Southern Sunset: Book One of 44 South Read online

  “What the hell was that?” I said, my voice beyond rasping. His hand stroked down my throat, so gentle, so caring, so him.

  “I’m keeping you, Maggie Blackmore,” he said, which wasn’t an answer. “I’m keeping you and I’m not giving you up.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I offered.

  He smiled. Luke smiling was a thing of beauty. It made his face crinkle in the most attractive way. I’d never thought sun lines could be attractive. But a man like Luke Drake, who worked all day in the harsh Mackenzie Country sun, should have sun lines. They shouted to the world that this was him. That he worked hard, played hard, lived hard.

  I loved them. I was beginning to love Luke Drake.

  He pulled out, his cock slowly slipping free, my walls tightening as if not wanting to release him. He stroked my throat, soothing me, promising me he wasn’t leaving completely. Then he placed me down on shaking legs.

  “Turn around,” he said, voice low and sexy.

  I obeyed the command without even thinking.

  “Hands on the wall,” he added. I complied. “Good girl, Maggie. Now arch that back, spread those legs, and let me see you.”

  I felt him step back as I did as he’d ordered, my body shaking with the anticipation of his next touch.

  “You have a fine arse on you, Maggie.” A hand came down on my bare butt. It wasn’t hard. More of a playful swat. But I didn’t doubt for a minute that Luke couldn’t make it smart.

  I wasn’t completely naive. I’d had my share of lovers. But Luke took loving - or fucking - to a whole other level. I’d never gotten off on having my hands secured or having a palm wrapped around my throat, stealing my air.

  But it wasn’t the loss of air that did; I like to breathe. It was handing over complete control to another person. To this person. Right now. Right here.

  It didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. I’d only just met him. His brother was under suspicion for murder. His farm was in the limelight, somewhere as a police officer I shouldn’t be.

  And yet I couldn’t stay away. Luke Drake was my kryptonite. A magnetic attraction I craved. When Luke touched me, I let go of everything superficial. Everything superfluous. I let someone else take charge and despite his hand at my throat, I could breathe.

  His big, calloused fingers gripped my hip, pulling my arse out at more of an angle. His bare cock, stiff and hard, rubbed between my folds, letting me know what was coming. Then that hand, the same one from earlier, wrapped around my neck, under my chin, and tipped my head up.

  His hot breath coasted over my earlobe as he whispered, “You are so fucking beautiful. I can’t stop wanting your body. Wanting to do dirty things to it. Wanting to cover you in my come. To slide my cock between your arse cheeks. To titty fuck you. To shove my dick down your throat and make you swallow every drop as I spill it.”

  He stroked my arse with his free hand and then slipped his fingers around the front of my body, rolling over my clit, his cock almost bumping against his thumb as he rocked between my legs.

  “Does that scare you, Maggie? My desires? What I want to do to you?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “What if I tie you up?” His voice was low, a warning. “Strap you down to my bed and make you come for hours on end.” His fingers didn’t stop rubbing tiny circles over my clit as he spoke. “Lean you upside down over the edge of the mattress, stretch that gorgeous neck, fist your hair and make you deep throat my cock. What then?”

  “Luke,” I begged, needing to come. His filthy words. His deep rumbling voice. Those clever fingers. I was so on edge, so wound up, but he held me just there, teetering, hanging. Begging.

  “I like it when you beg, Maggie.”

  “Neanderthal,” I said on a huff of pent up air.

  He chuckled. “You wanna come, sweetheart?”

  “Yes.”

  “How badly?”

  “Badly,” I admitted, unashamed that he’d brought me to a place where I was so honest.

  “You have no idea what you do to me,” he murmured.

  “Luke,” was all I could manage.

  A condom wrapper fell to the floor, then his cock was out from between my legs, no doubt being covered. But he never stopped teasing my clit. Not once.

  “When I spread your cheeks,” he said, his voice strained. “And enter you from behind.” Another swirl of his finger over my clit. “You are not to come.”

  “Luke,” I pleaded. “I can’t…”

  “You can, baby. I want to get my fill of you first.”

  I shook my head. His hand at my throat squeezed slightly.

  “Say yes,” he ordered.

  “Yes,” I hissed.

  “Don’t come,” he repeated, his thumb stroking across my hardened nub.

  I moaned. He spread my cheeks, his cock pressed into my pussy from behind.

  “Don’t come,” he said again and thrust hard.

  I bit my lip and tasted blood. His hand at my throat flexed, but didn’t tighten. The fingers between my legs moved lower, sliding either side of his cock as he plunged it deep inside of me. The heel of his palm pressed against my clit.

  I whimpered.

  “Don’t you dare come, Maggie,” he growled in my ear, then bit the lobe.

  “I can’t…” I panted. He just thrust harder.

  Sweating, gasping, moaning, shaking, I felt my mind leave my body. All thoughts vanished. Just the sensation of his bare chest - at some point he must have removed all of his clothing - against my back, hot slick skin against hot slick skin, the stretch of his engorged cock spreading my folds, banging against my g-spot, making my vision blur and my body tingle.

  A wave of sensation rose inside me on every grunt of breath puffed out down my back; a tidal wave I couldn’t fight. Tears coursed down my cheeks, my lips trembled, my hands and feet felt numb, my breath wheezed out between my lips.

  And still he didn’t stop. Touching me. Tormenting me. Fucking me. He ruled my body, he strung it out, he stripped me bare and remoulded my skin, making it too tight.

  “Come,” he said, his finger and thumb pinching my clit, sending me crashing, nose diving, head over heels under the wave, breathless.

  I made a sound I’ve never heard before. A keening wail, so loud, so guttural; from deep within.

  “That’s it, baby,” he said. “Ride me hard.”

  I realised I was, rocking back against him, seeking that next pump of his cock even more desperately then he’d been seeking to sink himself inside me. I moaned, my head hanging low between my shoulders, my forehead resting against the cool wall. The shudders subsided. My legs gave out. Luke wrapped a hand around my hip and held me upright.

  Then he pulled himself free of my body, the condom got frantically torn off, and he came all over my back, warm splashes coating me.

  “Fuck!” he moaned, the sound almost painful. “Jesus fuck,” he added, stroking himself off.

  His hand at my throat held me tenderly, a thumb sweep across my rapidly beating pulse letting me know he was aware of what he was doing. Even as his head came down on my shoulder and his desperate breaths coated my back, and his come started to dry on my butt cheeks.

  “Maggie,” he said, almost reverently. And then he swung me around, swept me up, and started carrying me towards his bedroom, taking the stairs two at a time.

  “Haven’t you had enough?” I said groggily.

  “Never,” he replied, smiling down at me.

  My lids grew heavy, my breaths evened out, and a smile swallowed me whole.

  “I’ve got you,” Luke whispered, and I realised he did.

  Because not once had I thought of my job. Of what waited back in the real world.

  Of Matt or James Whiting or even Investigator Everett.

  And not once of the ghost of Missy Drake trying to tell me something.

  Chapter 36

  I Didn’t Have An Adequate Answer

  Luke

  I watched Maggie sleep. My chest expandi
ng with a sensation I wasn’t familiar with. I rubbed at it absently, taking in the way her eyelashes fluttered against her smooth cheeks. How the flush of sex painted them an alluring shade of pink. How relaxed her body was snuggled up against mine. How perfectly she fitted.

  I ran a finger down her bare arm, seeing goosebumps rise in its wake. I reached down and lifted the blankets up, covering her from toes to chin. Her pulse beckoned.

  Sweet Jesus, she was perfect. And here we’d established that perfection wasn’t real. Well, fuck that. Maggie was as real as they came. Stunningly so.

  “You’re mine,” I whispered. She smiled in her sleep.

  Knowing I’d be sawing logs all too easily with Maggie in my arms and fearing a severe telling off by my woman should I forget to clean up our mess before station staff arrived in the morning, I reluctantly slipped out from beneath the covers and tiptoed from the room. The house creaked softly as I made my way downstairs, my feet feeling like they were floating a centimetre off the fucking floorboards.

  I picked up the used condoms and threw them in the rubbish, then grabbed Maggie’s gun and locked it away in the gun safe in my office. Then returned to the hallway for our clothes. Glancing out of the front window, I spotted Matt’s ute. It hadn’t been there earlier; the only reason I knew he still lived; he’d been home at some stage yesterday to uplift his car. And now he was back.

  I threw Maggie’s uniform on the sofa in the lounge and slipped back into my jeans and boots, then grabbing a jacket, I opened the front door and stepped out into the cold night air.

  Matt sat on the swing seat, staring off towards the front pastures. Towards section three. He wasn’t drunk. Or, at least, he wasn’t holding a bottle of whisky.

  “When did you get here?” I asked, leaning back against the railing of the porch.

  “Long enough to know you were busy.”

  Fuck. Maggie wasn’t going to like that one little bit.

  “Why didn’t you leave?” I demanded. He’d got real good at that recently.

  He pointed towards the front of his ute. I turned and stared at it for a long moment, my eyes slowly focusing on the dent on the hood.

  “What did you hit?” I asked, dreading the answer. If Matt had been drunk while driving, I might have to thump him.

  “I didn’t. First time I drove it was to come here. It turned up at my home like this.”

  “Someone drove it there, wrecked?”

  “Seems like it.”

  “Fuck,” I said on a heated breath.

  “I’m being set up,” Matt finally said, softly.

  “Because of this?”

  “And the wallet. And IPCA. I’m being fucking set up.” He had a point.

  “But what’s a dented hood got to do with it?”

  “Fencing,” he said.

  “What?”

  “There were bits of fencing in the grille.”

  “The fuck you say? Fencing?”

  “Section four fencing.”

  “The sheep.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But this doesn’t make any sense.” Why would anyone think Matt would sabotage our sheep? It’s just not in him. And besides, his profits would be hit too with Red Tussock’s name being dragged through the mud.

  “None of it does,” Matt said. Then tired brown eyes met mine. “What does Maggie think?”

  “You haven’t asked her?”

  “I can’t go near the station with that IPCA prick there. I can’t go anywhere. What does she think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So you just fuck her anyway? Even though she could arrest me at any moment.”

  “You’re innocent aren’t you?” I threw back.

  “Of this,” he said, as if he had other things to be guilty for.

  “Of everything, numbskull.”

  He snorted. “I’m not so sure anymore. Missy would disagree if she were here.”

  “Fuck Missy.”

  “Don’t fucking say that,” he growled.

  “Then don’t fucking mention Maggie and fucking in the same breath,” I growled back.

  “What, it’s not fucking? Sounded like it.”

  “Fuck off!” Truth is, I wasn’t so sure it was just fucking anymore. I sure as hell didn’t want to let her go and I’d never been that attached to the women I fucked before. But Maggie? Maggie was something else.

  Maggie was a drug I didn’t want to quit. Maggie was a need not a desire. Even knowing she was sleeping in my bed, upstairs, waiting for me to wrap my body around hers and hold on tight, filled me with a longing so deep I could barely breathe.

  I still wanted to do dirty things to her. I still wanted her to submit to my every whim in bed. But I was starting to think there was no end to my fantasies as far as Maggie Blackmore went. I wanted to try them all. Do it all. With her and no one else.

  “It’s not fucking,” I said, more for myself than Matt.

  “Well, fuck me,” he said and laughed.

  I started to smile, then my eyes snagged on the ute.

  “Who the hell would be doing this?” I said on the next breath.

  “I don’t know, bro. But I’m worried.” Not a lot worried Matt. Or not a lot that he’d admit to. Hearing him voice it now sent my protective side in to overdrive. I wanted to fix this for him. I wanted my brother back.

  “We’re gonna get through this,” I promised.

  “I’m not so sure, Lukey,” Matt said on a sigh.

  “Don’t you fucking give up on me now,” I growled. Then pointed to the second storey of my house. “We’ve got a fucking Auckland detective up there. Sound asleep in my bed. Would she be there if she thought you were guilty?” I shook my head. “That’s not Maggie’s style. Even if she hasn’t said it, none of this is flying with her at heart. She covered for you with Everett. She’ll…”

  “Everett and Sergeant Blackmore have a history. One that could work for us or against us.”

  “He the one who dicked her brother?” It all made sense. The way Maggie blanched when Everett mentioned Declan King. The fact that Michael Blackmore was no longer a cop. Was, in fact, mute. I could just picture that sanctimonious prick Everett messing with Maggie’s brother like that.

  “You know about Michael Blackmore?”

  “She mentioned him.”

  “Jesus, you do do more than just fuck her.”

  I swatted him across the back of the head. He mock whimpered. I punched him in the upper arm. Hard.

  “Ow,” he groused, rubbing it.

  I sank down next to him on the swing. Both of us staring off over the pastures. The stars blinked above our heads. The occasional car could be heard in the distance, the sound of its engine carrying across the moor from the state highway. The air felt chiller and chiller. Breaths huffing before lips.

  “Michael Blackmore was accused of going rogue on an undercover assignment,” Matt said.

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah. He was close to Declan King. That drug lord who killed heaps of people at the Auckland Court House six years ago?” Fuck me. That was who Declan King was. It’d been all over the news. Even down here. The Court House Massacre. “Well, Blackmore was close enough to King that certain people in positions of power believed he should have been able to prevent that bloodbath from happening. Everett hounded him. Dug up every dirty, belittling thing from his past that he could. Shit that was irrelevant. Shit that had nothing to do with him being a damn good cop. It was an utter clusterfuck, from what I’ve read. Then someone stepped forward, a witness, that proved Blackmore had no idea what was about to go down and by the time it all started, he was too entrenched to do a thing but try to protect those being hurt around him.

  “Took a bullet or two in the process. Saw death close up on a bloody scale. And then went through the court system, hounded by Everett, afterwards. People talked. Cops talked. His career was over even though it wasn’t.”

  “And he stopped talking,” I finished.

  “Just shut do
wn. Couldn’t take it. Severe case of PTSD, exacerbated by guilt complex. Misplaced guilt, but there you have it.”

  He shook his head and leaned back on the swing seat.

  “In any case,” he finally added, “Everett has an axe to grind with Maggie, because she made his life living hell. Defended her brother. Turned up at IPCA every weekend she had off. Investigated the case herself on her down time. Almost lost her rank and job. But it worked. The witness was found, Everett was shamed. Blackmore exonerated.”

  “Too little too late.”

  Matt nodded. “And now he’s here. Got something to prove and a police sergeant to dick with. How helpful would Maggie’s hatred of Senior Investigator Everett be, do you think?”

  He raised his eyebrows at me and waited.

  I didn’t have an adequate answer.

  Chapter 37

  Bloody JAFAs

  Maggie

  There were voices downstairs, floating up on the scent of bacon. I frowned as I stepped out of Luke’s bedroom, cocking my head and trying to determine how many people were here to witness my walk of shame. Again.

  The good news was I could only hear one other voice than Luke’s. The bad news was it sounded distinctly like the senior sergeant.

  I groaned and crossed the hallway to the bathroom, making quick work of freshening up and getting dressed. My uniform was sitting waiting for me. Even my boots. But not my gun and holster.

  With a sense of dread that made my stomach churn, I walked down the stairs praying Matt hadn’t found my gun abandoned on the hallway floor next to the condoms. It took everything in me to enter the kitchen and hold my head up high.

  The smell of frying bacon did help a little.

  “Morning,” I said, announcing my presence.

  “Hey, beautiful,” Luke offered, stepping away from the stove and wrapping a hand around my pony tail, tipping my head back for a quick kiss on the lips. I had the impression this would be a standard greeting from Luke. He had a thing for holding onto my hair.

  Ordinarily, I’d welcome that. But I was acutely aware of his brother watching our every move.