(Moon 1) - Killing Moon

by Rebecca York

  "Fine," he answered automatically. He was far from fine, on a number of different counts, but he wasn't going in to them. "You should get some sleep."

  "I'm okay."

  He'd fulfilled his obligation. He ought to let her go to bed. Instead he sat there, his hand tightening around the phone, held captive by his own blind, selfish needs. He couldn't hang up. And he couldn't handle the depths of his feelings, either. So he pretended to himself that the needs he felt were on some safe, superficial level. The same needs he'd felt with other women. "What are you wearing?" he heard himself asking.

  "What?"

  "Never mind." Bad idea.

  "A T-shirt and… panties."

  "I was picturing you in a gown. Something sexy," he said into the darkness of his familiar surroundings. He was miles away from her. That made this conversation okay. There was no harm in staying on the line. At least that was what he told himself. "Are you in bed?"

  "No, I'm in the living room. On the couch. Where are you?"

  "In my office. Are you lying down or sitting up?"

  "Lying down."

  He imagined the knit fabric stretched across her breasts, her long legs bare and smooth. He didn't know why he was torturing himself with the vivid picture. Again he started to speak before his brain had a chance to consider the consequences. "I wanted to kiss you this morning in the kitchen."

  "Yes. It was in your eyes." Her voice hitched. "Then you turned away from me—and I felt… desolate."

  He made a low, incoherent sound, the words and her voice tearing at him.

  For long moments there was only silence on the phone line. He pictured her now. And pictured the look on her face when she'd been standing there with her lips parted. Suddenly being separated from her was more than he could bear. He wanted to touch her. Wanted to hold her. Wanted to get as close to her as possible.

  Eyes closed, he pressed his fingers to his mouth, the touch sending tingling sensations through his body as he imagined the sweetness of kissing her. "Do something for me now. Touch your fingers to your lips. Rub them for me," he asked, his voice thickening even as he wondered if she would do it.

  On the other end of the phone line, he heard her breathing accelerate. Or maybe it was his own breath rasping in and out of his throat. After several endless seconds he asked, "Did you do it?"

  "Yes."

  "Your soft lips," he murmured, imagining the feel of them against his.

  She gave a shaky laugh. "Not soft. Chapped."

  Her laugh only increased the tension coursing through him. He had told himself he needed to feel connected to her. He was feeling that, all right.

  "If I touch my lips, you have to do that, too," she whispered.

  "I already did."

  "Oh!" Then, "Did it feel good?"

  "Yes." He drew in a gasp of air, let it out in a rush. It felt intoxicating. So much better than the pain he'd felt earlier in the evening.

  "Is this something you like to do with women? I mean have phone conversations like this?" she questioned, her tone a bit shaky.

  "I've never had a phone conversation like this."

  "Neither have I."

  "Good. That's good."

  "You have a very sexy voice."

  "Do I?"

  "Don't you know? Your voice turned the fifty-year-old administrative assistant at Bio Gen into a quivering mass of marshmallow cream."

  He laughed.

  Silence stretched again. Then she asked, "Ross, what are we doing, exactly?"

  He considered the question. "Getting as close as we can to each other without being together. Don't try to distract me with the fifty-year-old secretary at Bio Gen. Are your eyes opened or closed?"

  "Closed," she whispered.

  The image in his mind had changed. Now her neck was arched up, pale and vulnerable for his pleasure. "If I were there, I would nibble my way along your jaw, your neck."

  "Oh."

  "Nip you with my sharp teeth," he said in a low growl, waiting to hear her response. She drew in her breath, quick and piercing.

  His voice turned to honey in the darkness. "Touch your fingers there for me—stroke your neck."

  "Oh!" she said again, this time with more force.

  "You like that?"

  "Yes."

  He was reckless now. Somewhere along the line, the conversation had gone out of control like a train with no brakes speeding down the tracks. "I want to touch your breasts. I want to cup them. Feel their weight in my hands." Again her little gasp egged him on. "I want to rub my hands back and forth across your nipples. Make them hard so that they stab against my palms," he said, his body clenching from the intensely tactile images he'd painted.

  He heard a high sound escape from her, part arousal, part protest. "I shouldn't be letting you do this."

  "Do what?"

  "You know what you're doing to me."

  "Do I? Tell me."

  "No."

  "Arousing you?"

  "You know the answer to that."

  Unable to stop, he pushed a little further. "I want to touch you, but I can't. You have to do the touching for me."

  "Don't ask me to do that."

  "Why not?"

  "It's indecent," she said in a whispery voice that feathered along his nerve endings like fire.

  "You've never touched your own breasts? I mean, because it felt good?"

  Her voice quavered. "Don't ask questions like that. And don't ask me to do anything else now."

  "Are you embarrassed that I'm turning you on like this?"

  "Yes."

  The admission fueled his reckless need. Heedless of the consequences, he demanded more from her. "All right, but I don't have to ask, do I? You can feel it anyway. In your breasts. Between your legs."

  "Please…" He heard a desperate note in the plea.

  "What do you want? Do you want me inside you?"

  He needed to hear her say it. Needed to know she was as hot and wanting as he.

  She made a strangled sound. He heard her suck in a shaky breath, then let it out in a rush. "You have to stop."

  "Say it."

  "Ross, I can't handle this."

  He blew out air, shifted in the chair, trying to ease the ache in his groin as he imagined his body covering hers, imagined himself plunging into her.

  There was a roaring in his ears—the sound of her breath coming hard and fast, matching his.

  When she spoke again, her voice was low, barely above a whisper. "Why did you start this?"

  Because I'm frightened of what I might do to Arnott. Because I'd rather play games with you than think about wanting to rip his throat out.

  "Because it feels good," he growled.

  "Yes. But it's… bad."

  "Does it feel bad?"

  "It feels wicked."

  "No."

  She was silent for several moments; when she spoke again, there was a measure of control in her voice. "You said what we were doing was getting close."

  "Um-hum."

  "You meant you wanted to create physical sensations. You didn't mean you were going to tell me any more about yourself than you already had."

  It was his turn for silence. She was right. He hadn't been thinking in terms of revealing his secrets. He had only thought about how talking intimately to her on the phone had eased his pain. Turned his thoughts away from the fears that haunted him.

  "Ross?"

  "I shouldn't have started this."

  "All you want from me is sex?"

  "Yes," he lied, closing his fingers around the phone so hard that the knuckles whitened. He refused to let her glimpse his vulnerability, but he couldn't stop his mind from spinning back to what he'd been feeling when he'd dialed her number.

  "Then I'm going to hang up now."

  "Wait." The plea rose to his lips before he could call it back.

  He heard silence on the other end of the line and felt a stark panic at the thought of her severing the connection. "Are you there?"
<
br />   "Yes."

  Relief sighed out of him.

  "Tell me something about Ross Marshall."

  He held back a laugh, knowing she would run screaming in the other direction if he gave her what she thought she wanted. Still, he scrambled for something to say, something that would keep her on the line without giving too much of himself away. "I make my living as a private detective."

  "I know that. Are you the one who remodeled your house?"

  "What makes you think so?"

  "I was in your workroom when I was looking for something to unlock the bedroom door. I saw all your tools. And a lot of wood and stuff."

  "Okay, yeah. I remodeled the house."

  Her voice turned warm. "I love what you did with it. The bookshelves in the great room are wonderful. Do you call it a great room?"

  "Yes."

  "And the kitchen. I love the kitchen."

  "Thanks."

  "The bathroom is the only thing I'd change."

  He gave a small laugh. "You don't like soaking tubs?"

  "Those big windows with no shades are a little disconcerting."

  "I like soaking in the tub and looking out at the woods."

  "Are you the one who plants the flowers? Or do you have a gardener?"

  "You noticed a lot of stuff."

  "Um-hum."

  "I do it. It relaxes me." Then, "Now I get to ask some questions. How did you get into medical research?"

  "I found out I'm not all that good with patients."

  "You were good with me."

  She hesitated for a moment. "I get too… involved."

  "Like with me."

  "No. With you it was something more."

  She was giving him an opportunity to take the conversation in a different direction. Instead he asked, "Where did you grow up?"

  "I grew up in Boston. My sister still lives there."

  "What about your folks?"

  "My parents were killed in a car crash about a year ago."

  "I'm sorry."

  "I miss Mom."

  "But not your dad?"

  "He was the kind of guy who had to get his way." She paused, then went on. "And when the least little thing was out of his control, he… made life hell for Mom."

  He sucked in a breath. "That sounds like my old man."

  "Does it?"

  "Yeah. I warned you to stay away from me."

  "You're not your father," she murmured.

  "I'm more like him than I want to be," he admitted in the darkness.

  "Don't beat yourself up."

  "Why not? I came within a hairbreadth of…"

  "Of what?"

  "Killing the bastard who was shooting at me again," he admitted.

  "He was shooting at you! Oh, God, Ross. You said you didn't have any problems."

  "Well, I was lying. I almost killed him."

  "In self-defense."

  He sighed, feeling as if he were back where he'd started. "We'd better hang up. You have to go to work in the morning."

  "Ross…"

  "What?"

  "You're a good man."

  He gave a hollow laugh. "You don't know me."

  "I learned a lot about you in the past few days."

  "Didn't I pull a gun on you five minutes after we met?"

  She came back with an immediate excuse. "You were delirious."

  "Okay. Right. See what happens when I can't control my impulses?"

  "You risked your life tonight going after a very bad man."

  "How do you know he's so bad?"

  "He runs around shooting people. And you told me he's murdered women."

  "Did I?"

  "Yes."

  "What else did I say?"

  "Nothing."

  He wondered if she was telling the truth. He might have pressed her, but the emotions churning inside him had become too raw for him to continue the conversation. "You need to get some sleep."

  "I don't want to get off."

  The way she said it started an ache deep in the pit of his stomach. "Get some sleep," he repeated, then said, "Good night, Megan." Before she could answer, he broke the connection. For the second time tonight, he'd been out of control.

  The first time the sound of an owl screeching had snatched him back to sanity. The second time…

  The second time, it was Megan who had taken control.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  « ^ »

  WHEN THE ALARM buzzed at seven, Megan turned it off and gave herself an extra half hour to doze, then lay in the gray light of morning, taking a physical and mental inventory.

  Physically she felt better than she had any right to feel after staying up so late and worrying. Mentally, she wasn't so sure.

  In the smug little world she'd occupied until a few days ago, she'd never understood why people would engage in phone sex. The idea had always seemed perverted. But she'd certainly let Ross turn her on over the phone. Maybe because she'd allowed physical attraction to a man she didn't really know overwhelm her. A man who was as mysterious and frightening as he was sexy. A man who had told her he thought he had some strange genetic disease that she suspected she wasn't going to find in the medical books.

  That alone should send her running in the other direction. But she'd found running away wasn't as easy as it should have been. Whether either one of them wanted to admit it or not, they were involved. On a level that was more intimate than anything she'd felt before.

  That was scary. Pulling back from the thought, she deliberately started thinking about the blood sample that she'd been incubating overnight. This afternoon she could get to the next phase of the test—looking at his chromosomes, she thought with a mixture of anticipation and dread.

  She was glad that Walter wasn't around when she arrived at the lab, glad that she had routine stuff to do until she could get to the next step in the karyotype.

  JACK was working his way through a stack of reports when the phone on his desk rang.

  "Thornton," he answered.

  "This is Ross Marshall."

  "How's it going?" he asked, feeling a small pang of guilt. He'd been investigating the man all week and now knew a great deal more about him than he had the last time they'd talked.

  "I'd like to meet you for lunch."

  Interesting. Marshall hadn't contacted him in at least six weeks. Now, in the middle of the Crawford investigation, the PI was making a point of getting in touch. Of course, unless Marshall was clairvoyant or had some hidden source of information in the department, there was no way he could know about the body that had washed out of the ground up at Sugar Loaf Mountain.

  "Sure. Where and when?"

  "How about that Middle Eastern restaurant where we met last time? Across from Congressional Plaza."

  He remembered the place. Not one of the glitzy eateries that paid for an address on Rockville Pike but a more modest establishment where the decor ran to travel posters from Jordan. But the food was plentiful and good.

  "Sure. I can be there at twelve-thirty."

  In fact, he made a point of arriving early and settling himself in a booth at the back of the smoking section where he could study Marshall as he arrived. Outwardly, he was confident that he looked relaxed. But his nerves were jumping.

  The PI walked into the restaurant at the appointed time, wearing jeans, a dark T-shirt, a leather jacket, and a tight look around his eyes and mouth. He was limping slightly, too.

  He spotted Jack and started toward him, favoring his right leg. Before he'd taken ten steps, he stopped and rubbed his eyes. By the time he drew abreast of the table Jack had taken, he was coughing.

  Casting a glance at a guy two tables away who had left a cigarette smoldering in an ashtray while he ate his baba ganoush, Ross asked, "Do you mind changing tables?"

  "Right. You're allergic to smoke," Jack said, as if he'd forgotten. The choice of tables had been deliberate, since he'd wanted to watch the effect of a little stress on Marshall. Sliding out of the booth, he pointe
d toward a corner table on the opposite side of the room. "What about over there?"

  "Fine."

  When they were settled, he gave his luncheon companion a closer look. In addition to the red eyes, the limp, and the tight features, his complexion was pale.

  "You okay?"

  "I picked up something on an investigation—in the woods at night. How are you?"

  "Good. Haven't heard from you in a while," he answered conversationally.

  "I've been busy."

  Jack didn't bother to ask for clarification. He'd learned long ago that Marshall only gave out the information he chose to share.

  "So what have you been up to?" the PI asked.

  "Well, you remember the case of the hidden video-camera in the ladies' dressing room at the YMCA? A couple of county councilwomen use the place, so we've had a lot of R, J, and F A on that one." R, J, and F A was running, jumping, and fucking around. In other words, outward signs of great activity where nothing is really accomplished.

  Marshall laughed. "Yeah. I was feeling sorry for you when that hit the papers. I take it you haven't caught the enterprising voyeur?"

  "Well, we figure the camera was installed when the building was remodeled. There were workmen and contractors in and out for nine months. So we've narrowed it down to about three hundred suspects."

  Marshall shook his head, then opened his menu and studied the selections. When the waiter came over, he ordered a combination lamb and chicken shish kebab, rare, with rice pilaf.

  Jack ordered a beef kebab, medium, still thinking about how to play the interview. The element of calculation made him feel guilty. He hated wondering if Marshall had had something to do with the death of a scumbag serial killer five years ago. What did it matter how Crawford had died, really? Eliminating him had been a public service.

  Still, there was a nagging voice in the back of his mind as he took a sip of water. The file had landed on his desk. And his job was to close as many cases as possible.

  Marshall glanced up and caught Jack's speculative gaze. His shoulders tightened. "What?" he asked.

  "I was just thinking that whatever you picked up on that investigation must have been a doozy."

  "Yeah, it's hanging on."

  Jack shifted in his seat. "You've got something for me?"

  Before Marshall could answer, the waiter brought their food, and they were both silent until the man had left them alone again.