Skin Deep (28 page)

“Fucking hell!” Luke exploded, shoving away
from the table and slamming outside.

I started to follow him but stopped when
Jackson put his hand back on me to keep me still. He nodded to
Brandon who stood and went after Luke. As he passed my chair, he
hesitated and lightly touched my shoulder before going out the
door.

I looked over at Jackson with tears brimming
in my eyes. “Jacks…”

“I know, babe. But he loves you and you just
told him basically that someone is threatening you. He’s not going
to take that lightly. None of us are. We all love you, Emma.” He
raised his hand when my eyes widened and continued, “In different
ways. You know that, babe. Sure we did…what we did, but we all know
that was a one time thing. Luke and I made that deal years ago.
Brandon looks at you like the sister he’s never had, and you
definitely dealt us a blow tonight. Don’t keep stuff like that from
us. Okay?”

I nodded, wiping my eyes and turning to see
Luke and Brandon walk back through the door. Without a word, Luke
came over to me, jerked me out of my chair and into his arms, and
held me so tightly I couldn’t breath. I patted his shoulder
awkwardly and he loosened his grip, moving back to look me in the
face.

“Don’t hide stuff from me, Emma. I love you
so much, the thought of something happening to you, or even just
scaring you…it drives me insane. Okay?”

“I’m sorry, Luke. I’ll tell you everything, I
promise, and won’t keep anything from you. You do have to
understand that I never really was keeping this from you. I just
didn’t think to tell you.”

He nodded and let me go. We all sat back down
at the table and I told them everything, every detail about the
phone calls and the recorder device that my boss had gotten me. We
talked a bit longer and then headed to bed. Luke held me and made
love to me like I would break, until I finally rolled him over and
started riding him, plunging myself down onto his hardness over and
over again until he gripped my hips and began thrusting up to meet
my hips.

I arched myself back over him, leaning back
and bracing my hands on his thighs behind me. My hair brushed his
knees and calves and I heard him groan and growl at the dual
sensations. I looked down the line of my body to that place where
we joined and watched him disappear into me again and again before
letting my eyes find his face. I felt my inner muscles clench
around him when I noticed his hot gaze locked on that spot, lost in
the sight of his hard, thick length impaling the soft, bare, pink
folds of my sex.

I shifted my weight a bit, bringing one of my
hands around and sliding it down my body until my fingers dipped
into my cleft, finding and circling my clit. The sight of my
fingers playing there made Luke wild and he let loose a yell as he
slammed into me, spasming inside me over and over again as the
combination of his release and my fingers brought me, making him
jerk and twitch as my muscles clamped around him, milking his hard
flesh.

I collapsed forward onto his chest and his
arms came around me, holding me tightly to him as he murmured into
my hair, “I love you, Emma.”

I nuzzled his throat and whispered back, “I
love you, too, Lucas.” His chest rumbled beneath me as he chuckled
at the use of his given name.

Luke shifted and rolled until we were on our
sides, facing each other, our legs tangled together, and the waning
hardness of him still buried deep inside me. He kissed my lips
gently and we drifted off to sleep.

I woke up the next morning with the alarm,
surprised to see that neither of us had moved in the night. Even
more surprising, Luke’s then not-so-hard length was still inside
me, but was rapidly becoming his oh-so-very-hard length. I looked
at Luke’s face, seeing his gorgeous eyes blink sleepily open and a
grin spread across his face.

I rushed in to work twenty minutes late to
see Floyd standing over my desk with a worried expression on his
face.

“Sorry, Floyd! I got held up a little this
morning.” I smiled at him, hoping he wouldn’t be mad for me being
late.

He smiled and shook his head at me, telling
me it was fine before it was business as usual. I had just a week
to go before I got to take off for Christmas break, but we had a
lot to get done before then. The phones were ringing off the hook
and poor Floyd was booked solid with court appearances and client
meetings.

Two hours shy of closing time, the phone rang
and I smiled when I heard Mrs. Allen’s crackly voice on the other
end.

“Emma? Honey, is that you?”

“Yes, Mrs. Allen, how are you? I haven’t
heard from you in a while, so I assume everything has been going
well? How’s Fluffers?”

“Oh, honey, I’ve been okay until now.
Fluffers went missing again, but that stupid old fart Doc brought
him back to me. Do you know what he did, Emma? He SHAVED poor
Fluffers! And I think he bleached him or something cause he’s not
grey anymore, he’s WHITE! He doesn’t even look like my cat anymore,
but its him. Do I need to bring him out to you so you can see
him?”

“Er, um…no, Mrs. Allen, that wont be
necessary.” She continued before I could say another word.

“I can take pictures and bring them to you,
dear, that way you have the evidence when you get that lovely Mr.
Grim to sue the ever loving pants off Doc, that no good bastard.
Fluffers just had a couple burrs in his coat that I was fixin’ to
get out. There was no need to torture the poor boy!”

“Mrs. Allen, if he had burrs in his fur, then
Doc was doing a good thing by shaving Fluffers. That way he doesn’t
get matted worse, and besides, I thought Fluffers was a white cat?
You can’t sue him for those things, since he was helping you.
Okay?”

“Well, okay, dear. If you’re sure…” Mrs.
Allen sounded doubtful, but I didn’t give her time to come up with
anything else.

“I’m sure, Mrs. Allen. You have a nice day
and a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year if I don’t talk to you
before then, okay? Bye-bye!”

I laughed as I hung up the phone and turned
back to the trial brief I was typing. About thirty minutes before
closing time, Jackson walked into the office, stopping at the
counter in front of me.

“Hey, babe,” he said, smiling down at me.

“Hey, Jacks! What are you doing here?”

“Luke’s got a late appointment again and
didn’t want you walking out by yourself. So I said I’d pick you up.
Plus, I need your opinion on something.”

“Okay, I just have to finish up a couple
things and then we can go.” I turned back to my computer and
finished up in record time. I hopped up and grabbed my coat and
purse and we walked outside. He grabbed my keys out of my hand and
locked the door behind us before herding me into his car.

Instead of going to Skin Deep like I figured
we would, we headed home. When we got inside, he motioned to the
kitchen table and I went and sat down, waiting patiently for him to
join me. He pulled something out of a tube he had leaned up against
the corner of the living room and spread it out over the table.

I gasped when I looked over the blueprint he
had laid out, my eyes racing over every detail. “Is this for your
house that you’re building next door?” I asked him.

“Yeah, I just had a couple things I wanted a
woman’s perspective on.”

I teased him a bit, winking and asking,
“Shouldn’t you be asking Allie then?”

He grinned at me and said, “She’ll get to
voice her opinion eventually, especially if she’s gonna live there
one day.”

I raised my eyebrows at him, asking silently
for more information. After a minute he complied.

“Well, I know we talked before about Allie,
but I just…I really like her, Emma. But there’s Brandon and I don’t
know exactly where he fits in with everything.” He shook his
head.

“I think things will work themselves out.
Just be patient, Jacks. So! What did you want my opinion on?” I
rubbed my hands together in glee, excited to be able to get to help
actually design a house that was going to be built.

We sat there for a while, throwing ideas back
and forth, and at one point during a slightly heated conversation,
he had come up behind me at the table, leaning over my shoulder and
pointing at the blueprints. We both looked up at the door when it
opened and Luke and Brandon walked in. I smiled at them, and Luke
quirked his brow at Jackson leaning over me, his hand braced on my
shoulder. I glanced up at Jackson and laughed when he waggled his
brows at Luke before patting my shoulder and moving back so I could
get up.

I went to Luke, raising my lips for his kiss
as he smiled and said, “Jacks, you ass! You tryin’ to get fresh
with my woman?”

I laughed even harder when Jackson replied,
“Hell yeah, I am! She’s too good for you, needs someone macho like
me!”

I rolled my eyes at their banter and reached
around to snatch the pizza boxes out of Brandon’s hands that I
hadn’t noticed until now. He’d been trying to maneuver around Luke
and sneak away with dinner.

“Hey!” he whined. “That’s my dinner!”

Luke turned around and smacked him upside the
back of the head, muttering, “Greedy pig,” before we all headed in
to the living room to eat and watch some TV.

My cell phone chimed in my purse sitting on
the counter and I got up off the couch, gathering up used paper
plates, napkins, and discarded pizza crusts and carrying it all to
the kitchen. I threw away all the trash and fed poor slobbering
Doug the pizza crusts before I grabbed my cell and went back to sit
with Luke. I slid my finger across the screen to open the home page
of my phone to see that it was a text that had come through. I
opened it.

Hey, its your favorite brother. Got a
sec
?

I laughed before replying,
You’re my only
brother, jerk off. What’s up?

Well, remember how you said that I couldn’t
have a party at your house?

I groaned, knowing that this was probably
gonna be bad.
Yeah, I remember. But you didn’t listen,
right?

Not exactly? You’ll get over it but I do have
to tell you that I sent the carpet cleaner people over to clean the
carpet where this chick Exorcist-ed the living room. I even paid
for it myself. Just FYI. Later.

I sighed and called Leah, who picked up
immediately and started talking before I could.

“I know that you said he couldn’t have the
party and I told him no but then he came over and we were hanging
out and he asked if his buddy could come and I said yes but my
friend wanted to come hang because he was here and then it
snowballed and the stupid bitch drank three bottles of red wine and
Exorcist-ed the living room-”

“Leah!” I shouted, trying to get her to shut
up. “Breathe for a second, geez. Calland texted me. Did the stain
come out of the carpet?”

“Yeah,” she replied.

“Did anything get broken?” I asked.

“Ahh…nope? I don’t think so.”

“Okay. Its over and done with so…just be
responsible.”

“Okay, Emma!”

I got off the phone with her and Luke reached
over, snagging my phone so he could see the texts from my brother.
He sniggered and passed the phone to the other guys before I jumped
up and snatched it back. I swear, they’re like little kids.

Chapter 19

“Luke, I promise, there’s nothing for you to
do, so don’t bother coming down here, okay? I’ll just see you when
you pick me up from work. I love you.”

I hung up the phone and turned to the officer
that had come back into my office at work. He handed me a report,
which I laid on my desk with the other three already there.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Jensen, but beyond the
reports there’s nothing else for us to do. No one knows who he is
and he’s obviously masked his number so its not showing up on the
Caller ID. You’ve done well with recording the conversations and I
would watch it because it sounds like he’s escalating. Just call if
you need anything, okay ma‘am?”

I nodded and thanked the officer again,
smiling as he left the office. As soon as he cleared the door, my
face fell. It was the week before Christmas and Creepy had decided
to step up his game. He’s called me almost everyday, but today, not
to mention the past three days, he’s become increasingly more
agitated and vulgar on the phone. I’d made reports every time and
was keeping a file on it. Floyd was going insane with worry, and I
think he would have sent me away if I hadn’t talked him out of
it.

As it was, the only reason I got to finish
out the week was because next week was Christmas and the office
would be closed. I just had to make it through Tuesday at noon,
which is when we’d close the office. I’d get Wednesday (Christmas
Eve), Thursday (Christmas), and Friday off next week, and then the
complete following week, returning to work on the fifth of
January.

I think we were all hoping that the time away
would make him get bored and leave me the hell alone. It was
driving me nuts that I had no idea who this guy was and how the
hell he knew me, although every time I heard his voice it felt like
something was niggling the back of my mind, something that I just
couldn’t put my finger on. Luke was about five seconds away from
locking me up in a tower somewhere and Brandon and Jackson were
totally on his side.

Luke and I had gotten into an argument last
night because he found out that I hadn’t told my family anything,
and he assumed that I hadn’t told Allie. Noah was the only one
who’d known, other than Allie, who’d already been threatened with
death if she told, and I’d sworn him to secrecy. The only reason he
knew was because the guys at the station knew I was his
sister-in-law and had told him about everything. Luke had blown his
top and actually called every single member of my family at quarter
after eleven last night to tell them. My parents were pissed off at
me, Leah had sobbed like I had died, Jenna had mother-henned me to
death (Yes, apparently its even possible to do over the phone), but
the one that got to me the most was Calland, who shockingly had
been so sweet, asking if I was okay. Of course then he threatened,
and I quote, ‘to castrate the mother fucker who decided to fuck
with his sister.’