Miah (Lane Brothers #2) (6 page)

“Come on, babe. Let’s go eat and get you something decent to wear. Oh, and by the way, I told Jared to send that package back to your fucktard ex. You either buy your own stuff or let Ma take care of that shit, but you won’t be wearing anything another man provides. Please.”

“I was planning to send it back today, so thanks for that. And no, I don’t need your mom getting me clothes. I can buy my own, thanks.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

              I guess that he’s more reasonable than I thought. The man is way too perfect for the newly emerged independent Clara.

Clara

The school day is terrible from start to finish, and by the time my pupils run screaming from like class in glee, I’m so relieved that Miah will be by to pick me up soon.

I’ve been jumpy all day, and almost had a coronary when one of the sixth graders set off a cherry bomb in the bathroom. Talk about paranoid. I almost took the poor kid’s head off, I yelled at him so loudly. To top it all off, half the staff room was abuzz with my ordeal and were being nosy about it.

“You ready, Clari?”

I look up and smile when I see Miah leaning against the doorjamb with his arms and ankles crossed, his eyes all hot on me as if I’m wearing something sexy as opposed to the drab brown skirt that I wear on Tuesdays, and the button-up blouse that matches.

“Yup, just let me grab my purse.”

“That ugly shit has got to go,” he says once I’ve closed my door and we’re making our way out of the school.

“Hey! I thought you said—”

“I said you can wear your own clothes and get your own stuff, but babe, that stuff is just plain ugly,” he gripes, opening my door and handing me into the car.

He runs around the front and settles in beside me, his eyes raking over my ensemble with distaste.

“I happen to like this skirt.”

“No, you really can’t since I know your eyes work just fine and you can see the color.”

“What’s wrong with brown?”

“Nothing. It just looks terrible with all that fiery red hair, and your eyes look mossy instead of the emerald green I’m used to.”

That’s when I know that he’s trying to distract me, and the knowledge does not sit well at the moment.

And okay, maybe I’m a little offended that he thinks I look bad today. If he hated the clothes so much, he should have said something about it before I walked out of the house this morning—my house, since he was gracious enough to take me home and look at the place while I got dressed.

“What happened? What did you find out today? And no, if you’re thinking about lying to me, you may as well save your breath. I lived with an alcoholic for eighteen years, I can spot a lie a mile away,” I warn, turning to him and folding my arms over my chest.

He sighs and runs a hand through his hair in frustration before casting me a quick glance and taking the turn towards his house.

“Jared took a look at the soil outside your windows and found some shoe imprints along with what looks to be military- or police-issue boots. It’s either the cops who traipsed all over the place and compromised the scene, or…”

“Or what, Miah? Spit it out.”

“Or one of the assholes who broke into your house is a cop or military. The thing is, this may be my fault,” he admits.

He’s white-knuckling the steering wheel at this point, and I almost feel bad for him.

“What? How could it be your fault, Miah? It was probably just some random—”

“I’m working deep undercover to investigate corruption in the unit I’m working for. About a year ago we got intel that they were running drugs and controlling things down here to fund a homegrown militia operating in the Greater New Orleans area. Last night’s attack could have been them trying to get back at me because I’m sure these guys must at least suspect that I’m on to their dealings by now.”

“Well, phew. That takes a load of my chest.” I finally sigh, leaning my head back into the seat.

“I tell you that some highly trained psychos are after you because of my job and you act as if it’s nothing?”

“No, I’m just glad it wasn’t Nick after I told him off the other day,” I admit, giving him a sidelong glance. “Calm down, Miah, I got out of it fine and I trust you and your brothers to handle things from here on out. What? You thought I was too stupid to have seen the way the lot of you went all hard last night? Give me a break. I work with little kids who could outsmart us all with their lies.”

He nods as if satisfied by my answer and turns his eyes back to the deserted stretch of road leading to his home.

“Why would you suspect Nick?”

“Seriously? Because I would never think to suspect a homegrown militia…and he’s been acting weird lately.”

“Weird how?”

“I don’t know, just…he’s been calling nonstop. That’s why I turned my phone off today. Oh shoot, I should probably turn it back on,” I mumble, wincing when a slew of missed calls and texts start beeping like crazy the minute the phone powers up.

“Shit, are those all from him?” he growls, almost breaking the wheel off because he’s gripping it so hard.

“Er…yeah.”

I have no less than twenty-one missed calls starting from eight in the morning and a whopping fifteen texts before he finally gave up around twelve.

“I’ll have to talk to the guy before he does something to piss me off.”

“That would be a no.”

“No?” he asks calmly, giving me a dead stare and a raised brow.

“Yes.
No
, you may not intimidate my ex, and no, I won’t change my mind no matter how much you scowl at me. Nick may be acting a little nuts lately, but the guy is not dangerous.”

“You sure about that, Clari?”

No, I’m not too sure about that, and that’s one of the reasons I left in the first place, but telling Miah that with the mood he’s in would just stir up a can of worms that doesn’t need stirring right now.

              “Okay, then, change of subject. Ma moved all of your stuff into my room and set up an account for you to go shopping to replace some of the stuff you lost.”

“What? I didn’t lose anything.”

“You’re not wearing any of your old underwear. Those fuckers could have pawed through your drawers and touched your delicates,” he snarls, making the turn into the drive and stopping for the gate to clang open.

“They didn’t.”

“You know this for sure, babe?”

“No, but I didn’t hear them rifling through anything, and I don’t think they did—”

“Ma already got you a few replacements and I already got rid of the rest, so you need to wear what you have or go commando. Personally, I like the idea of you not wearing a bra or panties, but it’s your choice, Clari.”

              Nick used to buy all my underwear and make me model it for him on a regular basis. Not exactly torture, I know, but when the man you’re with points out your every flaw while wearing lingerie worth a few thousand dollars, it kind of makes the experience a little less exciting than it should have been.

But Miah’s not choosing any of it, is he, Clara? And besides, he’s not asking you to model the stuff under the glare of florescent lights. Suck it up and move on.

“Fine. Can I at least get an apology about my clothes?”

“Nope. My original assessment still stands, babe. That shit is ugly as hell, and if you don’t burn it or give it to Goodwill, I’ll just make it disappear one day. You don’t have to wear designer gear or anything revealing. You’re beautiful enough as it is. I just don’t like that drab stuff you’re always wearing. Go for some color and lose the flats, babe.”

And so begins what I now see is Miah’s very well-thought-out plan to ingratiate himself with me.

Miah

She’s not too happy with me at the moment thanks to my less-than-glowing assessment on her choice of clothing, and though I stand by my words, I still feel a little shitty for making her blush.

I did it because I could not talk about that shit that went down last night without losing it and breaking my fists on the steering wheel.

Jared and Jace have yet to report back with anything meaningful, and though Roman and I spent a good part of the day alternately swinging by the school to check on Clari and running leads, I found absolutely nothing to back up my suspicion that one of these assholes tried to terrify my girl in her home.

At this point, we’ve got nothing to go on and it’s making me antsy.

I’d almost refused to let her go to work this morning, I’m so unsettled by the thought of her being anywhere else but safely at home and protected by the legion of security Pop has running the place.

I can’t do that to her, though, because I know just how independent she is and how much she loves her job. So instead of starting an argument I know I will never win, I’d ground my jaw and smiled while she insisted on going to work and making herself a target for any lunatic willing to run an attack on a school.

It’s happened before, too many times for anyone’s peace of mind, and that’s the shit that kept running through my head all day. Gonzalez, of course, has been recruited to keep watch when I can’t be there. Call it his punishment for letting it slip to Dobson that I’ve had him patroling Clari’s neighborhood more than is normal for one cop.

I’m frustrated and pissed at the circumstances and doubts plaguing me, and to make matters worse, my damn dick hasn’t gone down since I woke to see her smiling at me this morning.

There are a lot of things that turn me on hard and heavy, but I have yet to experience anything that feels better than waking to her and knowing that that glorious smile is for me and me, alone.

Damn, the woman packs a punch that hits all the right spots.

“Dude, you’re foaming at the mouth.” Jace chuckles, coming to stand beside me where I’m having a much needed drink while Ma and Ellie keep Clari distracted with talk of the upcoming charity drive for underprivileged kids from poorer neighborhoods.

“Shut up, asshole.”

“Dude, seriously, just do something already, or by the time you unleash on the poor woman you’ll be an animal.”

“Shut the fuck up, Jace. I can’t do that yet, not after what she just went through.”

“Miah, bro, honestly, I think you’re taking it all worse than she is, and it happened to her,” Jace points out, taking a long drink of his beer.

“Me? I’m rock solid,” I snarl defensively, giving him the beady eye.

“Yeah right. You were wearing two different shoes when you tore out of here last night, and you haven’t shaved today. You look like shit, bro, no offense, and you’re about to go rabid from the looks of things.”

He’s right, damn his hide, I am on the edge and ready to explode, but I won’t allow myself to make an advance until Clari is ready. I’d die before I did something to hurt her.

Wyatt warned me about this, and also said that there’s nothing quite like making love to your woman after a dangerous event. I’m chomping at the bit to get her under me and prove to my beastly side that she’s safe and belongs to me.

Not yet, Miah. The girl is still fragile.

“You hanging around to work on my nerves, or do you have something to tell me?” I snarl, changing the subject and looking away from my greatest temptation.

She laughs at something Ma says and I almost let it all hang out and snatch her up for the claiming I’m dying to do.

“So here’s the thing, that asshole she was with before is all kinds of nuts, man. I called Case last night and convinced him to do a little recon on Grimes’s place. He’s got a whole room dedicated to photos of your girl, and that’s not even the creepiest part, man. Case found an unsigned marriage license with both their names on it and a wedding dress hanging in the bedroom.”

Well, that certainly puts a different spin on things, doesn’t it? If this guy is that nuts about Clari, he’s going to be a problem whether it was him behind this mess or not.

“Keep Case on him. If he so much as sniffs in Clari’s direction, I want to know about it, you got me?”

“Dude, done and done, man. Case is going to personally oversee this one, and he’s even looking into Grimes’s financials to see what the man has going on. As for Jared, he was making noise about just killing all the Lanes and Conrads to eliminate any threat from that avenue.”

That news makes me chuckle, and Jace joins in with a shake of his head.

“How the two of you can be twins is a mystery, bro. Jared is by and large one crazy asshole. You know, I called him earlier and he was actually about to scale their wall and break into their house. With Veronica in residence. I swear he was hoping she’d catch him just so he could lose it on the fool.”

I’m not surprised at all. Jared seems tame most of the time, but my twin brother is anything but. Being a spook and carrying out some seriously questionable missions, I know what my brother is capable of. Add to the fact that he’s been watching our crazy-ass family for a good year now and seems to hate them all with an abiding passion, and it’s a miracle one of them hasn’t just vanished by now.

That signals an improvement to me, because a few years ago the guy would have just acted and answered questions later. I suspect that his hesitance with just attacking them all has something to do with Paulie Hayes, Veronica’s best friend and the one woman I’ve seen Jared show an interest in.

Too bad for him, the girl seems just as vain and useless as the whole bunch of them. She’s a beauty, though, so if she doesn’t stop shaking her ass at him and tempting fate, I’m positive that he’ll finally lose all patience and just take what he wants.

“He’ll be fine for the meantime. If he gets out of hand, I’ll reel him in,” I say, sighing tiredly.

I hope it doesn’t come to that, because the man has some rage issues. Twin or not, he’ll kick my ass and hand it back to me for my efforts. Jared is, shall we say, a product of some of the shit he’s seen over the years, and he never hesitates to take out anyone he considers a threat.

“You think I should trade out assignments with him before things get ugly?” Jace asks after a while.

“Nah, man. He’s more likely to beat you than thank you for your concern. Leave him for now, like I said. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

Jace nods and shrugs his shoulders, a move I’ve seen on him more often of late. He hasn’t done it since he was a kid and those idiots at school tried to bully him.

Let’s just say that Billy Ray ended up crying like a baby when a much younger Jace handed him his ass and threatened to teach him manners till they finally took.

“You okay, man?”

He looks back at me and shrugs again, trying for the smile that I haven’t seen in a while.

“I think Tracy is back in town.”

I whistle beneath my breath.

“Yeah? You gonna make a play for her again?”

Tracy Mayfield is the girl Jace ran off five years ago when he decided to take the job homeland security offered both him and Jared. To him, it was a case of love versus country, and since Tracy wasn’t about to drop her life and do what he wanted, he chose country and broke her heart.

She left town to get away from the humiliation of seeing the idiot sniffing after any skirt in a mile radius, not a day after he cut her loose, and she hasn’t been back since.

“I called her the other day. She told me to suck a dick and go sky diving without a parachute.”

“Ouch.” I laugh, feeling terrible for the guy.

He hasn’t stopped loving Tracy all these years, and having her around now isn’t great, especially now with his mind focused more on staying home and giving homeland the finger.

He can afford to retire and consider his options, but I’m not sure having Jace and Jared running around town like two loose cannons is a good idea.

“Yeah, anyway, like I was saying. Case is taking care of things on the ex-boyfriend end, and Jared is keeping things together on our end. All we need now is to keep Roman from getting himself killed and we should be okay.”

I snort at that and turn back to watching the women and the two married asses in the family dote on their wives. Whipped, poor SOBs.

“I’ll keep my eye on him, too, and hope that things come to a head sooner rather than later. You know how he gets when things move too slowly for his liking.”

We start talking about some trivial shit after going over a few key points that I’ve been considering before I finally decide I’ve been patient enough and go get Clari from Ma’s greedy clutches.

I may not be planning to make love to her tonight, but after the kiss that’s still burning through my blood, I’m not about to waste my time convincing myself that there isn’t more than one way to satisfy my urges.

“Clari. Ma, we’re going to bed. Settle down, woman, she’s not leaving for the Kremlin. We’re just going upstairs.”

***

Clara

I know the minute that Miah comes over and all but sweeps me out of the living room that things are going to change tonight. I am so excited, it’s all I could do not to squirm the whole way up the stairs and into his room.

I’ve been simmering on a low heat all night and practically vibrating under his constant stare since dinner ended and he released me to his mother for some girl time.

Call me crazy, but having this man look at me all night as if he’s starving for only me is not easy to ignore, and now that I feel safe and okay with the universe again, I want to just jump into this thing with both feet and see where it’ll take me.

We finally get upstairs and he closes the door.

“You smell so good, babe. You always smell so good,” he growls, making me squirm when his face presses against my neck and I hear him inhale the scent of my skin.

The intensity of the longing I feel from that one action is so much more than I felt even when Nick tried to pleasure me that I feel off-balance in under three seconds flat.

Miah Lane is sex on legs and dangerous to my equilibrium. He’s doing nothing more than smelling my neck and I’m ready to rip all my clothes off so I can feel his hard, smooth skin pressed against mine.

I’m about to do just that when he lifts his head and stares down at me intently.

“You have no idea how much I want you, babe. No idea at all. But I won’t take you yet, not till you’re ready.”

              “Miah.”

“I want to take you under me and spend the whole night kissing you, though. Will you let me do that, Clari? Will you be a wild teenager with me and neck till we’re out of breath?” he growls, making my nipples bead at the thought of his mouth on mine all night.

I’ve never necked with a guy, not even in those first months when Nick and I dated before going all the way. To him, it was a waste of time fooling around. He wanted to get to know each other, and then he decided that we should just go all the way.

              With Miah, I feel no pressure, and believe me, I know how strange that sounds considering the man moved me into his house not twenty-four hours after informing me that he’s ready to give in and wants to date me.

              “Clari? Babe, if I’m taking things too fast—”

“Shut up and kiss me, Miah,” I cut in, grabbing on to his hair and pulling his mouth down to mine in a show of lust and confidence I’ve never felt in the bedroom.

His mouth hits mine and he takes over the kiss I initiated, his strong arms wrapping around me and lifting me up into his body as his tongue hits my lips and pushes in. This time he’s not asking for entry but taking what he wants, and the pleasure is so intense that when he wraps my legs around his hips and presses his sex to mine, I whimper.

We kiss for the longest time, just two mouths exploring and clashing as he slowly rubs against my moistening sex in slow circles.

I’m not innocent of what an orgasm feels like. Nick may not have hit that spot for me in all our time together, but I’ve masturbated enough to know that the tingling rush sending shockwaves up my legs and into my spine are precursors to a climax that will likely turn my brain to mush.

“Oh, oh.” That’s all I can say when he pulls his mouth away and looks down at me, his eyes a molten show of swirling blues and blacks.

“You feel that, Clari?”

How can I not? He’s positioned his erection right over my sweet spot and is torturing me with slow grinding rubs that feel so good, it’s a struggle not to let my eyes cross as I tense and push back into him, needing more friction, just more…

I’m a gasping, moaning mess of lust and unfulfilled need by the time I feel him moving and then the mattress against my back. Miah never breaks contact with me and seals our mouths again as he starts up a thrusting rhythm that has my toes curling and my back bowing as the pleasure intensifies to the pint of pain.

I’m wet, wetter than I’ve ever been, and so empty inside that I want to scream at him to just make love to me and to hell with necking and all that other fun stuff.