Catcher nodded. “That’s it.” He pulled one of his cards from his suit pocket and handed it to Zeke. “If you think of anything else, don’t hesitate to call me.”
“Sure thing.” After putting the card in his wallet, Zeke smiled at me. “Once again, thank you for saving Ezra’s life.”
I returned his smile. “You’re welcome.”
After stuffing his hands in his pants pockets, Zeke ambled back toward the ER entrance. Catcher and I watched his retreating form until he got back inside. “I can’t wait to tell the guys I’m working on a lead for a granny witch.”
I tsked at him. “That would be the Granny Witch Thornhill.”
“Isn’t that what I said?”
“No. You left it way too common. Apparently this old biddy has a proper title like she’s royalty or something.”
Catcher snorted. “Mountain royalty I suppose.”
My phone dinged in my purse. After I pulled it out and read it was from Allen, I grimaced. “Dammit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I forgot it’s my night to be on call for body pickups. We’ve had a death called in from Eastside Hospital back home.” I quickly texted Allen that it would be a little while before I could get there, but I was on the way. “Sorry that I have to get back.” What I really wanted to say was, “Sorry that I’m not going to be able to screw your brains out.”
“No need to apologize, and no need to cut our evening short.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, why don’t I come along with you to pick up the stiff? Then we can get some dinner.” Catcher grinned at me. “After two dicks, a nudist resort, and snake handlers, I have yet to have the pleasure of buying you dinner.”
I grinned. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“Of course not.”
“Okay. Sounds good.”
Actually, it sounded a hell of a lot more than just good. I mean, here I was with a drop-dead sexy man who not only didn’t find my profession abhorrent, but he was actually supportive. More than anything, he wanted to spend time with me. It was quite refreshing to find such a man existed. Catcher was truly turning into a man who was good for both the body and soul.
After we got home from the boonies, Catcher swung by the funeral home so I could pick up the hearse. As he opened the passenger side door, Catcher chuckled. “What’s so funny?” I asked, as I slid across the leather seat.
“The fact I’m about to take a spin in a hearse, and I’m not dead.”
“Yeah, I guess it is a little weird the first time.”
“Your dad didn’t drive you around in this, did he?”
I laughed. “God, no. It was bad enough being the girl with dead people in her house. The last thing I would have needed was to be the girl with dead people in her car.”
Catcher snorted. “I see your point.”
Eastside Hospital was a quick ten minute drive from the funeral home. Compared to the hospitals in the bigger cities like Marietta and Atlanta, Eastside was pretty small.
I pulled around back to the loading dock. “You can wait here if you want,” I said, as I grabbed my identification badge out of the dash.
“And miss seeing you in action? Ha! Never.”
I grinned. “It’s really not that exciting.”
“Anything with you is exciting, Olivia,” Catcher said sincerely, which when spoken in his sinfully, sexy voice sent my heart beating erratically and caused me to feel lightheaded.
Without my normal elegance, I stumbled out of the hearse. After recovering, I went around to the back and opened the door, pulled out the gurney, got it upright, and then locked it in place. With what felt like rote movements, the wheels rattled along the pavement as I approached the backdoor. I gripped the rails on the gurney so it wouldn’t go careening away as I rang the bell. The last thing I needed was to make a fool out of myself in front of Catcher.
“Yes?” a voice questioned.
“Olivia Sullivan from Sullivan’s for a pickup.”
The door buzzed open, and I rolled the gurney in with Catcher on my heels. After following the maze of hallways to the elevator to the first floor, I picked up Mr. Marvin Delaney—a stroke victim who had been brought in to the ER earlier that day.
I was greeted by Marco—one of the orderlies. He had started work about six months ago, and he had always been really nice to me. He was probably what you would call nerdy cute with his thick glasses but a built body.
“Hey Liv, what’s shaking?” he asked, flashing me a grin.
“Not much, Marco. What’s up with you?”
“Same old, same old.” At the sight of Catcher standing behind me, his smile faded. “Got a new apprentice?” he questioned, a hopeful lilt to his voice.
When I opened my mouth to introduce Catcher, he stepped in front of me. He thrust his hand out a little too forcefully. “Catcher Mains.”
“Marco D’Angelo.”
“And I’m not a new funeral home apprentice—I’m Olivia’s boyfriend.”
What. The. Fuck. I stared at Catcher in absolute shock at the fact he had referred to himself as my “boyfriend.” I mean, we hadn’t actually been on a real date yet. I couldn’t bring myself to consider our meeting at The Rusty Ho as a date. Sure, we’d spent a lot of time together in the last two and a half days, but it was in the pursuit of a murderer.
I wasn’t the only one staring at Catcher in shock. Marco wore the same deer-in-the-headlights expression as I assumed I did. Finally, he shook his head like he was shaking himself out of a stupor. “Hey man, that’s great.”
“I like to think so.”
As the tension grew in the air, I put the brake on the gurney. “I guess I better get Mr. Delaney.”
When I started to slide the sheet under Mr. Delaney to do the transfer from the bed to the gurney, Marco jumped forward like he usually did. “I’ll get that, Liv.”
Before he could, Catcher knocked him out of the way. “I got it.”
Once again, tension crackled in the air so thickly that you could almost hear the hum. Although I didn’t think Catcher had any experience with body transfers, he managed to do a great job getting Mr. Delaney on the stretcher. After buckling him and putting on the drape, I turned to look at Marco who was staring daggers at Catcher with his arms crossed over his chest. “Um, I guess that’s it. Good seeing you again, Marco.”
Instantly, his expression changed from sullen to smiley. “It was good seeing you too, Liv. Always a pleasure.”
At the word “pleasure”, Catcher stiffened next to me. I decided it was time to get the hell out of there. “Okay then. Bye,” I said before promptly banging the gurney and poor Mr. Delaney into the wall. “Oops.”
It then took me a few seconds of maneuvering to get myself out of the corner. “You got it?” Marco asked.
“Oh yeah. I’m fine,” I quickly replied before he and Catcher had a chance to trade evil looks.
When I got out into the hallway, I exhaled the breath I had been holding. “Need me to get that?” Catcher asked when I once again banged the stretcher into the wall.
“Nope. I’ve got it.” Get a grip, Sullivan. You’re making an ass out of yourself. You haven’t done the stretcher shuffle since the first summer you worked for your dad. After inwardly berating myself, I was able to make it down the rest of the hallway without any further incidents.
After rolling the gurney onto the elevator, I turned back to see Marco standing outside Mr. Delaney’s room. He threw up his hand and smiled.
“Bye,” I replied, which caused Catcher to growl.
When the elevator doors closed, I turned to glare at Catcher. “What the hell was that about?”
Catcher stared straight ahead. “What do you mean?”
“Um, the fact that for a minute, I thought you might go all Motown on me by pissing on my leg to show possession.”
Catcher snorted before cutting his eyes over to me. “I was not as bad as your dog.”
I cocked my bro
ws at him. “Seriously?”
“That douchebag was totally scamming on you.”
“Marco was not scamming on me.”
“Get serious, Olivia. The guy is probably going to jerk one out in the bathroom over you.”
Wrinkling my nose, I replied, “Ew. I seriously doubt that.”
“Are you really that blind?”
I shrugged. “He was just being nice. Marco’s always been very friendly and helpful.”
“Yeah, so he could get in your pants.”
I widened my eyes. “No. He so doesn’t think of me that way.”
“Oh yeah, he does.” Catcher shook his head at me. “No wonder you were in such a sex drought. You can’t pick up when a man is coming on to you.”
“I hardly think that Marco was trying to come on to me when I was picking up dead guys.”
Catcher snorted. “Babe, as long as we’re not dead or our dick’s not dead, we’re going to pick up a woman regardless of the situation.”
The elevator door dinged open. “And that’s why men are pigs.”
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.”
Ignoring him, I then rolled Mr. Delaney through the hallways and out to the hearse. Catcher stood by ready to lift a hand, but it was as if he sensed I wanted to do it on my own, so he didn’t interfere. The fact that he got me—the real me—was very endearing. For the first time, I felt like I had a met a man who was strong enough for me. As the strains of Sheryl Crowe’s Strong Enough played in my head, I closed the gap between Catcher and me.
I raised my hand to cup his cheek. “You know, you were kind of a Neanderthal back there, which is terribly unattractive to a feminist like me.” When he started to protest, I put my finger over his lips. “But by the same token, I’ve never had a man who cared enough about me to be so aggressively possessive. And God help me, I liked it. I liked it a lot.”
A smirk curved on Catcher’s face. “You did, huh?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Well, that’s just who I am, babe. An overly possessive alpha male that borders on being a caveman.” With a grunt, he brought his hands to my breasts. “Mine.”
I laughed as I pushed his hands away. “Stop before someone sees us.”
“If you think storeroom sex is hot, you should try al-fresco-hospital-parking-lot-sex.”
“No thank you. The last thing I need is to be involved in a sex scandal. That would be the final straw for my mother.”
Catcher laughed as he started around the side of the hearse. “Fine. I’ll be a gentleman and preserve your virtuous reputation.”
“Thank you, kind sir,” I replied with a grin.
When we got back to the funeral home, Catcher surprised me by following Mr. Delaney and me to the door. “What?” he asked at what must’ve been my shocked expression.
“Nothing. I just thought you would probably wait in your car for me.”
“No way. I want to see the inside of your place.”
I laughed. “My place is five minutes down the road. This is just where I work.”
“You grew up here though, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Can I see your teenage bedroom?”
“Why on earth would you want to see that?”
“In a way it would be like an anthropological dig. I could see who you were back in the day.”
“Trust me, you wouldn’t find it interesting.”
Catcher waggled his eyebrows. “The part where I fantasized about a young, curious girl discovering herself would be.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Ew, that’s disgusting.”
“My fantasy or you getting yourself off?”
“The fantasy.”
“Ah, so you’re admitting that you got yourself off back then.”
Ignoring him, I unlocked the back door and pushed the gurney inside. “Oh come on, Liv. Be a big girl and admit that you diddled yourself back in the day. Buttering your biscuit as a teenager is nothing to be ashamed of. I was twelve the first time I spanked the monkey.”
I glared at him over my shoulder. “Would you please have some respect for the dead? I don’t think it’s too much to ask for the words “diddled” and “spanked the monkey” not to be spoken around Mr. Delaney.”
Catcher grinned. “Ha, that’s just an excuse to avoid the question.”
“Whatever,” I mumbled. After easing Mr. Delaney into the first prep room, I walked into the second prep room to turn up the freezer. I would keep him on ice tonight until I could talk to his family or next of kin about their wishes for burial or cremation. Once the temperature was adjusted, I opened the freezer door and leaned in to see the fan had started cooling.
The next thing I knew Catcher grabbed me by the waist and jerked me back against his hard body…and his hard cock. He buried his head in the crook of my shoulder and licked a fiery path from my collarbone up to my ear. “What the hell are you doing?” I demanded.
“I would think it would be self-explanatory that I want to fuck you.”
“H-Here? N-Now?”
“Hell yes.”
One of Catcher’s hands slid up my ribcage to cup my breast. My traitorous body instantly responded to his touch. “Do you have some kind of necrophilia fetish that you haven’t told me about?” I asked as I tried to ignore my hardening nipple.
He chuckled. “No, babe, I don’t. It’s more about the fact when you leaned over just now, I not only got a fabulous view of your ass, but you’re wearing those sexy-as-fuck thigh highs.”
“So it’s a pantyhose specific fetish you have?”
I gasped as Catcher’s other hand dipped between my legs. “Yeah, it is.”
Since the funeral home was empty without any visitations and Mr. Delaney was hanging out in the other room, I decided to give in and have hot, dirty sex. Catcher’s sexts from earlier coupled with the way he had kissed me in my foyer had been like an extended foreplay through the evening. I reached behind me, cupping the growing erection in Catcher’s pants. He groaned into my ear.
Just as I started working him over his slacks, he whirled me around. His hands came to the buttons on my blouse. After fumbling unsuccessfully for a few seconds, he jerked the fabric apart. I gasped as the buttons went flying through the air. I narrowed my eyes at him. “You ruined my shirt.”
“I’ll make it up to you with an extra orgasm.”
I grinned. “Deal.”
My bra was jerked away with the same desperation as my shirt. Catcher dipped me back as his mouth closed over one of my nipples. “Hmm,” I moaned, my hands jerking through his hair. God, the man had a mouth like a Hoover. When his lips went to my other nipple, his hands slid down my ribcage and came to the hem of my skirt. He jerked it up over my waist before tearing my panties down my thighs.
When his hand cupped me between my legs, I moaned. His fingers tapped over my clit like he was doing Morse Code before he thrust two of them deep inside me. “Oh fuck, Catcher,” I groaned.
“Does that feel good, baby?” he asked, his breath scorching against my neck.
“Yes. Oh yes.”
“After you come, do you want me to eat your pussy or put my hard cock where my fingers are?”
Hmm, decisions, decisions, decisions. As I bit down on my lip to keep from shrieking with pleasure, I glanced at the doorway. So much for worrying about Mr. Delaney hearing “diddled” and “spanked the monkey.” Mr. Dirtytalk was putting that to shame.
I gripped Catcher’s shoulders so tight I was sure I would leave marks. I panted and whimpered as my hips moved frantically to rub my clit against Catcher’s hand. And then my body tensed as I came hard. “Catcher!” I screamed.
He brought my mouth to his for a lingering kiss. He didn’t remove his fingers until my walls had stopped convulsing. His fingers then went to unbutton and unbuckle his pants.
I gave him a lazy smile. “I guess this means no oral satisfaction, huh?”
Catcher shook his head. “I’ve got to get inside you, or I?
??m going to explode.”
I couldn’t argue with that one. Catcher glanced wildly around the room before grabbing me under my ass and hoisting me up onto the empty gurney. He bent over to retrieve his wallet from his pants that were now around his ankles. After grabbing a condom out, he tossed his wallet behind him.
He opened the condom and slid it on in record time. The next thing I knew he was filling me with his masterful dick. When he thrust into me a second time, his foot hit the lock on the brake, sending the gurney careening forward. Each time he pounded into me, the gurney went gliding further around the room. As we banged, we banged into walls and the furniture in the prep room.
Although the scenery wasn’t the most romantic or seductive, it didn’t take away from the sex. It was just as amazing as in the storeroom and at the Holiday Inn. There was something almost mystical that happened when Catcher and I got together. Like a seismic shift occurred when our bodies were connected. Everything around us melted away to where we were the only people in the world.
Of course in this instance, I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to see us like this. Not only we were screwing a few feet from a dead guy, but I’m sure we looked pretty ridiculous doing it. You had me flung half-way across a mortuary gurney with my skirt hitched around my waist, shirt ripped open, with my legs spread as wide as my semi-physically fit body would allow.
Then you had Mr. Alpha Male with his navy blue suit pants bunched around his ankles with his delectable ass full mooning, his belt clanking along the floor with every awe-inspiring thrust into my pussy while at the same time attempting to reposition me and the gurney.
Pretty sure we would never make it into a movie sex scene. Instead, it probably would find a home in some weird fetish porn.
“Oh God, I’m coming again!” I moaned into Catcher’s neck.
“Me too, babe. Let’s do it together.”
As our bodies shuddered and convulsed, we rode out the high together. When Catcher fell against me, the stretcher lurched forward one last time. That was when I felt something ice cold press against my butt cheek.
“EEEEEEEEE!” I screamed. In my pleasure haze, I didn’t realize that Catcher had fucked us into the other room and bumped the gurney with Mr. Delaney on it. Somehow Mr. Delaney’s arm had fallen off the table. With the beginning of rigor mortis, it had stretched out straight, instead of falling down.