Hot Sex Stories Made Easy. Speedy Publishing

Amy held up a small bottle of pain pills from the first aid kit, and held out her bottle of water.

      “No, it’ll make me fall asleep,” he protested. “Someone has to stay awake with you. And then there’s Anders upstairs still coughing…”

      “The sheriff will be here soon,” Amy argued. “Now, you get some rest. I’ll wait for him.”

      Carey nodded grimly, knowing that Amy was making sense. “Fine, I’ll take these, but not for another twenty minutes. That means I’ll be falling asleep right around the time the sheriff gets here.”

      “You are incredibly stubborn, you know that?” Her words were meant to scold him, but Carey could tell there was a softness underneath that was all for him. He nodded, trying not to grimace in pain but failing when the raw nerves suddenly flared up again beneath the skin. “Now are you ready to take them?”

      Carey finally nodded, giving in as a sheen of pain-induced sweat covered his injured skin, its saltiness further aggravating the burning feeling. He downed two of the pills and handed the bottle back to Amy. She felt helpless watching him cradle his arm, but knew better than to touch him and risk hurting him even more.

      “Hey, why don’t you tell me a story? You know, to take your mind off it?” She suggested brightly.

      “What kind of story?” He asked, catching his breath.

      “I don’t know. What’s your favorite thing about the ranch?” Amy asked, keeping him talking. “Tell me what you like best about living here.”

      “All the beautiful scenery,” he said softly, letting his eyes lose focus for a second. “There’s just so much…pretty…out here.”

      “Nice try, mister, but stay with me here. Those pills haven’t kicked in yet, this is your own brain doing the zoning in and out. Hey! Snap up!” Amy snapped two fingers near Carey’s ear, making his eyes come back into focus. She knew he was falling out, mostly from the stress of a long day and the long drive, the lack of sleep finally catching up to him. She knelt on the floor next to the couch near where his head sank against his pillow, then kissed him softly, avoiding touching any of the angry patches of burnt skin. He kissed her back longingly but during their kiss, he drifted off, his mouth going slack beneath her lips as he finally stopped feeling the pain.

Chapter Nine

      Sheriff Matthews didn’t arrive until the early hours of the morning and was appalled at Carey’s condition. “That settles it, we’re now looking at more than just vandalism and discharging a firearm. This is at least assault, if not attempted murder. That gives me more than enough reason to call in a team and help bring this guy in.”

      “The sooner, the better, Sheriff. Just let me know what we can do,” Carey began, trying to sit up. Amy put a hand on Carey’s chest to stop him as the sheriff rose up out of his chair to do the same, coming to stand in front of Carey with his hands planted on his gun belt.

      “You’re not going anywhere, Carey. Your father would kill me if I let any harm come to you, if he doesn’t skin me alive for the way you look already. If I’d caught that son of a bitch, Mack, the first night he showed up causing trouble, you wouldn’t be laying here practically turned inside out.”

      “Do you have any idea what brought this on, Sheriff? Why does Mack have it in for the Carsons?” Amy asked. Sheriff Matthews and Carey exchanged a silent look, but Carey’s face remained unchanged. It must be all right to fill her in then.

      “Well, ma’am, Mack runs a less than savory establishment over in Hale. I can’t tell you how many bar fights my deputies and I have busted up in there, and there’s been talk for a long time that he was running drugs through that place, but we could never pin it on him. We even started to think he was trafficking through there for a cartel south of the border. But this particular riot he’s causing seems to be about two of his ‘waitresses’, who went missing last week. Again, I never could pin anything on him because I didn’t have any complaining witnesses and because the girls both checked out as being over eighteen, but we think he was prostituting them from his bar. That’s the local rumor, anyway.”

      “And you’re sure their ID checks out?” she asked. “It’d be a whole lot easier to shut him down on suspicion if you had any reason to believe they presented fake IDs. The alcoholic beverage board would be your inroads, not the alleged prostitution. If they were using fake IDs, ones that the owner might have even made for them, then he has under-aged girls serving alcohol. That’ll shut down his bar and cost him his liquor license right there.” Matthews took the hint, his eyes lighting up at this new angle of investigating the bar owner.

      “You know, now that you mention it, they do look awfully young. I think we’d better have a deputy do some background checks into his two employees. Where’d you say you were from, Miss…?”

      “Amy McDade,” she answered, sticking out her hand for a handshake. “I’m with the Detroit Police Department, I just came down here for two weeks with the ‘city slickers’ who join the Carson Hill cattle drive. But I ended up offering to help Carey drive back here when he heard there was some trouble.”

      The sheriff took her hand in his and greeted her warmly. “It’s nice to have you in our part of the country, I just wish it was for sightseeing instead of holing up inside this house. If it’s all right with you, Ms. McDade, how would you feel about volunteering for the Williams County Sheriff’s Department while you’re here? We’re spread out so far over this entire region that we can’t possibly have enough people, especially not with something like this going on.”

      “I’m happy to help, as long as I won’t be in the way,” Amy agreed, her eyes lighting up in a way that they hadn’t in ages. The thought of getting back out in the fray was alluring, especially when a small part of her brain reminded her it was only temporary. It’s not like agreeing to go back out on my regular street patrol. This is just helping out, she told herself eagerly. The sheriff said they were undermanned, this is practically my civic duty.

      “Not at all, just let me go make a couple of calls and check out your status with your home jurisdiction, then it’ll be official. I’ll feel better leaving someone out here that’s authorized as part of our unit, at least during the day. Given how this coward likes to sneak around, though, we’ll make sure to double up after dark. Do you have your firearm on you?” he asked, his eyes moving over her briefly as he looked for a telltale bulge of a holster.

      Amy reached in the hem of her jeans for the second time since arriving at Carson Hill and retrieved her handgun, passing it to the sheriff handle first, after checking the safety. He took it, tossed it lightly in his hand to feel its heft, and nodded approvingly. He returned it to her, promising to gather a few larger pieces of artillery to leave with both Amy and Carey.

      Matthews went outside to check the perimeter of the immediate property for any signs of where Mack may have headed, leaving Amy and Carey in the living room. “Well, well, ‘Deputy’ McDade…I like it,” Carey teased before looking up at her shyly. “It’s kind of…hot.”

      “How is ‘Deputy McDade’ hotter than ‘Officer McDade’? I’ve been Officer McDade the whole time you had your tongue in my mouth, and it didn’t seem to turn you on as much.” She crossed her arms and gave him an icy stare, pretending to be insulted at her demotion.

      “In my defense, you neglected to mention the part about being a cop for most of the time that said tongue was enjoying ravaging said mouth,” he answered, looking smug. “In fact, I only found out about the cop part when you managed to get yourself pulled over for speeding.”

      “True, I’ll own up to that,” she casually replied, coming over to where Carey rested on the couch and stepping one foot over his legs, straddling him as she leaned over him. “But now, somehow, I’m ‘hot’ because I wear a uniform and carry a gun?”

      “Nope.” She raised an eyebrow at him suspiciously, staring him down as he answered. “You were already hot. The uniform just makes you scorching.”