The Innocent: FBI Psychics, Book 2 (10 page)

She focused on his eyes, even though his chest was moving in a ragged rhythm against her own and the sensation of it had her nipples drawing tight, her breasts aching.

“How long?” he asked, his voice tight.

She blinked, confused. “What?”

“How long has it been?”

“Ahhhh…” She licked her lips.

His gaze dropped to her mouth.

Oh…he could be distracted? She slid a hand up his chest, curved it over his neck and started to tug him down to meet her mouth. He started to comply but then he growled, tugging away.

That just sent him deeper and she whimpered, instinctively pressing her hips back into the mattress even as pleasure twisted through her.

“That’s it.” Linc caught her wrists, pinned them over her head.

She glared at him.

He glared back, but ruined it by dipping his head and tracing the line of her mouth with his tongue. “Tell me, Jay.” He circled his hips against her as he spoke and the soft, teasing little motions coaxed her into relaxing and she shuddered as he slid deeper.

“I…” Her breath caught in her lungs and then sighed, curling her captured hands into fists as he sank so far in, she could almost feel the heat of his pelvis pressing against her own. “Never, Linc.”

He tensed. Then, abruptly, he stilled, his weight braced on one trembling elbow as he pressed his brow to her chest.

Sliding one hand up his side, she held her breath. What was he going to do?

If he stopped—

His lips brushed against her skin, a silken caress.

“A better man might stop. If you waited this long, we should wait until we can do this right.” He withdrew his hips, lifting up, and waited until her eyes rose to his. Then, without waiting another breath, he surged deep, not stopping until he’d buried his length completely inside.

Her wail bounced off the walls.

Driving her heels into the mattress, she arched up, working to adjust to his invasion, tears trickling from the corners of her eyes.

He kissed them away. “I’m not a better man. I don’t care if my world is falling to shit and I don’t care if I’ll never have a better chance.” He pulled out, surged back inside, staring at her with naked, desperate need. “You came to
me
, damn it. You want this…say you want this.”

“I want this,” Jay said, her voice shaking. Her pussy was a silken virgin fist, clutching at his dick as he drove into her. He had little finesse and even less time for the gentleness she deserved.

But she arched up against him, her skin flushed, her breath coming harsh and fast and she strained in his imprisoning hold, the climax already rushing up on her. He could feel it, see it in her eyes.

He wanted to taste it on her as she came, but pulling away from her was impossible. Slowing down wasn’t going to happen.

Letting go of her wrists, he fisted one hand in her hair, tugged her head back. “Next time,” he said, refusing to think that there probably wouldn’t be a next time. She had to leave. He had to stay. “If there’s a next time, we’ll do this right.”

She started to speak, but he silenced her with a hungry kiss as he shifted higher on her body, moving so that he rode against her clit with each thrust.

She broke beneath him and he didn’t hold back another second, sinking into her with hard, driving thrusts.

It was a brief respite, the sweetest peace he’d had in far too long.

A peace that ended far too soon.

Chapter Seven

Even when she slept, Jay kept herself shielded. The low-level shields were minimal, enough to keep her safe, conscious shields she’d developed and maintained through years of experience.

Except she’d lowered them.

Under the bliss of being able to touch somebody and not take in every emotion, feel their every pain and pleasure, she’d lowered her shields and, now, battered by her own pleasure and the sensory shock of finally being able to revel in
real
physical contact, she slid into an exhausted sleep.

Without her shields.

It wouldn’t have mattered, maybe.

Except there was so much hell around her.

Linc was a solid, blank barrier, his arms wrapped around her, but less than an hour after he’d slid into sleep, her own restless dreams had her rolling away. Obligingly, he grunted something senseless and rolled away, sliding one hand down her back, a wordless reassurance that she was there.

Then he settled more deeply into sleep and she was left alone, curled into a tight ball as everything started to slam into her.

She locked herself down.

It was instinct, more than anything else, that kept her silent.

Perhaps, if she’d been louder with her dreams, he would have heard her when she slipped noiselessly from the bed.

She rarely sleepwalked.

At home, she had an alarm system that sounded if she tried to leave the house and normally, that worked.

His own exhaustion held him captive as she picked up a shirt from the end of the bed, pulling it on without buttoning it, the white cotton pale against her flesh.

The only sound in the room was the soft brush of her footsteps over the floor as she moved to the door, her gaze locked on it, although she saw nothing.

Even when she reached her destination, she saw nothing.

But there was nothing to see, really.

Everything had already happened.

She was just there for the memories.

He heard her moving, watched her slip out the door.

From under his lashes, he thought about going after her, but he needed a minute.

A virgin.

She’d been a virgin.

Yeah.

He needed a minute.

A million of them.

Otherwise, he was going to pull her against him, strip that white shirt away and sink inside her again.

His dick was hard just thinking about it, and thinking about her in any way left him feeling raw.

Under it all, his heart lay like a stone in his chest.

Today, he’d have to tell her to leave.

It didn’t matter if she liked it or not, and he suspected the desire, the affection he saw in her eyes, was going to change to something not far from hate or distrust once he forced her out.

But there was nothing to be done for it.

He’d set down this road not that long ago and he wasn’t going to turn from it.

The Dawson family had money.

He’d inherited everything upon the death of his parents. Not just the money and the house, but the businesses in town they owned and so many other things.

People had let his daughter’s disappearance go unpunished.

People looked at him as he walked down the street, and he saw the guilt in their eyes. That quiet acknowledgement that there were things that could have been done, should have been done, but they were too afraid. They didn’t want to step up, speak up. They feared the power that Steve Mays held.

Well, too fucking bad.

One by one, more and more were realizing Mays wasn’t the only one with power in this town.

That dickless wonder Stahley had been one of the first ones to realize it. He had been trying to buy one of the empty buildings on Main. There was no shortage of them, but only a few would have worked for what Stahley and his brother-in-law had in mind—a garage. Stahley had one particular love, in addition to being a dirty, dickless cop. He liked—and was actually pretty damn good at—rebuilding old cars. The town probably could have used such a business. Stahley’s brother-in-law had a rep for it but he couldn’t keep using that old, rundown place behind his house.

But as far as Linc was concerned, the more people who steered clear of Hell, the better. He was just lessening the fallout, really.

Not that he had to soothe his conscience. He’d bought the building out from under Stahley’s nose while Stahley was working to get his loan approved. Linc had the money and maybe he’d eventually go through with the bullshit plans he’d given when he’d gone to the bank about buying the place.

Assuming he lived to tell the tale.

That was just one of the lesser evils he’d done.

The other part-time cop who worked for Mays, Jeff Foster, a mean-ass bastard if ever Linc had met one, was now living with his dad. Before all of this had gone down, he’d lived in a rental home that had belonged to the Dawson family—they did have their fingers in a lot of pies—but Linc had “decided” he wanted to get out of the rental business and gave Jeff thirty days to decide if he wanted to buy the house—something that just wouldn’t happen because Jeff’s credit was shot.

When Jeff couldn’t buy, he was evicted.

Now the house was sitting empty, the price on it so high, it wasn’t ever going to sell.

He’d emptied out four other houses in the same, methodical fashion.

He still owned six other rental houses, but those, he’d leave alone. Unless the person had caused problems or turned a blind eye—and he knew in his gut who they were—he wasn’t going to make their lives any worse.

It was going to get bad enough once he was done.

He was going to drag this town straight down into a very real hell.

And that was why Jay had to leave.

She had to—

The alarm went off, the resounding peal bouncing off the walls.

He shot off the bed and grabbed his weapon, the Glock he’d bought for personal use back when he’d still been on the force.

As he ran down the steps, he caught a glimpse of Jay and it was enough to slow the erratic pace of his heart.

She’d gone outside, not realizing he had an alarm.

But even as he thought that, he wondered…why hadn’t she just stopped when she heard the alarm?

Robyn Bronwyn was a woman with a heavy heart.

An angry heart.

A tired one.

It had been three weeks since she’d quit working for Mr. Dawson, and it had been three weeks since she’d slept well. She’d worked for his family most of her life, but she didn’t think it was
just
missing her job as his housekeeper that had her so restless.

It was the nightmares. Three weeks of them, of awful dreams, of whispers and voices.

Three weeks of…
her
.

That voice in her sleep.

How could you… You left him.

Even now, at nearly three in the morning, after four hours of sleep, after another nightmare, she could still hear the voice.

And she was out of coffee.

“Out of sorts,” she muttered. She hadn’t been in her right mind ever since she’d quit Mont Oak, but she was frustrated. Her daughter Jeannie had told her what Linc had done and Robyn just couldn’t see the right of it.

No, she didn’t like Biff. She wasn’t precisely related to him, although there was a connection. Her daughter, Jeannie, was best friends with Anna Grace. Anna Grace was married to Joey Fletcher and Joey had been planning to open that old vacant building on Main, use it for that business they’d been trying to get off the ground for forever. If Joey’s partner wasn’t Biff Stahley, Joey would probably be working on that even now.

She knew what Linc had done. He hadn’t even lied about it, although he hadn’t outright admitted to it, either.

He wouldn’t lie.

She heard about all the people forced to leave their homes too. None of them had families—he hadn’t crossed that line yet, and so far, not one of the houses looked like it had a snowball’s chance in hell of selling.

“Fool man,” she muttered, reaching for the bottled Frappuccino she’d grabbed from the fridge before heading out of the house. She couldn’t stand another long night of pacing the floors. The longer she was there, the more it felt like the walls were closing in on her and the louder those whispers became, but she couldn’t stand being in Hell these days, either. Some people were starting to look at her strangely. Out of the corner of their eye, like she had something to do with what Linc Dawson was doing to some of the citizens of Hell. Others seemed to have the same sense of foreboding that she had, wondering…
what else is he going to do…

Linc owned several businesses in town. Not just some rental homes, but
important
businesses. He owned Dawson Home Store, the odds and ends shop where you could grab oil for that oil change, seeds for your garden or a gallon of paint. It employed four people full-time and had more than a handful of part-time employees. He owned the Café on the Square and he owned two others there on the square too—a small clothing store and the bait and tackle shop. He had little to do with the day-to-day running of the businesses, but he
did
own them—the buildings, the land.

If he decided he wanted to shut them down, he could.

Only a few businesses were still fairly profitable and more than half of them belonged to him.

Nearing the bend in the road near Mont Oak, she glanced over, her mouth flattening out into a thin line. Her heart ached for DeeDee. She’d loved that girl. A troubled child, sure, but a good one.