Bringing Maddie Home(27)
Author: Janice Kay Johnson

“Yeah, but it’s usually a euphemism. A way of prettying up something that’s really just physical.” The timbre of his voice vibrated her senses. “What we’re going to do, though, Nell, it will be making love.”

“Oh.” Her cheeks felt as if they were flaming. “Have you…?”

He shook his head. “I’ve had sex. I’ve never felt like this before, though.”

If she’d been standing, she would have melted like candle wax. As it was, her fear melted away. Oh, please, Nell thought, please let him mean it. She reached out tentatively and laid her hand on that lovely bare chest. He tensed, and she felt a thump as if his heart had thrown in an extra, hard beat.

“Explore all you want,” he murmured.

For a few minutes, he only watched, groaning a few times, as she did exactly that. She kneaded, curled her fingers in his chest hair, followed it down to the elastic band of his shorts and chickened out there. That was okay—she reveled in what she could see. Eventually she got brave enough to lean close and kiss his neck and even lick the hollow at the base of his neck, loving the salty taste of his skin. No ugly memories surfaced, to her relief. Maybe she could do this. She drew circles around his small, flat n**ples, then daringly kissed them, too. That groan was especially guttural. His h*ps seemed to lift from the bed momentarily.

She drew back. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah.” He sounded breathless. “Nell? Can I do a little exploring, too?”

She bit her lip and nodded.

“Is it okay to lose the shirt?” When she nodded again, he said, “And the bra?”

“Yes. I don’t, um, actually need it, you know.”

“Sure you do.” He smiled at her. “It’s armor.”

It was. She wore lots of armor, she realized.

She sat up and let him pull her shirt over her head, then watched his face as he took her bra off and looked at her. She was barely a B cup, but the dark flush that ran over his cheekbones and the glow in his eyes convinced her he liked what he saw.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, low and rough, then bent his head, first to kiss her. It was deep, passionate, fueling her rising tension. But he didn’t linger; instead, his mouth moved down her throat, then her chest until he kissed one nipple.

The sight of his dark head bent over her was erotic, but even so she hadn’t imagined how it would feel when he drew her nipple into his mouth and sucked. She squeaked and her h*ps bucked and he slowed enough to slide his tongue in a slow, sensual circle around her nipple. Then he moved to her other breast and did the same.

By the time his hand slid inside her panties, she was past feeling shy. She needed his touch, first pressing, rubbing. When one finger slipped between her folds, she moaned and opened to him.

Every so often, he lifted his mouth from her body long enough to talk. He told her over and over how beautiful he thought she was, how sexy, how he loved the way her h*ps rocked and her n**ples peaked and how she blushed.

After coming back to her mouth for another slow, hungry kiss, he lifted his mouth and just looked at her for a minute. “Your eyes have always gotten to me,” he said, his voice transformed by hunger.

Nell ignored the twinge of unease that gave her. Right now, it didn’t matter what he meant by always. She was savoring the sight of his eyes, too, almost black with need and tenderness. The muscles in his back and upper arms were rigid, and instinct told her the deliberately slow pace of his lovemaking was costing him. But, oh, it was wonderful. So like him. He’d never been anything but patient with her. There was none of the groping, ugly urgency she remembered, only that patience and…love. It felt like love.

Her panties were gone, and suddenly, so was her patience. She wanted to feel, to see…. She curved her hand over the thick, hard ridge barely contained by fabric and squeezed gently.

His laugh was closer to a groan. “Let me…”

“Yes, please,” she said politely, and he laughed again, more genuinely, if still strained.

The shorts went flying and he lay, rigid, letting her stroke him, cup him, tease him. And then he made an inhuman sound, growled, “Enough,” and reached for the packet he’d set beside the bed. He had to push the covers back, giving her a chance to see his thick, pulsing penis before he sheathed it. The sight was the first to awaken something unpleasant in her head. She’d seen…

Colin noticed that she’d frozen. He caressed her face. “We’re making love,” he whispered, and began to kiss her and touch her again, until that glimpse of a memory was forgotten and hunger to merge her body with his swept away any doubts.

Once he’d spread her legs and moved over her, he held himself completely still. “You okay, sweetheart?”

“Yes.” She wriggled her hips. She wanted…no, needed him to move. “Please.”

He rested his cheek against hers and thrust. There was no pain at all, only pleasure. She heard herself make sounds that should embarrass her but somehow didn’t. He rocked into her, out, and she couldn’t have stopped herself from pushing up to meet him if someone had put a gun to her head. This desperation to feel him deeper, harder, faster, grew until it felt like… She didn’t know. A spring winding tighter and tighter in her belly. It couldn’t take any more tension. It couldn’t. It couldn’t…

And then it sprang loose, flooding her with unimagined pleasure. She could only hold on to Colin and stare in astonishment at his face, stark with his own release, as he pulsed inside her and his body jerked.

He tried to half roll off her as his weight came down, but she wouldn’t let him. Nell wrapped her arms around him, and she squeezed her eyes shut and rested her cheek against his as he buried his face in the crook of her neck. Tears stung her eyes.

So this was what real happiness felt like.

* * *

REGRET, OR AT least worry, brought him down fast once he’d gotten dressed and left Nell sleeping.

Making love with Nell—Maddie—might have been a huge mistake. No, it was the timing that stank. Colin didn’t know how he felt, she couldn’t possibly know how she felt. She’d been scared and needed reassurance. He groaned and rubbed a hand over his face. Yeah, he’d been scared and needed reassurance, too.

But he didn’t want to feel too much for her if she intended to return to Seattle as soon as her leave of absence was up. Why would she want to stay in Angel Butte? Was he willing to quit, start over somewhere else, when he was so damn close to getting Bystrom out of office and maybe having the chance to develop a truly effective police force?

Even thinking things like that was so uncharacteristic of him, it set him on edge. And yet—he was in love with her. He knew he was. There was a reason he hadn’t been able to help kissing her several times before. What he feared was that his fascination for Maddie had morphed into the emotion that was giving him heartburn now. He couldn’t deny the power her face, her eyes, had always held for him. If that were the case, what did it say about him? What if Nell had come to town and he’d recently met her? What if she wasn’t Maddie? Would he feel the same?

He swore under his breath.

What if, in his confusion, he hurt her, a woman who had been hurt too many times?

He knew he’d never forgive himself.

Colin sat at the table, his laptop open in front of him although he hadn’t gotten any further than turning it on yet. Twice he’d stood up and walked silently to the bedroom to make sure Nell was still there. Still sleeping, not tossing in the grip of a nightmare. He’d meant it when he said he didn’t want to leave her this afternoon. Couldn’t leave her.

But he also itched to know what was going on with the various investigations. Had accountants turned up any answers about where all that money deposited into Bystrom’s account had come from? What about Beck? Jane would have been—

His phone rang and he reached for it quickly. Who else? “Jane,” he said.

“The uncle isn’t a very nice guy,” she announced without preamble. “The first time I called he said, I quote, ‘Why would I have kept anything of his? I was done with him.’ He did grudgingly give me the name of the family dentist.”

“And?”

“We have confirmation, Captain. No question.”

“Oh, hell,” he said, bowing his head. So much for any hope those bones had nothing to do with Maddie Dubeau.

“Opens a can of worms,” she agreed. “Means he can’t be the one who attacked her and abducted her.”

“No. It’s more likely he was protecting her.”

“That seems to be the likeliest scenario.”

Had to be, he thought, even knowing there were other possibilities. Maybe she’d shown up to meet him and he was already dead or she saw him killed. But why would anybody have wanted him dead? Because he was dealing…? Colin shook his head without finishing the thought. The Hales thought Beck was a great kid. Colin had seen the kind of student he was. Maddie had been shy and innocent, not the kind of girl to be attracted to a bad boy.

And then there was her memory block to account for. The headaches confirmed Colin’s belief that they weren’t talking memory loss from the physical injury, even if it had contributed. She was afraid to remember, even now.

He heard her say, I think it did happen. The look on her face, when she just…went away, that had scared him.

What worried him was that there would be no answers until she did remember. And in the meantime she’d be in danger.

Jane also reported having sent her trainee out to Arrow Lake to show the photo of mother and son around. He’d gotten only head shakes. The dentist in Eugene, though, remembered the family. Beck and his mother both looked Eastern European, pale, with dark hair and eyes.

“It has to be them.”

“There’s some connection to Arrow Lake, damn it. But what?” Colin growled.

“Maddie,” she said tentatively.

He only shook his head. In November, Maddie was in school full-time and unlikely to be going to work with her father much or at all. The weather would have been too cold for her to enjoy wandering at will the way she did in the summer.

Except, it occurred to him with a jolt, the proximity of the resort to the Hales’ place was suggestive. If her father didn’t pay any attention to where she was or what she did all day, she could have gone with him on Saturdays or Sundays, then walked as far as the Hales’. Or Beck biked to meet her. She probably knew how to program key cards for a particular room. She could have chosen a vacant one and let herself and Beck in. Of course, she’d be risking an uproar if a maid walked in on them. Daddy Dubeau wouldn’t like his little girl being found in a lodge room or cabin with a seventeen-year-old boy.

Where else could they have hung out for the day? he wondered. Did it matter? Even if they found out, would that tell them anything?

Probably not, he thought, scowling, but he didn’t like loose ends.

Right now, something else was on his mind. “Jane, you were on the Drug Enforcement Team.”

There was a moment of silence. “Yes?” It sounded wary.

“I want you to crop out Chief Bystrom from that picture and show it around. You don’t have to tell anyone the context. I don’t want to be thinking this, but I am. The combination of a private airfield, substantial, unaccounted-for payments and the photo of Bystrom talking to a man he doesn’t want to admit he knows…”

She mumbled something he suspected was profane.

“Go for people who were working drug enforcement then. They might remember the face.”

“Do I tell the lieutenant?”

Colin hesitated, feeling reluctant. “No reason not to,” he said at last. He trusted Duane, of all people. Duane wasn’t a gossip. “We don’t want word to spread, that’s all. You know how touchy this is,” he ventured. “If you’d rather, I’ll do it. You know there’s a risk here.”

“Of finding myself unemployed?” Her brashness was part of what made her good at her job. “I console myself with knowing that if I am, you will be, too.”

He laughed. “Misery loves company.”

They ended the call with him thinking, If Bystrom fires my ass, there won’t be any reason not to move to Seattle.

And he’d be close to Cait, too.

He was making a big assumption. What if Nell wasn’t thinking beyond tomorrow, or next week?

Trying to settle himself down, he checked email, responding to several messages that had nothing to do with the investigations that had him on edge.

His thoughts spun in circles. The glory of making love to Maddie. Nell. His confusion. The gray cast to Gary Bystrom’s tanned face as he stared at his downfall, neatly highlighted in yellow. The picture of the dark-eyed boy with his mother. Maddie again—the knowledge of what she’d gone through, and the terror that had driven her to do anything at all to avoid authority in any form, because she would be sent back where she came from. The headaches, so far triggered by thoughts of Beck, and of the possibility she had been sexually molested. But not her parents, however unsatisfactory the relationship with them had been. Not her brother.

He had a hell of a headache by the time he heard the soft sound of a door closing and then the toilet flushing. A minute later, Nell appeared, looking shy. Knowing he couldn’t let her see his doubts, he smiled and rose. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she responded.

She came to him and he kissed her, sinking into the rightness of her in his arms. He had to figure out what held him back. He didn’t think he could bear to lose her. He hadn’t known how lonely he was until he saw Maddie in that television clip. From that moment on, he’d been waiting, hungry for those phone calls.

And that took him back to Maddie. Because he couldn’t deny she had been Maddie to him, until she arrived in person and he got to know her better.

Finally he held her away from him and studied her face. Despite the nap, purple shadows underlaid her brown eyes. Several tiny clots of dried blood decorated her cheek where she’d been struck by flying bits of glass. He could still see the healing trace of the scrape from the icy street on the same cheek.