Her mouth went dry at the memory of his hard-muscled torso.
He didn’t close the door or speak as he took two steps into the room, put one knee onto the bed, then bore her back onto the mattress. It was a clean, unconscious move. Knee on the bed, left hand bracing his weight, his right arm coming around behind her shoulders to control her descent. She ended up flat on her back with him lying half on top of her, his knee sliding between hers. She inhaled breathily, and good thing, because when his mouth came down on top of hers, she forgot all about breathing.
He kissed her, lips soft but demanding as they slid against hers. Automatically she opened her mouth, but rather than his tongue she felt a smile against her lips. “Patience is a virtue,” he murmured, giving her vibrations when she wanted slick heat.
“I don’t feel very virtuous at the moment,” she said.
“This is a problem?”
“It’s . . .” He used the edge of his teeth along her jaw to the soft spot just under her ear. “It’s . . . different.”
“That was the goal, right? To be different.”
Never before in her life had a man explored the sensitive skin below her ear so thoroughly. She made a little noise, part desire, part assent, part plea, and felt an answering rumble of a chuckle deep in his chest.
“You said you had something in mind for my mouth.”
Heat swept through her, shock at her bold words blending with the arousal at hearing them repeated back to her. She arched under him. “This is good,” she said. “This is what I had in mind.”
Another chuckle. He straddled her and braced his weight on elbows and knees, trapping her without giving her the delicious pressure of his weight against her. He nipped at her earlobe, breathed a heated exhalation against her ear, then kissed his way back to her mouth.
This time his tongue rubbed against hers. She writhed under him, lifting until her breasts, then hips, brushed his hard torso, then subsided back against the bed. His mouth left hers to trace over her chin and down her arched throat to the hollow between her collarbones. Alana wrapped her fingers around his upper arms and dug in her nails as he kissed the skin not covered by the neck of her T-shirt, nuzzling it aside. Desperate for his touch, she reached down and peeled off her shirt. Without further prompting, he kissed and licked his way to the tops of her breasts, careful to lavish attention on exposed skin only.
The concept of a tease clarified in her mind. With a low moan she undulated under him as that wickedly talented mouth skipped over the front clasp of her bra to work over her ribs, then her stomach, exposed above the waistband of her jeans.
He lifted again, dropping another kiss on her mouth, and this time it was pure, hot desire. Slick and hot and wet, nearly carnal in its intensity. She slid her hands under his T-shirt and dug her fingernails into the ridge of muscle on either side of his spine.
“Easy,” he growled.
“Impossible,” she gasped in return.
His hair tumbled forward, tangling with his eyelashes as he surveyed her. “Take these down,” he said, using his chin to edge her bra straps toward her shoulders.
She removed her nails from his back and put her fingers to the front clasp.
“No,” he said. “Just the straps.”
Sensation shivered over her skin as she trailed her fingers along the upper curves of her breasts to the straps and urged them off her shoulders. The fabric covering her breasts loosened slightly. Lucas kissed his way down the memory of the bra strap, using his rough chin to push the cup to its limits. His scruff gently abraded her skin, a shocking contrast to the wet heat of his mouth. She moaned.
The plea implicit in the sound didn’t stop him from doing the same thing on the opposite side. She gripped his arms and trembled under him, her nipples peaked against her silk bra.
“Now,” he said.
Under his heavy-lidded gaze, she unfastened the clasp and drew the thin silk to the side, revealing the tight tips. When he bent and took one between his teeth to lave it with his tongue, she looped her leg around his and tried to pull him down. He laughed at her efforts and moved to the other breast. Both tips were red, swollen, and wet by the time he moved down her breastbone and over her belly.
She watched him, idling her fingers through his hair.
“Now these,” he said with a nod at her jeans.
She unbuckled her belt, opened the fly, and shimmied both denim and silk down to the tops of her thighs, but his legs straddled hers, preventing her from getting them all the way off. He took in her exposed hip bones and the top of her mound, then bent to her mound and slid his tongue into the soft folds. Intentionally or not, he grazed her clit and she quivered under him. Then he levered back up and kissed her mouth. She tasted herself on his tongue, and slid her fingers into his hair to grip the back of his head and hold his mouth to hers.
“Remember what I said about patience?” he asked.
The sound she made was positively carnal and held an edge of desperation. That was the only explanation for the way she pushed,
pushed
at his head to force him back down her body. He took his time, let her feel the strength of him at her command as he once again retraced his path along jaw, throat, collarbone, sensitive nipples, belly. Taking his weight on one elbow, he tugged her jeans down far enough for her to kick them off and spread her legs.
“No more teasing,” she said.
He bent and circled her clit with his tongue, the movement steady and firm. He didn’t rush her to climax, made her wait as the pleasure built and built, tight and hot and undeniable. Her fist tightened in his hair as release crashed through her.
She subsided into the bed, her muscles trembling with aftershocks as Lucas opened her nightstand, sheathed himself. Without preamble he slid into her, and she cried out as his thick shaft stroked over hypersensitive nerves and set off another wave of need. She wound her arms over his shoulder blades and her legs around the backs of his thighs as he withdrew and plunged in again. It was hard and fast and a little rough, each thrust forcing a hot little cry from her throat. To her utter shock, another climax detonated deep inside. As her nails dug into Lucas’s spine, he growled, plunged deep, and shuddered as he came.
He eased down against her, sweat slicking the contact between their bodies. “You okay?” he rumbled.
“Fine,” she said, then cleared her throat, said it again, and added, “Why?”
“I was pretty rough at the end.”
“I liked it,” she pointed out.
“Just checking.”
“You didn’t mind that I . . . wanted that?”
He sat back on his heels, disengaging their bodies and establishing some distance in one movement. “I found it incredibly hot that you not only wanted that, but told me you wanted it.”
A little smile ghosted across her lips. “Just checking,” she said.
Aside from his opened jeans, he was still dressed, so cleaning up was a simple process. She tugged her bra off and pulled up the sheet and spread to ward off the evening chill.
“I’ll start tear-out this weekend,” he said. “I’ll start in the basement, replacing the plumbing.”
“All right,” she said. “I dropped Cody off at home earlier today. He’s pretty isolated out there.”
His head came up. “I know you mean well, but take it easy with Cody, okay?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“He’s a kid on the poverty line, with no real future, and he knows it. Just get him through the community service. That’s all you can do right now.”
“You’re the one who sent him to the library,” she pointed out. “You must have thought the experience would be good for him.”
“I thought it was the least-risky place to send a kid caught stealing. Do him a favor and don’t get too involved.”
He strode down the hallway. Moments later she heard him click for Duke, then the dog’s nails on the linoleum and the screen door closing.
“Like you?” she said.
• • •
HE WAS IN
over his head.
Unlike many of his law-enforcement counterparts who linked their egos and professional identities, Lucas was perfectly willing to admit when a situation was spinning out beyond his control. He was so in over his head. On the surface, everything was perfect. She was beautiful, intelligent, a slow, fierce burn in bed, and didn’t want so much as a date, let alone a commitment.
They’d hired her temporarily while they conducted a search for a new librarian. She’d thrown herself at a problem without hesitation, but it was nothing more than academic, a quest to get results. Building renovated, computers upgraded, future secured. He knew the type, had worked with them in Denver. He’d married one, a person who came through with plans and programs and never stopped to count the human cost. His wife had left Walkers Ford for exactly that reason. It was too personal, too intimate, too much history and connection to stand.
Life was breaking free again, free from the frozen earth of winter, free from the blizzards and howling wind and the long, dark nights.
There was one person in town he could count on to compartmentalize life. He poured the remainder of his pot of coffee into an insulated travel mug, pulled on his ball cap, clicked for Duke, and headed for the Blazer. The drive didn’t take long, just past Main Street into the newer subdivision, and then he was in his uncle’s driveway.
He knocked on the door and found his uncle up and dressed for the day. Regulation haircut, belt and shoes polished, khakis pressed, shirt tucked in. “Lucas, my boy,” he said amiably. “What brings you by?”
“I need to make a run into Brookings. Want to come along?” he said.
“Is this family business or police business?”
“Police,” Lucas said.
The old man’s shoulders squared up. “Let me get my jacket,” he said.
Ten minutes later they were on their way out of town. “What’s going on?”
Lucas explained about the break-in at Gunther’s house. “You’ve got a contact at the Brookings PD who knows something about the drugs?”
“I want to hit the pawn shops, see if anyone’s pawned the ring.”
Silence from the seat next to him.
“It was his wife’s,” Lucas said.
“And this is the best use of your time today.”
“It’s one way I’m going to use my time today,” Lucas said. “You talked to Tanya lately?”
Nelson flexed his hands on his thighs, the knuckles swollen and angry. Crippling rheumatoid arthritis had forced him to retire before his time. “No. I told her the last time she relapsed, we were done.”
“I saw her a couple of days ago,” Lucas said.
Nelson, no fool, snorted. “She’s what, eight-tenths of a mile from Gunther’s place? That was the right place to start.”
“She looked okay,” Lucas said, even though it wasn’t true.
“She let you into the house?”
Lucas was silent.
Nelson shook his head. “Weak,” he said.
Lucas wasn’t sure if Nelson’s flat summary was directed at him for not forcing his way into Tanya’s cabin, or at Tanya for becoming an addict. Or both. “She says she didn’t do it.”
“Of course she says that. Two most frequently heard phrases from my daughter.
I didn’t do it. It wasn’t my fault
.” He looked out the window at the rippling prairie grass, cross-hatching in the wind. “That girl never did learn to take responsibility for her choices.”
“I went to the Burtons, too.”
“Hmm. Which one?”
“I arrested Cody for shoplifting a few weeks ago. He’s doing community service at the library.”
“Following in his brother’s footsteps, I assume,” Nelson mused. “I put him away three, no four years ago, when he broke into the pharmacy.”
Twenty-two years old and a felony conviction that would stay with him for the rest of his life. “He got out a few weeks ago. I called his parole officer. He’s checked in regularly and is looking for a job.”
“Where’s he living?”
“At home.”
With Cody, and the three younger siblings, and the mother, working the second shift at J&H.
“That’s a lost cause,” his uncle said finally.
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “Colt had been in and out of juvie by the time he was Cody’s age. So far Cody has stayed off my radar.”
“Maybe he’s just better at hiding what he’s doing.”
Lucas thought of Tanya, how well she’d hidden her drug use, right up until a random drug test at the academy turned up positive for painkillers. He could follow Nelson’s train of thought. If Tanya could hide drug use from her father, the chief of police, and from Lucas, who, by that time, was rolling onto the DEA task force in Denver, then Cody Burton could hide whatever he was doing from an overworked mother.
Or maybe Cody Burton felt like he didn’t have any other option.
They pulled into the first pawn shop’s parking lot. Duke’s ears swiveled forward alertly, but he made no move to jump out of the truck when Nelson got out and followed Lucas into the shop. The place was brightly lit, jewelry, guns, and electronics displayed in cases and in locked cabinets.
The guy behind the counter wore a navy blue polo with the shop’s logo stitched on the chest and a wary expression. He lifted his eyebrows in greeting. “Morning, officers,” he said.
Lucas identified himself as he pulled out an enlarged picture of Gunther’s wife’s hand. “Anything like this come in recently?”
The clerk took the picture and studied the ring. Even enlarged it was difficult to see the details, the diamond chips that disappeared into the white gold. “No,” he said finally, and offered the page back across the counter. “I’m not sure we’d even take something like that on pawn. It’s small. People today want bling. Flashy.”
“Keep it,” Lucas said as he wrote his cell phone number on the bottom of the page. “If you get something like that in, call me.”
“You got it,” the clerk said, “but this ring isn’t worth the cost of gas to drive down here from Walkers Ford.”
“It is to the man whose wife wore it for sixty-two years.”
The clerk shrugged, apparently unimpressed by a six-decade marriage.
They repeated the same conversation with only minor variations at three other pawn shops, then drove through for a fast-food lunch, eaten in the truck on the way back to Walkers Ford. Lucas shared half his French fries with Duke, still sitting alertly in the backseat.