Drive: Cougars, Cars and Kink, Book 1 (3 page)

Chapter Four

Suzanne’s last coherent thoughts were,
I can’t believe I’m doing this!
Followed by,
Why the hell shouldn’t I do this?
She’d been a good, faithful partner to Frank for all the years they’d been together, long after she realized that his passions were more intellectual than physical or emotional, and his vanilla ways less a preference than an unwillingness to step outside his comfort zone. That he liked her balance of good nature and occasional bouts of redheaded temper that made her willing to stand up to his stubbornness, but in the way you’d admire those traits in a top-notch executive assistant.

Even when she was sure their marriage was over except for the paperwork, it made a difference to her that she kept the promises she’d made so long ago.

Only they were promises made to a dead man. They didn’t count anymore.

And if she shocked a few sun-tanned moms of toddlers, or retirees on vacation enjoying the last glorious days of New England summer, did it matter?

Then she forced her conscious mind to shut up and threw herself into the kiss.

At first it was awkward. It had been so long since she’d kissed anyone other than Frank, who had his own style. Not a bad style, sweet and comfortable like the old married folks they were—except that pleasant but tame kisses started when they were way too young to settle for that. At least his kisses still felt affectionate, in his detached, distant way, even after he started with the late nights, the unexplained absences, and the second, password-protected phone she was pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to have found.

But she had to reach back into the mists of the early 1990s to remember this kind of kiss, the kind full of passion and possibility and curiosity. The kind that asked all kinds of questions, starting with “Do you think I’m hot?” heading to “Do you want to…?” and then taking a left turn to questions about love, sex and the meaning of life that were impossible to put into words.

She didn’t have answers to those questions. Didn’t even know, anymore, how to ask herself anything that deep and searching.

And maybe it didn’t make sense that she thought she might find the right questions, if not the answers, in the arms of this sexy, much younger cop.

But Neil’s lips reminded her she was truly alive, not just going through the motions of living. His lips and his tongue, the tickle of his rebel scruff, so charmingly at odds with his short, neat cop hair. And oh, those muscled arms around her, pulling her close, making her feel small and soft, but at the same time powerful, desirable. And not powerful because she was desirable. She was both.

Her body filled with almost forgotten hunger. Oh, she remembered desire, felt it often, but for the last few years, even while Frank was alive and well and occasionally having sex with her, desire had grown from fantasies rather than reality. A handsome actor looking buff and commanding on a movie screen, a sexy passage in a book—her Kindle was full of BDSM romances and erotica, some good, some schlocky, but all featuring scenes that set her imagination and libido soaring—a stray thought that sent her mind to dark, delicious places where hard hands and strong bodies and the occasional whip, paddle or toy worked their magic on her.

This wasn’t fantasy desire. This was specific. All about the taste of Neil Callahan’s lips, the way his tongue invaded her mouth…no, not invaded, because invaders weren’t invited in and welcomed with ticker-tape parades, and if her mouth could, it would be throwing a parade right about now. All about the way he smelled like gingerbread in the salt air with its hint of suntan lotion. The way one big hand cradled the back of her head, controlling and tender at the same time. The way his broad chest and back felt as she scrambled to touch as much of him as she could, and if she was making a spectacle of herself, well, it was about time.

She hadn’t thought about it when Frank was still alive, but she’d always been in his shadow, the brilliant man’s pretty wife who stayed in the background. Or was kept there. He was never mean about it, but his work was his life, and his cars were his escape from work, and she didn’t have a role, other than “supportive cheerleader,” in either area. She’d given him the occasional verbal slap down when his confidence veered into arrogance or when he walked over her without even noticing he was doing it, but she let him do his thing because both Mayhew Robotics and the cars mattered so much to him.

Now it was time for her.

Seagulls’ cries and the hush and roar of surf mingled with the wet sounds of kissing, sharp intakes of breath, little groans she was startled, then amused, to realize she was letting loose. She’d worked one hand under Neil’s Dropkick Murphys T-shirt, getting to know roped muscle. He stroked her bare back and side underneath her shirt until she expected the prim little twist-front top to burst into flames from her rising heat. His hand crept forward and up and she thought—hoped—prayed—he’d touch her breast right there in the parking lot, under the cover of their twined bodies but still in public.

His hand ceased its journey, to her aching disappointment, but he kissed his way along her jaw to her ear, little, delicate brushes that made her shiver.

“We’re being watched,” he whispered, between small nips on her earlobe.

“Duh.” She didn’t bother to whisper. “We’re a little blatant with the PDA. I’m fine with that.”

He gripped the base of her ponytail, sending a thrill through her whole body, and tilted her head. He opened his mouth, let his teeth rest lightly around her throat. No pressure, just pure, primal possessiveness, and her body responded in kind, turning limp and liquid and compliant, ready to do whatever he suggested or demanded next.

His lips returned to her ear. “No,” he whispered. “Well, yeah. A few people are gawking. But I swear the guy from your driveway is in one of the other cars.”

Chapter Five

The conflagration in Suzanne’s body changed to an ice storm, and the gasp she let out had nothing to do with passion. “Why?” was all she managed to say at first.

It occurred to her as soon as she did that Neil was likely as clueless about that as she was. But being a cop, he might have answers to some more immediately important questions. “What do we do now?”

She pulled away, smoothed her hair with a quick, instinctive gesture.

Neil pulled her back. “First, I want to make sure I’m not imagining things.” He kissed her again, a more playful kiss this time, deliberately rumbling the hair she’d just smoothed. “Would you like an ice cream?”

It took Suzanne’s addled brain a few seconds to catch he was inclining his head toward the ice cream stand at the far side of the parking lot. She tried to look casual as she glanced in that direction.

Between the Mustang and the stand was a gray Lincoln MKX SUV with its motor running and its windows rolled up. She couldn’t make out the faces of the people inside, but on this warm, beautiful September day, both men were incongruously wearing sports jackets, as if they’d just come from a business meeting.

Just like the guys who’d been so rude earlier.

She shuddered. “Yeah. Ice cream. I see what you’re getting at. Good time for a walk.”

Her imagination was full of scenes from the action movies and TV crime dramas she loved, the only frames of reference she had for this situation, so it took her a while to understand his next question. “What flavor?”

Not something she could make her mind about easily at the best of times, and this was hardly the best of times. But a stroll to the ice cream stand wouldn’t be convincing if it ended without ice cream. “Anything but vanilla.”

Neil grinned. God help her, even with some creepy guys possibly stalking them, he promised her all sorts of delights she could hardly imagine yet yearned to experience. “Anything but vanilla. My kind of woman. Although vanilla can be good with the right…topping.”

Had he just said that? Had he meant what she read into it?

It hardly seemed like the time to ask.

But as he sauntered toward the ice cream stand, strutting the cocky walk of a man on a hot and possibly illicit date, she couldn’t help wondering.

Even as she noted the way his seemingly casual strut and sightseer’s gawk were carefully calculated to disguise how he observed everything around him.

Including the occupants of the Lincoln.

She’d always hated those pretentious jumped up vehicles anyway. Now she had a reason.

Neil had done this dance before, something more than a dozen times, less than a thousand. Done the dance of pretending to be doing anything on earth other than paying attention to potential criminal activity.

The difference between those times and this one?

For one, the many times he’d done it as part of his job, he’d been armed, and there’d been backup, even if the backup hadn’t always been close enough to do much good if, as his dad said, the excrement really hit the air-conditioner.

The bigger difference between just about any surveillance-type situation in police work and this one was that at work he had an idea
why
the person was behaving suspiciously. Knew, in general, if he was dealing with a known drug dealer or a possible burglar, a potential pedophile or a suspected murderer. This time, he had no clue what was going on, no idea why or how the guy may have followed them all the way to the Cape, or whether he was stalking Suzanne or himself. Not exactly reassuring to know so little, especially not when someone else was involved.

Was she an innocent bystander in whatever the hell was going on or did she know something? What did he really know about Suzanne Mayhew anyway, other than she’d inherited (supposedly) a gorgeous Mustang and she kissed like someone possessed by a succubus? Not a hell of a lot.

Part of his mind was wandering in all directions, but most of it was observing. No one else appeared to be watching him or Suzanne with intense interest, though he got a couple of glances. Suzanne’s car was definitely drawing admiring looks, but then people moved on. It was hard to keep track of all the people milling around the lot, not to mention he was more interested in keeping an eye on Suzanne and on the people in the gray Lincoln anyway. He waved at Suzanne, smiling goofily like a doting boyfriend and was rewarded with her blowing him a kiss.

Suddenly he felt very much like a doting boyfriend.

Which wasn’t helping his concentration.

Get back in the game.

He’d been walking slowly, acting like a man enjoying the nice day and checking out the view of the beach and water from the lot—Nauset Beach’s parking lot was set well above the beach itself, making it quite a spectacular spot.

Romantic, even with the crowd.

Or it would be if that gray Lincoln weren’t sitting there, its engine running as if the occupants wanted to be able to follow them at a moment’s notice.

Maybe they just liked looking at the water in air-conditioned comfort in their jackets and ties. Maybe it was two completely different guys, stopping at the beach for a breather on their way home from a law office; even on the Cape, lawyers tended to be formal. Hell, for all he knew, the two guys were a couple having a heart-to-heart or a fight and that was why the windows were rolled up tight.

In fact, there were so many reasonable explanations that Neil almost managed to convince himself his law-enforcement Spidey senses were mistuned.

Until he got a good look at the people in the car. The tint on the windows was enough he hadn’t been sure from a distance, but as he passed the car, it was obvious.

Same guys.

Different car, same guys.

How the hell had they followed them to the Cape, especially with the detour to the Audubon preserve?

The guy had Suzanne’s cell phone number.

If the guy could triangulate using cell towers, he could track them that way. It wouldn’t be easy to pull off on your own, and highly illegal unless you were law enforcement with a warrant, but not impossible if you had mad hacking skills and/or the right contacts.

Hell, there were apps and websites that would let you track someone’s cell phone. All the legit ones were set up so the trackee had to consent—they were meant for keeping tabs on kids or people with health issues—but hackers were hackers because they got a big old woody out of getting around safeguards like those. And that was the kind of hack that could make someone a lot of money.

It seemed like something out of a spy movie, but it was the most logical explanation he could think of.

He bought the ice cream. He didn’t want to let the two well-dressed goons know they’d been made.

And while he waited for the cones, he took what he hoped looked like a picture of Suzanne and the Mustang, but wasn’t. He couldn’t make out much through the tinted glass, but maybe it could be enhanced. It wasn’t like on TV, where someone could take five pixels and get a clear image from it, but maybe he’d captured enough that between the image and their verbal descriptions, a sketch artist could come up with something decent.

He greeted Suzanne as affectionately as he could with them both holding ice cream and whispered, as he did, to confirm their friends from Bellwood had found them again. Then he suggested they switch places. “I know the roads down here,” he said, trying to sound casual and, for her sake, not saying he was the one trained in driving for pursuit and evasion.

From her strained expression and the smile that didn’t reach her eyes, she figured it out without him saying anything.

He also made a great show of driving out of the parking lot one-handed, licking his Kahlúa-and-cream cone until the Lincoln was out of sight. Temporarily. They’d be back because they wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble if whatever was going on wasn’t important.

Then he tossed the cone toward the curb (with a childish internal whimper because it had been really good ice cream) and, with both hands on the wheel, put all his training in defensive driving and everything he’d even
thought
of about ditching pursuit to the test.

As soon as they were on a mostly empty back road, he ordered, “Take the battery out of your cell phone. Now.”

Suzanne gaped and sputtered “What the hell?”