Without a hitch in his stride, he carried her into her bedroom. Lights came on instantly, and he took a second to appreciate the convenience of motion-controlled systems. He registered frilly and feminine before hastening to the bed. He placed her on turned-down sheets and followed so that he never stopped touching her. For the next few minutes, he worked her shoes, his boots, and both of their shirts and pants off. All of this while ravaging Cassidy’s mouth.
Once they were down to underwear, he concentrated on her breasts. God, how he loved breasts. Hers were covered in a simple flesh-colored bra that—yes, thank you, Jesus—had a clasp in the front. He flicked it open with thumb and forefinger and took one rosy nipple into his mouth. Cassidy rewarded him by arching up. She fisted what little of his short hair she could and pressed him harder against her chest. He nestled his leg between hers and humped his thigh against her clit. He sucked the hard nub in time to his rubbing and worked the other nipple with his thumb.
With a sharp cry, she convulsed against him. Her fingers clawed at his scalp and her legs flailed against him.
Holy shit, he’d made her come already. But that didn’t slow her down. If anything, she moaned and writhed even more. “Diego, I need you inside me.”
Need, not want. Her demand made his cock jerk. The head already peeked out from the front of his boxers. Reluctantly, he let her go in order to wiggle out of them. She twisted beneath him and, leaning over, pulled open the drawer to her nightstand. He saw the box of condoms and moved to take over the chore of grabbing one and sheathing himself. Thank God, she was prepared. He had one in his wallet, of course, but it was only one and he didn’t think that would be enough.
As soon as he was ready, he slid her panties down her slender, creamy legs. The cotton was wet to the touch, and he sneaked a whiff before tossing them aside. She looked up at him with hungry eyes. Then she lifted her arms in invitation. He started to dive onto and into her, then made himself slow down and savor the moment. Urging her thighs farther open with his knee, he braced his arms on either side of her. He kept his gaze on her face as he slowly lowered himself and slipped his cock into her waiting pussy.
Wet as she was, he was met with no resistance. He thrust in balls deep. His reward was Cassidy once more arching up against him. When she wrapped her legs around his waist and clutched at his shoulders, he got the message. He thrust fast, hard, and deep, stoking them both. His orgasm built quickly, and he worked at holding it at bay. No way would he come before making her do so for a second time. He lowered his mouth once more to one of her hard nipples, laving it with lazy circles and quick flicks of his tongue before sucking on it.
That did it. She came in silence this time, her mouth opening into a wide O, as if the force of the orgasm robbed her of voice. Seeing what he did to her sent him over the edge, too, cum spurting out of him as her cunt milked him dry. He kept thrusting even when he was empty, the pleasure of being sheathed inside her too tempting to give up.
Finally, he found the strength and pulled out. He knew he should get up and deal with the condom, yet couldn’t let her go. So he lay on his back and pulled her over to lie against him.
She came willingly and sighed contentedly as she slung an arm over his chest.
“I’ve never done this before,” she confessed after they spent a minute regaining their breath.
It took a second for his foggy brain to register what she’d said. He lifted his head a bit to look at her. Her gaze was lowered. “What?”
“Had sex on the first date.”
“Oh.” He smiled with relief, although if she had been a virgin, he knew he’d at least satisfied her. “Me, neither,” he confessed right back.
Pulling back a fraction, she stared up at him. “Really? I thought guys liked having sex on the first date. And on every one.”
He snorted. “I guess that’s true for a lot of guys, but it’s never been my style. Until tonight.”
She swirled his chest hair around her finger. “I guess I was a little pent-up. And…never mind.”
“What?” When she shook her head, he nudged her. “Come on. You can tell me anything.”
She propped herself up on her elbow. “It’s just that I’ve always been really proper, you know? It’s how I was raised, and Thomas, my ex, was a very reserved guy. Not someone prone to impulsive behavior.”
Diego could believe that. What a moron. Underneath Cassidy’s calm demeanor, was a hot woman. How could anyone miss that after spending time with her?
“Anyway, I was all set to marry him, the perfect guy for me as far as my family was concerned. And I was going to join my father’s medical practice. Then one day…I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I woke up thinking is this it? Is this what my life is destined to be?”
She plopped back down, nestling her head on his shoulder. The small gesture of affection and easiness with him made him smile.
“I didn’t want to be a GP. I wanted to be a medical examiner. I didn’t want a nice, reliable guy who would hope, but never assume, sex on Saturday and maybe a blowjob on his birthday every year.”
Diego barked out a laugh. “Wow, he sounds like a really nice and boring guy.”
“I know, right? Anyway, I broke the engagement, although I don’t think I broke his heart. I did break my parents’ careful planning for me.”
“Hey, it’s your life, your decision.” He knew that from experience. No matter what people had advised him, he knew he needed to leave New York and start fresh. But now wasn’t the time to delve into the ugliness of his past.
Cassidy sighed. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. I don’t have regrets, either. I love my work. Doing autopsies is like helping to solve a puzzle. I feel like I’m doing something important.”
“You are.”
They were quiet for a few minutes, and just when Diego felt he should make a move to go, Cassidy’s hand slid down to where his still sheathed cock messily lay against his thigh. She tapped at the root with her forefinger. “Think this guy is done for the night?”
Diego arched his brows. “No way.”
She beamed up at him. “Awesome!”
****
Ronan bolted upright in bed. The remnants of his dream tried to slip away, but he grabbed hold and held fast. His parents. No, his father. He’d been dreaming of the man not right before his death. Sometime prior to that. Ronan had been a little younger, and he’d been coming out of Fenway Park after having the rare treat of being out with his old man alone, no older brother or younger one horning in on the attention. Being the middle child had been tough. The Sox had won, and his father had let him eat and drink himself sick. Ronan waved a big foam finger in perfect happiness even though at fifteen, he was really too old for such things.
Then his father had stopped suddenly, his demeanor changing from glee to something else. Stress, maybe, or even anger. Another man approached him, one that had the look of a guy who’d grown up mean and lived hard. His father had told Ronan to wait for him and dragged the other man off to the side, a steady stream of indecipherable words coming out. When the two men parted, his father had not looked happy. Ronan had asked who the man was and his father said it was nobody important, just someone who sometimes gave him helpful information.
It had been Seamus O’Malley.
The DB had been one of his father’s snitches in the Irish mob. That one chance meeting had stuck in the recesses of Ronan’s mind. Running a hand through his hair, he pondered the implications.
He knew why the information had come to him that night in his dreams. Daire had called him to the family home the previous night to work on their parents’ murders along with Finn. They sifted through the files and boxes of evidence every once in a while, hoping to learn something new. Despite the fact that the effort hadn’t yielded anything useful at the time, it had nudged his memory enough to dredge up what may or may not have been useful information for his current case.
He glanced at the clock. Five a.m. Knowing he wouldn’t get
back to sleep, or even if he did, it would probably be about five minutes before his alarm was set to go off, he decided to get up and go for a run. At least the weather should be cool. And no matter how the day went, he had his date with Cassidy to look forward to. That thought put a smile on his face.
The cheerful expression was still there when he rolled into the station. His new partner was already at his desk, although he didn’t look like he’d had a very good night. With his chin in his palm, he stared stupidly at this computer screen and sipped at a large cup of coffee.
Ronan plopped down on his chair. He gave the man a toothy grin. “Morning, Nieves.”
Diego sat up straighter and blinked at Ronan for a few seconds. “Oh, yeah, good morning.”
Okay, so the guy sounded weird, and while he barely knew him, he thought something must be wrong. Given the day they had ahead of them, he decided it would be best to tackle the situation head on.
“What’s wrong?” He took a long pull of his iced coffee as he waited for a reply.
Diego fidgeted as he glanced around. “I, ah, think I need to tell you something. Yesterday, it seemed like no big deal, just some friendly rivalry, or maybe unfriendly. I don’t know,” he added with a shake of his head. His gaze darted anywhere but at Ronan.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“The thing is, it is a big deal. She’s a big deal.”
A knot formed in Ronan’s stomach. “She who? Cassidy? Spit it out, Nieves.”
“I took her out last night.”
“What!” Every head in the bullpen whipped their way. Ronan plastered a fake smile on his face and wheeled his chair closer to his partner. “What?” he repeated in a lower voice.
“I wanted to get the jump on you and took the chance she was free for dinner.” Huffing out a breath, Diego leaned closer. “It turned into more,” he added in almost a whisper.
Ronan stared back at him for a beat or two of his heart, reining in his fury. “You God damned son-of-a-bitch.” He practically just mouthed the words.
“I didn’t expect it to go that far because that’s not my style.” Ronan gave him a skeptical look. “It’s not. And it’s not hers, but,” he shrugged, “we just clicked. Anyway, I thought you should know. It was a dick move on my part, and it’s also not usually my style to sneak around. We’re partners, and we need to be able to trust each other. So…” He shrugged again.
Ronan didn’t say anything. His brain had trouble working out his partner’s confession and what it meant. Fuck, he liked Cassidy. Yeah, he’d rubbed it into the new guy’s face because he couldn’t help yanking people’s chains sometimes, and the guy seemed too uptight and righteous even though they’d only known each other for less than a day. It hurt more than it should, given that he’d known Cassidy for even less time, but he’d been looking forward to seeing her again. Now he supposed that was off the table, although really, why should it be? Just because Diego was looking like he’d just fallen into a really bad romcom didn’t mean Cassidy felt the same way.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and sent her a text. Are we still on for tonight? May as well find out now where he stood.
Diego frowned. “What are you doing?”
“None of your fucking business,” Ronan replied with the nastiest grin he could manage.
“You’re not berating her over last night, are you?” Diego’s tone took on an edge even nastier than Ronan’s expression. Okay, so the guy got points for being worried about her.
“No, of course not. I don’t hold women to some antiquated standard in which they can only date one guy at a time. Besides, I recognize that you’re the asshole in all of this.”
“Is that so?”
Before Ronan could answer, he got a text back.
Yes, looking forward to it.
This time the grin on Ronan’s face was genuine. He texted “great” back to her and put his phone away. “I have some info on our DB.”
Instantly, Diego lost his angry expression and went into professional mode. He got props for that, too. “What is it?”
“Believe it or not, I dreamt about him.” As his partner’s eyebrows went up, Ronan quickly explained about the guy being one of Ronan’s father’s snitches.
When he was done, Diego sat back and was silent for a while. “I have to confess I kind of heard about your parents being murdered before you told me.”
Ronan sucked on his coffee, pushing the lump down his throat. The pain of this topic never went away. “Yeah, figured you might have. You probably heard, too, that some think my father was on the take.” As he said it, he studied his partner’s reaction.
Diego surprised him by holding up his hands and shrugging. “No, I hadn’t, but cops are the worst gossips. I don’t put much stock in rumors. And I’ve been the subject of the police rumor mill myself, so I understand.”
“Sounds like a story you should tell me sometime.”
“Sometime,” he agreed noncommittally. “Anyway, where does this information lead us?”
“I don’t know. The guy I remember was kind of scuzzy, you know? I can’t quite square him with the well-fed and illness free stiff in the morgue. And why the hell wouldn’t the guy have any arrests for such a long stretch, a stretch I might add, that pretty much coincides with my parents’ murder?”
“All good questions. We need to figure out where he’s been holed up all of these years. Let’s start searching for relatives.”
It was a solid plan, and putting aside their rivalry over Cassidy, they both delved into the files on O’Malley. They found the name of a sister, Colleen O’Malley Sullivan, and pulled up a current address on her fairly easily. They decided not to call first in case the woman was in on something less than savory with her brother and tried to avoid them. They hopped into Ronan’s car and headed over to her home. Ronan parked a half a block away in front of a row of tidy houses in an old South Boston neighborhood.
“Let’s hope she’s home,” Ronan said as they strode up the sidewalk.
“I don’t know. With a neighborhood like this, it’s usually a two-income family.”
Diego was right, as no one answered the doorbell, although they could hear a yappy dog inside losing its mind over visitors at the door. A noisy neighbor poked her head out and got a wicked gleam in her eye when Ronan flashed a badge and asked if she knew where Ms. Sullivan might be. That led them to a bar around the corner.
“Jesus, we’re not open for business this early in the morning,” an older man shouted as they walked in.
Ronan once more flashed his badge. “We’re looking for Colleen Sullivan.”
Without shifting his gaze from Ronan and Diego, the man shouted for the woman. She came out, wiping her hands on a dish cloth. Rail thin in a way that spoke more of a cigarettes and coffee habit than a vegan diet and yoga, with hair bleached so many times it looked like straw, Seamus’ sister was more like the man he’d remembered in his dreams. The O’Malley siblings had been raised in poverty.
Colleen stopped short when she got sight of them. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“Colleen O’Malley Sullivan?” Ronan asked, once more holding up his badge.
She sighed. “Yeah, that’s me—Colleen Irish Irish. What’s up?” As she asked the question, her tone implied she already knew they came with bad news. He supposed with a brother like Seamus, who was probably a chip off the old block as these things usually went, her trouble radar was likely excellent.
“Is there a place where we can talk, ma’am?” Diego asked in the tone cops always used when delivering death notices to the next of kin.
She sighed again, more heavily this time, and looked down at her hands. “We can talk here, and I can guess what you have to say.” She looked up at them. “Seamus is dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ronan confirmed. “How did you know?” As he asked the question, he gently herded the woman to sit at a nearby table.
She didn’t put up a fight. “I suppose I
’ve been waiting for this news for a long time. Seamus was always getting into trouble, and even with the way he was the last time I spoke with him, I still expected it.”
Diego took a seat next to her. “What do you mean about the last time? We know your brother had cleaned up his act. No arrests for the past eight years or more.”
Colleen snorted. “Cleaned up his act? Seamus never changed.”
“He got smarter, at least,” Ronan injected.
“Not even that,” Colleen replied with a roll of her eyes. “He just had less of a reason to get into trouble, that’s all.” When they both sat and stared at her, she explained. “A while back, eight or nine years maybe, he scored big, big enough for him to live off the grid. Paid cash for everything. He came around my place, showing off to me with rolls of dough, offering to buy me stuff. I told him to get lost. I didn’t like the smell of that money. He’d done something really bad to get it, had to have. I didn’t want nothing to do with it. You don’t get that much by doing something good, at least not where we come from.”
Now that was interesting news. What could a small time criminal like O’Malley have done to acquire so much money? When he asked that question, Colleen didn’t have an answer.
“I don’t know, and I didn’t want to know. Even as he’s trying to impress me with how generous he was being, he said we had to be quiet about it all. Said he wasn’t supposed to be in Boston still but didn’t feel like leaving. This was his home, and no one was going to push him out.” She shook her head. “Idiot, trying to act like Mr. Big while he’s peeking out my window blinds like he’s afraid he was followed, sweat leaking through his shirt. I told him to get lost and stay that way. I didn’t need the trouble.”
“Was that the last you saw of him?” Ronan asked.
She stared off in the distance. “Yeah, that was the last time I saw him, but a few years ago, he sent me a letter. No return address on the envelope. I almost threw it away thinking it was junk mail ‘til I realized it was his handwriting. He gave me his new address, but said I shouldn’t try to contact him or give it out to anybody, even the cops if they came asking. He just wanted me to know where his stuff was in case something happened to him.
Double The Risk Page 5
