Love Under Two Jessops (17 page)

“
Grant
.” Her breathing hitched, the same tiny little catch he’d heard every time he’d held her close, and petted her so that her arousal began to grow.

“Let’s come together, baby girl. Let’s both of us cream ourselves…a little tiny appetizer of what’s going to happen once we get you home here with us tonight.”

Chloe may have started this, but he was damn well going to finish it. He didn’t miss that extra little hitch in her breath as he’d spoken to her—he sure as hell knew what caused it, too—but he was going to let it go for now. He was hot and horny and needed to come.

“Are you wet, baby girl? Is that moneymaker of yours dripping Chloe nectar for me?”

“Mmm, you know it is. I can hardly wait until later. I need your cock in me so bad, Grant. I want you and Andrew to fuck me at the same time. Will you do that for me, honey? Will you let me be full of Jessop cock?”

“Jesus, Chloe.” The image her words invoked wouldn’t go away. They blossomed in Technicolor in his mind. He could see pretty Chloe riding Andrew’s cock while he worked his erection into her ass. His control unraveled.

“Will you fuck me in the ass, baby? I need to feel both of your cocks in my ass. And I need to have both you and Andrew fucking me at the same time.”

“I’m going to fuck your ass so good, you’re gonna come like you never have in your life, baby girl. Move those fingers in and out, Chloe. Come for me now. Come for me, sweetheart.”

The sound of Chloe’s groan, her tiny little whimper and high-pitched squeal as she climaxed was the last stimulation that he needed to go over the edge himself. Grant couldn’t hold back his growl as his hand and mind worked together in a rapid, heavy rhythm and his ejaculation shot from him.

The sound of Chloe’s breathing as she tried to catch her breath echoed through the phone even as he could hear his own heavy breaths bouncing against the walls of his bedroom.

“Lord, woman.” He couldn’t have held off his grin if he’d tried. “No one has ever taken me apart quite like that.”

“Maybe you can get another couple of hours’ sleep before you meet me for dinner.”

“It’s possible. What are you going to be doing?”

“Well, I have another job applicant to interview at two thirty. After.”

“After what?”

“After I make another phone call. I’ll see you soon.”

“Oh, baby, you are in so much trouble when we get you back here.” Grant avoided saying the word “home” again. There was time to deal with his woman’s issues.

“I’m counting on that. Bye for now, Grant.”

“Until later, baby girl.”

Grant hung up his phone, lay back, and closed his eyes. He didn’t realize he was counting until he hit number seven. From down the hall he heard Andrew’s cell phone begin playing Luke Bryan’s “Country Girl (Shake It For Me).”

“Hey, Chloe-doe, how are you? No, that’s okay, baby, I don’t mind that you woke me up.”

Grant grinned. He tossed the sheet back, and got to his feet. He closed the door to his bedroom, and then headed toward his bathroom. He figured that was his cue to head into the shower. He’d just had a bit of “private time”—of a sort—with their woman. No reason Andrew shouldn’t enjoy the same.

Melvin Richardson didn’t really know the man sitting across the desk from him all that well. He’d met him briefly, once, through Jake Kendall and his cousin, Dev Wakefield. The man had just come by after calling for an appointment. He said he’d learned that Melvin was one investigator short of a full team, and would like to talk about the possibility of a job.

He might be looking for work, but Connor Talbot was no supplicant. Dressed in a business casual uniform of beige chinos, blue buttoned shirt, and navy sport jacket, Talbot sat with one leg crossed over the other, appearing, at least on the outside, to be totally relaxed and at ease.

Melvin could feel the energy emanating from the man. A restless energy, he couldn’t help but wonder if what Talbot
really
needed more than anything was not another job, but some extended R & R.

Still, men with the kind of experience and skills Connor Talbot possessed were rare, and Melvin wasn’t about to pass up the chance to woo the investigator to his firm.

Fuck, yeah, with the kind of chops Talbot has, I’m the real supplicant here.

“Patterson was my go-to guy for electronics, and he’s left me high and dry when he followed his girlfriend to New York City. I guess I can understand that, even if it does put me in a bind. Commander Wakefield tells me that electronics are you forte.”

Talbot tilted his head to one side, a kind of acknowledgement. “I’m good at what I do.”

No bragging, and no false modesty, which Melvin appreciated. He’d be willing to bet Connor Talbot was a whole hell of a lot better than just good.

“I’d like to ask, if I may, what kind of cases you take on.”

Melvin nodded. That was a fair question, and one he actually hoped that any real serious prospective employee would ask. “I only accept what I like to call righteous cases, here. I don’t do any sleazy PI work or any other kind of ‘easy money’ type of jobs. A lot of our assignments come down to digging through past records and fact checking, but with a few intriguing cases thrown in here and there. Life isn’t, after all, like a PI show on television. I’ve been thinking about spreading out, doing some security consulting—devising programs and protocols for select clients. That would involve working one to one and then designing something that would be individualized. With the kind of skills you bring to the table, you’d be key there. I’ll be honest with you. My tech skills are not my strong suit.

“As it stands right now, I get a lot of work from the Lusty Town Trust. Lately, it’s been simple background checks on newcomers to the community. Although we did have a hand in trying to track down that bastard, Deke Walters, when he escaped from custody a few months ago.”

Talbot smiled for the first time. “I understand Ginny Rose served that prick a big piece of Karma cake.” He shook his head. “I’ve only met the woman once. She’s just a little bit of a thing.”

Melvin laughed. “God, I wish I’d been there to see that myself. When Jake was telling me about it, I swear the man looked like he had a permanent nervous tick in one eye. The lady in question is Ginny Kendall, now. Married to both Jake and his brother Adam.” Since he did do a lot of work for the Town Trust, he figured he should float that one right out there, immediately. He didn’t know how familiar Connor Talbot was with the composition of that small Central Texas town.

“I’m a live-and-let-live kind of guy,” Talbot said as if reading his mind. “But I have to tell you, the concept of an entire community, practically, living an alternative lifestyle? I’m intrigued.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s something that’s caught my imagination, anyway.”

“Mine, too. Generations of folks living that way, and to be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever met a happier, more well-adjusted group of people in my life. There has to be something to that, to my way of thinking.”

“How’d you happen to connect with them, if I may ask?”

Melvin preferred “job interviews” to be this way—questions both asked
and
answered. “It’s no secret. Caleb Benedict was my training officer when I joined the Texas Rangers. That’s how I came to know the families. Then I left the Rangers and joined the San Antonio PD. Retired from there a few years ago and opened my own company. The Benedicts began to send me business almost right away.” Melvin laughed. “Just last year, Caleb, his brother, and another former cop, Mike Murphy, late of the El Paso PD, opened their own small PI firm, right there in Lusty. They’re not looking for hard-line cases. Of course I use them to assist, when I can. They’re damn good investigators.”

“You’re what, thirty-eight, thirty-nine? That’s kind of young to retire from being a cop, isn’t it?”

“Thirty-eight,” Melvin confirmed. “What’s that old joke, it’s not the years, it’s the mileage? Basically, my lifetime bullshit level got maxed out, so I left.”

“I hear you. That’s more or less why I’m here, unemployed and looking for work.”

Melvin knew the man had been working undercover, part of a working-under-the-radar government initiative to go after the people behind threats to US national security—the gun runners, black marketers, and drug rings that financed some of the world’s terrorist and fringe groups.

“Can you tell me what happened to make you walk? Or is it classified?”

“Let’s just say that not all information necessary had been disclosed to us, and the resulting cluster fuck ended in the death of my partner.” Talbot shrugged. “Frank Freeman and I hadn’t been together all that long. But he was a good man, and deserved a hell of a lot better than to die because some fucktard bureaucrat decided to make himself feel all important by holding back intel.”

“Talbot, I think you and I have a fair bit in common.” It was after four, and suddenly the office wasn’t where Melvin wanted to be. “There’s a place a couple of blocks over, O’Reilly’s. It’s a pleasant pseudo-Irish pub and serves beer and very good wings. You want to head over there with me?”

“Sure. Is that part of the interview?”

Melvin laughed. “Consider it a signing bonus, of sorts. I’d like you to work with me. And as a matter of fact, one of those intriguing cases I mentioned came to me yesterday—and from Lusty, too.”

“Oh, yeah? Will we be going there?”

“Probably, to gather a bit more background and talk to the principles involved. Why don’t I buy us a couple of rounds of beer and a couple of pounds of wings? I’ll tell you a story. About a tornado, two orphaned girls, and the rat bastard who made off with their inheritance.”

“Does this story have a happy ending?”

“That, my man, will be up to us. You in?”

It didn’t take Talbot long to think it over. Melvin didn’t even have to hold his breath.

“Yeah, I’m in. For the beer, and the wings, but
especially
for finding the rat bastard who would cheat two orphans.”

Yes, we do have a lot in common.
Melvin got to his feet and led the way to the pub.

* * * *

Chloe had never lived in a town small enough that she could just walk to work. Divine had been the smallest community she’d lived in before coming here. A town, not a city, her most recent former home had been larger than Lusty. She could have walked to Madeleine’s, but it likely would have taken forty minutes.

This was better.

She hot-footed it home as quickly as she could. She wanted to shower before the men came and picked her up for dinner. She grinned when she thought of the naughtiness she’d got up to today. She’d had phone sex for the first and second time in her life, and she had to say, she’d certainly enjoyed it immensely.

Grant and Andrew had both promised a bit of a comeuppance—pun likely definitely intended—and she could hardly wait.

As she reached her bedroom and began to drop her clothes, she thought about her second interview of the day—Arianna, call me Ari, Stein.

Jake had cleared her, and now in retrospect, she wondered at that. Ari Stein carried an edge that was visible, as it ended at the giant chip on her shoulder. There was no way Chloe wanted to take on someone who would be a disruptive influence to her staff.

But…

She’d seen the way Ari’s eyes had taken in the almost-done spa, and again, the way her gaze had swept the town. If she hadn’t been so familiar with the emotion those eyes hadn’t quite been able to hide, Chloe might not have offered her the job.

That emotion had been hunger—hunger for a place to finally
belong
.

Ari had taken the job, and Jake’s card.

Two down, and two to go. I wonder if I can be two for two again tomorrow?

Completely naked, Chloe stepped into her shower and turned the water on full blast—and then shrieked as the cold water hit her square in the chest.

That’s what you get for not putting your mind in the here and now.
She’d been so busy thinking about her day she’d forgotten—and how could she have forgotten?—that water coming out of a water pipe was cold before it got hot.

Chloe liked her showers hot. She’d only been a year in foster care—not several years like Carrie had been. And the people she’d stayed with hadn’t been as abusive toward her in the way that George Lockwood had been to her sister. But they’d treated her like a servant, instead of a child.

She’d had to do all the housework, and could only take cold showers. They’d given her a bedroom in the basement, and insisted she could only use the bathroom that was there, next to the laundry area. That small bathroom held a toilet, sink, and very small shower with cold water, only. They worked her hard, but of course, they couldn’t prevent her from going to school.

They collected a pretty penny from the state for fostering her, and they’d had someone to do all the housework and provide childcare or their two bratty kids, to boot.

It had only lasted until she’d turned 18, and then she’d left.

Chloe shook her head. Why was she remembering that now? That had been a lifetime ago, and had nothing to do with the here and now.