Gone From Me: Hearts of the South, Book 10 (11 page)

Seriously. He could not catch a break tonight. Resting his hands at his hips, he dropped his head and tried to flex the tension out of his neck and shoulders. “I wouldn’t call it a hard time. He was worried about you.”

“What did he do?”

Son of a bitch. He lifted a hand and let it fall. Trying to rub away the tension gripping his neck, he turned to face her. “He offered to pay for the artificial insemination.”

If he hadn’t been so all-out irritated now, the horror on her face would have almost been funny. “You told him no, right?”

“Yes, I told him no, that we’d decided not to go that route, which is when he offered to cover our living expenses until I could find another job so any prospective birth parents wouldn’t look at us unfavorably.”

“Oh my God.” She covered her eyes.

He snatched up his pillow. “I also told him my dad had done a dandy job of teaching me how to handle money and we had enough savings to cover our living expenses for almost a year.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this?” She dropped her hand. Hurt and annoyance glimmered in her brown eyes.

He really needed her to stop looking at him like that. He needed to crawl in a hole and maybe get a couple hours sleep because, fuck, he had to face this down in the morning, then keep it together all day. He sucked in a breath.

“Because he’s your father and he loves you. He meant well. All he wants is to make sure you’re taken care of, which is the same thing I want. I’d just lost my dad. I wasn’t going to do anything to mess up your relationship with yours.” With his free hand, he grabbed the blanket folded on the bench at the foot of their bed.

Amy stilled, expression shifting from ire to wariness. “What are you doing?”

“I told you.” He stalked into the hall. “Going to bed.”

“You’re sleeping on the couch?”

“Yeah.” He tossed the bedding down on the sofa and looked around for the remote. “I’m sleeping on the couch.”

“What the hell, Rob?” Oh, yeah, they were beyond ire and annoyance. She was cursing out of anger. A lifetime ago, he’d found that delectably adorable because the lapses were so rare.

“I’m exhausted. I have to work tomorrow.” With the remote, he ticked the points off on his fingers. “I’m pissed as hell. And I am going to bed.”

“You’re pissed.
You’re
pissed?” At her sides, she curled her fingers into fists, released them, fisted them again. “Well, that makes two of us, then.”

“What did I do wrong now?” He dropped onto the couch and accessed the television guide channel to scroll through the late-night offerings he wasn’t even going to watch. Whatever he tuned into every night was all background noise, sound and fury to get him through the dark hours.

“I’m not angry at you. I’m angry at the situation, at myself. You have been suffering, and I didn’t even see it. My sister had to tell me what was wrong. What kind of wife does that make me?” She tousled her hair. “Then you tell me what Daddy did, and I could kill him. To top it all off, you’re on the couch again. And I can’t do anything to fix any of it.”

“Amy, honey.” He settled on a twenty-four-hour news channel and dropped the remote on the coffee table. The hot blonde Wilson was infatuated with nattered on about some missing-persons case in Alabama. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’re not going to solve this tonight.”

“I know that.” She spoke with extreme precision, irritation lurking under the surface. “But you sleeping on the couch is not going to help us solve it at all.”

“Sweetheart, I’m mad as hell at the whole freaking world right now. I am trying like crazy not to fight with you—”

“Why? Fight with me if it’ll make you feel better. I’d rather have you fighting me than…than leaving me like this.”

With his elbow propped on the couch arm, he pressed a finger, hard, into his temple. He fixed her with a long, slow look. “What does fighting do to my mood?”

That brought her up short, but not for long. She tilted her chin. “So fight with me and then fuck me.”

A lifetime ago, those words from her mouth would have had him all over her. Tonight, the anger and the weariness lingered too much with him still. “What’s the point?”

Amy caught her breath, the fury bordering on unleashable. She recognized those words, recognized the simmering anger behind them. In a couple of strides, she was at the sofa, trembling before him.

“Is that what this is about?” She shoved the remote off the table, out of his reach. Her hands shaking, she seized the pillow and threw it behind her. “I apologized for that. I was crazy upset and stupid that night. Why are you still holding on to that?”

Because she could see that he was, that the unthinking words she’d wept into his shoulder the last time they’d tried to make love, mere days after the results of the fertility testing, had stayed with him. How much of what she’d said on a daily basis had shoved him deeper into the hole he’d been in?

She could seriously cut out her tongue.

He shrugged, and the casual gesture she’d seen so often the past few months sent her anger burning higher. She’d be damned if she’d leave him in that hole tonight. She would make him come back to her, make him fight for her.

“What’s the point?” She skimmed her pajama pants over her hips and let them fall to the floor. Grasping the hem of her camisole, she pulled it up and over her head so it joined the pj’s. He didn’t react, but rather watched her from his boneless slump on the couch. That apathy, from the husband who’d once been hungry and eager for her, intensified her fear and desperation. “This is the point.”

“Amy—”

Her mouth stopped his words, and knees on the couch, she straddled him, tangling her hands into his hair. The muscled warmth of his bare abdomen rubbed the most intimate areas of her body. He groaned under her, and the husky sound, full of longing and surrender, traveled all the way through her.

His hands found her hips, his grasp rough. She bit his lower lip and drew back, using her hold on his hair to tilt his head, too hard, she knew, but just right also. “This is the point. Fight me. Fight for me.”

She licked her way down his neck, sinking her teeth into the muscle between throat and shoulder. He shuddered, his hands a painful clench at her hips. “Fuck.”

The guttural growl sent a heavy ache to her lower belly. “Yes. Fight for me. Let me remind you what the point is.”

He was already hard, and she was wet for him. One hand still gripping his hair, she wrestled his loose pajama pants with the other, until his erection came free, brushing her thigh. Eyes on his, she sank down, taking him fully on one stroke.

He yelled, a rough sound torn from his gut, and she exulted in it. He pushed up under her, his hands at her waist pulling her down to meet each thrust. Already, she trembled on the edge of a climax, and she tugged at his hair. She locked her gaze with his, looking for her Rob in this angry man mired in loss and defeat.

She posted on him, deliberately tightening and releasing intimate muscles, relishing the feel of him inside her and the stunned desire on his lean face. “This is the point, Rob. Us.”

Face against her throat, he gasped. The base of him rubbed at her aching clit on each stroke, and she muffled a scream into his hair as months of denial exploded into an orgasm so strong it hurt.

He lunged into her, a final thrust, throbbing within her on his own climax. He collapsed against the couch, winded and his chest heaving. Trying to catch her own breath, she brushed back tangled bangs and leaned forward to stroke his damp hair from his forehead. He lifted a shaking hand to cup the side of her face, the tip of his thumb caressing the corner of her mouth.

“This,” she whispered, turning her lips into his palm. “This is the point, baby.”

* * * * *

Amy drifted into wakefulness. Darkness still hovered outside, and she remained tucked into Rob’s sturdy warmth. His arm, a familiar weight, wrapped across her midriff, one hand a soft cradle for her breast. He circled her areola with a lazy thumb. Between her thighs a wet throbbing lingered, a combination of their rough coupling and renewing desire.

He kissed her neck, then her shoulder, and she sighed, resting her hands on his naked thighs behind her. Afterward, he’d carried her down the hall, pajamas forgotten on the living room floor. He’d wrapped himself around her in their bed, holding her, stroking her like something infinitely precious, until sleep claimed them both.

She let one hand drift to caress his half-erect penis, feathered her fingers over his scrotum, and smiled at his muffled groan. He jerked against her palm.

“Remind me.” He murmured the words against her shoulder, his free hand cupping her other breast and pressing her closer to him. She stroked him into hardness, moisture clinging to her palm, and moaned under the welcome nip of his teeth on her neck. With a shift in position, she tangled one leg with his and opened to him, so his erection rested along her wet folds. A heavy ache bloomed low in her belly, and she laid a hand against the head, rubbing herself along his length.

His harsh gasp rewarded her, and he tightened his hold on her breasts. She pushed into him, the tip of his erection brushing her clit with each slow slide. Tiny shocks of electricity fired along her nerves every time he touched her.

“Take me,” she whispered. “Remind me I’m yours.”

One rough male hand slipped to her belly, tugging her into him and rolling them at the same time. On her stomach, she clutched the sheets and waited. The head of him nudged her clit, slid lower, and she moaned. Heavy wanting ached in her belly. She didn’t want his teasing; she wanted to know she was his.

“Do it, Rob.” She dug her nails into fine cotton. “Take me.”

He barreled into her, and she cried out. A slow slide almost out, and another thrust. His hands rested next to hers, the weight and heat of him all over her, and in the dim light from the hall, she watched the muscles flex and play in his hands and forearms as he took her, over and over, slow and hard and completely out of her control.

She dropped her forehead to the bed, from this angle, catching glimpses of him taking her. She burned. “God.”

Holding himself up on one arm, he slid the other beneath them to press his index finger to her clit. A single touch, the lightest pressure, and she was splintering, screaming his name. He kept up the slow, inexorable pace, pushing her toward a second climax, until the desire arced into tension and pleasure-pain, and she screamed again. On a muffled grunt, he pushed forward, and she felt him swell and spurt within her.

She collapsed into the mattress, scraping her fingers against the smooth sheets. On his elbows, he kept most of his weight off her, but his chest heaved against her back. His harsh breaths transformed into laughter, the rich, warm sound that came from deep in his chest, the laughter she hadn’t heard in forever.

“I’d forgotten how loud you can be.” He rested his forehead below her nape, shaking with each chuckle. “We keep this up, and the neighbors are going to call the cops.”

She elbowed him in the gut. “You can explain it to your buddy, Troy Lee.”

He guffawed, and she smiled into the sheet. Oh, she loved that laugh. He wrapped her in an embrace, and she simply lay, enveloped by him as he regained his ability to breathe.

His sigh whispered over her skin. “We needed this.”

This time, her elbow to his abs was gentler. “Um, yeah.”

“Definitely something we need to do more often.” He dropped a kiss at the base of her skull. His arms contracted beneath her, and he rolled to his back, taking her with him to lie cradled against his chest.

“From now on, Rob, you have to talk to me when you’re mad.” Head pillowed on his shoulder, she traced the line of his pectoral. “I never meant to hurt you, and you’ve let it hurt you too long. We should have talked it out a long time ago.”

“I know.” He ran his fingers through her tangled hair. “It’s crazy, like there are two people in my head sometimes—the normal me and this other one. And I lose my way.”

She linked their fingers together, resting on his abdomen. “I’ll help you find your way back.”

* * * * *

Ten til seven in the morning and already muggy heat lay close to the ground. Rob swung out of his truck and hustled across the parking lot. He fingered the adhesive bandage covering a cotton ball at the crook of his elbow.

His duty shoes crunched on the gravel, and Troy Lee, seated in the Charger’s driver’s seat with the door open while he tested lights and sirens, looked up. “About time you got here.”

Rob rested his hand on the car roof. “Hey, I’ve been up since before five.”

“You totally could have gotten a run in before you saw the doctor.” Troy Lee jotted a note on the inspection form. “Slacker.”

A memory flashed through him, the gut punch of his body sinking into Amy’s, her scream of pleasure surrounding him. “No, I really couldn’t. Trust me.”

Troy Lee’s grunt reeked with skepticism. “What’s more important than your morning run?”

Rob held up a pair of fingers.

Male understanding flashed in Troy Lee’s gaze, and he chuckled. “Yeah, I guess some things are more important than running.”

The metal side door clanged open, and Chris bounded down the steps. “Calvert wants to see us in the duty room before we head out.”

“Tell him we’ll be there in a second.” Troy Lee ran through the rest of the inspection, initialed the report and jammed the clipboard in the organizer. “Let’s go.”

Deputies from two shifts crowded the multipurpose room. Rob and Troy Lee slid into empty chairs on the next-to-last row of the makeshift roll-call area.

“Aw, look, Campbell, Farr has a new boyfriend.” The deputy behind them nudged his buddy and leaned forward to clap a hand on both Troy Lee’s and Rob’s shoulders. “Parker’s gonna be jealous, Farr.”

“Aw, look, Bennett, Walker’s still a homophobic asshole.” Troy Lee knocked Walker’s hand off his shoulder.

Chris came into their row from the other side and took the chair next to Troy Lee’s. He slung his arm across Troy Lee’s shoulders with deliberate casualness and patted Walker’s hand still lying on Rob’s shoulder. “Cut him some slack, Troy Lee. He’s jealous because we won’t let him in on what we have going on. Hands off my new bitch, Walker.”