Fire & Ice (The Locklaine Boys #1) (9 page)

UNDERSTANDING THE IMPORTANCE OF
that statement, seeing as my own brother was also a cop, my grip loosened and I pulled my hand from Griffin’s pants so he could focus on the call.

“Locklaine,” he barked into the phone, then went quiet as whoever was on the other line relayed information. “Shit. Yeah. You’ve gotta be shitting me.”

The look on his face expressed his utter displeasure at having to leave, but I found myself breathing a sigh of relief, through the disappointment, that was. My poor va-jay-jay was eager for more, but I needed a breather. I needed to be able to step back and clear my head in order to figure out what in the
hell just happened
.

I was confused, scared, turned on, excited, angry, elated. You name it, I was feeling it. It coursed through my blood making my skin feel too tight over my bones.

His eyes came to mine as I lowered myself onto the ground and pulled my pants back up. My body, already insanely hot from the encounter that had just occurred, grew even warmer under his scrutinizing gaze. I could feel it all over my skin, like a physical caress. Nerves at what just transpired began to weigh me down so much so it became a struggle to keep from fidgeting.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll be there in twenty,” he said, never once looking away from me. Moving to my discarded wine glass, I picked it up and took a fortifying sip as Griffin disconnected his call and stuffed the phone back into the back pocket of his still unbuttoned jeans. “Pepper—”

I cut him off. “You should probably hurry, huh? That sounded really important.”

Unable to meet his eyes, I listened to the zip of his fly and the clinking of his belt as he made himself decent. When he spoke again, his voice was much closer than I had anticipated, startling a jump from me. “Will you look at me, please?”

I gulped down a mouthful of air and lifted my gaze, praying he wouldn’t be able to see the tumultuous storm of emotions raging behind my eyes.

I wasn’t that lucky. In all the years we’d known each other without
really
knowing each other at all, I’d always flown beneath his radar. But for some reason, at that very moment, his intuition decided to kick in and he saw through my façade. I could see it in his eyes.

“You really should go,” I spoke quickly, before he had a chance to call me out, or say something that could only confuse me more than I already was.

I had to fight not to lean into his touch as he lifted his hand and brushed my bottom lip with the pad of his thumb. “This isn’t over, sweetness.”

“It shouldn’t have even started. It was a mistake,” I countered as I moved away from his touch.

He smirked as he started backing toward the door. “That was no mistake. That was fucking epic. And just the beginning.” My nipples hardened beneath my t-shirt at his seductive words. But it was what he said and did next that brought the tingles between my legs back with full-force. Sucking his index and middle finger into his mouth, he hummed seductively. “Mmm. You have to know, it’s hard as hell to walk away from something so sweet.”

There was no confusing that one for a mini stroke. I
definitely
orgasmed a little bit. I remained speechless as he pulled the door opened and smiled at me one last time. “Sleep good, sweetness. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He turned to leave before pausing to look over his shoulder. “If you don’t answer I’ll just hunt you down and spank that pretty ass of yours before I fuck you. Either way, no matter how much you fight me, I’m gonna be inside you again.”

With that, he was out the door, and I was left standing there feeling simultaneously aroused and terrified, all at once.

“
YOU SURE YOU’RE GOOD
, brother?”

I looked across the roof of Dex’s car where he stood, elbows resting on the top, his frame standing in the opened driver’s side door of his car. We’d been on scene for hours, trying to calm down the frantic wife who’d finally had enough of her husband’s abuse and put a bullet in him. Fortunately, her aim was shit and she’d hit him in the ass instead of killing the son of a bitch.

Un
fortunately, the fucker had lived and was raising hell about pressing charges for attempted murder. By the time the wife was cuffed and put in the back of a cruiser, I wanted to do the planet a favor and finish the job she started. The only consolation was the fact we were also able to haul his ass in for beating on his wife. She probably wouldn’t be in for longer than the night. Him, on the other hand? Well, after her attorney hands his ass to him with a self-defense argument, odds were, he’d be in some serious shit.

It wasn’t immediate, but justice would prevail in that case. But that didn’t lessen the sting from the serious case of blue balls I’d been sporting most of the night.

“Yeah, I’m good,” I lied. But what was I supposed to say? Call me crazy, but I didn’t think, ‘Hell no. I got your sister off, now all I can think about is being buried balls deep inside her’ was something Dex would handle all that well.

I was so screwed. I’d seriously underestimated my attraction to the fiery redhead when I started this whole thing. I thought it would be as simple as a few rolls in the sheets to work her out of my system. I’d gotten her off once—and
I
didn’t even get a happy ending—and already, I was feigning for more of her. I could only imagine how much worse it would be once I finally had her in all the ways I wanted her.

No way was once going to be enough. Hell, a dozen times wasn’t going to cut it. Problem was, the woman hated my guts. Getting so close to her once was a friggin’ miracle, and she was
already
trying to convince herself it was a bad idea. I didn’t know how I was going to pull it off, but I needed more—
so
much more—and I had to talk her into it, as well.

Luckily, I knew her weak spot. The woman never could back down from a challenge.

“HONEY-BOO-BOO, YOUR
grumpy face is putting a serious damper on my exceptional mood,” Tomas stated, earning a giggle from Navie who was sitting behind the counter at Fire & Ice, playing Candy Crush on her phone while I went through the receipts in the register. “I’m going to have to ask you to cheer up, you’re bringing down the boutique’s ambiance.”

I wanted to reach across the counter and knock his fedora off his stupid head. “First off,
never
call me honey-boo-boo again. Unless you want me to start referring to you as Sugar Bear.” His lip curled up in disgust and I knew I’d won that round. “And secondly, this is
my
shop, and you are
my
employee. I can bring the ambiance down as much as I want and you can’t do anything about it. Now get to tagging,” I ordered. I was so used to Tomas that taking his specific brand of crap wasn’t an issue for me… as long as he was at least doing the job I’d hired him to do, which at the moment was tagging the jewelry that Navie had just brought in.

He let out a disgruntled huff, but got back to work so I ignored the choice words he grumbled under his breath.

“You know, he’s got a point, sweetie. You seem a little off today. What’s up?”

“I’m good honey.” I smiled to try and convince her of my lie, but I could feel it didn’t meet my eyes.

She studied me for a few seconds, skepticism etched across her pretty features. “You sure? Because I’m here if you ever need to talk.”

I put the receipts, along with the cash, into the moneybag and zipped it up. “I promise, it’s all good.” Wanting to end the conversation before it had a chance to really begin, I walked out from behind the counter. “Go ahead and call it a night when you’re done with that, Tomas. I’ll handle closing up for the evening.”

He and Navie both looked at me in surprise. It wasn’t that I never closed, I did all the time, but I never sent my staff home and began closing down an hour early. But I desperately needed some quiet time to think. I needed my sewing room and my designs to get lost in. I needed an oatmeal crème pie, STAT, but, stupidly didn’t leave the boutique stocked. It was obvious to my friends that something was up with me, but at that point I just didn’t care. Griffin had been calling and texting for most of the day. And I needed time to figure out what the hell I was going to do.

I didn’t wait around for them to ask any more questions. Leaving them in the front, I headed to my sanctuary, closed myself in, stuck my earbuds in and turned on my
mellow out
playlist. I tried to lose myself in my work, and had been doing pretty well for about fifteen minutes, when my music cut out for a second when another text came through.

With a sigh, I pulled my phone from my pocket and thumbed across the screen.

Him: Stop fucking avoiding me, Pepper.

I actually felt a twinge of guilt at the anger coming through in that message. His earlier texts had started sweet and funny, and then slowly turned seductive, then downright dirty. When I hadn’t responded to any of those, the phone calls started, not an obsessive amount; just enough to know he really wanted to hear back from me. His later texts grew in agitation when the calls all went unanswered.

My phone chimed again.

Him: I told you I’d hunt you down if you tried to run. I meant it.

My thumbs hovered over the screen as my mind tried to formulate a response that would appease him while giving me some more to think.