Games of the Heart (31 page)

He stared at her face which was frozen in shock.

“What?” he asked and her eyes drifted to him.

“Fin doesn’t laugh all the time. But he laughs.”

“So, he laughed,” Mike noted.

“Fin doesn’t laugh all the time. But he laughs. And Mom told me Fin has not had a light moment, not one that she noticed before she left, since his Dad died.”

Mike stared at her feeling this deep. He felt it as the man who tried to get Darrin Holliday’s heart pumping while his sons looked on. He felt it as a father. And he felt it as a father who was also a cop.

“Your girl just earned herself another kickass leather bracelet,” Dusty declared.

That was when Mike burst out laughing.

* * * * *

“What?” Fin, sitting out in the cold, dark night beside Clarisse on a deck chair, asked and she focused on him.

“Dad’s laughing,” she answered.

“What?” Fin repeated.

“Dad’s laughing.”

“So?”

“Dad doesn’t laugh all the time. But he laughs.”

“Yeah and he just laughed.”

“Dad doesn’t laugh all the time,” she repeated. “But he laughs and not like that.”

“What was that like?” Fin asked then he felt something weird in his chest when Clarisse smiled, straight out, big, right in his face and he’d always thought she wasn’t pretty.

But he was wrong.

She was beautiful. And it wasn’t her face made up like it was that day so she looked like an actual model.

She was just beautiful.

Then she answered in that kickass soft voice of hers, but this time it was different.

It was happy.

“Like he’s happy.”

God, he wanted to kiss her. He really wanted to kiss her.

And she turned fifteen yesterday. She was now
totally
in the zone where he could kiss her.

He didn’t kiss her.

Instead, he asked, “You wanna go out?”

She tipped her head to the side, “Go out?”

Shit, Clarisse Haines, totally cool. She was a freshman but she had it going on
way
more than any other girl, even the three seniors he’d been out with. Hanging back most of the time, making him come to her. Being all quiet and mysterious, not talking his ear off all the fucking time. Making an approach just enough times so he knew she was interested but not enough that she seemed to be gagging for it. Letting him make the moves, play his plays, giving back just enough to keep him interested but not really giving anything away.

Except this afternoon. This afternoon she was different. Twice, she grabbed his hand and held on. It was only for a few seconds but she did it. And she was meeting his eyes when he talked like she really gave a shit what he had to say. Like it meant something to her. Like she didn’t want him to quit talking. And she talked more too, telling him about her day with his Aunt Dusty and how cool she thought she was.

So, it was time. She was fifteen. Her Dad was seeing his aunt. She was giving him the signals.

It was time.

“Yeah, go out on a date.”

She retreated physically, shifting back a few inches and other ways too, he saw it in her face.

Shit, had he not read it right?

“Dad says I can’t date until I’m sixteen,” she whispered and he could hear it, disappointment was in her voice.

He was disappointed too but not surprised. Fuck, Mr. Haines was with Aunt Dusty for about ten minutes before he was all over the gig with Aunt Debbie. If he stepped up to protect Aunt Dusty like that, he’d totally be all over protecting his daughter. Rees was the only girl he knew who had to wait until she was sixteen to date. And that was another whole freaking year.

“Maybe I can talk to Dusty about talking to him,” she suggested.

She
suggested.

Rees.

Fin grinned at her.

That would totally work. Mr. Haines was into his aunt and him stepping up with the Aunt Debbie thing wasn’t the only way he knew that. There were a lot of other signs. A fuckuva lot.

“You good to talk with her?” Fin asked.

She nodded.

“Awesome,” he murmured.

She grinned then looked at the dark yard.

Then to the yard she called, “Fin?”

“Yeah, babe.”

He could swear he heard a little sigh.

Then she said, “I…” and she trailed off.

He grabbed her hand and held it between them on the deck chairs. “What, Reesee?”

Did he hear another little sigh?

Then, “It was really…” she paused, “
nice
bein’ on Dusty’s horse with you.”

Fuck yeah, it was.

“Yeah,” he muttered, giving her hand a squeeze.

“Do you think Dusty would let us do it again?”

“Absolutely.”

“Cool,” she whispered, giving his hand a squeeze.

She fell into silence and Fin fell into it with her.

Then it hit him he was sitting out on a deck in a development doing nothing but holding hands with a girl, a freshman no less, while her Dad was maybe twenty-five feet away.

And it felt nice.

Jesus.

Rees broke the silence, whispering, “My Dad got back
really
late the other night.”

“Yeah,” Fin said through a smile, “I noticed.”

“He was
really
happy the next day.”

“Yeah,” Fin said through soft laughter. “Aunt Dusty was too.”

Rees giggled.

Fin squeezed her hand again.

“We’re like…fairy godmothers or something,” she remarked and Fin burst out laughing.

He heard Ress laugh with him.

That felt nice too.

Then he said, “Don’t tell any of my boys I’m a fairy godmother.”

“My lips are sealed.”

Fin laughed softly again and he stared into the dark yard, sitting on a deck in a development on a cold night holding a girl’s hand with her Dad twenty-five feet away and he did it thinking he wished
his
Dad had the chance to get to know Clarisse Haines. Being friends with Mr. Haines, his Dad knew her but he didn’t
know
her.

And Fin reckoned if he’d
known
her, he’d have liked her.

And then he thought, maybe she should know that. Not, like, straight out or anything.

But she should know it.

So holding Clarisse Haines’s hand out in the cold, Finley Holliday did something he hadn’t done in weeks. Not since that day out in the snow with his Ma being his Ma and Mr. Haines on his knees in the snow working hard to jumpstart his Dad.

Fin talked about Darrin Holliday.

And, her hand getting tighter and tighter in his as he spoke, he knew Reesee was listening to every word.

Dirty

I
grunted, put all I had into it and got Mike to his back in his bed.

“Ha!” I laughed in his face.

A nanosecond later, I was on my back with all Mike’s weight on me.

“You were saying?” he asked, grinning.

“Ugh!” I groaned and bucked up my hips as hard as I could.

Mike went with them. I quickly turned under him and started to scramble away.

Mike’s arm sliced around my middle, pulled me down and his front pinned me, belly down to the bed.

“Say it,” he ordered in my ear. “Your boot camps are shit.”

“I’m not done kicking your ass,” I replied and, considering my position and the last fifteen minutes we’d been wrestling on his bed with me seriously losing, my words were both stubborn and ridiculous.

He knew it, I felt and heard him chuckle and his arm gave me a squeeze.

“Say it,” he repeated.

“No way!” I snapped, trying to lift him off me by shoving up my hips.

This was a tactical error seeing as this opened space for his hand to slide down and cup me between my legs.

I stilled.

“Say it,” he whispered in my ear and I shivered.

I liked this new game.

“No,” I whispered back.

His hand shifted up and his fingers started working my belt.

“Say it.”

“No.”

His fingers undid the button on my jeans then the zip went down.

“Say it, Angel.”

“Not on your life, babe.”

His hand went in my jeans and my panties, his finger hitting the spot.

I gasped.

“You lose,” he murmured in my ear, “admit it.”

This didn’t feel like losing. Nothing like it.

I didn’t reply.

His finger twitched and I replied to that but involuntarily when the mew slid out of my throat.

His lips went to the skin below my ear and he whispered, “Give it to me.”

I had no idea what he was referring to, my admission that he was stronger than me (which, seriously, was obvious before we even started) or something else.

I gave him the something else.

I lifted my ass, pressing it into his groin.

His teeth nipped the skin under my ear.

Fire shot through me.

Thus commenced me learning something new about my childhood crush, good guy, excellent father, responsible citizen, courageous cop Mike Haines.

He could get dirty.

I knew this not because he ground his crotch into my ass as I pressed my ass into his groin. I knew this not because he did all this with his finger making magic between my legs at the same time his mouth and tongue were doing wild and wonderful things at the skin of my neck.

I knew this when I got seriously hot and bothered and his hand disappeared from between my legs. I made a noise of protest, twisted my neck to look at him to see his eyes sexy dark, staring down at me and to feel him plant a hand in my back.

Then he ordered, “Do not fuckin’ move unless I move you.”

Oh God, that was hotter than hot.

So hot, I couldn’t speak. So I nodded.

His hands went to my sweater, yanked it up roughly, my arms were forced up with it then it was gone. Then I felt my bra strap release, one shoulder strap was dragged down my arm, then at the other strap it was yanked away. Then with a forceful tug, my jeans were gone. Ditto my panties and suddenly I was naked on my belly in Mike’s admittedly gorgeous, scarily expensive and huge sleigh bed.

The bed moved with him as he did something that, by the sounds of it was him taking off his clothes and, swear to God, everything that led us there, Mike’s command and listening to him get naked almost took me near the edge.

I careened closer when I heard his voice growl, “Open your legs and tip your ass, Dusty.”

I didn’t delay. Not a second.

Then I felt him cover me. On a forearm in the bed on one side of me, his other hand shoving under me and honing in right on the target, his finger hit my clit as his cock drove inside me.

“Oh my God,” I whispered, tipping my ass higher.

“That’s my girl,” he grunted and then commenced fucking me and doing it really,
really
hard.

I pretty much thought everything about Mike was awesome but this new side to Mike was beyond awesome. I didn’t even know what that was and I was too turned on to try to figure it out.

“Harder, baby,” I begged and he gave it to me, both driving deeper, faster and pressing harder, rolling quicker. My neck arched back and more mews slid out my throat.

God, beautiful.
Phenomenal.

I heard my cell on the nightstand ring.

Shit! No! Why? Why, why, why, why,
why?

“Don’t stop,” I pleaded. “I don’t care who it is.”

But I knew Mike looked. I knew this because that was when I learned another new, unbelievably fantastic something about Mike.

And this was that Mike was a good guy, an excellent father, a responsible citizen who could fuck me hard, controlling and dirty but he was also macho and possessive and when he got angry, seriously angry, it was
hot.

And I learned this when he growled, “You are fuckin’ shittin’ me.”

“Mike, ignore it.”

But he didn’t. He ignored me. His hand went from between my legs and he stayed inside me even as he reached a long arm to the nightstand. I heard the weird electronic click of him sliding his thumb on my screen to take the call and then to my shock and, I had to admit, with what he said, extreme titillation, he started speaking.

“You got me and you gotta know you got me when I’m buried deep in Dusty, fuckin’ her hard, she’s facedown in bed, lovin’ every stroke and I know this because she’s purrin’ for me like a cat. And when I make her come, she’s gonna say
my
name. So with that, you also gotta know you are done. If you don’t get this, Rivera’s out and it’ll be me who explains it to you in a way you’ll finally fuckin’ understand.”