Page 9 of Duke's Rescue
“Trixie.” My name, rough, barely held together.
“I know,” I said. Because I did. Too fast. Too much. Too soon.
His thumb moved against my nipple one more time, slow, deliberate, a parting that was also a promise. Then he took his hand away, stepped back. The cold air rushed between us and I almost pulled him back.
He stood there. Breathing hard, his hands at his sides, his fingers curling and uncurling like he was trying to remember what to do with them now that they weren’t on me. His eyes moved over my face, my mouth, my chest, and the hunger in that look was so raw it made my stomach clench.
“We should head back,” he said. His voice was wrecked. Sandpaper and gravel. “Before I stop being a gentleman about this.”
I wanted to tell him to stop being a gentleman about it. The words were right there. But the wanting was so new, so fragile, that I was afraid of breaking it by moving too fast.
“Okay,” I said.
We got back on the bike. My arms around his waist, my body against his back, the engine vibrating between my thighs doing nothing to help stop the heat burning through me. Everything was the same as the ride up but also nothing was the same because now I knew what his mouth felt like, knew the sound he made when I pressed against him, knew the size of his hand on my breast and the way his grip tightened on my hips when he wanted me. The ride back was twenty minutes of exquisite torture, my body lit up, aching, pressed against a man who was in the same condition. Every lean into a corner pushed us tighter together and I felt him breathe differently each time.
He dropped me at Rosie’s. I swung off the bike and stood on the sidewalk. I looked at him and he looked at me. The air between us was so thick with everything we hadn’t finished that I could barely breathe through it.
“Goodnight, Trixie,” he said.
“Goodnight, Duke.”
He rode away. I watched him go, the taillights disappearing down Main Street, the sound of the engine fading into the dark.
Rosie’s house was next door to the diner, a small clapboard place with a porch light she left on. I knocked and she opened the door with Ruby asleep against her shoulder, the teddy dangling from one limp fist.
“Good ride?” Rosie asked. Her eyes moved over my face, my flushed cheeks, my swollen mouth, and she smiled the smile of a woman who already knew the answer.
“Yeah,” I said. “Good ride.”
She handed Ruby over, warm and heavy with sleep, and I carried her the few steps back to the diner and up the stairs toour apartment. I put her to bed, kissed her forehead, closed her door.
I stood in the small apartment above the diner with my back against the wall and my fingers pressed to my lips and my body still humming from every place he’d touched me.
I wanted him. Because his hands felt like something I’d been missing and he’d listened without fixing. Because my daughter trusted him and because he was asking for nothing from me. For the first time in six years, I felt like a woman. Not a wife. Not a role.
I didn’t sleep for hours because I felt too alive and my body was humming.
FOUR
DUKE
Rosie called at seven in the morning. That was the first sign something was wrong, because Rosie didn’t normally call so early unless there was a problem. She was behind the counter by five-thirty, had the coffee on by six, and didn’t stop after the breakfast rush unless someone was bleeding. We’d always looked after Rosie and her diner if there was a problem. It had a knack of being a magnet for problems passing through town.
“There’s a man in my diner asking for Trixie by name,” she said. “Asking for Ruby too. Says he’s her husband. Drove from out of state, says he’s been worried sick and wants to see his family.”
My hand tightened on the phone.
“Where’s Trixie?”
“Upstairs with Ruby. He came in during the breakfast rush. I clocked him before Trixie did. Something about the way he looked around the room. Like he already knew she was here and he was waiting for her to see him. I pulled Trixie into the kitchen, told her to take Ruby upstairs and lock the door. She didn’t argue, Duke. She didn’t ask a single question. She just took the girl and went. It’s like she knew she’d been found by someone in particular.”
That told me everything. A woman who’d argue with you about accepting a free tow didn’t walk upstairs without a word unless the man at the counter was exactly what I’d been afraid he was.
“I’m coming in.”
I rode into town in under ten minutes. Parked outside Rosie’s, sat on the bike for a second, and looked through the front window.
He was at the counter. I saw the suit first, charcoal, tailored, something nobody in Forsaken wore. Then the posture. Relaxed, open, shoulders back, one arm resting on the counter, coffee in front of him. A man who took up space by making everyone around him want to give it to him. He was talking to one of the regulars, a trucker named Dean, and whatever he was saying had Dean nodding along with sympathy written all over his face. Hank was leaning in from his usual table, already involved.
