“Yes. Like I said, he was in a hurry.”
“And you didn’t know him?”
Her closed-off expression and the echo of rain all around them flashed him back to a hitchhiker he’d rescued from a summer storm. “No. He was just a random guy passing through, in a hurry to be on his way.”
West leaned in so they were eye to eye. “If he was in such a hurry, why do you suppose Dobie spotted him at the Gas ‘n Go hours later?”
She swallowed hard enough he saw her throat muscles work. Her tongue darted out to lick her lips, causing his gut to tighten in anticipation of a lie even as his cock throbbed at the unintentionally suggestive move. Oblivious to both reactions, Roxy offered a very fast, very unconvincing, “I don’t know.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Her palm found the center of his chest and pushed, trying to shove him away. Thunder banged an angry fist on the roof. Lucky shot to his feet and barked. “Down,” West said and held his ground.
Her eyes flashed, but not with anger so much as panic. “I don’t care what you believe, Officer Donovan. I don’t know who he is or what he wanted. And I’ve had enough of this interrogation. I don’t know what you want from me.”
“Trust.” The word came out fast and bitter, but loud enough to be heard over the storm. He sank both hands into her hair and held her gaze. “I know in your mind trust is tied tight to dependence, and you don’t want to depend too much on anything or anybody. You’re afraid if you step off your own two feet, you’ll head down a slippery slope that lands you back in a place you don’t want to be. But, Roxy, you can’t stay where you are now. I want you to trust me enough to tell me what’s going on.”
Her chin came up. “Trust me, West.” She, too, outshouted Mother Nature. “Trust me when I say there’s nothing going on. Trust me when I say I love you.” A tear spilled from the corner of her eye. She pressed her hands to his cheeks. “I love you, West Donovan. I love your hard head and your fierce, protective heart. I love that you’re strong, and good, and have a bone deep decency that nothing can erode, even if you sometimes doubt it. I love that you care about the rules, and the law, but most of all, people.”
I love you echoed in his head. Words he’d been waiting to hear from her, even if he had convinced himself he understood her heart without them. But now that he had them, he was all the more determined to have her trust as well. “Roxy—”
“No.” She looked down and breathed deeply before meeting his eyes again. “You care about people more than you give yourself credit for, even when they’re reckless, and they’ve made some bad mistakes, and they still can’t seem to get themselves all the way together. I love you, West, and I would never do anything to hurt you. Please trust me on that.”
With those words, and that demand hanging between them, she surged up and fused her mouth to his. Thunder crashed with foundation-rattling force, but it was nothing compared to the force of nature directly in front of him. Urgent hands clung to the back of his neck. Her body pressed against his. His allegedly fierce, protective heart wanted to fight its way out of the prison of the situation. Protecting Roxy was more important than trusting her, even if that meant damaging her love and obliterating any chance they had. He knew this, a
bsolutely, and harbored a thousand objections to her tactics, but they all burned away under the heaven, the hell, the sweet torment, and the agonizing relief of finally, finally, having her mouth on his.
He dove into the kiss, fast and desperate, like a man chasing his last chance at salvation. Her lips opened—offering, demanding, purposefully distracting—but he couldn’t find the strength to withstand that distraction once she let him in. Their hands battled a moment as he reached for her while her fingers raced over his shirt buttons. Blind with need, starving for more, he took hold of her and hauled her onto the counter. From there he wedged himself between her thighs, backstopped her head with his hands, and changed the kiss from a hot, hard melding of mouths to a longer, slower exploration of every lush contour of her lips.
The pleading noises vibrating from the back of her throat, the way she chased his lips with her own, confirmed his original suspicion. Roxy love kissing. She shivered when he teased his lips over hers in a series of unhurried strokes, melted when he fused his mouth to hers and staked his claim to her lips, tongue, and every soft, sweet recess left vulnerable to him, and she staked claims of her own with devastating enthusiasm when he drew her tongue into his mouth. The rest of her remained in constant motion—as relentless as the rain battering the roof—despite being boxed in by the counter and his body. She shoved his uniform shirt off his shoulders and started dragging his undershirt up before he’d even shrugged his arms free. He relinquished her lips long enough to yank it off and then fell back into a kiss with all the ferocity of lovers reunited after war. He pushed her tank top up and took the warm, soft weight of her breasts in his hands. Her palms swept down his chest and abs, molded his straining cock through his pants for one knee-buckling second before tugging his fly open.
Thunder slammed through the room, covering the sound of his groan. He toed his way out of his thick-soled shoes while Roxy wrangled his cock from his boxers. Gripping him, she scooted to the edge of the counter. “Let me down,” she murmured against his lips and tried to slide off. “I want to kiss you everywhere.”
He pushed her back up and kicked free of his pants. “Uh-uh.” One quick pull of a drawstring was all it took to have her shorts hanging open. He slipped his hand inside and cupped her, let her rock her hips and dampen his palm, let her broken cry slide down his throat. “My dick has enjoyed lavish attention from your mouth. This time when you come, you’re coming with your lips on mine, so I swallow the sound of you saying my name.”
She whimpered something—maybe “West” maybe “yes”—but he was too busy hauling her ass up and her shorts down to ask for clarification. They would talk. They absolutely would. Later. When he wasn’t about to come apart, he would put her under him and fuck the truth out of her by whatever means necessary. For now, he captured one of her wrists and pinned it against the upper cabinet. He hitched a leg up in the crook of his arm and held there. She twined her other leg around him. They both watched, chests heaving, as she slowly guided the head of his cock to her center. When she shifted her hips a fraction of a degree to receive him at exactly the angle she wanted him, something inside him snapped. He reclaimed her mouth at the same time he thrust deep. Thunder crashed, rain pummeled, and Roxy’s cry of triumph vibrated down his throat. He thrust again, and again, his pace wild and out of control. But she rocked and writhed and did her level best to match it. Somewhere through the storm raging outside and the storm raging in him, he registered the sound of her head clunking against the cabinet.
Lifting her from her perch on the counter, but never breaking the points of connection between them, he carried her to the bedroom. With arms and legs wound tight around him, Roxy held on, rocking herself against him frantically even as he lowered them to the bed. He braced himself on his arms and went back to work, rolling into her, buffeting her, inundating her with everything he had. The words he wanted to give her wouldn’t form property in his mind, but as she stared up at him, with her pupils blown wide and her lips silently forming his name, he let the words that did come spill out of him. “Let me be your addiction, Roxy. Let me. I swear to God, I’ll never hurt you. I’ll be good for you, I promise. I’ll always give you exactly what you need.”
With a cry of surrender, she levered up and kissed him. He felt her breath stall, felt her long, involuntary shiver. “West,” she whispered, just before inner muscles hugged tight and pulled him, groaning, into a blinding orgasm.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Roxy feigned sleep as she listened to West move around the bedroom, trying not to trip over Lucky while getting dressed for work. It took quite a bit of effort for her not to risk a look at him. Watching his transformation from sleepy-eyed, stubbly-jawed bedmate to groomed and pressed Officer Donovan had become one of her favorite morning rituals. And knowing this was her last opportunity to commit to memory the sight of him buttoning his uniform shirt or threading his belt through his pants made it doubly hard to lie still and breathe normally. Her throat kept trying to close. Her breath kept wanting to hitch. Hot tears kept threatening to escape out the corners of her closed eyes. He wanted to talk. She knew he did. But he wouldn’t deliberately wake her, no matter how badly he burned to ask his questions. He was too well-acquainted with her insomnia to deprive her of rest if he thought she needed it, and after devouring him like a last meal for the better part of the night, his protective instincts would have fully kicked in. Turned out hers had, too. And protecting West meant making a clean, quiet getaway. So she pressed her cheek to the pillow and breathed in the lingering scent of him as deeply as she dared.
Her breath really did back up in her throat when the soft jingle of Lucky’s tag ceased, and then the pillow gave under the weight of West bracing himself inches above her. Something warm and heartrendingly gentle grazed her deliberately slack mouth, and the words, “I love you, Roxy,” whispered over her lips.
She willed herself still as stone while his footsteps retreated from the room, through the muted sounds of him retrieving his gun and duty belt from the console in the entryway, then the less muted thump and click of him walking out the front door and locking it behind him. Some reserve of willpower held her silent until the lonely growl of his truck engine cut through the stillness outside and then rumbled away like a vestige of last night’s thunderstorm.
The tears came, then. Her breath exploded on a cry conceived in her fearful mind, gestated by her broken heart, and birthed from her guilt-ridden conscience. The pain of walking away—no, call it what it was—running away from the man she loved, and the closest thing she’d found to a true home in her entire life, crushed her, making it impossible to do anything except curl up into a ball and sob.
But she didn’t have the luxury of giving into the pain. Randy might be gone for now, but his threats remained, like poison in her system. She needed to leave, before any of it touched West.
That overriding imperative propelled her out of his bed and down the stairs to her apartment. Lucky followed, a canine shadow. By her front door sat the bags she’d packed in record time yesterday afternoon before West arrived home. One oversize Army-issue duffel, bulging with clothes and accessories she’d dragged all over the country like personal totems, and none of it meant a damn thing anymore. Red cowboy boots hadn’t made her bold. A silk robe hadn’t made her sophisticated. Biker boots hadn’t turned her into a badass. She’d sacrifice all of it without a moment’s regret if it meant she could keep West safe. Automatically, her gaze sought the dinged, black guitar case propped against the arm of the couch.
Sacrifice offered the hope of getting one little thing right in this whole pathetic mess she’d made. But hope came at a cost, and this particular price all but broke her. Still, the need to be thorough had her prolonging the pain to open the case, run a hand down the neck, the flare of the body she knew better than her own, and unfold the note she’d written through tears yesterday afternoon. She’d aimed to lay everything out for West orderly and factually
, like she imagined a police report would, so he could decide the proper thing to do—because her straight-shooting, rule-loving lawman would surely know, whereas she’d struggle ‘til her last breath to turn two wrongs into a right. Reading through it this morning, in the harsh light of day, her explanation came across more rambling and confused than she’d realized.