She hadn’t seen him.
Her hands outstretched, she looked down at them, frowned, and turned back to the water, stepping closer to the edge of the dock. She swayed forward.
Pausing in the wet grass at the side of the pier, Harlan wondered if she were going to jump in. He didn’t move. If he had to, he could reach her, and so curiosity kept him motionless, observing her.
The rising wind molded the pajama top against her, flipping the triangular point of the collar flat against her long neck. Stroking her as his hands had in his dreams, the wind shaped the baggy top into the dip of her waist and pressed it to the outline of her small breasts. She swayed once more.
In that moment, adrenaline quickened his pulse, sent it slamming into his throat. Adrenaline and desire commingled, a twisting violence in his gut. He swallowed and slid closer, near enough to grasp the splintered boards.
With one hand on the worn planks of the old dock, Harlan boosted himself up, crouched at the foot of the dock and waited to see what Molly Harris would do.
Her right hand rose, fell, and she looked around, an air of bewilderment in the futile wave of her hand. She shook her head and her hair swept out from her pointed chin as she tilted toward the edge of the dock, her pale toes curling over the end.
She didn’t jump when he wrapped his arm around her narrow waist, didn’t struggle, barely reacted. Instead, against all his expectations of what she might have done, she turned slowly, so slowly, that her hip slid under his fingers, the jutting point sharp and fragile against his spread palm. Under the wing of her eyebrows, her empty eyes gazed at him. “Hello.” She reached out, touched him. Her fingers were cool against his heated skin. For a moment, something shifted in the blankness of her face. “Detective Harlan?”
“Yes, Ms. Harris?” He angled his chin to the touch of her slim hand.
She frowned, the smooth blankness crumpling for a moment as she struggled for words. “You’re here.”
“As you see.” He spread her hand flat against his face. The base of her thumb lay against his mouth and he cupped her palm to his lips. He couldn’t resist. In his dreams, she’d touched him like this. And more—those cool fingers running over his shoulders, his thighs, touching him everywhere until his heart had thundered, leaping out of his skin. “Yeah, I’m here. Like you, returning to the scene of the crime.”
“Why?” Her words were clear, the low tone husky and torpid, a tape drawing tight in the sprockets of a recorder, slowing to a halt, distorted.
“I’m here. Sworn to serve and protect.” He surprised himself.
“To protect?” Bewildered, she looked around her, glancing at the bare boards under her feet in confusion. Her head lifted as though against an enormous weight. “Detective Harlan?” she said again, and traced his mouth, his cheekbones, her fingers reading his face as if she were blind. “You’re going to protect me?”
“Ah, so many questions, sweet Molly. Perhaps I should ask you what you’re doing out here.”
She didn’t respond. The tips of her fingers stroked his eyebrows, down the hump of his broken nose.
Harlan shivered under her light touch. Not even in his dreams had he shivered like this, her delicate touch spearing hot to his groin. His arm, which had never left her narrow waist, clasped tighter against her inadvertent step backward off the dock as he moved forward, unable to stop himself. That curiosity that had held him motionless now urged him on, his hips bumping hers, his sex hard against her softness under the pajama bottoms.
He’d been so sure she’d step back.
She didn’t.
And none of it made sense. Not her actions; certainly not his. Curiosity. Anger. Lust. All three, and pity—there was that, too. Pity for her lovely fragility, which would be broken. By him. By prison.
But still, careless to touch her like this under the dark sky when his defenses were lowered. Stupid. But she hadn’t moved. She could have, oh, she could have. He would have turned her loose if she’d moved away from him. He could have turned her loose. Not easily, no—he recognized that even in the need flooding him. But he could have stepped aside. And would have, if she hadn’t stayed so motionless, her empty silver eyes fixed on his as she outlined his mouth.
Hungry for the taste of her, cursing himself silently, even so he took her mouth, her fingers trapped between his lips, hers, sliding down his neck to catch in the collar of his jacket. He curled his free hand under her hair and clasped her neck, slipping his hand up to cup her head. Spreading his legs, he brought her closer into the cradle of his hips as he opened his mouth over hers. He touched the tip of his tongue to the corners of her lips, their cool taste water to the heat blazing through him. The taste of her was everything he’d dreamed, more. “Damn you,” he muttered, swearing at himself, at her, furious with his own weakness. “Damn you to hell, sweet Molly.”
“Oh, yes, I am. Damned. Cursed.” Her whispered words vibrated against his mouth and he heard them, and like everything else tonight, they made no sense to him.
“Then so am I.” With her whisper, her lips parted and he entered, taking the kiss deeper as she inhaled.
“Truly mad, after all,” she murmured, swallowing, and he tightened like an arrow shot into the darkness of her being as she drew his tongue deeper. “Lost in darkness and mad, mad.”
“Yes. But the sweetest madness.” He groaned, echoing her words, scarcely attending them, knowing only that here, here in the touch of her against him, was what he’d been craving for longer than he could remember. From her waist, he curved his hand over her slender breast and stroked the delicate softness of her nipple. Swelling to him, that tiny pebble of her flesh rose hard under his index finger, as hard against him as he was against her, her flesh answering the urgent demand of his. He slid his thumb under a button of her top, seeking entrance there, too. Her mouth, her breasts, everywhere. He wanted to touch, to taste, to lose himself in her.
Bending her backward over his arm, unable now to leave the seductive swelling of her breast under his palm, he used his teeth to nudge a button loose and pushed the light fabric aside with his tongue, tasting her at last, her nipple pebbling under his tongue, its woman-sweetness against his mouth rendering him deaf and blind to everything except the taste of her. “Ah, Molly, Molly,” he breathed, desire and hunger crouching in the darkness of his soul, springing against the bars.
In a wide V, the half-opened top slid back over her shoulders, her pale skin shimmering for an instant as the moon broke free of cloud-darkness. A flush moved over that pale skin and she was irresistible to him in that moment of half-light, half-darkness, as she raised her arms to him, her hands clinging to his neck, the chewed edges of her cuticles scraping in slow, electric tingles against his scalp.
Smooth alabaster against the black leather of his jacket, cool to his heat.
Against all caution, all judgment, he bent his knees, ready to lower her to the planks of the dock, to take her there. One knee jarred on the dock and she settled onto his thigh, pliant, willing woman, her knee bumping him where he burned the hottest. He would take her.
And yet…
And yet, her mouth, tender and inviting, was passive under his. Her eyes—those innocent, lying eyes—were open in that strange blankness where neither innocence nor lies found a home.
He bit her earlobe gently, tugging even as he tugged with his fingers at the nipple lying near his own heart. “Molly? I want you. If you don’t want to do this, tell me you want to stop. Say the words. I have to hear them. But tell me now. Yes. Or no.”
He waited.
Supple, bending to him, she didn’t answer.
He could take her. And still look himself in the mirror in the morning. Could still clip the handcuffs on her and march her to jail. Her body sang to him, gave its consent to the swoop of his hand over her spine and down to the gentle curve of her rear, gave consent to the pull of his arms drawing her so tight against his arousal that he felt the flimsy barrier of panties underneath her pajama botto
ms.
And beneath him in the underwater gleam of moonlight and clouds, her eyes were blank and empty, the spiky eyelashes fluttering.
He could take her. His ethics were that flexible these days. Reluctantly, he’d been drawn to her from the first instant she’d opened her door. In spite of everything he believed about her, his body craved her in this moment as if she were the breath in his lungs. He couldn’t remember when he’d last wanted someone as intently as he wanted Molly Harris.
Never, he decided, as he brushed his knuckle down her throat and her skin flushed beneath his touch. Primitive, his reaction to her. Instinctive, hers to him.
He would have no compunction about bending his rules this once. If she were willing, he would give them both that pleasure of the small death. He let his knuckle drift over her taut nipple and down to her belly button. Her stomach muscles clenched at his touch.
Willing, indeed. His groin tightened, and in automatic response, his pelvis rocked against her, once, twice, the rhythm pulsing to his brain, their bodies cleaving, male to female, in an urgent, ancient language of blood. Sweet heaven. A matched pair, he and Ms. Molly. Pleasure, indeed. Lost in that long-denied pleasure, he rocked once more, a groan rumbling deep in his throat at the exquisite feel of her against him.
And yet…
Surveying Molly’s serene face, unmarked by the passion ratcheting through him, Harlan felt the faint stirrings of reservations. Her body, a slim, pliant wand that was responding to his every touch, spoke one language, a language whose every nuance and inflection he read clearly. But her face…
Doubts. Underneath the piercing pleasure came niggling doubts that short-circuited the electric arc of his skin touching hers.
He had the oddest sense he was all alone in the dark.
“Molly? Did you hear me? Do you want this?” He twisted his hand in her hair and tipped her face to his. “Say yes, Molly.”
It took her a long time to answer. Harlan inclined his head as he watched the sleepy flicker of her eyelids, the languid turn of her head against the leather of his jacket. “Molly?”
“Detective Harlan?” Disorientation in her lethargic voice. “What do you want? What can I do for you?”
Her toneless reply told him everything, told him nothing. Told him he couldn’t take her, not tonight.
Something was very wrong. He should have caught on earlier, and would have had desire not separated his brain from his—
She interrupted his thoughts. “How can I help you?” Passivity cloaked her face, dulling the edge of her words.
Molly had been wary, hostile, evasive when he’d first met her. Frightened, perhaps. Guilty of murder, most probably. Her words had been sharp when he’d pushed, as sharp as the blade of the knife on her floor. She’d been on guard. But never passive.
He should have known from the beginning. The signs had been there—the disorder in her kitchen, her oblivious walk down to the dock, the somnolent dip under the crime-scene barrier.
She was on drugs.
That none had been found in the search of her house meant only that the crime-scene investigators hadn’t searched hard enough, not that drugs weren’t there.
He wanted to see her eyes in bright light. Scrutinize her slim arms for evidence of drug usage. Somewhere in her house, on her person, he would find the reason for this peculiar, trancelike numbness of Molly Harris.
Rising, he lifted her off his thigh and onto her own feet. She shut her eyes for a moment, opened them, her eyelashes skimming against his chin as he rose. She echoed his movements, malleable. Hands at her sides, she stood peacefully in front of him.
Her acquiescence irritated him. That, and frustrated lust. “So, Ms. Harris, what is it? What are you on?” He gripped her shoulders. “Been popping pills? What?” Giving her a small shake, he frowned. “Damn you, answer me.”
“All right. Certainly.” She ignored his grip and stepped past him, heading back to her house.
Harlan scrubbed his hands through his hair. Hell. She was one cool customer. Ice water flowed in Ms. Molly’s veins. Except he’d felt the beginnings of heat under her chilled skin.
From the dock, he watched as she hesitated once more at the spot where Camina’s body had been found. Her forehead furrowed and he heard her sigh, smelled the sweetness of her breath on the wind. Leaping off the dock, he caught up to her and followed close behind.
Stepping unhurriedly through the wet grass, she seemed unaware of his presence at her back until she unlatched her screen door and entered her kitchen.
She halted at the touch of his hands on her shoulders. There, surrounded by the evidence of emotional turmoil, Harlan turned her face to the blaze of lights and examined it, lifted her arms. Unresisting, she waited as he traced her blue, silky veins with a forefinger. As he followed the veins upward and back down, a tiny shiver moved over her skin, lifting the fine, light hair on her arm.
He found nothing. He’d been so sure he’d see her pupils dilated, see the evidence of needle marks on her skin. Mystified, he let her arms drop.
Oblivious to him once more, she turned, bolted the door behind them and walked through the debris of her kitchen up the stairway that led to her bedroom, her right hand trailing along the white wall that reflected the bright lights of the hallway and kitchen.
“Molly!” Harlan glossed the syllables with command. Her bare foot hovered over the last step and then lowered as she continued up to her bedroom. Her feet were whispers against the uncarpeted floor.
The sound of a sheet slipping back. A faint squeak of bedsprings. Her sigh.
Tracking her, Harlan halted at the top of the stairs. He could see her small shape, the sheet pulled smoothly up to her chin. Her eyes were wide open, watching the stairs.
“Go away now,” she murmured. “Leave me alone, please.”
“I can’t.” He stroked the slippery smooth banister and thought of the feel of her skin. “You know I can’t.”
“Go away. I can’t take any more.” With that, her eyelids shut abruptly, and she was gone, vanished somewhere behind the mask of sleep.
Harlan left the lights on as he returned to her kitchen. He would stay this time. And he would search through every inch of her house until he found what he was looking for—an explanation for Molly Harris’s behavior. The techs had missed something earlier. If an answer were to be found in her house, he would know it.
But he didn’t go into her bedroom.
He couldn’t forget the look in her eyes as she’d watched him at the head of the stairs.
Prowling through the quiet of Molly’s house, Harlan slipped from one room to another, opening drawers already searched, lifting the lid off the back of the toilet, stirring a spoon through canisters of flour. He slid his fingers lightly over the bottoms of drawers, avoiding splinters. He looked at the backs of pictures, flipped through the pages of her books. He unscrewed an apparently burned-out light bulb and shook it, looking for anything that would serve as a cache.
Her brother’s bedroom took him the least time. Stripped of anything personal, the room had an institutional appearance. Its walls, too, had been painted, and an oiled-teak dresser was bare.
A current of air eddied around his ankles when Harlan folded back the shutters. Running his fingers along the tops of the windows, he clicked the brass lock on the window back and forth, observing its easy movement. Someone had jammed jimmy rods at the top of the windows in all the rooms. Like the other windows, this one, too, lifted only an inch as long as the rod was in place.
Removing it, Harlan lifted the window that opened out onto the upper gallery. Rain swept in, wet his face as he leaned forward. Unlike Molly’s bedroom on the other side of the long hall, her brother’s bedroom faced the bayou.
The yellow ribbon down at the dock bent under the weight of the downpour, rose and fell to the ground, a long serpent undulating across the grass with the wind.
Frowning, Harlan shut the window and replaced the jimmy bar.
Pass
ing Molly’s room, he pressed against the wall and looked in. She still lay in that face-to-the-stairwell position, her eyes open and glazed, not even seeing him as he edged across the hall and down to the end that fronted the driveway. All the way down the hall, though, he heard the even shush of her breathing, the slow beat of her heart.
Like fog drifting through her house, he left no evidence of his search.
When he’d finished, he was back in her kitchen.
Leaning against the sink, he thought about what he’d found. What he hadn’t. Like the techs, he’d uncovered no bloody clothes, no stained shoes, nothing to implicate Molly Harris in murder. Except the bracelet. He’d unearthed no hidden stash of drugs or tranquilizers.
The case was like an onion, layers upon layers.
Cocking his head, he sniffed, his nostrils flaring as indistinct odors rose to him. The delicate scent of Molly’s skin. The acrid tang of fear, pungent. A coppery smell of blood.
The hot burn of rage.
And the reek of evil.
Harlan began his search again. This time he started in her room.
The rain beat against the windowpanes on the far side of the hall. Her room was predawn hushed and gray. Uncharacteristically hesitant to invade the privacy of her room, Harlan glanced at her as he stepped through the door and saw that her eyelids were finally closed. Relieved, he moved, meticulously, silently, through the room scented with flowers and powder, her scent a siren call in his nostrils.
On the hunt.
Molly knew he was there and recognized him before she opened her eyes. Yesterday she would have screamed.
“Good morning, Ms. Harris.” Smooth and silky, that low voice was.
She looked at him. “Is it, Detective Harlan?”
His back to her, he stepped closer to her window. “No, in fact, it isn’t. The rain has settled in.” Abruptly, he turned to her and folded his arms over his chest.
After the fire storm of the previous day, Molly lacked the energy to sit up, but she did, pulling the sheet closer around her. Evidently she’d slept. Twice in one day, after months of twilight sleep. She’d have to think about that after the detective left. Lifting her chin, she said, “I can see that you, obviously, have settled in, Detective. Would you like to explain to me what you’re doing in my room? And how you got in?” Molly reached for the phone, and the sheet pulled uncomfortably against her ribs until she freed both arms.
Lover in the Shadows Page 7