Undercover Obsession (11 page)

When Brody pulled his mouth from hers, she
bemoaned the loss then, when he closed those same lips over a
turgid tip and suckled, she embraced it. Even though her nipples
were still sore and she had no idea what from, the discomfort only
seemed to enhance her pleasure. Her hands clasped his dark head,
her fingers sinking into his thick hair as the bristles from his
beard scraped her sensitive flesh, the added pleasure from that
sensation just as good as she remembered. Her imagination conjured
up the image of both men’s heads bent over her breasts, of feeling
both their mouths suckling her nipples, the dual sensations sending
her to an unbelievable height of ecstasy. When Brody switched to
her other nipple and drew it into his mouth with deep suction, she
could no longer hold back a plea for more. “Brody, please.”

Her soft voice pleading with him worked as
effectively as a douse of ice water. Five years ago she had pleaded
with him in just that tone, softly vulnerable as well as huskily
aroused, and he had been unable, or rather, unwilling to ignore it.
But he refused to do that to her again, take her only to leave with
the intention of imprisoning the one person in her life she
considered family. She had been hurt enough by both Charles and
him. She didn’t deserve to go through that again. If they
discovered Charles was alive, and the odds were he was, she was
going to have enough betrayal to deal with. Believing he was dead
was a self-defense mechanism she was using to spare herself from
being hurt anymore by the man she thought of as her father. She may
have had her rose colored glasses yanked off at that party five
years ago, but, despite her independence from Charles now, she
didn’t seem to have any trouble slipping them back on when she
needed to.

“I can’t do this again,” Brody said as he
reluctantly released her breast. Very softly, he ran his tongue in
a caress meant to be soothing instead of arousing over each
reddened tip before raising his head to her flushed face and large,
pleading eyes. “Damn it, Piper, I am not going to fuck you again
only to turn around and leave to betray you. If Charles is still
alive, it’s my job to find him and bring him in. He’s a material
witness against the man we really want and that hasn’t
changed.”

Piper yanked down her shirt and was grateful
he stepped back and allowed her the dignity of hopping off the
counter unaided. “When will I learn,” she muttered as she turned
away from him.

“What was that?” Brody asked as he tried to
ignore the way her ass moved under those loose gym shorts even
while he was vividly recalling the feel of that soft ass under his
hands last night, how those globes, firmer than they were five
years ago, were still plump and round, still soft enough to have
him fantasizing about reddening them before sinking his cock
between them, riding her crack until his white come splashed over
the redness.

Piper turned her head and glared at him.
“Charles is dead. There’s nothing you can say to convince me
otherwise. I have work to do. If you’re going to insist on hanging
around here, clean up after yourselves.”

Brody watched her walk down the hall, winced
when she slammed the door to her workroom then breathed a sigh of
relief that she wasn’t arguing about them sticking around for a
while. At least she was smart enough to know she had a problem and
they were here to help solve it and protect her if need be. He
could only hope they figured out what was going on soon, because if
he had to be in such close proximity to her for any extended period
of time, he didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of keeping out
of her bed, even if he knew it would be better for her if he
did.

Piper adjusted her back pack on her shoulders
again as her angry stride through the oak hickory and pine tree
filled woods kept making it slip off her shoulders. She didn’t know
who she was madder at, herself for falling so easily for him again,
or Brody, for making her fall so easily for him again. Okay, that
wasn’t fair, but who cared about being fair at a time like this?
She had tried repeatedly over the past five years to rid herself of
Brody’s memory, to shove aside his betrayal of Charles and to
forget the pleasure he had shown her she had unknowingly been
missing out on. But nothing she had done, not even the satisfying
sex she had with Cole, had been able to erase that man from her
memory. Not even during those first months, when she had worried
obsessively about Charles’s fate as she struggled to take control
of her life by moving back to Missouri, using the money she had
hoarded from Charles’s generous monthly allowance all those years
to buy her cabin and jeep and, for the first time in her life,
working to support herself.

Now here she was again, as if no time had
passed at all, as if she hadn’t witnessed the brutal attempt on
Charles’s life followed by the revelation that Brody had been
working to send the man she loved so dearly to prison and he had
only befriended her as part of that job. “I’m a fucking idiot,” she
berated herself, still smarting over the way she had succumbed so
easily, the way she had once again pleaded with him to take her
only to be turned down. Her nipples still throbbed from the deep
suckling of his mouth, her pussy still wept with unfulfilled
frustration and she still ached from head to toe for some
inexplicable reason. “Bastard.”

It was a struggle to blame him for rejecting
her since his reason, this time, was honorable, but she was
determined to do so nonetheless because she simply would not
believe Charles was alive, that he would keep her in the dark, make
her suffer his abrupt absence from her life, unless he was dead. It
was the only explanation. To this day she wasn’t sure what the FBI
had been investigating him for, she only had a few facts from first
Ian, and then Brody, delivered quickly and in Reader’s Digest
format that night. She still didn’t believe Charles would do
business with a drug lord, refused to believe the man who was no
blood relation to her, or even a relation by marriage, who had
nonetheless saw to her upbringing and had been generous with his
money as well as his visits would embroil himself with such a
nefarious person as this Pasquino was reputed to be.

Piper waved to the elderly couple who had
been her closest neighbors since she bought her cabin as she passed
theirs. She imagined both Brody and Ian were going to be royally
pissed when they found her sewing room empty, but she needed to let
them know up front she wasn’t about to allow them, or anybody else
dictate her life again. She freely acknowledged, and worried, that
she had a problem on her hands, which was why she hadn’t insisted
they leave again. Having them there was a comfortable safety net,
one she wasn’t above using, but she knew these woods and this well
hiked trail into town like the back of her hand and there were
enough cabins and friendly faces on the way to ensure her safety.
If those jerks had bothered asking her, she could have have told
them that, reassured them, but she was piqued enough and perverse
enough to let them suffer and stew as to her whereabouts until she
got back from delivering these items to Haley’s shop. It had been
surprisingly easy to slip out the window and enter the woods
without them catching her, but maybe this little lesson would show
both of them she wasn’t a meek college kid any longer and she
wouldn’t be dictated to. She valued her freedom and independence
and she wasn’t going to give them up unless her safety absolutely
demanded it.

The trail came out at the small marina at the
edge of town and it was just a short walk up Main Street to Haley’s
small boutique. Piper had met Haley when she applied for the
part-time position in her shop. It only took a few weeks for them
to become close, both of them recognizing a kindred spirit, and
when she had shown Haley some of her sketches and told her about
starting up a mail order business, Haley had quickly begged to
carry some of her items in her shop. Even though Piper’s business
had grown and become successful enough that she no longer had the
time to help out in Haley’s shop, they still saw each other several
times a week. Picking up her stride, Piper hoped Haley hadn’t been
too stressed over her no show the other day, she had enough
emotional trauma to deal with on a daily basis, she didn’t need
Piper adding any more.

Chapter Six

The bell over the door tinkled when Piper
walked into Haley’s small boutique that carried a wide range of
women’s clothing, including a lingerie section Haley had added
after seeing some of Piper’s designs. Displaying and selling some
of her items in the small shop had proven profitable for both of
them as Hope was only a short distance from Branson and benefitted
from a steady stream of tourist income almost year round.

“Better late than never,” Piper beamed when
Haley saw her, squealed and ran over to greet her with a hug.

“Damn you, Piper. I was worried sick. What
happened to you?”

Her friends’ blue eyes were swimming with
unshed tears and Piper felt bad for worrying her even though she
hadn’t done it on purpose. “Hell if I know. Here, let’s get these
hung while we talk. I have a feeling I don’t have much time.”

There were only two customers browsing, so
Haley led the way to the far corner that was reserved for Piper’s
garments. She had only been in Hope a year before Piper walked into
her shop and they hit it off almost immediately. Her friendship had
come at a time when Haley had sorely needed that bond with another
person. Her own past had enabled her to recognize right off another
woman who was as determined as she had been to start over, to leave
a painful past behind. “What do you mean you don’t have much time?
I haven’t seen or spoken to you in three days and since I know
you’d never take off without letting me know, I’ve been plagued by
horrible scenarios of what might have happened. You owe me lunch at
least. Oh,” she breathed when she picked up a light blue teddy with
matching thong, “I love this.”

“It’s yours,” Piper offered even though she
knew Haley wouldn’t take it.

“It’d be wasted on me and you know it.”

“Hey, I’ve offered to share Cole with you.”
Piper had no emotional attachment to Cole, her part-time lover, and
she knew he would be more than willing to end Haley’s long drought
from sex, but she also knew it wasn’t going to happen. Suddenly,
she was besieged by a memory of being sandwiched between two hard
bodies, harsh breathing filling her ears, hands and mouths leaving
no part of her untouched.

“Piper, you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, sorry.” Those erotic images that
had been so dreamlike this morning when she first awoke were
becoming clearer instead of vaguer and Piper was beginning to
wonder what exactly did happen when Brody and Ian had arrived at
her cabin yesterday. A quick glance up and down Main Street from
the front window showed no sign of Brody or Ian yet, but Piper
didn’t think they’d waste time tracking her down once they
discovered she had slipped out.

“If you don’t want that, why don’t we put it
on the mannequin? It’s subtle enough to display in the window. Some
of these others should probably be more discreetly displayed. Like
this one.” With a cheeky grin she held up a white lace bra with
cutouts for the nipples, a small red bow placed to sit right above
a rosy tip, drawing ones attention. The matching crotchless panties
had a similar bow set to rest right above an exposed pussy.

“Those are positively decadent.”

“They’ll make some guy happy.” While they
worked together, Piper quickly told Haley what she knew, which
wasn’t much.

“So, this Brody is the same guy you spent one
really hot night with five years ago and out of the blue he shows
up because the sheriff and I thought you were in trouble? The man
must be obsessed.” Haley folded the bikini panties and thongs in
neon silk and arranged them on a shelf as she tried to suppress the
memories of her obsessed husband and how easily he had duped
her.

Piper finished hanging the last silk nightie
before turning to her friend. She knew about Haley’s crazed ex, how
he had tormented her until she had finally decided anything was
better than living in constant fear, how, even though the bastard
was currently serving year six of a fifteen year attempted murder
sentence, it was still a constant battle to keep fear from ruling
her life.

“He’s obsessed with his job, not with me,”
Piper retorted. No matter how much she had daydreamed about having
a man like Brody want her when she was an overweight, dumb as nails
young woman and despite her apparent lust for the man who had
betrayed Charles, and in turn, her, she would never believe she
meant anything more to him than a means to an end, that end being
finishing the job he and Ian had set out to do five years ago. From
the closed, implacable look on Brody’s face when she had denied any
possibility that Charles might have survived his injuries from that
assassination attempt, she knew he’d never believe that until he
had proof or possibly until he and Ian succeeded in bringing this
other man, Pasquino, to justice. “But he doesn’t mean me any harm,
Haley, I’m sure of that.” At least not physically, Piper thought
morosely. Emotionally might be another matter. She had been crushed
when she had fled Atlantic City, not only because of Charles’s loss
but because of the painful revelation of Brody’s efforts to hurt
the one person in the world who meant anything to her after she had
humiliated herself by practically forcing him into having sex with
her.

“Good, because I have to admit, I’m glad
you’ve got someone so capable and willing to look out for you until
you find out what happened. I’m sure you’ll rest easier knowing
they’re there also.”

“Yeah, I will, but not enough to totally give
up my independence again to another man. Like you, I learned the
hard way to stand on my own two feet, but I’m willing to accept a
helping hand when needed. Right now, though, I think I’ll head back
home before they show up to drag me there. That,” she muttered
darkly, “wouldn’t be a pretty sight.”