Wicked Need (The Wicked Horse #3) Read online

  But I watch because she lets me and because I could watch her for hours doing nothing. Pish was already pissed at me for ditching work last Friday, as well as missing Monday and Tuesday of this week. But I pointed out to him that I never take vacation—which is true because there’s nowhere I want to be—and that shut him up. I also told him I was taking Wednesday too.

  Which I did and enjoyed thoroughly. That was the day after the spectacular fuck-fest that occurred between Cat, Logan, and me. Whereas I thought the three of us would go all night, turns out we all fell into an exhausted heap because of the massive orgasms that ripped through our little group. I think I dozed with my head on Cat’s chest and her playing with my hair. When I woke up, Cat was sound asleep and Logan was gone. I noted the way Cat was curled into me and I was spooned around her, and I figure if Logan saw that, he was being the good guy and jetted out of there so we could be alone.

  So yesterday… Cat and I did nothing but relax and recover from the events of the last few days. She wasn’t going to start with Callie and Sloane until the next day as Callie was having a bunch of shit moved from a warehouse over to the campaign headquarters for them to organize.

  Cat and I hung at the apartment all day, wore sweatpants, ordered Chinese takeout, and binged on Netflix. The only sign of energy either of us exhibited was while we were watching Jessica Jones. I was sitting on the couch, my legs propped on the coffee table. Cat was lying on her side, her head on my thigh.

  Just as Jessica and Cage were getting it on for the first time, Cat shifted, rolled, and came up on her knees beside me. With her face still turned toward the TV screen and watching Cage take Jessica up against the wall, she palmed my crotch with her hand and started rubbing.

  My breath froze and I held still.

  Deliriously happy she initiated not only because my cock was about to feel really good, but also because Cat was embracing her sexuality in a natural manner. She was doing something she wanted to do with no one prodding her or expecting anything.

  So she blew me right there while I watched Jessica Jones. Well, fuck… couldn’t watch it. Couldn’t concentrate on anything but her wet mouth on me, so we had to rewind.

  “What’s the smile for?” Cat asks.

  I blink away the memory, coming back to focus on her watching me in the bathroom mirror as I lean against the doorjamb. Not sure why I’m still loitering because I could have left for work already, but like I said… very much enjoying the view.

  “Just thinking about that blow job you gave me yesterday on the couch,” I tell her truthfully.

  She beams back at me in the mirror as she puts the cap back on her mascara. “It was really good, wasn’t it?”

  “Best ever,” I murmur, and I think it was. But then again, each encounter with this woman just keeps getting better and better.

  She turns, placing the mascara in a black, quilted bag laying on my cramped vanity. Resting her butt against the counter ledge, she places her palms to either side and says, “Listen… I want to reach out to Kevin and demand a copy of the signed will he says supposedly exists.”

  “I thought we were going to wait for Bridger—”

  “I’m tired of waiting, Rand,” she interrupts. “I’m sorry… but this is my life and I want to get this settled so I can move on.”

  “Move on from here?” I ask her quietly, my throat aching just pushing those words out.

  She gives a quick shake of her head. “No. Not from here, here… I mean like move on from Samuel, his family, and everything that was my life.”

  I instantly inflate with relief and wonder if subconsciously I hadn’t been pushing the will aside because I was afraid she would leave after it was worked out. But I can’t keep her here against her wishes to move on, whether it be from my apartment or from a bad life, and I swore to myself that I’d help her out as best I could.

  “Let me call Bridger really quick and see if he’s got anything to offer before you call, okay?” I ask her as I pull my phone out of my pocket.

  She nods and I dial Bridger’s cell, putting it on speakerphone so Cat can hear when he answers, “What’s up?”

  “Just checking in to see if you got to look over the copy of that trust agreement I brought you?”

  “Sorry man,” he says with true apology in his voice. “I’ve had a bit of an issue going on at The Silo and just haven’t been able to get to it.”

  “What’s going on?” I ask, completely feeling a bit guilty I haven’t been there in so long. Bridger hasn’t said a word, and I wasn’t poking the bear on that.

  He sighs into the phone. “I don’t even know if issue is the right word or not, but I accepted a new patron into the club upon a recommendation of a few of our more established members. In fact, he bought himself a platinum membership, as well as memberships for his harem… four of them in all.”

  My head snaps over to Cat, and she has the same raised eyebrow look that I do.

  “Did you say harem?” I ask with a laugh.

  “I don’t know what the fuck you call it, but the man has four women he brings in with him, and they all sort of… belong to him, I guess. It’s fucking weird, but hey… you know our motto… no judgment.”

  “Then what’s the issue?”

  “He’s got this girl… woman, really, but young. Twenty years old and supposedly a virgin. Won’t let anyone fuck her. They can do other things do her, but not fuck her. Rumor is going around he’s going to auction off her virginity and everyone’s in an uproar, wanting it for themselves. I’ve been at The Silo every night just making sure I keep an eye on things. But seriously, reviewing that document just slipped my mind.”

  “It’s cool,” I tell him, but inside, I wish he’d have some better advice.

  “Listen,” Bridger says, his voice coming through the speakerphone in that slightly tinny way, “mind if I give it to Jenna to look at? She’s good and it will be a professional eye on it.”

  Jenna’s a former college classmate of Woolf and Bridger’s who went on to law school, and she’s also Bridger’s attorney for the business. She plays at The Silo too—quite well I know from personal experience—and if Bridger trusts her to review it, then so do I.

  I look at Cat and give a nod, telling Bridger, “Yeah, that’s fine. Cat’s going to go ahead and reach out to Kevin to ask for a signed copy of the will that supposedly cuts her out.”

  “Sure that’s a good play?” Bridger asks.

  “I have to,” Cat pipes up, and I give her a smile. “I need to move this forward.”

  “Hi Cat,” Bridger says, his voice softening. He always had a soft spot for her and I wonder if he’s fucked her. I’ve never seen him do so and he rarely participates at The Silo. But still, plenty of times Cat and Bridger were there and I wasn’t, so it’s conceivable.

  “Hi, Bridger,” she says back, smiling at me. “And thank you for helping.”

  “My pleasure, darling. Now I’ve got to get to work.”

  We disconnect. Cat pushes off from the counter and moves past me to get out of the bathroom. She does this with a hand coming to my waist where it rests softly for a brief moment, and I like to imagine that she did it for no other reason than she wanted to touch me.

  I follow her out, through the living room and to the kitchen where she pulls her phone out of her purse.

  “I’m calling Kevin right now.”

  I wordlessly come to stand beside her, my hand going automatically to her lower back where I rest it lightly. A sign of support. A way to give her strength.

  She taps her finger on the screen, pulls up Kevin’s number and poises her finger above it. “I’ve got both Kevin and Richard’s contact information in case something happened to their father.”

  I nod because I can’t imagine any other reason she’d have to call them, but I see her eyes filled with unease. It hits me all of a sudden why she would even bother to tell me that.

  My hand covers hers, and I pull it back from the phone slightly. “Cat,” I say, m
y tone soft but censuring. “I’d never think you’d do that.”

  Call up one of those brothers.

  Sons to your husband.

  Because you wanted to fuck them.

  She gives me somewhat of an apologetic grimace. “I just… you don’t know me, Rand, and I didn’t want you to ever think there was anything—”

  “Just stop,” I say roughly as I squeeze her hand in mine. “I do know you, Cat. Now make the damn call.”

  She studies me for a moment, and I stare back at her. She finally gives me a nod and pulls her hand free so she can tap on Kevin’s name. She hits the speakerphone button, affording me the same courtesy I just gave her during my call to Bridger.

  It makes me feel like we’re a team.

  Unit.

  Couple.

  Really, Rand? You’re letting your head go there?

  The phone rings twice and then Kevin is answering. I expected his voice to be higher, maybe even effeminate, because I can’t help but view him as a little pussy for fucking his father’s wife. I expect he’s ugly, small, and weasely.

  Instead, his voice is vibrantly deep, and I know in an instant that he’s none of the things I expected.

  “Catherine,” he says smoothly, as if he’d just greased his throat with melted butter. “I thought you’d be calling me. Please tell me you’ve reconsidered my offer to stay here in Jackson.”

  Both of our gazes rise from the phone to focus on each other. Cat rolls her eyes in exaggerated fashion, and I grin at her.

  “Kevin,” Cat says in her most regal, sophisticated voice. I expect she learned to talk this way being married to Samuel and running in wealthy circles. “I want a copy of the will you claim has cut me out of my inheritance as your father’s wife.”

  “So you’re not considering my offer?” he asks, sounding almost hurt.

  “Kevin,” Cat snaps to focus him. “I want a copy of the signed will and I want it immediately. When can you get it to me?”

  “Sorry, love,” he says, and I can hear the smirk through the phone. I hope I get to wipe it off him one day. “But it’s in my father’s home office in Vegas and of course, I’m here in Jackson. Once I return, I’ll be glad to get you a copy.”

  “Wrong, Kevin,” Cat sneers at the phone, and I can actually feel the rage vibrating off her. “I was in Vegas this weekend. In my home… your dad’s office… and the will you purport he signed isn’t there.”

  She stops, and I’m surprised she had the fortitude to do so. I thought she might blurt out that we saw the original trust agreement and pour-over will signed not long after the wedding, but she didn’t. She holds that close to the vest, and I think that’s smart. No sense in him knowing exactly how fired up she is or that she has a copy of what is probably the one and only estate document in existence. It’s best to let him think she’s just a girl poking around… not someone to be reckoned with.

  Kevin’s silent. For a moment, I think he’s disconnected. Cat and I look at each other, and I give a slight shrug to my shoulders. Finally, he asks in a voice filled with icy disdain, “What is it exactly that you want?”

  Cat takes a deep breath. “I want a copy of the signed document that governs Samuel’s estate, so I know what my rights are. And until such time as we can resolve this, I want you to turn my credit cards back on so I have something to live off until that occurs.”

  My eyebrows shoot up because I didn’t see that coming. Cat glances at me with a questioning look, and I nod at her in agreement of what she just asked for. My hand comes out, and I hit the “mute” button on the phone so he can’t hear us. “Ask for the house. Tell him you want back in and him out.”

  She shakes her head immediately in denial and whispers, even though he can’t hear us. “I don’t want to go there.”

  Yeah… that’s a big fucking smile taking up residence on my face right now. I lean forward, kiss her quickly, and then unmute the call.

  “Tell me where you are,” Kevin asks. “I’ll bring it to you.”

  Yeah, he isn’t getting within twenty feet of Cat again. I lean toward the phone slightly and say, “You can send it with a courier to 263 W. Karns Ave, but you’re not welcome here.”

  “And who is this, if I may ask?” he says in an amused voice. “Cat find herself a man or something?”

  “I’m your worst nightmare if you fuck her over,” I growl into the phone, my eyes flicking up to see Cat watching me with wide eyes.

  Kevin makes a scoffing sound and laughs. “Brave man… hiding behind a phone and won’t give his name.”

  “It’s Rand Bishop, you asshole. I just gave you my home address, and I work at Westward Ink. You feel free to come see me whenever you want to, and I’ll show you exactly the lengths I’m willing to go to make sure you won’t fuck Cat over anymore.”

  A moment of silence while Kevin digests my words, and I’m sure they’ve pissed him off royally. But he surprises me when he says, “I’ll send a copy of the signed document over tomorrow.”

  “Bring it to Westward Ink,” I command because it just hit me… neither Cat nor I will be here during the day, and besides… I don’t want him anywhere near her.

  “Understood,” he says crisply. The phone then beeps twice to indicate he’s hung up on the other end.

  “Was that okay?” Cat asks me hesitantly, dropping the phone back in her purse.

  “You were perfect,” I say, sliding my hand from her lower back to her ass and giving it a small smack. I don’t do more than that, although I’d love nothing more to drag her back to the bedroom and muss up that perfect makeup and hair. At the least, I want to kiss her, but not sure it’s appropriate given the nature of the conversation that was just had.

  So I keep it cool and give her a wink. “Well, I better get to work before Pish fires me.”

  Cat snorts. I spent the many, many hours on the road to and from Vegas telling her all kinds of gory details about Pish. Hell, she probably knows more about my friends and family than anyone as much as we’d talked during that road trip, but she definitely knows what I know about Pish.

  That he’s a pushover.

  I pat my front pocket for my keys, feel the small bulge, and turn toward the door.

  “Hey,” she says softly.

  Turning back to her, I tilt my head to wait for whatever it is she wants to say.

  Please be something good. Please be something that lets me know that I’m not imagining some of these feelings or worse yet, that they’re one-sided.

  “I meant what I said a minute ago,” she says, her eyes lasered onto mine so I know she’s talking straight.

  “What’s that?” I ask, since a lot was said in the last minute or so.

  “That I don’t want to go back to the Jackson house,” she says bluntly. “I really don’t want anything he has, but in particular, I don’t want to go back there.”

  “Bad memories and all,” I hazard a guess, remembering just how good that felt to hear her say she didn’t want to go back the first time.

  It’s even better the second.

  “No,” she says simply and picks up her purse. “Just better memories here. Much, much better, and I don’t want to give that up.”

  “Then don’t,” I tell her leaning forward, grazing my lips on her cheek. “You have a place here as long as you want it.”

  I hope she reads between the lines. I’m not just talking a bed to sleep in, but I’m certainly not ready to tell her that yet. While Cat’s opened up to me in amazing ways, I can still tell that deep down, she’s going to be leery of anything that resembles a commitment and I’m not about to scare her off.

  Chapter 18

  Cat

  “There’s way more paper than I thought there’d be,” I tell Sloane as I pull several thick folders out of a banker’s box.

  It’s one of about forty banker’s boxes that are stacked against the wall in the large conference room of Governor Hayes’ campaign headquarters. Sloane and I have been diligently unpacking and orga
nizing it all as best we can. It’s the materials from his last campaign for governor when he won the office in a very heated and close race. That was three years ago, and in just over a year from now, the citizens will be voting again on whether to keep him in office.

  And this is the extent of my knowledge of how elections are run by a candidate. Sloane’s been filling me in a bit. She told me that her father used to be an elected U.S. Senator, so she’s done campaign work before. She also told me her dad’s a douche and she didn’t like to talk about him, but she hoped he had perpetual sunburn from spending all his time on a beach in Brazil with his new and much younger wife.

  I didn’t press her for any details given the acid in her voice when she said that.

  Callie was in Cheyenne, meeting with her father to start putting together a formalized kick off for the campaign. For my first day of work, she left instructions for me to just help Sloane with organizing the materials, and that seemed easy enough. I wish I had dressed a little differently, choosing a black and white zebra-print Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress with nude heels. Those have been long since kicked off and my sleeves rolled up as we pull out mailing lists, copies of speeches, policy summaries, advertising campaigns, glossy mailers and signs that were used. We lay them in stacks according to subject on the large table that takes up most of the room and chatter about inane stuff, mostly an attempt to get to know one another.

  I had an amazing time with Callie and Sloane at lunch two days ago. The margaritas absolutely helped break the ice, but the fact that these women were so accepting of me says so much about them, that I feel relatively comfortable now despite my sordid past with the two men in their lives.

  “So you and Rand, huh?” Sloane says while sitting on the floor before an open box. She’s not looking at me but rather pulling out manila envelopes and checking out the contents.