Saving Grace (Serve and Protect Series) (21 page)

“What do you think it means?”

“You think I try to control you?” How had this escalated?

“
Us
,” she corrected. “I think you use your damned self-control and your damned command presence and all your other little cop tricks to control how things are between us.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Is it?”

She took a step closer and this time he managed to control the urge to step back to preserve his safety zone. Barely. He felt sweat break out on his brow.

“Why don’t you ever come home after a really good shift?”

He knew what she meant by ‘good’. Anything a civilian would call bad. Adrenaline-pumping, mouth-drying, exhilarating action. A car accident or a chase or a drug bust. Never failed to leave a guy horny.

“I do come home.
Did
. I always came home to you.”

“Not right away, you didn’t. And you sure as heck never came home like the other guys.”

He scowled. “What would you know about the other guys?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, wives talk, Ray. I think some of them look forward to the busts and the raids more than you guys do. Best sex they ever get, to hear them talk about it.”

“Grace, listen‌—”

“They exchange their little notes, then turn to me expectantly,” she continued. “I just duck my head, and they laugh.
Poor Grace. Too shy to talk about that stuff
. But you and I know the truth, don’t we, Ray? The truth is, I don’t have anything to talk about.” She emphasized her point by jabbing him in the chest with her finger. “Do I?”

Ego smarting, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her close to his face so she could read the anger in his eyes.

“Think you were missing out on something?” he ground out. “Is that it, Grace? Is that why you found yourself another man? To get laid good and proper?”

He expected her to recoil from his deliberately ugly words, but she held her ground.

“Yes!” she hissed, her eyes shooting fire at him.

His hand slackened on her wrist. “So, you remember.”

“No, I don’t remember anything.”

“But you said‌—”

She glared at him. “I meant yes, maybe I
did
feel like I was missing out on something. And if I couldn’t get it from you, then maybe it stands to reason‌—”

Before he knew his intent, he grabbed her, pulling her hard up against his chest. “You wanna know what you’ve been missing? Is that what you’re telling me?”

She lifted her chin, her eyes glittering. “What if I do?”

“Then I guess I’ll have to show you.”

He had time to see a brief flare of alarm in her eyes before he took her lips in a crushing kiss.

G
RACE
’
S HEART
,
ALREADY POUNDING
from their charged exchange, took a crazy leap when Ray crushed her against his chest. Alarm stiffened her limbs when his mouth crashed down on hers, but only for a few seconds. Only as long as it took for his tongue to push past her teeth and sweep into her mouth.

Hot and fierce and impossibly arousing, it was like that day in the car outside the motel. Elemental.

Yes, he was angry; she could feel it in his coiled muscles, taste it in the demand of his mouth and the bite of the hand cupping her head. But it didn’t matter. Anger was honest. Anger was real. Right now, she’d take it.

Ray’s hand raked up under the hem of her loose boxers to squeeze her bottom and she arched into him. Oh, yes, she’d definitely take it!

For long moments the only sound in the room was their ragged breathing as they strained together. Then something changed. The hands roaming her body became a little less fevered, the mouth a little more deliberate. It wasn’t a softening of his anger. It was more of a subtle shift, a distancing.

She tried to pull back to search his face, but he pushed her down on the bed and came down on top of her. Under his weight, her disquiet was forgotten in a surge of raw lust.

Ray, sweetheart, it’s been so long.

Then his hands were at her waist. The t-shirt came over her head. A second later, he dragged her boxers off. Feeling exposed by the rapid stripping, she sought reassurance in his eyes but found only hard-edged hunger. Then he came down on her again, crushing her doubts.

His clothes had come off somehow, too, because she felt his erection pressing into her belly and the crisp hairs of his chest abrading her breasts. She wanted to cradle his hardness against her softness a while, savor the anticipation while they took each other higher with lips and mouths and tongues. But when she tried to pull his mouth back to hers, he levered himself higher. She found herself looking up into the face of a man who might be a stranger for all the emotion she read in those carved planes.

She shivered. “Ray?”

His answer was to nudge her legs apart with his knee. Then she felt his hand on her sex, shocking in its sudden insistence.

She seriously thought about stopping him then. And he
would
stop if she told him to. She was utterly certain of it. But she’d deliberately goaded him in an effort to finally crack that damned self-control of his. She couldn’t turn coward now, couldn’t retreat to the safety of their old roles.

Besides, if she put on a display of maidenly vapors at this juncture, it would only serve to prove the problem was hers, and she refused to accept sole responsibility.

He slid two fingers inside her and she shuddered.

“Is this what you like, Grace?”

He stroked her deeply while using his thumb to stimulate the nub of nerves buried in her slick folds. The pleasure was almost unbearable, but it was tainted. His talented hands were too deliberate, too calculating, as he ruthlessly propelled her toward physical release. Heaven and hell met, merged.

“Is this what you wanted?”

She dragged in a breath, which seared her throat. “I want
you
.”

It was a cry from the heart, a plea for him to join with her in real intimacy. For a fleeting second, she saw her husband, the man she knew, a man who understood her plea. Then the stranger’s face was back, a man who chose to construe her appeal on a more literal plane.

With an alarming speed and economy, he covered her body again, urging her legs apart. One powerful thrust and he was home. Pleasure warred with shock. Then he was moving inside her, establishing an insistent rhythm. Inexorably, despairingly, her excitement rose.

Propped on his arms, he seemed more focused on the way her breasts bobbed with each rocking thrust than on her face. Again, she tried to pull him down, face to face, heart to heart, but he closed his eyes and plunged on. She heard his breathing grow harsher, felt his climax approaching.

Why, then, did she feel so alone? Like she could be any woman under his straining body. A faceless partner. An inflatable goddamn doll.

He slipped a hand between them, his fingers sliding into her folds. Helpless, she convulsed around him, contracting, coming apart in a violent orgasm. He followed, pumping his seed deep into her.

Seconds later, he rolled away to collapse on the mattress beside her.

Limbs trembling, she lay there, feeling the aftershocks of her orgasm shudder through her. She glanced over at him to see that he lay with one arm cast over his eyes. She watched the heaving of his chest recede to a normal rise and fall, but still he didn’t speak.

Damn him.

Ray wished he could take it back. He wished he’d held onto that stupid temper of his. He wished he never had to open his eyes again.

Dear God, she’d all but begged him to love her and he’d
banged
her.

After a couple of minutes, he heard Grace move away. Lifting his arm, he glanced at her. She was staring at the ceiling, her face unreadable in profile.

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

Aw, hell. Her voice was tight and she didn’t even look sideways at him, which made him feel lower than the worst skell. Dammit, she’d
asked
for it.
Literally
.

Except you didn’t have to be so ... impersonal
. Hell, he’d viewed porn performances that were less insultingly clinical.

He blocked that train of thought. What he needed here was a good defense. Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of one. So he said, “Don’t get all huffy. You’re the one wanted to know what you were missing.”

She turned her head toward him, her gaze liquid, blue and withering. Then she looked back to the ceiling. She made no effort to cover herself, either. Her flushed, naked body lay there like an accusation. His face burned.

Levering himself up on one elbow, he said, “Hey, don’t take it out on me, you don’t feel so great about it after the fact. I just gave you what you flat out said you wanted.”

Her gaze seemed to be trained on a stained tile on the ceiling. “You gave me nothing.”

Nothing?
Nothing?

Okay, he’d been a bastard about it. But what about
his
feelings? He’d vowed to stay out of her bed for his own peace of mind‌—‌hell, for his sanity‌—‌and then she comes along and goads him right into it. Then she says it was nothing?

But you didn’t have to humiliate her just because she handed you the means.

Flopping back on the pillow, Ray pressed a hand to his forehead as though he could hold the voice in his head back, but there was no stemming it. To drown it out, he spoke, though his voice sounded funny coming from a chest gone tight. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

She said nothing for a moment. He lifted his hand to see that she’d turned those eyes on him again.

“I feel,” she said, “exactly like you wanted me to feel.”

“Yeah?” Again, he closed his eyes to escape her cool gaze, pressing a thumb and forefinger into his lids. “How’s that?”

At her silence, he lifted his head, reading the answer in her eyes. The answer, unfortunately, was a word a woman like Grace would never say aloud.

She rolled off the bed. Scooping her nightclothes from the floor, she stalked naked to the bathroom, her head held high.

Ah, hell.
Way to go, Morgan. Aren’t you just the man?

He heard the shower come on. Trying to wash away the traces of him, no doubt. Too bad a shower couldn’t wash him clean.

There’s not enough hot water in the world for that, buddy.

He crawled out of Grace’s bed and re-made it. It was the least he could do to wipe out the reminder of what they’d done, what
he’d
done. Then he retreated to his own bed. Punching the pillow into shape, he lay back, closed his eyes and let the self-loathing wash over him.

The room was in darkness when Grace finally emerged from the bathroom. She’d stood under the stinging spray until her skin protested the scrubbing and the motel’s seemingly-endless supply of hot water started to wane. Now there was nothing for it but to try to escape into sleep.

She stood there a moment, letting her vision get acclimatized. There he was in his own bed, a dark shape looming under the blankets. Thank you, Lord. It would be hard enough to face him in the morning. She sure didn’t want to do it now, tired and achy and tearful.