Mystery: Family Ties: Mystery and Suspense (18 page)

Asa was still feeling as if Gabriel was holding her behavior against her and after weeks spent together still wasn’t able to forgive her.

Suddenly, two hands held her against the window’s edge, basically trapping her, while someone leaned forward to speak in her ear. “Is it already midnight?” Asa recognized Gabriel’s voice, before she had the chance to turn around and protest. “I thought that only Cinderella has to leave the ball so early?”

“My place might not be here, Cinderella or not Cinderella,” Asa said sadly, refusing to take his bait.

“I couldn’t take my eyes off you through the whole day,” the man whispered, dipping his tongue into her ear.

“I thought that you couldn’t stand me?” Asa answered, for a brief moment wondering if she was imagining his words.

Gabriel didn’t answer her, but raised his hand to absently rub her belly, as it tingled under his hand. “You think you can fool me, didn’t you?” he whispered, his lips touching her neck. “If you really want to know what I think, I will tell you. You managed to entangle me and now I am unable to keep my hands away from you.”

Asa pulled back jokingly, “I think, I want to go now.”

Gabriel nodded and let her head towards the stairs, following her silently. “We need to talk.”

“Right now?” She turned around to look at him.

“Yes, right now,” the man repeated and, without further talk, tugged her towards the nearest room, which turned out to be a small parlor, rarely used by them. Asa froze, when she realized that Gabriel was very serious.

The outside world was just a dull white noise to them right now, and between the hunger to touch and be united and the desire to kill each other, Asa and Gabriel didn’t care for anything else. Asa shook her head slightly and turned to look at him, “I don’t even know what
we are doing here,” she said seriously.

Gabriel’s eyes were focused on her lips and Asa saw them grow hungrier. Asa’s own eyes widened as she watched him get closer. It was happening again. She was going to once more fall victim to Gabriel’s charm and let him take from her whatever he wanted. He knew it and she knew it too. It was just like a bad movie, which she didn’t like, but couldn’t stay away nevertheless.

It was Gabriel who closed the small distance between them and pressed his lips against Asa’s, his mouth hot and insistent against hers. Asa made a noise of surprise, which was quickly muffled when his tongue pressed into her mouth. Asa tried to pull away, panting. Right there, just like that, that was what she wanted…

“What are you doing?” She sputtered, although her voice wasn’t angry or indignant, instead it was full of the old wonder. She touched her lips, feeling the wetness left from Gabriel’s kiss.

“Sit down.” Gabriel gasped. “And I am sorry for acting like an asshole.”

Asa sat on the only sofa in the room, while Gabriel started pacing the room silently. “What is it, now?” Asa couldn’t wait any longer. She waited for him to look at her and made a movement to get up. She was finding it hard to think when he was so close, so she needed to put some distance between the two of them.

Gabriel frowned, “Stay,” he said urgently. Asa sighed and the man licked his lips, as he watched her carefully. “I wanted to say that your appearance in my life surprised me a lot and I acted, I acted… You know how I acted…”

Asa gave him a hard look. “You accused me of going after you, then you treated me like trash…”

“Yes,” the man shook his head and walked over to her. He stood there, just looking down at her, his eyes meeting hers. “I know now that I was wrong.”

“Really?” the woman asked sarcastically. “And what made you change your mind?”

Gabriel licked his lips, the tip of his tongue resting for a moment on his lower lip. “I think, I always knew it, but it was easier to accuse you than to admit that fate was playing with us.”

“Fate?”

“What do you call it, if not fate? We met without knowing who we were…”

“Okay, okay,” Asa interrupted him. “What now?” She didn’t particularly like the idea of him thinking that it was fate that put them together and prefer to see it all as a bad experience.

Gabriel reached out and ran his hands up the sides of her face. “I cannot keep my hands away from you.” His voice had gone down an octave and it was also a bit raspy. “But, we know that it is just because we had very good sex and now I want to have some more…”

Asa looked away, unsuccessfully trying to hide the hurt in her eyes. The man didn’t move, his lips still near Asa’s and curved into a slight smile. “I know that you feel the same,” he said slowly. “Probably never felt this way before.” His smile became wider, just before he leaned in and brushed his lips across Asa’s. Pulling back slowly, Gabriel looked behind himself and went to the door, closing it from inside.

Asa watched him and wanted to convince herself that she was panicking, but the truth was that she was just feeling excited. Her eyes closed, when the man returned to the sofa and this time sat down beside her, his soft lips touching hers. Her body cried for more, for real touches, skin contact, deeper kisses… The feeling was so powerful, it overwhelmed him. Gabriel took a deep breath and interrupted the kiss for a second. “It’s now or never. If you want to stop, say it now.”

She turned her face up and stared at him. “I don’t know what I want…”

“I know,” Gabriel said convincingly. “I want to hold you, to touch you, to kiss you…”

The man kept talking, while his hands and lips did the things his mouth was saying. Asa’s protests died before she could open her mouth, as Gabriel put his tongue into her mouth. Her world zeroed in on Gabriel alone, everything else in the world completely
forgotten. She had never done anything so restless before. Sure, she had wanted men before, but nothing like this. Gabriel she wanted by just looking at him, no matter where they were and who was around.

Their kisses grew deeper, as neither of them could get enough. Gabriel rolled them down, lying Asa on the sofa and adjusting his position over her. The sensation was stronger than any addiction, it was all consuming, all powerful, impossible to ignore. Asa kissed him back, her hips thrusting into him, desperately searching for more contact. Gabriel stayed like that for another endless moment and then stood up. His experienced fingers removed her dress, and his own clothes in the matter of a few seconds and then he was back, caressing her body and moaning against her lips.

Asa didn’t protest when he raised her legs and adjusted their position in a way that put her sitting in his lap. Gabriel was leaning against the sofa, which was giving him the support he needed to raise Asa up and then lower her down on his hard member. The room was filled with their hot moans, but at that moment no one cared.

Asa kept asking herself how was it possible for someone to affect her so deeply, especially when that someone was so hard on her. The man was driving her to the edge, without as much as a movement of his finger and that was too much for her. Crushing their pelvises together one more time, Gabriel brought up her orgasm. Asa cried out desperately, unwilling to admit that she felt loved and protected in his arms.

Gabriel moaned against her neck and came himself, filling her with his seed and almost crushing her against his chest. By the time they had come down from their orgasms, Asa was feeling a bit cold and very much
self-conscious of her current situation.

“You okay?” Gabriel asked, while refusing to let her go. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” Asa answered breathlessly. “But, I think that we cannot keep doing this.”

“I agree with you,” he answered and carefully helped her to stand up. “Here, use this.”

Gabriel offered her a box of paper towels and turned around to dress. Asa was thankful for the relative privacy she was given and quickly cleaned up and dressed. She was ready almost before him and waited for Gabriel to turn around.

“Is something wrong?” Gabriel asked again.

“Everything is wrong,” Asa said sadly. “Listen, we should stop doing this and continue with our lives just like before we met.”

“Okay, but now our lives are tied together because of all that had happened to us.” Gabriel pointed out.

“I know, but we still can act as friends, without further complications.”

“If you think so, I am going to give it a try,” he agreed easily. “And anyway, what can I offer you? All I have is this ranch...”

“I like your ranch…”

“And I love you…” Gabriel said in the same tone of voice.

Hearing finally what she had been longing for, Asa looked him in the eye and said, “I love you too…”

The End

A sample of a few other mystery and suspense books published by James Kipling:

The Card Counter

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00H39Y6ZQ

1

For the first time in who knows how long, I actually woke up all by myself. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done that without assistance from an alarm clock or a telephone call with something urgent to kick my sorry ass out of bed.

I woke up this morning because my body simply felt like doing it. The batteries were charged and it was time to get up and do something. While I still felt a little tired, I consulted my cell phone, which sat silently on the dresser beside my bed. It was all the motivation I needed to get up and get my pitiful butt in the shower. I wasn’t used to waking up at eleven in the morning. There was a point where I’d actually started to think there was a law against letting me sleep past eight in the morning.

I had the day off, which was not abnormal for my particular situation. Thanks to an agreement with the station, I always got every other Friday off. It took a lot of arm twisting and even a few bribes to get what I wanted, but I was willing to do anything to get my ex-wife’s lawyer off my ass. Picking up the kids after school was a priority because I didn’t want to pick them up at their mother’s place. We put on a good front for the children, really, but they were the only reason we even shared a single word with one another. If Beth and I didn’t have any kids, we wouldn’t even share the same air, let alone meet once every two weeks when I drop them off on Sunday nights.

The divorce had been hard on everyone, and despite the bad feelings, things were actually moving along a little better than expected. Beth didn’t want this to drag out any longer than it had to and I didn’t fight her on most of her requests. The children were old enough to know what was going on, but we both agreed to keep the vital details to ourselves out of fear that some of the kids might use it as ammunition to get out of trouble. Kind of like a
get out of jail free
card. Not on our watch.

Once out of bed, I went into the bathroom to clear my throat, hock up some phlegm, and brush my teeth just before taking my morning piss. I know it must sound unbelievable, but I do enjoy the simple things in life, like breathing. I shaved with an electric razor almost out of habit since it was the way I usually got ready for work, and even though I wasn’t going in today, I wanted to look good for the girls.

Beth and I had three children, and while our oldest was in college and out of the nest, we still had two in high school and they were a pain in the ass sometimes ... almost as much as their mother was on her best days. Abbey and Sandy are 15 and 13, respectively, and thanks to my compromised scheduling arrangement, I was able to pick them up after school.

I never said that in front of the girls, as it’s something that I kept to myself and to my brother whenever I spoke with him alone. It felt good to have at least one person in my life with whom I could share those little joys. Clive was always there whenever I needed him, and I always did my best to make sure I was there whenever he got into trouble or needed a little something extra to prevent that trouble from occurring. His having an older brother in the police force didn’t hurt much, either. I was never asked to do anything illegal, at least not yet, but I did whatever I could to help Clive because he would always do the same for me. My work had a habit of getting in the way, and he would always have my back, so I did my best to make sure I had his.

After cleaning up in the bathroom, I dressed rather casually, tossing on a pair of blue jeans, a black t-shirt, and some sneakers. Clothes I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing at work, but I made an effort to at least try to look like I would be around all weekend by not showing up at the girls’ school in something closely resembling my work attire.

After dressing for the day, I strolled into the kitchen and started to clean up. Friday mornings were the usual clean-up time at my place. For some reason, it was hard for me to regularly clean up a little at a time instead of doing everything in one morning. It’s not that I never wanted to do it, but things just seemed easier when Beth was there to kick my ass and keep me on track. Now that I had my own place, by the time I found a moment away from work to do something about it, something would always come up. A hand grenade would actually improve things around here, but the girls were a good enough excuse to get me in gear.

While sweeping the floors and doing the Mount Everest of dishes that had piled up since the last time the girls visited, I put a few slices of toast on and nuked a few pieces of bacon in the microwave to go with them. I didn’t make any coffee because there was no milk.

There wasn’t any food for that matter, and suddenly I had another thing to do before the girls got here. Grocery shopping was yet another thing that I rarely accomplished, considering the kind of work I did for the city. Fast food and especially the hot dog cart outside the station made up the bulk of my diet. The sauerkraut I put on my sausages was likely the only thing closely resembling a vegetable that I ate in any given week. If it wasn’t for the gym and the constant walking I did outside the station, I could possibly be as fat as a few of the other detectives. Not an image I wanted to think of.