Arouse Read online

  But in his unofficial capacity, as a neighbor—and a pervy one at that—he’d tell her she shouldn’t come outside this time of night with flimsy fabric riding up her creamy thighs. Shouldn’t stand under the motion light so her body glowed like a fucking supernova. He wanted to burn with her in the weeks or months they could have together. Because it could never be more than that.

  The light winked out.

  “So… Officer… Jeff…” Her voice was as flimsy and soft as that fabric that wrapped around her body and tied with the pink sash. He wanted that voice—and that robe and the body in it, if he were honest—all over him. Grazing his forearms, rubbing over his chest, and sliding up and down the length of his erection.

  Cushioning him as he thrust into her.

  He shifted on the stair, took another sip of scotch. “Detective.”

  “Pardon?”

  “If you want to be technical about it, it’s detective. My title.”

  There was a pause and a little rustle of fabric. Was she crossing her legs? Drawing them up underneath her in that weird way she sometimes did? Damn, he was still a little night blind from the flash of the motion light. And the flash of fantasy his enthusiastic imagination had wallowed in. Curls. Definitely. She’d be all natural, a plump and pink delicacy to feast on once he parted her glossy, dark curls.

  “What’s the difference?”

  He could hear the genuine question in her voice; she wasn’t shrugging him off. So he wouldn’t shrug off an answer either. But he wouldn’t go into details. Civilians often thought they knew all about cop life from the five-point-three-billion shows on cable alone. But reality was often… messier.

  Like everything else in his life.

  He tamped down that depressing thought and leaned forward to answer her. “The difference? These days, the caseload. Lots more. Rank, eh, a little more.”

  “And maybe a little bit of a buffer zone from the general public?”

  He winced, thinking about how thin the buffer zone sometimes was between him and a vic’s family. “Something like that.”

  They’d never talked shop before. Usually, they just shot the breeze for a few moments while he willed his erection to subside, or until it got so unbearable he had to surreptitiously run a palm down his length. Just a few short strokes while they talked about nothing in the darkness before he went inside and fucked into his fist, her name on his lips.

  Jeff took another nip of scotch and relished the smooth burn.

  He had no clue what she did except for some vague notion that she worked from home most days. Not that he checked up on her, specifically. It made good policing sense to keep a bead on your neighbors’ movements. Most people loved having a cop in the neighborhood, but there were those for whom—

  “I can’t believe it’s so humid. I was led to believe Austin was the Promised Land when I agreed to move here.”

  Jeff sent up silent thanks that she’d interrupted his darker thoughts. “I can’t disagree with you, there—grew up in the Hill Country. If I’d wanted air I could see, I’d have moved to Houston. It’s like the Armpit of the World there.”

  She laughed, and he willed his eyes to cut through the darkness to see her. Move, move, he silently implored her. Turn that motion light back on; let me see the laugh on your lips.

  “Tell me about it?” Her voice, when she asked him questions, went all soft. “What is it like, the Hill Country? I’ve managed to get up to Dallas a few times this year for some meetings, but I haven’t really done much regional exploration.”

  And wasn’t that a damned shame, that some idiot man she’d dated last hadn’t taken her out to show her God’s Country? Woman like Kami deserved to spend an evening on a porch glider out by the river, a million stars all trying—and failing—to outshine her smile. She deserved to picnic in the bed of a pickup truck in the spring, nothing but bluebonnets and rolling hills for miles around. Nothing but the sun and blue sky to witness the way her skin turned pink when she came around his cock. Nothing but the sun and blue sky to hear her cries of pleasure.

  But how could he tell her all of that? He couldn’t. So he settled on something lame, like, “It’s real pretty.”

  The silence stretched on, thick as the air that surrounded them. One of these days, he’d stop running down the alley, stop checking the lock on her gate to make sure it was secure—not that it did much good on a chain link. But that’s what was standard in their old neighborhood. Better to keep that then put up a solitary privacy fence. That was just an invitation to bad actors.

  One of these days, he’d convince himself he didn’t deserve to try to keep a woman like Kami safe.

  “When I first moved here, they told me all the lakes were fake.”

  It took him a moment to catch the thread of their conversation, to get out of that place of rage that threatened to bubble up whenever he thought about someone hurting Kami. “I, uh, think we Texans prefer ‘man-made’ to fake.”

  The motion light came on. Her scruffy beast shot off to perform a quick perimeter check. She looked a little startled in the spotlight, smoothing down her hair and clutching her robe self-consciously.

  Her legs were drawn up in some complicated pretzel. Jeff had perfect vision, but he caught himself squinting to discern just what she wore under her robe.

  “We, uh, do have one natural lake,” he continued, lamely, then petered off when she unfolded herself, stood, and looked off into the middle distance of her yard.

  There was some growling coming from the back fence line, but no scuffle. She called softly for her dog, but he didn’t return to the deck like he usually did.

  Jeff whistled for the dog when his own hackles rose. Something wasn’t right.

  “Kami, get inside.”

  Chapter 3

  Something was wrong. Why wasn’t Ruffles coming back when she called?

  “Kami, I said, get inside.” His repeated command was harsh, and his voice was harder, louder, than she’d ever heard it. It scared her. His insistence scared her. If he thought something was wrong—

  “Now, Kami.”

  “Not without Ruff—”

  A scream tore the heavy night air in two, and Kami felt herself blanch, wobbled a bit on her feet. A shape vaulted over her fence, and she froze in place. Run, run, her mind demanded, but her body couldn’t comply.

  Idiot!

  A resounding crack filled up the silence. Twice. Three times. And she was propelled backward.

  “I’ve got you, baby. Let’s get you inside.” She struggled against the arms wrapped around her even though his voice calmed her. Reassured her.

  He was here. Everything would be okay.

  “Jeff?” She breathed his name against his chest, seeking confirmation. Reassurance. He was no longer a shadow but a big, bulky shape pressing her against her door, breathing into her hair.

  “Let’s get you inside.” He smoothed her hair back and bent his knees a little to look directly into her eyes.

  Green. He had light green eyes.

  “Lock the door, draw the curtains.” He was giving her a list of instructions. She could do that. She could do those things his eyes beckoned her to do. Such pretty eyes on a man. “And get to the middle of your house. Away from windows.” She was falling backward, gasping for air as sure as she was grasping to make sense of what was happening.

  Oh, she was in her bedroom now, sitting on the side of the bed somehow while he was prowling around. Checking the bathroom, the closets, issuing orders and looking like a badass. “Jeff, what—”

  Had he physically carried her inside?

  “I’ll ring your doorbell three times when it’s safe. But look out your peephole first. Don’t let anyone else in. Call 911 if they try. How many times, Kami?”

  She had to clear the fear from her throat before answering. But his question brought her back into the moment—everything in sharp focus. “Three. You’ll ring three times.”

  Before she had a chance to appreciate it, he was ba
ck in front of her. His lips pressed into the top of her head, and her nose was all mushed up against the unyielding wall of his chest. And then he was gone.

  She was alone.

  Kami scanned the silence, desperate to make sense of a sound—any sound. Where was her dog, and why hadn’t he come back to her?

  “Oh God, where is Jeff?”

  Just saying his name spurred her into action. She moved to lock the French doors and draw the drapes. Peeking out one little slat of the wood blinds, she scanned the yard for the dog. The motion light was on. He wasn’t on the deck—dog or man. She had to trust that whatever had brought her through this far would continue, so Kami moved to her windowless hallway, grabbing her cell from the nightstand along the way.

  Should she call 911 now? What would she say? Hi, I was out on my back deck night-flirting with the neighbor I’ve never actually met—although he just kissed me in my bedroom—and my dog wouldn’t come back and he jumped over the fence and told me to stay inside. The neighbor. Not the dog. Dogs can’t talk. That would be ridiculous.

  Jeff had said to call if someone else—ohmygod—tried to get in.

  Someone else, as in the person who fired the shots. Because that was what they had to have been. Three gunshots.

  Three gunshots in her quiet little neighborhood with the flags on the porches and big hanging pots of begonias. She walked those streets every night. Waved to little old men on porches and toddling kids running barefoot through the grass.

  Where had the shots come from? Somewhere to the south? Oh God, what if they’d come from the house with the broken fence and the stairstepped kids?

  No. They couldn’t have been gunshots. Jeff was just being overly cautious; it was his job. They’d just heard a car backfiring. And she was being silly for wedging herself in the linen closet in the hall.

  Better to be silly than sorry.

  She scanned Twitter for any chatter. Nothing, of course. She didn’t even know what to look for. It wasn’t like APD broadcast every domestic call they received.

  Her stomach almost turned inside out. Surely Jeff wouldn’t do anything. Domestic calls were the worst calls. Surely he’d wait for the police.

  Kami laughed a bit hysterically. He is the police. But he’d been barefoot, hadn’t he? He’d been that big, dark shape launching over the fence; she realized that now. And when he’d been walking around her room, checking her window locks and closets, he’d been barefoot. Surely he wouldn’t go running through the city streets without shoes.

  How long should she wait before she called 911? Five minutes—ten? How long should she wait for Jeff to ring her doorbell three times and tell her everything was okay? That those stairstepped kids over by the park were okay.

  The ting of the old doorbell sounded like a scream. Or maybe she screamed. When it pealed a second time, then a third, she flew to the door, sobbing like a ninny, and went to throw the lock before she thought to look out the peephole.

  Seeing him standing on her porch, Ruffles in his arms, filled her heart with joy and terror.

  “Is he okay are you okay is everything okay?” Her questions were rapid-fire, on the verge of babbling. Later, she’d try to process. Right now, she just wanted reassurance.

  Ruffles started wriggling the moment he saw her, and then she noticed why Jeff was carrying him: the dog was a giant mud monster. “Easy now, just take it easy.”

  Kami fought down a bubble of inappropriate laughter. Who was he comforting with those honeyed words, the dog or her?

  They worked like magic, though, his words. Ruff stopped his frantic struggle to get free, and she felt her heartbeat calm by a thousand percent. Damn dog, why couldn’t she be wrapped up in Jeff’s arms? She was still shaking.

  “Close the door. Lock it. And I’ll tell you everything while we get this critter clean.”

  Oh yeah, he was magic. He waltzed into her house like he’d been there a thousand times before, carrying Ruffles through the hall, unerringly, back to her master bath. She made a pit stop in the linen closet, grabbed some rag towels, and headed back to the bath almost in a daze.

  How long had he been gone, and what on earth had happened? Some voice told her not to care, that her boys were back safe, so it didn’t matter, but it mattered. Someone’s life had changed tonight.

  Hers had, too—especially since the thought of “her boys” didn’t scare her as much as it should.

  She hoped it had changed for the better.

  “You use anything special on him? Don’t want to waste your stuff if it’s expensive.” His voice caught her off guard. It was sweet and domestic. A normal night, giving the dog a bath, no big deal, no domestic disturbance, no gunshots. No emotional upheaval. Just giving Ruffles a bath after midnight.

  “Uh, nope. Just bargain-bin shampoo. Squirt away,” she called down the hall, taking a moment to gather her composure.

  It didn’t work.

  The second she rounded the corner into her master bath, her composure fled the premises.

  He was naked.

  Well, not completely naked. But naked enough to cause every single female chromosome floating in her DNA to stand up and cheer. Maybe faint a little.

  He’d removed his shirt—he’d thoughtfully placed the muddied garment in the sink—and his navy running shorts were hanging over the towel rack in her stand-alone shower. His boxer briefs were brief. Very brief. With Ruffles standing between his legs in the tub, all she could really see was feet and feet of muscles.

  Big ones.

  The kind of muscles not honed in a gym, but the kind of muscles hewn from splitting stones, mighty sequoias, carrying oxen across the Grand Canyon.

  Oh. Holy. Lady. Of. Mercy.

  Kami wasn’t usually the type of woman to go completely nuts over a man’s body. Especially as her own didn’t exactly inspire fantasies. But seeing Jeff’s body in relief against the clean white marble tiles she’d installed herself made her wet. She was instantly aroused. She felt flushed, a little lightheaded. And maybe a little panicked. Could he tell she was completely worked up and ready? Oh, so ready.

  This wasn’t the sweet buildup of flirtation and sexual tension over the fence that gave way to a solo-play session of light, teasing strokes once they’d said their goodbyes and she lay alone in her bed. No. No, this wasn’t that at all. What she was feeling was bend-me-over-the-counter-and-fuck-me-hard kind of arousal.

  Or at least that’s what Kami assumed it was, because she’d never experienced it before and the sensation was acute. Primal.

  “He gonna fight me on this?”

  “Uh.” Her grasp of vocabulary was pretty spectacular at this point. “No. He, um, should be fine. I can do it, though.”

  “Oh, it’s okay. Judging by past experience, you’d just get soaking wet.”

  She did laugh then, mostly to cover the sting she felt from the unintended truth of that statement. Too late! Her panties had been soaked since the moment she’d walked in and seen him.

  “It’s no problem.”

  And without thinking, she untied her sash, hung her robe up on the crystal-tipped hook she’d shopped for for weeks before finding the perfect one, and turned around.

  Only to realize that she was now just as almost-naked as he was.

  There was that brief moment when she wanted the floor to open up beneath her. Swallow her whole—her bare, dimpled thighs, the slice of belly where her cami and panties didn’t meet, and definitely her upper arms. All of her.

  That was before she heard Jeff curse.

  It was low, it was vulgar, and it made her feel sexy as hell.

  That one word gave her step a bounce as she sauntered over to the tub. Gave her hips an extra little swoosh as she leaned over to turn on the faucet and test the water.

  Jeff groaned, and his vocal appreciation of her body had transformed her into some kind of sexpot. Gone was the insomniac in end-of-the-week panties and sleep tank that didn’t quite cover her belly pooch. In her place was a vixen, a temptre
ss with a body built for pleasure.

  Just knowing he was devouring her with his gaze was pleasurable—a unique sensation. Her nipples tightened, making themselves known through the stretchy cotton knit. Her breasts felt full and needy, and she almost couldn’t wait to turn around again—couldn’t wait to see how he’d react to the sight.

  But there would be no pleasuring; the moment Ruffles heard the water hit the tub, he snorfled and reared up, plopping his giant paws on her shoulder.

  “Hey, settle down, Chips,” Jeff commanded, and she regained some balance.

  So much for appreciative stares; Jeff was struggling to wrangle her dog. Kami stepped back with a laugh when he jumped up again; Ruffles whined like a little boy when she pushed him off her. “You are a mess!”

  And so was she. Twin streaks of mud decorated her shoulder, her camisole. She could kiss this top goodbye—she’d never get the stains out.

  Le sigh, so much for pleasure, Kami. They had a job to do. And a dirty one.

  Kami climbed onto the edge of the tub and started hosing Ruffles down. Poor thing, his dignity went straight out the window when he was wet. He was all muscle and fluff, but when he was wet, he looked so pitiful and all he wanted was snuggles—even when Kami was on the verge of drowning in overspray.

  “Wanna hit me with some shampoo and I’ll start on his ears?” She looked up when Jeff didn’t answer.

  And then she followed the line of his gaze. Straight. To. Her. Wet. White. Top.

  Oh, that was nice. That was very nice, indeed, that look in his eyes. But it challenged her to sit still and allow him to look at her. It had been so much easier when she’d been facing away from him. It was possible to adopt a femme fatale character when she wasn’t looking him straight on. Now, she was just overly plump Kami in her underwear. While he—well, he was male perfection.

  Kami coughed a little to clear her throat—then suppressed a wince when she realized that action set her breasts to full-on jiggle beneath her top. She tried to play it cool, but even on her best days, she was far from cool. And tonight was anything but a best day. Insomnia. Gunshots. Almost-naked cops in her bathtub. It was a miracle she wasn’t still huddled in her hall closet.