Violating this rule caused all kinds of problems, and I was old enough to know better.
Yet I also knew that I was going to fuck him the first chance I got. Hard, mean, and truly as deviant as I could muster fucking was exactly what Mathias Montgomery had to look forward to.
I woke with a start, my shoulder stinging like the wound was fresh instead of the neatly healed scar it was. I sat up carefully as the pain drifted away. The dreams were always the same, always painful.
Shoving the covers back, I pulled my damp T-shirt over my head. I hadn’t dreamed about the night I’d been shot in nearly five years. I dropped my hand from my shoulder, aware that I’d been rubbing it, and left my bedroom. My apartment was small but neat and minimal.
Clutter has been my mortal enemy since grade school. Neat and orderly represented control, and that’s something that every woman needs. My childhood had been full to the brim with clutter, mostly my mother’s. She’d kept everything, and it took months of careful planning to remove most of the crap from the house after she was gone. At first, my father had been militant about keeping things just as she had left them. I guess he’d stopped caring when he’d finally realized that she wasn’t coming back.
It was then that I’d learned that my brothers had hated the junk as much as I did. I can hardly describe how relieving it had been to throw out years and years’ worth of magazines. As an adult, I knew that we dealt with our mother’s abandonment by cleansing the house of her. It was just too bad cleaning out our minds hadn’t been so easy. All three of us had abandonment issues, and none of us have ever come close to getting married. I had serious doubts that either of my brothers would ever marry.
I pulled a soda from the refrigerator, popped the tab, and drank half of it standing in my kitchen. Caffeine was a mistake, especially at three in the morning, but it tasted good. Of course, pouring a couple fingers of rum in it would’ve been nice too.
Clad only in my panties, I walked to the hallway and stopped in front of the floor-length mirror there. With a grimace, I turned on the light and stared at myself. My eyes immediately went to the puckered flesh of my scars. One on my shoulder, another on my hip, and then the last one on my thigh. Being shot in the line of duty had ended my career in law enforcement. It had also changed me in ways I’d never thought possible.
I glanced over my breasts and then the rest of my body. I worked out but ate like a pig. I’d never really been able to gain weight or grow tits. I was probably in line for more attitude when breasts were being given out in heaven. I turned out the hall light. Staring at myself in the mirror was the kind of activity that would lead to a mental disorder of some kind.
By the time I reached the bedroom, I’d concluded that my mood and my bad dream were all his fault. If he hadn’t gotten me all worked up I wouldn’t have dreamed about the shooting. Mathias Montgomery had to be removed from my mind, but it wasn’t my mind that he’d really infiltrated…it was my body. I’d been attracted to him before he said his name. When I’d thought he was a criminal. Me, the daughter of a cop, attracted to a criminal. My father would roll over in his grave.
But he was no criminal. I tipped up my soda and downed the rest. Thinking about him was not good for me…at the rate I was going I’d go back to bed and have obsessive sexual dreams about him.
Mathias “sex on a stick” Montgomery was going to be a permanent fixture in my life, and it was very important that I put him in the right place in my mind. Professionally, I couldn’t afford to lose focus. My position at Holman Gallery was new, too new to mess with. I had a finite amount of time to cement myself as the assistant director of the gallery. When Mercy Rothell had taken over the directorship of the gallery in August and slid me into her place, the opportunity took my breath away. I’d known it was coming for months, and when it happened it still knocked me off kilter a little.
Disgruntled, I went to my bedroom and pulled on workout clothes. If I wasn’t going to sleep, I might as well get some time in on the treadmill. My apartment building had one of the best in-house gyms in Boston. In fact, I’d chosen the building because of the gym.
My hip was sore from my tumble with Mathias, but since it was more my fault than his, I couldn’t hold it against him. I pulled off my sweat-damped T-shirt and dropped it on the floor beside my shorts. Four miles on the treadmill and I was still wound tight with emotion.
When I’d first moved to Boston, I’d hoped that the change of scenery would help clear my mind and push my past firmly behind me. It hadn’t. In fact, if anything, being so far from my two brothers had only intensified the desperate feeling that I’d carried around with me since I’d been shot. I could still feel the hot pavement underneath me when I thought about that day.
I don’t remember how long I lay there on that road. I do remember my brother, Stan, combing road tar from my hair in the hospital. The patient and thoughtful look on his face lingered with me even six years later. I’d been a cop in Savannah, Georgia, for less than two years when a traffic stop turned into my worst nightmare.
Wes, the middle child of our family, had told me repeatedly that I shouldn’t have been out on the street to begin with. That had only made me want it more. How many times in our lives had I strived so hard to prove him wrong? I’d proved that day that I could take care of myself; the price, however, had been a horrible one to pay.
My partner lay dead on the road because we’d both underestimated a seemingly mild-mannered history teacher. The altercation we’d had earlier in the day with the man hadn’t led us to believe he would be dangerous. To this day, I still had no clear reason why the man had come out of his car firing at us, and I never would. Because the same day I’d been shot in the line of duty, I took a life.
I briefly planted my hands flat against the wall under the showerhead before I reached down and turned the water on. Too hot, but it helped. I sighed softly when my muscles started to relax under the stinging spray. Having my day start before the sun even came up wasn’t the ideal Saturday; in fact, it wasn’t ideal for any day.
I left the shower and started to grab a towel to dry off, and my doorbell rang. Disgusted, I went into my bedroom, grabbed a T-shirt that would cover my ass, and pulled it over my head as I headed toward the door. The bell sounded again as I entered the small foyer of my apartment. The only thing worse than an ass-crack-of-dawn visitor was an impatient ass-crack-of-dawn visitor.
One peek out the peephole told me that the visitor was far more than just impatient. I jerked off the chain and undid all four of the bolt locks as quickly as I could. Throwing open the door, I glared at Mathias Montgomery.
“So, do you make a habit of skulking around in the night?” I leaned against the door and inspected him. He’d come to my door; I figured I could look at him like a fresh blueberry pastry if I wanted to.
“It’s at least six o’clock in the morning.” He glanced me over and swore under his breath. “Do you make a habit of answering your door practically naked?”
“I’m not naked.”
“No. You’re soaking wet in a T-shirt. Which in any man’s book is actually better than being naked.”
I took a step back as he moved forward and actually jumped when he shoved the door shut. “I didn’t invite you in, Mr. Montgomery.”
“Yeah, and it was rude of you.”
“Rude of me?”
“Yes. Rude. You stand naked in a doorway and then don’t have the decency to invite me
