Page 20 of Frankie and the Fed (Untamed Rascals #3)
The taste of her, her cries, the way she gave herself over to me so completely carved into me, leaving a hole in my being that only she would be able to fill.
Fuck.
I climbed onto the bed, pushing one of her legs down, and did my best to line us up. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t an exact fit. She was fucking perfect—the way her slick pussy slid along my thigh.
“Shit.” I didn’t go slow. There was no build-up. There was only us and the rough, desperate rhythm of our bodies together.
Slick.
Fast.
I grabbed her breast—hard—twisting the nipple, pulling it tight, giving her that pain she responded to so beautifully.
She cried out, arching and pushing her hips against me.
“That’s it. You’re doing so good for me. I know you can come again. Come with me.” My voice was soft, a stark contrast to my rough treatment of her, and she screamed my name as she fell apart again, taking me with her into bliss .
I collapsed on top of her, catching her mouth in a languid kiss, savoring her as I ran my hands down her side and pulled us over, pillowing her head on my arm.
This may be all I ever got of her. The feeling weighed heavily on me as I clung to her while she slipped into sleep.
“You can cook?” Frankie asked the next morning—or was it afternoon? Light spilled in through the dining room patio door, lighting her messy hair and rosy cheeks with a golden hue.
Angel.
Devil, more like it. She managed to thoroughly distract me from my investigation, and I needed to do something to regain control and get back on track. Breakfast was just the thing to butter her up and get her talking.
“I grew up a girl in a mormon family. I can cook, sew, drag a handcart across the plains in summer in four layers of handmade clothing while dehydrated with grown ass men watching me like a hawk. I’m a woman of many limited, misogynistic talents.
I haven’t cooked for more than just me in a long time, though. After my dad left the church, dinnertime became fight about the church time, and I haven’t really shared a meal with anyone since.” I flipped the omelet like a pro.
I hadn’t meant to reveal so much about myself, but something about Frankie made me want to tell her everything.
My soul cried out to her in a way I’d never felt before, like they were already one .
I shook off the thought. “This meal was one of the things I had to learn when I was twelve. The boys played basketball while we made breakfast for dinner and then had to serve it to their sweaty asses.”
I tested the eggs, and when they were perfect, I slid them onto a plate with sliced apples and strawberries. Frankie did not have a well-stocked kitchen.
“I probably would have dumped the eggs on one of the boys’ heads and then ran away from the whole thing,” she said while examining the omelet.
“Someone did. She’s a tattoo artist now. She’s very talented.” I cracked the eggs for my omelet.
“Give me her name, and I’ll look her up. I’ve gotten tattoos from artists all over the world, and I love to see what kind of work different artists are doing,” she said, waiting patiently for my food to be done so I could join her for breakfast.
All very domestic and, surprisingly, not panic inducing.
I shook the thought off. This couldn’t be more than right now. That lonely life was real, and I needed to accept that I would be going back to it as soon as I finished this assignment.
“Tell me about your tattoos,” I said, to direct the conversation away from me and cover the discomfort I was feeling at my own sorry life.
That did it. She dug into her food when I joined her and started telling me the story behind each one.
Some were simply there for pleasure, while others held meaning. Every one of them told me something about her, even if none of that information was useful to my investigation .
I still tucked it all away to pull out on the cold, lonely nights that were sure to come.
“This one is from a trip to New Mexico. Honestly, I don’t fully remember that trip. Something about my telescope breaking. I know I went there for—” she cut her story off abruptly.
“Went there for?” I prompted. If this was the trip I knew about, it should be an interesting story.
“Aliens. I’m done.” She stood and grabbed our plates, rushing over to the sink to clean them out.
I walked over to help her, not letting her get away. This was the first time she had hit on one of the red flags in her file, and I couldn’t just let it go. Guilt niggled at me, but I brushed it away and let the undercover agent out to play.
“Aliens?” I asked as I scraped the food from a plate.
Her shoulders slumped, and she kept her back to me, just standing there in silence.
“Fine,” she said, rounding on me. “I don’t tell people this. It’s… I don’t know, embarrassing, I guess.”
I set the plate down and came up to her, wrapping my arms around her. “Don’t be embarrassed, I want to know everything about you.”
It was frustrating how true those words felt. I shouldn’t want to know these things for myself. This was just an assignment.
She pulled away to sit, defeated. “I was out there to hunt for aliens, and the worst part is that I think I found some and they erased my memory.”
I snorted a laugh before covering my mouth and reining it in. I cleared my throat. “Ok. Tell me about it.”
This wasn’t exactly what I would have expected. She found a government facility that even I didn’t have clearance to know about. That I knew it existed at all was a credit to my sleuthing abilities. Abilities that fled anytime Frankie was around.
“I don’t appreciate you laughing at me,” she said, trying to sound stern, but looking more like an angry cat.
That was to say, I knew she had claws, but she was just so adorable I couldn’t help wanting to pet her anyway.
“I’m sorry. I’m listening.” I took her hand and drew her out of her chair and to the couch in the living room. I hoped sitting practically on my lap would help draw her out.
She didn’t protest when I arranged her legs over mine and pulled her in close.
“Last year… No, I need to start earlier than that. When I was five… wait, that’s probably too early.” She chewed on her bottom lip, and I wanted to take her place and be the one to plump it up.
“So, you believe in aliens.”
“Well, it only makes sense. The crazy part is that other people don’t!
” She burst out, and I knew I had landed on just the right thing.
“There’s simply no way we are the only intelligent species in the universe.
The question isn’t ‘are aliens real.’ The question is who are they and have they come to Earth before? ”
I rubbed her leg, feeling the slight prickle of regrowing hair as she talked.
My first partner drilled into my head that sometimes the best interrogation was when you would sit quietly and let the perp talk themselves into a corner.
I didn’t have to try to stay silent now. She seemed so passionate about this that I couldn’t help being drawn in .
“So, I joined some message boards, figuring most of it is crap, but I know how to weed through things to get to the truth. Any time there’s a semi-credible lead, I go track it down.
It’s fun, I meet lots of people, get out of the house, but this one seemed like it was it.
” She seemed almost angry by the end of her story, though I didn’t know why.
“It wasn’t?” I prompted when she stopped.
“That’s the thing. I have this tattoo, so I know I went.
” She traced the flying saucer on her arm.
“I just can’t remember how the trip ended, except that my equipment is damaged and my last night there is a blur.
Sometimes I have dreams about it. Someone else is with me, and we find what we are looking for but get arrested.
Then, some shadowy figure saves us. I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.”
Based on what her file said, she broke into a government facility, and the cameras went out for her escape.
This was what put her at the top of the suspect list, and why Taggart pushed so hard for me to find evidence linking her to the smugglers.
It was probably foolish, but I wanted to believe her.
“Yeah, I sound insane.”
“No,” I said, tilting her head up so I could place a kiss on her forehead. She hadn’t put her wig back on in the light of day, and without it she looked smaller somehow, vulnerable.
I pulled her closer to me, a protective instinct I didn’t even know I had bursting through me to the surface. “You sound passionate, and if I recall correctly, I liked your passion. ”
It wasn’t a lie, even if it felt like one. Maybe that was more guilt I felt. I didn’t know. The lines blurred more and more by the second, and I couldn’t find my way up anymore.
She laughed and relaxed with the validation. God, she was so beautiful. I couldn’t resist leaning down and kissing her again, soft and slow, with no greater motive than to taste her and feel her squirm in my arms.
Her lips were plump and reddened when we broke our kiss, her eyes glassy, and her gorgeous hair slightly mussed.
Before I could stand and drag her to the bedroom, the door opened, and her roommate came in.
“Oh!” Lily exclaimed as she hung her bag by the door. “Sorry. I didn’t know you had someone over.”
Frankie pushed away from me like she was embarrassed to be seen curled up with me, and I was surprised by how the pain of that sliced into me.
This wasn’t real.
I shouldn’t have had to keep reminding myself of that.
Frankie looked… guilty. Like I was the problem. Fuck.
“I was just leaving,” I said, the words torn from me, but I knew I had to. I was the odd man out. I didn’t belong here.
“Oh, you don’t…” She didn’t finish her sentence, though. I tried not to read into it. Her roommate startled her. We weren’t dating. I wasn’t here to date. I had fucking work to do.
God, this was a mess.
I ordered a ride home. Thank fuck I didn’t drive.
I did my best to hold it in and not let the driver know what a mess I was, but hot tears ran down my cheeks anyway.
I didn’t even know why.
This. Was. Just. A. Job.
Yeah. Right.