Take Me Harder Read online

Rush put his bottle down on the table and got out his phone, putting it beside the bottle. Then he swiped the screen a couple of times, pulling up a timer app, the numbers glowing clearly as they prepared for countdown.

  “Okay,” he said. “You’ve got exactly five minutes.” Reaching out, he touched a finger to the screen. “Starting now.”

  —

  Ava stared at the phone sitting on the sticky, beer-stained table and the numbers counting steadily down, and gave an inward sigh.

  Talk about awkward.

  She’d understood that the Rush Redmond sitting in front of her, the one who’d walked out of the Huntsville Unit two months earlier, wasn’t the same Rush Redmond who used to give her milk and cookies, letting a grief-stricken seven-year-old talk as much as she wanted about the mother she’d lost and wasn’t allowed to mention in front of her father.

  He wasn’t the same Rush Redmond who’d crouched down and given an upset eight-year-old, heartbroken that she was going to lose her only friend, a hug and a tissue the day he’d left to join the army. Nor was he the same Rush Redmond who’d returned three years later and taught an angry prepubescent how to shoot, because if she wanted to be a cop, she’d better learn how to handle a gun.

  He wasn’t even the same Rush Redmond she used to stare at when she’d been fourteen, sitting in her daddy’s office at the station sometimes after school, watching him bring in fugitives who’d skipped parole. Tall and muscular, and so intensely handsome. Those unusual blue-green eyes and that wide, sensual mouth, the one that turned up into a smile so wicked and charming it made her want to melt into a puddle whenever she saw it. The charm that made all the female cops in the station melt into the same puddle.

  Yes, she’d mooned over him then the way only a teenage girl can moon.

  But he wasn’t that guy anymore, and it was only now that she was standing here, staring at him, that she really understood.

  It was his eyes that gave him away. They were completely and utterly cold, showing how much of a mask his easy smile was. And it was only because she knew how incredible his smile had once been when it had reached his eyes that she realized how much it had changed now.

  He was still drop-dead gorgeous and his charm all slow, lazy Texas heat, but now there was a calculation to it that hadn’t been there before.

  She didn’t like it, not one bit.

  Prison had hardened him. She couldn’t see the man sitting in front of her now giving milk and cookies and attention to a grieving seven-year-old girl, that was for sure. And then there was the fact that he was obviously pissed she hadn’t been to see him up until now, and, well, he had reason.

  She’d wanted to visit him, because she’d missed him terribly, but he’d been very clear that he didn’t want her to, so she’d been good and hadn’t, counting down the days until his release. But when that time had come…She’d felt weird about seeing him again. Afraid, if she was honest with herself. Afraid that the friend he’d once been to her as a kid wouldn’t be her friend anymore. That he’d be different, changed.

  Looked like she’d been right about that, and it made her feel pretty rotten. Still…didn’t mean he could act like a total dick.

  “Look,” she said, at least attempting an apology, “I’m sorry I didn’t visit when you got—”

  “Time’s ticking, Ava.”

  Okay, so he didn’t want to hear that. Fair enough. “You don’t need the timer. I promise I won’t stay longer.”

  He didn’t move, the numbers on the phone counting down. “Four minutes twenty seconds now,” he pointed out in that slow, husky drawl of his.

  A shiver went through her at the sound, the remnants of her old crush, but Ava ignored it. Instead she sat down in the seat Rush’s black-haired friend had vacated and put her elbows on the table, only to take them off again as she noticed the stickiness gleaming in the dim light. Ugh. She so did not want that on her uniform.

  Spilled beer and strippers. What a great evening she was having.

  Folding her arms instead, she stared across the table at Rush.

  Oh yes, she was right. He really had changed, hadn’t he? His charm and his easy smile had always been his greatest attraction. He’d never radiated authority the way Quinn did, or had Zane’s brooding intensity, but he was friendly, laid-back, and most of all caring and kind. She’d fallen a little in love with that caring and kindness years ago, especially since her father didn’t have an ounce of either in him.

  But neither caring nor kindness was in evidence now. Scars marred the rough, almost brutal beauty of his features, narrow white lines scoring one cheek and pulling slightly at the skin around one eye. His sensual mouth was hard, as if it had never smiled and didn’t know the meaning of the word. As hard as the jaw lined with stubble, the same golden brown of his slightly too-long hair.

  Again, it was in the eyes. Those beautiful eyes, glittering not with humor, as they once had, but with menace. With danger.

  His whole presence radiated it. From the arrogant way he was sitting, to the black T-shirt pulled tight over his massively muscled chest and shoulders, and the faded jeans that sat low on his lean hips and clung to his strong thighs. The full-sleeve tattoos that covered his arms didn’t help either, roses and thorns and skulls along one arm, a panther prowling up the other.

  Everything about him screamed “do not mess with me.”

  He set off every one of her cop senses like a Geiger counter at Chernobyl.

  “Three minutes,” he said, staring back at her.

  Ava pulled herself together. “I need your help.”

  “No.”

  She stiffened. “What? But you haven’t even given me a chance to explain what it’s about yet.”

  “I don’t need to. The answer is no.”

  “Please let me explain.”

  The look on his face was bored. “Sorry, honey, but I want to watch Candy dance with no clothes on, not hear about whatever the hell it is you want to talk about.”

  Ava grappled with her thinning patience. If she’d known he was going to be this difficult, she’d never have come to the strip club in the first place, especially when what she should have been doing was sitting in the patrol car with Mike, her partner.

  But no, Quinn had finally answered her text asking where she could find Rush, telling her he was at Sugar Daddy’s, and it was fortuitous that the area she was currently patrolling wasn’t too far from the club. So she’d snuck away on the pretext of finding coffee, and now here she was, in this dim, sleazy place that smelled of desperation and sadness, with Rush Redmond being a stubborn jackass.

  She should have waited, maybe, chosen a different time and a different venue. Been properly glad to see him instead of feeling defensive about the fact she’d been too afraid to welcome him home the way she should have done. But she’d thought—naively, as it turned out—that asking for his help wouldn’t be a problem and that he’d do what he’d always done in the past, which was to help her.

  And he had to help her because this was too important for him not to.

  This concerned the murder of police officer Lauren St. George, Ava’s mother, killed in the line of duty years earlier.

  Leaning forward, she said, “I’ve got a…hunch I need to follow up on.”

  Something in his eyes flickered. “What hunch?”

  Ah, now she was getting somewhere.

  “Well, a couple of weeks ago I got an anonymous tip-off about…an arms ring we’ve been investigating.”

  That was the bare bones of it. The very barest of bones. Because the tip-off wasn’t so much about the arms ring as about her mother’s murder.

  It had been a phone call from some guy, his voice obviously heavily disguised, telling her that the cops had arrested the wrong man for her mother’s shooting. That it wasn’t the drug dealer her mom had been in the process of arresting who’d shot her. That it was someone else, on the orders of a notorious gunrunner by the name of Jimmy Troy. The same guy who was still causing a pain in
the police’s collective backside as head of the arms ring he currently controlled.

  At first Ava hadn’t believed the anonymous man’s claims, dismissing them. But then she hadn’t been able to get them out of her head, and she’d known she couldn’t let this go, that it was her duty as a police officer to at least investigate. But she hadn’t wanted to go to her father with it. No point stirring up all those old, bad memories, or not until she had verified the claims, at any rate.

  No, there was only one person she could go to who perhaps knew all about Jimmy Troy. And that was the man notorious for having most of the criminal underworld of Travis County in his address book.

  Rush gave a low, husky laugh that was absolutely devoid of humor, yet stroked across her skin all the same. “An arms ring? That’s awesome. Good for you, honey.”

  She tried not to bristle at his patronizing tone and the honeys and the sweethearts, giving him a pass for old times’ sake. “It’s important.”

  “Oh yeah? How?” He was looking bored again, his attention starting to drift back to the blond stripper on the stage. The woman was wiggling her butt in his general direction and giving him a sultry look over her shoulder.

  Annoyed, Ava debated whether or not to tell him the truth, that it wasn’t the arms ring specifically she was investigating so much as who actually killed her mother. She kind of wanted to, and maybe if he’d still been the guy who’d befriended one sad and lonely little girl all those years ago, she might have. But he wasn’t that guy anymore and she didn’t know what kind of man he’d become. And until she did, she didn’t want to bring her mother into the discussion—and certainly not here in a strip club.

  She tapped the sticky surface of the table instead. “Hey. I’ve got two minutes left and I want your attention.”

  Rush glanced back at her, green sparks of irritation glittering in his eyes for a moment. Then they were gone, his mouth kicking up at the corner in that lazy smile that made her heart turn over in her chest the way it always had, even though it was only a mask concealing whatever emptiness lay beneath it.

  “Okay, little girl. You got it.” His voice was deliciously rough, the drawl liquid and hot as a summer’s day. “So you’ve got a hunch on an arms ring. That’s great. But why the fuck are you bothering me about it?”

  That pass she was giving him? It had pretty much expired. He might be totally justified in being angry, but that didn’t mean he had to be quite such a patronizing ass.

  Stifling her annoyance, Ava said, “Because I need confirmation on something. But I can’t get it because I don’t have the contacts.”

  “You have the entire Austin police department.” Rush lifted one powerful shoulder in a negligent shrug. “So like I said, why the fuck do you need my help?”

  Dammit, she didn’t want to have to get into this. “That’s confidential.”

  Rush’s gaze flicked away toward the stage again. “Uh-huh.”

  For a nanosecond, Ava was very tempted to strip out of her uniform, get up on that stage, and blow his stupid head off. But since she didn’t have the blonde’s figure and she was actually on duty and her dad would have a conniption if he found out one of his officers had started stripping onstage, let alone his own daughter, she was going to have to stay right where she was.

  She needed to think of some other way to get his attention.

  Leaning back in her seat, she gave him an assessing look, then the rest of the club a quick scan. Okay, so it wasn’t exactly by the book and she was definitely a by-the-book kind of girl, but this was too important to let go.

  This was about her mother, who’d been gunned down doing her duty to protect and serve. And if her mother’s murderer hadn’t actually been brought to justice the first time around, then Ava needed to know. And do something about it.

  She hadn’t worked her ass off and gotten where she was now for nothing. She’d done it because she’d always dreamed of being the kind of stand-up, decorated cop her mother had been. And that did not include letting the memory of her mother down.

  “Oh, would you look at that?” Rush tapped his phone screen. “Time’s up, honey. Sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry.” Ava pushed her chair back and stood up, skirting around the table and coming over to where Rush sat. Then she put one hand on his hard, muscled shoulder. “Rush Redmond, I’m arresting you under suspicion of violating the terms of your parole.”

  Then she pulled her handcuffs out.

  Chapter 2

  Holy shit. She could not be fucking serious.

  And then before he could get over the shock enough to move, Ava ruthlessly pulled his hands behind his back and cuffed him.

  Yeah, seemed she was pretty fucking serious.

  Fury bolted down his spine, because no way was he going back inside again. And if she was going to drag him in, it would be over his dead, decomposing corpse.

  His whole body went rigid as she attempted to pull him to his feet, her light, slightly smoky-sounding voice already starting in on his Miranda rights, and he found his hands curling into fists, straining at the metal, ready to take out the opposition.

  Dude. She’s a cop. She’s also Ava and a she. You don’t hit women, remember?

  Jesus Christ. He’d been in prison too goddamn long, where the automatic response to a problem was to hit it until it wasn’t a problem anymore, or else you paid someone else to hit it for you. Sadly, things were a little harder to deal with in the outside world.

  Things such as being arrested for a fake parole violation by the earnest redheaded cop he used to babysit when she was seven.

  Whatever. Fury was a symptom of giving a fuck, and he was supposed to not be giving a fuck.

  Inhaling silently despite the adrenaline rush, he forced himself to relax, to let the easygoing, not-give-a-shit-about-anything mask fall back into place. And when Ava tried tugging him to his feet again, he let her.

  “Honey,” he said, “I know you’re trying to be a good cop and all, but you can’t arrest me for violating parole when I haven’t actually violated my parole.”

  “Yes, you have.” She grabbed his upper arm and held on, her fingers surprisingly strong. “You’ve been visiting a place of harmful character.” With her other hand she waved around at the club. “This is a place of harmful character.”

  Rush stared down at her, amusement starting to overcome the remains of his fury. She was quite tall for a woman, the top of her head almost level with his mouth, and she was built along athletic lines. Determination shone in her coppery eyes, the spotlights on the stage making them gleam like new pennies, and he was suddenly aware of how the dark blue of her shirt pulled across her breasts and indented at the graceful curve of her waist, and how long her legs were.

  Yeah, seemed little Ava St. George had grown up. And very nicely too.

  What the fuck? She’s like a little sister, asshole.

  Christ. Eight years inside had clearly messed with his head if he was seeing Ava as a woman. Not that he’d do anything about it.

  Not only was she Ava, she was also a good girl, and good girls weren’t his type.

  “My character was harmed the day I went to jail,” he said casually. “Don’t think this place is going to make it any worse.”

  He hadn’t meant anything by it, and yet Ava’s red-gold brows descended into a frown, her gaze turning disturbingly perceptive. With a certain amount of shock, Rush realized she was staring at him with…holy fuck, was that sympathy? It had been so long since anyone had looked at him like that, he couldn’t tell.

  “I know.” Her voice was quiet. “You can’t know how sorry I was about that.”

  Oh hell, it was sympathy. In which case she needed to stop that shit right there, because he didn’t want to get into the whole Charlie Jones situation with her, not right now.

  Charlie was the girl who’d ended up dying of gunshot wounds during a botched Lone Star Bounty job. Rush hadn’t been the one who’d accidentally shot her—in fact, whether it had been Quin
n or their father who’d been ultimately responsible was still up for debate—but whatever, Rush had volunteered himself to take the fall for her death. And then he’d been left to rot in jail, an innocent man.

  Not that he was upset about that. At all.

  “I don’t need you to be sorry, honey. I’m just pissed that eight years of celibacy nearly caused my dick to fall off.” He let his gaze travel down her body in an openly sexual appraisal, because if that didn’t shut her up, nothing would. Then he lowered his voice. “But I’m sure you can help me get it back in working order.”

  Ava’s forehead creased. “Are you okay?” she asked, as if he hadn’t just given her a glance that would have melted the knees of any other woman. “You’re looking a little flushed.”

  Christ. Was she covered in Rush-Teflon or something?

  He killed the sexual innuendo, since it clearly wasn’t working as offensively as he’d hoped, and completely ditched the charm. “Get me the fuck out of these handcuffs, little girl. I’m not going to ask twice.”

  But Ava only shook her head. “I told you I wanted your help. And you’re going to at least do me the courtesy of hearing me out before you decide. It’s either that or I take you down to the precinct and tell Dad about the strip clubs you’ve been visiting.”

  “He wouldn’t give a shit about the strip clubs.”

  “Yes, he would,” she disagreed. “And he’d be disappointed.”

  Fucking hell. The woman had him over a barrel. Because she was right—of course Ian would be disappointed. He’d told Rush when he’d finally managed to get him out that if he was wise, he wouldn’t let this experience color his life. That Rush was smart enough to make something of himself despite the shitty hand he’d been dealt.

  Talking to him as if he was still the boy he’d once been.

  Another bolt of anger ran through him, but he let it pass this time.

  No, he wouldn’t let any of that bullshit bother him. But still, Ian St. George had gotten him out of prison when everyone else was quite happy to leave him there, and the thought of disappointing him was…uncomfortable.