Sin (The Waite Family) (17 page)

“They said you’d been shot
seven
times.
S
even
times
,
yet you managed to take out six men.”

She looked at him for several seconds
,
her gaze slightly unfocused.

“Sydney?”

“Six
men
?
I don’t…I don’t remember.
They wouldn’t tell me anything until I told them what had happened.”
She sat down on the log near her and leaned back on her hands.
“
I think the
y
were there to do just what he said, take out my team.
I’ve been trying to figure out who would pay a bonus to have me done
in
.
I have some…people looking into some things.
Nothing so far.
”

~~~

He moved over to her and sat down.
He was close enough that he could smell her shampoo, strawberries
,
he thought.
Shifting
,
he moved to face her, his legs on either side of the log and her between
them.
Coop had never wanted a woman so badly in his life.
When she stood up he nearly whimpered, but said nothing.

“I have to go in now.”
Nervous, she was nervous
,
he could tell.
“You can keep the gun.”
She turned to go and was about five feet away when he stopped her
,
but she didn’t turn.

“Sydney?”
He stood up.
“
This
isn’t over between us.
You started something out here tonight and I mean to find out why you felt the need to take your life.”

She didn’t move for several seconds then without turning
,
she told him.
“I found out
yesterday
that I can’t have children.
They said that when I’d been shot, there had been too much damage done to make my fallopian tubes viable.
I told…I told it to that guy I’ve been seeing.
He told me…he said damaged goods wasn’t worth his time no matter how much my family was worth.”

He sat there for a while after she’d left
, n
ot really believing that someone could be so call
o
us as to say that to a person who had nearly given her life for her country
—
his country.
Coop pulled out his cell and made a call.

“Do you fucking know what time it is?
If you don’t have your blood all over your body, then you will shortly if you don’t have a fucking good reason for calling me at the butt fuck of midnight.”

Allen Cramer was a charmer, no doubt about it.
“No blood, not yet at any
rate. You
up for
shedding
some in the name of a pretty woman?”

He didn’t answer
,
but he could hear him shifting in his bed.
Then Coop heard him tell someone that he’d be back in a minute.
A door shut then Allen was back on the line.

“Must be a very pretty girl if you’re calling me and breaking silence.
Who is she and what does she mean to you? And if you tell me this is just one of your fuck buddies I won’t believe you. You don’t even fix parking tickets for them.”

He trusted Allen with his life.
But did
he trust him with his love life?
Only one way to find out.
“She’s becoming very important to me.
Seriously very important.”

The
noise at the other end
had
him jerking the phone from his ear. He wasn’t sure what it was until Allen came back on the line.
“
‘
Bout fucking
time. Anything
.
Tell me what you need and it’s yours.
Fuck yeah!
Payton Cooperider has met his match. Wait until I tell
Cindi. She’ll have a cow, two—
”

“You can’t tell anyone, remember?
I’m in hiding
,
you dork.”
Coop smiled when Allen started cussing.
“You kiss your wife with that mouth?
Christ, I miss you.”

“I miss you too
,
cocksucker. When we get this guy
Wickett
, I’m going to personally piss in his face.
Give
me the name and what you want done.”

Coop gave hi
m
everything he could on the guy, including his plate number. “I want him to suffer and loudly, understand?
And you
have to remain clear. It will come back to bite my ass
if you don’t.”

After a few more minutes of conversation, Coop went
into
the house to find Sydney.
Smiling
,
he realized the conversation
they were having was far from over.

~Chapter 10~

Sin paced her room. It didn’t take her long to get from one side to the
other
,
but that was fine too. She just wanted to burn energy
,
not walk a hundred miles or so.
She heard Coop come down the stairs and
then
her door opened.

“I’m going to bed
. W
ill you join me?
” He leaned against the door frame as he asked her
. “
I’d say let’s use your bed, but I doubt I could lay on it alone much less with you and what I have a mind to do with you.”

She could only stare at him for a minute.
“Are you fucking nuts? I’m not sleeping with you. I don’t even know why I didn’t shoot you out there.
Speaking of which, I want my gun back.” She put out her hand hoping he’d just give it to her, but it was too much to hope for.
But he did take her hand and br
ing
it to
his
mouth.
His breath was hot and his tongue curled around her fingers as he watched her face.
Her body
responded
hard
.
H
er nipples tightened
,
her pussy creamed
,
and she felt her pulse triple.
Jerking her hand back
,
she stared at him.

“You can come and get it from me. I’ll be more than glad to give it to you if you promise
to come to bed with me.
Oh
,
and Sydney, I don’t plan on sleeping with you either. When you come to my bed, we’ll be making love all night.”
With a quick kiss to her mouth, he left her.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to kick something, preferably him.
But most of all
,
she wanted to follow him, to find out if he could go all night and to see if what Taylor had told her about Cooper being a Dom was true.

Sin sat on her bed.
The doctor had told her that she was young and healthy and that she would have no problem adopting as many children as she wanted.
But having a child, carrying one for nine months
,
was too dangerous for her and the child.
Sin
lay
back on the bed.

If it were just her, she’d chance it.
If she ever found a man she could
marry.
She knew the chances of th
at
happening were slim to none. But it was what he’d said after that had made her so depressed that she decided to eat her own bullet.

“Miss Waite, you won’t be able to work either. I’ve already got the paperwork for you to fill out and send in
.
W
ith the damage
done
to your body…well
,
you’re just lucky that you can walk and get around.
The Army has agreed to pay you until your death
.
I would stay at home and find a hobby.”

A hobby
?
What the fuck was she supposed to do, glue pictures in a book and put some pretty crap around it?
She didn’t have a problem with that sort of thing
. I
t just wasn’t her. She
thought
about
all the girly things her sisters did.
She had never even owned a doll much less a pet. She had held her nephew for three minutes the other day and all he did was scream at the top of his lung
s
the entire time.
Quinn said it was because she was so scare
d
and he coul
d feel it. Well no fucking shit. H
e’d read that right
;
she was scared. Give her a fucking gun or a knife and she’d be better off.

When
she
felt
the tears rolling down her cheeks again she looked over at the clock on the floor.
It had been over an hour since Payton had left her
. S
he figured he would be asleep by now.
She got up
,
stripped down to her skivvies
,
and pulled on her blacks.
She would simply sneak into his room and get her weapon.
She knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep without it in here anyway.
Ten minutes later she was creeping up the stairs.

She realized when she opened the first door and it wasn’t
his that
she really didn’t have any clue where he might have been sleeping since he’d moved in.
She was on the third one when she found him.

She knew that he’d been in her room.
She hadn’t served in the Army for so long that she hadn’t learned to protect
what was hers
.
Nothing had been touched, nothing moved
,
but the door was different.
He’d closed it when he’d left.