Bittersweet Darkness

by Nina Croft

  “And, Detective, you need to get into contact with your old partner. Tell him you want to meet up.”

  Like hell, she would. But she didn’t say the words out loud. She was quite aware Ryan was the real reason she was here, but no way was she setting him up for these creepy guys.

  She wasn’t sure how she was going to cope with the whole Ryan thing; she needed to think on it some more. But she also couldn’t tell him anything that went on here. She’d signed a scarily complete nondisclosure agreement that morning. And if she revealed anything about her new job, she’d find herself locked up and silenced quicker than she could say, “vampires don’t exist.”

  So she nodded. She’d been issued a waist holster and she slotted the Berretta into the small of her back, pulled her jacket on, and headed out. It felt slightly strange leaning down for the retinal scan, but by the fourth time, she was getting used to it.

  Her cell phone rang as she stepped out onto the street. She didn’t recognize the caller ID but answered anyway.

  “It’s Ash.”

  Her heart gave a little jump at the low, rich voice. She’d been doing her best not to think about him during the long day. Now his image flashed in her mind.

  “You there, Faith?” He sounded amused, but then she had been standing in the middle of the busy street and gazing at nothing.

  She cleared her throat. “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “I thought we might go for a drink.”

  “A drink?”

  He laughed softly, and a tingle ran down her spine. She forced herself to pull herself together.

  “I’m tired,” she said. “I want to head home.” It had been a long day.

  “I’ll give you a lift.”

  She opened her mouth to say no, then snapped it closed again. It occurred to her that if she needed a contact in CR International Ash was as good as Ryan. And while Ryan was her friend, she didn’t owe Ash anything. She’d be much happier using him as an entry to Christian Roth’s company than her old partner. Plus, sitting in Ash’s comfortable car sounded a much better option than a busy commuter train right now.

  “You don’t know where I am.”

  “So where are you?”

  Without giving herself more time to think, she gave him her location.

  “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  And he was. Five minutes later a black SUV pulled up beside her. Ash leaned across, opened her door, and she climbed in.

  She’d forgotten how big he was. Huge in the confined space of the vehicle. “So?” she asked, nerves making her snappish.

  “So?” A lazy smile curved his lips and her stomach flipped. What the hell was the matter with her?

  “What do you want, Ash?”

  “Would you believe the pleasure of your company?”

  No, the truth was, she wouldn’t. Ash was gorgeous and she was sure the bad-boy looks attracted women in their droves. She could imagine him, with a blond Barbie doll type on each arm, and she was hardly trophy girlfriend material. She was okay, but had never considered herself sexy.

  “I did ask Ryan’s permission to date you,” he murmured breaking into her thoughts.

  Her mouth dropped open. “He’s not my goddamn father.”

  “He told me ‘good luck.’ But that he wasn’t picking up the pieces when you’d ripped me to shreds.”

  “But you’re still here.”

  He turned in his seat and studied her, his gaze sliding over her face, down her body, and back to her face. It was like being touched and she shivered.

  “I like a challenge,” he murmured. “But right now, you look tired. I’ll take you home.”

  As he pulled out into the traffic, she fastened the seat belt.

  “So, how was work?” he asked.

  She glanced at him sharply. “I have a new job.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “I called your old office—Ryan gave me the number. They told me you no longer worked there but wouldn’t tell me anything else. So why the move?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not allowed to talk about it.”

  “I presume it’s the organization that approached you yesterday.”

  “I’m not allowed to talk about it.”

  It occurred to her that he might be using her for information just as much as she intended to use him. But he merely grinned at her answer.

  “I love it when you go all secretive on me.”

  She ignored the comment, sat back, and closed her eyes. The headache still nagged at the back of her brain and she couldn’t help but worry; she’d been trying to forget the whole thing and hated the reminder that there was something bad going on in her head.

  The drive took about forty-five minutes. To her surprise, Ash didn’t speak again and by the time he pulled up outside her apartment, she was feeling better. It was that spooky place messing with her mind. And the change; new jobs were always stressful. Tomorrow would be better. She was going to go over the file on Rosamund Fairfax and try and work out where she fitted in.

  Maybe Ash would be able to tell her. She turned to him as he switched off the engine. “You want to come in for a drink?”

  Instead of answering, he reached over the back of his seat and picked up a bottle of wine. “I come prepared.”

  She wasn’t sure she liked that. Or maybe she liked it too much. She gave him a quick peek and sighed. Six foot five of alpha male all wrapped up in black leather.

  For a moment, her mind flashed back to that morning when Pete had suggested they date. The thought hadn’t made her go all hot and fluttery like this. Ash was a source of information. That was the important thing. That’s what she had to focus on. She’d never considered using her body to get information, had probably known there wasn’t enough of it to swap for anything useful. She was way too skinny and flat-chested. The idea made her smile.

  “What are you smiling at?”

  “Nothing,” she said, her tone innocent. She jumped out and led the way to her apartment, letting them in through the front door and dropping her bag on the table.

  “Nice,” he said, his gaze wandering around the place.

  “No, it isn’t,” she replied. “It’s functional at best. But it does the job.”

  She went into the small kitchen, dug the corkscrew out of the drawer, and tossed it to where he stood in the doorway.

  Tonight, he wasn’t wearing a coat and no weapons. She took off her own jacket.

  “Hey, nice gun,” he murmured.

  She’d forgotten about the pistol at her waist. After unbuckling the belt, she dropped the whole thing into a lower drawer and slammed it shut.

  “That come with the new job?” he asked. Then held up his hand before she could answer. “Don’t tell me—you’re not allowed to say.”

  “So, you’re not carrying today? Have you decided I’m safe?”

  He grinned, then reached down and pulled up his pants leg to reveal an ankle holster and a small pistol.

  She shook her head; that wasn’t legal whether he had a license or not. But she didn’t pursue the matter. Instead, she grabbed a couple of glasses from the cabinet and led him into the living room. Kicking off her shoes, she sank down onto the sofa with a sigh of relief.

  Closing her eyes, she felt when he sat down beside her. He took the glasses from her hand and she heard the cork being released. A few seconds later, he wrapped her fingers around the stem of the glass.

  “Thank you.”

  When she opened her eyes, he was sitting in the far corner of the sofa, long legs stretched out, sipping his wine and watching her over the rim of the glass, his eyes dark.

  “So, without telling me anything about it, how do you feel about the new job?” he asked.

  She took a gulp of wine. “Pissed off.”

  “Why?”

  “I was working on a case. It was important to me.”

  An image flashed in her mind. A young girl’s naked body, wounds at her throat and wrists, her in
ner thighs. She was pale with loss of blood, her eyes wide and terrified. Suddenly, the image was overlaid with an older one. Faith’s mother. And something was behind Faith. Something that shouldn’t be there, something so terrible—

  “Faith?”

  She jumped as Ash dragged her back to the present.

  “You know you could always tell them to go to hell and come work with us,” Ash said.

  She’d thought about it on and off through the day. If this transfer was a long-term thing, then she didn’t know how she felt. Her whole life was the force. It was all she had ever wanted to do. But the thought of working day in, day out in that underground vault with a bunch of guys who gave her the creeps—well, it wasn’t a long-term option.

  But first, she wanted to find out what they knew. Because while there was no way in a million years they were going to convince her that vampires had killed Julie Foster, she was certain that they had information that would help solve her murder.

  Once she had that information, she would consider her future. If she had one.

  She decided to ignore Ash’s question and ask one of her own. “How well do you know Rosamund Fairfax?”

  He raised a brow at the change of question. “Roz? I know her very well.”

  How well?

  She didn’t like the reminiscent little smile that hovered on his lips. Her eyes narrowed. “Are you seeing her?”

  “Hell, no.” He grinned, then shrugged. “We were close once but that ended a long time ago by mutual agreement.”

  “Can’t have been that long. She hardly looks out of her teens.”

  He smiled. “She’s older than she appears.”

  For some reason that later photo of Christian Roth sprang to mind. Someone else who was older than they looked? Coincidence? As a detective, she didn’t believe in coincidences. CR International owned pharmaceutical companies; maybe they’d discovered some brilliant antiaging drug. She cast a quick glance at Ash and tried to estimate his age—early thirties maybe.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Maybe one day, I’ll tell you.”

  “Hmmm? Evasive or what. So Roz works for Christian Roth?”

  “Not really. She’s in a relationship with a business colleague of his, and she’s friends with Tara, Christian’s wife.”

  She frowned at him. “You’re being very free with information.”

  “You haven’t asked me anything I don’t want to answer yet.”

  “Except your age. So what does she do—what is she exactly?”

  “She’s a witch.”

  Faith scowled. She should have known he wouldn’t tell her anything useful. “Thanks for nothing.”

  “You don’t believe me?” He studied her, head cocked on one side. “Why are you so certain she’s not a witch?”

  He was the second person to question her convictions that day. It was starting to piss her off. She was the normal one. She wasn’t chasing after make-believe monsters. “I just am that’s all.” Perhaps she should suspend disbelief and see how far he would go. “So what is a witch? What does she do exactly?”

  “Roz? She finds things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  He raised a brow.

  Was she being slow? She thought about it and it came to her. “She finds people.”

  “Sometimes.”

  Shit, she’d found Jessica Thomas. Faith thought back to the other times she’d seen Roz at Scotland Yard talking to Ryan. She’d once asked him who Roz was and he’d told her that she didn’t want to know and she wouldn’t believe him anyway. And he was right. If he’d told her he was consulting some sort of clairvoyant “witch,” she would have laughed in his face. But the fact was, they’d found Jessica after Roz had become involved. Prior to that, they’d had no clue. Roz had come to visit Ryan in the morning and by lunchtime they had a photo-fit of the perp. Ryan had told her it was an anonymous tip. But it had actually come from Rosamund Fairfax.

  For a second, she seriously tried to consider the witch aspect, but her brain refused to cooperate.

  Instead, she sipped her wine as she tried to put the pieces together in her mind. Maybe there was no “magic” involved. Maybe there was a much simpler explanation—that she’d known who had taken Jessica because that person was somehow associated with Christian Roth. And Roz knew Roth…

  But that didn’t explain the earlier cases she’d been involved with.

  Faith rubbed her forehead, then pressed her fingers to the back of her neck. Her headache was returning with a vengeance.

  “Are you okay?” Ash asked.

  “Yeah, but all this supernatural crap is doing my head in.” She studied him over her glass. The room was falling into darkness casting shadows across the hard angles of his face. He was beautiful, all sharp cheekbones and the long lines. “Well at least I know you’re not a vampire.”

  His full lips curved into a smile. “I’m not?”

  She nodded to the window, where evening was just falling. “I’ve seen you in daylight.”

  His smile broadened, showing gleaming white teeth, not a fang in sight. “Of course you have. And of course I’m not a vampire.”

  “Good.”

  He leaned across and filled her glass and they drank in companionable silence for a while. Considering he was such a scary badass, he was relaxing to be around. Some of the tension of the day drained from her and she sighed. After placing her glass on the table, she stretched, trying to ease the kinks from her shoulders.

  Without speaking, Ash rose to his feet and moved around behind her. He pulled the grip from her hair and ran his fingers through the long strands. His hands moved to her shoulders and he kneaded lightly. Heat burned through the thin cotton of her shirt from his fingers, but it felt so good. It had been a long time since another human had touched her like this.

  There was no point in telling herself there was nothing sexual in the contact, because she’d be lying. He might not mean it to be sexual, but little shivers ran across her skin, concentrating at her breasts and between her thighs.

  His hands splayed, his thumbs digging out the tense little knots between her shoulder blades while his fingers continued to smooth the skin on her shoulders. Her breathing slowed, and warmth suffused her, spreading from his touch to settle low in her body. She bent her head giving him better access.

  “Is that good?” he murmured.

  “Oh yeah.”

  He must have taken her words for license to go further, because his hands shifted and his fingers slid beneath her shirt to caress her bare skin beneath. He played with the strap of her bra and a jolt ran from her breast to her belly, every nerve ending coming alive. When she glanced down, her nipples were tight, little points pressing against the cotton.

  His hand slid around to cup one breast over her bra and her head fell back against the cushions, the tension seeping from her muscles, leaving her limp and pliant beneath his touch. She had no thought of denying him; this felt too good. Just a while longer. His palm grazed over her nipple and brought it singing to life. She longed to feel his hand against her bare breast and a small groan escaped her.

  He lowered his head and his hot breath feathered against her throat sending her heart rate speeding and her blood throbbing through her veins. As his lips brushed against her skin, she tilted her head to the side, giving him better access, and his teeth nibbled at her flesh.

  Maybe he was a vampire after all, but at that moment, his hand slipped beneath her bra and he squeezed her nipple between his finger and thumb and all rational thought fled. She groaned when he withdrew, but then he clasped her upper arms and turned her so she knelt on the sofa, facing him.

  His eyes had gone even darker, and were half-closed, framed by the thickest, blackest lashes she’d ever seen on a man. As he leaned in closer, she realized his eyes weren’t black but the dark sapphire blue of the midnight sky. And his hair wasn’t black either, but deep brown and glinting with rubies.

  One hand moved
to slide beneath her hair to cup the back of her neck and draw her closer.

  “I want to kiss you,” he whispered against her lips.

  “You do?”

  “Do you know how long it is since I kissed a woman, even wanted to kiss a women?”

  “No.” And she wished he’d stop talking about it and do it. She raised her hands to his shoulders and pulled him the last inch. He laughed softly but then his mouth was on hers and she wasn’t thinking anymore.

  Like his hands, his lips were hot. They slanted over hers, and she opened for him, heat flashing through her. There was nothing tentative about the kiss, his tongue pushed inside like hot, wet velvet. He filled her, forcing everything from her mind but the feel and taste of him. Sharp and sweet with a hint of spice. His kiss wrapped around her, sucked her under, until she could feel it with her whole body. In her breasts pressed against his hard chest, in the warm coil of flame in her belly, the moist heat between her thighs.

  The back of the sofa was between them, and she wanted nothing to separate them, not the sofa, not clothes, nothing. Without releasing his hold, he shifted and came around the side, crawled over so he was kneeling in front of her. He pushed her backward with his body, and she sprawled onto her back as he came down over her, his mouth still fused with hers.

  This was better, much better. The long superhard length of him pressed against her, his erection like steel pushing at her belly. She was going to go up in flames any moment. She was burning from the inside.

  The pain came out of nowhere. One second she was drowning in the dark sensual promise of his kisses, the next, a red-hot poker was drilling into her skull. Every muscle in her body clenched.

  Ash went instantly still against her, then slowly backed away.

  “Are you okay?”

  She heard the words through a fog of pain and for a moment, she couldn’t answer.

  “Faith?”

  He sounded really worried now. She forced her eyes open. At least her vision wasn’t blurred; she could make out Ash’s almost scared expression.

  “I’m okay,” she ground out. It was a lie, but the pain was receding to a manageable level. “Just a migraine,” she said when he continued to stare down at her.

  His eyes narrowed. “You have a headache?”