Their Ex's Redrock Twilight (Texas Alpha) (Texas Alpha Series Book 4) (2 page)

From his vantage point above her, he saw her catch her plump bottom lip with her teeth; she smelled like lilies and some other scents he didn’t know, but really liked.

She leaned into him and glanced back and up at the bottom of his goatee. “It is strange Gordon picking a motel like this one. I’d think he’d go to the casino hotel.”

When she looked back outside, Brown Eyes made a strangled sound, because then they both saw the three frightened and battered women coming out of one of the motel rooms.

“Human trafficking,” Finn muttered. “I fucking knew it.”

“Gordon can’t be involved in something like this!” Brown Eyes exclaimed.

Finn hauled her around and grabbed her chin, making her look up at him. Man, he could get lost in the brown of her eyes, he thought, right before he said harshly, “Me keeping you out of this and out of going in with the rest of them”—he chin-nodded outside—“means you and I have to talk.”

Coco was freaking out on the inside, while on the outside, she was trying to suppress the signs that all pointed to the fact she was losing it. All the things that had been happening just didn’t happen in her world. She lived in a suburb, drove a sedan, and was a boring housewife who tried to make gourmet dinners as a hobby to impress her not-so-impressed husband.

Multi-agency stings, human freaking trafficking, and men that said “fucking” all the time and looked like sinfully attractive bad boys did not happen in her world.

––––––––

C
oco found out what it was her captor, who could be a good guy, but definitely looked like a bad boy, had meant by saying they had to talk, and it was to pull her into a rowdy biker bar. She didn’t think official officers pulled innocent ladies off the street and into questionable bars to talk to them. But with the threat of being “taken in” hanging over her, she went.

Still, it had to be said that she’d really had no choice, because her abductor was forceful and very hot in a rugged and a very masculine way. Maybe that was why he was so arrogant in the way he bossed her around ... and maybe that was why she had followed him ... fascinated.

She tried not to be ... she didn’t want to be fascinated by him. She decided it was the goatee that framed his attractive mouth. She didn’t know any men with goatees or men with tattoos curling like black flames out the open collars of their shirts. Except Zeb had tattoos, and she thought maybe they were the same cut of men.

“Finn O’Neil, you old bastard!”

The shout from across the half-filled, rather rowdy bar was the first Coco knew his name. So she was finally able to use it.

“Officer O’Neil, I think this is—”

“Babe.” Officer O’Neil interrupted her with a sharp growl over his shoulder. “Do
not
call me that here or
any
where.”

Before she could comment on that, a large hand groped her behind, making her squeal in outrage and throw herself at Officer O’Neil, who reacted quickly and caught her. Once again, she was pressed to muscle that she was beginning to covet as he turned them toward her groping attacker.

“You fucking do
not
touch my woman,” Office O’Neil snarled at a lumbering man who was wearing a blue bandanna and a denim shirt with the sleeves ripped off, which showed slack muscles and tattoos from his fingertips to his shoulders on both sides. He had missing teeth when he grinned, and he was already drunk at about eleven thirty in the morning.

“Finn, dude!” the man hollered. “Tits and ass, man, sweet shit.”

Coco blushed to her fake-colored roots, while she thought maybe eleven thirty was a great time to be drunk. Her Officer Finn growled under his breath and very succinctly said, “Everett, hands the fuck off.”

Everett raised his hands as if he was innocent, and he winked at her. “You ever need a real man, sweetheart, come sit on my lap.”

“If I had the damn time,” Officer O’Neil muttered.

Then Coco found herself transported to a booth and set down on the seat with a one-word command from either her bad man abductor or rescuer; she could decide.

“Move over,” he growled.

So Coco moved her butt, clutching her purse until she was in the corner, turned to face him as if she was a caged person, while he glanced grimly toward her and “my woman” kept ringing in her thoughts. But it was better than that, because of the remembered sound of his deliciously deep voice saying it.

Oh please, Mr. Officer, say something else sexy with that deep, rumbling voice of yours.

Coco shook her head at her wicked inner thoughts, but please—he was so, well, so everything hot-alicious.

“Officer O’Neil,” she whispered, because he seemed to need his official-ness kept quiet, and he really hadn’t acted like any officer she’d ever seen. Except maybe one or two on a TV show where they were like those bad-guy officers who you knew were bad, but then they went and did something amazing, so you were conflicted on whether they were the good guy or the bad guy.

But like before, as she’d said his name, his body whipped toward her and he moved in closer to her. His brow was deep and his eyes intense as the earpiece he had been wearing was out and flopped against the top of his shoulder.

“Don’t,” he uttered, then he leaned in close, until he was all she could see, “call me that, bella.
You
call
me
Finn.”

She nodded, internally quivering and mesmerized by his command.

Then he added, “Or you call me for a date ... if we figure out you’re not really messed in this.”

Ohmylord

Oh.

My.

Lord.

Coco couldn’t believe she was nodding slowly and totally entranced in his gaze and hot masculine aura.

“’Kay,” she whispered, then more awesome appeared because Officer Finn smiled and he went from hot to smoking hot.

Then she did quiver.

In delight.

In pure, lovely delight.

A man like he was didn’t ever flirt full out with a woman like she was. It was impossible.

Finn leaned back slowly, but his gaze was all for her. “Say my name, bella, so I know you get me.”

“Finn,” she said, trying to unclench her purse and sit straighter.

Lordy, he’d called her “beautiful” by saying “bella” in that sinfully delicious voice of his. Her? He was like rough and rugged and she was like suburban chick; how could those two be interested in each other? She must be reading him wrong. Maybe he was a natural flirt?

“What’ll it be?” a woman demanded.

At the sound of the very loud voice, Finn turned, and Coco straightened so she could look beyond Finn’s big body, where she saw a platinum-blond waitress with black roots and an overly endowed chest. A chest that put Coco’s to shame, and it was all wrapped in a Harley tank top. The blond had smoky makeup and a deep frown.

“Lady, you look like you need a shot,” she announced, looking at Coco. “I take you for a Snake Bite or Wet Clit.”

Thirty minutes later, Coco slurred, while Finn watched her across the table. “Gordon, my snake of a husband, he doesn’t like my chocolate truffle cake with creamy ganache.”

She stopped to sip from the shot glass in front of her like she’d done for each of the three shots before that. Those tricked-out nails of hers, gripped around the small glass, were shiny pink and elegant, while her glossy light red lips pursed, just as if she might be getting ready to suck on the tip of a hard cock.

And fuck him, Finn could watch her do just that sipping thing a hundred times more, even though being irritated that she didn’t just slam the shot. Yeah, two hundred times, with her saying that word he didn’t know what the hell it was, “ganache.” Man, he wanted to taste it, though. She was sweet and she could fucking cook, if he had any guesses about it.

“Rumm,” she slurred in a whisper after her sip. “The secret’s I put rum in it, and what person wouldn’t like that?”

“Don’t know, babe,” he offered her, and he got rewarded again by her smile.

Beautiful went to exquisite when she smiled. And her damn name made him hard. Coco. Man, just kill him, because it was a perfect name for a hot babe. What he totally didn’t get was why he thought she was such a turn-on. Maybe it was the curvy, sultry style she had going on, without really being aware of it. But tits and ass? He’d never looked hard at that particular feminine combo before, except when he’d met—

Tess.

Then he knew. Coco reminded him of Tess, in a darker, sultrier way, but more innocent compared to Tess’ sass. What he did know for certain was Coco Maxwell wasn’t involved with her husband in a human-trafficking ring. On first look, Gordon Maxwell’s crime seemed to be cheating with Finn’s fucked-up ex. How crazy was that. But something wasn’t sitting right, because Coco claimed Gordon had been missing for weeks and she’d been in town trying to find him for several of those.

She’d said Gordon had just disappeared out of their marriage, and that sounded damn well suspicious.

“Babe, how’d you think he was here?” Finn asked, while he kept glancing down to read a few updated texts off his phone.

His team also wondered where the hell he was, because he’d given his life for those busts, and the sting wasn’t just at Rowdie’s, it was multi-location and multi-state. So he had to decide what to do with pretty Miss Coco so he could get back to his job and the fucking reward he deserved for being undercover and working the cases.

“I got a call,” she whispered with a slur.

Finn’s head snapped upright and his gaze cut to her as a gnarly bad feeling started in his gut, warning him immediately he was not going to like what he heard.

“Details, bella. Give me every word.”

Coco had the sleekest dark hair; it shone like silk and was long with waves and a few curls leading toward that sultry, voluptuous babe look. She was decked out in white ... what looked like a fancy tank top ... that hugged her nicely full and big breasts, which were partially covered by a shirtwaist dark blue blazer.

That little jacket did a backdrop to her chest and the creamy slops of her cleavage showing over the top of the table across from him. She had on some piece of white gold jewelry that dangled nearly down into her cleavage, and drew every male eye right there. Those nails, those lips, that makeup, that hair; she was put together and she worked it.

At first glance, he might have thought she worked it too much and would be self-absorbed, but that was until her first smile hit him, which proceeded to blow him away and blow away any doubts he had that she was anything but sweet.

Her brow furrowed and her cute nose scrunched, while her full lips pouted.

“The man on the phone wouldn’t tell me his name, but he said if anybody asked me, and if I told anybody anything, Gordon would be dead, so I better keep my mouth shut and it’d be best if I left town too. Left so no one could ask me any questions I could get Gordon in trouble for.”

“Damn it,” Finn said, before she was finished.

Finn saw the look of fear in her brown eyes and he knew she was smart enough to be afraid of that phone call, but loyal enough to override it to go after her man ... fear or not.

“So,” she drawled out. “I checked his cell phone records from Erma May’s grandson, who works for a major carrier.” She leaned forward, giving him a stellar cleavage shot that he had the intense urge to lick. “It was kind of illegal,” she whispered.

Finn really wondered why Coco Maxwell saying the word “illegal” did things to him. But he growled under his breath, because once again he could not get into it right then, so he made a quick decision, the only one he could see making.

“Safe house,” he muttered.

***

C
oco found out Officer Finn “bad boy” O’Neil’s idea of a safe house was a multilevel log home on a beautiful lake outside of town about ten miles. Maybe it was because she was tipsy, but she’d never thought about disagreeing with him. All she’d really done was keep looking at him from the passenger seat of his Jeep, because he was hot.

Amazingly, super
hot
.

It was as if her eyes couldn’t stay away from the hotness now that they were drunk eyes. Nothing like it had ever happened to her ... she kind of wanted it to not end. She definitely didn’t want it to end in the part where she was the clueless wife who had gotten dumped over a hot younger woman.

She still couldn’t get that the woman she’d seen plastered to Gordon had been Officer Finn’s wife. They really didn’t fit one another. Not like she and Gordon did. Gordon and she were a typical suburban couple, and really, that blond probably fit there too.

So Gordon kind of fit the blond, expect Gordon was not sexual and it was astonishing to see him being so. But the one person that didn’t fit being together with any of them was Finn ... he needed a biker babe or a
Penthouse
pinup.

“That would so work,” she slurred, watching his really nice goatee move as he talked on his cell phone.

His arm was thrown up over the top of the steering wheel and he had a tattoo, which looked like black flames licking up over his muscular forearm. It was about the most attractive and manly thing she had ever seen.

Just that forearm.

Lord, it turned her on.

Then she blushed and got flustered about it. That made her mad. She was not a flustered kind of woman! She tugged her short jacket across her chest with mild irritation. She
really
was good enough for Officer O’Neil, even if she was a bit tame and a bit plump.

That didn’t make her out of his league, and she better stop thinking that way, because her momma brought her up to charm, and she could throw her feminine charm around with the best of them. She was
not
an old married woman.

Well, she wasn’t freaking one anymore.

“Sugar, I need to get my things, at least,” Coco started to say, and she had a lot more to say.

But instantly Finn growled, “No.”

She turned to look at him, while the Jeep bounced them further up the driveway toward the spectacular log home. She squinted at him. He couldn’t just say “no” to her.