“The driver’s dead. He can’t tell us, can he?”
“She says she found the gun in the venue and put it back. She didn’t leave with it. She also says she was drugged at some point that night.”
“That’s not going to hold up in court.” God, she hoped not. Devil’s Music had created Moniqua Prenz, and she’d turned on the company. If her resources were powerful enough to sway a judge and help her slip charges of double murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, what would she do next?
“I don’t think it will, either. But Joshua and I went down the client list, urging everyone to tighten security. All of our assistants have bodyguards—I’m sure Teagan’s already informed you.”
“She did. She said she might ask for a replacement because the guy y’all gave her is sexy. His hotness is distracting her.” She was relieved to see the tension in Emma’s face dissipate. “Where’s your bodyguard?”
“My husband’s my bodyguard. We agreed the public should see us together, relying on each other and reiterating that the company is still strong.”
“Joshua can’t be with you at all times. Is he even at the hospital?”
“He’s outside the door, pissed at me. He thought I should wait until you were discharged before dropping the Moniqua news on you.”
“I appreciate that you did. Now go tell him you were right to come here.” She picked up her phone to check the time.
Emma twisted her mouth and raised a brow. “Expecting a call?”
“No, a visitor.”
“Say no more.” She grabbed her bag and headed to the door. “I’ll remind the guard outside not to hassle Dante when he gets here.”
Several minutes later Dante came in, and her heart surged with so much enthusiasm she gasped at the bite of pain in her chest.
“Are you all right?” he asked, hesitating at the door as if he might run out to grab a nurse.
“I’m okay. Don’t…Don’t go.” She tried to sit up straighter, but it hurt like a bitch. “Okay, that’s painful.”
“Take it easy, Chelsea.” He leaned in to kiss her. “You look tired as hell.”
“I am, but I’m too wound up to sleep.”
“Are you managing the pain better today?” He shook his head, took a step to the side and raked a hand up her leg.
“Quit it. I haven’t waxed since the night of the shooting, and now it’s starting to show.”
“That’s fine with me.”
It was? “Uh, you should also know I didn’t get my shower in this morning.”
Dante stroked her belly, relaxing her, and slid her gown up to her hips. Kissing her mound, inhaling her, and sucking on her flesh, he muttered, “This is exactly what I want. Smells so good. Tastes perfect. Rest for me. Don’t hurt yourself moving around, all right?”
Lie back, receive oral, and not move? That wasn’t going to be possible. If she started writhing and bucking on the bed, she’d aggravate her wound. But the touch of his mouth to her skin triggered sensations that helped obliterate the fear, rage, and trauma she’d been feeling for five fucking days.
“Want me to go slow? Put my tongue in you? Play with your clit?”
“All of that.” Her thigh muscles leaped and she moaned a little when he spread her legs and dipped lower. She pressed her head into her pillow, reached up to clutch the fluffy cloud that kept her anchored. “Yeah. Yeah. Put your mouth on my clit—oh, fuck, like that.”
She caressed his arm, fondled his muscles, and watched him dine on her pussy.
“In the limo that day, I lied about your cunt,” he said, tearing away to look into her eyes. His lips were wet; his beard glistened. “This is worth it.”
“Worth what?”
“Everything.” He returned to his task as if possessed with a drive to tongue-fuck her out of her mind.
Chelsea’s moans were soft and her voice cracked under the limitations of pain, but pleasure radiated from her core, and when the orgasm burst through her, he held her hips still and she could either screech out his name or faint.
“If I pass out, have a nurse check my vitals,” she whispered as her inner muscles continued to gently flex.
“I don’t think that’ll happen, but if it does, I’ll make sure you’re looked after.” Teasing her with another few slow licks, he brought her legs together, smoothed down her gown, and looked at her mouth. “How about I give some attention to these lips?” Then he kissed her, roughly, thoroughly.
When they’d kissed at the carriage house the night of Vitalz’s party, it had felt like goodbye. This kiss felt like an apology.
“Am I reading too much into this, or are you sorry for something?” she asked. His frown was an admission she dreaded and wanted to pretend she didn’t notice. She wanted to hang on to the pleasure and not contaminate it with what he had to say. “Do you know something about the shooting?”
“No.”
“Is this the last time I’m going to see you, Dante?” He should’ve left for Washington yesterday, but she assumed he was sticking around long enough to see her discharged from the hospital and back to work at the top of Devil’s Music. Maybe this was goodbye. “Going down on me like that. Was that farewell cunnilingus, or what?”
“You’re going to want it to be, after I tell you—Jesus, I should’ve told you a hundred times before. Maybe if I’d been up-front, you wouldn’t have gotten capped on the goddamn street.”
“Wh-what are you trying to say?”
“I didn’t come to Atlanta just to write your album.” He went to the other side of the bed and lowered onto the chair. “Delilah had told me she bought her slice of the company back, but she wanted more. Controlling interest.”
“But you don’t have an interest in Devil’s Music.”
“No, but you do.”
Her shares. Dante had an agenda to claim her portion?
“Delilah said you felt guilty about what you’d done. She figured I could use that to my advantage, to use any means to get your twenty-four percent. Then I’d turn it over to Delilah. I’m a fucking bastard for agreeing to that and for thinking that sex would make it easier to get in your favor.”
She reached for the rubber band on his wrist. “Take this off. I don’t want you to wear it.” He let her yank it off and shoot it across the hospital room. “I don’t want you to have my trust. That’s power you don’t deserve.”
“This wasn’t about having power over you.”
“Say it. Say what you did. You conspired to screw me out of my ownership and interest in my company. You tried to literally fuck me out of my position as COO.”
“I’m sorry, Chelsea.”
“Fuck your apology. I gave you my body.”
“In exchange for the songs.”
“Classy, reminding me that I sold my ass for songs.” It hurt to try to move, but she felt at a disadvantage reclining against a pillow while he was free to stand over her or turn his back on her and walk away. She gritted her teeth against the pain as she pulled herself up straighter.
Dante shot out of the chair to press her back against the mattress. “Your wound.”
“Don’t touch me.” The words snapped from her lips, and it was as if she’d zapped him with an electrical current. His hands froze over her and he looked perturbed. She knew how he felt to lose the right to touch her. It was what she’d experienced when he’d first returned to Atlanta, when he banged her from behind and refused to allow her to put a hand on him. “Do you think I would’ve taken it this far with any songwriter?”
“You told me about a club promoter. You slept with him because of what he could potentially do for the company.”
“You’re not like Club Promoter or all the others. I didn’t think of you as Songwriter. You were always Dante. Would I have given the hymnbook to anyone? Would I have trusted any man with that piece of my life if I didn’t love him?”
And here he was, continuing to extract from her. He took the truth against her will. He didn’t have to lay a hand a
gainst her skin to manipulate her. All he had to do was exist.
“I don’t deserve the book, but I’m keeping it, Chelsea. And I don’t deserve your love, but I’m keeping that, too. Because I fucking want it.”
“That’s something Jude Bishop would say.”
“I’m his flesh and blood. You know what that means.”
It meant he was capable of tapping into the ferociously possessive part of his personality, the part that staked claim and fought for entitlement. Dante’s grandfather Martin Bishop had ruled his company with a lighter hand, but Martin’s son, Jude, and his grandchildren had iron fists and abided by a looser moral code.
“On the farm I can ignore who I am at my core. Atlanta, it pulls all my evil to the surface. Jude is nothing like me. Neither is Delilah. I’m worse.”
“I know you are.” She’d never said so out loud, but she’d known even when they were younger and thinking about making a life together. He had the capacity to be the type of businessman you didn’t cross, the type of leader you bowed to, the type of friend you feared. And she wanted him in all his fucked-up glory. “You were afraid to be that person and you were pissed at me. That’s why you left.”
“And y’all were waiting for me to come right on back. We weren’t finished, Chelsea. Just like the hymnbook.”
“The hymnbook’s only history.”
“It was unfinished. This is destiny and I don’t want to believe it any more than you do, because it fucks up our choices. It makes us think we’ve got no will of our own. All I knew was I had to have you in my life. I had to know your body.”
“You had me. So curiosity satisfied, right?”
“Hell, no.”
“The company matters more, though? You came here to buy my interest and put it in rightful hands. A Bishop’s hands.”
“The agenda changed.”
“So you’d rather keep doing me than manipulate me out of my cut of the label. Forgive me for not being flattered.”
Dante stared hard into her face. “I’m supposed to be here with you. I won’t leave Atlanta as long as there’s a threat on your life. You’re mine. Your thoughts, your mouth, your love, your pussy—all of it’s mine.”
“I’m not going to be with a man I can’t trust.”
“That doesn’t change what I said. You don’t have to be with me. You don’t have to let me touch you again. I’ll still have a hold on you until I die. Maybe even after that.” He shattered their boundaries and dove a hand between her thighs. “You’ll never quit wanting this.”
“I said don’t.”
“Say it again.” His thumb found her clit and two fingers glided up and down the length of her slit. Her arousal gave him wet, easy entry inside and her legs drifted apart. “Go ahead. Say don’t. I’ll get close and you can whisper it.”
He sheltered her, opened her, restraining and unshackling her at the same time. Rolling her hips, she beckoned jets of pain across her chest and shoulder. But lust fought back, struggling to dominate the pain the same as Dante’s touch dominated her rational thought.
Lust won, and instead of uttering one definitive word—don’t—she kissed him.
His satisfied groan poured contrition into her mouth. He’d played her and all she could do was get off on his hand. Coming so hard that she grunted in agony as tears flooded her eyes, she rode the excruciating pleasure and was still gasping when he withdrew.
She swiped his face. “Don’t touch me when I hate you.”
“You hate me?”
“Yeah. What you did was shady. Then, without giving me a chance to process the truth, you did…this.”
“Made you come so fucking rough that every son of a bitch outside this room heard.”
Oh, crap, that. They weren’t in their own nasty universe here. Being a high-profile patient and the victim of a high-profile crime didn’t secure her ultimate privacy. There was a guard at the door and medical staff practically pacing the hall should she need assistance.
“I was shot, I’m grieving, and there’s an opioid narcotic in my system. My judgment’s off.”
“And I get to you. Own it.” He backed away, glanced over his shoulder at her, and maybe she was more addled than she’d thought because she could swear there was ferocious desire snapping in his eyes. “I put you before anything else, including family.”
He left, and Chelsea pressed her thighs together. She summoned the nurse for another hit of medication. She wanted it to numb her, make her drift to dark silence. Now that Dante was gone, all she felt was pain.
—
Frederick Hill watched a late-model Jeep turn onto the street and slow as it loomed toward the lavish pearly white house on the cul-de-sac. Sunshine bounced off the charcoal-colored hood, shone over the windshield.
Rose, a lowly maid who’d never warmed to him, squinted around, pressed a button to lower the window, then sat absolutely still in the car for a moment. She must have thought she was being tracked—which she was. A lawnmower rumbled a few streets over. Deciding everything was safe, she turned into the driveway behind Dr. Celia Chavez’s red Ferrari.
Fred watched her scoot out of the driver’s seat and scurry to the trunk. She wore the same rosy pink uniform and white tennis shoes he’d often seen her in when he visited Celia, but her skin was bronzed from the tropical sunshine and her graying brown hair was streaked with blond. For someone who had just returned from a getaway, she seemed…
He searched for the right word to describe her frowning face and the way she constantly glanced over her shoulder as she retrieved suitcases from the trunk and set them on the porch. Stressed? Not quite. Afraid? Maybe.
Panicked, he decided. Leaping out of his car and crossing the street to Celia’s house, he was going to get answers.
Rose paused with her hand poised to close the trunk. Her mouth opened, then clamped shut. She slammed down the trunk door and spied him as he strode up the driveway. “Attorney Hill,” she drawled with stiff politeness. Her eyes didn’t meet his. She swiftly activated the car’s alarm system and hurried past him to the porch. “Please have a seat,” she said, gesturing to the handcrafted wicker furniture. “I’ll tell Dr. Chavez you’re here.”
He noted how unusually disheveled the porch looked. Celia’s beloved exotic plants drooped in their pots; the petals on the flowers were dulled and crisp, as if burned from the heat. UPS and FedEx missed-delivery notes littered the front door. Sealed envelopes and magazines spilled out of the mailbox.
“Tell me, Rose,” he began.
She whirled, her eyes large. “What?”
Guilt seemed to seep out through her pores. But her jumpiness made him maintain his cool and go about this gingerly. At the first hint of trouble she could clam up or bolt and he didn’t want that. He needed her help. Celia was freezing him out and he wanted insight.
His mouth slowly formed a smile and he could see Rose’s shoulders relax. He touched the airline tag attached to one of the suitcase’s handles, read the destination. “How was Mauritius?”
Relief flooded her eyes. “It’s a beautiful island.” She trailed off and retreated to her shell. “Anyway, back to work now.”
He bent to scoop up the scatter of letters and catalogs that had tumbled from the mailbox and handed them to her. “Celia paid for your vacation?”
“Uh, yes, as a matter of fact. She—ah—she needed absolute privacy, no interruptions.”
“For her research,” he provided.
Rose shifted her hazel eyes away. “Her work is never my business.” She gathered the rest of the mail, shifted it all in the crook of her elbow, and inserted her house key. She hesitantly glanced into his face, then sighed. “I oughtn’t let you sit out in this heat, Attorney Hill.”
“I’ll be fine.” As he spoke a bead of sweat rolled down the side of his weathered face.
“Bet I won’t get another vacation from Dr. Chavez if I let you in her home, but even a lawyer shouldn’t have to wait outside like a dog.” She pushed open the door an
d the sound of classical music greeted them. “Come in, please.”
He didn’t refuse. Celia had shut herself in the house, ignored phone calls, and sent her housekeeper off to an island all because of some undisclosed research project that had suddenly taken hold of her interest when a high-profile drive-by murder shattered national news.
Fred was loosely connected—his client, Dante Bishop, was writing songs for Devil’s Music—but he couldn’t pinpoint Celia’s interest in the case. A fresh-faced psychiatrist whom Fred had met at one of the label’s parties decades ago, Celia had sworn off Jude Bishop and his brood over ten years ago. She and Fred maintained a friendship—sex and conversation, though Fred appreciated the conversation more—but she never discussed the falling-out and he never pushed.
Last week he’d begun calling her when she hadn’t responded to his invitation for martinis. He’d come to her door a few times but she didn’t open it to him.
Rose led him to the sunny living room and he eased onto an armchair. “Are you comfortable?” she inquired, and when he replied, “Very,” with a slow wink, her cheeks flushed. “One moment. Dr. Chavez’s probably in her office. I’ll fetch her.” She gave a short nod and dashed off down the hallway, carrying the mail with her.
Fred scanned the room as he waited. It was neat, stylish, borderline over-the-top with eclectic furniture and flashy knickknacks. It mirrored Celia.
A shrill cry sliced through the music.
Fred shot up, moved through the hall. Time wasn’t on his side. He was getting slower by the day. Violins and Rose’s screams pounded his eardrums as he swung into the master bedroom. It was empty. Clothes were strewn over the floor and across the unmade bed. Rose was in the adjoining bathroom.
He found her hunkered on the floor with the mail scattered around her. She trembled hard, her face buried in the bath mat.
His eyes moved beyond her to the shower stall and his blood froze. The stall doors were open and the water blasted full force, battering Celia’s naked body.
She dangled from the curtain rod, one leg hanging out of the stall. A pair of pantyhose knotted around her neck held her slightly upright. Her head hung to one side. Clumps of hair stuck to her pallid face. Her half-closed eyes were dull, unfocused, and rimmed in an unnatural shade of red. Water ricocheted off her back and hit the shower walls.
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