If Wishes Were Horses Read online

  “Sarah, Eric here. I’ve talked to the coroner and the guys in Gainesville, but theyhad two college girls murdered up there last night, and they’ve already told me pretty bluntly the murder case of a junkie drifter in our little county isn’t going to be put ahead of those two girls. They’re saying it could be the end of the week or next week before we get any reports from the data we gave them.

  “As far as Herne goes, he’s a cagey bastard. I didn't get any more out of him than you did, but you're right, I think he has information he's not sharing. If it’s not toomuch to ask, since he's in your town, dog him a bit this week for me. Maybe the new kid on the block will have better luck and I’ll keep after the Gainesville boys.”

  Not too much to ask, unless you wanted to avoid the man in question at all costs.

  She found herself going back down the drive to For Hers at four thirty. Only his carwas in the parking lot. She’d hoped to question him between the distractions of customers again. She hesitated, her engine idling, then cursed herself for it, for her hesitation and her desire to avoid being alone with him had nothing to do with the job. She switched off the engine and deliberately strode up to the door, slamming the screen on her way in.

  The front foyer area was empty.

  “I'll be right with you,” Herne's voice came from somewhere above, up a cordoned-off staircase, blocking the way to the inventory in the attic, she supposed.

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  Sarah wandered into the lingerie area. He had moved the ice blue teddy from itsdisplay area on the armoire and had it hanging on the privacy screen. Had someoneelse tried it on? She noticed it was her size.

  She glanced around, touched the watered silk. It shimmered like moonlight on ice. Tiny pearls had been worked into the lace of the neckline, and there was padding and wiring to push up and out what you had, that delightful overflowing tavern wench look that was the joy and awe of every small-breasted woman.

  “I was going to send it to you as a gift.”

  He was right behind her. When she turned, he stood inside her personal boundaries.

  “I came back to buy it for a date I have this weekend,” she said, her eyes cool and remote. “Cops don't accept bribes.”

  “And here I figured you had come back to see if you could pry the answers out of me that Chief Wassler couldn’t get.” He leaned forward, bringing his shoulder within touching distance of her lips, slipped the garment off the ivory quilted hanger and handed it to her. When she drew in his smell, it hit her like a sensual caress to her

  internal organs. “You'll want to try it on, then.”

  There was nothing in his expression but the well-meaning concern of the professional shopkeeper, though she noticed he did not remove himself physically from her even one inch. His dark eyes were as intimate in their regard as the garment clutched in her hand. “Make sure it fits your body as well as the man for whom you're wearing it. It's $150 and lingerie is non-refundable. That’s quite a lot to risk on a cop's salary.” His eyes glinted. “Especially if she doesn't take bribes.”

  He motioned toward the screen. Trapped, Sarah set her jaw. Fine. She'd go in, put it on, tell him it didn't fit.

  Only it did. When she slid the teddy on, it fit so perfectly she relented to the inevitable purchase and slid her panties off so she could see the trim line of it from waist to crotch. The thong back was soft, a stimulating friction between her cheeks as he had told her it would be. The shaping of the wired cups gave her bosom a lift so awesome she couldn’t resist trailing her fingers in amazement over the plump curves of their tops. A movement snapped her gaze to the mirror.

  “Hey,” she said, whirling around to confront Herne, watching her over the screen.

  “I've seen you in less,” he pointed out, and came around to place the matching shoes on the floor. He went to one knee. “Hold onto my shoulder and step into them.”

  Sarah deliberated on whether she should just plant her foot in his chest and knock him on his ass. Instead, she ignored his shoulder and braced herself on the wall for balance to slip into the soft gloved feel of the three inch pale blue heels.

  Herne guided her second foot into the shoe, his touch lingering on her ankle anddrifting up her calf. He raised his head slowly, and she watched his gaze cover the slopeof her thighs, the barely covered mound of her pussy, the curve of her belly and the riseof her breasts. By the time he got to her face, her breath was shallow. He rose, so close

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  his leg and hip brushed hers. His arm slid around her hips, the fingertips of his other hand trailing up her bare left thigh. “You look beautiful, Sarah,” he said, his voice as soft as a stroke of fur. “No. More than that. You look irresistibly fuckable.”

  Her heart jumped in panic. Get a grip, officer.

  “Well, I hope the guy I'm wearing it for will think so.”

  “Sarah.” The small area behind the screen became even more so with just that onemurmured word, the heat and steel that transformed his expression. They made her even more aware of everything the garment revealed. The cool air of the shop on her exposed breasts, the press of the thong strap against sensitive nerve endings in dark, secret places, the way the cotton crotch rubbed her dampening folds as she shifted. The tightening of the satin ribbon straps on her bare shoulders as she took a shuddering breath. Her legs trembled as both his hands closed on her waist. She jolted at the sensation that swept through her at that one point of contact.

  Her lips moistened, parted. “What?”

  She meant to sound tough, unaffected. Instead, she sounded as if she could be shoved to her back by the touch of a finger. If that finger were Justin Herne's it might be more truth than metaphor.

  “You're a liar.”

  He twisted his fingers in the strap on the left shoulder and yanked it down, exposing her breast to the eager cup of his palm. Sarah gasped and arched into histouch, and found her mouth claimed by his. His arm around her waist hauled her upagainst the full length of his body. He lifted her on her toes so her heels rose out of the shoes.

  With a man as elegant and smooth as Justin Herne, a woman expected intimacy to be a well-planned ballet. Sarah knew he was capable of it. But when he moved to kissher now, he was quick, brutal, overpowering. In a hungry and terrifying heartbeat she realized he had laid a claim on her and this was his reminder of it, a warning that therewere consequences to provoking him.

  She had never kissed a man who kissed like Justin Herne. Hell, she had never imagined a man could kiss like this man did. He used not just his lips, but his hold on her body to enhance the effect and make it explosive. He held her relentlessly againsthim as his hand moved up from her breast to her jaw, his thumb against her throat, collaring and caressing her at once. Her bare nipple pressed into the soft cotton of the black T-shirt while his hand splayed out so his fingers could stroke the dip into the valley between her buttocks. He nipped the thong strap in his fingers and tugged, making her moan into his mouth and rub her mound against him for a sweet burst offriction she felt thrum through her thighs and lower belly.

  Then there was his mouth, tongue and teeth, scraping, licking, sucking and nibbling until she could only hold on, her body too weak to do more. She didn't believe in thiskind of magic. Every brain cell screamed one word.

  More.

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  * * * * *

  She had a date. Like hell she did. Chief Sarah hadn't opened her legs or her heart to

  anyone since her divorce, he’d bet his store on it. The pussy he'd had the pleasure of enjoying last night had been excruciatingly tight. Her prickly attitude told him her heart was in the same condition.

  Cops weren't normally a trusting group, and one recently ditched in a marriage would not be an easy fortress to storm. It was a good thing he’d done extensive readingon the strategies of medieval sieges for a history term paper in college. It was going totake a complex plan not only to
take this castle, but to keep it. Driving the battering ram through the door to keep it open for a full invasion seemed a logical first step.

  His grip eased, but only to spin her around so she faced the window next to the mirror. One arm remained clamped around her waist. This part of the house faced away from the road, toward a small lawn where spring wildflowers were starting to come up, bathed in gold by the late afternoon sun, and outlined by the acres of verdantgreen marsh and silver water of high tide just beyond them. Sarah caught the edge ofthe frame and closed her eyes as his fingers tugged at her ponytail and brought her hairspilling onto her shoulders.

  “Glory,” he murmured, and dropped her barrette to the floor. His fingers slid over her thighs, under the narrow silk and lace crotch, and gently he stroked her damp folds.

  “Justin,” she managed. “You can't—”

  “Sshh…” His nose pressed into her hair. He began a slow, painstaking process of using the movements of his face against her to spill her hair forward and bare her neck. Each small shove to move the strands to the edge of her shoulder and send them tumbling forward onto her breast was accompanied by a soft nuzzle, a lick or a gentle bite of her nape. His thumb made idle passes on her clit, dipping and pressing slightlyinto her pussy, making her ass lift in response and slide against his erection, pushed against her. Still he took his time, worrying her neck. She began to wish she had less hair, and then more, and then she was incapable of deciding whether she wanted him to stop, or if she could never get enough.

  At last he rubbed his rough jaw against her skin, and his nose into the shallow dip of her collarbone, so her head fell back against his shoulder, letting him suckle the taut line of her windpipe, which seemed to be processing far too little air. His hand took hold of her bare breast, not the nipple, the whole thing, as if he cradled a fragile treasure beneath which her heart beat rapidly.

  “I know this may be hard for you to believe, Sarah,” he said, low, his breath hot against her skin. “I didn't come to your home last night to ravish you. But once I saw you, smelled you, I had to have you. That was personal, Sarah. We are lovers.” His handtightened on her, not so gentle. “It’s not about time or preparation. It’s a spark, ignited in a single moment, and don’t you dare deny it. You know when it happened last night,as much as I do.”

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  She did remember, though she had tried to block it, even denied it to herself when the moment had occurred last night. Their faces had been close, and he had been insideher. They had both grown still, as if suddenly time stopped, and there was a heavy hazeof desire slowing their movements. He had lowered his lips to hers, not to plunder but to sip, to taste and find her, and offer himself. It had been there, an all-consuming moment of heart, mind and soul, and though it had slipped away before the power oftheir lust only a blink later, it had been potent enough to embed itself in her memory, called up the moment he summoned it now. It had been intimacy, uncalled butimposing itself on them all the same.

  He slid back and began to kiss her, working his way down her spine.

  “Do you know how many vertebrae there are, Sarah?”

  “No,” she rasped.

  “Eight cervical, twelve thoracic, five lumbar and five sacral vertebrae...and thenthere is the coccyx, the lovely, lovely tailbone.”

  His mouth closed over one of the bumps of bone he had enumerated for her, licked. Then another. “I do not want to miss a single…perfect…one…of them. Ah…missed that one. Have to start over.”

  Sarah whimpered. His thumb pushed more deeply into her pussy as he went several inches back up her spine and started down again. He was everywhere on her. Awet warm mouth, a flick of the tongue on her spine. A slow, circular stroke of histhumb inside her cunt. The firm hold of that arm banded across her, his palm holding her breast, kneading it. What was it about a strong man holding a woman helpless back against him that could make the knees weak and all brain cells leave the skull?

  “Justin,” she pleaded. Her body shook like a newborn colt. An orgasm was rising in her in a way she had never experienced before, a slow tide rolling in from the horizon. She felt it coming, not in a furious rising crest, but a straight, powerful charge thatwould punch into her lower body and knock her legs out from under her.

  “Darling Sarah. Let me hear you. I love to hear you come.”

  Counting down another vertebrae in a whisper, his hand worked her. Her pussy made a succulent noise, the juices so thick they dampened her thighs and his knuckles. His trousers rubbed against her bare cheeks, exposed by the thong. The hard outline of his cock was firmly wedged in the channel between her buttocks, pushing the thong strap deeper into her cleft, and her instinctive movements stroked him against her anus, the rhythm working at odds with his hand as her hips rose and fell with her erratic breathing. She kept coming down on his thumb, which was now pushed inside her tothe farthest knuckle, that curve of bone resting firmly against her clit. His other fingers were insinuated between her thighs, braced out straight and unrelenting against them so she had to stay spread open, unable to contain or control the building climax.

  He straightened and brought his lips back to her neck. His body pressed fully against hers, giving her a shock of emotional intimacy that shoved the physicalresponse up another notch.

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  “No.”

  She barely got it out, but managed to let go of the sill, trusting him to hold her upwith the arm banded around the front of her body. Sarah closed her hand over his large one between her legs. “No. I want you inside, Justin. Inside.”

  He stilled, eased his thumb from her, nipping her neck as she groaned at thesensation. She twisted in his arms and fumbled for the buckle of that slim, elegant belt holding up his neat trousers. The head of his cock rubbed against her wrists through thesummer wool. He muttered an oath, relenting, and helped her, stripping off the beltand unfastening the clasp, shoving the pants and the underwear beneath down to his thighs.

  He caught her under the arms before she could touch him and lifted her onto the sill, her shoulder blades against the hard wood of the pane dividers and cool glass. Themotion was rough but effective, his cock finding her slippery opening and plunginginto her in a movement so immediate she screamed at the sensation. Her legs lifted,wrapped around him, and she banded her arms around his shoulders, wishing shecould feel his skin. She settled for the press of her temple and cheek against his soft hair, and drew in the smell of him with all the mysterious scents of his shop.

  He caught her arms and lifted her upper body away from him. “Tell me, Sarah,” he said, his face harsh with need, more than the need of the moment. “Tell me you wantme.”

  She shook her head, made to pull him to her again, but he had the belt in his righthand. He shifted his grip to hold it against her upper body, the strap pressed horizontally from shoulder to shoulder, pinning her against the window. It was positioned right above her nipples, the tension causing the stiffened points to tilt upward and constricting the blood flow so her breasts instantly became more sensitive. He had his hips pressed hard in between hers, his cock and his body working with the immovable wall to keep her still. His eyes on hers, he lowered his head, suddenly back to being slow, and flicked one nipple with his tongue.

  She cried out. The nerve endings reacted as if jolted with electric current. Her lungspumped for air against the restrictive hold of the belt while he began to suckle her gently, as if he had all the time in the world. He kept his hips still, even though her own struggled to move on him, to get some friction going between her pussy and the thick cock he had buried in her. It moved just a bit within her with the movements of hisupper body as he devoted himself to nursing her breast, his mouth making soft, wet noises against her nipple. There was a coil of energy so tight in her lower body that thewaves rippled out through her thighs, tiny orgasms that hinted at the power of a fullonslaught.

  He traced the curve of her breast with his ton
gue, moved like a slow tide toward the other eager flushed point. Just her watching the progress of his tongue made the nipple stiffen further. He blew on it, giving it heat, then closed over it and began to suckle again.

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  “Justin,” she begged. “Please…” She tried to move her arms, but his strength on the belt’s restraint was immovable. Her fingers closed on his shirt helplessly, bunched it in her damp hands.

  He raised a brow, and his eyes were flame. “I love the feel of a woman's pussy contracting on me, so close, but not quite there, her arousal running down my testicles. I still haven't washed you off of me from last night, Sarah. Tell me you want me.”

  “I want you,” she said, her voice rough. “Damn you.” She made the leap, though the abyss had no bottom she could see. She didn't care. It was the leap she wanted, the soaring, the plunge. The bottom had become irrelevant.

  Justin lifted his head, keeping the belt in place. His lips paused just over hers, those intent eyes so close.

  “I want you, too, Sarah,” he said. “I've never wanted a woman this way before. Ever. I need you.”

  There was a shift in his eyes, so quick she might not have caught it except she was trained to notice such shifts, even at a moment like this.

  He did need her, desperately. Maybe it was just what happened earlier today, but somehow she knew he had a savage need to lose himself in this act with her. How often had she come home with that savage, desperate need, the need to dispel the pain and horror in an act of love and physical passion? She had settled for a civilized dinner andpolite conversation about her husband's work and glossed over the details of hers, when what she really wanted was for him to violently sweep dishes and food to the floor and fuck her on the table with every ounce of his strength so she could scream and let all the blood and death be washed away on a flood of physical and emotional release.