by Lori Wilde
He was so good at making her feel good. When they moved together it was like a dance, an attunement. His leg there, hers here. His back arched just so, then her own. Even when they turned and tumbled so that she surfaced straddling him it was graceful, adroit, as though they were suspended.
Had it been this way from the beginning, smooth as a globe, an act of beauty as well as an act of love? Though the start had only been a few days ago, Cass found it difficult to remember her former self, who she’d been before him: impulsive but charming, self-centered she now knew.
But here she was with him feeling—what was it? Ah yes, accepted, supported, cared for.
They were both aware of every nuanced murmur of their bodies. They were swept away by the slightest touch, barely able to breath.
They switched again, him on top and unhurriedly, he pressed himself into her, thrusting steadily until he was buried to the hilt. A breaker of uncontainable desire rushed over her. She milled herself against his pelvic bone, grinding hard. Fisting her hands into the Egyptian cotton of her crisp four hundred thread count sheets.
“Sam, oh, Sam. That feels so good. That’s right. Give it to me.”
“You like that?
“Yes.”
“You want me?”
“Yes, yes.”
He increased the tempo of his thrusts, moving in and out of her with a rhythmic precision that drove her mad. With each inward plunge, she felt abundant, almost to the point of explosion. It wasn’t enough.
“Faster,” she pleaded. “I need you faster.”
His cadence quickened.
“More, more.” Her voice sounded hoarse and needy, echoing off the walls.
He gave her everything she asked for.
Cass lost touch with the commonplace, let go of all fears, released her grip on the earth, upon reality. Deliriously, they were transcended, dazed and drunken.
And that’s when Cass Richards realized for the first time in her life she’d fallen hopelessly, helplessly in love.
LATER SHE WOKE to find him beside her, his leg thrown over her waist, his hair sexily tousled, his gaze upon her face. Cass closed her eyes and smiled as he leaned in for a kiss.
Sam nuzzled her cheek lightly. She raised her eyelids halfway, still smiling and their eyes met in greeting. She teased him, playing coy.
His skin was damp with a fine outline of sweat between his shoulder blades. He looked at her in a way that made her feel like the sexiest woman alive. She thought she knew her body well, but in his eyes, she was changed, charting unexplored territories of her sexuality.
Sam closed her arms around his neck. She leaned her face into him, smelling his essence, resting her chin against his soft, dark brown chest hairs. They lay there unmoving, mesmerized by the sounds of their own breathing.
Cass slowly became aware of the pressure of their touching bodies. She pushed back from him, kissing his arms as they slid away from her neck.
Eyes flashing, he inched his fingertips up the inside of her thigh. A laugh, sweet and thick as honey, caught in her throat making her sound like one of those smoky-voiced French cabaret singers, husky and exotic. She was turning into someone new.
And he was her conduit. She was becoming her essential self. In the process, learning to let go of the belief that she needed Hermès scarves and filet mignon and limo rides in order to feel satisfied. She was naked and in her nakedness she was able to fully assimilate her experience and be nourished by it. She required nothing beyond this ecstacy.
She grasped his shoulders to steady the fluttering of her heart against the tingling pleasure of his touch. He lowered his head, rested it on the roundness of her belly. Her breath came quicker, deeper. A flush of awareness tickled the back of her throat.
He raised his head and looked at her. They looked frankly into each other’s eyes. Not talking, just looking. Cass saw something that she’d never seen in a man’s face after lovemaking. Was it honesty? A trueness only real and lasting intimacy brings?
What did her eyes tell him? Could he see that this experience was new to her? These feelings. This letting down of the guard. This willingness to leap with him into the arms of an unknown destiny.
Recognition passed between them. A vow unspoken.
His erection stirred against her thigh, growing hard and hot all over again. She reached down to slowly caress his shaft, admiring the throb.
Anticipation sparked in his eyes as she increased the measured stroking. He moaned when she cupped his balls with her other hand. She marveled at their weight, felt them tighten up against his crotch, felt a corresponding pressure, a tightening of her own nerves.
She bent her head. Kissed his satiny tip, tasted his pungent tang. She dragged her tongue down one side of him, tracing his pattern.
He groaned.
Her tongue traveled, roaming over the brilliant territory. As her excitement grew, her control slipped. Her mouth closed delicately over the head of him.
Sam lay motionless, straining against his impulses. She clutched his hips with both hands, sucked him first slowly all the way to his tip, turning her head so she could feel every part of him. Then down to the base of his shaft.
Cass dove, her tongue swirling, in one fluid movement.
Sitting up, she moved her hands around his buttocks to the inside of his firm, muscular thighs. Gently she stroked, moving over his thighs with shivering lightness. She glided with him as smoothly as breathing, inhaling him and then allowing him to fall away on a sigh.
Yet the whole time she was holding back, holding something in reserve. Their pace quickened and they never lost contact. They swayed in unison.
“Cass, Cass, Cass,” he groaned, his head thrown back, his eyes tightly closed.
His body went rigid. The signal she was looking for. The signal to wait.
Cass did not move, her mouth resting on the base of his shaft. The head of him pounding inside her.
He shuddered in premonition.
She wrapped her legs around his thighs so he could feel her warm wetness, dripping with excitement. She undulated her hips in rhythm with her mouth, moving up and down him once more.
His hands reached for her. He touched her hair. His fingers moved blindly over her shoulders, trying to find a place to hold on to as he arched his back.
She wriggled away from his hands, determined to focus all her attention on his pleasure, knowing he would return it tenfold. She closed her eyes, calmed her pulsing heart. All her awareness was in her fingers and her tongue.
He was close. So very close.
His breath came in rough gasps. Her body simmered in sweet sweat as they rocked together. She moved her mouth and her fingers took over. With a burst and shudder he came. His juices leaking over her hand onto his belly.
He cried her name.
And she collapsed against him. Together, they lay breathing heavily, absorbed by vibrant bliss.
SAM WOKE WITH THE NEED to do something special for Cass. He propped himself up on one elbow and lay watching her sleep, his heart a leapfrog in his chest.
He’d been ruined. She’d wrecked him for any other woman.
And he was delirious about his downfall.
She was the sexiest thing in the world and he wanted her all the time. They had such fun together. Both in bed and out of it. He loved the way she was delighted by life. And her delight delighted him. Her instincts were delicate, beautiful things, and it was painful but wonderful to realize the way she handled him. It wasn’t guile on her part. It was just the way she was and he was wrapped tightly around her pinkie.
After Keeley, he’d feared he might never be able to fully open up to a woman again, but his feelings for Cass overrode the past. His need for connection was stronger than his fear of being hurt.
He knew she needed more time, that her fear of commitment wouldn’t disappear overnight, that she hadn’t really known him long enough to be sure she could count on him. That was fine. He had all the patience in the world. In the meantime, he was going
to set about showing her exactly how much she meant to him.
And that she could trust him to be there for her, no matter what.
Sam eased from the bed without waking her, collected his clothes off the floor and slipped out of her bedroom to get dressed. He finished cleaning up the mess the intruder had made of her kitchen knowing at this point it was more important to get her life back to normal than to gather evidence on a break-in where nothing had been stolen.
As he puttered, he found himself humming the Madonna song “Angel.” Hell, he didn’t even like Madonna, but the song just fit.
When he’d finished setting her kitchen to rights, he moved to making breakfast. He opened the fridge to see what she had.
Bottled water. Olives. Two oranges. A dozen packets of soy sauce. Mustard. Three eggs. A tub of margarine and an half-gallon carton of two percent milk.
Sam smiled. Ah, the life of a hip, young, urban single.
He looked in the cupboard, found both a half loaf of bread and an unopened bottle of maple syrup. French toast it was.
Cracking open the fridge once more, he tucked the eggs under his arm and reached for the milk. Hmm. There was something lumpy in the bottom of the milk carton. Had it curdled?
He set the eggs on the counter and wrinkled his nose as he opened the carton, preparing for the smell of soured milk. But it wasn’t curdled.
Whatever the something was in the bottom shifted heavily. Weird.
Sam took a tall glass from the cabinet, poured off the milk into it and then squeezed open the entire top of the carton and peered inside.
Jewelry.
Why did she have jewelry in her milk carton?
He carried the loot over to the sink and rinsed it off. As soon as he’d washed away the milky film from the gems, his stomach sickened.
They were all here.
Everything the Blueblood Burglar had stolen. The teardrop pendant that had gone missing during the Ackermans’ party, the cameo from the Martindales’. A Tiffany watch from the Parkers. And most telling of all, the chunk of jade from Bunnie Bernaldo’s Buddha.
His world caved in. A landslide. An avalanche. Burying him alive.
He’d been so sure she was innocent. Convinced of it. Staked his future on it. His gut had deceived him. His heart had lied.
Accepting the truth wasn’t easy. Desperately, he wracked his brain, searching for any other possible explanation for how the Blueblood Burglar booty had gotten into her milk carton.
And the reasons he concocted were beyond belief. No good cop would have accepted them. In the end, he was left with one conclusion.
His angel was an outlaw.
15
“WHAT’S THIS?” Sam loomed over her bed, his cupped hands extended in front of him.
Cass sat up blinking, not understanding what was going on. What was he talking about? Groggily, she pushed her hair from her face.
“What were these doing in your milk carton?”
She shook her head, still not comprehending. The dark expression on his face scared her. “What are you talking about?”
He shoved his palms under her nose and for the first time she saw the jewelry. Her mouth dropped open.
Around his thumb was looped the Tiffany watch that had gone missing the night of her friend Melina’s birthday party. There winked the cluster diamond earrings stolen from her coworkers’ Easter celebration. And in the center of his palm sat the round green jade from Bunnie’s Buddha.
As she stared at the treasures in Sam’s hands, understanding crept over her. Every piece of jewelry in his hand had been pilfered during elaborate parties thrown by luminaries and the social elite. All parties she had attended.
Every single one of them.
She looked up to meet Sam’s gaze, clutching the sheet to her breast, acutely aware of her nakedness.
He said nothing, just clenched his jaw. His face changed. Went white. With anger or hurt she didn’t know which. But he had no right to be hurt or angry. She was the injured party here. She was the one he was wrongly accusing of a crime with his murky gray eyes.
“You think I stole these?”
“They were in the milk carton in your refrigerator,” he repeated.
“Well then, someone else is trying to frame me. My apartment was vandalized. Find out who broke in and you’ll find out who’s put them there.”
“There’s no sign of forced entry.”
She couldn’t have been more shocked if he’d kicked her in the gut with his thick, ugly Doc Martens boots. “You think I wrecked my own place?”
Cass had never seen such emotions in a man’s face all at once. Regret, disappointment, grimness, steely resolve.
“I don’t want to think it, Cass. Show me something else. Give me something I can cling to.”
Another unpleasant thought slapped her.
“You didn’t take me to Bunnie’s for an introduction because you suspected she and Trevor had robbed the Stanhope auction house. You were spying on me, waiting to see if I would steal something.”
His guilty expression was answer enough. He shifted his weight, his hands still outstretched, the jewelry winking at her in accusation.
“Yeah.”
A short, derisive noise escaped her. Unbelievable. She’d finally, finally fallen for a man and look where it had gotten her. “You thought I was guilty from the very beginning. You’ve been using me all along, trying to get me to crack. Lovely technique, Detective Mason.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Last night was…”
“A bad mistake,” she said firmly. Cass tightened her jaw. She wasn’t going to cry. She refused to cry. She was tougher than that. She was innocent. She’d get a lawyer. She’d prove she hadn’t stolen anything.
And her feelings for Sam?
Well, clearly that was over.
“You have the right to remain silent,” he said.
SAM SAT WITH HIS BACK to the wall at O’Reilly’s bar two blocks from the 39th Precinct, planning on getting rip-roaring drunk. Putting Cass in jail had been the single most difficult thing he’d ever done in his life. And he hated himself for it.
But what choice had he had?
His gut told him she was innocent, but the evidence said otherwise. He was a cop, sworn to uphold the law.
He’d done the dutiful thing.
But was doing his duty the right thing?
Gritting his teeth, Sam knocked back a swig of beer. He hated to believe he had a pattern of falling for shallow beautiful women.
No. He refused to accept that. Yes, on the surface, Cass and Keeley were a lot alike. But underneath, they were midnight and dawn. Cass had a generous heart. She was kind and considerate of others. She was fun loving yes, and that was part of the reason he was so attracted to her. She balanced out his more serious side.
Unless he was simply deceiving himself.
Was he?
Sam plowed a hand through his hair. He knew Cass must be feeling powerfully betrayed. Last night, he’d made her promises. Promises he’d been unable to keep. He couldn’t blame her if she hated his guts.
Right now, he hated his own guts.
Sam’s cell phone vibrated against his hip. He didn’t want to answer it. Wanted nothing more than to get stinking drunk and forget all about Cass Richards.
But the phone wouldn’t stop buzzing. Finally, he snatched it up. “Yeah?”
“Sam? This is Joey from the evidence lab. Got that DNA report back from that blood sample you found on the onyx brooch recovered from the Stanhope robbery.”
Sam sat up straighter, his heart a piston in his chest. “What did you find?”
“There were two donors on the specimen.”
“Two?”
“But neither one of them matched your suspect, Cass Richards.”
His sigh of relief was audible. “Did you find a match?”
“One was unidentifiable. We did get a hit on the second, but I don’t think it’s going to help you much,” Joey said.
“It was a match to the contractor the Stanhope hired to assess and catalogue the Zander estate. It’s highly likely the guy stuck himself while he was logging in the items, probably has nothing to do with your case.”
“You gonna give me a name, Joey?” Sam spat out the question.
“Sure, sure. It’s Marcos Rebisi.”
Sam hung up the phone, bolted from the bar. He knew now what the smell was he’d detected underneath the antiseptic scent in Cass’s apartment. It was the same odor he’d smelled in the stairwell of the rehab hospital.
Wet cardboard.
The damp boxy smell of Marcos Rebisi’s cologne.
He had to get to Cass. Had to find out exactly what had happened between her and Marcos.
Sam couldn’t believe he’d been so shortsighted. He’d gone through the roster of Stanhope employees, assuming it accounted for everyone who may have had contact with the gems since they’d come into the auction house’s possession.
And yes, he’d checked the guest list of all the parties where the Blueblood Burglar had struck, and while the only name on all seven guest lists had been Cass’s, Marcos’s name had appeared on six of them. And the party that Marcos had not attended was one thrown by a Melina Rebisi Parker.
After making a quick cell phone call to Bunnie Bernaldo while en route to the station, Sam found out Melina Parker was indeed Marcos’s sister. Her brother could have stolen the Tiffany watch from her home at any point. The theft hadn’t occurred during the Parkers’ party. Cass wasn’t to blame.
Cursing himself, Sam rushed up to the outer desk at the holding cells.
“Cass Richards,” he said to the jailer. “I want her in an interrogation room, now.”
“No can do, Detective.”
“What do you mean?” Sam glowered.
“She’s not here.”
Darkly, Sam leaned across the desk. “What do you mean she’s not here?”
“Some guy sprang her about…” He checked his watch. “Forty-five minutes ago.”
Sam fisted his hand. “Who? What guy?”
“Hang on.” He tapped on the computer keyboard, consulted the screen in front of him. “Um…his name was Marcos Rebisi.”