Arouse Read Free Page A

on her, specifically. It made good policing sense to keep a bead on your neighbors’ movements. Most people loved having a cop in the neighborhood, but there were those for whom—
    “I can’t believe it’s so humid. I was led to believe Austin was the Promised Land when I agreed to move here.”
    Jeff sent up silent thanks that she’d interrupted his darker thoughts. “I can’t disagree with you, there—grew up in the Hill Country. If I’d wanted air I could see, I’d have moved to Houston. It’s like the Armpit of the World there.”
    She laughed, and he willed his eyes to cut through the darkness to see her. Move, move , he silently implored her. Turn that motion light back on; let me see the laugh on your lips.
    “Tell me about it?” Her voice, when she asked him questions, went all soft. “What is it like, the Hill Country? I’ve managed to get up to Dallas a few times this year for some meetings, but I haven’t really done much regional exploration.”
    And wasn’t that a damned shame, that some idiot man she’d dated last hadn’t taken her out to show her God’s Country? Woman like Kami deserved to spend an evening on a porch glider out by the river, a million stars all trying—and failing—to outshine her smile. She deserved to picnic in the bed of a pickup truck in the spring, nothing but bluebonnets and rolling hills for miles around. Nothing but the sun and blue sky to witness the way her skin turned pink when she came around his cock. Nothing but the sun and blue sky to hear her cries of pleasure.
    But how could he tell her all of that? He couldn’t. So he settled on something lame, like, “It’s real pretty.”
    The silence stretched on, thick as the air that surrounded them. One of these days, he’d stop running down the alley, stop checking the lock on her gate to make sure it was secure—not that it did much good on a chain link. But that’s what was standard in their old neighborhood. Better to keep that then put up a solitary privacy fence. That was just an invitation to bad actors.
    One of these days, he’d convince himself he didn’t deserve to try to keep a woman like Kami safe.
    “When I first moved here, they told me all the lakes were fake.”
    It took him a moment to catch the thread of their conversation, to get out of that place of rage that threatened to bubble up whenever he thought about someone hurting Kami. “I, uh, think we Texans prefer ‘man-made’ to fake.”
    The motion light came on. Her scruffy beast shot off to perform a quick perimeter check. She looked a little startled in the spotlight, smoothing down her hair and clutching her robe self-consciously.
    Her legs were drawn up in some complicated pretzel. Jeff had perfect vision, but he caught himself squinting to discern just what she wore under her robe.
    “We, uh, do have one natural lake,” he continued, lamely, then petered off when she unfolded herself, stood, and looked off into the middle distance of her yard.
    There was some growling coming from the back fence line, but no scuffle. She called softly for her dog, but he didn’t return to the deck like he usually did.
    Jeff whistled for the dog when his own hackles rose. Something wasn’t right.
    “Kami, get inside.”

Chapter 3
    S omething was wrong . Why wasn’t Ruffles coming back when she called?
    “Kami, I said, get inside.” His repeated command was harsh, and his voice was harder, louder, than she’d ever heard it. It scared her. His insistence scared her. If he thought something was wrong—
    “Now, Kami.”
    “Not without Ruff—”
    A scream tore the heavy night air in two, and Kami felt herself blanch, wobbled a bit on her feet. A shape vaulted over her fence, and she froze in place. Run, run , her mind demanded, but her body couldn’t comply.
    Idiot!
    A resounding crack filled up the silence. Twice. Three times. And she was propelled backward.
    “I’ve got you, baby. Let’s get you inside.” She struggled against the