Something New (27 page)

When did I hear Daddy shouting?

Rodrigo’s voice cut through the noise in her head. “Abby?” Concern filled his tone, and on top of him, Braden asked, “Are you okay?”

Bits of sound and blurry, brief flashes of imagery worked in Abby’s brain in such a way that her head felt like it had a strobe light and disco ball in it. “I think my father might have had a fight with someone before he died. I don’t know when, though.” She squinted, searching for clarity. “I don’t know if the guy was on the phone or here in person. I must have gotten scared and hid from what I’d overheard.”

“Like you did just now,” Rodrigo said.

“I guess.” Abby created circles against her temples with her fingers, working out the beginnings of nausea. “Yes.”

“You said guy,” Braden pointed out. “If your dad was on the phone, how would you know it was a man?”

“I wouldn’t.” Abby sat up straight and banged her head on the low ceiling. “Ow.” She pushed her fingers through her ponytail and rubbed the pinpricks of pain radiating from the bump. “Do you think my dad knew about my mom’s affair, invited the man here, and confronted him in person?”

“It’s possible,” Braden said. “I’ll have to lay it out and see if it makes sense.”

Abby suddenly felt dirty in a way that went beyond the dust on her face, hands, and clothes. Each clue they unearthed pushed her more and more toward the certainty that her mother had cheated on her father. And if her dad had found out about it, and obviously wasn’t happy, Abby might have been about to become a statistic of divorce. She put her hand over her mouth, stifling the sob that wanted to erupt.

I always thought they loved each other so much.

Suck it up, girl. You’re here to find a killer, not wallow in self-pity.

Ignoring the pounding in her head, Abby tucked the flashlight handle in her belt and began crawling back toward Braden and Rodrigo. “I want to go talk to Mrs. Bruno. Maybe she knew something about my mom’s affair. Maybe Mr. Bruno knows if my dad suspected anything.”

Braden craned his neck, looking up at Abby, as he backed down the ladder. “You want to go right now?”

“It’s not that far.” As soon as Rodrigo cleared the rungs too, Abby swung her legs through the entrance and dropped down to the ladder. “I remember how to get there.”

“So you’re done here?” Braden asked from the door, where he grabbed the case file from the floor.

“Yeah.” Taking another look around her parents’ bedroom, Abby rubbed goose bumps away from her arms. “I don’t want to be in this place anymore.”

“I can understand why,” Rodrigo said. “Come on.” He tucked his arm around Abby’s waist and steered her to the door. “I have baby wipes in the truck you can use to clean up.”

Braden stopped them with a hand to Abby’s arm. “You don’t remember anything else?”

Rodrigo nudged Abby into the hallway. “I don’t want her to be here anymore, Crenshaw.” He sounded the way he did when he gave orders to his employees. “I think that’s enough for today. Get the ladder for me, and let’s go.”

“I wasn’t trying to push, man,” Braden said as he jogged across the room. “Let me close the window, grab the ladder, and I’ll be right behind you.”

Abby had entered this house without feeling any sense of bond to it or her parents. Now, as she walked out, she eerily sensed that every corner called her to look closer and see all the scars still there that spoke of her past.

Shivering, Abby felt like ghosts floated out of this house, right at her side, talking, if she could just hear what they had to say.

* * *

Abby trudged up familiar blue-painted porch steps and walked right up to a matching door that took her back twenty years. The wonderful aroma of citrus permeated the air, the smell so clean and tart that Abby breathed in deeply and let it take away some of the tension still locking her tight.

Now this hasn’t changed much at all
. She smiled, feeling buoyant again.

A gleaming new gold knocker adorned the door. Abby rapped it sharply, smiling over her shoulder at Braden and Rodrigo as she waited.

Someone inside shouted, “Be there in a second,” and a moment later a young, dark-haired woman answered the door.

“Hi.” Abby stuck out her hand, too anxious to wait. “My name is Abby Gaines. May I speak with Martha Bruno?”

The woman pulled a funny face. “Sorry, but there’s no Martha Bruno living here.”

As fast as air lifted Abby, she now felt like someone had popped a hole in her balloon. “Did she pass? Are you a relative? A granddaughter? She owned this land with her husband, Anthony Bruno.”

“Nope.” The woman shook her head. “Never heard of either one of them. We bought the orchard a year ago from someone named Hector Gonzalez. He never mentioned any Martha or Anthony.”

“Oh.” Abby thudded back to earth.

“Sorry.”

“I apologize for bothering you.”

“No problem. You have a good night,” the woman said as she swung her front door closed.

Braden took hold of Abby’s elbows and turned her to face him. “I’ll track Mrs. Bruno down tomorrow at work, Abby. It shouldn’t be that hard.” He slid his hand down her arm and closed it around her fingers. “We’ll just have to keep busy with something else until I do.”

She narrowed her stare at him. “Doing what?”

Braden smiled, oh so very wickedly. “It’s quitting time for me.”

Rodrigo traded a glance with Braden and adopted his own naughty gleam. “For me too.”

Mierda!

Chapter Fourteen

Stretched across her headboard, arms and ankles tied to the top posts and forced wide apart, Abby tried to scream around Braden’s cock stuffed in her mouth as Rodrigo shoved his long prick into her cunt.

“Oh yeah, that’s it,” Braden said. Standing on the bed, he held Abby’s head to face him and worked his length past her lips in short, snapping bursts. “Take it all.” His pale eyes were a luminescent jade in the warm shadows of Abby’s bedroom. “You have the fucking most beautiful mouth.”

“Fucking most amazing everything, Bit.” Rodrigo moaned and shoved his hands under Abby’s ass, clutching her cheeks to tilt her hips for a deeper thrust. Every slam of Rodrigo’s hips abraded Abby’s inner thighs and chafed at her pussy lips, but she had long ago given up caring about anything but coming and coming and coming again.

Upon arrival at Abby’s place, though unspoken, Abby knew Braden and Rodrigo had made it their mission to eradicate any thoughts or hurts from the day. They’d stripped her naked and covered every inch of her body with licks, kisses, and love bites. Each man had made her come twice already by trading off going down on her or sucking on her breasts or kissing her to the point of exquisite, painful sensitivity.

When Abby swore she was about to turn into a puddle of goo, Braden had dipped into her toy drawer—which he must have discovered on his own in the last few days—and produced silk ropes. Braden had Rodrigo arrange pillows behind Abby while he lifted her legs up and wide open, putting her ankles almost on level with her wrists. He’d then created two slipknots into each rope and pinned Abby to the bed. By that point, Rodrigo already had his wonderful fingers halfway up her pussy and his incredible tongue working her clit like a professional, and Abby had been too far gone to share that she’d never actually used the ropes before.

Now Abby alternated between hanging limp when her muscles couldn’t take the strain and yanking against the ropes every time Rodrigo grazed her sweet spot with his driving thrusts.

Scorching-hot, wet cock pushed past Abby’s lips again, taking her almost to the throat, and the raw nature of the act helped pump her cunt with more liquid heat. Abby loved having a man in her mouth, and she couldn’t help creaming and moaning each time Braden filled her full. When Braden withdrew, leaving Abby nearly in a state of tears for more, Rodrigo sank his iron-hard dick into her sheath and stretched her open with shivery depth again.

As soon as Abby’s mouth was free of Braden’s cock, Rodrigo surged forward and covered her, taking her with a voracious kiss. He slowed everything down and moved his hips in rolling waves, stroking Abby’s throbbing, wet walls with massaging full pumps. Abby kissed Rodrigo back with messy licks and bites; she struggled against the rope binding in her efforts to work her body into Rodrigo’s mating, desperately wishing to rub herself more completely against every inch of Rodrigo’s solid, muscular body. She arched her back, straining for Rodrigo with a whimper, and Rodrigo pressed his weight into her, giving her that rougher grind against her breasts, belly, and sex Abby so desperately needed.

Her pussy flooded with proof of her arousal, making her buck her hips in a shuddering display. Above her, Braden moaned, watching as Rodrigo claimed Abby so completely. He shuttled his tightly closed fist up and down his rearing erection, thumbing the head each time he reached the leaking tip, and then coated his red length with the sheen of precum.

Rodrigo rubbed his chest and stomach all up and down Abby’s front. Abby jerked and keened as Rodrigo abraded her pebble-tight nipples with every move, and Braden picked up the pace of his handjob as his leaking slit became a stream of early seed.

“You both like this, huh?” Rodrigo’s dark hot gaze passed between Abby and Braden.

Abby answered by pulling against the ropes. She failed to move much but managed to grab Rodrigo’s mouth with a quick, licking kiss. Braden nodded while groaning and reaching between his legs to pull on his balls.

Rodrigo’s eyes darkened to pitch. “Bring that cock back in here, Crenshaw.” His voice sounded like secretive, dirty sex in the back of a truck on a steamy summer afternoon. “I want a taste too.”

At Rodrigo’s words, Abby’s cunt throbbed all around his embedded prick.
Oh good God, yes. Do it
. Braden jerked in response and grabbed on to the headboard, his legs clearly going a little bit wobbly.

Rodrigo already had his mouth almost touching Abby’s, and they both struggled with their breath as Braden stepped in closer. Braden closed his hand around the base of his cock and pushed his dick into the space between their mouths. The thick, stiff shaft grazed both sets of lips, snagging skin against skin, and all three of them gasped at the light contact. Then, like starving animals pouncing on one morsel of food, Abby and Rodrigo opened their mouths around each side of Braden’s dick and licked up, down, and over each centimeter of flesh. They used their tongues to follow the lines of ridged veins and often met around the top or underside to tangle with each other before separating to lick all over Braden’s slick, rigid cock again.

“More.” Braden buried his fingers in both Abby’s and Rodrigo’s hair, pulling hard enough to sting as he bowed his spine and thrust his hips in a furious rhythm, his face a stark, ruddy mask of unforgiving lines and angles. “Oh fuck, more.”

Abby absorbed Braden’s desperation and knew exactly what he needed.

She knew she wasn’t going to give it to him either.

Rodrigo was.

Dropping her gaze from Braden’s to Rodrigo’s, Abby looked into eyes burning black with desire. “Let him in your mouth.” She pulled back just as Rodrigo’s lips grazed Braden’s cockhead. “You already know exactly what he needs to come.”

Rodrigo’s fingers clenched convulsively and dug into Abby’s ass, but he also turned his head and parted his lips. He didn’t open very wide, though, which made it fucking orgasmworthy as Abby watched Braden nudge his penis against Rodrigo’s mouth and oh so very slowly force his way inside. The second Braden got there, Rodrigo made one of his excited noises and sucked more of Braden’s length in on his own, clearly taking to the task quickly. He bobbed up and down the top third of Braden’s dick and played with the head, getting it nice and wet, and hummed something incoherent each time he went down on Braden’s penis. Soon Braden started rocking his hips, helping feed more of his erection deeper and deeper into Rodrigo’s mouth.

“Rigo, oh fuck, Rigo.” Braden stared down at Rodrigo with lust-filled eyes as pale as moonlight. “So good.”

The sight of Rodrigo giving Braden a blowjob rushed blood into all of Abby’s erogenous zones and shoved her dangerously close to the edge. With her arms and legs restrained, she couldn’t give herself relief, so she knocked her cunt back and forth in an abbreviated motion and fucked herself on Rodrigo’s unmoving cock. Rodrigo didn’t let up on Braden’s prick for one second. Instead, he held tightly to Abby’s hips and ass and moved her body for her. He impaled her on his stationary erection with driving force and took her pussy with as much aggression as Braden used to fuck Rodrigo’s mouth.

Everything about what these two men did to each other and to her rushed through Abby hotter than a Texas oil fire and pooled a controlled burn deep in her core. Each time Braden shoved his cock into Rodrigo’s mouth and Rodrigo took it with a rough grunt, the coil inside Abby twisted tighter and tighter and wrenched her closer to the abyss.

“Oh yeah, yeah… Please.” Abby rolled her head back and forth against the headboard, unable to remain still as the invisible chain inside her pulled so fucking taut she thought it might tear her in two. “Touch me.”

Without breaking from Braden, Rodrigo speared two fingers into Abby’s slit to finger her clit. He used just the perfect amount of pressure and ripped a convulsing tremble out of her entire body.

Letting out a deep, guttural moan, Braden wrapped his hand around the back of Abby’s head, pulled her to his cock, and put her mouth around his root. “Together.” He made it a plea and an order, withdrew solely from Rodrigo’s mouth, and went back to sawing his length between both of their lips.

Voracious and near to shattering, Abby licked up and down Braden’s dick in time with Rodrigo, pairing up with his pace. With each pass along Braden’s shaft, the man held on to Abby’s head with a rougher hand, and his hips lost any sense of control. Meanwhile, Rodrigo continued to manipulate Abby’s pussy with his fingers and cock and pulled her insides tauter than a drum.

Unable to take it anymore, this time when Rodrigo flicked his tongue just under the rim of Braden’s cock, Abby licked across his wide slit and wiggled into the opening. In an instant, Braden grabbed his root and roared with his release. Abby stuck out her tongue, and just as Braden’s ejaculate hit her taste buds—and she saw it splash on Rodrigo too—Abby let go of the fight and exploded right along with Braden. Orgasm hit her with a powerful, clenching wave; each squeeze inside Abby’s cunt wrapped around Rodrigo’s penis and yanked him deeper inside, which in turn rocked a jolt through Rodrigo. Rodrigo grabbed Braden and jerked him down to his knees beside Abby. He held Abby and Braden to him with his intense, unblinking stare as he swelled and then spilled inside Abby, warming her with his seed.