Trust In Lust Read online

  Another deep breath in and hold. I’m safe, he’s safe. No need to get carried away. Calm your shit. I blew out slowly, trying not to clench my teeth. This was stupid. Sutton was literally right there. Right fucking there and nothing was happening. Another breath. I think I’d rather take my shot than this stupid shit.

  Opening my eyes, I let the last deep breath out slowly, my heart closer to a steady rhythm now and a voice that sounded a lot like Sutton's sang an ‘I told you so’ through my head. I looked at Sutton. He looked... relaxed, his tall frame leaning back in the seat, upper body cocked sideways and I wanted to throw something at him just on principle.

  Something was… I frowned and looked over him again. He filled the whole driver’s side of the truck. His right leg stretched out a little further than the left, which meant his knee was bothering him again, and his broad shoulders angled towards the warehouse. He held the binoculars to his eyes with his left hand, elbow resting on the door while his right arm sat relaxed down by his side, hand tucked between his thighs.

  He’s too relaxed. Narrowing my eyes, I see his shoulders slightly shake. That son of a bitch. “You jackass.” I leaned forward through my knees and punched him in the arm.

  “Ow!” Shaking my hand out, I groaned, clutched it to my chest, and slumped back to the seat. “You’re a horrible man.”

  He chuckled and turned toward me. “You should know better than that by now.” He waved the binoculars at my hand.

  “You did that on purpose! You know how dangerous that shit is, and on a case? What were you thinking?”

  He barked out a laugh, his body shaking the truck, and pulled his right hand from between his thighs and waved my kit at me. “But you did it though. I knew you could, just needed the right motivation. Though if you’d have had your shields down, it’d have been a lot faster.”

  “You’ve lost your ever-loving mind. Mr. don’t be fucking reckless—” A light on the dash went off getting both of our attention and he leaned forward and grabbed our earpieces and handed me mine. I snatched it from him, glaring, and he grinned.

  “Stop smiling like you’re proud of yourself. You’re fucking unbelievable,” I bitched while tucking the piece into my ear and adjusting it. “What you did was reckless and could have put me out of commission for this whole fucking case. Then where would you be, genius?” I asked looking at him, only to see him not paying me any attention as he swiped at his phone.

  That giant ass… I picked his cup up and downed just as much of his coffee as I could in one go. “Over there all proud and shit like you did something,” I huffed then slid my tongue all the way across the lid.

  “You’re such a ray of sunshine.” He looked over and frowned. Reaching out, he snatched his cup away scowling and looked down at it. “Did you have to fucking lick it?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and smiled. “Yes, yes, I did.”

  He snorted and put it back in the cupholder, then twisted around and reached over the back seat. I adjusted the earpiece again as it crackled to life in my ear and immediately heard chewing on the other end.

  No. Hell no. I pulled it out and leaned over while he was digging around in the back, grabbed his and switched earpieces. Not this time. If I had to deal with locals as back up again, it would not be Phillips. Never again. Grinning, I popped his in and stuffed my feet back into my boots.

  When Sutton straightened back up into the front seat, he pulled a thermos out and shoved it in my face. “Keep your lips off mine.”

  “Awe, you do love me!” I took the thermos and twisted the top off, or tried. It didn’t twist. Trying again, I gave it everything and just ended up grunting.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Slumping back in the seat I held it out to him. “Did you have to put it on so tight?”

  “Gotta make you work for it.”

  I pulled back and chunked it across the truck at him instead.

  He caught it midair and shook his head. “So violent without caffeine.”

  “Just open the damn thing, Gigantor.” A deep chuckle sounded in my ear and I smirked. I got Bobby. He could have fun with Smacky McChomperson all up in his ear canal. I wanted to rub it in, but I’d let him think he did it to himself. He deserved it.

  Sutton waved the canister around. “Only if you tell me how much you really love me.”

  I growled. Really deserved it.

  “Sasquatch have a death wish?” Bobby asked, his accent southern and rich. I bit my lip to keep from laughing. Sasquatch. Best. One. Yet. Our game of ‘Name the giant’ never got old, and it pissed Sutton off just enough that I enjoyed it.

  “Good one, I think I’ll steal it.”

  He laughed again. “Morning, darlin’.” He was a cheerful morning person. I tried not to hold it against him.

  “Morning, Bobby.” I liked him. He was one of the few guys on the local force here I enjoyed being around. He felt genuinely good. The rest… not so much. Either they gave me shit for not being a ‘team player’ or had big ass chips on their shoulders because we were FBI. Bobby didn’t care though and didn’t get his panties in a twist that I didn’t want to be besties like his partner Phillips. Hard pass. He wasn’t a bad guy, but there was just something about him. I couldn’t figure out what it was, but he made me uncomfortable. And holy fuck was he annoying.

  “Y’all ready for this?” Bobby asked.

  “If it means getting me out of this truck, yes,” I said way too desperately and Sutton laughed.

  “That bad?”

  “I honestly don’t know which smells worse, Sutton or this disgusting alley we’re in.” I looked over at him and stuck my tongue out like a five-year-old.

  “Hey!” he yelled and Bobby just laughed. He always laughed.

  “Guess you don’t want this then.” He held the thermos back out to me.

  “Seriously?”

  “Here.” He waved it in the air at me again.

  “James Michael Sutton.”

  He grinned mischievously and my stomach tightened. It’s like his smile connected directly to my vagina and I clenched my thighs.

  “Open the fucking thermos.” I swear I was going to wipe that stupid sexy grin off his face one day. It would happen.

  “Nope.” His smile got even wider, taking over his face, and his eyes lit with excitement. Oh, for fuck’s sake. I turned straight in the seat to get away from it and crossed my arms. He’d won way too many arguments with his stupid face and he knew it.

  “Wait the beast out, love, he’ll give.” Ducking my head, I looked out the window to hide my grin. Bobby’s name-calling was so much easier to focus on than the weird reactions my body had to Sutton’s face now, but that would have been too easy. So I sat there and stared out the window trying to think of something else so I wouldn’t drool.

  I’d been crushing on him since the day I’d walked into his training program. At 24, he was already the best trainer the FBI had and had earned quite the reputation for himself.

  I’d been training with Mason since I was eight, and at that point in my life, it had been the distraction I’d needed. My Sixes were well and truly out of control by then and Mason, sixteen at the time, was scared to leave me alone. We had always been close. But after everything happened, everywhere he went, I went. Including training. He’d had his trainer, and I’d had mine.

  The physical exertion and concentration helped keep me out of my own head even at eight. Within months, I could focus enough past my own emotions to at least keep my wards up and the rest of the world out again. It also left me physically exhausted enough I didn’t have the energy for overload. We both knew what that meant and started devoting more and more time to training. If I wasn’t doing schoolwork, I was training in something or just flat out running. We had a treadmill in the living room before Christmas hit that year.

  By the time I’d reached seventeen, I’d outgrown the personal trainers, and the challenge wasn’t there anymore. I needed someone to push me harder. I’d found Sutton. We’d h
ad a party with the academy lawyers and now, four years later, he was my boss.

  And that crush? Full-blown lust now. But he wasn’t supposed to know, much less feel the same damn way. This was a disaster. Had been a disaster for the last six months. And here we were, stuck on a stakeout with me ignoring him so I didn’t hump his fucking leg because of his fucking stupid face. Stupid.

  “Ugh.” The truck rocked with Sutton’s movements and then I heard the spinning of the cap coming off. Looking back at him, he rolled his eyes and held it out for me.

  I smiled sweetly like I hadn’t just taken a depressing trip down memory lane and took it from him. “Thank you, Sasquatch.”

  Bobby howled in my ear while Sutton rolled his eyes again and turned back to his window. He did that a lot. Nothing like kindergarten name-calling to diffuse an awkward situation. I cringed.

  “Tell Bobby I said fuck off,” he said loud enough for the man himself to hear him.

  I put the thermos to my lips and smiled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “The fuck you don’t.” He shot me a bird and turned back to the window.

  “You started it,” I laughed. He ignored me and kept looking out the window so I took a sip of the hot sweet coffee and sighed. So good.

  “Told ya’. Man’s got it bad, darlin’.”

  I almost laughed but ignored the comment instead. If he only knew. Too bad Sutton’s moral compass was stronger than his sex drive. It was an outstanding quality to have in a partner. Most of the time.

  Pins and needles raced across my skin, lightly, almost like I’d sat still for too long and my legs had fallen asleep. Except… across my entire body? I frowned and rubbed my hands up and down my forearms. It didn’t hurt; I just didn’t know what it meant. This was new. And new? New was bad.

  “What’s wrong?” Sutton asked and muted our coms.

  “I’m not sure.” I shook my head and looked around. If this was a new six, then it was telling me something. What, I didn’t know.

  I looked out the windshield again. Nothing had changed; the parking lot was still vacant and only the trees swayed in the breeze, dancing solemnly in the warm night air. A weight settled in my stomach and I readjusted my vest. I didn’t like this at all.

  “Talk to me, J.”

  “Energy?”

  “Energy?”

  He sounded confused. He wasn’t alone, but I didn’t know how to describe it. “It’s feels like electricity running across my skin.” I held my arms out and let him see the hairs standing on end.

  “You mean like static electricity?”

  “Sort of?” No, that wasn’t it either, and I shook my head again. “No. Electricity. Just, low? Have you ever used one of those muscle stimulator things without the gel?”

  He nodded warily, trying to follow.

  “It feels like they’re shocking you, right?”

  He nodded again.

  “That. Except everywhere.”

  His face grew serious and his brows furrowed. “Is this good or bad?”

  “Fuck if I know.” I couldn’t imagine it being anything good though. It felt like my skin was crawling.

  “Well, lower your wards and find out.”

  “Yeah,” I nodded, searching the lot one last time before closing my eyes. “I'm on it.” I pulled back, slowly unwrapping my barriers from around me. I loosened them enough to search the surrounding area, but nothing popped; so I reached out further towards the small patch of timber, the warehouse and rock yard beyond. Nothing. My chest tightened, and I looked over to him.

  “Nothing. There’s no one there.”

  He frowned and picked his binoculars back up to do another sweep, and I did the same as my stomach flipped. I’d spent my entire life figuring out how to translate my fucked up sixes. What they meant, why, and how to use them to my advantage.

  I was classed as a Sixer, someone whose abilities were solely within their mind. Like an extra sixth sense. Get it? Sixth sense? Sixer? Yeah, I didn’t think it was funny either. It just labeled us and the stigma of being a Sixer made our lives hell just as much as the sixes themselves did. People feared us. What we could do. What we could see. We knew their secrets. We knew the things they did. The things they craved that were so abhorrent their conscientious minds couldn’t make sense of. We knew. It made forming connections with loved ones hard. Friends were impossible to keep. And relationships were a disaster.

  We all usually had some form of intuition as a base, but anything else to go along with that varied from sixer to sixer. I was an Empath, amongst other things. If it had emotions, I could sense it and, with years of practice, could pinpoint its location in my mind like radar. Or at least that’s how I explained it to Sutton. If you found a simile that worked, you stuck with it. Men.

  All that hard work had won me a seat exactly where I was right now; doing the only thing I wanted out of life. I couldn’t ask for a better partner; he didn’t quite understand how it all worked, but he accepted it. Accepted me. Trusted me.

  Seven months ago, I’d have said I deserved that trust; I’d earned it. I’d have said I had the skill to back it; I did. Until a new six emerged two weeks before we left Harmony. Needless to say, it wasn’t of the normal variety. If you could call any of this other shit normal, that is.

  He’d chased me down and cornered me in my room the day before graduation. He’d noticed. Imagine telling the man you’d spent everyday training with for the past four years that you’d lost your virginity and now some seriously fucked up shit was happening. Oh, and that attraction issue I had? Wasn’t so one sided after all. I could feel his cock stir every time I bent over now. Thanks for never telling me, asshole.

  That was six months ago. He’d said we had this. That he wasn’t going anywhere. That we’d figure it out.

  He was an arrogant bastard.

  We hadn’t figured shit out. Except how awkward masturbation was now. He could hear me, and I could feel him. Control when I sensed him getting off in the next room was hard enough, but my wards solved that problem.

  Feeling what he felt? The physical sensations of his body’s response, growing hard, the tightening, the pull.

  Me feeling someone have an orgasm was feeling that orgasm tear though my body, basically having an orgasm myself. Wards didn’t do shit for that.

  Yet it was ‘inappropriate’ for me to do anything about it. Inappropriate? I’m sorry and setting rules for masturbation wasn’t? We fucking sailed past appropriate behavior a while back, bonehead.

  The stinging along my skin grew worse bringing me back to the present. It almost burned now. Almost hurt. This was definitely bad. My heart beat kicked up, and I put the binoculars in my lap and looked at the skin on my arms.

  Something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. Everything else in me said we were safe; no warnings going off inside by body. We had enough going on as it was. Now this. Another curve ball thrown into the mix I didn’t understand. This was getting out of control. We didn’t have this. I didn’t have this. And if I didn’t have this, it could get Sutton killed.

  The truck rocked, and I jerked my head around to see what was wrong. His back was straight, and he was leaning forward looking towards the warehouse, his mouth twisted into a nasty snarl while his body radiated an anxious excitement.

  “Is it…?” I trailed off as the blood ran cold in my veins. I’d just checked the entire area. It couldn’t be.

  Chapter Three

  “Yup,” he said then slowly turned toward me. “Went back in, but he’s here.” Moonlight danced with a savage, primal glint in the depths of his dark eyes. His lips curved in a vicious grin, teeth shining, while eagerness rolled off him in waves.

  He was excited.

  Despite the fear inside me at what the impact of not being able to sense Hicks meant, I was still in awe of Sutton. He was a predator, a brutal force of nature, and I hoped, with every piece of my soul, I’d never be on the receiving end of that look.

  He leaned
over the seat and grabbed his gear then reached for the door.

  “Hold on, Rambo.”

  His hand froze, and he looked over, waiting.

  “My wards are down.”

  Confusion twisted his features and poured from him tainting his excitement. He really didn’t get the problem here?

  “You aren’t this dense most of the time.” I sighed and massaged the bridge of my nose. “They’re down, Sut, and he’s right there.” I pointed across the lot for emphasis. “They are down, he’s right there, and I got nothin’.” I stared at him and let it sink in. I couldn’t sense Hick’s. To me, that was a big problem. The implications of there being people I couldn’t see had my stomach swimming with nausea.

  Relief flooded my senses and brought me up short. Relief? How was he relieved? This changed everything. I narrowed my eyes at him and seriously debated if he needed a psych eval. If his relief had been a flood, then the rush of exhilaration emanating from him that followed was a tsunami. And only one thing gave him that rush.

  “No. No, that’s a bad idea.”

  “How?”

  “Going in blind after him? That’s how, idiot.”

  “You realize people do this shit all the time right? Not everyone is lucky enough to have a little Sixer in their pocket.”

  “Not everyone goes after the people we do either. I’m not saying you’re not capable and I’m not no; I’m saying at least stop and think it through. I can’t sense him. That’s not normal. He’s the variable here. Think about it, big guy.”

  He dropped his gear in the seat and checked on Hick’s through the binoculars. I could see his jaw slightly shift so I knew he was at least giving some thought to it before running off like a virgin to a stripclub. We needed an alternative plan here. I swear, half my job was reigning in a giant fucking toddler.

  Normally, he led, fielded physical threats, and leveled the playing field. While I kept my wards down, did threat assessments, and found our clearest route. That only worked if there weren’t many people around though. Crowds wreaked havoc on my senses and if it got too bad, I was out of commission. So the wards stayed up, we tackled everything together, and I just played GPS with my intuition. Detective TomTom—Harbinger of Doom. Please reroute...