The tall detective looked at me over his partner’s head. “You were there at the hospital, weren’t you?” He opened the notepad he seemed to always have in his hand, again reminding me of a television detective. “Mellissa Anderson?”
I nodded.
“You were the intended victim. Funny finding you here.”
“What is this about?” I demanded again.
The detective looked from me to Conrad, an odd smile on his lips. “Your boyfriend is being arrested under suspicion of orchestrating Miss Miller’s kidnapping.”
Again that feeling of being doused with ice water.
Could my life possibly get any worse?
Chapter Nine
“I called his lawyer.”
“Good. Do you have a car?”
The pretty secretary stared at me for a second, as though she didn’t understand simple English.
“A car,” I repeated. “We should probably go down to the police station and see if we can expedite his release.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, turning around. “I do.”
She wandered to her desk a little too slowly, as though she were in the midst of shock, or something. It reminded me vaguely of the day Uncle Mike told Memaw and me that he was going to jail. Memaw had the same distracted, unable-to-concentrate attitude for a full two days afterward. But when the FBI actually came to the house and made the arrest, she was a rock. She knew exactly what to do, who to call, and how to handle the whole thing.
I wished I could call her now and ask her to come fix this for me.
“Here,” Conrad’s secretary said, holding out a set of keys. “You should be the one to go.”
My southern upbringing told me that I should refuse, but I didn’t have time to fight with her. So I grabbed the keys and rushed toward the door, aware of Conrad’s employees standing in the hallway, wondering to each other why their fearless leader was just marched out of here in handcuffs.
I didn’t stop to ask what kind of car the secretary drove. Thank God for the little fobs with the remote lock/unlock buttons and the little red alarm button. I found it in a breeze, a Ford Fiat that looked like it had seen better days. But it got me to the police station without too much trouble, just a rough idle at stop lights. I should mention it to her when I returned it…
The lobby of the police station was crowded. I half expected to find Conrad sitting on a bench there, but he was nowhere to be seen. I stood in line for nearly fifteen minutes before I was finally able to ask the desk sergeant where Conrad was.
“He hasn’t been processed yet. Take a seat. Someone will come out and speak to you when he is.”
Great.
My cellphone rang as I turned away. Russell. It was then that I realized that I hadn’t called work to let them know I would be running late. Not that I was going to need this job after this week. I could quit today and it wouldn’t make much difference. But there was still that southern upbringing…I didn’t want to leave Einstein and Russell in a bind.
“Hey, Russell,” I said, stepping out the door to avoid the noise in the lobby. “I’m sorry, I should have called sooner.”
“I was just going to ask if you could bring some lattés when you come in. I’m overloaded and could use a little caffeine.”
“I don’t think I’m going to make it in today. Something’s happened—”
“Ms. Goldstein is here, and she’s expects you to be at your desk.”
“I realize that.”
“You’re supposed to give at least an hour’s notice.”
“I know that, too.” I watched a couple of uniform cops bring a screaming woman up the steps, my heart sinking. I couldn’t help but think—who knows what might have happened to me if my uncle hadn’t taken me in, if he hadn’t made the choices he did, and if I hadn’t agreed to the rules and regulations of WITSEC.
My thoughts again drifted to those dark days right after my uncle was arrested.
“You said Ms. Goldstein was there?”
“Yes. But she’s very busy, and I’m sure she would appreciate if her receptionist bothered to come into work—”
“Can I talk to her, please?”
That shut Russell up. It surprised me. I didn’t think anything was capable of shutting Russell up.
“If you plan on pleading your case—”
“No. This is of a more personal nature.”
Russell groaned. “Fine. But if you aren’t at your desk tomorrow, don’t expect your job to be waiting for you on Wednesday.”
“I understand.”
A moment later, Einstein’s voice came over the phone.
“Are you ill again?” she asked with real concern in her voice. “Maybe you should start taking some vitamin C. I hear it does wonders for the immune system.”
“No, I’m not ill. It’s Conrad.”
“Is something wrong with Conrad?”
“You know about Madison’s kidnapping last week, right?”
“Kidnapping?”
“Has Rawn told you about the investigation? Do you know why they would think that Conrad would have something to do with it?”
“Conrad should be at work right now.”
I started to tell her about his arrest, but thought better of it. Instead, I asked, “Have you spoken to Rawn since last week?”
“Of course. We were in a meeting together just this morning on the new electron microscope he’s thinking about producing. Our scientists think they could have a workable blueprint in a month or so.”
“That’s great,” I said. “But did he say anything about corporate espionage or kidnappings?”
There was a long silence. “We talked about an electron microscope,” she said. “And a new mass spectrometry detector.”
“Okay. Then he didn’t mention anything about Conrad?”
“No, not that I remember.” There was a clear tone of confusion in her voice. “Is Conrad okay?”
“He’s fine.”
I dragged my fingers through my hair as a man came walking up the steps dressed in a suit. I found myself hoping that he was Conrad’s lawyer. If I couldn’t get Conrad’s ex-wife to help me—I still didn’t even know why he’d been arrested, not really—I didn’t know who else to ask for help.
I shut off my phone a minute later and went back inside, the dregs of humanity screaming all around me. There were a couple of women dressed in less than appropriate clothing sitting on a bench, handcuffed to one another. A man with blood running down his cheeks from a pretty significant head wound sat beside them. A couple of teenagers with more tattoos than I’d ever seen on a single human being were there too. And then there were the worried parents, the crying wives, and the indifferent boyfriends, sisters, brothers, and grandparents standing around, waiting for their loved one to be brought out.
After a while, I found a place to sit that wasn’t too close to a questionable character or near the random puddles of unidentifiable fluids that seemed to be scattered throughout the room. I checked my phone dozens of times, not sure what I was hoping to see. Around noon, I slipped out onto the front steps again to check in with Christy. Everything was fine at home, thank goodness. I wasn’t sure if I could handle another crisis today.
And I thought Friday was a gray day.
I was about to give up and get in line to ask the desk sergeant if perhaps someone had forgotten to let me know what was going on with Conrad. I started to get to my feet when the door suddenly burst open and Rawn strode through.
“Ra—Mr. Jackman?” I said.
He glanced at me. “Miss Anderson. What are you doing here?”
“Conrad was arrested this morning.”
“I know. The police have asked for me to come down and make a statement.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You? Then you knew what was happening?”
“Yes.”
He brushed past me and walked up to the front desk, bypassing all the other people who had been waiting in line to speak to the desk serg
eant, as though his power at Cepheus Scientific and his money made him more important than all those other people.
Before Rawn could fully explain to the sergeant who he was, however, Conrad and a man in a suit I had never seen before came out another set of doors to the left of the main desk.
All I heard was Conrad mumbling something that was unrepeatable. And then he swung his fist at Rawn’s perfect jaw. Rawn fell back, slamming into the glass partition that separated the lobby from the sergeant’s desk. He raised his hand to his face, his fingers coming away dotted with blood.
“After everything, you dare to pin this bullshit on me?” Conrad asked, his face reddened with anger. “Everything I did for you.”
“You did for me?” Rawn asked, straightening his suit jacket as he rose to his full height, towering over Conrad by an inch or two. “I think you got that wrong, brother. I was the one helping you out.”
“That would be the way you remember it.”
The suited man grabbed Conrad by the shoulders and hissed something in his ear. Conrad pulled away, but he also turned away from Rawn. When his eyes fell on me, I could see the pain in his eyes. But then it slowly slipped away and was replaced with sadness and a weary sort of exhaustion that was more about emotional pain than a lack of sleep.
He pulled me into his arms and breathed deep the scent of my hair.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.”
***
He directed me to a luxurious, but modestly so, colonial on the outskirts of town. It was a pretty white and black house that seemed to fit his style to a T. The moment we stepped through the double doors into the marble foyer, he grabbed my hand and led the way upstairs.
“I have to get the stink of that place off of me,” was his only explanation.
His bedroom was situated at the front of the house between another set of double doors. These ones were a pretty oak with rosettes at each of the four corners of the frame. Inside I expected to find dark paneling and dark wood furniture. Instead, I found brightly colored walls, three of them a creamy green and the fourth—the accent wall—a dark Kelly green that was interspersed with thick, pale gray stripes. The floor was a dark wood with an area rug under the bed and under the couch that sat in a comfortable entertainment area on far side of the room. There was a huge television, a state of the art sound system, and a couple of lounge chairs with the couch…a perfect place to unwind at the end of the day.
But it was the bed that dominated the room.
It was a four-poster, king-sized thing made of what looked like recovered barn wood, or some other western-style design. It was massive, but it was also a work of art. There was something about the way the wood was put together that gave the bed a unique appearance. And the down comforter that flowed across it made it look like a place tired bones would love to retire for the rest of eternity.
“Beautiful,” I said, walking along the far edge, running my fingers over one of the posts before catching a corner of the comforter and rubbing it between my thumb and forefinger.
“It’s custom made.” Conrad slipped up behind me, sliding his arms around my waist before he dropped a kiss on the top of my head. “This guy in Austin buys salvaged wood and makes furniture out of it. He said this wood was taken from an old barn in Vermont.”
“It’s almost too pretty to sleep on.”
He kissed my neck with a soft movement of his full lips. “Who said anything about sleeping?”
I turned and he kissed me, his lips warm and moist. He tasted like stale coffee and smelled a little like cigarettes. But his hands were smooth, as they slipped under the back of my sweatshirt, his fingers persistent as they sought out the back of my bra. But he didn’t try very hard to get it undone. In fact, he pulled away after a moment.
“I smell like an old cop.”
“I don’t mind.”
“But I do.”
He tore off his suit jacket and began tugging at the buttons on his shirt as he walked to the bathroom. He dropped his shirt on the floor as he stepped through the door, and then he turned and tilted his head slightly as he studied me. I couldn’t help but stare at his chest—this was the first time I’d seen him anywhere near undressed—that ball of need that refused to be satisfied jumping to life with just that one sight.
“Coming?”
I don’t even remember stripping off my sweatshirt, but I must have done it as I walked to the bathroom because I would find it on the floor beside his shirt the next morning. And then his mouth was on mine again and we fumbled with a certain amount of urgency, as he backed into the bathroom, pulling me with him until he nearly fell into the sink. I found myself standing between his legs as he tugged at the stubborn button of my jeans, and I fumbled with the Italian leather belt around his waist. I gained release first, tearing the belt from his pants before I managed to undo the zipper, dropping to my knees as it exposed his boxer briefs underneath.
I’d never done anything like this before. I wasn’t a prude. I knew the basic mechanics. But the few boys I had been with had been more interested in other aspects of the sex act than this. One had actually told me he preferred to save oral sex for times when his girl couldn’t offer a good fuck for one reason or another.
Who knew?
But Conrad didn’t seem to mind either my desire to taste him, or the fact that it took me a few tries to figure out how to keep my teeth out of the way. And once I did…his fingers buried in my hair were enough to tell me I was doing it right. His moans were enough for me to know he was getting everything he could want out of my touch.
It was like silk the way his cock slid over my tongue. And it tasted like…so many different things. I, like the other girls at my private Catholic school, had giggled in the back of the gym about things like this, trying to figure out what the appeal was to women much older than ourselves. It didn’t seem like anything I would ever want to do. But now…now I wanted to taste, to touch, to feel everything.
A week wasn’t long enough to create a lifetime of memories. But I was determined to try.
I tugged at his briefs, moved them down his long, muscular legs until they finally fell to the floor so that I could push his legs further apart. I ran my hands along the underside of his balls, measuring their weight in my hand before I wrapped my fist around them, making him groan with a mix of pleasure and pain. Then I let go of his cock long enough to suck one, then the other, into my mouth, rolling them around until he cried out.
“Okay, you can’t do that again,” he moaned as he pulled me to my feet.
“Didn’t you like it?”
“More than you will ever know.”
He turned me, pressing me against the marble countertop. He captured my lips again and tasted himself on my tongue before he slid his lips over my chin and began to nibble at my throat. And then he was tugging at my jeans again. But again, he was struggling to get the stubborn button undone. I laughed as I reached down and released it with a quick jerk of my thumb.
“Show off.”
He pulled me to the shower, even as I was kicking away the leg of my jeans. It was a beautiful walk-in shower with brown tile that looked rough, but felt like satin against my bare back. There were three or four shower heads, each set at a different angle to create a rain effect. Water was running down over our bodies, even as he pressed me against one side and lifted me so that he could easily slide inside.
It was an interesting sensation, the feel of his movement mixed with the heat of the water. I wrapped my legs around him and buried my fingers in his shoulders, as I pulled myself up high against his body, encouraging him to hit all those delicious spots deep inside that turned my muscles to jelly and made me lose my mind.
There was no build up to my orgasm this time, no warning. I came so quickly that I’m sure I left bruises on his shoulder from the way surprise made my fingers clench. And my thighs…they were like a vise the way they clamped down on his body, forcing his movements to cease until the initial tidal wave passe
d. Slowly, almost reluctantly, they relaxed, and he tested the waters by rolling his hips, the movement pressing his hip bone so hard against my clit that I immediately fell off the cliff again.
I was losing my mind and loving every second of it.
Then, the cherry on top of the sundae…he bit down on my shoulder. Exquisite pain sliced through me, as he released the heat of his virility inside of me. His knees grew weak for a moment, long enough that we slid down against the tiles and ended up in a heap on the floor of the shower, the water rushing down over us with a gentle, but persistent pulse.
“Damn, baby,” he groaned when he could catch his breath, “you will be the death of me.”
I pushed a heavy, wet lock of hair out of his face. “That’s better.”
“What?”
“Baby. You can call me that instead of darling.”
He laughed, but it was belied by the sadness in his eyes. “Baby it is.”
***
We lay in bed, hours later, the super soft down comforter tucked around us. He had his hand on my hip, his cock nestled nicely in the crack of my ass, his abs against the small of my back, and his chin resting just above my head. We fit together almost perfectly, like two puzzle pieces that had finally found their mates.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Anything,” he said, his breath blowing the tangled mess of my hair.
“Why did they arrest you?”
He groaned, but he didn’t move away as I had feared he might. Instead, he slid his hand around my belly and pulled me closer against him.
“Do we have to talk about that?”
“No. But I don’t want to leave next week without knowing what’s going to happen to you.”
He bent low and kissed my shoulder. “Well, you shouldn’t worry too much. My lawyer thinks he can get the whole thing thrown out before it goes any further.”
“Good. But why did they arrest you in the first place?”
“It’s your fault, actually.”
“Mine?” I rolled over so that I could see his face. “How is it my fault?”
The TROUBLE with BILLIONAIRES: Book 2 Page 9