When he came down over her, she opened her arms to hold him and her legs to accept him into her body.
“You have no idea how much I want you,” he said.
“Yes, I do,” she told him. “If you want me half as much as I want you.”
He entered her with one quick, deep lunge, filling her completely, stretching her to accommodate his size. She clutched his shoulders. He cupped her buttocks and lifted her up as he eased in and out of her, the rhythm slow and steady.
“This is so good,” she said.
He increased the tempo of his thrusts, then slowed again.
Groaning against her mouth, he kissed her, then maneuvered them so that his mouth came down over one breast. He toyed with her breasts, alternating back and forth between licking and sucking.
She felt the tension building and couldn’t believe she could be this aroused again so quickly, but if anything, this time she was spiraling out of control even faster.
She bucked up against him, meeting each thrust with equal intensity. When he buried his face against her neck, she whimpered, “I’m going to come again. Oh, Dom…”
“That’s it, honey. Come for me. Let me feel you falling to pieces a second time.”
He hammered into her relentlessly until she cried out when another orgasm hit, spiraling her completely out of control, beyond anything she’d ever experienced.
She clung to him, savoring each millisecond of earth-shattering pleasure.
And then when Dom came, she felt it in every fiber of her body. He groaned and shook, then collapsed on top of her.
They lay there, their bodies sticky with perspiration, their breathing labored. Totally spent and feeling as if she’d died and gone to heaven, Lausanne kissed Dom’s naked shoulder.
“Wow!”
He chuckled. “Yeah, honey. Wow!”
He lifted himself up and off her, then rolled them over so that she lay in his arms, cuddled and cosseted, safe and secure.
“We’re good together,” he said, as he caressed her flat belly.
“Almost too good. It was unbelievable.”
“There’s no such thing as too good, but I’m curious to find out if it’ll be as good the next time.”
“The next time?”
“Not right away.” He nuzzled her neck. “But give me an hour or two and—”
“And if it is as good the next time?” Would he stay with her, love her, never hurt or disappoint her? No, of course he couldn’t make such a promise. Sex, no matter how great, was still just sex. Love was a horse of a different color. He might consider what they did lovemaking, but that didn’t mean he loved her or that he ever would.
“If the next time is as good, I’m not going to be able to keep my hands off you,” he said. “You’ll have to get a whip and chair to stop me from attacking you every chance I get.”
“And what if I don’t want to stop you?”
“Then I’d say we’re going to be spending an awful lot of time in this bed.”
He hugged her close and kissed her. For a few brief, blissful moments, Lausanne forgot to worry about the future.
BAIN DESMOND ESCORTED Grayson Perkins and his sister-in-law, Cara Bedell, to the morgue. He had telephoned Mr. Perkins an hour ago and explained the situation, then had volunteered to pick him up, but Perkins had said he’d drive himself. However, as it turned out, he had told his sister-in-law about Desmond’s call and she had insisted on not only accompanying him to the medical examiner’s, but on driving.
“I should warn you, Mr. Perkins, that this body appears to have been in the river for quite some time and it’s bloated and some decomposition has begun,” Bain said, recalling that several weeks after death, the hair, skin and nails become loose and the skin begins to burst open, revealing muscle and fat. And a body that had been in the water almost always showed signs of being fish food. Literally. “There will be an autopsy and Dr. Stevens will use forensic odontology and DNA testing to determine the victim’s identity—”
“The victim?” Cara asked.
“Yes, ma’am. The lady from the river is considered a murder victim,” Bain replied.
With a stricken look on his face, Grayson asked, “If she can be identified by other means, then why must Cara and I—”
“You don’t have to ID the body,” Bain said. “You might not be able to, but it would help us if you could.”
Perkins turned white as a sheet. If Bain didn’t consider Perkins the chief suspect if the body turned out to be Audrey, he would actually feel sorry for the man.
“I’ll do it,” Cara said. “There’s no reason for Gray to go through such a horrible ordeal.”
Sighing heavily, his shoulders slumping with relief, Grayson grabbed his sister-in-law’s hand. “Thank you, Cara. I—I don’t think I could have…If it is Audrey, I couldn’t bear to see her that way.”
Cara squeezed Grayson’s hand. “I know. I know. It’ll be all right. I’ll do it.”
Bain watched the interplay between those two and wondered about their relationship. It was obvious Cara cared deeply for her brother-in-law, that she felt protective where he was concerned. And one other thing was quite evident—Cara Bedell had balls; Grayson Perkins didn’t.
“Before I take you back and introduce you to Dr. Stevens, there’s something I’d like to show you,” Bain said. “The victim was wearing a diamond ring. If you could ID it as belonging to your sister—”
“Audrey wore a large diamond on her ring finger,” Cara said. “No wedding band. No other rings.”
Bain motioned to Jimmy Stevens’s assistant. “Could we see the ring that was removed from the victim?”
The young woman nodded, went into another room and came back with a small envelope. She opened the envelope, then put on a pair of protective gloves before dumping the envelope’s contents into the palm of her hand.
Cara and Grayson looked at the diamond ring. Grayson gasped and clutched his throat. Cara clenched her teeth.
“Well?” Bain asked.
“It’s Audrey’s ring,” Cara said. “Or one just like it.”
“You’re certain?” Bain looked from Cara to Grayson.
“There’s an inscription inside the band,” Grayson said. “The words ‘forever and always’ will be there, if it’s Audrey’s ring.”
Jimmy’s assistant picked up the ring, took it to her work station and slipped the band under a magnifying glass. After giving the ring a thorough inspection, she lifted her head and looked directly at Bain.
“The inscription is there.”
“Oh, God, no!” Grayson crumpled, doubling at the waist as he wept. “My precious Audrey.”
Not being an emotional person, Bain had some difficulty watching another man fall apart in front of him. He cleared his throat. Cara cast him a withering glare, then wrapped her arms around Grayson and led him over to a nearby chair.
“Hush, hush.” She stroked the guy’s back, petting and consoling him as if he were a child. “We knew this was possible, that Audrey might be dead. It’s a terrible thing, but we will deal with it.”
Grayson lifted his head and stared at Cara through his tears. “Go see her.” He clutched Cara’s hand. “It’s possible someone stole Audrey’s ring. Maybe that Raney woman…She could have sold it and someone else bought it and…” He wept again, almost uncontrollably.
Lowering her voice to a mere whisper, Cara comforted him, soothing him in a maternal fashion. When he calmed enough so that he was merely sobbing softly, Cara stood up straight and turned to Bain. “I’m ready.”
“Are you sure, Ms. Bedell?”
She nodded.
DOM WRAPPED HIS ARMS around Lausanne as they stood together in the shower, the warm spray pelting them as he kissed her shoulder. She sighed dreamily, turned in his arms and kissed him. They had made love for the third time, here in the shower, only minutes ago and yet they couldn’t break apart, couldn’t end this delicious closeness. She had never felt so exuberantly alive.
> “What shift are you working today?” He cupped her damp buttocks.
“I’m working a short shift today. I go in at eleven and I get off at three. Just four hours to cover the lunch crowd.” She draped her arms around his neck, stood on tiptoe and kissed him.
“I wish we could stay here all day, not go out, not see another living soul.”
“I have day after tomorrow off.” She kissed him again.
“Let’s stock up on supplies and lock ourselves away.”
“I like that idea.” Smiling up at him, she asked, “What supplies will we need?”
“Oh, a couple of bottles of wine, maybe some cheese and eggs and bread, a couple of romantic CDs and a big box of condoms.”
She giggled. “Planning a lovemaking marathon, Mr. Shea?”
He slipped his hand between her thighs and petted her intimately. “Yes, ma’am, that’s exactly what I’m planning. Are you interested?”
“Very.”
When he leaned down to kiss her, he stopped midway.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I think that’s my phone.”
“Let it ring.”
“I’m expecting a call from Dundee headquarters,” he told her. “Daisy was supposed to get back to me this morning with a report on Megan Reynolds.”
Dom shoved back the shower curtain halfway and stepped out onto the floor mat, then turned to Lausanne. “I’ll be right back.”
“No, I’ll get out. You go answer your phone.”
After he wrapped a towel around his waist and disappeared into the bedroom, she turned off the faucets and got out of the shower. She wrapped a towel around her head, then using a second towel, dried her body. Her breasts were tender, so she took special care when drying them. Dom had been gentle, but he had given her breasts thorough attention each time they’d made love. Her nipples turned pebble hard just at the thought of his mouth on her body.
As she moved the towel between her legs, she realized she was slightly sore from their vigorous lovemaking. When the terrycloth touched her nub, she quivered with renewed arousal.
Lausanne walked into the bedroom and found it empty, so she retrieved her silk robe from the floor and put it on, then went into the living room. Dom was in the kitchenette preparing the coffeemaker while he held his cell phone sandwiched between his ear and his shoulder.
“Yeah, thanks, Daisy,” Dom said. “If you can get me an exact location, like the name of a hotel, that would be great.” He glanced at Lausanne, smiled and blew her a kiss.
She smiled tenderly at him.
“Be sure to tell Sawyer that I need to speak to him as soon as possible and go ahead and line up Deke Bronson.” He flipped on the coffeemaker. “Talk to you later.” He closed his cell phone and laid it on the bar.
“Was it an important call, the one you’d been expecting?” Lausanne asked.
He nodded. “The information Dundee’s dug up about Megan Reynolds is very interesting and it’s something the Chattanooga PD will find out about soon, if they don’t already know.”
“Did Dundee’s locate Ms. Reynolds?”
Dom came over to Lausanne and stood directly in front of her. “Yeah. She’s in Buenos Aires and I’m going to fly down there and talk to her.”
“When?”
“Today. Dundee’s should be able to arrange things so I can leave by late this evening or early tonight.”
“I want to go with you.”
“Honey, you can’t do that. First of all, it could be dangerous. And secondly, you’ve been ordered not to leave town.”
Lausanne nodded, reluctantly agreeing. “You’re right, but…”
He tilted her chin with his forefinger, encouraging her to look right at him, which she did. “Dundee’s was able to check on Ms. Reynolds’s finances. Up until recently, she lived rather modestly, had a small savings account and pretty much lived paycheck to paycheck. Then the very day she hired you to impersonate Audrey Perkins, Megan deposited a million dollars in a money market account.”
Lausanne let out a loud whistle. “Where did she get—Oh, my God, somebody paid her to hire me? Is that what you think? If that’s the case, then I was badly gypped. I only got fifty grand.”
Dom grinned. “I’m glad to see that you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”
“I realize that this is no laughing matter, but you don’t know how relieved I am. If she was paid a million bucks, then she either killed somebody or she’s covering up a huge secret, right?”
“Right,” Dom said. “My guess is that Megan Reynolds knows what happened to Audrey and probably knows who killed Bobby Jack.”
“Then we have to talk to her, somehow make her tell the truth and get me off the hook.” Lausanne clutched Dom’s arms.
“Not we,” he reminded her. “Me. I’m going to Buenos Aires alone.”
She nodded. “Of course.” That’s what he thought. This was her life on the line. She’d been set up. But by God, she wasn’t going to take the fall for someone else. When Dom flew off to South America, she intended to either be on the plane with him or on the very next one out of Chattanooga.
Another woman might stay put and wait for Dom, the trained professional, to handle the situation. But not Lausanne. Even though she trusted Dom, past experience had taught her not to put her fate entirely in someone else’s hands. She wanted to be there when Dom found Megan Reynolds. She needed to confront the woman who had set her up and learn the truth first hand.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LIEUTENANT BAIN DESMOND swirled around in his swivel desk chair and chewed on the side of a pencil while he thought things over, trying to put all the information into the proper perspective. He figured official identification of the lady of the river was a mere formality. The corpse had been wearing Audrey Perkins’s ten-carat diamond ring, the flashy engagement ring that Desmond would bet his last dime her old man had paid for and not her husband. And when Cara Bedell had taken a look at the body, she’d tensed like a dog raising its hackles and preparing to fight.
“I can’t be sure, but she looks like Audrey,” Cara had said as she studied the woman’s barely recognizable face. “Is there a tiny serpent tattoo on the inside of her left wrist?”
Jimmy Stevens had looked at Bain and said, “There is a small tattoo of a snake on the underside of her left wrist.”
Tears had welled up in Cara’s eyes. “Then that—” she gazed at the corpse “—is my sister.”
Over the years, Bain had learned to steel his nerves and not become emotionally involved with the victims or their families. A police detective, like a doctor or a nurse, faced tragedy on a regular basis. If you didn’t harden your heart to some degree, you’d be worthless to yourself and those you were sworn to help.
“Jimmy should know something from the dental records by the end of the day,” Mike Swain said, bringing Bain back to the present moment. “But there’s not much doubt our lady of the river is Audrey Perkins, is there?”
Bain removed the pencil from his mouth. “Hmm…no, not much doubt at all.”
“So, what’s your take on this? Who killed her and did the same person kill Bobby Jack Cash?”
Bain tapped the pencil on his desk. “In a jealous rage, Grayson Perkins killed his wife and her lover, then dumped their bodies into the river. He then paid his wife’s personal assistant to help him cover up the crime by having her hire Lausanne Raney to impersonate Audrey, thus making everyone assume she was still alive.”
“Hey, we now know that the Reynolds woman was paid a million bucks, which makes me wonder if she witnessed the murder. That’s a hefty sum of money to pay out otherwise.”
“Despite the fact that Megan Reynolds deposited a million in a money market account in a Nashville bank, we can’t get a name of the person who transferred the money because it was wired from a Swiss account. If we knew for sure who paid her, we’d have our killer.”
“I thought you said Grayson Perkins killed—”
“T
hat’s one theory,” Bain said. “There are others.”
“Like Lausanne Raney killed them both.”
Bain tossed the pencil atop the stack of files in the corner of his desk. “Lausanne Raney was in cahoots with Bobby Jack, but something went wrong and she killed him and Audrey, then stole Audrey’s identity and fifty grand in cash, then left Tennessee.”
“If that’s what happened, then she’s pretty stupid,” Mike said. “She left a trail a blind man could have followed.”
“Yeah, I know, that’s why I tend to believe her story. That and the fact Megan Reynolds is somehow involved and if Lausanne Raney killed Audrey and Bobby Jack, how does Megan fit in?”
“Then we’re back to the husband.”
“Or possibly the half-sister or even the stepmother. There was no love lost between the stepmother and Audrey,” Bain reminded him. “Maybe she was jealous because of Audrey’s affair with Bobby Jack or maybe she wanted to eliminate one of the heirs to her husband’s fortune and Bobby Jack just got in the way.”
“One less heir would mean a great deal more money. I hear the old man is worth billions, so it’s possible wife number four might have bumped off the elder daughter. But do you really think the sister could have killed Audrey?”
“Remember what Audrey’s friends and acquaintances have told us,” Bain said. “Cara Bedell is in love with her brother-in-law and hated the way her sister treated him.”
“So, the sister killed her to get her out of the way. But why kill Bobby Jack? And if she did kill him, why shoot him more than once?”
Bain shrugged. “Maybe he tried to stop Cara and she shot him. Or maybe Cara didn’t know he was anywhere around and when she realized he’d seen her kill Audrey, she had to kill him, and shot him several times to make sure he was dead.”
“It makes sense.”
“All my theories make sense,” Bain said. “The problem is, which one is correct, if any of them are?”
CARA AND GRAYSON didn’t go back to the Bedell mansion on Lookout Mountain, nor did Gray go to work. Instead, they went to Gray’s penthouse apartment, the one he’d shared with Audrey for the past six years. Neither of them could bear facing her father, not yet. She had no idea how he would react when he learned that Audrey was dead. Would he fly into a rage? Would he fall apart completely? Perhaps both. The two things she knew for sure was that Edward Bedell would never be the same again and that he would move heaven and earth to see that Audrey’s killer was punished.
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