ass,’ he said and patted me on mine.

‘Better than being a dumb–’

‘Ass. Yeah, yeah. Let’s see.’

The potting shed wasn’t huge but it was big enough. Shepherd took three more big steps back until his back hit the potting shed’s long wooden counter. ‘Yep, perfect view of you, my love.’

My body rippled at the words, “my love”.

‘So how did he get in a locked potting shed? These windows are sealed on.’

Shepherd squatted tapped a few of the windows. ‘These are fragile and the panes are stacked one atop the other. If one of them broke a bunch would and …’ He bent over and then squatted down. His knees popped like shotguns. I wanted to ask if that was from being an ultimate fighter.

‘Ah, here we go.’

‘Here we go what?’

‘There’s a section back here that was patched. Probably someone hit the wood with a tiller or lawnmower or something. Or even a car. Possibly wildlife chewed their way in for bird seed or something. Anyway, it’s big enough that perhaps a person even my size could wriggle through there if he was desperate.’

‘Can’t be Adrian. He could just unlock the fucking thing.’

I turned in a slow circle. Dusk was starting to fall and now I felt exposed. Someone had been watching. Sneaking about at the lake – following me if the slut remark was to be believed. Either a local creep who I didn’t know, or my worst nightmare – a creep I did. Phil.

‘It’s not Adrian, and that’s why you’re going to go pack a bag. You need a fucking dog,’ he grunted as we left.

I had to laugh.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘I was thinking about that when you were gone. A shepherd.’

‘Nice,’ he said and put his arm around me. The barn was dark. Adrian’s car gone.

‘Named Tiny,’ I snorted and then started to giggle. The giggling was good. A pressure release for my pent up anxiety and the worry that now the psycho from my past was back.

Phil had been a good man until life had beaten him down and he’d sought comfort in the arms of alcohol instead of mine. Then it had been a nightmare. He was an all or nothing man. Good when sober. The devil when drunk. After he lost his job, he preferred the devil.

‘That is completely unfunny,’ Shepherd said, but I felt his big body vibrate just a bit as he suppressed a laugh. ‘Tiny …’ He shook his head.

‘Come on. I chose a shepherd just for you.’

He stopped on the doorstep of my house. ‘Would you choose me just for me?’

I swallowed hard. ‘I think if I were at a place where I could feel that way, I would. Life didn’t just beat me down, Shepherd. It beat me down, rolled me up in a rug, ran me over and dropped me in a river.’

‘Because of one man who didn’t know how to keep his hands to himself?’

‘Nah. Parents … dead. Man … turns bad. Nan, light of my life … dead. It’s just been building.’

‘Well, you know I learned something a long time ago.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Never give up. Even if both your eyes are full of blood and you’re pretty sure you lost a tooth.’ He tapped his canine and said ‘Cap.’

‘And what else?’ I asked, smiling at him. I touched his face, grateful he was here.

‘And when you see something you want grab it. Don’t wait.’

He hugged me to him fiercely. I allowed myself to press my body to his. The heat of him was blissful. The memory of him entering me the way he had, in a place no one else had been, made my whole body flash hot.

‘So, I’m grabbing you, Tuesday Cane. All you have to do is grab me back.’

Chapter Thirty-six

‘Oh, pack these for sure,’ he said, dangling a pair of neon green and black striped over-the-knee socks at me.

‘You like those, do you?’

‘You in these and nothing else? Hell, yeah.’ He leered at me and waggled his eyebrows.

‘Perv.’

‘You know it.’

I tossed them in my duffle. I carefully folded and tossed his hoodie in, too. ‘You know you’re not getting it back, right?’

‘How about the smell. Won’t it fade?’ He winked at me.

‘OK, you can have it back once a week to wear and smellify and then it’s mine again.’

‘Smellify?’

‘Made a word up for ya, there.’

He palmed the back of my head and guided me in gently. His mouth was soft at first but then intense. His tongue stroked over mine. How about you in that jacket and those socks, just for me? Bent over, opened for me. Taking my cock hard and deep and–’

I pushed a finger to his lips. ‘Stop or we’re doing it right here. And I want out of here until this whole silent stalker Nancy Drew mystery is solved.’

‘Hurry up and pack then,’ he growled.

‘Help me.’

When he turned from me and I caught his profile, I felt a rush of affection and lust and something more. Something I pushed back and away and out of me.

Not ready. Not ready …

I put a toiletry bag in my duffle even though I knew I’d be stealing his stuff so I could capture his scent.

When I grabbed my things and followed him downstairs I called, ‘See, I ask you to pack and you go and run awa–’

My words broke off because he was sitting on the sofa, the sofa where I’d been sleeping (nesting like a raccoon, really), with all my writing stuff stacked in his lap. Shepherd’s eyes skimmed the pages of the notebook where I had been working long hand on my short story.

‘I see why she bragged about you,’ he said to me without looking up.

I cleared my throat, at some point a huge gob of something had become wedged in it. Emotions, I think. ‘Yeah, well, she was a bragger no matter what. Deserved or not.’

I came down the final few steps and suppressed the urge to race over and snatch the book from him. It was embarrassing, someone reading your words when you didn’t expect it. The emotional equivalent of showing up at a swanky dinner party in your underpants.

‘The praise is deserved,’ he said and turned a page.

‘Hey!’ I said a bit too brightly. ‘It’s bad luck to read a writer’s work before it’s done.’

Total lie.

‘How about you wait until I finish?’ I said and held my hand out to him. Praying he wouldn’t balk. Praying he would humour me.

He smiled and shut the book. Placing it in my hand, Shepherd stood and gathered all the other writing debris he could find. ‘When you asked me to help you pack, I figured I’d know how important this stuff was even if you didn’t.’

We heard a noise and both of us froze. It was dark now and the noise had come from the kitchen door. Where I’d seen my phantom shadow man peering in the mottled glass.

My neck spiked with goosebumps and Shepherd turned very slowly toward the sound. Then he took off at a run still clutching my notebooks.

Damn!

‘Motherfucker,’ he hissed when I almost slammed into his broad back. Out on my deck, he stood watching the thick trees that bordered the lake. ‘Someone was here but he took off before I could catch up. I heard him go down the steps. Fell in that bush over there,’ Shepherd pointed. ‘I guess he didn’t see it. But he was fast enough to get away. And I’m stupid but not fatally stupid. I’m not ploughing through those trees in the dark.’

‘For all you know he has a gun,’ I said, grateful that Shepherd was a manly man but a smart man. Now I wouldn’t have to chase him through the woods worried he’d get hurt.

‘Right. Let’s get your shit and go.’

He locked my back door and chained it. After a spot check of all the other windows and the door that led to the basement, we left by the front door, locking it behind us. Carrying my bags, we trudged across the expanse of open space to his house.

‘Gotta say, I feel super exposed,’ I said softly. My voice was barely audible above the crack and pop of our boots on the gravel.

‘I agree. But I don’t think he has a gun. I think he has a thing for you. And for right now the spying is working for him. Now that I’m back and I’m relocating you … well, now I’m not so sure.’

‘You think it’ll make him violent?’

Shepherd shrugged, my duffle rising and falling with the motion of his wide shoulders. ‘Don’t know. But I want you with me if there’s any chance of that.’

I tapped my bat on the ground as we walked. He laughed softly. ‘What?’ I asked as we neared his house. A house had never looked more welcoming to me.

‘Remind me not to piss you off,’ he said nodding toward my weapon of choice. Then he put his arm around me.

‘Who do you think it is?’ My voice was way too meek for my liking. I poured us each a glass of a red from a local winery and took a shaky sip.

‘No idea. Whoever he is, I’m gonna beat his ass if I catch him.’

‘Not if I catch him first.’

Shepherd swigged down half of his wine and said, ‘No doubt.’ He set his glass down and took mine.

I let him wrap me in his arms. I let him tuck my head to his chest so I could feel his heart. I didn’t like to feel need for someone besides maybe Nan but here I caught a fast and flickery dance of that need inside my belly. It wasn’t a need for sex. It was a need for a specific person.

And it scared the shit out of me.

‘So one girl who fell out of love with you can’t be why you were all monk-like when I showed up. But for the fucking.’

He chuckled.

‘You don’t seem the sort to let just one instance get you down. Not for good.’

He let out a long, slow breath and I held mine – waiting.

‘I was in love once upon a time – before her. Before that girl, before the UFC stuff. I think that’s why I went into it. I was big, I had rage and it was a legal way to let it out. Even earn some money from my anger.’

My hair brushed his pale blue tee as I nodded against his chest. But I didn’t speak. I thought it might break the spell of him confessing this bit of himself to me.

‘And I went to pick a ring for that long ago girl. There are not a lot of places around here as you can imagine. I travelled to neighbouring towns and I finally found the perfect antique gold settling. She loved old things.’

I held my breath. I listened to the thump of his heart. I smelled the cotton-salt-leather smell of him and my own heart thumped in sympathy.

‘Anyway, I bought it. I asked her. We were going to be in love and married and have babies and all that bullshit.

Silence.

I didn’t think it was all bullshit, but I sure knew it could feel that way should your heart get mangled badly enough. Should you get stomped on and hurt.

‘And she said no. She had actually picked the same night to tell me that she’d fallen in love with an older guy. Forty to my twenty-four. She walked away from me. But what can I say … she’d warned me.’

I looked up at him then, realising my eyes were stinging with unshed tears. So two women had walked away from his love when he offered it. Part of me realised he probably had love to offer me. That was mostly what he’d been saying to me without actually saying it. But I was sending signals that I couldn’t deal with it. That I would push him away.

Jesus. What a train wreck we were.

‘Warned you about what?’ I prompted.

‘That she loved old things.’

I stared at him then started to laugh. ‘Oh, punch line. At least you can work that into your story to lighten the mood, am I right?’

He grinned down at me, his finger sliding below the waistband of my jeans. Making me gasp a little and wriggle to get my skin closer to his skin.

‘Hey, you have to find laughter where you can.’

‘True.’

‘And you never pass up an opportunity to touch a beautiful woman,’ he said. His hand worked lower and he turned it so his fingers pressed right above where my clit throbbed merrily waiting for him to stroke it.

‘Also true,’ I breathed.

‘I think we need to do something, you and I.’

‘What’s that?’ I found him hard under my hand when I touched his jeans. I thought of how he’d taken me just hours before. I thought of giving myself to him in a way I’d never given myself to any other man.

How much trust had that required?

A ton.

And I had given him that part of myself without questioning it once.

It took some effort but I slid my hand down into the front of his jeans to find him hot and stiff and soft as sin in my hand. I slid my fingertip along the slit of skin on the head of his cock and felt the dot of precome spread over him.

‘We need to recreate a kitchen scene. I need to claim that back in my mental terrain. When I think of kitchens, I want to think of me and you. Not you and Reed.’

My heart fluttered. It sounds stupid, but it did just that. It jumped like some tiny animal in my chest and my pussy grew slick and warm. I pressed my knees together but it only made the urgency in my cunt worse.

‘Oh,’ I said. Because I didn’t know what else to say.

He gripped my shoulders tight and kissed me. When his hands moved to hold my head so he could deepen the kiss and thrust his tongue against mine, the breath fled my lungs. I moved against him, trapped in some sinuous dance that only came from one source. Arousal.

God, how badly I wanted him. Again. It never seemed to end – my lust for this man. It was maddening and insane and entirely comforting.

He dropped to his knees, stealing the warmth of his body from under my hand. I made a low desperate sound and watched him peel back my jeans with big blunt fingers. His mouth crushed down – lips only, so surreally soft – on the sensitive skin just above my mound. My pussy took up the steady beat of my heart and a small rush of fluid escaped me. By the time he got my jeans and panties down over my hips, I could feel the wetness at the very tops of my thighs.

My breath rushed out of me and he kissed my mound firmly so I felt his energy all along my skin. The fine hairs on my body prickled with it. My pulse slammed with it. My cunt flexed with it.

‘Please,’ I said. Feeling foolish but totally OK with it. ‘I might actually die if you don’t–’

But I didn’t get to finish the sentiment because he seared me with his open mouth. His tongue and teeth and lips pressing over my clit – surrounding it with his heat. And when he sucked the swollen bit of flesh into his mouth, my knees did dip a bit but he steadied me with strong hands cupping my ass cheeks.

‘Stay still,’ he murmured and suckled at my clitoris again. He drew it in hard and then soothed it with his tongue. The rigid tip of that talented tongue teased me until more of my juices sluiced from my eager cunt. I gripped his shoulders, holding on like I was drowning, holding on like I would fall. But utterly willing to fall if need be. Because I was falling for him.

I let the thought go when he nibbled each of my outer lips – plump and swollen – and then drove his tongue back into my folds to find the little hard organ. He bit me there gently, just hard enough for the sharpness to register and then burrowing two thick fingers into my cunt, he got me off.

And off I went like a shot. My knees sagging and Shepherd holding me up with only his free hand.

‘I … you need …’ I was tongue tied. A minor miracle for the likes of me.

He shook his head and shushed me and pulled me down to my knees. His mouth had the rich humid musk of my sex and he pushed his tongue to my lower lip and swept it back and forth so my own scent filled my head.

‘Take your pants off,’ he rasped.

I tried to get them free of my body with hands that were shaking terribly. Finally, I dropped to my ass and he helped me by yanking then off by the leg cuffs. With one big hand splayed between my breasts, he pushed me back so I was supine, my braids tickling the edge of my jaw.

I unzipped my sweater and he filleted it open to reveal my bra and my breasts and my quivering stomach.

‘Leave it on. It’s cold in here,’ he said, suckling my nipples through the sheer mesh of my bra. Each halo of pink flesh stood at attention as if seeking his mouth, his tongue, his teeth.

He tugged one rosy disc and then the other, his fingers painting invisible patterns on my stomach. I shook with the sensation and when he pressed a thumb to the very centre of me, I drew in a shuddering breath.

‘Fuck me,’ I said.

‘I will.’

‘Take me,’ I said, my voice a ghost of its normal boldness.

‘I plan on it.’

‘Use me.’ I was almost crying and I didn’t know why and I wasn’t going to question it. For once, since the whole disaster of my life had unfolded, I was going to just go with the visceral feelings that pounded through my veins. Thick and syrupy, sweet and terrifying, gorgeous and transformative. I would just shut up my own chatter and give in.

He grunted, pushing my thighs apart so that I was spread wide for his examination.

‘In the best possible way,’ he said as an answer. ‘I’ll use you.’

His cock was flushed and thick, and in his hand almost resembled a weapon. We had passed the point of niceties and the clever condom dance. I was safe. He was safe. And I trusted him to be in my body unsheathed. That alone spoke volumes and we both damn well knew it.

Shepherd slid the head of his erection up and down the length of my slippery split. He nudged me but did not enter me. Parting me with his tip just enough to make me move up to meet him and then he withdrew.

He was watching me. My body, my movements, my face. He covered me with his body and kissed me and then backed off again. I wanted him in me, filling me, moving in me, but he seemed to be waiting.