Something New (35 page)

“Ohhh God… God yes.” Thrashing her head side to side, Abby squeezed her breasts and tugged hard on her stiffened nipples, crying inside and out for some relief from the delicious, torturous pain. “Ohh, fuck, guys, guys.” Aching need had Abby’s twisting her body against Rodrigo’s and Braden’s unrelenting hold. “Mnnm…yes, yes…” Torqued so tightly inside due to every bit of contact on her bead, cunt, and bud, Abby thought she might rip apart right down the middle. “I’m gonna come.”

“Wait!” Braden’s raw plea ricocheted around the room. His and Rodrigo’s tongues no longer inside Abby, Braden kissed Rodrigo with a crushing quickness while moving Rodrigo to Abby’s side, out of the way, revealing all the harsh lines and cutting angles taking over Braden’s face. “Christ, honey.” Still on his knees, Braden yanked Abby’s lower body up his thighs and fit her sex to his. “I need to feel it.” Not even fully hard, Braden stared down and watched himself feed his cock into her pussy. He hissed, and Abby moaned and arched her back as Braden split her open and pushed himself into her to the root. “Just to feel it.”

Looking on his last legs, Braden lifted his gaze to Rodrigo. “Finish it for her.” Holding her wide open, Braden hooked Abby’s knees over his elbows and held himself fully buried inside her throbbing channel. Next to him, Rodrigo bent down and put his mouth on Abby’s exposed clit. With one hand reached out and twined in hers, Rodrigo suckled the little red pearl of flesh, put it between his teeth, and using crazy speed, he swatted it with his tongue and shot Abby straight out of her skin.

She screamed as her hips bucked out of control and her cunt contracted in a choke hold on Braden’s invasion. Concentrated bursts of pleasure exploded deep in Abby’s belly and radiated in a wide circle, pebbling her nipples into tight buds and creating shattering, strong pulse after pulse after pulse into her pussy. Rodrigo kept his head down and his tongue working overtime, and Braden clenched his jaw and dug his fingers deeper into her thighs with every wave of Abby’s orgasm, groaning low in his throat right along with her cries.

It tired the hell out of her, and Abby went limp as a rag doll as the final ebb of release worked its way through her, but eventually her orgasm came to an end. Rodrigo pressed a kiss to her mound before lifting upright, and Braden eased his cock out of her sex and laid her back on the bed as gently as he’d put himself inside her.

Exhaustion and satiation blurred Abby’s vision, putting Rodrigo and Braden in murky shadows. “Come closer.” She reached out, found wonderful, big hands waiting, and tugged both men to her, one on each side. Abby could see their beautiful black-brown and jade green eyes now, and their sweet upturned lips. “That’s better.” She lifted her hands and let her fingers drift through silky soft and then coarser tresses, and finally drew Rodrigo’s and Braden’s mouths to hers. The gentle brush of their lips against hers settled deep inside Abby and wrapped itself around her heart.

With all their mouths still touching, Abby whispered, “I love you both,” without censure. “You’re everything to me.”

Then Abby slipped toward unconsciousness in the shared comfort and security of Rodrigo’s and Braden’s arms, a soft smile on her face, so at ease she never even realized what she’d admitted.

As she drifted off, more peace and contentment settling inside her than she’d ever experienced, Abby thought she heard a raw “shit” and an equally gruff “agreed.”

Chapter Seventeen

In the bathroom the next morning, Abby stepped into the panties and jeans Rodrigo had run through the washer and dryer the previous night. As she wiggled the finicky zipper up, she crinkled her brow when Braden brushed right up against her backside to move past her, even though the bathroom had so much space none of them would ever have had to touch if they didn’t want to. Rodrigo had done the same multiple times since they’d woken up. Abby had expected it and even enjoyed it during their shared shower, but this was something different.

What the heck is wrong with them?

From one of the sinks, Rodrigo held his toothbrush poised over the basin but studied her in the mirror’s reflection. When she pointedly grabbed his stare, he raised a brow. “What?” he asked.

“You tell me,” Abby replied. Her gaze slid Braden’s way, and she found him watching her rather than paying attention to buckling his belt. “Either one of you are welcome to.”

Braden tucked in his shirt, finished doing up his buckle, and strolled to Abby’s side. “You look particularly lovely this morning.” He pecked a kiss to her cheek. “Isn’t that reason enough to look at you?”

“Fine.” Abby rolled her eyes at the man’s innocent act. Her pale skin was blotchy without her moisturizer, and her hair could be mistaken for Medusa’s without the product she used daily to keep the frizz to a minimum. “Don’t tell me.”

After putting on her shirt, Abby turned to the sink and grabbed the one-use toothbrush she kept in her purse for emergencies. Rodrigo had been able to locate one extra in his medicine cabinet, so it had gone to Braden.

Out of the corner of her eye, Abby watched Braden move in behind Rodrigo and reach around his waist to get that extra toothbrush. They both put their toothbrushes under the water at the same time, and Braden chuckled as he said, “The one thing you didn’t count on when designing this house was the need for three sinks.”

Rodrigo bounced back and forth between paying attention to applying paste to his brush and looking at Braden in the mirror. “There’s plenty enough room for me to add a third if you want it.”

“Nah.” Braden dipped down and kissed Rodrigo’s bare shoulder. “I don’t mind sharing.”

His smile growing, Rodrigo reached back and ran his hand down Braden’s outer thigh. “I did notice that.”

Abby was enjoying the banter and play between the men when Braden braced his hands on the edge of the sink on either side of Rodrigo and pretended to grind his crotch into Rodrigo’s ass. Teasing in return, Rodrigo dropped his head back on Braden’s shoulder and made loud, exaggerated moaning noises. In between the fake moans, they laughed together as they simulated sex.

Suddenly, the bathroom swam in front of Abby’s eyes, and she saw Braden’s jeans around his hips, his ass exposed, and heard him shout hoarsely in a way that terrified her all the way to her core. Only, it wasn’t Braden’s voice or even his dark head bent over Rodrigo that she heard and saw anymore. And it wasn’t Rodrigo’s dark head turned toward Braden’s neck. Instead, red hair flamed hot, and the back of a blond head concealed faces caught up in a passionate kiss as bodies merged into one, the image partially obscured by intermittent dark slashes.

Like looking through a vent.

“Oh my God.” Abby covered her mouth and stumbled backward, not stopping until her legs hit the bathtub ledge. Her limbs the consistency of heated rubber, Abby dropped to sit, mindless of anything except the images flashing like oncoming traffic in her mind. “He wasn’t fighting.” The shout Abby had originally thought she’d heard while eavesdropping on her father in the den changed from something full of anger to something released in the throes of exuberant lust. “He was having sex.” In her mind, below the short blond hair, Abby saw a thickly corded, masculine neck and part of a wide, bare shoulder and arm.

Oh dear Lord.

She looked up, blinking, and found herself back in the bathroom with Braden and Rodrigo crouched at her feet. “He was with another man.”

Braden pushed Abby’s hair out of her face. “Who, honey? What are you talking about?”

Half pointing in the direction of the sink, Abby didn’t know what to do. Moving her arm—her whole body—felt like a foreign thing. She squinted and tried to bring back the imagery. “You and Rodrigo were playing there, and the way you were positioned triggered the rest of the memory. I heard that low shout, and back then, in my mind, I filled in the blanks with anger and a fight, but it wasn’t.”

The pictures in Abby’s head flashed back and forth between Rodrigo and Braden, teasing, to something much more aggressive—set in a den with entirely different men. “My father… That day we talked about…”
Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus
. Abby didn’t know how to process such visual information about her own parent. “He wasn’t yelling at someone on the phone or in person.” Rodrigo and Braden shimmered before Abby’s eyes, and her voice cracked. “In his den, against the desk, my father was making a noise that I thought was shouting, but it was really a sound he made while having sex with another man.”

“
Dios mío
.” The rest of Rodrigo’s Spanish muttering occurred under his breath. He finally shook his head, and when he looked up at Abby, his eyes burned like he wanted to hit something. “And you saw it?”

Abby nodded, the feeling jerky and unnatural. “Just for a second.” Abby’s psyche recoiled against the idea of going back into that moment of new memory to catalog everything again, but she forced herself to delve in quickly and grab some details. “My dad is covering the man, like Braden was just doing to you. The only things I can remember seeing in that moment from the other person are the back of a blond head and a thick shoulder and upper part of an arm.” Every word Abby spoke felt like it was coming out through sandpaper. “I think my eight-year-old mind must not have been able to accept or process what I was seeing, so I jerked away and covered my face.”

“Like you did the other day in the attic,” Rodrigo said.

“Yes. And then I must have blocked it out entirely, along with the murders.” Elbows on her knees, Abby held her head in her hands, exhaling a shaky breath. “Jesus.” She scrubbed her face.
Careful what you toss out into the universe
. “My dad really was cheating. Just like my mom.” She shrugged, her shoulders almost too heavy to move them. “Maybe that guy killed them.”

“No.” Braden bracketed her head with his big hands and shifted her to face him directly. “It’s shocking as hell, and I’m sorry you saw one of your parents being unfaithful, as sorry as I am that you heard them being murdered. No eight-year-old should have that kind of information in their head about a mother or a father with a man or a woman. But it’s not relevant to the case. Remember”—he brushed the pads of his thumbs under her eyes, drying skin—“it’s your mother who said
baby
and knew the murderer. It’s still whoever
she
had the affair with we have to focus on and find.”

It felt tight, but Abby forced herself to smile for Braden. Or at least to stop frowning. “Right.”

“But maybe they both knew, Bray,” Rodrigo said, thumping his fist on Braden’s thigh. “Maybe they each knew about the other’s affair, and if we find this guy, he could tell us if Richard ever told him the name of Elaine’s lover.”

Braden’s lips thinned, and his stare narrowed. “I can think of one blond man I’ve come across who possibly had his own secrets to hide and thus much more personal reasons for blocking this investigation than we originally thought.”

Oh no
. Abby’s inside churned between sickness and rage.
No, no.

“The priest?” Rodrigo voiced Abby’s horror.

“I’m not saying definitively.” Braden put his hand on top of Abby’s, automatically easing her distress, as if he’d been able to read her mind. “But it would give reason for his desire to shut down an investigation that would require looking deeply into the Gaineses’ personal lives. I might have a new set of questions to ask Father Jim now. I need to talk to the captain, but maybe I can even bring our priest friend into the station and help make him a little bit more nervous about his circumstances.” Lifting out of his crouch, Braden took a seat next to Abby on the tub and tucked her close to his side. “If nothing else, the implications could intimidate him enough to loosen his lips about the information he’s protecting about Elaine.”

“Damn, Crenshaw.” Kneeling close, Rodrigo rested his arms alongside Braden and Abby, closing them in. “That’s why you’re the cop, and I refurbish houses. I would not want to sit across a table and drill a priest about his secrets and lies. If you’re wrong—and pardon the way I say this—you’ll get crucified.”

His hand tightening at Abby’s waist, clutching her, Braden grimaced. “I’m not saying I’ll like doing it, but sometimes you have to unearth places people don’t want to see in order to get to the truth.”

“Ohhh my goodness.” Abby looked upward, mentally seeing beyond the ceiling to the blue sky outside…and even higher above to what she had always been taught existed far beyond the clouds. “This is weird. It’s so strange and unnerving and bizarre.” She blinked a handful of times and brought her gaze back down to find Braden’s and Rodrigo’s waiting for her. “I had no idea when I started having these nightmares that I’d learn all this.”

“Do you want to stop?” Braden asked.

Two faces that always had a smile for Abby as a child, two sets of ears that never seemed to tire of listening to her fanciful tales, and two sets of arms that took turns holding her when she was sad or scared or hurt still whispered over Abby’s skin and into her heart today, buffeting her with new resolve. “No. They’re still my parents. Someone still broke into our house and butchered them. They still deserve justice so they can rest in peace.” Abby looked upon these two new beautiful, masculine faces that gave her extra strength today, and her throat went tight. “We all do.”

“Then let’s get something to eat so we can get going,” Braden said. “I’ll drop you both off”—Rodrigo’s truck was still at Abby’s place—“and then I’ll go have a chat with my boss.”

“Come with me.” Rodrigo shot to his feet and pulled Abby and Braden upright too. He drew them to his sides, then led them to the kitchen through the media room, saying, “I make an even better breakfast than I do dinner.”

Abby welcomed the distraction of watching Rodrigo move around his kitchen like a pro.

* * *

“Come on, Bray!” Rodrigo stood at his open front door and shouted into the house. “You’re the one who wanted us to shovel down our breakfast so we could get this show on the road!”

A second later, Braden appeared from the direction of the kitchen, his middle finger saluting high. “Hey, give me a fucking break, Rigo. When you have to piss, you have to piss.” The man pecked a kiss to Rodrigo’s cheek and smacked his ass as he squeezed past him to the outside. “I’m good to go now.”