Hard Case (Hard as Nails #2) (15 page)

He pulls me up and somehow manages to continue thrusting while pressing against my clit even harder, and I bury my face into his shoulder.

“That’s it, baby,” I tell him as he brushes repeatedly against the sensitive ridge of my pleasure. “Right there, Slate.”

He pants in my ear as he thrusts into me harder. Harder. Deeper. Faster. My body shakes with each forceful thrust as pleasure threatens to consume us both.

His hand slides down to the base of my neck, and his grip tightens. My breath is stuck in my chest as I rock my hips furiously against him, driving myself to ecstasy.

My body quakes as my climax overtakes me. I cry out, shutting my eyes tightly against the overwhelming waves of pleasure rushing down through my body to his cock.

“Fuck,” I scream. “Oh fuck, Slate.”

My breath shudders and my hips jerk against his. My muscles tighten and release, tighten and release, as if coaxing him to join me.

He strokes my entrance with his length a few more times, then pulls out. It looks like he’s going to make himself come on my stomach again, but before he can spill a single drop, I push him onto his back, kneel beside him, and suck him into my mouth.

I want to taste him. I want to please him and make him come for me.

I lick and suck, but at some point, he wraps his hand around his cock, leaving me no option to keep my mouth open wide just under his head as he strokes himself. His grunts keep time with the arousal throbbing through my body, and suddenly he grabs the back of my head, keeping me still while he erupts into my mouth. I swallow several times, trying to take all of his warm, salty essence. Listening to him moan above me as he empties himself down my throat fills me with gratitude and satisfaction.

I know I’m more than just his client, more than just a convenient piece of ass for him to take his payment from. Slate’s already said he’s come to care for me, and even if he can’t admit he’d ever want more from me than sex, his body has told me what he can’t voice.

We both fall to our backs and catch our breath.

“Damn, Rose. It gets better every damn time.”

“It sure does.” I roll over and place an arm across his waist. His eyes are closed, a smile spread across his lips. As his breathing calms, he lightly puts his hand on my arm.

I think we doze off for a while because for some reason, my mind wanders back to the Google searches I did on him. I’m feeling guilty, and in trying to assuage my guilt, I remind myself once again that he admitted he hadn’t always been a straight arrow. But that just makes me remember what had probably driven him down that path—the fact that his father had abused his mother, and eventually killed her.

When I turn to look at him, I see his eyes are open and he’s staring at the ceiling. He should be looking satisfied. Replete. Instead, he looks…haunted.

I squeeze his arm gently to get his attention, and he turns his head to look at me.

“What is it?” I ask.

He smiles. “Nothing.” His eyes drift away from me.

“No, really. What’s wrong, Slate? Is it something with my case you’re not telling me.”

“No, Rose. It’s not that.”

For some reason, his answer is less than reassuring. But I feel suddenly self-conscious that I’d jumped to the conclusion that his preoccupation was because of me. Like he doesn’t have more to think about than me or my case every minute of the day.

“Slate, I hope you know, if there’s ever anything I can help you with, you just have to ask.”

His brow furrows slightly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re helping me, and I know it’s your job, but maybe a small part of it is because we’re…I don’t know…friends?”

He nods and caresses my arm lightly. “Yes. That’s right, Rose. You’re not just a job to me.”

“Well, good. Because you’re not just a job to me either. So if you ever need to talk about anything…like your friend Street…or I don’t know…your mom and dad…I just want you to know you can.”

His expression shuts down when I mention his mom and dad. Which is weird, given how he’d freely talked about them during our motorcycle ride. Granted, he hadn’t said a lot, but what he had said had been pretty earth-shattering.

“Why would I talk to you about my mom and dad, Rose? I told you what happened. She’s dead. He’s in prison. I don’t waste my time dwelling on it.”

“But…but it can’t be easy. Just shutting things off that way. You were twelve at the time, old enough to have memories of them both. I don’t know if there were good memories, but—”

Abruptly, Slate sits up, then swings his legs off the bed to stand. His movements are such a surprise that I’m left just lying there with my mouth hanging open. He sees my expression and sighs.

He rubs his temple. “Rose, what we just did felt great, but I don’t want to talk about my mom and dad with you. Ever.”

Wow. What we’d done “felt great.” Talk about taking something that I’d felt was life-changing and reducing it to something paltry. I avert my eyes to stare at the ceiling.

“Okay,” I say quietly.

He doesn’t move, but I don’t look at him. Not until he gets back in the bed and pulls me close. “I’m sorry, Rose,” he says. “I didn’t mean to sound so harsh. It’s just a painful memory and I’d prefer we simply enjoy our time together. Is that okay?”

“Sure,” I say softly, but inside, I’m still hurting. I’m adding meaning to everything he says now. He wants us to enjoy our time together. While we can.

“Rose,” he whispers, and tilts my chin up to kiss me. It’s a tender, sweet kiss. One that makes tears fills my eyes, and I quickly blink them away.

I bury my face in his chest and he kisses the top of my head. Then he holds me in silence.

His body relaxes slowly by degrees, but then, it’s as if his waking consciousness just lets go, and the last little bit of tension is released. His breath deepens and finds that comfortable rhythm as his body goes on autopilot for the night.

I lift my head and stare at his beautiful body. He is a work of art, his muscles carefully sculpted to his own masterful design. Even relaxed, their definition isn’t lost. His body is a perfectly toned machine, designed to defend as well as to love.

I envy him his ability to sleep so peacefully, so comfortably.

Even though I try to fall asleep, I can’t. I’m exhausted, my body relaxed from the intense pleasure he gave me, but my heart still hurting from the way he shut me out. And because my heart is hurting, my mind won’t stop working.

Won’t stop focusing on how worried Slate seemed when he walked out of his office last night, despite how often he’s told me I don’t have anything to worry about with my case.

I don’t like the suspicion I’m once again feeling. The suspicion that Slate isn’t being honest with me, and maybe, just maybe, he actually does know what Josh had been mixed up in, and that’s a lot more than just drugs and alcohol abuse. I think of the man he asked a favor of, a man with connections powerful enough to shave seven years off the prison sentence of Slate’s friend, Street.

The only kind of man I know of who might have that kind of power is a man who has important people under his thumb. Someone like a mob boss.

Silently, I slip out bed, pull on his robe—I love how his scent surrounds me—and head downstairs and back to my computer.

Once again, I enter his name on Google. I add “mob connection” to the search. I debate on whether or not I should do the search. I don’t know what I expect to find, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with anything I do find.

I’m torn. Of course he’s going to have some connections on the wrong end of the law; it’s what he does. He works with criminals and suspected criminals all the time, defending them in court and trying to keep them out of prison. It won’t be long before he’s in there with me. Maybe I should be grateful instead of trying to question him.

I backspace and clear the search field, telling myself there’s nothing I really need to know in that search. All I need to know is right here in this house. He’s going to go to court with me. If he manages to prove I acted in self-defense, what happens after that? Do we come back here and celebrate by making love? Do I move in? Are we going to be an item after all of this is said and done?

And, I ask myself, if I’m considering getting seriously involved with him, don’t I need to get to the bottom of his mob connections? Don’t I have a right to know who this man really is?

I type SLATE RAWLINGS MOB CONNECTIONS back into the search bar and hit ENTER.

The same articles I read before come back up. There’s nothing new, just a bunch of speculation that tells more about his critics than about him.

I click on Google image search, thinking maybe there will be some pictures of him with the people he’s allegedly connected to. Sure enough, a bunch of pictures of Slate and his allegedly mob-connected clients come up. I scroll down slowly, amazed at how many different pictures there are. Most of them are accompanied by captions telling me who the people in the pictures are, and most of the names are familiar from inflammatory articles I’ve already read.

Then, there’s one picture that jumps out. It is
not
accompanied by a caption, but I recognize the face in it. It’s a picture of Slate shaking hands with a very nicely dressed man in a recessed doorway. It’s the kind of picture that leads the viewer to believe the photographer wasn’t supposed to see it.

I’m glad he did, though, because I know that face.

* * *

It was one of the first nights Josh had stayed out late. He’d called me around one in the morning.

“Hey, babe, is there any way you can come pick me up?” His words were slurring and he sounded like he was in really bad shape. All the way up to the end, when his voice had taken on a panicked tone, like he was afraid for his life, he never sounded as bad as he had that night.

I’d sighed. He’d been out late several nights in a row already, and worrying about him had prevented me from getting any sleep. “Yeah. Where are you?”

“Wager’s,” he told me.

“The sports bar?”

“Yeah, that’s where I am, babe. Hurry up, please. I’m ready to go home.”

It broke my heart to hear him so completely sloshed out of his mind, but I hopped in my car and hurried to Wager’s Bar. It was billed as a sports bar, but it was a small dive in the basement of one of the older buildings downtown.

When I got there, Josh stood on the sidewalk with another man who was helping him stand up.

“Hi, I’m Rose Carter,” I said, and the man simply looked at me.

“This here’s Boss Man, babe. Boss Man, this is my wife, Rose. Rose, this is Boss Man. He takes care of me down here at night.”

Boss Man
helped me pour Josh into the car.

“You got a name, Boss Man?” I snapped, not too happy that he’d probably had a hand in getting my husband as drunk as he was.

He shook his head. “Nope. For you both, Boss Man will do,” he said.

“Well, thanks for your help anyway.” I remember shaking his hand, then thinking,
Thanks for nothing.

* * *

“Slate knows Boss Man,” I think aloud.

I quickly scramble through the pictures, trying to find one of him with a caption, trying to find a name. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t have a name. Or nobody knows it. He just goes by Boss Man.

Somehow, I know this is the connection Slate was talking about. This is the man who helped Street get out of prison early in exchange for a favor.

I’ve found what I was afraid of finding.

Slate is connected to the man behind my husband’s problems.

He’s been playing me this entire time.

Chapter Seventeen

Slate

When I wake, I’m alone and the house is silent. It’s a tense silence, the calm before the storm. I immediately tense, thinking something is wrong. That Rose is in danger. But a quick check confirms the security alarm is still engaged and she hasn’t left the house. I find my robe missing, but shove on jeans and a T-shirt, then head downstairs.

That’s when I see her sitting on the couch, her laptop in front of her. She’s fully dressed. When she sees me, she picks up her cell phone, presses a button, then holds the phone to her ear. “I’m ready,” she says softly before disconnecting the call.

“Rose?” I say. “What was that?”

She turns the laptop screen to face me. King’s visage is prominently displayed.

“Who the hell is this?” She spits the words at me like an accusation but she’s already figured it all out. At least, she’s figured out King has something to do with her husband’s downward spiral.

“Sweetie—” I begin.

“Do
not
call me Sweetie. Just tell me the truth. Please. For once just tell me the truth.”

I want to go to her, but she looks brittle, like she’ll slap my face if I dare get any closer. I run a hand through my hair. “Remember how I told you I asked a favor of a man to help Street?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“That’s him,” I tell her. “The man who ran Thornbridge, the orphanage where I met Street and the others. He took care of us, but he bartered for favors. Things like stealing cars. Dealing drugs. That sort of thing. When we were all of legal age, we told him we wanted to go straight. And to our shock, he let us go without a fight. He even gave us the money to start Nailed Garage, saying he was investing in our future. We didn’t like it, but we let him do it. Then we paid him back every single dime. For years, we lived the life we wanted, clean and free. But then Street was arrested…”