Portrait of Death: Uncovered

by Isabel Wroth

  He set his hands on the counter behind him, still smiling crookedly while I worked on his tie and slipped the buttons on his shirt free before pulling the material from the waist of his trousers.

  My hands shaped the swell of his shoulders and biceps after I pushed his shirt away, and the hair on his chest rasped against my palms.

  My fingers bumped across the cobbled ridges of his abdomen, through the trail of dark hair arrowing down his belly.

  I traced the bull on his belt buckle before pulling it apart, then carefully eased the zipper of his slacks down over the thick bulge of his cock.

  The air hissed out of him on a long sigh; his lashes fell to half-mast as he watched me drop to my haunches and unlace his boots before pulling them and then his socks off.

  I turned away from the awe-inspiring sight of Callum's nude body to start the shower.

  I made a show of slipping out of my thick sweater, my legs already bare from having shed my overalls, knowing he had a thing for my underwear.

  I'd chosen something new: pink silk so pale it was almost white, with ivory lace along the petal-like shorts.

  The top was a flutter of silk that fell just below my breasts, a panel of soft lace lay between my shoulder blades, connected to a few straps to keep the little top on my shoulders.

  Callum's expression as his gaze roamed over my body didn't disappoint. He crossed the distance between us, crowding me back against the wall.

  Excitement raced through me. I could taste the hunger in his kiss, feel how his shaft jerked against my belly, the friction of the silk boy shorts adding to his pleasure.

  He tugged at the straps of my top, the calluses on his palms scraping down my arms as he pushed and pulled until the silk was a puddle on the floor at my feet.

  At feeling the sensitive points of my nipples make contact with the burning hot skin of his chest, I moaned.

  He devoured it and guided my arms around his shoulders while he shaped the curves of my body with his hands.

  Back first, then waist and hips before pausing and tightly gripping my thighs to lift me and carry me into the shower. All this without ever taking his mouth from mine.

  The hot water slid over us, but the shocking chill of the marble against my back made me gasp and arch up instinctively to get away from the cold.

  With my legs wrapped around his waist, my involuntary movement rubbed my clit up and down the coarse trail of hair on his belly.

  Pleasure sparkled through my veins. The scrape of Callum's teeth down the column of my throat sent an ecstatic wave throughout my body, the anticipation building to a fever pitch when his hands tightened on my flesh, lifting me higher.

  I whispered his name as his cock kissed the entrance to my pussy. Without his usual spread of foreplay, I was so tight. He fought his way inside me, slowly—inch by inch—forcing my muscles to stretch and accept the invasion.

  Callum lifted his head from my shoulder to search my face and watch while he worked to reach the end of me.

  I tipped my hips to meet his next deep nudge, both of us gasping when he slid those final inches without any further resistance.

  If I'd had the breath, it would have been the perfect moment to give a wholly satisfied, 'ahhh.'

  A million words passed between us without uttering a single syllable. The eager sounds I made filled the shower, steam wafting around us.

  The water that trickled down my body felt like a thousand licks of added sensation.

  He brought me to the edge slowly. Seated deep, he rubbed and nudged inside and out, stimulating every inch of me.

  The softer head of his shaft bumped against my cervix in a rhythmic pattern; my clit chaffed against his pelvis, and the water rained down on us while his lips clung to mine.

  I felt him everywhere—in my body, my soul, my heart. The orgasm came out of nowhere; my vaginal muscles flexed in a cascade of ripples.

  Callum's face contorted as my pussy milked his cock for every ounce of pleasure he had to give.

  We stayed entwined until both of us caught our breath, and I was surprised to find my knees were strong enough to hold me up when Callum set me on my feet, but even if I'd faltered, Callum hadn't backed up to let the water hit me.

  “Thank you, Jo.”

  “For that?” I laughed huskily. “I assure you, the pleasure was entirely mutual.”

  He gave a deep chuckle before touching a string of kisses to the side of my face. “No, baby. For putting that sexy pink number on for me.”

  “You thought that was for you?” I teased, filling my hands with the taut mounds of his ass and scraping my nails at the crease where butt gave way to thighs. It never failed to make him shudder.

  He lifted his head, pulling his bottom lip through his teeth with a hiss, playfully glaring down at me.

  “That's not what you put on this morning to go to your appointment. You saying it wasn't for me?”

  I clicked my tongue and gave a careless shrug. “Well, Dr. Anderson advised me to do things that made me feel good and putting on lingerie from Under There never fails to make me feel good.

  “But it does make me feel especially good to see the way you look at me when you see what I'm wearing.”

  Callum's smile came back, crooked with a hint of arrogance. He kept his eyes firmly locked on me when he tipped his head back into the spray of the water.

  I leaned against the now warm marble to watch the drops sluice down his gorgeous body.

  I had my own personal porn star right here in my shower, watching him squirt his manly three in one shampoo on his hair, suds up, and start his ritualistic scrub.

  “One of my favorite things about you, is your complete lack of a poker face, Jo.”

  “Huh?” I couldn't help but notice his cock was half-hard again by the time his soapy hands reached his groin.

  Is there anything in the world sexier than watching a wet man rub himself down with soapy hands? Or am I just extremely turned on by watching my man bathe?

  He gave a short bark of laughter, stepping back again to let the water rinse the soap from his olive skin, and reached to pull me toward him with one hand while snagging my bottle of shampoo from the shelf with the other.

  We switched places in a slow, dance-like movement, the water making my breasts and belly slip and slide across his chest and abs.

  Heaven. Maybe I can stand to go to bed with wet hair more often.

  “Nothing, close your eyes.” He squirted too much shampoo into my hair, but I didn't mind. I loved the way he pampered me when he got the chance.

  He washed my hair, and after, used his big hands to soap me down, missing not one nook or cranny.

  I was a bad girlfriend, selfishly letting him do all this work when I hadn't returned the favor.

  But then, Callum wasn't about who owed who what. He washed me because it pleased him to do so, and he didn't expect me to do anything other than enjoy the experience.

  I sighed in bliss as he used his fingers to comb the conditioner through the ends of my hair, peeking at him carefully through my lashes and hooking my arms around his waist to keep myself steady.

  "You're one in a million, Callum Graham, and I love you very much.”

  My statement earned me a sweet kiss on the end of my nose. “I love you, too, and as much as I'm loving this shower, I have to tell you something.”

  Uh oh. The intensity of his voice put me on alert, and I closed my eyes again, preparing for the worst. “Okay.”

  “Pop texted me while I was still on duty. He got the results of the DNA test he ran on Elliot. You were right about him not being your father's son, Jo. But there's something else.”

  I kissed his throat and stepped closer, snuggling under his chin with a sigh. “I know.”

  “You know, what?”

  “Everything. I remember everything. I'm not biologically related to Elliot at all.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The trip took nearly three hours because of a bad accident on the 17 outsid
e of Paramus. I was driving because Callum had a mess of calls to make for the case he was currently working on, and truth be told, I was grateful the distraction meant we didn't talk much on the way up to Pine Hill.

  He'd been worried about telling me the truth last night, thinking it would be too much for me to handle after my hypnosis session, trying to find a gentle way to break the news. Only to have me calmly tell him that I knew exactly what he was going to tell me.

  My rock-solid man wasn't dealing well realizing it was too much for him to handle.

  He was still shooting me uncertain glances every ten minutes or so, and by the time I pulled into the parking lot of the Pine Hill Sheriff's Department, Callum—frustrated by the lack of progress in his phone calls, my calm silence, and frustrated as hell by the lack of information I wasn't ready to share yet—was fit to be tied.

  After our shower, we'd gone to bed. I'd crawled on top of him, and every time he asked me another question, my answer was to give him another kiss and tell him, “Tomorrow.”

  He and I had both been exhausted, but not so exhausted that we hadn't gone another round. My body was still slightly sore, but it was the sort of ache I relished.

  It meant I still had him with me, even though he was sitting over there in the passenger seat, pouting.

  Though, when I parked, he practically leaped out of the car, slamming his door to come around and open mine.

  I took his hand as I got out, he slammed my door too, his jaw locked tight when I grabbed him by the tie to stop him from heading inside.

  “Are you mad at me or someone else?”

  I couldn't see his eyes from behind his sunglasses, but I saw a muscle above his left eyebrow tick and a vein pop in his forehead as his heart rate surged in response to his internal anger. Callum had a solid poker face.

  I mean, I knew he was pissed, but other than those few facial ticks and the surge of energy coming off him, a general observer might not know.

  “I'm about to walk into Davidson's shop without all the information and ask him to let my woman sit down with a pair of murder suspects, with no good explanation other than to say she wants to talk.

  “It reminds me of how I let you sit down with Gemini, and it's pissing me the fuck off. I don't like that you won't tell me what's going on, or why you need to speak to those people so bad, and why I can't do it for you.”

  Ah ha. There it is. My love. My Mr. Fix It.

  My heart pretty much overflowed with love and adoration for this huge bossy jerk, standing here bitching at me, because he couldn't go into the lion's den on my behalf.

  “I'm trying to understand. Fuck, I do understand that you need this for yourself, but I'm the one who sits down with murderers and monsters, Jo. Not you.

  “This shit already touches you too much. So, no, I'm not mad at you. I'm just fucking mad.”

  I smoothed my hands down the front of his shirt, down over his tie, and nodded. “I hear you, Cal. Can I try to explain?”

  “I wish you would,” he grunted tersely.

  “You know what it feels like to be helpless, Callum,” I reminded him gently, glad that he placed his hand over mine where it lay over his heart.

  “What you went through, not knowing where Mia was or what happened to her, we share that burden.

  “But you don't know what it feels like to be utterly and completely powerless. Janet and Aaron Beauchene did that to me, and if I let you go in there on my behalf ...”

  He sighed heavily and ripped his sunglasses off, glaring down at me stubbornly.

  “You can't take it back.”

  “No. I remember everything, Callum, and honestly, I know once I start talking, the gloves are going to come off. I only want to do this once.”

  “I’m going in with you. In the room. Right behind you. Non-negotiable.”

  I wasn’t ashamed to say Callum’s insistence made me extremely happy. He couldn’t disappear on me like last time if he was right there behind me.

  I offered him as bright a smile as I could muster. “No arguments here, Cal.”

  That muscle above his eyebrow got to jerking, his jaw working as he ground his teeth in frustration before he blew out a rough breath and gave a tight shake of his head.

  “Fuck it. Let's get it over with.”

  My sentiments exactly, handsome.

  Sheriff Davidson met us just inside the tinted doors, giving Callum's hand a shake, then mine. It seemed my new ability to see death via touch was still working.

  With one firm squeeze of his hand, I saw a gruesome scene of Davidson, sprawled lifelessly in a black leather recliner, a gun on the floor a few inches from his limp hand.

  Tears glistened wetly on his cheeks, and a pink mist hung in the air around him.

  The bullet's entry wound seemed so small in comparison to the red ruin on the left side of his head.

  “—haven't said much, and their lawyer is in there now. You sure you want to speak with them, Miss Beauchene? You don't look so good.” Sheriff Davidson looked down at me with concern stamped across his craggy, handsome face.

  He didn't look much older than he did in my vision of his death, and I couldn't imagine what would make a man who seemed so confident and self-assured commit suicide.

  Of course, I would tell Callum, but now wasn't the time for that. I struggled to find a smile for the sheriff and assured him I was fine.

  “Thank you, but yes, I need to do this, and I wanted to tell you before I go in there ... when we spoke the other day, I didn't have all the information. I didn't remember.

  “I know you'll be listening, watching, and I don't want you to think I withheld anything on purpose. I saw a psychiatrist and we worked on a recall exercise that worked ... much better than anticipated. I remember everything that happened to me before I was taken to the asylum.”

  Davidson spent a few minutes giving me a deep, penetrating stare I was coming to associate with all law enforcement personnel.

  I let him look, waiting patiently for him to decide whether or not it was a good idea to let me go through with this.

  Since he hadn't gotten a confession from my parents yet, and his window of opportunity was closing, he agreed

  “Let's do this.”

  FIFTEEN YEARS WITHOUT weekly beauty treatments and appointments at the hair salon, and having to work every day from nine to five had not been kind to my mother.

  Janet Beauchene tried to cover the gray in her dark brown hair, probably with box dye, but there were at least two inches of growth at her roots to show off her silver secrets.

  There were deep lines on her face from fatigue, stress, and days spent in the Florida sun. In the papers and for her interviews, the news crews had done her makeup for her, but what little she had on now was cheap and a shade too dark, making her once flawlessly porcelain skin look sallow.

  Aaron Beauchene was balding but too stubborn to just shave his head, and even though I knew he'd been an entry-level clerk at the same company for years, he still believed he was better than everyone else.

  Aaron looked down his nose at the public defender—the person who was going to defend him in a court of law—like he was a piece of gum stuck to his shoe.

  The lawyer was young, probably just starting out his career, and likely getting shit from my parents every time he turned around.

  My father sported a beer belly when once he'd been as slim and fit as an athlete. His vanity made itself known in the fastidious way he'd combed his hair, and though his clothes were wrinkled from having spent the last four days in jail, I could see remnants of the iron-sharp creases in his faded polo shirt and khakis.

  He had a mustache now, and it only served to add to the look of overall unhappiness on his face.

  They’re the villains in my story, and they looked so ... drab.

  “Jo? You sure about this?” Callum asked me again, his arm around my waist while we stood at the two-way mirror, watching without sound while my father paced back and forth behind where my mother sat
, arguing with the lawyer.

  I nodded decisively and looked away, slipping my feet out of my flats, exchanging them for the pair of black suede Louboutin heels I’d tucked into my purse.

  My black slacks were linen and silk, the smooth V-neck shirt I wore made of 100% bamboo, and the open front trench coat I had on, a modern take on a cape.

  I'd dressed for this meeting in a designer outfit I usually only wore for business functions, knowing my mother would recognize the labels and be pissed as hell to face me knowing she would never again be able to afford such luxury.

  Callum caught my cheeks in his hands, his gaze boring into mine, uncaring that Davidson was watching the intimate moment that passed between us.

  “I'll be right behind you.”

  I couldn't help but smile. “I know.”

  It was hard for him to let me go, but it was a testament to how much faith he had in me and was all the convincing I would ever need.

  Callum might be my bossy Mr. Fix It, but he loved me enough to let me stand on my own two feet when I needed to.

  I took a kiss for luck, then nodded to Davidson when he opened the door to the interview room and announced me, like I was some high-profile VIP with special privileges.

  Davidson shut the door, Callum stood like a bodyguard behind me, and I walked slowly to the chair waiting for me, shedding my coat before sitting down across from the two sour-faced people responsible for ruining my childhood.

  The mental door holding back my pain and anger creaked, groaned, gave a warning rattle, but held shut.

  It wasn't lost on me, the look of longing that crossed my mother's face when she looked at my shoes or the thinly veiled distaste on my father's face aimed squarely my way.

  “You did this, didn't you?” he accused hotly, waving his hand around to indicate the interrogation room.

  I took a page from Eliza Gilden's playbook, recalling a conversation we'd had about the best offense when faced with someone trying to intimidate you, was silence.

  I had seen the powerful woman silently stare down someone who was attempting to attack her verbally.

  With an icy calm, Eliza simply waited them out until the discomfort made the offender squirm and she regained the upper hand.