by Jenna Ryan
Anticipation gleamed side by side with the hunger in Jacob’s eyes. “Not a chance, Romana.” He deposited her on the mattress. “I want to look at you.”
She hooked a booted leg around his hip and tugged him with her. “Look all you want, Knight, but I expect the same privilege.”
Amusement won out. Righting himself, he held his arms to the sides. “Go for it, then. I figure I’ve got about ten seconds of self-restraint left.”
Thankfully, the zipper worked this time. She dragged off boots, jeans and black boxers, then caught back a breath.
“Okay…hah…” Shoving at his shoulders, she straddled him on the mattress. “That’s ten. Now kiss me again, and make me crazy.”
It surprised and touched her that he took his time, that he laid her gently on the sheets and began to stroke her as if she were a priceless musical instrument. He ran his hands over the silky flesh of her stomach, then lower until his fingers slipped under the strip of black lace between her legs.
She gripped his arms, dug her fingernails into his skin. She arched her body up into him, arched her head on the pillow.
Her body hummed, even her skin felt alive. And alight. God, it felt as though fireflies were whizzing around inside her, sparking everything they hit.
He bent his head, and through the lace of her bra, drew her nipple into his mouth. She bowed up to meet him, wanted quite badly to remove the barrier between his tongue and her breast, but couldn’t form the words.
Threads of thought were all she had left. She took him in her hands and, even with only half of her brain functioning, managed to see his eyes go dark. And darker.
It wasn’t about power, but there was something incredibly arousing in realizing she had as much of it as he did.
Sensation rocked her from surface to fiery center. Hunger turned to need as his fingers moved inside her. The room and the night spiraled away. There was only Jacob now and the erotic things he was doing to her. With her.
He was beautiful, truly beautiful to behold. She had enough of her wits remaining to acknowledge that. Smooth flesh over sleek muscle and bone. Romana wrapped her legs around him, stared up into his eyes and knew, simply knew, this was right. It was good.
She held on to him, felt his hand leave her and his body rise up. The black lace vanished. He moved between her legs, bent to kiss her once more.
He drew the moment out, like a long, lovely note of music. Unwilling to wait another second, Romana closed her fingers around him and took him inside.
“Not going to live through this,” she murmured, then bit her lip around a sound that might have been a scream. She was wet and ready, and she matched his rhythm perfectly.
Something danced in her head as he drove himself inside her. A word, a feeling, pure wild sensation-she didn’t know or care. He filled her up, that was all that mattered. His hands and mouth touched and tortured her. But it was a delicious torture.
He surged against her and she swore, just for a moment, that her bones dissolved. And still she reached upward toward that exquisite peak.
Her nails bit into his shoulders. She squeezed her legs tighter, caught back a quick breath-then hovered, like a child on a roller coaster. Heart pumping, adrenaline flowing, flushed and breathless, waiting for the headlong rush.
It came in a burst of heat and a flash of light. The plunge through colored darkness that was her climax. And Jacob’s.
“Okay… Ah… That’s it.” She shook the hair from her face, felt the dampness of his skin against hers. “I can’t breathe. Can’t move. Might never think again.”
Jacob dropped his forehead onto hers. “It’s all about nature, isn’t it? Souls meeting, connecting, remembering.”
She managed a smile. “I gotta tell you, Knight, that’s a way more profound thought than I can form right now.”
“Spectacular sex must make me profound.”
“Only spectacular?” She blew at his hair, slid her arms around his neck and nipped his bottom lip. “Guess I’m losing my touch. I expected at least earth-shattering or maybe mind-numbing.”
“Believe me, Romana, I’m numb and shattered.”
“Me, too.” Her eyes twinkled and a laugh bubbled up. “But believe it or not, I’m also hungry.”
He couldn’t even lift his head to stare at her. “You’re joking. You want food?”
She teased him with her lips and eyes, feathered her fingers over his buttocks. “I didn’t say I wanted food, I said I was hungry.” Using her free leg and both of her hands, she switched their positions. “But this time, Detective Knight, I get to feed first.”
Chapter Thirteen
It was close to 3:00 a.m. by the time Jacob remembered, barely, to check in with the desk sergeant. Tying up loose ends was what he told her. Tying himself in emotional knots would have been closer to the truth.
If he loved Romana, and he might, he wasn’t ready to admit it yet. Not to her and certainly not to himself.
“Your father loves me, honey,” his mother used to whisper. “He loves you, too, he does. He just doesn’t always show it right. He has such a difficult job…”
Did that mean all police officers hit their wives? Even as a child, Jacob had had his doubts.
He hadn’t wanted to become a cop-no way, anything but. And yet there he’d stood after two short years of college, reading the forms, filling them out, wondering what kind of perverted inner demon was driving him to do this.
Eighteen years later, he still hadn’t figured it out.
He’d survived the training, done the job, climbed the ladder. There was more waiting for him, a great deal more if he wanted it. Harris had been trying to push him to the next rung for the past two years.
To the same rank his father had achieved before he’d lost it.
The clock chimed twice in the square below. That would make it three-thirty. He should be out there now, following leads, talking to informants, picking apart airtight alibis. Instead, he was sitting in an ancient armchair with his feet propped up on a wine crate, drinking merlot, staring at the city lights and trying very hard not to think about the woman curled up in the bed behind him.
They’d had sex, they hadn’t made love. He couldn’t accept anything so vast yet. The word overwhelmed him. As for the feeling, well…
He drank more merlot, heard a whisper of sound and set his head on the back of the chair. “I thought you were asleep.”
“I was. Now I’m awake.”
She stayed on the bed, and it took every scrap of Jacob’s restraint not to turn around. Seeing Romana naked had fired a need inside that he hadn’t realized existed. And the firing had been nothing more than a point of commencement.
He raised the bottle. “I have wine.”
“Yes, I see that.”
She didn’t sound angry, but then she wouldn’t be. Curious maybe, a little guarded and certainly intrigued, but not upset.
Reluctant amusement tugged on his lips. “You’re going to use silence to make me talk, aren’t you?”
When the bed creaked, desire turned lethal. “Actually,” she said, “I’m hoping the wine will do that for me.” He caught the deliberate shrug in her tone. “Or we could have more sex. Your choice.” Her fingers slid through his hair. “You can talk to me or not, just feed my female vanity and make me believe you want me. Again.”
Okay, he wasn’t dead, he wasn’t drunk and he sure as hell wasn’t made of stone.
Whipping a hand around, he tumbled her into his lap.
He wore only his jeans. She wore nothing but skin, and miles of dark, silky hair.
Brushing it from her face, he let his gaze roam over her features. “I want you, you know I do. I’ve shown you twice already.”
“Guess that makes me a glutton, then.” She bit his earlobe. “Whatever it makes me, show me again.”
She might be a glutton, he reflected, capturing her mouth in a hot, wicked kiss, but only for punishment. He just prayed he wouldn’t be the one meting it out.
His lashes fell to shield his eyes. “How do you know…”
She stopped him with a kiss. “Later, okay? I want you, and I think,” she wriggled against him, “you want me.” Her eyes sparkled in the soft glow from the street. “Third time’s lucky, Detective Knight.”
“O’KEEFE DIDN’T SAY A WORD.” Romana held up her right hand. “I swear. All he talked about was you and Canter as rookie officers-bet you were cute in uniform-and how much he misses his daughter.”
Jacob shook the last drops of wine into her glass. “So you’re telepathic, then?”
“I wish, but, no, not that either.” Reaching over, she tapped a finger to his mouth and stage-whispered, “You talk in your sleep.”
He stared for several incredulous seconds. “Are you serious?”
She sat back, dipped that same finger in her wine. “For once, I am. You mumbled things about-well, about your father, I guess. And your mother. I’m sure about her. You loved her.”
“I sure as hell didn’t love him.”
“Grew not to love him would be my take.”
“Same thing in the end.”
He looked out the window. Broody, unapproachable- maybe it was time she said something, pried just a little.
Wearing only his T-shirt, she curled her legs on the rug in front of him and set an arm on the wine crate. “You look out, Jacob, at other people and their lives. But how often do you look in? You’re not your father. You’re not your mother or your grandparents or some barbaric ancestor. You’re you. You’re what you’ve made of yourself. Everyone, and I mean everyone, in my family, including Grandma Grey, swears I’m the reincarnation of her mother.”
“The one with the winter-lake eyes?”
“That’s her. But you know what? I’m not her, and no one’s going to convince me I am.”
“You don’t believe in reincarnation?”
“I’m open to the possibility. But in the case of my great-grandmother Rostov, she was alive when I was born. So it wouldn’t be reincarnation so much as spiritual possession, and, whether by a good spirit or an evil one, I absolutely will not buy into that. I am who I am, you are who you are, and I’m really, truly sorry for what you must have gone through as a child.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. He glanced into his wineglass, then back up at her. “I could have killed her. It’s possible.”
He wasn’t talking about his mother. Romana’s heart gave a tiny stutter that settled the second she felt it. “You can’t account for your whereabouts at the time of Belinda Critch’s death, is that right?”
“I was on duty. It was one of my first night shifts.”
“What part of the night don’t you remember?”
“About half of it. O’Keefe and I were partners back then, but as you know, partners don’t spend every minute of their shift together.” “You separated.” She rolled the stem of her glass between her fingers and thumb. “When? What time?”
“Close to midnight. O’Keefe had personal business to take care of. Problems with his wife. He went home. I went looking for Durphey-an informant.”
“I’ve heard the name. Did you find him?” “Yeah, I found him, around 1:00 a.m.” “The medical examiner pinpointed Belinda’s death between
1:00 and 4:00 a.m. How long were you with Durphey?” “Ninety minutes.” Amusement sparked. “That long? With someone who smells like a sewer and drools when he speaks?” “The drooling’s an act. Keeps people at arm’s length.” “The sewer smell would do that no problem. He must have had some valuable information to impart.” “He did. We spent most of those ninety minutes in a dockside warehouse, searching for an outgoing shipment.” “Of drugs?” “Homicide division,” he reminded her. “You were searching for a corpse?” “Two. Drug related. They weren’t there.” “So you split at the warehouse?” “He left, I stayed, searched a bit longer. I remember lighting a cigarette, looking at the moon, then-nothing.”
“Well, okay, hmm. So from, say, 2:30 to 4:00 a.m. you don’t know where you were or what you did. When did you-” she rocked her hand back and forth “-wake up, so to speak?”
“Dawn.” His features darkened as his mind traveled back. “It was starting to snow. I woke up in my car-literally woke up, so I must have been asleep.”
“Where were you?” When he didn’t answer, Romana tapped his leg. “Where, Jacob?”
“Three houses away from O’Keefe’s place, parked by the curb.”
“Did you go inside?”
“I used my cell to call first. There was no answer, so I went to McDonald’s and had breakfast. I heard about Belinda after I checked in with Harris. O’Keefe was in the captain’s office when I got to the station. They said Critch was freaking in his holding cell, accusing me of killing his wife. He kept screaming that I’d done it and they should have let him shoot me when he had the chance.”
“They meaning me.”
“And so began the Christmas card parade.”
Romana’s brow knit. “That’s right, the cards. I’d almost forgotten about those. Carefully worded portents of doom. Until the last one. Well-or actually no, the one before it was quite vicious as well.”
The ghost of a smile appeared. “Prison guards get complacent after a while. Critch was a model prisoner. They’d have stopped checking his outgoing mail after the first few years. He’d have known that and reacted accordingly.”
With an elbow propped on the wine crate, Romana slid her fingers through her hair. “So, going back to the morning after, no one could vouch for you except an informant whose testimony wouldn’t have been worth anything anyway. You didn’t see O’Keefe after the two of you separated, or you wouldn’t have woken up in your car. Critch was behind bars at the time, so he didn’t kill her. Where was Barret?”
“At home, asleep, he said.”
“And Shera?”
“Couldn’t alibi him because she was in Columbus at her sister’s place, working out the details for an upcoming family reunion. Allegedly.”
Romana opened her mouth, but at his last word, closed it again. “What do you mean? Was Shera in Columbus or not?”
“Her sister says she was.”
Romana tipped her head for a better view of his shadowed face. “And you think what? That her sister’s covering for her?”
“It’s possible.”
“Most things are, but why this particular thing? Come on, what do you know that you’re not sharing?”
“A tip I got tonight.”
“From Canter?”
Again that ghost of a smile. “Source isn’t important. I talked to Shera Barret’s sister earlier tonight. She lives in Cincinnati now. She admitted that Shera went to bed with a migraine at 6:00 p.m. the night before Belinda Critch died. She didn’t come out of her bedroom the next morning, and her sister, knowing what migraines are like, didn’t disturb her. She went to work as usual and came home to a note Shera had left on the nightstand. It said she had to go back to Cincinnati, and she’d call soon.”
“Did she call?”
“The sister doesn’t know. She left on a buying trip to Mexico that evening. When she got back after Christmas, she was in the middle of a business war and never thought to ask Shera for an explanation.”
“Well, that’s convenient. Doesn’t mean Shera had anything to do with Belinda’s death, but it sounds like the opportunity was there.” A shrewd eyebrow went up. “Was it? Did your tipster say?”
“Yeah, he said.” Jacob’s gaze slid to the window. “Five days after Christmas, the investigating officer received a phone call and the offer of a substantial amount of money if he’d be willing to make the case go away. Whether the call was intended to protect her husband or the caller herself, he didn’t know. But it was made by Shera Barret.”
ROMANA KNEW THERE WAS MORE to the Gary Canter story than Jacob
was telling, but since it didn’t appear to relate to the Belinda Critch investigation, she didn’t press for details. He’d tell her what he wanted to when he wanted to. It was Jacob’s custom to hold back and hers not to push. Which might, she reflected, be the reason she hadn’t been the most effective officer on the Cincinnati force.
In any case, the night had been incredible. So had the sex. Better than incredible-it had overwhelmed and, if she was honest, been more of a revelation than she was prepared to handle right now.
Her marriage had left holes in her self-esteem, had burst bubbles of hope and allowed doubt to creep in and take root. Even Grandma Grey’s unwavering support hadn’t managed to offset all the damage. And reflecting on cause and effect hadn’t been high on Romana’s to-do list. Until now.
“Really missing you, Fitz,” she said to the ceiling of her condo. “Please be safe. Please, let me find a way to find you.”
She wished she could go out and search tonight, but it was almost eight o’clock and the police/forensics party would be getting underway in a few minutes. Rushton Hall had been rented and seasonally decked out. It wasn’t a black tie affair, but that wouldn’t stop the partygoers from dressing up in their holiday finest, especially the females, who tended to wear uniforms or lab coats on a daily basis.
The intercom buzzed at 8:02. Not bad, Knight, she thought, and added an extra dab of perfume to her wrist.
The phone rang before she reached the security monitor. She picked up en route.
“It’s me.” Jacob’s voice reached her over a static-filled line. “I’m stuck in traffic.”
“And here I was complimenting you on your prompt arrival.” She switched on the security monitor. “How long?”
“Twenty minutes. We’ll be fashionably late.”
“It never hurts to be-” Romana stared at the image on screen “-late.” Icy fingers of dread skated down her spine. “Damn.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing. Well, something, but you don’t need to use your siren. Someone buzzed me just as you phoned.”
“And?”
“There’s no one in the lobby. All I see is an envelope taped to the wall. It might have my name on it.” She finished the sentence with a sigh. “You’re using the siren, aren’t you?”