Confess (The Blue Line Series Book 1) (12 page)

“Did that just turn you on? Remembering what we did last night? Remembering coming in my hand and again wrapped around me?” He groaned, a pleased sound that rocked through his throat like a quiet plea. “I think it did, Angel.”

“So what if it did?” Lacy finished shaking the Screwdriver and slid the glass down three seats to a group of young women who eyed Mitch like they could jump his back and ride him pony style.

She hadn’t noticed until now, but the only people now seated in her section were women. Young, attractive, single women with smokey eyes and boobs hanging out over low-cut tops.

She pushed the ping of jealousy down into her gut.

He rolled the paper in his hands before shucking it across the bar and rimming the small trashcan Charlie kept in the back. “There’s that name again. I swear you only use it to piss me off.”

“Bartender rule number one. Don’t learn the names.”

She watched his throat tighten around a swallow. Somehow he managed to make the minute task look sensual with the way his lips curved around the bottle, the slow pull of his neck muscles working the liquid down, the way his pulse flickered just under the tanned line of his jaw.

“Did you know your nose flares when you lie?” His gaze narrowed on hers.

Her father had told her the same thing. She’d never been able to hide anything. “You really don’t know how to stop until you get what you want, do you, Detective?”

He nodded. “I always get what I want, so giving in would be easier than fighting.”

“What if what I want goes deeper than what you’re willing to give?”

He sat back, his elbows off the bar and the look of retreat in his eyes.

She had to think fast.

He had her opening old wounds she’s kept closed so long she wasn’t sure what would surface or if she’d be able to stop talking when the subject of her secret bubbled up.

“When I was a kid, I had horrible nightmares. Mostly this haggard face over and over and I’d wake up paralyzed in my bed.”

Mitch’s eyes darkened, and his head tilted in thought. “Night terrors?”

She wished. At least night terrors were fake. “Worse. Memories I didn’t want to remember. Places around town would trigger them. People I’d see on my way to school.”

“Memories?”

She shuddered. “I didn’t exactly have the white picket fence childhood.” He seemed satisfied enough with the answer for now, but she’d bet as soon as he found some alone time with a computer, he’d search the town records. And he’d find nothing because when the chief wanted something to disappear, it never saw the light of day again.

“My mother had only been gone a year and Dad hated doctors, seeing how mom’s had told her the best thing she could do for her depression was get out of a marriage with a cop. So he took me to a Shawnee medicine man on the reservation.”

“Do you think that?”

“What?” She’d been too lost in not saying the wrong thing to remember what she’d just confessed.

“Marriage to a cop caused her depression?”

“If you knew my dad back then, his determination to solve cases, you’d understand.”

A strange emotion washed over his face. Confliction? Anger? She couldn’t be sure, but it made her stomach flutter.

“Anyway, the medicine man said every face we see in a dream is someone we’ve met along our life journey. He asked the spirits to only let in dreams of people whose names I recognized. The people closest to me. It’s silly, but Dad was willing to try anything for a night of sleep.”

Anything to keep her secret hidden and her name from the man who’d taken her once and could return at any moment to take her again. Anything to make her appear normal to the world even though she’d already figured out at ten, her normal was a life lived inside the memory of a living, breathing nightmare.

Mitch caught her arm and twisted her wrist up with soft fingers. He rubbed his thumb over her tattoo, a spider web design inside a circle with three dangling feathers. “A dream catcher?”

“The name thing didn’t really work. I experimented with other options.” Not that the dream catcher stopped her kidnapper’s image from searing into her brain every night as soon as her eyes shut. She could recall every feature of Richard Wray’s face down to the fine winkles around his nose when he smiled and the sweet smell of his breath on her face. Just thinking about it now made her shudder.

Mitch studied her for a second. The detective in him couldn’t miss her body shake, but he didn’t ask why. “And the one on your hip?”

She passed him a scornful stare at the mention of the tattoo now under her shorts. “Faith in Chinese characters.”

Concern flickered in his eyes. “Do the tats work?”

“Why do you need to know? A tough guy like you wouldn’t have bad dreams.”

“No. My nightmares don’t end with the daylight.” His eyes grew dim. That comment had come from a deep, dark, guarded place inside him. She saw the slight wince of his jaw, like if he could, he’d pull it back and bury it deeper than before.

The need to push back, to see what Mitch was made of, took over. “Sounds like a guilty conscience to me. What would you have done to feel guilty about?”

“Plenty.”

Starburst tingles shot up her spine at the rawness in his voice. Mitch had a dark side, and as much as that should scare her away, it didn’t.

There was something oddly appealing about being able to pull back his layers one at a time and see a glimpse of the man he was under the badge. Venerable. Guarded. Pained.

Lacy slipped her wrist loose from his fingers, but he tightened his grip before she could break free. She clenched her teeth to keep from growling at him. “I’m a grown woman, Mitch. I don’t let nightmares get in my way anymore.”

His eyes lightened and narrowed on hers. Something in them changed, as they had the night before. The detective was gone, replaced by an animal with primal needs and primal ways to satisfy them. “You want to dream about me?”

She shook her head. The blushing heat from her face bloomed across her body, making the close quarters behind the bar close in and cage her. “You really should work on your self-confidence,” she joked.

Mitch leaned closer over the bar. She couldn’t take her eyes off his mouth. “I saw you watching me tonight at the party. Every time the fabric of your panties slid over your clit you thought about my fingers making you come. Didn’t you?”

Heat drained to between her legs. Her body reacted to him with instant lust. Something about the way Mitch took charge. How he created boundaries to their sexual relationship with his words, made her feel vulnerable to him and safe all in the same breath. It was intoxicating. And frustrating. An itch she just couldn’t get close enough to scratch.

The way most men constantly needed to be reassured in bed made her sick. In fact, she’d never made it past foreplay and oral before a guy would ask if she was all right and her geek-dar would send her running from the bedroom.

Mitch didn’t ask for permission. He took complete control, leaving her no room to question or fear. And the best part--the clincher for her--was he didn’t ask for anything more than sex.

His fingers slipped off her arm, his prints burned into her skin. “I still owe you eggs.”

“Forget the damn eggs,” she breathed. A glance around the bar proved what she already knew. The night was a complete loss tip wise. Charlie would forgive her if she left, eventually, and Connie wouldn’t mind the extra tips.

Driven by a need to know just how far Mitch planned to take her, she tossed her bar apron on the counter. “Meet me out back in five.”

***

Five minutes stood between him and holding the woman who made him feel irritated and ignited at the same time. Five minutes might as well have been an eternity in hell the way he was feeling watching her disappear behind the swinging door to the kitchen.

“Buck up, Cowboy.” Connie slid a drink to a customer and leaned over with a wicked smile. “You’re not the one she’s leaving behind to fend off the drunks.”

“Sorry about that.” He broke out his best forgive-me smile.

Connie poured two beers at once. “You make her happy, so I’ll forgive you. But one wrong step with my girl Lace-”

“Message received. She’s in good hands.”

He half expected Connie to crack a smile and lay some sophisticated threat on his life, but she went for the guilt trip instead. “She better be because good hands isn’t something that girls had a lot of experience with. You’d better be the real deal.”

He saluted and tossed a healthy tip on the bar to make up to Connie for stealing Lacy and spun on his stool in time to catch Stetson cruse through the front door already leaning on the walls for support. Stuck between Lacy’s guard-dog best friend and the nightmare kid with the hard-on for his girl, he sighed and slid off the stool.

He’d been on the lookout for the kid at the chief’s party but even the chief had enough taste to avoid him.

Not tonight. Stetson would have to be Connie’s or the bouncer’s problem. And the sliver of guilt he had over the thought vanished with a glance back to the bar and Connie dressed in head to toe black leather with a dog collar around her neck.

Connie could take care of Connie. No guilt needed.

Now he just had to get by the kid without starting something and leaving Lacy waiting. He ducked his head as he passed, hoping to avoid a confrontation, but Stetson spotted him through the crowd of women and staggered over.

“Hey. I know you.”

Mitch plastered a smile on his face and forced his voice to sound light. “Yeah, man. I’m sure you do.” He patted the boy’s shoulder and pushed passed, letting the crowd separate them.

The bouncer, a large guy in a button down western shirt and jeans swung the door open when Mitch approached. Almost the clean getaway he’d hoped for until Stetson yelled at his back. “No man. I really do think I know you.”

Mitch slipped out and around the brick wall to the parking lot. He had much better things to do than get into another scrap-up with the kid. He’d just rounded the second corner to the back of the bar when he first heard the footsteps at his back. Too heavy to be a woman. Too unsteady to be anyone trying to kill him. He spun in time to catch the flash of white in the darkness.

Stetson.

The kid jerked to a stop an inch from Mitch’s chest. His sour breath blew across Mitch’s face. “I do know you. You’re that kid. The one with the dead girl. Or,” he rubbed shaking hands over his face leaving streaks of red on his cheeks, “I mean, you were that kid. The one in the woods who found the dead girl. You’re him.”

Mitch’s stomach clinched. He locked his jaw and spoke slow through clenched teeth. “How would you know about that?”

Stetson’s smile widened, and his eyes danced in the thin veil of light from the street lamp. “We studied the case in criminal law at the community college. You were a legend. The biggest fuck-up ever. Let some little kid run off into the woods knowing a killer was out there waiting.” He laughed, one beat and harsh.

“What makes you think that was me?” Not even Andrews, the man who’d comforted him, who’d been the only one to give him any attention at all during those long hours after Sadie’s body had been found recognized him. He’d taken on his mother’s last name to distance himself as far as possible from the boy who killed his cousin. Even with a new name and thirteen years of hard won manhood on him, the chief should have seen through to the kid.

Mitch repeated his question, slower this time. “What makes you think I’m him?”

Stetson’s face sunk. “I didn’t until some guy at a bar suggested it.”

Mitch rubbed the back of his neck. He stepped closer. The tension on his face readable. His hand itched to gather the slack in Stetson’s collar and shove the guy against the brick wall. Oh what the hell, the kid deserved a little rough handling. He fisted Stetson’s shirt and lifted him off the ground. “What guy? What bar?”

Stetson’s eyes widened as his back hit the bricks. “The biker bar on the highway, Bullets. I didn’t get the guys name, but he’s there all the time. He’s a cop or something. Henry or something like that.”

“Helms maybe?”

“I don’t know.” The kid laughed. “It’s not like we go by names there or anything. Just some guy.”

He wanted to ask for details. Get a mental picture of the guy before he stormed down there and checked him out, but in the darkness, metal scraped the brick. In seconds Lacy would walk out the back door of Charlie’s, and the last thing Mitch wanted her to see was Stetson.

He dropped Stetson’s shirt and straightened the collar. “Go home kid, you’re wasted.”

“Not too wasted to put a make on you.” Stetson’s head tilted in Lacy’s direction. “She doesn’t know, does she? Wonder what she’ll think about you when someone finally tells her?”

Mitch ground his teeth. He wanted to grab the kid again. This time give him a good shake. Maybe even knock some sense loose.

Lacy appeared from the shadows, and he thought better of manhandling the kid. “If you like breathing, she won’t find out.”

Stetson’s eyes watered with the dull haze of alcohol. He gave Lacy a quick glance, pushed off the wall, and stalked back to the bar with a grunt of disapproval.

“What’d he want?” Lacy stopped at Mitch’s side. Even in the darkness, Mitch could tell she’d taken time to freshen her make-up and hair and something citrus scented radiated off her skin.

“Doesn’t matter.” He turned to her and stepped forward until her back pressed into the wall. “He knows your mine now. He won’t be back.”

“Yours?” She laughed. She reached for his shoulders. “I don’t belong to anyone, Mitch Kilpatrick. Least of all domineering troublemakers like you.”

“Oh.” He bit the side of his lip to keep from grinning. Just like last night, the urge to take her in the parking lot proved almost too much to avoid. He pressed his knee between the apex of her thigh and was rewarded with the growing heat of her arousal. “You are mine. Body and soul. No one else’s. Mine.”

“Re—” She started to protest, but the words were lost when his mouth closed over hers.

He kissed her hard and deep, letting the firm feel of her under his lips melt away the anger from Stetson’s accusations.