by Lauren Layne
His gaze turned warm as his hand moved forward, settling on her bare waist. “Well, for starters, I can be your partner.”
“Oh yeah?” she asked as his hand moved down slightly, resting on the curve of her hip before moving back up again. “Is that all?”
He moved closer, his mouth settling into the hollow of her throat, and she sighed. “I can also be a decent friend—beat up your fiancé when he goes to dinner with other women, things like that?”
His lips moved over her neck and she arched toward him even as she let out a little laugh. “I guess I could use a friend.”
“What about a lover?”
“Nah,” she said flippantly. “I’m good.”
Vincent’s hand moved up, covering her breast. His thumb drifted over a nipple and she moaned.
“You’re sure?”
“Mmm hmm,” she managed.
Vincent moved down her body until his mouth was even with her chest, his thumb continuing to toy with her before he let his hand fall away, so she felt only his warm breath.
“I guess you don’t want my mouth here then,” he said, moving imperceptibly closer.
Jill arched toward him, but he moved back, just out of reach. “What’s this? Changing your mind?”
“Vin,” she whined.
He looked up at her, his eyes hungry. “Thought you didn’t want a lover.”
“I lied,” she whispered as her back arched again so that her nipple brushed his lips. He rewarded her with a soft lick before he pulled back again.
“See, I don’t know that I can work with a liar, Henley. Seems to me—”
Jill shoved him onto his back, rolling on top of him. She maneuvered his big arms to his side, her hands pinning him to the bed and he let her, just for a moment, his eyes gleaming mischievously up at her.
“Ah, so you did change your mind.”
Jill didn’t bother responding. She was too busy moving her lips over his shoulder. His pecs. Her teeth grazed his nipple and he hissed.
“What about you,” she said, her mouth moving slowly down his torso. “Do you want a lover?”
Her hand closed around his cock as he groaned. “Ah—”
“What was that?” she asked innocently, stroking him.
“Yes,” he said.
“Yes what?” she moved farther down, her lips brushing against the tip of him, relishing his guttural groan.
“Yes,” he said, his fingers tangling in her hair. “Yes, I definitely need a lover.”
She couldn’t resist the small smile of victory before her lips closed around him.
Lover was good enough.
For now.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
It was typical that the moment one thing went right in Vincent Moretti’s life, another would go horribly wrong.
“I can’t believe they’re closing the case,” Jill said for the hundredth time around a bite of her turkey sandwich. “We were so close!”
He gave her a look as he took a drink of Coke.
“Okay, so we weren’t close,” she said, mouth mostly full. “But we were getting there. We always get there.”
He dragged his fry through ketchup, barely registering that the fry was cold and that he didn’t even like ketchup.
Vin threw the fry back on the plate and took a deep breath. He was trying not to be pissed. He really was.
But it was the first case that his superiors had ever pulled him from.
And the worst part was, he didn’t even blame them.
Not only had they not solved the case—they hadn’t gotten fucking close. If you held a gun to Vin’s head and told him to name the killer—he couldn’t.
He didn’t have a fucking clue who’d killed Lenora Birch, and the lack of control made him irritable. Itchy.
Pissed.
Jill took a sip of her iced tea, only to pull it back when she realized her glass was empty. She looked around for a server, then sighed. “I miss when Maggie used to work here.”
“You’re just saying that because of the free pie,” he said.
She had a point though.
Much as he was happy that his new sister-in-law had gotten out of her dead-end job as an under-appreciated waitress at the Darby Diner, the weekday lunchtime gal who’d taken Maggie’s place had proven to be a good deal more interested in her iPhone than her customers.
Jill set her empty iced tea glass aside and reached for his Coke, taking a long sip before digging back into her sandwich. “How come you’re not more mad about this?” she asked.
“It’s diner food, Henley. Our bill’s not going to be more than twenty dollars.”
She rolled her eyes. “Not about the diner. About the case.”
He reached across the table to take her fry. It was every bit as cold and soggy as his.
“I am upset,” he muttered. “I just don’t know what ranting about it’s going to do.”
“You rant all the time.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Usually I rant and you sprinkle glitter on everything. But since you’re ranting on this one, I figure it’s time for a role reversal.”
“Oh, got it,” she said. “So if I’m the grumpy one today, and you’re going to take on the positive one”—she glanced around dramatically—“I see no glitter. Or even a smile.”
He forced his mouth into a farce of a smile, which coaxed a giggle from her.
Her giggle then coaxed an actual smile from him, and before he knew what was happening, they were staring across the table grinning at each other.
It had been like that in the week since they’d started sleeping together.
One minute they were their usual old bickering selves, and the next minute, it was, well… happy.
Vincent’s smile slipped a bit as the thought that had been quietly nagging him for days crept up once again.
What if this thing between him and Jill was part of the reason they hadn’t solved the case.
Technically, they separated their personal and professional life.
He didn’t cop a feel when they were on the job, much as he wanted to. They didn’t kiss in between coffee breaks, didn’t talk about them while they were on duty.
But if he was honest—really brutally honest—his head hadn’t been in the game since Jill had returned from Florida with that damn ring on her finger.
And now that the ring was off her finger—
Well let’s just say it was even harder to concentrate on the job when half the time he wanted nothing more than to toss her in the backseat and screw like teenagers.
He blew out a breath as he faced the truth looming in the back of his mind.
What if Lenora Birch’s killer was going to go free because Vincent had spent the past two months thinking with his dick instead of his brain?
“Uh-oh,” Jill said, pushing her plate away and crossing both arms on the table. “I know that look. What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” he muttered.
“No, we don’t get to do nothing,” she said. “Not as partners, not as lovers.”
He glanced around. “Jesus, keep your voice down.”
She lifted her eyebrow. “First of all, there are only six customers in here right now. None are in hearing range. Second of all, why so jumpy?”
He pulled his wallet out of his pocket. “Are you done?”
“No, I want more iced tea.”
“We don’t have time for Joyce to get back from her smoke break.”
“Really?” Jill crossed her arms. “We don’t have time? Where exactly are we running off to? Last I checked, we don’t have a case—”
“Because we fucked up,” he said, standing and heading toward the door.
Jill caught up with him when they were outside, grabbing his arm and pulling him around. “Why do I feel like that was a loaded statement?”
He ran his hand through his hair. “We lost this case, Jill—we let a killer go free because we couldn’t find the clues.”
“It happens, Vin. I
don’t like it any more than you do. I’m beating myself up too, but it had to happen to us sooner or later—”
“And isn’t it interesting that we got dropped from the case the very week we started screwing.”
His words were harsh. He didn’t mean them to be, they just slipped out.
She said nothing, and he reached out a hand, relieved when she didn’t step back.
If anything she looked… amused?
Jill’s lips twitched a little as she took a step closer. “Is that what this is about? You’re actually doing that cliché guy thing where you think your brain didn’t solve the case because it was sex-addled?”
“Maybe,” he muttered.
Jill smiled softly, her fingers briefly touching the tips of his before he let his hand drop. Before someone saw them.
“It’s not like that, Vin. Whatever was going on with us didn’t change the fact that the killer hasn’t left us a single clue.”
“Or we missed something,” he said as they walked to the car and climbed in.
“Or that,” she said. “But we have to let it go. Not only for our sanity, but because it’s an order. Another case will come up tomorrow, or the next, and—”
Both of their phones buzzed just as the police radio crackled.
Five minutes later, Jill and Vincent looked at each other and grinned.
“Well, whadya know, Henley—looks like we just got ourselves another case.”
She clicked her seat belt into the buckle. “We do indeed. Maybe your famous instinct will actually work on this one.”
“Maybe. Assuming I’m not distracted by a cute blonde with a mouth like a—”
Jill turned her head and gave him a look.
“Lady,” he finished. “A mouth like a lady.”
“What does that mean?”
“Hell if I know,” he muttered as he turned the ignition. “But it’s better than what I was going to say.”
But Jill wasn’t listening. Her phone was already up to her ear as she called in to their superiors to tell them they were on their way.
Five minutes later, they were pulling up to the curb of a mid-rise apartment building in Spanish Harlem. Jill jumped out of the car, notebook already in hand.
Vin paused a moment, taking in the swarm of cops, the yellow tape—the curious onlookers, the just-now-arriving media.
And then there was Jill.
His eyes sought and found his partner. She was wearing a simple black suit, her hair pulled back in its usual ponytail.
She’d already scooted under the caution tape, deep in conversation with one of the uniforms. Her pen was moving across the page of her notebook as she nodded along to whatever the officer was telling her.
Then she flipped her notebook shut and glanced around until she saw him. Their eyes met, and she held out her hands in a what’s the holdup, get your ass over here, Moretti kind of way.
Vincent couldn’t help it. He smiled.
Yes, there was a dead body inside that building, yes, he’d just had his first unsolved murder go on record, but right now, those didn’t seem to matter as much as the woman in front of him did.
Jill was his.
The only question was…
For how long?
How long until she realized that he needed her light a hell of a lot more than she needed his darkness?
“Dude, Moretti. Get a move on it,” she called. “Even you can’t solve a case by standing in the street.”
Instinct told him he didn’t have much time with her.
And since his instincts were never wrong, he fully intended to make the most of the time he did have.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Jill knew she was gloating. Big-time.
She also knew she didn’t feel even the tiniest bit bad about it. The cork of the cheap champagne finally gave in to all her tugging and twisting and went shooting across the room with a satisfying pop.
She glanced at Vincent, who stood behind the stove stirring some sort of meat sauce that looked amazing. He gave a skeptical look as she poured two glasses of champagne and handed one to him.
“Meat sauce requires red wine.”
“So, when we eat your precious meat sauce, we’ll have a glass of red,” she said, lifting up his hand and then shoving the champagne flute into it. “But first, we toast.”
Jill held up her glass, waiting patiently until he finally rolled his eyes and complied.
“To us,” she said.
His eyes shuttered, and Jill stifled her sigh at how jumpy he was about anything related to them.
“To the best damn homicide detectives in the NYPD,” she clarified, more for his sake than hers.
As expected, the clouds in his brown eyes lifted and he clinked his glass to hers. “That was pretty fucking exceptional today. Even for us.”
“If we can continue to get a confession on the same day that the bodies are found, we’ll restore our reputation in no time,” she said, taking a sip of the wine, loving the way the bubbles matched her mood.
It’s not that she was okay with the fact that they hadn’t found Lenora Birch’s killer. She wasn’t. At all. In fact, she was sure that the lack of closure on the case would continue to haunt both of them for some time.
But that didn’t change the fact that she and Vincent had done damn good work this afternoon.
Granted, it hadn’t exactly been a stumper.
A twenty-one-year-old girl named Maria Salvez, found dead of multiple stab wounds on her blood-soaked mattress…
But wait, twist!
Only half of the blood was hers.
Quick calls to local hospitals and they’d found themselves victim number two. A twenty-four-year-old male with multiple stab wounds, in serious but stable condition.
It had taken Jill about ten minutes of sweet talk before she found out that the guy had been sleeping with his best friend’s girlfriend.
The boyfriend found them in bed and lost his mind, grabbed a knife…
A classic, tragic tale. One that made Jill positively sick to her stomach, and all the more gratified when she and Vin had found Maria’s killer within two hours of discovering the body. The bastard had been skulking at his sister’s house, drinking a beer and eating a corn dog, looking cocky as hell.
It had taken less than five minutes of Jill and Vincent’s trusty good cop/bad cop routine before the guy confessed.
Open.
Shut.
Awesome.
“I’d forgotten how good it feels,” Jill mused, taking a sip of her champagne.
“Sure,” Vin said, tasting the sauce on the stove. “Until the damn lawyers strike some sort of bullshit deal and the guy gets off easy.”
“Uh-uh,” Jill said. “Don’t rain on my parade right now. We did good, Vin. It was a win.”
A win they’d sorely needed after the Lenora Birch disaster.
Jill watched as Vincent added salt to the sauce, envying his confidence in the kitchen. She knew her way around the stove, but only with the help of a very, very detailed cookbook. She’d never quite mastered the “pinch of this, a dash of that” approach that the Morettis all seemed so comfortable with.
“You’re staring,” Vin said, not looking up as he tasted the sauce once more.
“Because you look good,” Jill said, taking a sip of her champagne and leaning against the counter.
And he did. He’d been wearing a white button-down but had discarded it almost the minute they’d walked in the door, and he was now dressed only in dark slacks and a white undershirt that did nice things for his amazing arms.
“Keep the compliments coming,” he said, holding a spoon out to her so she could do her own taste test of the goodness he had happening on the stove. “It’ll help keep me from being peeved at you.”
“Why would you be peeved at me?” she said, blowing on the steaming sauce before taking a tentative bite.
“Today when we found Garcia—anything seem wrong with that?”
She replayed it in her mind. They’d shown up… found him plopped on his sister’s couch with that damn corn dog. They’d asked where he was at the time of the murder and gotten a fuck-off, followed by bitch-deserved-it…
They’d hauled him off the couch, read him his rights as she’d cuffed him—
“Oh,” she said, eyes going wide.
Vin lifted an eyebrow. “Yeah. ‘Oh.’”
“Was it your turn?” she asked sweetly.
“That voice doesn’t work on me, sweetheart. Neither do the baby blues.”
She batted her eyelashes. “How about this?”
“Nope,” he said, advancing on her. “It was my turn. Fair and square.”
“Well now, hold on,” she said. “What about the entire three months that I was gone? You got to cuff plenty of people, and I got to cuff none.”
“Doesn’t count. You weren’t there,” he said. “You know the deal. We take turns with the cuffing. And this one was mine.”
Jill pursed her lips. “Are you sure—”
He moved closer, pinning her to the counter with his weight. “Shall I get the log?”
Jill ran a finger along the V-neck of his shirt. “Maybe we retire the old take-turns-cuffing thing. I mean, it’s a little childish—”
His eyes narrowed. “It’s the best part of our job, and you know it.”
Jill took a sip of her champagne. He was right. It was the best part of their job. There was something so satisfying about the click of the cuffs when you knew you had the right guy.
“What if I told you I forgot?” she said, lifting her eyes to his. “It’s been a while, after all. I’ve been on sabbatical.”
“I’d believe you, baby,” he said. His voice was calm. Lulling. Dangerous.
“You would?”
“Mmm hmm.” He moved even closer, slowly pulling the champagne flute out of her hand and setting it aside behind her. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you were out of turn, Henley.”
Jill was finding it harder and harder to concentrate with his warmth pressed against her, his big arms caging her in, his mouth so damn close—
So addled was her brain with lust that even when his hands found her hips, turning her around to face the counter with the perfect amount of roughness and gentleness, she didn’t realize his intention.
