by Lora Leigh
Scott cleared his throat again before glancing at Ramsey as he moved behind the desk and sat down.
“Scott’s paying for his negligence that day,” Ramsey stated firmly. “I trust you’re not here to go over this, Mr. Steele.”
Nik arched a brow and looked at Scott mockingly. The knowledge that Nik was deliberately courting Scott’s father’s protectiveness wasn’t lost on the boy. He squirmed, ducking his head in shame before lifting his gaze to Nik’s once more.
“I have some questions,” Nik told them both as he took a seat in one of the leather chairs facing the desk. “First and foremost, who knew Mikayla was picking Scott up that day?” He deliberately posed his question to the father rather than the son.
“Scott?” Ramsey asked, frowning as he glanced back at Scott.
“He can ask me,” Scott growled. “Why is he asking you?”
Ramsey continued to frown.
“When dealing with a child you go to the parent,” Nik stated softly. “If you’re a man, then we can dispense with a third party.”
Ramsey glared back at Nik. “I think we’re both aware Scott is no match for you, Mr. Steele.”
“And I think we both know that the thought of Mikayla’s ire is a far better deterrent in smacking that kid upside the head for his negligence than your anger or anything you could do, Mr. Martin,” Nik said. “I have some questions, nothing more. But if you feel you must protect him, then neither of you should object when I deal with the matter as one adult to the other, and exclude him as much as possible.”
It was a tactic Nik’s father had used on him, his brothers, his cousins, on more than one occasion.
“I can handle this,” Scott protested, his shoulders squaring as he tried to tell himself as well as his father that he was a man.
Ramsey gave Nik another hard, warning look before standing slowly to his feet, nodding sharply, then leaving the room.
Nik remained in his seat, staring back at the young man with knowing mockery. Scott knew he’d just come face-to-face with judgment if he was lucky. A hell of a lot of hurt if he wasn’t.
Nik got straight to the point.
“Why didn’t you call your sister and let her know you had a ride rather than leaving her to arrive at a deserted construction site where anything could have happened to her?”
This had nothing to do with the investigation and everything to do with the primitive protectiveness rising up inside Nik for her.
“I forgot.” Scott crossed his arms over his chest before tucking his hands beneath his armpits defensively, his shoulders hunching as though he carried the weight of that decision and it didn’t sit well. “I was on the phone with Dad when she called. My phone was dying. I asked Dad to call her back. By then, she was already there and it was too late.”
The boy shook his head before swallowing tightly, his gray eyes darkening with remembered fear. “I almost got her killed.”
“Let it happen again, and it won’t matter where I am, or what I’m doing. I’ll come for you, Scott. You got that? I’ll kill you.”
The boy paled. “Yeah, you and the rest of the family.”
“Your family will leave you breathing. I won’t,” Nik told him before gesturing to the chair next to the desk. “Tell me what you know about Eddie Foreman.”
Scott blinked but did as he was ordered. He sat down slowly, the awareness that he had gained no more than a reprieve from Nik evident in his gaze.
“He was an asshole,” Scott breathed out heavily. “Always cutting corners, always trying to make deals and earn an easy buck.”
“Mikayla said you witnessed an argument between him and Maddix Nelson?” Nik reminded Scott.
Scott nodded. “I don’t know exactly what it was over. I only caught bits and pieces. Maddix was accusing him of something from what I heard. I heard Eddie yelling from the construction office that he didn’t do it, and that Maddix was crazy. I heard Maddix yell back that he’d pay for it, if he did.”
“And you told the police this?” Nik pressed.
“Hell yes, I did.” Scott frowned, anger darkening his gaze. “Bastards just blew me off. Said it didn’t matter because Maddix didn’t do it. My sister doesn’t lie—”
Nik held his hand up, recognizing that Scott was in danger of losing his temper. He needed Scott calm. This information wasn’t in the police report. There were too many holes, too much information missing.
“Anyone else?” Nik asked. “Who could have wanted Eddie dead beside Maddix?”
Scott shook his head. “Hell if I know. Probably everyone. Like I said, he was an asshole… .”
“What about that evening?” Nik asked. “Who else knew Mikayla was picking you up?”
Scott snorted at that. “Everyone. The guys like Mikayla, but she was late that day. I caught a ride, thinking maybe she had forgotten about me while she was sewing. She does that sometimes. Me and the boys I left with were the last ones out. Even Eddie had left before us. I have no idea why he came back to the job site.”
To meet with someone, evidently.
“What about Maddix?” Nik asked. “Did he come out to the site often?”
“Always after everyone else left,” Scott replied. “And yes, I tried to tell the police that, and they still wouldn’t listen.”
But Nik had something to start with now. Unfortunately, that something was against Maddix himself.
Nik didn’t trust anyone unconditionally, especially a man he owed a favor to. The suspicion had been cast, and now Nik had to figure out where it went.
“Scott, what about the chief of police and the council people he was meeting with that night? What do you know about them?”
“I know they’re all in bed together.” Scott leaned forward, his expression mutinous. “One way or another, through either business or sex, they’re all up each other’s asses and they have a damned good reason to lie for Maddix Nelson. He’s one of them; Mikayla’s not. That’s why she’s being treated like shit and that’s why the police won’t believe her.”
If Maddix Nelson was lying to him, Nik would make damned certain he made good on that threat. There was a steel-hard core of determination riding inside Nik, one he didn’t bother to fight. Strike against Mikayla and Nik would be the one to strike back. He’d always warned Maddix what would happen; Nik would leave it up to the other man to heed the warning or not.
Calling Nik had been a bad mistake if Maddix was involved in any way in the murder of Eddie Foreman or the attempted shooting of Mikayla. Of course, from a certain standpoint, it could have been considered a wise move. Hire someone to come in to prove Maddix was innocent with the excuse that he simply wanted to know why he was being targeted? That was damned good.
If Maddix and his alibis were lying, then Nik would make certain they all paid.
When he rode out of town he would make sure there were no threats left against Mikayla.
When he rode out of town.
That thought left a sour taste in his mouth, and a regret inside him he had been certain he wouldn’t let himself feel.
He couldn’t let himself feel. Because there wasn’t a chance in hell he could stay.
CHAPTER 10
Mikayla walked into the house early that evening. Standing aside, she waited as Nik went through the house and then returned to the living room. One more evening that she had returned to find her home unviolated.
Lucky her. If only she could claim the same for her shop. There were more of Maddix Nelson’s friends and their friends tripping in and out than there were of her own.
Financially, it was good, but her nerves were shot.
“I have to go out for a while,” Nik told her as he came back to the living room, his jaw flexing as though he were clenching his teeth.
“Fine. I’ll leave your dinner in the oven.” She shrugged as though it didn’t matter.
She wasn’t going to let it matter. After the completely humiliating episode that afternoon, the less time she had to spend with him t
he better.
“I’ll be sure to remember that.” There was a dark, hungry sound in his voice, a rasp that sent a shiver racing up Mikayla’s spine as he neared her.
She breathed in deeply, drawing in the dark male scent of him. A hint of winter in the summer. A hint of heat on a cold winter’s night.
“Mikayla.” He paused before her; the way he towered over her should have made her feel something other than intensely feminine, protected.
“I thought you had to leave?” She stared up at him, the three-inch heels she wore doing very little to add enough to her height to make her feel a bit more on common ground with him.
She was cursed with her short stature, she determined. And before a man like Nik, so tall and broad, his towering over her and making her feel feminine and protected could be hazardous to the heart.
“You’re a dangerous woman.” His voice lowered, the ice in his eyes seeming to unthaw for just a second.
“And what makes you think I’m such a dangerous woman?” she asked, her voice stronger than she knew she actually was.
“Because you make me forget some hellacious lessons,” he stated as his hand lifted, his thumb brushing against her lips gently.
They trembled at his touch. She couldn’t help it. The need for his touch had been rising since he had walked away from her that morning.
Who was she kidding? The need for his touch was about to drive her positively insane. She had never ached like this. To the point that her entire body was sensitized, hyper, on fire. She was burning alive.
“I thought you were leaving,” she repeated, the little squeak in her voice as her lips brushed against his thumb.
Oh man, she needed desperately to tighten her thighs, to put just a little pressure on her clit to ease that tingling little burn going on down there.
The way he was looking at her was driving her crazy. As though he could see straight to that hungry, sexual part of her. The part that had wicked, nasty fantasies about him.
“We’ll talk later.” That sounded like a threat. A sensual, hungry threat that had her sex clenching involuntarily as she forced herself to slide out of the way, to allow him to open the door and leave.
As the door closed behind him Mikayla could have sworn that some of the life in the room went with him.
That was exactly what she didn’t need, she told herself as she forced herself to the bedroom. The life couldn’t leave the room when he left; otherwise, how much worse would it be when he left her life, not just the room?
Guard against a broken heart, girl, she told herself as she stepped into the shower.
The shower might not have been the best idea, though, as the water sluiced over her naked flesh, heated and warm, caressing, her hands rubbing from her shoulders down, over her breasts, her waist.
The rasp of the washcloth over her flesh reminded her of Nik. The calloused heat of his hands coursing over her body, touching her, feeling her.
Eyes closed, inhibitions lost, a muted moan left her lips, shocking her with the hunger rife in the sound.
She had never wanted as she wanted at this moment. A man’s touch, his kiss.
No, not just a man’s, Nik’s. Nik’s touch. Nik’s kiss. His hands smoothing over her stomach, hips, to her thighs and beyond.
Dropping the cloth, she let her fingers touch, so desperate, so on fire, now that nothing but flesh on flesh could come close to giving her what she needed.
Her head tipped back against the shower wall, the feel of her hair caressing the tops of the rounded globes of her rear another caress. Another reminder of a touch she wanted, a touch she had no hope of attaining if she didn’t have Nik.
Brushing her fingers over the swollen curves of her sex, Mikayla drew in a hard, broken breath at the whispered caress against her clit.
Sensation shot through her, clenching her stomach and tightening her thighs as her fingers parted the slick, dew-rich curves of her pussy and delved inside.
It was good, damned good, but not as good as Nik.
A needy moan fell from her lips again as she dragged her free hand to her breasts, her fingers brushing against first one nipple, then the next. She let her nails rake against them as she fought to find the feel of Nik’s calloused, roughened fingertips against them.
Almost. She almost had the sensation. The pleasure.
Water pounded around her, hot and wet as her fingers slid through the slick layer of juices that eased from her vagina. She wanted, ached, to be touched there. To be taken. It was a hunger unlike anything she could have imagined.
“Mikayla!”
Her eyes flew open in shock to meet the searing blue flames in Nik’s gaze.
One hand still cupped her sex, the other her breast, her fingers on her nipples as her brain tried to comprehend the sudden change.
To assimilate the fact that Nik was stripping. His T-shirt tossed aside in the space of a breath, his jeans loosened with one hand, unzipped, his cock springing free as he pushed them over his hips, his gaze refusing to release hers, his expression filled with hunger, with something more than pure lust.
“I …” She tried to talk, to explain, as his hand gripped hers and drew it from between her thighs.
Heat flushed her face. She had been standing there, still touching herself, as he undressed. How mortifying. And yet how sexy.
The water shut off. She blinked back at him as he drew her from the shower.
Mesmerized. That was what she was. She was mesmerized. She knew damned well what was getting ready to happen and she was suspended between disbelief and helpless anticipation.
When his lips met hers, adrenaline jacked through her veins, pouring into her senses as she felt his hands stroking over her.
No, those weren’t his hands. Well, they were, but he held a towel between his flesh and hers.
Drying her.
A moan tore between their lips as she cried out at the friction against her sensitive flesh. She felt weak, uncertain. The rasp of the towel over her skin was almost too much; sudden, sharp spears of pleasure tore through her.
Her gasps of surprised pleasure were silenced by his lips on hers, but the jerking of her body, the hard inhalation, wasn’t lost on him. It seemed to make him harder, hotter. His lips slanted over hers, his tongue pressing against her and stroking in rapid-fire motions that stoked her own need higher.
Mikayla stopped trying to make sense of it. The hard naked press of his cock against her stomach was like a brand. His hands were wide, strong, holding her to him as he lifted her, turned, carried her to the bedroom.
Mikayla was shaking. She could feel the tremors racing through her body as his lips continued to ransack hers.
“You’ll be the death of me.” He pulled back from the kiss as he laid her on the bed, staring down at her, the broad, bronzed width of his shoulders shadowing her.
She had to touch them.
Her nails raked over the tough flesh, felt the flesh of muscle beneath.
“How?” She forced the word past her lips, questioning his statement rather than begging for him as she wanted to.
Watching his hand move, his long fingers cup her breast, Mikayla lost the ability to reason anything then.
“This …” The answer was lost on her. “This sweet, sexy little body. That innocence in your eyes. I don’t know if my conscience can survive you, Mikayla.”
“Then make it worth it,” she whispered, fighting the whimper in her voice. “For both of us.”
She had to touch him as she spoke. She had never imagined pleasure like this, never imagined such need to touch a man. Her hand slid down his chest, his hard abs, to the thick stalk of flesh rising from between his thighs.
She couldn’t encircle it with her fingers. It was heavy, strong, and hot, throbbing beneath her fingers with life and pleasure.
Mikayla’s neck arched as his lips came to hers again, his kiss hungrier, hotter, than ever before.
It was going to happen, she thought. Her ideal of romance ha
d been shot to hell. The white dress she had planned was dust in the wind.
Would antique white work? she wondered, because she wasn’t about to deny herself this.
She wanted to touch him. All of him. All over.
His hair-roughened thigh stroked against her softer one as she ran her foot up his lower leg, feeling the strength, heat, and soft male hair against her foot. She hadn’t known her feet could be so sensitive.
But she had known her neck was sensitive. Still, when his lips brushed down it, moved from her lips, she couldn’t halt the cry that escaped her lips.
She wanted to rub her entire body against him.
His shoulder tasted of a hint of salt, a lot of hard, vibrant male, and of life. The taste of his flesh was almost an aphrodisiac, drawing her further into the sensual vortex wrapping around her.
“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he groaned as his lips brushed along her skin, moving unerringly to the swollen curves of her breasts.
She didn’t know what she was asking for?
“Everything you have to give me,” she demanded, her head grinding against the pillow as his hands cupped her breasts, lifting them as his mouth descended on one hard, violently sensitive nipple.
“Look at me, Mikayla.” His tone was darker, rougher.
Forcing her eyes open, Mikayla stared into the pale blue flames of hunger in his gaze.
“You don’t want everything,” he whispered, his cheek brushing against her nipple.
“Everything.” No matter how dark, no matter how lusty. She wanted all of him.
His eyes narrowed on her, his tongue licked out, stroking over her nipple a second before his lips covered it, drawing it into the liquid fire of his mouth.
Mikayla arched, her arms wrapping around his neck to hold him to her as she felt one hand move from her breast to her thigh. She tried to pay attention; she really did. She needed to have an idea of what to do to him when she got the chance. What would make him crazy. Deirdre said it could be done that way. That men would sometimes touch how and where they liked being touched.
If that was true, then she was doomed to failure.