Crashed, p.26
Crashed, page 26
“It’s always been you and me, Travis. Always. Yes, I’m sure. Make love to me.”
Travis swore raggedly. “Damn ... Bella-mine, I love you.”
He dipped his knees.
She tried to spread her thighs, but the pants, still tangled around her thighs, trapped her. And he wouldn’t let her go. He shifted his position, bent her forward and reached between them, guiding himself into her, and then he straightened her back up, pinning her to the door as he slowly, so slowly pushed into her.
She was surrounded by him, filled by him.
“Bella ... ” Travis sounded dazed, and he caught her hip, holding her still when she tried to follow him as he withdrew. “For fuck’s sake ... be still ... you’re burning me alive ... oh, fuck ... ”
She grabbed his wrist and clenched around him, her other hand braced against the door for leverage. “Travis, please.”
Desperate need filled her. Desperate. She undulated her hips, clenched down around him as he thrust up into her. She felt every ridge, every pulse of his length as he filled her, then slowly withdrew and she wiggled against him, squirmed, trying desperately to hold him inside a little longer.
“Be still ... you’re so damn wet and hot. Nothing’s ever felt so good.” He caught her shoulder into his other hand, growled in her ear.
“Fuck me, I feel like I’m already going to come.”
“I want to come ... right now.”
His laugh was strangled, a little wild in her ear, as he wrapped both arms around her.
She caught her breath.
“Isabel ... ?”
“I’m fine!” She groaned and ground her hips against him, trying to ride the heavy length invading her. She was rewarded with a harsh intake of breath, so she did it again. “I just need you to fuck me before I lose it!”
Travis went tense and she stilled. Maybe that was too crass—
But he moved, spinning them around and taking her to the ground with careful, controlled strength that left her heart racing. “Maybe that’s what we both need,” he muttered against her neck just before he put her on her knees and yanked her hips up with hard, competent hands. Then he lunged, slamming into her.
She screamed, dazed, delirious delight tearing out of her.
“Is this what you need, Bella-mine?” he demanded.
“Yes!”
“Good.” He shoved a hand into her hair, fisted it close to her scalp, clenched her hip with his other and started thrusting, heavy, powerful digs of his hips that had him filling all the empty places in her.
Isabel shuddered, heart racing, strange, animalistic sounds falling from her lips.
The ridge of his erection swelled inside her and she tried to stretch her thighs apart instinctively, but somehow, her flannel lounging pants were still trapped and tangled around her knees and Travis tightened his hand on her hips. “Be still,” he rasped, leaning into her, the thrusts coming harder, faster. “You have no idea how good you feel ... how many times I’ve dreamed of this ... oh, fuck, Bella ... ”
She clenched around him and came with a cry.
He let go of her hair, gripped her hips with both hands, hitched her hips higher, his pace increasing until he was slamming into her.
And she loved it. “Yes, please ... Travis!”
“That’s it ... come for me ... let me feel ... squeeze me ... fuck ... Bel ... ”
She drummed her feet against the floor, gasped out his name and came again, breaths still ragged from the first climax. It didn’t matter, because he was sending her flying again and then he slammed into her one final time, groaning her name as he, too, started to come.
Isabel moaned, barely able to breathe.
Travis slumped, pressing his lips to her spine before pulling away and tugging her into his lap.
The phone was still playing music and she couldn’t stop the indelicate giggle that escaped.
“What?” Travis asked, his voice drowsy.
“If those cameras are sensitive as I suspect, I don’t think that music did any good ... I’m pretty sure they heard me screaming in town.”
“Well, you did ask to be fucked. I hope I got the assignment right.”
This time, she didn’t just giggle. She turned her face into his neck and laughed. “Oh, baby. You passed with flying colors.”
Chapter 29
Lloyd Brimley wasn’t having a good day.
As a matter of fact, he wasn’t having a good day, a good week, a good month, a good fucking year, or a good fucking life.
But he most certainly wasn’t having a good fucking day and the last thing he’d needed was to get back in town and find out his wife wasn’t able to come pick him up from the diner.
His piece-of-shit brother had dropped him off there and told him he had to get back to Bangor, and couldn’t even be bothered to drive the extra ten miles to take Lloyd home. And after Lloyd had been helping him build all that shit for his dumbass man cave.
How much had his brother, his friend, paid Lloyd for all the work he’d put in?
Two hundred and fifty bucks.
The amount of work he’d put in should have landed him a thousand, easy. Over a week’s worth of work and he’d gotten two-fifty, a lousy couch to sleep on in the basement and a few beers at night while Lewis and his girlfriend Tamara either flirted or fought. Either way, they always spent the night fucking in the bed over where Lloyd had been forced to sleep while doing the work, and that just served to remind him that his wife never seemed interested in doing her wifely duties.
Sometimes, he thought she might spend too much time talking to that high and mighty bitch across the street because the last time he suggested she show more interest in her husband, she’d looked down her nose at him in a way that had about made his dick fall off from frostbite.
Who the fuck wanted to touch a woman who made you feel like that?
Not Lloyd.
So he didn’t mind disappearing for a few days to go work for his brother or do a job for a buddy. But it was just his luck his truck had broken down while he’d been staying in Bangor and he didn’t have the money for the part he needed. Nor would his brother help him out with it, either.
So his truck was stuck in his brother’s driveway for now and he was stuck in the diner, waiting for Bridgette to call so he could get a ride home.
He’d been calling her half the day, it seemed. She hadn’t even paid his phone bill—had refused, saying she wasn’t going to pay for the package he wanted, so if he wanted it, he had to pay for it himself—and so his service had been cut off and half the money he’d made needed to cover that.
The moment his service was reactivated, a shit-ton of texts and missed calls lit up the screen, too. Several from her, but now that he was trying to call her, did she answer?
Fuck, no.
Finally, though, after he’d been trying for over an hour, she’d finally answered and he’d told her she’d have to come pick him up from work. She’d gotten pissy, told him she was working. Did she care that this was an emergency and he was stuck there at the diner with his back hurting him? Hell, no.
He’d pointed that out, but instead of understanding, instead of listening, his fucking wife had told him they couldn’t be at the house.
Some horseshit line about electrical work being done on lines near the road. She was staying somewhere else for a few days.
He’d already bought a six-pack of beer and had drank a couple of them out back behind the diner while he waited for her to call him back. Now, with the rest stowed in various pockets of his jacket to keep out of sight of the diner’s managing harpy, he stared at the table and brooded.
The buzz from the beers made it a little hard to think straight, but he was almost certain his wife was making up stories.
This was her way of telling him she’d left him.
The hell she could just go and disappear on him like that.
And what about their boy? A kid needed his mama. Or was she planning on taking Brant with her? Ah, hell no on that. Brant was his boy.
He picked up the phone to call her again, but it just rang and rang before abruptly clicking off. A few seconds later, his phone rang and he grabbed it without reading the name on the screen. “Bridgette, so help me, if you don’t get your ass down here—”
“Ah, yes, Mr. Brimley?”
The cool, professional voice cut into his rant and he stopped, surprised.
This wasn’t his wife.
“Yeah, this is Lloyd Brimley. Who the fuck is this?”
“This is Joseph with Coastal Cooperative Electric and—”
“I ain’t never heard that name before,” he said, interrupting.
“We’re a subsidy of your local electric company, Mr. Brimley and we’ve been hired—”
“Oh, the fuck you have. Leave me the hell alone,” he snapped and ended the call. As he dumped the phone on the table, a shadow fell over him and he glanced up, ready to tell whoever it was to leave him the fuck alone.
“Hey, you didn’t just say your name was Lloyd Brimley, did you?”
He squinted at the man in front of him—a stranger, Lloyd thought. “What’s it to you?”
“Are you Lloyd Brimley? Played for OSU a few years back?” The man smiled and revealed straight, perfect teeth.
“Yeah, that’s me.” Some remnant of pride surfaced and Lloyd managed a smile.
“That’s fucking amazing,” the man said, slipping into the seat across from Lloyd, a look of excitement settling on his features. “I watched you play ... I thought for sure you’d go pro. Then that one bad play ... that fucker did you dirty, you know.”
Lloyd jerked his head in a nod. “Damn right, he did.” Nobody ever seemed to get that. Always talking about bad luck and bad landings, but that piece of shit had hit him wrong deliberately, had killed his career. “What’s your name, pal?”
“Steve.” The man offered his hand and gave Lloyd a wide, friendly smile. “It’s Steve. Man, it is a pleasure to meet you.”
“We might have a problem.”
Travis had just finished securing his vest when Miles came on the line.
“Explain.”
After taking the quickest shower in the history of mankind, he’d come out of the bathroom, turning it over so Isabel could take a longer one. Now, as he listened to the sound of water rushing, he slid out of her bedroom and leaned against the wall just outside the door. Less than fifteen minutes had passed since his last update—sure, it had been a fast and furious few minutes in the closet, but they’d both needed each other. He’d devote so much more time to her later. Once this was all settled, once she was safe.
“We had a team in the dinner—a man and a woman, paired up and acting as tourists passing through. They saw our target come in. He approached somebody we believe is a local. They got a picture of him as they left—”
“Together?” Travis demanded, shoving off the wall.
The shower shut off and he pressed the heel of his hand against his eye. Fuck, fuck, fuck ...
“Yes,” Miles said, voice clipped with impatience. “Together. The man we believe to be local got into the car with our target—there was no obvious threat made. From everything the team could tell, the local went along willingly, was smiling and chatting with the target.”
“Did he pay him? Are they partners? What?”
“We’re working on it. Another team picked up following while the first team stayed on site—they might luck into getting some information out of the staff at the diner.”
“I need the picture. Any details,” Travis demanded. “Is ... Bella knows these people, has lived here for ages. Maybe she knows whoever it is. Can you give me the details?”
“I already got them from the team. Where is Bella?”
The door swung open and he looked up, saw Isabel look out in concern.
“She’s right here,” Travis said, pulling out his phone and switching the call from his earpiece to the phone, then putting it on speaker. Travis gave her a quick summary and saw her mouth tighten, eyes darken with worry. “Miles has a description of the guy, maybe you know him.”
Isabel grimaced. “I suck as descriptions like that ... I need a picture, a face. Something.”
“The team is sending one but it needs to be cleaned up a bit—they weren’t at a good angle to grab one, so the techs on working on it. It shouldn’t take long, another half hour.” Miles sounded pissed at the delay. “But for now, here’s what we have. Approximately six feet, white male, mid-to-late thirties, wore a baseball hat, most likely black, with what one agent thinks was an Ohio State logo on it. Solid build, but getting a little thick through the middle. He walked with a faint limp, favoring the right leg. He had a ruddy complexion so my agents think he might work the boats around here, either that or just has that sort of skin tone.”
Travis’s stomach clenched at the mention of the ball cap and the limp.
He looked up at Isabel and saw the same worry in her eyes.
“Tell your team to do a run on Lloyd Brimley.”
Barely a second passed before Miles swore. “Son of a bitch!” He bellowed out an order, followed by another order to a different member of his team. Two more orders followed on the heels of that. “And I need to know where the fuck Bridgette Brimley and her son are, now!”
“How far is the diner from here?” Travis asked Isabel softly.
“Not even ten minutes.”
Distantly, a faint, mechanical hum came to Travis’s ears. Isabel jerked her head up and looked downstairs. “That’s the school bus. It shouldn’t even be stopping here.”
He caught her arm. “You need clothes—and grab that damn vest.”
“But—”
“No.” Steeling his voice, he said, “Get dressed and grab that vest. You won’t leave this house without it—nothing matters to me as much as you do. Understand?”
“But if it’s one of the kids ... hell, it could even be Brant.”
“Stop arguing and get dressed. It will take less time.”
Isabel glared at him, then growled before swinging around and rushing to her room. He followed to make sure she’d listen and turned to leave only after he saw her shimmying into jeans.
He paused at a window and looked up the street where the bus was still stopped at the main road. Nobody had gotten off. “We know what’s up with the Brimley kid yet?”
“No,” Miles said. “We checked in with the mother just an hour ago. She was picking the kid up and they were going to the house we rented for them. We asked if she’d heard from her husband and she said he’d been calling her off and on for over an hour, claiming he needed a ride, then getting angry when she wouldn’t leave work to come get him. We had a man call, trying to help get him settled away from the situation and that didn’t work.”
“He didn’t buy the electric line repairs,” Travis said, still watching the bus.
A sedan turned onto the street and drove steadily in his direction. “What kind of car is our guy in?”
“A Ford Taurus—roughly 2014, 2015. Dark grey.”
Travis said softly, “He’s here. And if it’s not Lloyd Brimley in the front seat, it’s somebody else.”
Travis looked up as Isabel came out of the bedroom, holding the vest by the straps. He took it from her and adroitly fit her into it, securing it with the straps on the side. “Grab your hoodie. Hurry.”
Her face tight with strain, she started to turn her head. But Travis stopped her, his hand on her chin as he drew her toward him as if for a kiss. He’d already moved out of the line of sight and now, with her pressed against him, she was as well.
“He’s here,” he told her gently. “And we think Lloyd’s with him. Right now, we don’t know about the kid, or anybody else. Get your vest. He knows nothing about the agents we have on site, nothing about the rest of my team and he has no idea what I’m capable of. None. Let’s keep it that way.”
Isabel met his gaze and after a moment, she nodded.
He kissed her gently, quickly, then let her go.
Adjusting his position, he went back to keeping watch on the car as it slowed to crawl in front of Lloyd’s house and slowly turned into the drive.
“Mom, the driver is saying I have to get off here ... and there’s nobody working on the road or anything here,” Brant said, his face red as everybody on the bus stared at him. The bus driver glared at him and Brant turned his back on the grouchy old asshole, hitched up his backpack. “Look, I can’t just stay on the bus!”
He jumped off and the bus driver waved for him to cross the road, then pulled off in a cloud of stinky exhaust. Several cars that had been piled up behind the big vehicle gunned their engines and Brant spun around, feeling like all of them were staring at him.
Hopefully, none of them were his dad. If his dad was waiting ... but no truck turned down the road and he didn’t see the vehicle in the driveway, either. But as he walked, the relief drained away and realization settled in.
There was a car in the drive. And it wasn’t his mom’s.
And his dad wouldn’t ever drive a car like that—hell, Brant doubted he’d ever drive a car. Men drive trucks, his dad always said. Brant didn’t know what the hell it mattered, but his dad never shut up about it.
The door swung open just as Brant considered calling his mom.
And he saw his dad. Relaxing a little, he broke into a jog, even as a pinch of nervousness gripped him. He hadn’t told his dad about how he’d been hanging out with Jacob some ... or that he’d been talked to Aaron. He couldn’t tell him that. Because his dad would his shit.
He didn’t like hiding it, but he didn’t know what else to do.
Lately, he’d been thinking a lot about what Travis had said, about treating people and all. All his dad did was push people around and he wasn’t ever happy. But Isabel ... fuck, she was so pretty. And nice. She did lots to help people and she was always smiling.
