“Oh man, that’s heaven.”
Popping a couple of pills into my mouth, I leaned against the edge of the counter and allowed myself to luxuriate in the potent coffee sliding down my gullet to warm my belly. Several long sips later, I finally began to feel something resembling coherent thought as the caffeine and pain pills went to work. As the fog in my mind lifted, I turned my thoughts to the conspicuous absence of my protector and furry companion.
I’m sure they’re off doing some male bonding or something equally asinine and unfair, I thought, the sting of rejection flaring back to life in my chest.
Curling both hands around my mug, I wandered over to the large bay window overlooking the backyard. A thick layer of fog obscured my view, but I got a sense of frost-tipped grass stretching into the trees. I was about to turn away from the window when movement on the deck caught my attention.
Craning my neck to peer around the edge of the window, I saw Holbrook bundled under a blanket sipping a cup of steaming coffee as he gazed out at the backyard and whatever secrets it held. Much to my irritation, Loki was curled up in the hollow between his knees, eyes slit in bliss as he kneaded the blanket.
“Traitor.”
As if he had heard me, Loki stopped and turned his violet eyes in my direction. Spying me through the glass, he immediately hopped down and dashed to the back door, forcing it open with his rock-like skull. Slamming into my legs with the force of a freight train, and purring just as loud, he rubbed against me with an exuberance I had rarely seen from him. My shoulders slumped with guilt, and I instantly berated myself for my petty thoughts.
“I missed you too, buddy,” I said with a smile, bending as much as my battered ribs would allow to trail my fingers from his nose to the tip of his tail.
“He kept guard over you all night,” Holbrook said from his spot on the deck, his gaze still fixed on some distant point in the fog.
I’m such a humongous ass.
“Thanks, buddy,” I said, giving Loki another scratch behind his ears before venturing outside.
“How’d you sleep?” Holbrook asked without looking up, his voice thick and rough. I couldn’t be sure, but I didn’t think the thickness was just from lingering drowsiness.
“Like the dead,” I replied.
Without saying a word he scooted over on the deck chair and lifted up the edge of the blanket, revealing a Dallas Cowboys t-shirt and plaid flannel pajama pants. Moving as fast as my aching legs would allow, I slipped under the blanket at his silent invitation, curling up against his side. Tiny jolts of electricity ran up and down my body where we were pressed against each other, the tickling sensation growing as familiar to me as the sugary scent of him.
Despite the warmth of Holbrook’s body against mine, there was something distant in his manner, a stiffness in his shoulders that hadn’t been there before. I could only assume he was waging an internal war over what to do about Johnson. As much as my body hurt, I figured that what he was feeling was a hundred times worse. I knew what it was like to be betrayed by someone you trusted; after all, I had thought I was in love with Samson when he tore my life apart. But I hadn’t worked alongside Samson for years the way Holbrook and Johnson had; I hadn’t trusted him with my life every day.
Swinging a leg over him, ignoring the stab of pain that shot through my middle at the movement, I straddled his hips. I paused at the sight of the Glock in its holster sitting next to his coffee cup on the small table beside the chair, and then set my cup down beside it.
“I won’t let anything else happen to you, Riley,” he rumbled as if in response to the furrow in my brow, one hand grasping the hair at the back of my skull as he pulled my lips down to his. That was when I felt it—the blistering fury that seethed just beneath his calm exterior, causing his fingers to tremble where they flexed on the bare skin of my hip. He needed the willingness of my body as much as I needed to feel the strength of his.
Cradling his face in my hands, I lengthened the kiss, turning the hungry need of his lips into a slow exploration. He fought it at first, his teeth grating along the swell of my lower lip, but I ignored his insistent pull. Running my fingers through his thick hair, I rocked against him in a slow undulating movement, letting him know how much I wanted him, but that I wouldn’t rush the moment. Soon enough he gentled, letting me show him where and how I liked to be touched, how I liked to feel his teeth against my throat while his fingers danced between my thighs.
The minutes stretched out between us, peppered with gasping sighs and desperately questing fingers until I was fit to burst with the need to have him inside me.
“I need you now,” he growled, pulling at the elastic of my underwear.
“I know,” I whispered, sinking down into him.
***