Eagle's Refuge by Regina Carlysle

pace. Tiny fingers of sensation raced from the soles of his feet to the top of his head and every place in between as his
    body gathered for climax. Beneath him, Callie cried out, her voice muffled against the mattress. Her limbs quivered. Oh hell yeah, she was there and so was he. No more dicking around. A roar of pleasure crashed through his body as he came with a low sound, his cock going off like a rocket deep inside her smoldering pussy. Callie shivered beneath him and in the aftermath, Mac stretched across her back, kissed her and wondered what the hell this woman was doing to his heart.
    Sometime later, after they reheated and devoured the burgers and fries, Mac helped Callie put away contents from the boxes that had arrived that day. The woman sure liked to read. Already he’d carried three heavy boxes to her built-in bookcases and begun neatly stacking book after book onto the shelves. Callie had turned on working music as she’d called it and classic rock from the eighties and nineties rolled from her sound system. Mac had to laugh. Most women in his past had found him a little intimidating but not Callie. She was completely funny to him and so unselfconscious about things. Sometimes she danced barefoot across the floor and occasionally belted out lines from songs in an off-key lilt. Shaking his head at her humming to an old Stones song, he shoved another two books into place when suddenly she stopped with the impromptu concert. He looked over his shoulder and saw she had gone still. She sniffed the air.
    “Do you smell something?”
    Mac took a couple of steps toward her and sniffed the air too. “Now that you mention it, yeah.”
    Following his nose, he approached three or four boxes stacked along one wall of the living room. “In here, I think,” he murmured, reaching into his jeans for a pocket knife he always carried. “Let’s open some of these and see if we can get to the bottom of this.”
    Callie had been opening stuff with an opener that held a sharp razor so she bent over one of the boxes and went to work slicing packing tape while Mac opened the one next to it. Suddenly Callie screamed and jumped back. Mac caught her against him as she buried her nose against his chest.
    “Fuck!”
    A huge rat that had obviously been dead for some time lay atop the linens in the box. The thing smelled to high heaven. Mac held Callie close, feeling her tremble.
    “I hate rats! I mean it, Mac, I hate them,” she whispered.
    Feeling as helpless as hell in the face of all this, Mac patted her back and buried his face in her hair. “Let me throw the thing out, honey.”
    Callie drew back and looked at him and he instantly recognized the fear swimming in her eyes. She sucked in a shaky breath and mustered a smile. “I’m okay now. It just surprised me. Ick.” She shuddered violently.
    Pressing a kiss to her forehead, Mac went about disposing of the thing while Callie carried the box of linens into a laundry room and started shoving sheets, pillowcases and blankets into the washing machine. Mac walked back into the house and found her there, her hands shaking as she tried to pour soap into the tub. “Here, let me.”
    Mac took the jug of laundry soap from her hand and got the machine started before settling a hand on her lower back and steering her into the living room. Together they sat down on the couch and he pulled her against him. “Tell me what you’re thinking here, honey.”
    Callie looked at him and frowned. “I think someone put that damn rat in the box.
    There wasn’t a hole in it anywhere.”
    Anger balled up in his belly but he fought it down. “You think your ex did this?”
    “Doug. Yeah, I do. It would be just like him to find out where I stored things and do something like this. He’s a real classy guy.”
    Mac considered things and figured it was likely. No hole in the box meant someone had to put it there and Doug Hill was a likely suspect. He just wished the dude was here right now, at