Tactical Advantage

by Julie Miller

  And just like that, the tables were turned. Every liberty she’d taken with Nick, his hands and mouth were doing to her. He slid his tongue along hers, twisting and tangling them together in soft, raspy caresses. He slipped his hands down to her butt and lifted her onto the counter, spreading her knees apart and moving between them, pressing the thick bulge of his zipper against the most sensitive part of her. Annie moaned against the sensual assault that robbed her of coherent thought and he dipped his moist, hot mouth to the hum in her throat. Her body, chilled the whole day long, was growing feverish from the inside out. The pores in her skin opened and she gasped for breath as the heat began to build. She squirmed atop the counter, bound by his hands and mouth and body, seeking some sort of release.

  “Nick...I...please...”

  Perhaps reading her thoughts more clearly than she, Nick slid his hands beneath her sweatshirt and found bare skin to claim. Her thighs clutched around his narrow hips. He palmed the lace of her bra and squeezed the achy nub of one breast. Annie tipped her head back, gasping at the shards of exquisite delight that shot through her like an electric current.

  It had never been like this with her fiancé—this raw, this wild. With Adam there had always been steps, stages—

  seduction protocol. Making out with Adam had been a slow, planned process—methodical and predictable, which she thought had been perfect for her. Nick peeled away any pretensions of decorum and went straight to the want, to the need firing between them. His kiss was all instinct, all impulse, all passion. And she reveled in it.

  “God, woman, I’ve never met anybody who gets into my head the way you do.” He nuzzled his nose in her hair, his hard breaths and whispering lips teasing a sensitive bundle of nerves beside her ear. “You smell so good. You feel even better.” He slipped his fingers beneath the elastic of her sweatpants and panties, pulling her to the edge of the counter, anchoring the weeping pressure between her thighs against the pulsing heat of his desire. The layers of cotton and denim between them couldn’t hide what they both wanted. “You’re all silk and fire and the biggest surprise of my life. Who knew, sitting across that meeting room table at KCPD all these months...so that’s what the sparks were all about—”

  “Stop talking, Nick.”

  This driving need was so far out of control, so far out of her realm of experience that Annie couldn’t see the consequences. She couldn’t see anything beyond the moment. She couldn’t think. She only knew it felt good. It felt right. Coming to life in Nick’s arms smashed any feelings of isolation. There was no past to mourn, no future to worry about. There was only now, only this, only Nick. She linked her heels behind his thighs, tunneled her fingers into the soft mess of his hair and pulled his mouth back to hers, seeking the force of his body moving against hers, assuaging her hunger for the powerful claim of his kiss.

  “I just want to feel. I want to connect. I want—” An alarm bell went off inside her head. “What was that?”

  “Connecting. Feeling. Magic.” He kissed her with each word, pushed against her with every breath.

  “Nick...” Annie tore her mouth from his with a breathless gasp. The ringing bell went off a second time, insisting that she regain a little common sense.

  Nick pulled his hands to the neutral location of her waist. He pressed a chaste kiss to her swollen lips before easing some space between them. He rested his forehead against hers, his cobalt gaze looking down into her eyes. “It’s your phone. Got an answering machine?”

  “Of course.” The machine on the far wall of the kitchen rang again. Annie wondered at the stuttering rhythm of Nick’s chest, heaving in and out like her own. Curiosity got her thinking again. And with thinking, a little bit of sanity returned. “But it could be the lab with the results from the serology tests I ran.”

  “Serology?” He pressed the gentlest of kisses against the bandage in her hairline.

  “The study of body fluids like blood and...” He angled his head to kiss her lips, but Annie pushed him away before temptation overrode the reality of her life. “We need to stop. I’m sorry. I was tired and sad and I wasn’t thinking. That was a—”

  “Stopping,” he interrupted sharply. He stepped back, holding his hands out to either side, breaking all contact except for the piercing intensity of those eyes. “But don’t you dare say that was a mistake. It doesn’t happen like that between two people if it’s not supposed to. Didn’t it feel right to you?”

  “Of course it felt good. That’s just hormones, Nick. It’s a result of loneliness and guilt and fatigue. We needed the endorphins...” But the grim expression behind those beautiful eyes had no interest in the reasons why that kiss had happened. When the phone rang again, she seized the excuse to escape. She wasn’t emotionally equipped to deal with the craziness Nick stirred up inside her right now. She hopped off the counter, landing on unsteady legs. “Let me get the phone.”

  “Damn if I can’t think straight when you grab on to me like that.” If she didn’t know better, she’d think she detected some kind of hurt shadowing his gaze as it followed her across the kitchen. But he looked away before she could even formulate a question, turning his attention to rebuttoning his shirt. “Maybe you’re the one who needs to promise not to kiss me.”

  “Nick—”

  Another ring. “Your phone? Blood tests? Serology?”

  His sardonic tone was a reminder that she was the one who’d used work as an excuse to end that grope fest on the counter. Fine. Work. She could handle that a lot easier than trying to understand whatever Nick was feeling—or what she herself was feeling right now. After pulling her own clothes back into some semblance of order against the nerve endings still sparking across her skin, she picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  There was a beat of silence before a raspy, barely audible voice answered. “Is this Annabelle Hermann?”

  Annie. Odd duck. Pinocchio. Even slugger. Those nicknames were all fine. They made sense. But Annabelle? She’d only heard that name when she was in serious trouble from her parents or a teacher in grade school. Was this serious trouble?

  “Annabelle?” the hoarse voice repeated. Definitely not the lab calling. Any friend or coworker would have identified himself. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

  Oh, God. She knew that voice. From the alley.

  “Who are you?” More silence. But the caller didn’t hang up. She could hear him on the line, his slow, audible breathing crawling down her neck like the cold promise of winter. Or death. Oh, hell. Where had that image come from? She hugged her arm around her waist, feeling exposed,

  vulnerable—unsure of what was stalking her from the shadows. “I know you’re there. What do you want? Hello?”

  She saw a flash of movement from the corner of her eye a split second before Nick plucked the phone from her hand. “Who is this?” he demanded.

  The click at the other end of the line was loud enough for her to hear. She turned to ask Nick if he thought she had reason to be spooked by the call, or if she was letting her off-kilter emotions create another error in judgment. But he’d already punched in the code to call back immediately to get the caller’s number. She guessed that response was answer enough and wound both arms around her waist. She paced away from the wary tension radiating off Nick, but came right back when he muttered a curse and slammed the receiver back down on its cradle. “What is it?”

  “No answer. No answering machine or voice mail, either.” That left explanations like the caller turning off his phone, disposing of a prepaid cell, knowing it was her number calling back, but refusing to answer—any of which doubled her suspicion that the call was no accident. Nick immediately pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and punched in a number. Seeing him go into overprotective-cop mode again confirmed that she had every right to feel like someone was watching her, monitoring her location, maybe even intentionally trying to frighten her.

  If that was the goal of that call, it was working.

  “What did he say to you?”
Nick demanded.

  “Nothing. He just asked for me by name. He asked for Annabelle.”

  “Annabelle?” He shook his head. “I’ve never heard anybody call you that before. Is that how you’re listed in the phone book?”

  A sense of dreadful clarity fell like a weight through her body. “Yes.”

  “Hell.”

  “I think it was him. The man from the alley.”

  “And now he knows where you live.” His call picked up at the other end of the line and he turned away. “Spencer? It’s Nick.”

  Needing room to tamp down her frayed emotions and make some rational decisions, she left Nick and the small space of the kitchen, still so full of the memories of their ill-timed passion and the charged energy that was Nick himself. Annie scooped Reitz up off his favorite chair and plopped down in his place, stroking his ears and hugging his familiar warmth to her chest. If she needed any more evidence that her ordered world had tilted way out of balance over the past twenty-four hours, G.B. popped out from beneath the couch and jumped up into her lap, seeking attention, too.

  Stereo purring offered little comfort. “Every time I drop my guard around that man, I get hit with something else.”

  “You still at the precinct?” She watched Nick stride out of the kitchen, checking the locks on her front door again. “Somebody’s looking for Annie. I’ve got a phone number I need you to run for me. I’ll wait.” He walked past her to peek through the blinds at the front windows and check the locks there. “Are you saying I’m bad luck?”

  He’d heard that comment? Fine. She wanted to discuss this burgeoning relationship that shouldn’t be happening in the first place, anyway. “I’m saying you need to leave me alone. You need to leave, period. I have to focus on my work. I can’t keep making mistakes.”

  “That phone call was intentional.” He buzzed by her chair, phone still at his ear, and headed down the hallway. “Not some mistake.”

  “I’m talking about what happened in the kitchen. I’m talking about...” Feelings. Oh, damn. That could not be what was happening here. She was exhausted. The holidays made her feel blue. She had this stupid bump on the head that muddled her thoughts. Any one of those offered a plausible reason to explain why she’d dropped her guard and exposed every vulnerable nerve she possessed to this man. She supposed she could rationalize the physical attraction to those broad shoulders and blue eyes, but her discovery of his compassion and sense of humor, his die-hard loyalty to an idea, the heavy weight of the conscience he carried with him—she shouldn’t notice or admire or care about any of those things. She shouldn’t think Nick Fensom was the answer to any of her problems.

  “Nick, wait.” Annie dumped the cats off her lap and hurried down the hallway after him. “We need to remember that we have to work together. There’s a serial rapist out there we’re trying to identify. And now there’s an accomplice, too? There couldn’t be a worse time for us to...get involved.”

  “Involved?” She met him coming out of the bathroom, where she guessed he’d inspected the security of the window in there, too. “Who says we’re involved?”

  “Well, I don’t go around practically having sex on the kitchen counter with just anyone.” She’d never done anything so spontaneous and foolish and out of her comfort zone with any man, not even her fiancé. “I’ve never...I mean, I have, but never like...” She snapped her mouth shut, too embarrassed to elaborate on the boring parameters of her previous relationships.

  He paused for a moment, granting her one sliver of truth. “Okay. So maybe things have gotten a little complicated between us tonight.”

  She jumped on the concession. “Exactly. I’d like to go back to the way things were between us yesterday. There was friction, yes, but there was a pattern to our behavior. We accomplished—”

  “Yeah, I’m still here,” he muttered into the phone, gathering information from his partner and moving down the hallway again.

  She tried to block his way into her bedroom, but Nick simply moved her aside and went straight to the window there. Locked. Everything was locked. She was perfectly safe. Right? Yet he still didn’t relax the grim expression on his mouth or show any willingness to listen to reason.

  He picked up a pen and pink notepad from the table beside her bed and jotted something down. “Yeah, Spence. Got it. Send somebody to check it out, will ya? I know he’s probably long gone, but do it anyway. Thanks, buddy.” He disconnected the call and tore off the top sheet of paper, holding up the phone number and an address she recognized. “That call came from a pay phone down by the Fairy Tale Bridal Shop.”

  That information shifted her attention. “Where Rachel Dunbar was killed?”

  “Same neighborhood. Spencer is going to send a squad car around to see if anybody’s in the area. But I’m guessing that crackpot’s long gone.”

  She definitely needed to think like a criminologist and not a woman fighting her feelings for the wrong guy right now. With a nod of renewed determination, Annie opened her closet and pulled out a fresh pair of blue jeans. “You have to drive me down there so I can dust for prints and look for any kind of trace he may have left behind. And because we’re right there, I can get my car and drive myself home.”

  “No.”

  She tossed the jeans onto her bed and went to her dresser to pull out some knee socks. “Time is a factor, Nick. If that guy left any evidence, I need to find it sooner rather than later.”

  “No, you are not driving your car or coming back here by yourself.”

  Her shoulders sagged with a groan of frustration. They lifted just as quickly as she crossed the room to push him out into the hall. But as soon as Nick braced his feet, he became an immovable object stuck in her bedroom doorway. “What are you doing?”

  “I need to get some warm clothes on if we’re going uptown to that pay phone.” She pushed at the center of his chest, but the remembered sensations of strength and heat only made her back away. “Your things on the radiator are probably dry by now.”

  “I never said—”

  “I need to dust that phone for prints. If there’s any chance that guy took off his gloves, we might be able to ID him. Maybe he left a shoe print in the snow—with temperatures dropping and the snow and slush freezing over, I could make a casting. I can at least take a photograph.”

  “If you aren’t the stubbornnest...” He nodded, and suddenly, that handsome grin was back in place. “All right. Let’s bundle up and get out of here.”

  “Why don’t I just drive my car back afterward and you can go home and get some sleep?”

  The grin vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “Twenty-four hours ago, a man nearly killed you to get his hands on the evidence in your possession. He knows where you live. Are you going to trust that he thinks he got everything and has no reason to come back to finish what he started?”

  “If you stay here, we can’t...you have to promise—”

  “You’ll know when I make a promise to you, Annie.” Before she could guess his intent, his hand snaked out to cup the back of her neck. His fingers tunneled into the curls there and her skin dotted with goose bumps, remembering his touch. He stroked his thumb against the thumping beat of her pulse. “I am keeping you safe whether you like it or not. You’re right. We are on this task force job together—so you do your brainy thing and I’ll do what I do so that you can get us whatever clues you can. I’m tired of this Rose Red bastard and his sick fan club having the upper hand on us. This investigation will not be compromised. You will not be hurt. Not while there’s breath in my body. Understood?”

  Annie nodded, reading the promise in those dark blue eyes. She reached up to wind her fingers around his wrist, holding on to his coiled strength, finally resigning herself to his round-the-clock protection.

  The tone of his voice gentled, but the vow behind it was no less adamant. “It may be coincidence that there was some jackass in a big car who doesn’t know how to drive in this weather or thought it’d be a nice prac
tical joke to drench us in snow and ice. Maybe that call came from a phone a block from where Rachel Dunbar died because there are no other pay phones in the city. But that attack this morning was no mistake. I don’t buy two coincidences, much less three. Now, either I get the couch or I’m sleeping out there on the landing. And I don’t think the neighborhood-watch guy is going to like that.”

  “I’ve got blankets and pillows for the couch.” Annie pulled away and picked up the clothes off her bed. There were no more arguments to be made. She resigned herself to having Nick’s company 24-7, so she’d better shore up the resolve that guarded her heart before she foolishly forgot that they weren’t involved. “I’ll get changed and grab my kit.”

  Chapter Seven

  Annie climbed out of Nick’s silver Jeep and squinted against the bright morning sun reflecting off the blanket of snow that sloped up to his parents’ front porch. Her headache and occasional wooziness from standing or turning too quickly seemed to have gone after a good night’s sleep. But her trepidation about visiting the two-story yellow-and-white Victorian—and all the people she’d met at the hospital gathered there—made her cling to the door handle and consider climbing back inside.

  “This will be a quick stop.” Nick’s door shut behind her and she transferred her grip to the strap of her purse hanging across her chest. He circled around the car and joined her on the curb. “I just need to pick up a few things. I’ll get my bag and clothes and we’ll be gone.”

  The big house and sprawling yard certainly looked big enough to accommodate all of them. But still, Nick had to be twenty-eight? Twenty-nine? “You live with your mom and dad?”

  “Very funny. Natalie and I have our own apartments in town. But because Noah, Nadine and Nate are home from college, and Grandma and Grandpa Fensom are visiting, Nat and I came home for the holidays to make it a real family reunion.” He touched his hand to the small of her back to guide her through the snow at the curb onto the cleared sidewalk. “That way, if we get caught up in a twenty-four-hour game of Risk, or want to watch the complete Lord of the Rings DVD marathon, we don’t have to worry about cutting out on the fun early, or showing up late for breakfast. Besides, the midnight snacks here are way better than anything I’ve got at my place.”