Rogue became lost in the pleasure, in the lightning-swift explosions of heat that began to race through her system. The slap of his flesh against hers, the scent and sound of sex surrounding her, his harsh breathing at her ear. It combined to begin that sharp, desperate rise to release that was both ecstatic and torturous.

She moved against him, thrusting back into each hard lunge of his cock inside her as she felt the pleasure tightening inside her, racing through her.

“Zeke, oh God. Don’t stop,” she whimpered, then cried out as his thrusts became harder, wilder.

She felt his control shatter. She felt it in the slam of his erection inside her, the stroke of the hard flesh over brutally sensitive nerve endings. She felt it in the grip of his hands at her waist and heard his hard, rasping male groan as she felt the pleasure explode inside her.

She tried to scream his name but all that emerged was a breathless cry as she felt her vaginal muscles clench around him as her womb convulsed with her release. Sensation upon sensation detonated inside her, until she was shaking, sobbing, aware of nothing but Zeke, his touch, his heat as ecstatic pleasure surrounded her. She felt his release spurting inside her, liquid hot and consuming. She heard his groan as he buried his face at her neck and his hands flexed against her hips.

She was aware of nothing but the man and the pleasure. Brilliant pulses of heat were like electroshocks tearing through, shuddering through her body, leaving her breathless and weak as Zeke supported her, holding her between the wall and his body as he groaned her name and shuddered behind her.

Standing there, her legs rubbery, the pulses of pleasure still echoing through her, Rogue felt more than just the pleasure. She felt the emotion. She heard it in his rough groan at her ear, in the hard, desperate caresses of his lips against her neck. She felt his possession. She felt marked, on the inside, by a man she still wasn’t certain how to read or how to predict.

But in those moments, his cock still buried inside her, his hands hard on her hips, his lips against her neck, she knew one thing. Zeke was right. She belonged irrevocably to him.

Which left one all-important question. What would she do if or when he decided to move on?

The sun was high overhead when Zeke slipped from Rogue’s bed and moved into the kitchen with his cell phone. Flipping it open he pressed speed dial and waited for the call to go through.

“Sheriff.” Cranston sounded wide awake, while Zeke admitted his ass was starting to drag from a lack of sleep.

“You’re a bastard, Cranston.” He sighed. “You’ve pushed me out of the investigations you’ve conducted here, and now I’m fucked. I need your help.”

“I didn’t push you out, Zeke,” Cranston answered. “I used you as effectively as I’ve used the other tools I’ve had at my disposal. That’s my job. Too many eyes were watching you and a killer was just waiting on an excuse to take you or your son, or both, out. I couldn’t afford that.”

“Yeah, you did it out of the kindness of your heart,” Zeke snorted.

“I don’t have a heart,” Cranston assured him. “But I do try to look at long-term goals rather than short term. Long term, you’re more useful to me alive rather than dead.

Long term was, I knew the exterminator was out there and focused on you. If we didn’t catch him in the first investigation, then I needed you in place. You’re in place, he’s killing again, and he’s trying to get your attention with these murders, otherwise he would have changed his style enough to throw you off his scent. Now tell me what you need.”

Zeke’s lips thinned at the thought of how effectively Cranston really had used him.

“Are you covering my back?”

“Me and three Mackays,” Cranston admitted. “No one else. We’re keeping this operation small and on a need-to-know basis. Chief Jansen has been informed of what’s going on, but he’s holding back for the present. Are you with the Walker girl?”

“I’m distracted,” he stated, knowing it was the damned truth. “I want this taken care of this time. Shane’s out of state, he left on a school trip a few days ago, so he’s safe for the next week. I want that bastard caught.”

Silence filled the line for long moments. “A week will be cutting it close,” he finally said.

“A week,” Zeke stated. “He’ll use Shane against me if he gets scared I’m getting too close. I’ll continue the investigation from my end while keeping Rogue safe. You and the Mackays do whatever mumbo jumbo you do and let’s get this taken care of.”

“And if it’s Maynard?” Cranston finally asked. “I know he’s your lead suspect, Zeke.

Are you looking beyond him?”

“I suspect everyone but Rogue,” Zeke said softly, aware that this was the first time he had crossed any possibility off his list. “Now let’s do it. I’ll play the distracted lover, you help me find a killer.”

“It’s good to be working with you again, Sheriff,” Cranston replied a little gleefully.

“Damned good.”

Zeke just wished he felt as happy about the situation. As he glanced back at Rogue’s closed bedroom door, he knew it could all backfire on him though. He could lose her.

And the thought of that had a dull ache centering in his chest and reminding him that for the first time in over ten years, he had a weakness other than his son.

For the first time in his life, he was afraid he might truly be falling in love.

NINETEEN

Zeke entered his office two days later to find the coronerJay Adams’s report on Callie Walker’s death. Joe and Jaime’s grandmother hadn’t died accidently. The blow she had received on the head had been delivered by a blunt object rather than the side of the bathtub as it had been made to appear.

The blow could have been fatal in time, but the cause of death had been drowning as she lay in the bathtub.

He read the report before breathing out roughly and shaking his head. The coroner had released the bodies for burial, and Lisa Walker had been notified.

He rubbed his hand over his head before taking the file and locking it in the file cabinet.

Joe and Jaime, and then their grandmother. A woman tied them together and Zeke was no closer to figuring out who that woman was than he had been the day of the twins’

deaths, just as he, Cranston, or the Mackays were no closer to finding the killer.

He’d questioned everyone he could think of to question. Even the Mackays had come up blank on the woman’s identity. That didn’t make sense. Pulaski County wasn’t that large. It thrived on gossip as any small county did. Zeke bet he knew every lover, potential lover, or wannabe lover that Joe and Jaime could have had in their sexual lives. All but one. The one that had led to their deaths.

Or had she been the one to commit the murders?

The twins’ phone records had revealed very little. They had no cell phones, so there were no records to trace there. There was just nothing left to go on except his gut-deep certainty that all three murders were linked.

At this point, there wasn’t much more he could do without any leads. Lisa Walker had called earlier, informing him that she would be returning home unless he was close to an arrest. She had things to take care of, and her sons’ father wanted the boys back in town. Lisa still had family here, too, her job, a life. She couldn’t stay away indefinitely.

That was an additional worry. Whoever had killed the twins and their grandmother, Callie Walker, wouldn’t hesitate to kill again. He had a feeling the murderer might have even enjoyed the elaborate game that had been made of the deaths, just as Cranston had suggested.

A knock at his office door had him moving from the file cabinet back to his desk as the door opened and his secretary peeked in.

“Zeke, you have a visitor.” Kendal Birchfield arched her expressive brows as her blue eyes twinkled with amusement. “Mr. John Calvin Walker Jr. requests a few moments of your time.”

Zeke’s brows arched. John Calvin Walker Jr. It couldn’t be anyone other than Calvin Walker’s son.

Zeke grinned as he took his seat. “I have a few minutes, Kendal. Show him in.”

Kendal winked back at him playfully before closing the door. A few seconds later it opened it again and Mr. John Calvin Walker Jr. entered the room.

Zeke wasn’t certain what he was expecting in the form of Rogue’s brother. A polished Bostonian lawyer, perhaps. John Walker was known as a lawyer with teeth. He was picky about the cases he took, but the ones he took he rarely lost. Zeke’s contacts in D.C.

had placed the younger man as an up-and-coming political force to be watched.

It wasn’t the first impression Zeke had of him though. John Walker was dressed in jeans, a rumpled white cotton shirt, and well-worn boots. Zeke would have pegged him for a California surfer boy.

“Sheriff Mayes.” Violet blue eyes were set behind thick blond lashes in a sun-darkened face. Overly long white blond hair fell almost to his shoulders and framed hard, slashing features.

The boy looked a lot like the father had when he was younger, except Calvin Walker had sported red hair rather than blond and had been broader, more muscular, where John Walker was leaner.

His handshake was firm and hinted at strength. His gaze was cool and determined, and Zeke understood why his contacts in D.C. foresaw a political future for this young man.

Zeke saw something that perhaps they didn’t though. He saw a decided lack of true deception in the other man’s eyes.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Walker?” Zeke held his hand out to the visitor’s chair in front of his desk as he took his own seat.

John Walker sat, though he slouched with lazy negligence.

“So, you’re the sheriff sleeping with my baby sister.” John’s smile was tight and hard. “I was wondering what had Jonesy so worked up about you. I understand now.”

Zeke leaned back in his chair and arched his brow. “Last I heard Rogue was over twenty-one.”

John’s eyes narrowed. “Caitlyn,” he corrected softly. “And she may be over twenty-one, but you, Sheriff Mayes, are nearly old enough to be her father.”

Zeke stared back at him implacably, refusing to be drawn into whatever fight the younger Walker thought he was getting ready to start.

“Your sister is Rogue in these parts, Mr. Walker,” he said evenly. “I haven’t known a man yet that called her Caitlyn that didn’t end up on his knees with his hands covering his balls. She has a wicked knee. And you’re exaggerating the age difference by quite a bit.”

John’s grin was slow and filled with amusement this time. “Little witch. She always did know how to go for the weak spots.” His smile dropped just as quick. “That doesn’t tell me why a man your age is taking advantage of my sister. Or a man of your past.”

Zeke stayed still. He stared back at Rogue’s brother coldly, sensing what was coming.

This younger Walker was no man’s fool; he would have run a check on Zeke the minute he knew his name, and the information he could have found would have worried any brother.

“You have quite a reputation in L.A.,” the other man stated. “The detective who took down one of the most corrupt underground BDSM communities in the nation? After your wife’s death, you became quite enmeshed in the community before your investigation and the subsequent arrests were made, didn’t you?”

Zeke propped his elbows on the arms of his chair and steepled his fingers as he stared back at John Walker.

“The investigation had nothing to do with the BDSM aspects of that community,” he stated. “I was there to find a killer and a drug dealer, Mr. Walker. And the lifestyle itself has nothing to do with my relationship with your sister.”

John’s gaze sharpened. “Strange, I hear you don’t have relationships.”

“Strange,” Zeke drawled. “I hear that who your sister sleeps with or how she lives her life really isn’t any of your damned business. If that’s why you’re here, then perhaps you should head back home.”