Officer on Duty (Lock and Key Book 4) (13 page)

He paused for a split second, giving her time to brace herself as his desire built momentum. The compulsion to be inside her snowballed, and his fingers tingled against his shaft. He flexed his hips, splitting her tender skin and delving into tight heat.

She gasped and arched against him, drawing even tighter and squeezing his dick.

He almost lost it. Gripping both her thighs now, he froze, buried to the balls inside her for a couple seconds before he pulled back and pushed in all over again.

She was everything he’d imagined, everything he’d craved: heat, pressure and just the right amount of resistance. Her body was strong yet soft in all the right places, and it yielded to the hard shaft of his cock.

She gripped fistfuls of sheets, just like he gripped her legs. The muscles in her forearms were taut, showing him just how fierce her hold was.

Her hold on his focus was even more intense: all he could see, hear, or think of was her. Her pussy pulsed every now and again, shocking him with sensation that was almost too much, too soon. And the way she looked…

Looking down at her arched up against him, draped over his shoulders with her pussy lips split around his shaft, was something he’d remember for the rest of his life. No detail would escape him, no matter how much time went by – it was a memory that’d serve on the frontlines of his fantasies.

Sound bytes punctuated the moments between each thrust: broken syllables that were something more than breath and something less than words. Some came from him, but mostly, they were hers.

Not that he was enjoying this any less than her. Hell, no. But he strove for near-silence as a test, a measure of his self-control. Because if he gave in to every urge that rushed through his lust-flooded brain, he’d be groaning and fucking her hard, coming deep inside her in a heartbeat.

This was too good to give up so fast. Maybe it was the fact that he’d ached so badly for this, or maybe it was that part of him was too jaded to believe that her interest in him would last. It didn’t matter, because either way, he wasn’t going to let himself finish before he felt her come all around his dick – before she made him.

He looked down and couldn’t look away. There wasn’t a single part of her that didn’t scream for his attention, from her dark hair to her breasts with their hard nipples, to her pussy. And that was where he let his gaze settle. Watching his cock rock in and out of her was a deeply gratifying pleasure.

Just above the sweet slit he’d filled with his shaft, her clit was swollen. Memories of how she’d squirmed and moaned when he’d plied his tongue against it hit him hard. He couldn’t do that now, but he could certainly do something.

He slid a hand down her thigh and pressed his thumb against her clit. It was as much for him as it was for her – he couldn’t keep his hands to himself. He wanted to feel the tremor that hit her when he touched her there, wanted to hear the hitch in her breath.

And he wasn’t disappointed.

The flaw in her breathing was quickly followed by the first words she’d spoken since he’d put himself inside her.

“I’m so close.”

“Already?”

“Yes. Harder.”

Her pussy echoed the sentiment with a quick tightening, a motion that would’ve milked him dry if it’d been followed by more.

He rubbed his thumb slowly over her clit. She didn’t have to ask twice.

He gave her what she wanted, slamming home with every thrust. The sharp sound of their bodies meeting was underscored by the bed shaking, the headboard knocking against the wall.

It was what he wanted, too. Just like that, unbelievable heat and pressure pooled at the base of his spine.

She reached up, quick as a viper, and surprised him by grabbing the hem of his uniform shirt. He barely noticed a button flying loose as she pulled, and then she cried out so loudly that the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

It was like being hit by lighting. Her pussy pulsed around his cock and he couldn’t temper the speed or the immediacy of his reaction. He fucked her even harder, his pace furious and unheeding of anything besides the urge to keep her keening like that and the urge to get off.

He thrust his way through a few seconds of almost painful intensity, and then a climax tore through him, numbing him to anything other than pleasure.

Pleasure so deep it radiated into his bones, erasing everything else: the strain of exertion, of fucking while standing and supporting her weight, even the pain in his mauled leg. None of it existed anymore; all his nerves there played dead as his world imploded beneath the weight of gratification.

He relished it as long as he could, barely noticing the sound of his own rushing breath, until his nerves were overtaxed and the condom suddenly felt too tight.

Pulling out was sweet agony, and he took it slow. Only when he’d fully vacated her sweet, hot body did he realize her thighs were trembling in his grip.

He eased her down slowly, surrendering her to the bed and its twisted quilt.

She rolled over onto her side and made a sound that was half sigh and half hum. He didn’t know exactly what it meant, but it sounded happy.

All he could do was breathe and ease the condom off his cock.

There was a wastebasket in one corner of the room. He tossed it there, and then he was left standing in a uniform that was wrinkled, missing buttons and dampened at the crotch.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m more than okay.” He was on top of the fucking world.

“Your leg… That had to be hard on it.” She sounded worried, but not sorry.

He stood a moment longer before sinking down onto the edge of her bed. The haze of pleasure was slowly fading, allowing him to feel the soreness in his calf. It was nothing compared to the satisfaction rolling through him.

“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I would’ve gladly stood with my leg in a bear trap if that was what it took to get inside you like that.”

She laughed. “I’m not into anything that weird. Are you?”

She traced a line down his back, her fingers bumping his vertebrae and setting his nerves on edge again. “Please don’t tell me you’re into pain. I don’t think I could stomach inflicting it, and we can’t count on you getting mauled by a dog every week.”

Her tone was teasing, and so was her touch. It was strange how much he enjoyed it, after what they’d just done. For years, he’d treated sex like a business transaction: pleasure exchanged for the mutual benefit of two parties.

This was nothing like that. He liked the feeling of her hand on his back because it was hers. He’d just felt her come around his dick and he still wanted to make her feel good. He didn’t want to walk away, even though his erection was softening.

“I promise not to bring any bear traps into the bedroom. I’m not into that either, but if
you
wanted to maul me … well, that might be a different story.”

The mattress shifted, and he felt her weight against his back immediately before he felt her teeth on the back of his neck.

Just a light scrape, and then hot breath on his skin as she laughed.

“You tear up my skin now and I’m gonna walk out of here looking like I’ve been bested by some convict on the job – my uniform’s already in tatters.”

It was an exaggeration, but there was no denying that she’d certainly left her mark on his attire. He had a lot of washing and sewing to do before he could wear it to work again.

“I’m sorry about the buttons – I didn’t mean to pop them off. I got caught up in the moment.”

“Nothing a little thread and needle won’t fix. I just have to make it across the street before anyone notices.”

“I’ll sew them back on for you.”

He turned and arched a brow. “So you want me to leave my shirt here with you and march across the street without it?”

She giggled, then waved a hand. “It’ll only take me a few minutes. You can spare a few more minutes, can’t you?”

“I don’t guess I have much of a choice.”

She smiled.

He returned the expression, unable to help it even though reality was setting in and uncomfortable questions were churning in the back of his mind.

Lucia put on a pot of coffee before sitting down at the kitchen table with her sewing kit. It was more for Jeremy than for her – after a day at work and the way he’d fucked her, he had to be tired.

Even if he refused to let it show, just like the soreness he had to be feeling in his leg.

Heat smoldered in her cheeks as she repaired the buttons she’d accidentally torn off his shirt – something she would’ve expected to happen in a romance novel or movie, but not in her bedroom.

He sat across from her in a black t-shirt, his vest and duty belt lying between them on the table.

“You okay?” she asked when his coffee cup had stopped steaming, and he’d all but stopped drinking.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You look like something’s bothering you.”

Maybe she was prying, but she felt deliciously close to him and couldn’t just sit silently while he stared into space, worry lines running between those gorgeous blue eyes.

“Paige is upset with me.”

“Really?” It was a surprise. It was hard to imagine a sweeter girl than Paige, or a more devoted father than Jeremy.

But then, all families had their squabbles, especially during the preteen years.

He nodded, his shoulders shifting beneath an invisible weight. “She wants to go to this birthday party. A party that starts with a horror movie at the theater and ends with a ghost tour of the Wisteria Plantation House.”

Lucia arched a brow. “Whatever happened to cake and ice cream?”

He exhaled in a rough sigh. “Hell if I know.”

“I didn’t even realize they gave ghost tours at Wisteria. I was under the impression it was more upscale than that.”

“It’s a new thing. Apparently the event they put on at Halloween last year was a hit and the owner slipped down off his high horse in order to cash in. I wish he hadn’t.”

“You don’t want Paige to be scared?”

“No, I don’t. I spend enough time being scared for her. I’ve always felt torn between letting her know how ugly the world can be, for safety’s sake, and wanting to shield her from it all. I don’t see where getting scared for fun fits into any of it. Especially at her age.”

“I’m not a fan of horror movies either.”

He nodded. “I doubt the tour at Wisteria will be that scary, but I don’t like the idea of her wandering around in a public place with a bunch of kids and no supervision. Not with everything that’s been going on. Apparently the parents are letting the girls do the tour alone while they set up for cake and gifts afterward in the restaurant on the plantation grounds.”

Lucia was silent for a moment. She got what he was saying, and wouldn’t have wanted any of the girls in her swim class to wander like that, either – at least, not in light of recent events.

“Don’t you have friends who work there?” she asked, thinking back to their recent beach trip. “Alicia, Kerry and Sasha all do, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, maybe you could compromise – have Paige skip the movie, but join her friends at Wisteria. You could ask a friend to keep an eye on her during the tour.”

He seemed to consider it. “Maybe, if one of them will be there that night. I can’t be there myself because I’ll be working.”

She shrugged. “I don’t mean to tell you what to do – it’s just an idea.”

“No, I appreciate it. I can’t help but feel like shit, telling her no, even if I know it’s right. I don’t want her to think of me as just some ass who keeps her from her friends.”

“I’m sure she doesn’t think you’re an ass.”

He met her eyes, a glimmer of wryness there. “Don’t all kids that age think that about their parents? And there’s just the one of me, so I worry she’ll think I’m twice the ass.”

“She doesn’t think you’re an ass; it’s obvious she loves you. Trust me, I know how to read teen girls.”

A smile flickered around one corner of his mouth, but his eyes still looked worried.

“Her grandma spoils her, and I seem like a hardass in comparison. But I can’t complain – Christ knows she deserves some spoiling, and I can’t give it to her.”

Lucia tilted her head. Why did he think that? “I don’t think you’re quite as strict and stern as you imagine. I never got that impression, seeing you with Paige.”

He shrugged. “I get so caught up in worrying about her, sometimes, that I forget about letting her have fun. I don’t want that to be someone else’s responsibility, while I enforce all the rules.”

“Does your job make it hard to make time for fun stuff with Paige?” A pang of guilt hit Lucia. If that was the case, then she’d be infringing on what little time he had to spend with his daughter.

Slowly, he shook his head. “It’s not that. I’ve booked a lot of overtime, but there’s still enough left over. The real problem is that I’m just not fun. Think I forgot how to be, God knows how many years ago.”

“Oh, come on, that’s not true – you’re plenty of fun.”

His gaze focused to laser intensity, locking with hers. “Name one fun thing we’ve done, or you’ve seen me do.” He tipped his head toward her bedroom. “What just happened back there doesn’t count.”

“Easy. There was the beach trip this past weekend.”

“Yeah, I was a real barrel of laughs, sitting there on a blanket shoveling down fried chicken and trying to pretend I wasn’t noticing the way you filled out that bikini.”

Her cheeks warmed. “You couldn’t have helped that, with your injured leg. Stop beating yourself up – you’re fun, and I know it. You’ve just been so immersed in raising Paige for so long that you can’t see how good of a job you’re doing. Take it from someone objective, who deals with girls her age regularly: you’re a fantastic dad.”

A little of the tension seemed to go out of his muscles, his shoulders shifting into a more relaxed angle beneath his t-shirt.

She wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been watching him so intently – if she’d been able to look away.

But she couldn’t. She’d already taken her hands off him to repair his shirt; she didn’t want to take her eyes off him.

“Here you go,” she said, snipping a dark thread and setting his uniform shirt down on the table. “Good as new.”

“Until next time, anyway.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “Any idea when that might be?”

“Soon. I want it to be soon. But I won’t lie or sneak around. I need to figure out how I’m gonna tell Paige we’re dating.”

“Do you think she’ll be upset?”

“No. She adores you. But I’ve never dated anyone seriously since her mother. I don’t want her to get too excited.”

In case they didn’t work out. “I understand.”

He nodded. “I’ll have to tell her, though.” He grimaced. “And my mother, I suppose.”

“You don’t think
she’ll
be upset, do you?”

“Upset?” A bark-like laugh escaped him. “I’ll probably have to talk her down from throwing a party. She’s had a bee in her bonnet about me dating for a decade, at least. Never did like Paige’s mother and wanted me to find someone else after that was over.”

A prickle of curiosity ran through Lucia, laced with caution. She didn’t want to dredge up painful memories, but… “Is Paige’s mother involved in her life?”

“No. She left when Paige was just two months old, and that was the last time she saw her.”

Lucia’s mouth went dry. “That’s awful. I’m sorry.”

How could any parent abandon their newborn like that, especially a mother?

“In retrospect, I had my head up my ass when I decided to so much as go to a movie with that woman. But I was young and dumb.” He shrugged. “It is what it is now. She moved halfway across the country and died in a car wreck eighteen months later. Sheer shitty luck.”

A wrenching feeling gripped Lucia’s heart, wringing it out like a dish rag. To be abandoned like that, and then to know there was no hope of it ever being made right… Her head spun as she tried to imagine.

“It was rough for a while, but I’d be lying if I said I miss her now. But I do miss who she could’ve been – who she should’ve been – for Paige.”

Lucia frowned as her heart softened into a puddle of pitiful mush. She found herself nodding, because she didn’t know what to say.

“I was twenty-one, just finishing up the police academy when she left. I was only able to pull it off thanks to my mom. She stepped in and saved my ass, took care of Paige when I wasn’t home. She’s been doing it ever since.”

No wonder Meredith was so eager for her son to find someone. She’d had a front row seat to his grief for over a decade. A newfound admiration for Meredith welled up inside Lucia.

“So if she acts a little goofy next time you see her,” he said, “try to let it slide.”

“Of course. She wants you to be happy, and I understand.”

Her thoughts ebbed back to everything he’d just told her, and she pictured him at twenty-one, rocking a newborn while still in uniform, pulling late nights with a baby after days at the police academy, and then his first years on the job.

Never dating. Never letting anyone else in to share the life he’d been thrust into so unexpectedly.

It made her heart hurt, and the gravity of the fact that she was the first woman he’d chosen to date since that betrayal fell down on her all at once. Why now, after all this time?

There had to have been other women interested in him over the years. Probably quite a few – men like Jeremy attracted female attention.

She wondered, but she certainly wasn’t sorry.

The closer she got to him, the more she admired him. She was lucky to have met him, lucky he’d decided to finally take a chance and let someone in.

* * * * *

Beverly closed the baby album. It was worn, its cardboard cover swollen and frayed at the corners. Her hands were much steadier than her breath as she put it down on the kitchen table, picked up the phone and dialed with purpose.

It rang.

And rang.

And rang.

“Hello?”

She sucked in a sharp breath and nearly dropped the phone.

“Sarah?”

“Huh?”

“Sarah!”

“This is Emily. Who’s this?”

“I need to speak to Sarah. Give her the phone.” Her knuckles ached as she squeezed the receiver.

“I think you have the wrong number.”

No. Her breath hitched in her throat, and she splayed her free hand against the table top. “I need to speak to Sarah.”

“Sorry. Bye.”

She called back twice before Emily, whoever she was, answered again.

Wrong number, she said, over and over like a broken record. It was a new number she’d just gotten the day before. She didn’t know anyone named Sarah. No, no, no.

Beverly’s head spun, and she slammed the receiver against the table.

Its plastic shell cracked, but the stranger named Emily had already hung up.