Troublemaker by Linda Howard
His tone, his expression, both made her uneasy. She looked down at her cookie to hide her foreboding. Experience told her conversations that began this way were never good; that was how her ex-husband had begun his explanation of how he needed more than she could provide, how a stepfather or two had said good-bye, how her mother had announced her first remarriage. Was now when Morgan told her not to get too attached, that anything they had was temporary and he’d be going back to his exciting job when the time came? She knew that; he didn’t have to spell it out. And knowing it was one thing, but she didn’t want to hear it, she didn’t want him to say, “We’ll have a good time, baby, but then it’s adios.”
“No, we don’t,” she said briskly. “I get it.”
“Trust me,” he growled. “You don’t.”
She rolled her eyes. “So this isn’t the part where you tell me you’ll be leaving—”
“I want to—”
“—and that’s good because I really don’t want to hear it!” she ended, the words clipped off hard and flat.
“Bo. Shut up.”
At his hard tone she looked up, her eyes flashing with temper, but he seized her by the back of the neck and kissed her, his mouth hungry and fierce. For a second she held herself stiff, not responding, but he wasn’t having any of that and dragged her across him so her butt was on the quilt between his thighs and her legs were draped over his. He tilted her head back and kissed her until she softened a bit; she still didn’t kiss him back, but she was accepting his mouth. His hand delved under her shirt and closed over her breast, deftly pinching her nipple until it formed a tight bud, the sensation sharp but not quite painful. Pleasure arrowed straight down between her legs, making her tighten and clench as if he were inside her, damn him.
She didn’t want to flash back to how all of that had felt, but she couldn’t stop the memory or her response. She had wanted him all day—not a gnawing need but a constant low heat. She had wanted to touch him, to feel his weight pressing her down, the heavy sensation of him pushing between her legs and into her. She hadn’t indulged because waiting was its own sort of perverse pleasure, feeling the craving slowly grow. She liked the anticipation, the knowledge that when they finally came together again the pleasure would be more intense for the waiting.
And the way he was kissing her now . . . She began to think that perhaps the “This is temporary” talk hadn’t been on his mind after all. His mouth was too hungry, his touch too . . . possessive? She’d never had anyone feel possessive of her before, so she wasn’t certain.
She bit his lip and murmured, “Don’t tell me to shut up,” mainly because she didn’t want him thinking he could get away with it.
He drew back a little to look down at her, his eyelids heavy and color deepening the sun bronze on his cheeks. “If I do, will you bite me again?” he asked, and bent to nuzzle her temple.
“You bet.”
“Shut up.”
The air between them changed and sizzled. She laughed and bit him, and ended up flat on her back with her shirt jerked up and his mouth clamped over her nipple. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, sinking and floating in the sharp, prickling sensation that pulled at her. He slid his hand between her legs and cupped her through her jeans, rubbing the heel of his palm against her clitoris. Bo’s eyes flared open and she stared up at the bits of blue sky she could see through the gently swaying tree limbs. Her gaze was unfocused because all of her attention was focused inward, on her body and what he was doing. I’m going to come, she thought dimly, then she said it, and then she did it.
He fought her out of her jeans while she was mostly comatose, unable to help him because her body was limp and heavy and still faintly pulsing. He didn’t get her shirt off, but it was shoved up under her arms anyway. He hooked his hands under her thighs and pulled her legs up and apart, settling solidly between them. The light breeze briefly cooled her hot damp flesh, then he was there, reaching between them to set the thick head of his penis against her opening and stretching her as he slowly pushed inside. He made a rough sound deep in his throat as he lifted her legs once more so he could seat himself as deeply as possible. Bo roused enough to wind her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his back, and held on as he began thrusting.
He didn’t take long, about a minute, but it was a tumultuous minute. The heavy push and drag of his shaft inside her just did it for her, so fast and so hard that within that minute she was feeling the coil of desire again. His orgasm hit and he bucked and shuddered through it, then slowly sank down on her until she was bearing his entire weight. Almost immediately he struggled up onto his forearms so she could breathe, but his head hung down so his forehead rested against hers. “You kill me,” he muttered almost soundlessly. “Bo.”
Was that good? she wondered woozily, because he made her feel drunk, drunk on pleasure, on him. She smoothed her hands up and down his sweaty back, either to soothe him or to satisfy her own need to touch him. Maybe the two were mixed together; maybe somewhere along the line her needs and his had stopped being so defined and separate.
When they could manage the effort, silently they pulled apart and cleaned up with the napkins she’d brought, and some of the water. Morgan gave a low growl of laughter because Tricks had turned her back on them while she finished off her chew bone. When they were dressed again—halfway, at least; she had on her shirt and underwear, and he had on his jeans—he pulled her to sit between his drawn-up legs and wrapped his arms around her. “Now,” he said. “We talk. I have something serious to tell you, about me being here.”
She thought about that a minute. “Will I like it?”
“Probably not. But if you and I are going to do this thing we’ve got going, then I’m going to be straight with you. You might kick my ass to the curb, but that’s a chance I have to take.”
Okay, so it definitely wasn’t a don’t-get-serious-because-I-have-one-foot-out-the-door talk. Bo leaned her head back against his shoulder, laid her arms on top of his where they wrapped around her stomach. Her mind raced, trying to think what could be so dicey about his situation here, which led her immediately to Axel. “Damn it!” she said irritably. “I knew I should have been more suspicious of Axel. He’s behind this, right?”
“Mostly right. I have my share of responsibility. The deal is this: what he told you was correct, as far as it goes—”
“But, because he’s Axel, he didn’t travel too far down the truth road, did he?” She felt like growling. Any time Axel was involved, her irritation level shot through the roof. She didn’t like him, didn’t trust him, and so far her instincts had been dead on the money.
Morgan grunted. “He has other priorities, and they’re damn important priorities. Likely he chose to send me to you partly out of spite, because that’s Axel. But he had other criteria for choosing you, such as the relative isolation of the town, the small population that would make it easy to spot strangers, the relatively short distance to D.C. He was setting a trap.”
Bo absorbed that, rapidly sorting through and discarding scenarios. She wasn’t schooled in subterfuge, but she was intelligent and observant, and this additional information clicked in a way Axel’s original argument hadn’t. Oh, she’d been swayed—by Morgan’s condition, by the money Axel had offered, by the surface logic of what he’d said. The logic even went deeper than one layer because of the probability that their organization had been compromised from the inside. And yet . . . she should have been more suspicious.
She asked the most important question first: “Is it possible anyone in town could be in danger or hurt?” That had been one of her original concerns, and she’d been fool enough to believe Axel when he’d denied it. The town and the people in it were her responsibility; more than that, the people were her friends. If anything happened to any one of them—she didn’t know if she’d be able to get past that. On the one hand she appreciated that Morgan was telling her the truth, but on the other hand this was so potentially big that she
He sighed and rested his chin on top of her head. “My guess? Almost zero. But anything is possible. We don’t know who we’re dealing with. The idea was to hide me away in a place that was safe but not inaccessible, leak info that I’m recovering my memory, and trigger the bad actors into making another hack—but this time with a trigger on the information so we’d know who was doing the hack.”
“And if that fails, Hamrickville is small enough, isolated enough, that it would be easy for us to spot an outsider,” she finished. “There’s a flaw in that, though; the town is small, but it’s also big enough that I don’t know everyone, or even have a good idea who at least half the population is. It’s four thousand people; a stranger wouldn’t necessarily stand out.” People who lived in large cities seemed to think everyone in a small town knew everyone else, but that just wasn’t so.
“But there aren’t a lot of roads coming to Hamrickville, so intercepting someone would be more feasible than if you were on an interstate. Hamrickville was a secondary consideration, and a convenient one. Axel’s money was on catching the hacker and following the Judas twig all the way back to the Judas tree.”
“Except nothing has happened, despite his ‘leaks.’” Normally she loved for things to be calm; drama wasn’t in her wheelhouse. But in this instance, she thought her reaction should be more . . . forceful, more angry, yet going off half-cocked wasn’t her way. She was angry, yes—at Axel. He was a champion asshole. He hadn’t turned a hair at possibly endangering the townsfolk, or herself, come to that. His sole consideration was finding and eliminating the threat to the GO-Teams specifically and to Morgan as a . . . well, Morgan had said it perfectly himself: he was a secondary consideration. Maybe that was why she wasn’t throwing a total fit at Morgan, why she wasn’t screaming and telling him to go screw himself the next time he got a hard-on.
“Exactly. He hasn’t had a nibble. So we’re dead in the water because I still don’t have a fucking clue why I was targeted. If it helps, anything happening in town would be damn stupid on the part of whoever is behind this. If they slip past Axel’s trap, more than likely they’ll come to your house.”
“Ah,” she said neutrally. “That definitely explains your insistence on all the security upgrades.”
“I think the chance is small, but I can’t discount the possibility. I’d rather be cautious than unprepared. Until and unless we hear from Axel that the trap was sprung and the jerks caught . . .” He shrugged.
“Nothing to do but wait,” she said.
He was silent a minute, then said carefully, “Does that mean you aren’t going to kick my ass to the curb?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “There’s a lot to think about. I know Axel, remember? He came up with the idea, and you were probably half-conscious at the time, juiced up on pain medication—” Considering how weak he’d been when he’d arrived, she could only imagine how serious his condition had still been when Axel cooked up his plan. And then the bastard had put him on the road from wherever to drive here on his first day out of the hospital. Most people would have collapsed before they got halfway here. Morgan had gutted it out, but then, Axel had likely known he would.
“Don’t give me a full pass because I’ve had plenty of time to think about it since I got off the funny flying stuff.”
“I’m not giving you a full pass,” she said testily. “This is serious, so don’t rush me, okay? I need to think about things.” One of those things was how he didn’t try to sidestep the issue or pass blame off on Axel, which would be laughably easy.
“I’d rather you punch me in the nose and get it over with.”
“You don’t get to choose. I’m pissed, but I’m still deciding how to allocate the pissery.”
“Oh, God.” His arms tightened around her. “Serves me right, falling for a reasonable woman. I’d rather you yell and get it over with.”
Bo sat quietly in his embrace, letting his words seep through her. She was cautious enough, suspicious enough, about romantic relationships that her first cynical thought was to wonder if he’d said he was falling for her as . . . manipulation, maybe. He was sharply intelligent, as witnessed by the way he’d so rapidly and correctly assessed Jesse’s character and adjusted his attitude and approach on the fly. He could read people, knew how to say what he needed to say to get what he wanted.
On the other hand, except for the information that he’d omitted at the beginning, as far as she knew, he’d always told her the truth. He hadn’t hidden anything from her, he’d answered all her questions . . . and yesterday he’d risked his own life to protect her and Tricks.
She watched the lake, seeing the ripples that probably signaled small fish coming to the surface, watching the bank reeds sway in the breeze. Tricks nosed around, following one interesting smell to another interesting smell, her extravagant tail swishing happily back and forth. Morgan’s arms were around her, his strength between her and the world. She didn’t know what to think about that because she’d always stood alone, handled things alone—until she’d come to Hamrickville.
She knew there wasn’t anything special about the little town, except maybe the fond blend of admiration and fear in which everyone held the Mean-As-Shit Hobsons, that she could have found friendship and caring in almost any place she chose. Except she hadn’t chosen, being here had been forced on her by her finances, and it was what it was. They were her friends. They were hers to protect.
That line of thought led to her wondering if Morgan thought of her, and them, as his to protect. He’d been there when she needed him. He’d gone above and beyond. For better or worse, he was becoming part of the town. People greeted him with a “Hey, Morg!” as if he’d become one of them. Jesse treated him with respect, and Bo had to admit that weighed big in Morgan’s favor because Jesse was nobody’s fool.
If she was going to sit here and think of reasons why she shouldn’t blame Morgan for the situation, there were several. He treated her with respect; not once had he ever made her feel less than capable. He didn’t second-guess her, he didn’t question her decisions, he made it plain that he considered it her-house-her-rules and he was willing to do whatever he could to help her. He treated her as an equal, which, considering the kind of man he was and what he did, was quite a statement.
And, if she wanted to keep going down this particular road, he was as completely under Tricks’s paw as she was. He’d fought it, but now he made no pretense of being indifferent. Maybe she needed her head examined to base a decision on whether or not someone loved her dog, but Tricks was so important to her that she couldn’t discount it.
On impulse she called Tricks to her. “Tricks! Here, sweetie.” She clapped her hands. “Come get a hug.”
Tricks whirled and came bounding to her, a big smile on her face. The sunshine glinted on her pale gold coat, catching the iridescent threads in the soft fur and making her glow. Enthusiastically she pounced, licking Bo’s face and hands, her tail wagging so hard her entire body was wiggling back and forth. “Pretty girl,” Bo crooned, warding off some of the swipes of Tricks’s tongue while engaging in her own hugging and petting. “You’re such a smart girl. What do you think of Morgan, huh?” She held Tricks’s head still and went eye to eye with her. Tricks stilled, her expression becoming one of intent listening as if she knew Bo was telling her something important.
Bo jerked her thumb at Morgan. “He did something I don’t like, and I can’t decide if I should keep him or not. Mostly it wasn’t his fault.”
“Son of a bitch,” Morgan muttered. “No pun intended. You’re asking a dog to decide—”
“Whether you get probation,” Bo finished coolly. “Yes. She’s an excellent judge of character, in case you haven’t noticed. She doesn
Tricks turned her dark gaze on Morgan as if considering. Bo felt him tense, and part of her wanted to laugh. She was only half serious, but the half that was, yeah, that half wanted to know what Tricks thought. The thing was, Bo couldn’t remember asking her such an abstract question before; she thought it was possible Tricks would at least partially understand, but she wasn’t sure. Either way, watching the faint alarm with which Morgan awaited Tricks’s verdict was amusing, and she could use some amusement now.
After a few seconds, Tricks moved forward and licked Morgan on the cheek. Then she backed away, wagged her tail, and returned to her own pursuits.
Bo and Morgan sat in silence, watching her. Eventually he said, “I’ve been blessed.”
“Not quite the same as coming from the pope, but yeah.”
“Do I get probation?”
She let the sentence lie between them for a while, but the truth was that she wasn’t ready to make a final decision, couldn’t make one. “I guess so. There’s a lot weighing in your favor.”
He laid his cheek against the side of her head. She didn’t have to spell it out for him; he knew that she was pissed and might stay pissed for a while, but she wasn’t kicking him out and they’d work through it. That was what people in real relationships did, she thought with a sharp twinge of terror. Dear God, was this a real relationship? Part of it felt real, felt like more than sex. They’d been living together for weeks, building a routine and meshing their lives together.
“Maybe it’s real,” she said faintly.
“I guess I’ll need to work on making up your mind for certain,” he said, then threw a thumbs-up toward Tricks. “Thanks, girl.”