Wicked Women Whodunit

by Davidson, MaryJanice

  She took in a breath at the sound of his voice, low and gentle, and felt a flutter of excitement when she realized his gaze had darkened to that smoky, heated blue she’d seen last night. The man could make her tingle all over with just a look, and if she stopped to remember what he had made her feel when touching was part of the equation, she’d melt into a messy puddle right here at the foot of the bed.

  “Maybe you could just help me talk it out,” he said, but it was really more of a murmur. A persuasive, you’re-too-far-away murmur. “It would be easier if you were up here, though.” He patted the bedspread in invitation.

  “Within groping range?” She lifted an eyebrow, but she scooted up next to him, curling into the circle of his arm and against the heat of his body with a satisfied sigh. Go ahead, grope me, she wanted to say. There’s nothing I’d like more.

  “Something like that,” he said, but he only reached up to twine his fingers in her hair. She wanted to push against his hand like a cat, urge him to stroke, but they had a murder to figure out, after all. Her body was embarrassingly oblivious to the business at hand.

  “So, enemies,” she said idly. “Apparently, you have some. When I found the body, and thought it was you, my first thought was the contractor who confronted you at the bar. What was his name?”

  “Vic Landry.” He angled up on his other elbow to look at her. “That doesn’t work, though—from the looks of it, my father was probably dead before we even got back to the cottage, and Vic left the bar before we did. Even if he was somewhere waiting for me, the timing’s all wrong— my dad was shot sometime early in the evening, before there was much snow.”

  “Okay, so he’s out. Which is a shame, because he’s got a motive.” Tracing a figure eight on his sweater with one finger, she looked up at him and noticed his raised eyebrows. “Not a good one,” she added, “but still.”

  They were silent for a few minutes, each thinking, with the low rumble of the heater in the background. In the comfortable nest of the bed, Will’s body a great big warm temptation beside her, it was hard to believe they were trying to piece together the clues to a murder instead of how quickly they could get undressed.

  “I guess that leaves out Jill, too, huh?” Lanie said finally. “I thought maybe she’d gone totally stalker-psycho and followed us back to the house, but if he was dead before we got there ...”

  “Yeah.” Will sat up, running his fingers through his hair. “Besides, she may be a little single-minded, but I don’t think she’s homicidal. You know, yet.”

  “Maybe if we knew what your dad was doing here, it would lead us to something,” she suggested. “What about the people Clarice mentioned?”

  “Well, I can’t think of a reason Chick would want me dead,” Will said doubtfully.

  “What’s Chick’s deal? He sounds ... interesting.” Focusing was difficult when she was breathing in the clean, warm scent of him.

  “He runs a Harley shop out near Finley, and it’s not strictly aboveboard. He’s not a bad guy, really, but he looks like one, and he uses that to intimidate people.” Will sighed, and his arm tightened around her. “Chick has always been just scummy enough to encourage wanna-bes to fetch and carry for him, you know? Actually, Petey, the other guy Clarice mentioned, used to run errands for him sometimes back in high school. Go out for another case of beer, lock up the shop when Chick had a date, that kind of thing. He always thought it would make him one of the cool guys.”

  “How did your father even know Chick?” Lanie asked. “He had to be years older.”

  “Not as many as you’d think.” Will’s voice was rueful. “He and my mom were just eighteen when I was conceived in the proverbial backseat of someone’s Chevy, and Chick’s a few years older than me—left back twice, and the kind of guy who likes to be a big fish in a little pond, hanging out with kids just enough younger to look up to him.”

  “Sounds like a really upright member of society,” Lanie murmured. “What about Petey ... what was his name?”

  “Petrowski. I fired him a month ago, actually—he’s been working for me on and off for years, but I got fed up with his bullshit. He’s lazy and about as intelligent as a bottle cap, and I just stopped feeling sorry for him.”

  “But what would your dad want with him?” Lanie asked.

  “They were probably commiserating about what a rotten guy I am,” Will said with a bitter laugh. “I wouldn’t give either of them a handout as often as they liked.”

  “So that means we’re back where we started,” she added, sitting up in frustration. Outside the slightly parted drapes, the afternoon was completely still, a dark, threatening gray. “Nowhere.”

  With that, as if she’d uttered the words to a spell, it was suddenly even darker. With a wheezing gasp, the radiator went off, and then the lights went out.

  Seven

  “I didn’t do it, I swear,” Lanie said, shaking her head. “Not my fault this time.”

  “It’s probably the power lines.” Will laughed and climbed off the bed to grab his coat. “When the temperature drops like it did today, the lines get icy and heavy, and then they collapse. Let’s go see what’s what.”

  “Out there? In the snow? Again?” She sighed, but she got up and put her sneakers and her coat back on, and he threw an arm around her shoulders as they headed back to the office.

  “Power’s out,” Clarice called from the back room when they walked in, the bell over the door jingling their arrival. She came out to the counter, and Will realized her green nail polish glowed in the dark. “No refunds, though.”

  “Not a problem,” Will told her, even though Lanie had rolled her green-brown eyes in disgust. “Well, it’s going to be cold,” she whispered.

  “Wait here and let me walk down the road a bit,” he said to Lanie, installing her in the leather chair near the window again. “If it’s out all over, we’re better off just staying put.”

  It was—he didn’t go far, but no lights were visible in the twilight, not from the lane heading off the main road, or from farther down the highway, where a Mobil sign should have been a big blue beacon. He walked back into the office, stomping snow from his boots and blowing on his hands, and found Lanie examining a tattoo on Clarice’s stomach.

  “Anything to eat around here?” He took a casual step closer to get a better look, but Clarice pulled down her sweater with a smirk.

  “Not much that doesn’t require a zap in the microwave,” she said, “but we could raid the cash drawer for change and hit the vending machine.”

  “It’s that old,” Will said when Lanie frowned, glancing at it. “Circa 1969, I bet. All mechanical.”

  “If it’s got candy, I don’t care if it’s from the last world war,” she retorted, following Clarice to the cash register, which was another conveniently retro model. Clarice opened the drawer with a loud ding and handed out quarters.

  “I don’t think there’s enough chocolate in the world to balance out the events of this weekend,” Lanie said as they trudged back to the room, nibbling delicately on a Hershey bar with almonds, and then attempting to spit mitten fuzz from her tongue.

  Will set down the two candles Clarice had scrounged from the storeroom, and unloaded the M&Ms, chips, and peanuts he’d chosen from the vending machine. Soda was out since that machine was refrigerated, but Clarice had given them each a bottle of water from the tiny motel kitchen, and a bottle of cheap tequila some college kids had left behind two weeks ago, just in case they needed artificial warmth. The room was already chilly, and he grabbed the extra blanket from the luggage rack near the closet.

  “Maybe not chocolate,” he said, taking Lanie’s extra candy and tossing it on the bureau. “But we could try something else.”

  She licked a creamy brown smudge from the side of her mouth and glanced at the bed. “Something like ... ?”

  “You know the old theory about sharing body heat, don’t you?” He flipped down the covers and took off his coat. “I say we test it.”


  She crumpled her candy wrapper and threw it vaguely in the direction of the wastepaper basket, and shrugged off her jacket.

  “It’s not ... you know, disrespectful?” she whispered as he sat her on the bed and removed her sneakers, then reached down to take his own off. “I mean, your father’s dead, and we’re supposed to be ... I don’t know, sleuthing. Mourning. Something.”

  “I’ll mourn him,” Will whispered, sitting down and pulling her onto his lap, sighing when she pressed her breasts against him. Nice, but it would be much better when they were naked. Time to work on that. “Right now I still can’t really believe he’s dead. And as for sleuthing, I think we’ve done our share for the day.” His hands slid up her back, beneath her sweater, and then under her bra strap.

  “If you say so ...” She met him halfway when he angled his mouth toward her, and the taste of her tongue was sweet and dark and delicious. When she arched her back, he unhooked her bra and ran his palms over the bare, silky skin, lingering on the wings of her shoulder blades. She made a sound so close to a purr, he almost growled in response.

  He’d been imagining this all day, and if it made him callous or cold or just plain weird, he didn’t care. Lanie Burke was the best thing to happen to him in a while, and a small, admittedly petty part of him was pissed off at his father for nearly screwing it up. He’d made excuses for him when he was a kid, and when he’d given up on that, he’d tried his best to deny the hot flare of bitterness in his gut whenever his father’s name was mentioned. Mike DeMaio had never given him anything of value but his life, and for that Will owed him at least some measure of justice for a murder that was most likely an accident.

  Right after he took a little comfort in Lanie.

  And that was all it was, or at least that’s what he’d been trying to tell himself since last night. He slid Lanie’s sweater over her head when she raised her arms and then took her bra with it, tossing the clothes to the floor. Fastening his mouth on a ripe, sweet nipple, he suckled it, feeling the buzz of approval in his cock when she groaned.

  They were just two people, a man and a woman, trying to forget the mundanely irritating stuff of life for a little while. She’d told him last night, when her mouth wasn’t busy elsewhere, about the work screw-up and the melting-down sister and even the wedding fiasco, and he’d actually owned up to his own discontent with the routine of new roofs, refaced kitchen cabinets, and beer and wings at the Coach and Four on Saturday nights.

  Was that why he wanted her so ferociously? Hell, half an hour after finding his father’s body, he’d glanced at her in the kitchen of the Seavers’ cottage, and he’d pictured her on the bed, long legs spread, breasts and belly sheened with sweat as she shuddered through an orgasm, her hair a wild tangle of curls on the pillow. Getting her in that bedroom again, preferably all day, was the one thought that had kept him warm as he trudged through the snow back to the house this morning, bagels in hand. No, not warm—hot. Impatient to hear her laugh and the adorable strangled squeaks she made when she was close to coming. Itchy to fill his hands with the soft ripeness of her breasts, and to fill his mouth with the taste of her, everywhere, as long as she’d let him.

  Right now, with all of that and more about to become a reality, he was ignoring the idea that something else was going on. Something serious, something that felt a little bit too much like the beginning of a relationship. That the electric hum of connection between them last night, when her eyes had met his as she came, shuddering, was just a freak thing. A freak nothing, in fact. Getting close was not in the plan, unless it was the skin-to-skin kind. Too much was happening at once to consider anything else.

  He pushed Lanie off his lap to lay her on the bed and unzip her pants, and she helped him, wriggling and twisting. She probably had no idea how the movement made her breasts bounce, but he could definitely enjoy the show without enlightening her.

  Then she caught him looking and jiggled on purpose, a hot pink blush of awareness staining her cheeks as she did, and he slid up to cover her mouth with his, gently prodding for her tongue, wet and warm and still faintly sweet. He had to love a woman who would play to his fantasies, and he was more than up for playing to hers.

  Play was the operative word, and he didn’t think he’d ever enjoyed it as much as he did with Lanie. An orgasm was an orgasm in some cases—not that they were ever bad, of course—but an orgasm when you were grinning and waiting to see what happened next was something else again. Something damn good.

  Lanie needed it, too, he could tell. He wasn’t the only one taking comfort here—he was pretty sure she was reveling in the no-strings aspect of the weekend so far, the fact that no one was looking at her as if she had two heads, or asking where this was or why that was late. No one was judging her, or shaking their heads at her choices and her screw-ups. Instead, she was getting a big thumbs-up of approval from him—he liked her, wanted her, just as she was, and he would have bet good money that part of the excitement for her was understanding that.

  She was tugging at his sweater now, and he tore it off with the T-shirt beneath it. She got up on her knees to pull down her panties—lacy little lavender ones today—and then fell back on her elbows to shimmy them off.

  If she was trying to speed things up, she was doing a damn good job of it, because just one glimpse at the triangle of curls and the pink, glistening flesh beneath it jerked his cock higher with a kick-start of arousal. He swung his legs to the side to take off his pants, and before he realized what she was doing, she’d climbed off the bed to kneel at his feet, pulling his jeans past his ankles.

  Completely naked, her hair a crazy cloud of curls, she looked a little bit like an angel without robes or halo. A naughty angel, then. Definitely fallen.

  Which was fine with him, he thought as she tossed her hair to one side and leaned in to take his pulsing, already aching cock in one hand and lick up the shaft with just the tip of her tongue. A whisper of wet, a bare hint of pressure, teasing, promising—Christ, he was going to black out himself if she didn’t take him into her mouth real soon.

  “Lanie,” he managed, bracing himself on the mattress with his elbows, resisting the urge to take her head in his hands and guide her. The part of his brain that was still rational wanted her to do it her own way, in her own time.

  It was just that he wanted her own time to be right now.

  And it was—he groaned when she closed her lips over the swollen head, sucking gently, swirling against the cleft with her tongue, and he groaned louder when she bent her head to slide his cock farther into her mouth.

  He was going to fucking explode if she didn’t stop ... and in a hazy red flash, he realized what he really wanted was to explode fucking. Fucking Lanie, with those luscious breasts soft and hot against his chest, and her amazingly strong legs wrapped around his hips, her little heels digging into his ass.

  And her hands—her small, very feminine hands holding on tight, like she was having the ride of her life.

  He grunted as her mouth tightened around his erection and her hand wandered between his legs to cup his taut balls and stroke the extra-sensitive skin behind them. Okay, time to stop. Time to get inside her, where he could hear that shuddering little sob when she came.

  Gently, he pushed her head away, easing himself out of the slippery bliss of her mouth, and even in the almost nonexistent light he could see the question mark in her eyes.

  “My turn,” he said, and pulled her to her feet.

  She wriggled away when he tried to steer her toward the bed, and backed up instead. “Ever do it standing up, Will DeMaio? I haven’t.” She swallowed hard, her chest still rising and falling fast, and then she said, “I bet you could teach me.”

  Oh, yeah. He grinned, and she grinned back, opening her arms to let him lift her, wrapping her legs around his waist and lowering her head to kiss him, deep and hard and so, so hot. Her mouth was on fire, dark and wet and greedy, and he shuddered when the hot, slick center of her made contact with his abdomen.<
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  Oh, yeah. His cock was wedged between the round cheeks of her ass, which was a good thing on its own, but right now he wanted in. Deep, then deeper. Then, if possible, deeper still.

  The thought of it made his cock twitch with impatience, and he stalked forward as she hung on, nibbling at his earlobe and twining her fingers in his hair.

  “Condom,” he grunted between gritted teeth, trying to figure out where his jeans were and if there was any way he could find a condom, open it, and roll the damn thing on without letting go of her.

  She slithered off him without warning and scrabbled over the carpet, coming up with a handful of denim. “Give,” she panted when he pulled out the foil-wrapped packet. “I like this part.”

  He let her smooth the slick rubber over his erection, shuddering when she managed to work in a few sly squeezes around the rock-hard base, and then he grabbed her. She climbed up him, her skin flushed with heat everywhere, warm silk, and once he’d staggered back to the wall, resting her against it, she pushed herself up using his shoulders so he could aim.

  He eased in with one thrust, and for a second everything went a fiery red, his nerve endings blazing at the relief of being inside her, where the heat was searing and she was so incredibly wet.

  Then she wriggled, seating him deeper with a funny little sound that was half groan and half sigh, and he braced himself with one arm against the wall to rock into her.

  It wasn’t going to take long, damn it, and he wanted it to take forever. He wanted to thrust into her deliciously slick center until everything was obliterated and time had stopped, it felt so un-fucking-believably good.

  She was levering herself up and down, using his shoulders, digging her fingers into the knotted muscle, and with every bounce she gasped, a steady “Oh, oh, oh” that became “ohohohohoh,” a fierce, frantic hum.

  Every syllable urged him deeper, harder, faster, the head of his cock burying itself against the far wall, stroking her, and suddenly he felt her tense up, her thighs tightening, and she came in a trembling wave, pulsing around him.