Authors: Liz Lee
Now as he stood in her room, her bed mocked him. When she tossed the box on it, he thought about pushing it aside and giving in to what they both wanted. Forget the reporters outside, the clues they were searching for, and just get naked.
Callah brushed her hands on the knees of her jeans, and he saw she was careful not to look at the bed too long. Maybe his plan had worked after all.
Her cheeks and neck were still red from his kisses. Her lips still full. But she sounded fully committed to finding the truth.
“I figure we can go through my baby book, maybe some of my old childhood photo albums and see what we can figure out.”
He grabbed three of the albums she’d thrown on the bed with the book and started out the door. No way could he stay in her bedroom.
Together they sat on her couch and started looking. For what, neither was sure, but Riley thought she might be on to something. Somehow he stayed focused on the photos and not on her soft skin, her full lips, her round breasts that fit in his hands perfectly.
“How come you have these anyway?” He asked as he flipped through the pictures. He had no idea where his family photo albums were. Couldn’t say he’d ever been tempted to look at them if they even existed.
Callah’s fingers slid over one photo of her as a toddler playing with a kitten and then another of a laughing woman he recognized as her mother—the mother she’d known—holding her close. She was younger than the little girl in the photo the agents had shown yesterday to convince her they were telling the truth.
“When my mom died, I brought them home.” She turned the page, frowning. “I haven’t looked at them in ages, but I wanted them. I wanted the memory of her. The…” her voice trailed off, and she looked away.
Her pain was obvious and he wanted to help her, but he didn’t know what to do.
“Callah.” He touched her shoulder, and she pressed her cheek against his hand then took a deep breath and turned back to the album.
“I’m okay, Riley. Really,” she lied as she flipped another page. “They must’ve known me before.”
She didn’t have to say before when.
“I don’t understand the baby book. Or any of it really. Why not just tell me I was adopted?”
Riley thought about his brother’s words the night before. “Maybe they were protecting you.”
She shut the album. “Maybe. But if they were, wouldn’t it have made more sense to tell me the truth eventually?”
She took the lid off the box and opened the rabbit covered baby book. “She lied to me about everything.” Her voice barely a whisper, she lifted a pink cone-looking thing out of the book.
Seeing his confusion she explained. “My newborn hat.” She rubbed her fingers over it in an almost kind of reverence. “She told me all these stories about the day I came home. About how I cried. How I sang myself to sleep.”
When a tear fell down her cheek, she brushed it away, and Riley knew he couldn’t sit there and let her hurt. Not when he could stop her pain. He knew then that he was screwed. Because as bad as he wanted her, she’d still always be sweet Callah Crenshaw. She deserved more than he could ever give her, but he’d try anyway.
When he reached for her, she shook her head. “Don’t, Riley. Not now. I can’t handle it. I hurt too bad.”
Callah knew he wouldn’t listen, and she was thankful when he proved her right. Leaning forward, Riley ran his finger down her cheek, following the path of the tear, then tilted her chin toward him and kissed her softly.
“Maybe they weren’t really lies, Callah.” He kissed her gently again. “Looking at these photos, at that book, I can tell she loved you.”
That only made it worse. The people she’d trusted more than any others had lied to her again and again. She’d never have the chance to ask her mother why. Even if she could, she wasn’t sure it would make a difference.
But his kisses lessened the pain. She turned her body toward him, ran her hands through his hair and over his shoulders as she forcibly pushed her past aside.
When he tried to stop her, tried to tell her not yet, she couldn’t take it any more. She had to make him understand.
“Please, Riley. Please. I need this now. I need to feel you.”
With those words, she saw his capitulation. When he said, “ah damn,” she knew she’d won.
Climbing onto his lap, she did what she’d been dying to do since his earlier kiss in the kitchen. One by one she undid the buttons on his shirt, then pushed it off his shoulders and pressed her hands against his bare chest as she touched her lips to his neck. His skin was hot underneath her hands, and she wanted to feel all of it. To lose herself in him.
“Damn, Callah.” His fingers ran in steady paths across her back as she pressed her chest against his. She’d purposefully left her bra off earlier, just to torment him. Now her soft shirt gently rubbed against her desire-hardened nipples. Separating them, but just barely.
He moved his hands to cup her breasts and she let him, let him kiss her through the light cotton t-shirt.
As he moved his mouth over her, she pushed her hands between them, unclasped the first button on his jeans, then the next and the next, until she could touch him. He was hard and ready, and she didn’t want to wait any more. Didn’t want to put off what had been inevitable from the moment she’d heard his deep voice on the phone saying, ‘Callah, wait’.
She smoothed her hand over his hardness, and he whispered words she couldn’t understand before turning slightly, moving just enough to give him the advantage.
Lowering her to the couch, he pushed her shirt up and over her head. Threw it somewhere. She didn’t know where, didn’t care, as his bare chest pressed against hers. His hardness pressed against the juncture of her thighs, and even though both of them were still partially clothed, the pressure left her breathless, wanting.
He knew it. She could tell with the way he pressed into her as he took her mouth, her breasts.
She wanted to forget. The books she’d pushed away. The trips to Dairy Queen. Her mother’s voice as she told her one story after another. Everything but him and this moment.
“Now, Riley, please.”
“Not yet, Callah. Not…” she pressed her hand against his hot, hard shaft again, and he groaned. His whispered curse was anything but as he pulled her hand up, buttoned his jeans, then stood and lifted her in an almost seamless motion.
As he carried her down the hall to her bedroom, she buried her head against his shoulder, wrapped her arms around his neck.
Gently he laid her on the bed and just as gently he undressed her the rest of the way.
When she opened her eyes, she saw that he’d undressed himself also. He stood before her, naked. Perfect. She wanted him inside her. Wanted the blessed friction to chase away her tears, her questions, her anger. Everything.
Even though he knew why, knew she was just using him to forget, he was going to do this for her. And he did know. He just didn’t care right then. She saw that truth in his eyes as he leaned over her and reclaimed her mouth.
Callah’s eyes closed as Riley ran his hand across her ribcage and over her stomach.
As often as he told himself he could live with her using him to forget her crappy reality, he knew he couldn’t just sink into her without it being more. Even though he knew the last time they’d made love, all those years before, he’d been using her in much the same way.
“Please, Riley.” Callah arched against him, and it took every ounce of his will not to finish it then, not to sink into her and give her what she thought she wanted.
She moaned softly against his mouth as his hands trailed down her stomach and up, then down again. When his fingers trailed over the juncture between her thighs she gasped softly, then cried out as he slid his thumb between her wet folds. Back and forth, he tortured them both, as she pressed against his hand.
He wanted to find release, to lose himself in her, but he wanted this more. Wanted her to find her escape, have that moment, and then see him, them, when he plunged inside her.
Carefully, he built the tempo with his hand, pressed softer, then harder as she cried out, begged for more.
And when she shattered against him, he waited until her breathing returned to normal, until she opened her eyes and looked at him and smiled as she said “thank you,” before he rolled a condom over his erection while she watched.
Slowly he knelt between her legs, and just as slowly he sank into her. Once, twice, three times. Every time she gasped. The word “yes” echoed through the room again and again. Until finally, “Riley,” and he was lost.
Later, after they were both showered and dressed, they once again poured through Callah’s albums looking for answers.
Making love had eased her constant unease, and Riley told himself that was a good thing, even though her albums proved time and again why he didn’t belong here with her. But he couldn’t leave her alone. Even with the agents outside keeping her safe, he couldn’t do it.
Riley forced himself to focus on their search. He used sticky notes to mark anything that looked like it might be of interest, but other than the early albums that showed her with the Crenshaws supposedly before they were a family, it looked to him like they were going to strike out.
His stomach rumbled, reminding him that her pantry and fridge were sorely in need of replenishing. They could go back to the diner today. Maybe stop by the grocery store and his office. Amber Jackson was sure to be in a piss poor mood since he’d pushed her off the front page. Might be nice to see that. Even if it did mean more questions from Mack. Of course, Callah might not be all that jazzed about visiting
The Standard
.
Just as he started to ask, Callah changed everything when she gasped and held up an album. “Oh my God, Riley. It’s him.”
From the moment they’d climbed out of bed, Callah had felt almost languid. Now the tension was back as she looked at the man in the photo and nearly dropped the album. Clutching it tighter, she showed Riley.
“The man from the diner. And my dad. Riley, they know each other. He wasn’t just some stranger. He’s involved in this.”
Riley helped her pull the photo out of its protective sleeve, but at first nothing identified it. Both men wore timeless military fatigues and the hard look of warriors. The photo was old though, old enough that her father didn’t have the polished politician air about him. She barely remembered those days.
And then she saw the cake in the background. Barbie.
Even though the faded color of the photo left the cake grainy, Callah remembered the pink dress, blonde hair and blue-eyed perfection made of icing. She’d begged her mother for that cake.
“It’s my fifth birthday, Riley. He was at my fifth birthday party.”
“Do you remember him from any other time?”
Callah closed her eyes and tried to go through the memories of her youth while ignoring Riley’s spicy male scent. No use.
With her eyes closed, all she could see was Riley slowly sinking inside her again and again until she cried out his name. Opening her eyes, she shook her head. “I don’t remember him at all. But at that age, I don’t know that I would. He certainly never came around when we lived here in Burkette.”
Thirty minutes later, the single photo was still their only clue. Callah closed the final album and stretched to work out the kinks in her back from sitting too long in one spot and tried to focus on the positive. “Something’s better than nothing, right?”
His smoldering smile started a tingle low in her belly that radiated out and down, and she bit her lip remembering how many times he’d brought her to climax only a few hours before.
“Oh yeah. Something’s definitely better than nothing,” he teased. Then he lowered his gaze to where her nipples puckered against her shirt. He grazed one hardened peak with his thumb and then smiled when she gasped softly. Making love earlier might have been a mistake, but she couldn’t be sorry. Not when she responded so readily to him.
“We’ve got to go eat before I’m up for round two, Callah, but trust me when I say we will definitely go for round two.”
Callah wasn’t interested in eating. The hunger he’d brought back to full bloom had nothing to do with food. Still she saw the wisdom in his plan.
When they walked into the diner, they waved hello to Glenda who tut-tutted over Callah and her unfortunate situation. Riley asked if she’d seen the man from yesterday, but Glenda said she’d just clocked in, so no help there.
They slid into the same booth as last night, looked out at the parking lot, saw, thankfully, no news crews outside the diner windows but also the same absence of agents, and Callah had to ask. “Where are they?”
“Out there somewhere.”
She didn’t believe it. They’d abandoned her.
“Maybe we should call the police.”
He laughed. “And say what? The FBI isn’t enough.”
He was right. That was ridiculous. But still, “I don’t know. I feel exposed suddenly.”
And then she looked up and everything fell into a scary sort of place. The man from the night before didn’t bother trying to hide. The welcome bell rang as he walked through the door, removed his straw cowboy hat and made his way across the diner until he stood beside their table.