I smiled the most innocent smile I could conjure, doing that little shimmy again. He jumped off the bed, kicking away his tangled jeans. He grabbed my arms and forced me back against the wall, twisting me around and pinning me there like a cop preparing to frisk a suspect. I pressed my hips back against him. He pulled away, refusing me the pleasure of feeling his erection pressed against my ass.
“You shouldn’t tease a man like that.”
“You were enjoying it.”
“Yes, well, your body makes it difficult for me to control myself.”
“Maybe I don’t want you to control yourself.”
He slapped my ass the moment the words finished coming out of my mouth, hitting me a second time, but without the force I knew he could have applied. There was a sting, but nothing I couldn’t handle. In fact, it sent shivers of pleasure up my spine again, shivers that made me ache all over. And then he grabbed the top edge of my panties and yanked downward, the pain that sliced against my hips more intense that his palm against my ass.
He took hold of my hip and pulled me back slightly, then thrust against me, his hard, thick cock sliding deep with just that one, determined movement. I cried out, reaching back instinctively to pull him closer. He stood still for an instant, his mouth near my ear as he bent his knees to fit his body perfectly against mine. And then he began to move and the whole world became nothing more than the intense pleasure his touch sent throughout my body.
I’d never known my body could feel this good!
I held his thigh and moved my hips, rocking back against him as the pleasure just kept growing and growing, threatening to make my mind shatter. I came with a scream, his hand coming around my mouth to silence me making me want to scream more. And then he was lifting me, carrying me back to the bed. He was inside of me again in seconds, my knees hooked over his shoulders. And that ... would this roller coaster never end? I buried my fingers in his sides, holding him desperately close as he moved quickly, deeper and deeper, until it felt like our bodies would forever be one.
Just as my second orgasm began to wash over me, darkening my sight for an instant, he cried out as I’d so desired to hear him do. He came inside of me, the heat of his desire only increasing my own climax.
He held me for a long time afterward, his arms wrapped warmly around me, his legs tangled with mine. I’d never wanted to be this close to anyone. But with Kasey it seemed like everything was different. He was everything I’d always wanted, but never knew.
I closed my eyes, drifting off into an afterglow nap, when someone pounded on the door.
“Who could that be?” I mumbled.
A voice called out to me through the heavy, metal door.
“Erin? You have to let me in. They’re coming for me.”
I sighed. The past was coming after me. Again.
Chapter 17
Kasey
I climbed off the bed and pulled on my jeans, glancing at Karma where she still lay warm and comfortable on the bed. But the color had drained from her face and she was searching for her own clothes.
“How did he find us?”
She shrugged. “Maybe he called James.”
“Who’s James?”
“One of our team from back in the day. He does computer stuff.”
I didn’t like the dismissive tone in her voice. It was too contrived. I glanced at her again, but I didn’t say anything. Jealousy was ugly and things were getting ugly enough around here with Randy standing at the door, screaming for us to open it.
I wrenched the door open, not bothering with more than my jeans. He needed to know that he’d interrupted us. He needed to know that this was unacceptable.
He stepped back when he saw me, fear sparking in his eyes for a second.
“You.”
“Yeah. What the hell are you doing here?”
“They’re coming after me. I didn’t know where else to go!”
“Who’s coming after you?”
“The cops.”
“Let him in,” Karma said, resting a gentle hand on my back. I glanced at her and saw the way her eyes were moving slowly over the faint bruising at the corner of Randy’s mouth. Guilt made me step back and allow her brother into our hotel room.
“You saw the murders on the television, right?” Randy demanded as he marched into the room, descending on the bed we’d just vacated. He started to sit on it, but clearly thought better of it. Instead, he sat in the chair that was placed in front of the narrow desk.
“The cops came to the hotel in huge droves. I didn’t realize what was going on at first because I’d walked down to the corner convenience store to get ice for this.” He gestured toward his face, fear in his eyes as he glanced at me again. “When I got back, I was crossing the lobby when I heard the cops talking to the manager. They’d been looking at the security tapes and wanted to know who I was. I distinctly heard my room number.”
“Are you sure you aren’t just being paranoid?” Karma demanded.
“I’m not.” He leaned forward, running his hands over his skull. “I stole their credit cards last night. Theirs and a couple of other people’s. I needed money to move out of this area because I knew you’d be after me.”
“You broke into my room and beat the crap out of me.”
“James called and told me you were looking for me.”
Karma looked guilty. I, personally, was pleased to hear that James wasn’t the trustworthy fellow she’d thought he was.
“You didn’t get out of there very fast.”
“I thought I had more time. James said he wouldn’t tell you where I was until tonight.”
“He lied.”
“No kidding.”
“How’d you find us?”
Randy waved a hand. “How do you think? James told me.”
Karma turned away, her arms crossed over her chest as she dropped onto the end of the bed. Her eyes fell to the floor with that look on her face I was beginning to know well. She didn’t want him here, but she wasn’t ready to sever those ties, either.
“You should hire a lawyer,” she finally told her brother.
“A lawyer?”
“We can’t hide you. If the cops come here, they’ll check us out, too. I don’t want to go to jail any more than you do.”
“A lawyer can’t get me off of this one! They have me on video!”
“You should have been more careful.”
“They probably just want to know what you know about the couple who died,” I interjected. “Homicide cops rarely care about theft.”
“Yeah, well, they’ll book me just the same.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
Randy ran his hands over his skull again. “I can’t take the chance.”
I took Karma’s arm and pulled her onto her feet, leading her away from Randy.
“We have to call the police.”
“I know.”
“I can call my people back in Houston and arrange for a lawyer.”
She reached up and kissed me lightly. “I appreciate it. But I’ll just call James.”
“Doesn’t seem like James is very trustworthy.”
She inclined her head, clearly agreeing with me. But when she looked at me again, I could see that she felt like she had no other choice.
“He’s my brother,” she said.
That’s all she needed to say. I understood completely.
Every time I had a steady girlfriend, every time a woman got close enough to me to see the burden my family could sometimes represent, she would ask me why I put up with their demands. Why did I answer the phone at two o’clock in the morning? Why did I go down to the house before dawn? Why did I let them schedule my life for me? All I could ever say was, it’s my family.
None of them understood.
I stroked the side of her face.
“Let me call Dragon and make arrangements. They can hire a good lawyer who might actually keep Randy out of state prison.”
She hesitated, but the
n she nodded. I drew her into my arms and kissed the top of her head, holding her for a moment before I began to move around her to get my phone, but then there was another knock on the door.
“What the hell?”
Karma stiffened, clearly afraid Randy hadn’t been careful when he ducked out of his motel and came here. I pulled her back behind me as I approached the door. There was one of those peepholes in the center. But it wasn’t the cops on the other side.
It was Hayden.
“What’s he doing here?” I mumbled as I yanked the door open a second time in less than five minutes.
“Kasey,” he said, inclining his head in my direction as he barged into the already crowded room.
All I could do was watch him brush by Karma and move into the main part of the room, a slight nod acknowledging Randy’s presence. Then he turned back to me.
“Thank God you’re okay. Why didn’t you fly home last night?”
I suddenly felt like a child being dressed down by his father in front of all his friends. I rested my hands on Karma’s shoulders, pulling her close to me even as we moved forward, stepping just into the wider part of the room.
“I interviewed Ms. Myers, like I told you I was going to, and she offered some information I felt it was important to follow up on.”
“I assume this is Ms. Myers,” Hayden said, his eyes grazing over Karma. He gestured behind him. “And this?”
“This is her brother, Randolph Myers-King III. He’s the information I was following up on. He was dating Rosalie Matthias in the weeks before she disappeared.”
“Do you know who took her?” Hayden asked, pointing toward Randy.
“No.”
“Do you know anything else about her death?”
“No.”
“Then I think that line of investigation is done.” Hayden focused on me again. “The company plane is waiting at a local airport. I suggest you get on it within the hour.”
“You came all this way to bring me home?”
Hayden’s eyes narrowed slightly. “We don’t leave any men behind, Kasey.”
“He can’t leave,” Karma announced. “He was going to help my brother with a legal problem.”
“And what might that be?” Hayden asked, a little weariness to his tone.
I was watching him, suddenly aware of something different about him. I’d known him a little more than two years and I’d never seen him rattled by anything. But something had him rattled now.
“My brother was staying at a motel in Coronado where there was a murder and the cops are looking for him.”
New interest sparked in Hayden’s eyes. “You were staying in Coronado?”
“Yeah. I took some credit cards, but I have no idea who hurt those people.”
There was a whine to Randy’s voice that was beginning to get on my nerves.
“I was about to call Mag and find out if we could arrange a lawyer.”
“I’ll call Megan,” Hayden said, tugging his phone out of his pocket. But he didn’t even look at it. He was too busy studying Randy. “What do you know of what happened over there?”
Randy’s eyes filled with hope.
“I heard the cops talking about it in the lobby. They said that the woman was tortured and raped, that the man had been tied up. They think he was forced to watch. And they said they’d both been killed less than an hour before the maid found them, so the killer must have been there all night.”
“Were there marks on their bodies?”
Randy shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Do they have a child?”
I thought Randy was going to say something rude, but he didn’t. He actually paused to think about it.
“I think I heard them mention a son training over at the naval base.”
Hayden nodded, some sort of understanding dawning in his eyes. But, whatever his interest, he didn’t let us in on it.
Rather than ask any more questions, Hayden activated a call on his phone and held it to his ear, speaking quickly and directly to someone on the other end. When he hung up, he glanced at Randy.
“You have anything else on your record a lawyer needs to know about?”
I could feel the tension shoot up in the room at the question.
“He’s never been arrested,” Karma said.
“Good. We’re headed over to the police station.”
“I can’t!” Randy jumped to his feet, his hands raised. “You don’t understand. I took the credit cards.”
“All they want is the information they suspect you have.”
“I can’t go to jail.”
Hayden sighed. “I need to see what the cops have. Taking you in to talk to them is a convenient excuse.”
“But I—”
“A lawyer will be meeting us there.”
Karma tugged at the back of my jeans. I turned and pushed her back into the little corridor in front of the door.
“You stay here.”
“If Randy goes to jail, he’ll turn on all of us!”
I brushed the hair out of her face. “I know. I’ll make sure he knows to keep you out of it.”
“Kasey—”
“I won’t let him hurt you.”
She hesitated, her loyalties divided between me and Randy. She looked over at him, at Hayden standing like a warrior in the middle of our sanctuary, at Randy cowering in the corner like an injured animal. And then she looked at me, her hand coming up to touch the side of my face.
“I trust you.”
“It’ll be okay.”
“No,” she said, touching her fingers to my lips. “I’ve never trusted anyone. But I trust you.”
I kissed her because there didn’t seem to be words to answer that. She moved close to me, breathing softly against me. And then she pulled away.
Time to go.
***
Randy was restless in the back of the SUV, shaking his legs and chewing on his fingernails. Hayden kept glancing back at him, clearly annoyed by the whole thing, but he never actually said anything.
“Nice hotel,” he did say. “Put that on the Dragon credit card?”
“I did. But if there’s an issue—”
“No. I would have done the same thing. Megan’s not the only one who should be living the high life.” He winked at me. “So, this Karma ...”
“She’s a unique soul.”
Hayden laughed. “I guess all that alien bullshit got to you.”
“Karma’s not as much about the aliens as she is the spiritual side of things.”
“I dated a girl like that. Did yoga and ate nothing but fruits and vegetables. She could do some pretty amazing things with that body—flexible, if you know what I mean.”
I knew what he meant. And a week ago, I might have joked about it with him. But not today. Today it seemed crass to talk about a beautiful woman that way.
“Just be careful, Kasey. We don’t recommend our operatives get involved with their targets for a reason. Karma may not be your target, but she’s closely related to the case. When it’s all over, you might find yourself on the wrong end of things.”
“I’ll be careful.”
Hayden glanced into the backseat, watched Randy for a second.
“What is his connection to Rosalie Matthias?”
“He was calling himself Jake, hanging out with the paranormal investigators. They were seeing each other romantically, apparently. The way Karma tells it, he found out about Karma’s relationship with Rosalie so he sought her out in an attempt to pull his sister out of hiding.”
“Why’s she in hiding?”
“They ran a theft ring together and she decided she wanted out five years ago. He didn’t want her to go.”
Hayden watched Randy in the mirror a moment longer. “He had nothing to do with her disappearance?”
“Not as far as we can tell. He wasn’t the man we have on security tapes walking her out of her room.”
“Then who is that man?”
I sho
ok my head. “Your guess is as good as mine. But Karma thinks it had to be one of the investigators or someone else Rosalie trusted because of her mental issues.”
“She was bipolar, right?”
“She was. And, by all accounts, she was sliding into a depressive state at the time.”
Hayden glanced at me as he glided through a green light. “Would that have made her less likely to go off with a stranger?”
“I think it would. My aunt becomes more paranoid when she’s going into a depressive state. When she’s manic, she tends to be more trusting and adventurous.”
Hayden nodded. “Then it was someone she knew. We’ll need to generate a list of men who she might have trusted who fit the suspect’s appearance.”
“Have you spoken to the cops back in Smyer?”
“Not yet. But I plan on it.”
“How did the sister take the news?”
“How do you expect?” He glanced at me again. “She was devastated.”
Of course she was. I didn’t know why I asked such a stupid question. But then I found myself thinking about the things Karma had told me about Rosalie, about her particular paranoias.
“Karma thought that maybe her brother-in-law should be on that list.”
Hayden hit the brakes a little too hard as we approached another red light. He glanced at me, an unreadable expression on his face.
“Why would she say that?”
“Because he was one of few people she would have walked out of that room with in the state she was in. Karma insists that Rosalie trusted very few people, even those regulars on the alien investigation tour.”
Randy chose that moment to lean forward.
“Rosalie didn’t like men all that much. It took me a long time to get her to trust me because she said she’d been hurt by some guy when she was first in the mental hospital as a teenager.” Randy touched my shoulder like we were suddenly friends. “She said most of the guys who hung out around the investigations were losers who were just looking to victimize someone. The only guy in Smyer that she trusted besides me was that guy, Paul Cronie.”
“Where was Paul that night?”
Randy shrugged. “I’m pretty sure he was near the national park, near the spot of the last UFO sighting. He was using an electroscope to detect remnants of the crafts electrical expenditure.”
DRAGON SECURITY: Volume 2: The Complete 6 Books Series Page 57