Fingers flickered, Claire’s earrings disappeared into Brad’s shirt pocket. He began to nibble his way around the rim of her ear. A soft, slow puff of his breath filled her inner ear. The whispered warmth might as well have been a hot sirocco off African desert sands. Claire was scalded to her soul. Her body quivered, her heartbeat accelerated off the chart.
“I’m not the big bad wolf,” Brad whispered silkily as her body jerked. Starting at her forehead, he brushed his lips down her nose, skimming her mouth to come to rest in the hollow of her throat.
“It’s sex, not love.” Her moan, as his busy tongue nuzzled its way back to just beneath her ear, rather spoiled the effect of her admittedly feeble protest.
In one fluid movement Brad shoved Claire’s shirt and loosened bra up under her arms, revealing an expanse of skin topped by two enticing mounds of flesh, the nipples taut, inviting his touch. Ignoring the temptation, he turned his attention to her shorts. Button, zipper, a slight tug and her belly button was exposed to his teasing, tantalizing mouth. Her body arched and bucked as he licked, then blew into that tiny orifice as well.
A chuckle rose in his throat. “If you want more of that, you’re going to have to marry me.” Brad skinned off her lace-trimmed shirt, tossed her shorts on top. He had not, he discovered with satisfaction, lost his passing arm. The bra was a five-second job. The silky flowers and lace might be intoxicating to some, but he preferred what was underneath.
“Now I might still do this,” he conceded as he took a breast into his mouth, suckling sweetly while his hand kneaded and teased her other tender mound of flesh.
“Keeper quality. Definitely,” he breathed as he switched to savoring the other side. He licked and nibbled his way around her breast. Slowly, tantalizingly, his hand crept down past her belly button, into the hair covering her other, smaller mounds of flesh. Where moisture spilled over his fingers as he found her warm and wet and willing.
It was hopeless, Claire conceded. Her body had betrayed her. If he stopped, she’d shrivel and die. She couldn’t hide a cry of dismay as Brad rolled away, kneeling beside her, breathing hard. As he ripped off his shirt, the buttons bounced against the wood, scattering across the floor like something live. Jeans and minimal black bikini followed.
Even by moonlight he was magnificent. A bronze sculpture, well-muscled and ready. Very ready. Claire arched into the thumbs he slipped under her bikini elastic, aiding their mutual rush to get as close as a man and woman can get.
As he lowered himself full length above her, Claire gave up her last feeble semblance of indifference. With avid hands she tugged him down, her fingers groping at the back of his neck, loosing the thong, allowing his wild blond mane to flow free. As Brad’s mouth once again took hers, Claire ran her hands through the thick glorious strands. Her hand hard behind his head, she pulled him tighter yet, demanding, giving, promising, loving.
Yes, oh yes, oh yes! Once again, her litany—nothing that felt this good could possibly be bad.
Brad lifted his head, a wicked grin clear in the light of the full moon. “As long as we’re doing this the old-fashioned way, we might as well practice another time-honored custom.”
“Umm?”
“The shotgun wedding,” he murmured. Then, as if he had not dropped a bombshell into the summer night, Brad returned to what he had been doing, nibbling and nuzzling his way down her body.
Claire’s hands fisted in his silky hair. Not gently. “What did you say?” she inquired, pulling him up sharply just short of his ultimate goal.
“You know,” he replied with a wide-eyed innocence Jamie might have envied. “Little old ladies whispering over the tea cups, counting on their fingers.”
Claire yanked at the long pale strands, rolled swiftly to one side, and flopped back into her cocoon of bedding with a resounding thud as Brad flattened her by the simple expedient of letting his full weight fall on top of her.
While she was still catching her breath, he thrust a knee between her legs, his hand clamped hard against her thigh, ready to shove her legs wide. “Scream now, Claire,” he warned. The threat was not idle.
Scream? It was far too late to scream. This wasn’t rape. And if she’d had a lick of sense, she would have gone back on the pill the day she met him.
Scream, no. Common sense, yes. If he really loved her, Bad Boy Blue would listen. “Condom,” Claire ordered. “Or pack up your marbles and go home.”
“Long walk back, lady. Snakes, gators, wild hogs-–”
“Condom or bust.”
She thought she caught a hint of a chuckle in his groan. “What if I left ‘em in the truck?”
“The stairs are that way.” Claire pointed toward the gaping front door.
With a long-suffering sigh, Brad sat back, patted the shadows around them to find his jeans, produced a foil packet from his pocket. “Voilà,” he declared with a flourish. “The honor is yours, Ms. Langdon.” He sketched a mocking bow, which from a kneeling, very large, fully aroused male had Claire fighting the giggles. Biting her lip, she concentrated on the challenge of recalling a skill she hadn’t practiced in more than a decade.
While she rolled the condom over a challenging length of arousal, she had time for a moment of satisfaction. Maybe, just maybe she could handle the Bad Boy of Golden Beach after all.
Like the night in the hot tub, they were close to the edge before they began. Blindly reacting to the world’s strongest urge, they clung together, gasping, as wave after wave exploded, drowning them in nature’s most glorious gift.
With my body I thee worship . . .
From a branch of the live oak the green eyes of a bobcat peered into the room, watching the rocking, writhing bodies, ears tuned to the small cries, gasps and moan. Far below along the river alligators prowled in their nightly search for food. Armadillos waddled, snakes slithered, and raccoons carefully washed their food in the tea-colored river.
The owl hooted a benediction.
Two new lives had just been added to the jungle habitat along the Calusa.
Chapter Sixteen
His handsome face distorted by a furious sneer, he plucked a carving knife from its wooden holder and stalked back toward the breakfast table and the morning newspaper, which was lying where he’d left it. So they’d figure it out. Slice. The long knife’s serrated edge ripped across the newsprint. Forming a Special Task Force, were they? Slice. So everyone who didn’t already have a cell phone was buying one. Slice. “A mobile lifeline,” that’s what the newspapers called it. Slice, slice, slice!
He stopped his dissection of the morning paper to examine the lethal edge of the long blade. Slowly, he drew the knife in a precise diagonal across the neat straight cuts he had already made. Suddenly, he smiled. Anger was stupid. All this attention just made the game tougher and more interesting. It was the others who were running scared. And all because of him. He was in control. As always.
They were the stupid shits, the blind dummies who could only panic, not seeing what was under their noses. Trusting a handsome face, respectability, the whiff of money.
He jabbed the point of the knife through what was left of a photo of customers clustered around a phone kiosk at the mall.
Stupid, fucking shits.
He savored the words his mother never let him use. They were freedom. Independence. He was grown up now. At last. He could say and do any damn thing he pleased.
If only he could get off on whores . . . the eager working girls who swished their tails along the Tamiami Trail in Manatee Bay. Easy to find, easy to get.
Easy to kill.
But his mama had warned him about prostitutes. They had diseases . . . and their sleazy little outfits repelled him. He liked Realtors. They had class. They were well dressed, well groomed, well spoken. Not an easy lay.
And there were so many of them. Open, friendly, ready and waiting. And all so much more tempting now that he knew how to do it. Now that he’d found what turned him on . . .
He eyed the lo
ng knife. He liked the feel of it, the smooth firmness of the bone handle against his palm, the gleam of the blade. The power. With the tip of the blade he lifted a shred of newspaper, flicked it off the breakfast table, watched it flutter to the floor.
His hands were powerful, but with a knife? With a knife, he was God.
“You’re reaching, Blue,” Bill Jeffries scoffed. “Been out to pasture too long.” The Task Force was meeting at the South County Sheriff’s Department, and Brad had just sparked the sheriff’s derision by suggesting a possible connection between the skull brought home by a dog in Pine Grove and the Realtor murders in Manatee Bay and Golden Beach.
“The body’s female, it’s been there six months to a year,” Brad said, biting out each word. “The first Realtor death in Manatee Bay was two years ago, shortly after I came back to Golden Beach. Then nothing until this summer. It’s very likely the killer didn’t really go two full years before this latest rampage. It’s stupid to rule out the Pine Grove skull.”
The sheriff, a lean, hard fifty, could outshoot and outparty men half his age. Nor was he absent when brains were passed out. But he had an election coming up and a county full of people quaking in their boots. No sense adding another body. “Probably just some Alzheimer case wandered off and got lost,” he drawled, leaning back in his chair and regarding the mouthy ex-fed from under half-closed lids.
“And dug her own grave, lay in it, and piled the dirt on top.” Not to be outdone, the slow rhythm of Brad’s drawl matched the sheriff’s. Sarcasm oozed through the southern honey of his soft baritone, making his sudden switch to short-tempered northern supercop all the more dramatic as he added, “Cut the bullshit, Bill. Don’t rule this one out.”
In the end the Task Force authorized bringing in a state forensic specialist to reconstruct the facial features that had once belonged to the skull. They also put into motion the tough task of tracking the dental records through two counties of dentists in an area where most people came from somewhere else.
Though gratified by the Task Force’s concessions—which were as much due to his status as a good ol’ boy as to the respect due his former job—Brad sensed nothing but skepticism from the local experts around him. Old bones in Pine Grove were not high on the Task Force’s list of priorities. Best to pursue that particular line of investigation himself.
Giggling like a six-year-old instead of a dignified, professionally employed sixteen, Jody Stevens held the canoe steady while her friend Kim Dawson gingerly stepped inside. Jody couldn’t believe they were doing this. She and Kim had lived here all their lives and never thought to take a Saturday afternoon off from their ranch chores to do something as touristy as rent a canoe and paddle along the Calusa. She hoped no one they knew was watching. It was positively embarrassing.
After Kim settled herself on the rear seat, Jody gingerly planted her sneaker in the center of the gently bobbing craft and, grabbing for the sides, stepped forward and lowered herself onto the front seat. In unison, the girls heaved a sigh of relief and reached for the paddles.
“Okay,” Kim inquired, “which way do we go?”
Jody looked around, shrugged. “I don’t think we have much choice. Tide’s flowing upriver, and until we know what we’re doing, we’d better go with it.”
Kim snorted. “Speak for yourself. I went canoeing with my brother once. Just keep paddling, don’t stand up, and everything’ll be fine.”
“What if we see a gator?”
“What are you, some dumb tourist? You’ve lived here all your life. Just keep your eyes open and try not to run one down.” Kim thrust her paddle into the mud close to shore and shoved hard. Slowly, the canoe swung out toward the nut brown current flowing upstream. With a sigh, Jody put the flat of her paddle into the water on the opposite side, and pulled. The feeling of power as her tentative thrust propelled the canoe forward startled her. On her second try she did better, feeling the pull of the water, the satisfying surge of the light craft as the current helped thrust them forward. Behind her, Kim settled into a matching rhythm, and they were soon round the bend and out of sight of Bud’s Fish Camp.
There was something serene about the Calusa, Jody thought. Less than a quarter of a mile and they’d dropped back to the time of the Indian tribe that had given the river its name. Jungle surrounded them, trees dangling low over the dark waters, the call of birds, the chitter of squirrels, the faint hum of insects. A snowy white egret stalked along one bank. As they passed a fallen tree trunk that extended out over the water, a fat frog plumped into the water with a splash, closely echoed by the rise of a fish, the two concentric circles overlapping in a great swirl. A snook? Jody wondered. Her brothers sneaked away whenever they could to fish these waters. Above the tree tops, two turkey-headed vultures swooped low, circled, swooped lower yet. Jody shivered. Something had to keep the jungle clean, but preying on the dead was just too ghoulish for a sunny Saturday afternoon.
“Look!” Kim hissed. “To your right,”
“Je-ez!” Jody breathed, glancing at the far bank, her paddle frozen in mid-stroke.
The alligator was ten feet if he was an inch. Stretched full length on a muddy bank, he seemed to be peacefully snoozing, enjoying the early afternoon sun. Without a word the girls steered closer to the side of the river inhabited by humans and glided on by. Quietly, very quietly.
A sudden shout, a loud splash, the rising note of gleeful male voices shattered the girls’ already shaken nerves. The canoe rocked, then drifted as both girls thrust their paddles hard against the current, backwatering to a stop behind a drooping willow.
Stupid world, Jody thought as she caught her breath—two girls who had lived here all their lives hiding from the sound of male high spirits because evil had tainted trust. Cautiously, she stuck her head around the delicate leaves of the willow branch and peeked at the bank ahead. And sighed in chagrin. “It’s Slade Whitlaw and his buddies,” she told Kim. “Guess the surf’s not up. They’re jumping off the bank. Some macho version of Dare the Gator, I guess. Trying to wake the old boy up. You know how gators think splashing means food.”
“Slade Whitlaw? You’re kidding. We couldn’t be that lucky.”
“Of course it’s Slade. Who else would be crazy enough to jump into the Calusa? Let’s go back,” Jody added, raising her paddle.
“Go back!” Kim reduced what started as an outraged shriek to a hiss. Fortunately, the shouts and splashing on the bank ahead covered her gaffe. “In case you haven’t noticed, girlfriend, these are the most popular jocks in Calusa County. And the richest. We’d have to be nuts to run for it like a couple of little mice.”
“Squeak, squeak,” Jody mocked. “My hair’s a mess, I’m wearing cutoffs, my brother’s old T-shirt, no makeup. And you want to parade out there in front of the them?”
“Shit, yes! Let go of the bush.” Kim hoisted her paddle and stuck it firmly into the brown water.
“No!” Jody hissed, tightening her hold on the willow branch.
“Don’t be stupid. Let go!” Kim thrust hard with her paddle, swinging the rear of the canoe away from the tree. For a few seconds Jody clung to her handful of swaying leaves before reluctantly letting go, allowing Kim to steer them back out into the current, where they were almost instantly visible to the boys on the bank.
Hoots, catcalls, and whistles. What else could they expect? Jody thought.
“Hey, Kim,” called Josh Tyree, “why don’t you girls go over and pat that old gator on his snout? Bet he wouldn’t mind being paddled by the likes of you.”
“Naw,” drawled Matt Henson, pausing in the process of using the old oak’s roots to pull himself up onto the bank. “Just one snap of his jaws and you girls’d be lunch meat. I bet he’s got a hankerin’ for sweet things.”
Jody dug in her paddle. They weren’t going any farther. Absolutely not.
Kim pulled hard toward the bank. Jody backwatered.
“Stop it!” Kim hissed. “This is our chance to make an impression. You w
ant them to remember you, don’t you?”
“They’ll remember us all right!” The last thing Jody wanted was a scene. Reluctantly, she gave a tentative dip to her paddle. The canoe moved toward the boys on the bank.
When they were only a few feet from the exposed oak roots the boys were using as a ladder, Josh Tyree—all one hundred eighty Golden Beach linebacker pounds of him—plunged off the bank in a cannonball into the river. The canoe rolled, pitched and went over in a tumble of flying paddles, bare feminine legs, shrieks and shouts.
On the far bank the gator woke and slid silently into the river.
Kim’s head bobbed to the surface and Josh grabbed her. No longer finding the boys’ attention thrilling, she raised a fist and pounded his chest while Josh, muttering abject apologies, dragged her toward the bank.
There was no sign of Jody. The dark waters were impenetrable, but the gator’s armored head with the protruding humps over its eyes was clearly visible. He was now half way across the river, heading toward the splash that just might mean dinner.
Slade, who’d hit the water as soon as the canoe rolled, didn’t know Jody Stevens well, but the ranching families kept track of each other. Two of her brothers were in his classes and he’d been at a few of the same beach parties with Jody. She swam like a fish, so she was in trouble. Either she’d been knocked unconscious by the canoe as it went over or she’d been caught beneath the surface in the octopus-like roots of the old oak that had been washed out in the June flood. Slade breathed deeply and executed a surface dive straight down.
It was grope and feel. Grope and feel. The oak roots were relatively thin and slimy. If he touched something larger . . . rounder . . . Slade knew right there and then he would never dive into the Calusa again. This was it. The end of childhood. And that was before he felt what he’d come for. A hand, the firm roundness of an arm. Infinitely relieved, he tugged. Tugged harder.
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