“Give me your fingers,” I nearly whimper.
And immediately, two fingers glide up and down my pussy, once, twice, and then he twists his wrist so that the same two fingers slide inside me, curling forward as his mouth descends back to where I want it. His tongue teases me, warm and wet with the perfect pressure that has my thighs shaking. It’s barely enough time to realize he’s too fucking good at this, and my neck is arching back, a cry escaping as my pussy pulses around his fingers. He draws it out somehow, my body writhing and tensing beneath him.
“That’s it, just like that,” he says softly, resting his chin along my thigh as I catch my breath. His scruff is drenched with me, and I love how messy he looks. I love that I’ve affected him like that. He shifts, looking down at where he just played with me, his fingers slowly pulling out to their tips.
I want him. I don’t want to overthink. I don’t want to forget how this feels.
“I want one more,” he demands in a low gravel. My eyes shift to his just as he bites along my thigh and stretches me again with his fingers. Moaning, I watch as he makes a show of extending his tongue out flat and licking along the base of his fingers. He drags it up to my clit again as if he doesn’t want to miss a single drop of the arousal he’s wrung from me. It’s so fucking good that I move my fingers into his hair again and pull. When he looks up at me, I shift and grab at his shirt. I want the weight of him, want to feel more of him.
“It’s not enough,” I rush out just as his lips find mine. The taste of me on his tongue pulls another raspy moan from me. “Please, let me feel you,” I beg, pulling at the back of his shirt.
He sits back on his heels, grips at the neckline of his shirt, and pulls it over his head. Every inch of him is mouthwatering to look at, from the broadness of his sculpted shoulders to the thickness of his arms and chest. It’s not chiseled muscle or overtly cut lines, but the deep-set curve of strength that spans from chest, down his stomach, and to his thighs. Just as he’s lowering himself over me, my hands smoothing up his chest, buzzing drowns out the sound of our heavy breathing.
My phone lights up from more than an arm’s length away. It’s vibrating without stopping, meaning someone’s calling, and I’m almost exclusively a texter.Shit.Something is wrong.
“I need to see who—” I say as I move to reach for it.
He leans over to grab it for me. Before I answer, I see it’s a picture of Stevie and Nash smiling on the screen. I slide to answer right away. “Hey?—”
“Fury is detaining me,” Stevie rushes out, sounding pissed and maybe on the cusp of tears.
“What?” I suck in a breath as I turn to look at Julian, who’s brow furrows at my concern.
“Sheriff Fury is trying to helicopter his tiny prick around,” she yells out, so I’m sure he or whoever is close by can hear whatshe’s saying. Her emotions always come out more like anger—and she’s the loudest of us.
I hear someone in the background say to her, “Watch it, Stevie...”
“The sheriff marched up to my recording space and demanded that I drop the conversations around Billings being a piece-of-shit cop and how plenty of rumors are circling about his side hustle in narcotics and opioids. That,” she pauses to groan in frustration, “and I quote, ‘Rumors are not facts and shouldn’t be reported as such.’” She barks an unamused laugh. “Do you believe that shit? As if we don’t understand the damage rumors can do.” She gets louder when she says, “And it’s a podcast, you asshat, not hard-hitting journalism!”
“Okay, ease up and tell me what happened after that,” I ask, trying to get a full picture here. I knowThe Distilled Truthruffles plenty of authority feathers, but being detained seems a little extreme, if not infringing on an amendment. “He couldn’t have arrested you over that.”
She huffs, and then takes a deep breath. With that pause alone, I know there’s more. “I told him that he was a paper-pushing manbaby who takes handouts from sociopaths and blatantly ignores criminals within his own precinct.”
Julian kisses my shoulder and slowly sits back on his heels as I sit up taller.
“Stevie,” I say, trying to get a word in.
I start to fumble with the buttons that came undone on my blouse as I glance at Julian, who’s already reading the situation right as he puts his shirt back on and moves to help me up.
“And that he’s no better than a cult leader with the way he brainwashes everyone into believing everything is fine around here. He didn’t like that one.”
I don’t need to know why she’s asking for my help. And I wouldnevercall her an idiot—my sister is smart. She just likes to play it off as a flaw most of the time.
She exhales. “You can tell me I’m an idiot and lace into me later. I just need you to come and get me—I didn’t know who else?—"
I stop her right there. “Stevie, I’m on my way.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Julian
“You can’t tellme that this isn’t all somehow related, Fury,” I hear Stevie shout from a chair in the far side of the station’s bullpen. “There are missing persons, more overdoses in the past handful of years than ever before in this county, I’ve seen now two college-aged girls coming out of here looking worse than when they came in, screaming sexual assault being mishandled, and then you, and you,” she says, pointing at Jameson, who must have just come in, surveying what’s going on in front of us. “The sheriff, the county’s lead homicide detective, and your paper pushers come intomyfamily’s bar to throw around your weight, looking for a man who we all know knocked his wife around like a goddamn pinball machine. And again, you didnothing.”
Wyn lets go of my hand and rushes up to the main desk. She asks, “Being detained? For what reason?” And without letting the deputy answer, she adds, “And she’s not a minor. It isn’t required for her to have someone come and get her. Does she need to appear in court after this?”
I smile at hearing her tear the deputy behind the desk a new one. I run my fingers beneath my nose as if I’m scratching an itch, but really, I just want to remind myself of the smell of her. She smells as good as she tastes, and I swallow roughly, trying to focus on where I am and what we’re walking into.
“If you’re not arresting her, I’d like to take my sister home now, please,” Wyn adds as the deputy gets up and moves towards a still fairly loud Stevie Crowne.
