by Jami Alden
Ethan sank down on her couch and pulled out his phone. “Yeah, my dad was an investment banker in San Francisco.”
She swiveled around her her chair to face him, one dark eyebrow cocked over the frames of her glasses. “So did you sell drugs, too? Make your dad pay off the cops?”
He gave a short laugh. “No. We were pretty good.” He paused. “Well, mostly. And if we weren’t, nobody knew about it.”
She turned back to her screen and typed in a series of commands. “We? How many of you are there?”
“Three. There’s Derek—he and I are twins—and Danny, our older brother. We formed Gemini together three years ago.”
“You must be close if you manage to stay in business together.”
He shrugged. “We have our moments, like all brothers do. How about you? Any brothers or sisters?”
She opened her mouth and paused, as though not sure how to answer the question. Something dark passed in her gaze before she shook her head.
Something had happened there, something that hadn’t come up in the brief background check Derek had run. Ethan knew it would be relatively easy to find out, but he wanted her to tell him herself. An impulse he didn’t want to examine too closely—when was the last time he wanted a woman to share her secrets? In his experience, that was only asking for trouble.
“So why do you? Work, I mean?” she asked, obviously eager to steer the conversation back to him.
“Because we’d all be bored shitless if we didn’t,” he said. “Besides, my father set it up so that we don’t come into our money until we’re fifty. I’m not saying we haven’t had help. Dad gave us the seed money to start our business.”
“Generous of him,” Tony said.
Ethan nodded. Yes, it was generous, but it also meant they got roped in every time Dad went hieing off after some phantom lead.
“Why not just give it to you?” Toni asked.
“Because he’s smart and doesn’t want the guarantee of a pile of money to turn us all into shiftless assholes.”
“Oh, so it’s not the money, you managed to turn into an asshole all by yourself?” Toni said with a teasing smile.
Her comment cracked the tension building inside him. He laughed, wondering when he’d ever laughed at a woman calling him an asshole.
And why did he find the one woman who did so goddamn entertaining?
“Okay, I have Toby’s car,” she said. “It’s a black 2006 Yukon, California license plate XJY 424,” she read off.
Attention riveted on her screen, she paid no attention to him. She was so fucking pretty and seemed to get better-looking every time he looked at her. Even now, seeing her frown at her screen as she looked up Toby’s recent credit card activity, Ethan couldn’t stop wondering how she’d react if he went up and bit her on the neck, on that tender spot right below her ear.
He closed his eyes and sipped his beer, hoping it would ease the restless, itchy feeling he’d been fighting all night, as if his skin had suddenly shrunk one size too small. But the second his lids dropped, all he could think of was Toni, the way she’d felt when he’d pressed up against her while playing the part of her jealous boyfriend.
He opened his eyes again and studied her. She was working hard to keep that wall up, to pretend she wasn’t interested. But with his arm around her waist, palm flattened on her stomach, he’d felt her catch her breath, seen the pulse in her neck pick up speed when she’d felt the pressure of his thickening cock snugged up against the small of her back.
He couldn’t stop wondering if it had gotten her hot. If her thighs had subtly clenched and unclenched inside her jeans. When they got into the elevator, he’d wanted nothing more than to press the emergency override and pin her up against the wall, to slide his hand up between her thighs, slip his fingers down the front of her pants and see if her pussy was as silky-wet as he imagined.
Now wasn’t the time or the place for the full-court press, but as soon as this case was wrapped up—
“Aha, got him!” Toni crowed, her fist punching the air in triumph. Ethan casually crossed his ankle over his knee and tugged at the fly of his pants, praying she wouldn’t notice the way his cock was straining against his zipper. Either he was regressing to adolescence or he seriously needed to get laid.
He struggled to get a grip on his libido, reminding himself harshly of the seriousness of the situation. A girl was missing, for Christ’s sake, and all he could think about was fucking Toni so good and hard she wouldn’t be able to move for a week.
“He used a Visa to buy gas in Barstow, and at seven fifty-three yesterday, he used that same Visa to check into the Wynn Las Vegas Hotel.”
Ethan quickly dialed Jerry, eager to relay the information and have something to take his mind off sex. Or more specifically, sex with Toni.
While he left Jerry the information in a voice mail, Toni called Marcy and did the same.
“Jerry didn’t answer either?” Toni asked, walking over to the couch and plopping down beside him. “If my kid were missing, I’d have the phone glued to my ear. Where the hell are they, and why the hell aren’t they answering their phones?”
At the moment, Ethan didn’t particularly care, because he was all too aware of how close Toni was sitting. Her arm was only inches away, and he wanted to reach out, trace the inner curve with his fingers and see if the skin was as baby smooth as it looked.
“I should have known something was going on,” Toni said. The deep worry in her voice pulled him momentarily out of his lust-filled musings. “I knew she was having a hard time…” Toni’s voice trailed off. She took another sip of her beer and stared into space.
“You said that before. Her own parents didn’t know what she was up to.”
“I know, but I should have been looking out for her, checking up on her.” Toni shook her head. “If I’d known about this whole Kstar90 thing, we could have gotten on this before anything bad happened.”
“We still don’t know that anything bad has happened.”
“Nude photos of an underage girl all over the Internet isn’t enough?”
He held his hands up. “Point taken. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t hanging out with him willingly, having a great time. Did Marcy hire you to check up on her kids?”
“No.”
“Then how is Kara your responsibility?”
“She’s my friend. Don’t give me that look.” She frowned at his apparent surprise. “My parents split up when I was sixteen and I knew what she was going through.”
“And you didn’t want to spy on your friend?”
Toni slumped back against the lumpy sofa cushion. “I promised Kara I wouldn’t do anything behind her back,” Toni said. “I wanted her to trust me.”
Ethan placed his hand on the smooth skin of her forearm. “You kept your word to her. You shouldn’t feel guilty for that. You did what you could.”
“No, I didn’t,” she said, her voice tight. “The last time I talked to her I blew her off. She talked about wanting to get away, how her mom was a mess and her dad expected her to be perfect all the time. I told her she just needed to stick it out, she’d be off to college soon enough, blah, blah, blah.” She took a sip of beer and let out a disgusted sigh.
“Good advice.”
She shook her head and snatched her arm out from under his hand. “No—lame, parental, smile-and-nod advice. She needed someone to listen to her and I wasn’t listening. And now she’s gone, and I’m not going to just leave her out there like—”
She cut herself off, shifted her gaze away, and started to get off the couch.
“Like what?”
She sighed and closed her eyes, as though carefully weighing her response. “When I was seventeen, my sister Michelle ran away. We found her three months later. She’d been raped and strangled. She was fifteen.”
Her tone was even, careful to conceal any hint of emotion. Still, the blunt words hit Ethan like a blow. “That must have been awful for you. I’m sorry,” he said,
his words sounding incredibly lame as they left his mouth.
“After my parents got divorced, she got into all kinds of trouble. You name it, she did it—drugs, sex, everything. I ignored her, kept my head down and focused on being the smart kid who didn’t cause any trouble.”
He could easily imagine her, dark-haired and somber, trying to keep her world together as everyone around her fell apart. He could relate.
“I’m sure Kara’s fine.”
“Yeah, that’s what they said about Michelle. ‘She’s run away several times, ma’am. She’ll come back when she’s ready, ma’am.’ And we were so tired of dealing with her by then we didn’t even bother looking for her.”
“Toni, you were just a kid yourself—”
“I was her big sister. I should have looked after her.”
He set his beer down and slid his arms around her shoulders. She stiffened slightly but didn’t move away. “Kara’s not like your sister. She’s not—”
“Not a drug-addicted juvenile delinquent? Maybe not yet, but she’s not exactly trending in the right direction.”
“Yeah, I know, but she’s never run away before, and she’s only been missing for two days. Even if she’s with Toby, she’s probably fine.” He felt like a broken record, but he wanted to ease the guilt and pain shadowing her eyes.
She looked up at him, her mouth pulled tight with strain, eyes dark and troubled. A heartbeat passed. Two. In his efforts to comfort her he’d gotten closer, close enough that her thigh was pressed against his. Close enough to smell the sweet woman-scent of her skin.
His hand slid from her shoulder to her neck. His fingers slid up, tangling in silky black hair as his thumb brushed back and forth over the creamy skin of her throat.
The itchy, tight-skinned feeling was getting worse as every cell went on high alert, every nerve screaming at him to cover her mouth with his own, slide his tongue between those plump, rosy lips, kiss away the sadness and guilt.
Not the time or the place, Taggart. But his body was beyond listening. What the fuck was wrong with him? He never had a problem shutting down his libido. Sure, his brothers liked to tease him about being oversexed, but truth was he was always in control.
Until now.
Her eyes widened behind the lenses of her glasses as he leaned forward, but she didn’t try to move away or avoid his mouth as it came down and covered hers. His palm spread against her back and he pulled her close like he’d been dying to do since he’d first seen her in Jerry’s kitchen.
Her hands came up, curling over his shoulders, resting there, as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do.
He figured he’d give her a little hint, and slid his tongue into her mouth for a taste. She was hot and salty-sweet. A shaky breath spilled into his mouth and her lips parted wider, sucking him inside as she leaned in to the kiss, as eager for it as he. For all that she’d been throwing up a brick wall, there was no doubt she was feeling the same insane chemistry he was. Her hands clutched at his back, twisting the fabric of his shirt, and the hungry little sounds she was making in the back of her throat were driving him insane.
What had started as a comforting gesture quickly spun out of control. Any thoughts of work, of the case, flew out the window as the taste and feel and smell of her coursed through his veins. Ethan cupped his hand around the back of her head, holding her in place as his mouth moved greedily over hers. Tongues tangling, lips sucking. Ethan tried to remember the last time he’d gotten hard as a spike from just a kiss, and couldn’t.
His free hand slid down the front of her shirt, closing over the soft weight of her breast. Her nipple was bullet hard, pushing eagerly against his palm, and he tasted her startled gasp when he pinched it gently through the stretchy fabric. A gasp turned into a whimper as his fingers plucked and teased the hard tip, until her back was arching away from the couch as she sought closer contact.
His lips slid from her mouth, across her jaw, and down the length of her neck. Her skin was salty with sweat and arousal, the smell of her subtle perfume growing heavier in the sultry air of the summer night. His hand slid down one side of her waist, catching the hem of her T-shirt in his fingers on the way back up. He heard something rip as he tugged her shirt up over her breasts, and he cautioned himself to slow down. But sometime between meeting her yesterday and right this second, the skilled, always-in-control lover Ethan prided himself on being had disappeared.
Taking his place was a lust-crazed, out-of-control hedonist who wanted nothing more than to tear off Toni’s panties, shove his cock in her as deep as he could get, pumping and thrusting until he came so hard he couldn’t move. He tugged her shirt up over her head and flung it somewhere over the back of the couch.
He paused for a moment to enjoy the view and nearly came in his pants at the sight that greeted him. Toni was half reclining against the cushions of the couch, clad in tight jeans, and nothing on top but a creamy satin-and-lace bra that barely covered even creamier skin.
He tugged the cups down and covered her left breast in his hand, the plump, succulent flesh looking all the more delicious contrasted against his big, tanned hands. Her nipple was a rosy-pink, tight little bud peeking over his fingers, making his mouth water as he anticipated sucking it hard between his lips.
He’d been with more-well-endowed women over the years, but hands down, Toni Crawford had the prettiest tits he’d ever seen. Creamy white with tight, pink nipples that begged to be sucked. His breath exhaled on a groan as he bent down for a taste, meaning to tease her with his tongue, but instead losing all technique and finesse as he sucked her hard into his mouth. Her fingers twisted into his hair, and the little shock of pain was enough to make his cock harden another inch.
He shoved her back onto the couch and used his knees to spread her legs, and even through her jeans he could feel her heat as his stomach pressed against the sweet spot between her thighs. The smell of perfume and aroused woman filled his head. He wanted to move his hands and his mouth lower so he could explore the blossoming heat at her core. But he couldn’t get enough of her breasts. He sucked greedily at one while his hand played with the other, stroking the smooth skin, pinching the tight tip in his fingers.
Toni’s breath was coming in short, hot pants, her hips lifting and grinding against him. Ethan adjusted himself until his fly was perfectly aligned with her sex. The heat of her seared through the fabric barrier of his trousers as he began a slow, circling counterrhythm guaranteed to drive them both insane. He closed his eyes, savoring the taste and feel of her nipples against his tongue, the sound of her breathy gasps as he rubbed his cock against her, bringing her closer and closer to the edge. Her legs trembled faintly against his, her fingers gripped at the muscles of his ass.
God, she was hot, purely responsive, with no pretense or calculated moves. He could feel her body stiffening, every sinew going tight in preparation for the impending explosion. When she came, it was going to be so hard, so good. And when she came down off that high he was going to strip off their clothes and start the process all over again.
A shrill noise cut through the sounds of heavy breathing and smacking lips, accompanied by a vibrating sensation next to his balls. Ethan jumped like a cat and tumbled to the floor, groping at his pants as his sex-fogged brain realized that both the noise and the vibration were coming from his pocket.
He pulled out his BlackBerry, recognizing Kramer’s number as Toni pushed herself upright and pulled her bra cups back into place. She stared at him, dazed, as though she wasn’t sure where she was or what she was doing.
“Ethan Taggart,” he answered the phone, his voice only moderately more raspy than usual. He glanced up at Toni, silently cursing at Kramer’s unbelievably shitty timing. Her face was flushed pink, her pulse still thrummed in her throat. Her lips were swollen and parted as her breath came out in shaky gasps, and all Ethan wanted to do was throw the goddamn phone across the room and relieve the sexual frustration coursing through both their bodies.
Bu
t duty called. “Got your message,” Kramer said curtly. “You’re sure she’s in Vegas?”
Ethan stood up and turned his back on Toni, to give her a chance to compose herself and also because the sight of her, clothes half off and primed for one of the biggest female orgasms of the century, was playing way too much havoc with his concentration. “It’s the best lead we have so far. I was about to follow up with the detective assigned to Kara’s case when you called.” It was only a partial lie. But he didn’t think Jerry would appreciate the truth that Ethan was going to get back on the case only after he’d fucked Toni every which way he could think of.
Which was messed up. Ethan had never let sex interfere with work and he wasn’t about to start now. As much as his aching cock would argue differently, Kramer’s call was a blessing. He didn’t want to do Toni in some fast, furtive fuck on her couch. He wanted the time and the room to explore her at his leisure and find out what she liked. There would be time enough after they brought Kara home to explore chemistry that snapped, crackled, and popped every time he was in the same room with her.
“I don’t want to leave it to the police or anyone else. You go to Vegas. You get her back.”
Ethan stifled a sigh and took a look at his watch. It was already after ten. If he moved fast, he could be in Vegas by one a.m. “I’ll call you when I get there,” he said and hung up.
Toni hurried by, T-shirt clutched to her chest. He heard a door close behind him and water running as he willed his cock back into a semirelaxed state. What a fucked-up night. Two minutes ago, he was on his way to spending several hot, sweaty hours with a woman he wasn’t even sure liked him, and now he was flying to Vegas.
The fan hummed, stirring the hot air of the apartment. Ethan could detect the faint aroma of sex breezing by on its way out the window. Desire twisted in his belly, and despite all of his rationalizations, he wondered if he could possibly talk Toni into a quickie up against the wall before he had to go.
She emerged from the bathroom, shirt tucked tightly into her jeans, hair brushed into a sleek curtain. And judging from the grim set of her mouth and her tightly folded arms, hell would freeze over before she indulged in his up against-the-wall fantasy.