The Girl in the Mist (Misted Pines 1)

“Baby, that was the hottest fuck I’ve ever had,” he said. I lost his eyes, and he licked the shell of my ear before he whispered in it. “And I like to fuck. It’s been a while. But for the record, my bed is a playground.” Pause then, “Anything goes. You want it. You ask for it. And I’ll give it to you.”

That was quite a promise.

I shivered.

From the other room, his phone rang.

He lifted his head and said to me in the mirror, “Goddamn fuck.”

I seconded that emotion.

He then slid out, fixed his pajama bottoms, knelt to help me step into my panties, which he pulled up, then my pajamas, and he stood.

“Be back,” he muttered, touched his mouth to mine and stalked out of the room.

I watched.

Full report?

He had an insanely beautiful back.

I allowed myself a second (okay, it took ten, but it could have taken a year) to reflect on how wholly beautiful what we’d just shared was.

Then I went to the little toilet room to do some clean up.

I came back out, he wasn’t there, so I washed my hands and wandered into the bedroom.

I was still in a daze, part of me happy we waited, thinking that might have built the need, which was what made what we shared so elemental, part of me ecstatic because I knew that wasn’t true.

That was us, and it might not be that intense every single time.

But it was going to be great.

Coupled with the rest?

Suffice it to say, I’d waited fifty-three years.

But in Cade Hunter Bohannan, I’d hit the motherlode.

On this thought, it struck me he wasn’t in the bedroom.

And on that thought, he prowled in from the hall.

“What were you—?” I began to ask.

“Checking on Celeste. Fortunately, she didn’t do anything stupid,” he bit off, walking directly to his closet.

Hesitantly, I followed him.

He was dressing.

“Bohannan, what’s going on?”

“Scared parents, an incompetent sheriff and defiant kids aren’t a good mix,” he muttered.

Ah hell.

As he did up his jeans, he looked at me.

“I gotta get to the woods.”

Thirty-Nine

Abundance of Caution

There were many bonuses to living in Misted Pines and being with Cade Bohannan.

One was, after he got home from dealing with the clusterfuck that happened in the woods, he worked off his frustration by fucking you so hard facedown into the bed, if you could think (and trust me, you couldn’t, but you also didn’t want to, you just wanted to feel), you’d worry that he’d have to buy a new mattress because there would be an indelible female-shaped dent in the springs.

And two, when you showed at the hustling, droning, riled, crowded meeting in the town council chambers the next evening, even though it was standing room only, five people would exit their chairs so Bohannan and his family could be seated.

This begged a question I had not thought to ask.

Why was Bohannan such a force in that town?

It couldn’t be denied him being ex-Green Beret, ex-FBI and an expert, and even famous, profiler was cool. And I would suspect, in a small, and what seemed until recently had been a sleepy town, this would lead to him being a favorite son.

From this, I could see the local townspeople wanting a man of his experience to replace an ineffective sheriff. I could also see them wanting him to be involved in a highly charged, highly emotional set of murders.

But people scrambling to give up their seats for him and his family took that to a new level.

He accepted two men’s seats and planted Celeste’s and my asses in them.

He indicated in a way no one would deny him that the women who got up should sit their asses back down, so they did.

Then he, Jess and Jace found a spot on the wall closer to the front and claimed it, assuming identical arms-on-chests, shoulders-to-wall, scowls-on-faces positions.

Yeah, the woods thing last night was not a clusterfuck.

It was a clusterfuck.

A shots-fired, thank-God-no-one-was-hurt, deputy-on-administrative-leave clusterfuck.

And that was only the worst part about it, it wasn’t the only bad part about it.

The long, curved desk up front was crowded, not only with all the town council members, but with seats added so the county commissioners could sit with them.

And there was a line down the center aisle of people waiting to take the lectern because they had something to say.

A gavel was struck, and the guy sitting in the middle, who was eighty-five if he was a day, didn’t have to request in his microphone that he wanted everyone’s attention.

Upon the gavel strike, quiet swept the room.

That didn’t last long.

“We sense it’s going to be a long night,” he began.

“Yeah it is!” someone shouted.

“Ya think?” someone else shouted.

“Remove Dern!” another shout.

This started up a chant of those two words that consumed the company with somewhat frightening ease.

Dern, who was at the very end of the curve, opposite to where Bohannan was standing, sat there, face set to a fundamental fury borne of a man who’d lived his entire life seated in the lap of privilege, and his adult life wielding power that should be handled with regard solely to protection and service, but he’d considered it elsewise. Therefore, he was utterly incapable of grasping the concept he couldn’t do whatever he pleased.