Walking up behind her, he stopped, watching the dog. “Kilroy, huh? How’d he get that name?”
She winced as she spun in her chair and stared up at him, then he mentally kicked himself for startling her, causing her to hurt herself.
He would have laughed at the shock in her eyes had he not been so damn grateful to have found her.
Stepping beside her, he reached out and cupped the back of her neck with his hand and leaned in to trace her lips with the tip of his tongue. Somehow, he managed not to shout with joy when she reached up and grabbed the back of his head, pulling him in and deepening the kiss immediately.
Dropping to his knees, he pressed his forehead against hers. “I love you, baby. I was so damned worried about you. We caught the guy who hacked Jordan’s school and torched your car, and are arresting more of the lesser assholes who joined in the harassment. By tonight, if they’re not in custody already. And a lot of them are.”
She sobbed as she threw her arms around him. “I decided this morning I was going to call you tonight.”
“Yeah? Well, good thing I saved you a call.” He tempered his comment with a smile.
The dog ran over to them, hesitant, nose in the air as he warily eyed Ethan. When she patted her lap he jumped right up, shoving himself between them and giving a wary growl.
“Shh, he’s okay,” she scolded, releasing Ethan. “Settle.”
The dog quieted immediately, but still looked wary.
Ethan held his hand out, palm down, for the dog to sniff. After a brief hesitation where the little dog’s nose seemed to be working overtime from a distance, Kilroy leaned in closer, going over every square inch of it.
She scratched him behind the ears. “See? He’s your daddy. Get used to him.”
Ethan slipped his other arm around Brita’s shoulders even as the dog continued sniffing. “Yeah, get used to me, buddy. And you won’t be the only one wearing a collar around our house.”
Brita stared at him, lips slightly parted in shock.
Before she could say anything, he plowed forward. Either this would nuke them, or make them for life.
“I love you, and I’m done being patient. You belong to me, and I’m marrying you, and that’s it. First, I’m collaring you. We’re doing that this Saturday, in front of our friends. You’re moving in with me, and we’ll try that for three months. Then either we get married, or we figure out where we’re going from there. Understand me, baby?”
She blinked, licking her lips, blinking again, finally nodding. “Yes, Sir,” she whispered.
Relief filled him. He pulled his hand from under Kilroy’s nose and cupped Brita’s cheek so he could kiss her again. Long and sweetly, deeply.
“Congratulations, you win the hide and seek award,” he teased, finally pulling a laugh from her.
Then he engulfed her in another hug.
“I love you, Sir,” she softly said.
“I love you, too. That’s why I’m putting my foot down. Maybe I should have done it years ago, after you got hurt, but I was willing to wait you out. I’m not waiting any longer, and I don’t think you really want me to wait, do you?”
“No, Sir. I don’t want you to wait.”
* * * *
There was a terrifying amount of freedom in admitting that. Yes, Ethan had been patient. Far more patient than most men ever would have been.
In Brita’s logic brain, the one with the training and common sense, she honestly hadn’t expected him to come after her. Not when she’d gone to great lengths to disappear. In the past, he’d always respected her, respected her space, never forced himself on her.
In the part of her brain where the pretzel logic took over, she knew she’d hoped he would have found her after the yarn order.
As if reading her mind, he spoke again. “And no, your friends here didn’t rat you out. I was an idiot. I received my vitamin order today and had a d’oh moment where I finally thought to check your Amazon account.”
“I’m sorry, Sir.”
Even saying that felt right.
Brita heard a slight commotion behind them as the sliders opened. It sounded like Sachi was scolding someone. When they turned, she spotted John and Oscar standing there, Sachi trying to pull both of them back inside.
“Everything okay, Brita?” John asked.
“I told you they’re fine!” Sachi said. “Get yer asses back inside!”
“We’ll go inside when Brita tells us she’s okay,” Oscar said.
“Oh my Goddess, you two jerks better not screw this up for her, or you’re making love to your hands for the next few months!”
Ethan finally started laughing. “We’re okay.” He stood and picked up Kilroy from Brita’s lap, tucking him under his right arm so he could offer Brita his left hand to help her stand. “Want to introduce me to your bodyguards?”
Brita slipped her arm around Ethan’s waist as she leaned against him. “Oscar, John, and Sachi, this is Detective Ethan Neri.” She looked up at him. “My fiancé, and my Sir.”
When his eyebrow arched at her, she smiled. “Sachi, John, and Oscar aren’t exactly kinky, but they’re a poly triad, and they have friends who are poly. I hope you don’t mind I told them about us.”
“Ah.”
Brita took Kilroy from him so he could step forward and shake hands with the men. When he tried to shake with Sachi, she went in for a bearhug instead.
“Fuck that polite nonsense shit. What took you so fricking long to find her, you putz? Are you Inspector Clouseau or something? I was about to start sending up goddamned smoke signals.”
“She hid pretty well.” Ethan explained the Amazon order to them.
“Oh.” Brita pulled out her phone. “Sorry. I need to change my shipping address for the order, I guess.”
“Well, are you staying for dinner?” Sachi asked. “We have plenty.”
Ethan’s blue gaze nailed Brita deep in her core. “Thank you for the offer, but I’m looking forward to getting her home. Can we take a rain check and come back this Sunday? Or you’re welcomed to come down so you can inspect my house and sign off on me.”
Brita knew he wasn’t even teasing, suspecting he’d quickly figured out Sachi was a non-kinky Tilly.
Sachi let out a barking laugh. “Ha! I like this guy. Of course you can take a rain check. And yes, we’d be delighted to come down for dinner on Sunday. I’ve got my dad’s kugel recipe I’ve been dying to make.”
When Brita looked, she spotted the other woman’s pleased grin. “Dang, girl. He’s even better-looking in real life. Soon as I opened the door, I was hit by his aura first. He crazy loves you. He’s also been worried about you.” She wiggled her fingers at Brita. “And now you’ve finally shifted out of dark and cloudy mode.” She hooked an arm around Brita’s. “I know you humor me, but I was right about Kilroy, wasn’t I?”
She had been. In an almost spooky way. “Yeah.”
“Then trust me when I say you two are meant to be together.”
“She does have a pretty darn good track record there,” Oscar said.
“Yeah,” John added. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t live with her and see it with my own eyes on a regular basis. She’s made a believer out of me.”
Brita tipped her head onto Sachi’s shoulder. “Thank you for protecting me from myself.”
“Hey, this is nothing. This was easy. I was all ready to have my dad talk me through disabling your car if I really thought you were going to run again. I knew you just needed some decompression time to sort out your priorities. Stress relief.”
“You were really going to disable my car?”
John snorted. “She’s a tricky witch. Don’t ever let her fool you.”
“You know, baby,” Ethan said, “I think I really like these friends of yours.”
Chapter Twenty
It took them less than an hour—with Sachi constantly sniping at Brita to sit down and let her and Ethan and the men pack for her—to get on the road.
If Ethan hadn’t taken an immediate liking to Sachi, seeing how she basically sheep-dogged Brita into taking it easy would have sealed the deal. And now Brita had more friends, open-minded friends who weren’t cops, who she could lean on and confide in.
One of the cars in Sachi’s driveway, parked facing the street and with the back end against the garage so the license plate wasn’t visible, turned out to be Brita’s replacement car. As they got it packed with all her things, and John moved his car so she’d be able to pull out, Ethan knew Sachi hadn’t been kidding about keeping her there by any means necessary.
Once her car was fully loaded, and they’d all had a last round of hugs, Ethan held Brita’s driver’s door open for her. He would follow her all the way back to his house in Sarasota and not take his eyes off her for a second until he had her safely inside.
“I’m really surprised you didn’t find me sooner,” she told him before getting in. “I figured you would have called Sachi.”
“You didn’t take your skeet gun. I did an inventory of the lockers. When I saw it in there, and your skeet stuff was in the office, it dropped from my mind.” He smiled. “You going to tell on me? That I’m a sucky detective?”
“I’ll hold it over your head,” Sachi snarked. “In case I ever need leverage against your ass.” She waggled a finger at him. “Keep that lady on a short leash for the next few days, huh? And we’ll see you Sunday afternoon for dinner.”
“You’d better believe it,” he said.
With Brita and Kilroy safely in her car and heading out, he followed her in his car.
On the way, he called Alisse to let her know.
“Is she okay? Where’s she been?”
“Brooksville. She’s fine, she’s safe.”
“I’m going to kill her!”
“No, I’ll explain later. Don’t bother calling her, because she has a burner phone. We’re driving home now, to my place, and I plan on having her all to myself for a serious talk over the next few hours.”
Actually, he planned on fucking her brains out for the next few hours, but he wasn’t going to say that to Alisse.
His next call was to work, to get an update and to let them know he was taking a personal day tomorrow. Also letting them know he’d found Brita and was bringing her home. If they needed to talk to her, they could call him.
After also updating Bill and Dave and Ed, so they’d stop worrying about her, and they could help pass word to their friends that she was safe and home, he tossed his phone into the passenger seat and relaxed, staring at the rear end of her car as they made their way south down I-75.
Yeah, he was a dumbass. He still should have contacted Sachi, if nothing else to ask her to call him if she heard from Brita.
Then again, Sachi likely would have lied to protect Brita, in the beginning.
I owe that woman a bottle of wine or a new shotgun or something.
He could barely see Kilroy’s ears, where the little dog kept looking out the passenger window and staring around.
Another good sign. He’d never wanted to push a pet on Brita, but had known her being alone all day wasn’t good for her. A dog would keep her active and give her company. He loved animals, but after hinting around a few times that maybe she should look into adopting one, he’d given up.
Yes, when they pulled into his driveway, he parked behind her car.
Not that he didn’t trust her, but he wasn’t taking any chances until he knew she wouldn’t run away again.
And he had a ring on her finger.
* * * *
It was a welcomed relief to be back at Ethan’s. He even walked up and opened her car door for her, helping her out and grabbing Kilroy’s leash before he could jump out.
“I guess I should call Alisse. She’s going to chew me out.”
“I already called her,” he said. “We told Jordan you were on vacation to relax, a cruise you couldn’t call from. I told her you’d call her tomorrow.” He leaned in for a kiss. “I have dibs on you tonight.”
“You do, huh?”
He smiled. “Yeah. I do.” His smile faded. “But in all seriousness, we need to get you a new phone tomorrow.”
“You have to work.”
“No, I don’t. I took the day off once I had you tracked down. Your cell number is compromised, anyway. We’ll get you a new one, put it in my name, then it won’t matter.”
Before, she would have bristled under his suggestion, argued with him, or flat-out refused it.
Except she was done with pretzel logic.
“Yes, Sir.”
Damn, it felt so good to admit she liked him taking care of her.
His smile returned, bright, wide, handsome. “Now those are two words that can stiffen my cock.”
He wouldn’t let her help unload. Instead, he sent her to the backyard with Kilroy, to walk him and get him used to his new home. Like Sachi’s, the yard was fenced in, and she could let him off his leash.
He immediately ran around sniffing everything, exploring, chasing leaves.
Brita didn’t even realize she was crying until Ethan came out a few minutes later and found her there.
He pulled her into his arms. “Honey, what’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry I scared you.”
“Yeah, we need to have a talk about that. I wish you’d told me you wanted to go away for a while instead of assuming you had to protect me. I would have helped you hide out. You could have come here, you know. Or we could have found you a place to stay. You didn’t have to go dark on me.”
“When I saw the message about Jordan, I panicked.”
“I know, and you played right into his hands. Unfortunately for the little fucker, he wasn’t anticipating me.”
“How’d you arrest him, anyway?”
“Simple. We baited the bastard. I reactivated your Facebook account. I posted as you and a pic of my car with the license plate obscured, as if it was your car, and a message that I knew would bait him. Said you were leaving the next day on a road trip. How you’d decided to fight back and how you wouldn’t let some little cowardly pussies scare you.”
“You did, huh?”
“Words to that effect. Taunted him. Suspected the forced timeline would make him act. Tom, Gary, Dave and I had a good old-fashioned stakeout at your place. Caught the guy driving in early in the morning. He’s a nineteen-year-old senior at Venice High. He was going to torch my car and then head to his classes.”
“How’d that work for him?”
“His father and step-mom are howling up a storm, but the kid is over eighteen. He started crying like a little bitch when we leaned on him and hinted he was looking at a minimum of twenty-five years hard time, no parole. He never in his wildest dreams thought he’d get caught. He was in line to be valedictorian in his class, and this has just cost him a full academic scholarship to MIT. His hacker buddies had built his ego up to the point he thought he was untouchable. When the state attorney’s office offered to cut him a deal to save him some jail time, he rolled and vomited up names like you wouldn’t believe. Managed to get that before he lawyered up, too.”
“How’d he break into Jordan’s school’s computer?”
“Oh, get this—his step-dad heads up their IT department. Kid installed a keystroke logger program on his step-dad’s laptop and got the school login info, then used that to scout through their system until he found a backdoor he could manipulate to make it look like someone hacked in. He’d actually had access since two days following the shooting, once he’d heard one of the students’ aunts was the shooter. That’s how he got your address, home and cell numbers, e-mail, Alisse and John’s employers, all of that.
“He found out about your parents through looking at their comments on your Facebook posts. He was bragging about it to his hacker buddies, who all encouraged him to take action, since he lived so close. Needless to say, the step-dad is not happy. He’s asked we throw the goddamned book at the kid. There might be a divorce in that man’s
near future, too.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope. It was that simple. That’s also how he got your car’s license plate. All that information was listed in Jordan’s file for emergency contact and approved pick-up contact info.”
She stared at him. “Then how did they not go after you?”
“Remember, my info isn’t in the computer, because I’m law enforcement. They have me listed in her physical file in the office, with the signed forms, and a notation in her computer file to look at that file for additional contacts. All he had to do was run a simple script to search the contact database for your name to find out hers and see all the information on file with her.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“Yep. It was literally an inside job.”
Brita got Kilroy settled in his crate in the living room with the TV on to keep him company and a stuffed Kong to keep him busy. She suspected there might be spanking in her future and didn’t want him to freak out.
Then she led Ethan to the shower, where she draped her arms around him.
“I missed you, Sir.”
“I missed you, too, baby.”
“I’m sorry I ran away like that. I thought I was doing the right thing, at the time.” It figured that just hours after she’d finally found her spine, Ethan had found her.
His hands splayed over her ass cheeks. “You fucking worried me.” His blue gaze stared down at her, intense, piercing, as he slapped her ass with his bare hand. “What do you think needs to happen to atone for that, hmm?”
She rose up onto her toes to kiss him. “I was thinking Sir should fuck my ass.”
He waggled his eyebrows at her. “If you were looking for the fastest way to an orgasm, congratulations, wish granted.”
His hands squeezed her ass, then one finger parted the seam between her cheeks. His hard cock rubbed against her pussy even as his finger probed, pressing against her rim but not breaching. “Maybe I should tie you up, fill you up, and not let you come, hmm?”