She pulled out another condom and proceeded to torture him in the most delicious ways, her hand gripping and stroking until he couldn’t stand it. His gaze met her mischievous blue eyes and he suddenly realized she wanted him to beg. “Please,” he groaned.
She guided him into her then, slowly lowering herself onto him, continuing her sweet torture, until his pulse was hammering, and an internal heat consumed him. She was so proud and beautiful above him, and he leaned up to take one of her breasts in his mouth, already knowing how much she liked it when he kissed her there. She shivered and tightened around him and he broke, arching off the bed to bury himself inside her as he came.
Christ, what was happening here? How was it that this woman could do this to him? She was nurturing and caring one minute, passionate the next, and then sexy and playful, all in one night. She was everything.
She was his everything.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Emily burrowed deeper into the covers, nuzzling her cheek against the warm body next to her and squeezing her eyes shut against the daylight she knew was just beyond her lids. Daylight. Her eyes snapped open, and she sprang upright, searching frantically for the clock. Seven fifteen.
“Mac!” Looking down at his sleeping form, her heart flipped. His auburn lashes rested peacefully on his cheeks, his face relaxed and almost boyish in sleep. If she hadn’t needed him to drive her to work, she would have been happy to let him sleep like that all morning. Lord knew he needed it. But she was seeing her first client at eight, and she needed to get going.
“Mac, sweetheart, wake up.” She nudged his shoulder gently. Eyes still closed, a seductive grin lit his features, and he moved in the direction of her voice.
Oh, dear. She scrambled out of bed before he convinced her to stay. “I’m going to take a quick a shower. You need to get dressed and drop me off at work.”
She pulled the comforter with her to take to the bathroom, suddenly self-conscious about her indecent state. She accidentally pulled the top sheet off as well, revealing his splendidly naked male body, and Mac showed no such modesty. He just ran his hand down his chest and scratched his stomach, a lazy grin stretching across his face.
“Need any help?” His eyes were half open and his voice husky from sleep. “In the shower?”
She quickly shook her head, tripping over the sheet on her way to the bathroom.
“’Cause I’m really good with soap, you know?”
“I’m sure you are.” She smiled. “But this needs to be a lightning fast shower and something tells me you would not be quick.”
“Baby, I can do quick. Quick is my middle name.”
Pulling the bathroom door shut, she laughed softly. She should not be this happy to be late for work.
* * *
Mac drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel in time with the song on the radio, and pulled out of his complex, heading toward Emily’s work. The sense of lightness that had been with him all morning was definitely something he could get used to.
Her hair was still damp from the shower, and she nervously checked herself in the mirror between pointed glances at the clock on his dashboard.
“Don’t worry. You won’t be late,” he said.
“I know. I just hate feeling rushed. And I don’t feel very prepared for my first appointment anyway. I never did review her file last night.”
“I’m sorry.” He wasn’t sorry at all. “I shouldn’t have kept you…occupied all night.” They’d made love until almost three in the morning and then he’d fallen asleep with his arm around her and their legs intertwined. It was the best four hours of sleep he’d had in over a year…maybe a lifetime.
The corners of her mouth turned up. “You’re not even a little bit sorry about last night.”
“No. You’re right. I’m not.” He reached over and took her hand, bringing it to his lips and pressing a kiss to the back of it. “And I hope you’re not either.”
“I’m not,” she said, smiling.
He continued holding her hand and used the other to turn his SUV down Sheridan, relieved to see that traffic was light this morning, and he wouldn’t let Emily down on his promise to get her to work on time.
“So, are you planning another stakeout today?” she asked.
“Probably not. Watching the place yesterday, I feel pretty confident that no one is following you. Besides, I need to get back and grab a shower. Then I’d like to get to the station and talk to Dorsey. Find out where he’s at with locating Carl. Meet you for lunch though?”
“Sure. I’m free at one today.”
He pulled into the parking lot of her office, disappointed that their time together this morning was already at a close. “Great, one o’clock. Looking forward to it,” he said, putting the car into park.
One hand resting on the door handle, she was clearly in a hurry to get to her office, so he didn’t waste time. “Come here,” he said, placing his hand around her nape. “Can’t let you go without a kiss.”
She laughed against his lips, but quickly quieted to a soft purr of pleasure when he gently nipped at her lower lip.
“One o’clock?” she asked dazedly.
“It’s a date.” A date…well, who’d have thought? Maybe he was the relationship-type after all.
* * *
Hurrying up the sidewalk to her office, Emily touched her lips, still tingling from Mac’s kiss, and couldn’t help the sigh that escaped her mouth. What a night they’d shared. And the prospect of spending another night in his arms? Pure heaven.
Stuck in a dreamy daze, Emily almost missed the person standing at the edge of the path.
“Oh, Ruth! Good morning,” she said, greeting the woman with a smile.
Ruth did not smile back. “Do you know who that was?”
Taken aback by the accusatory tone, Emily glanced in the direction of Ruth’s gaze and saw Mac’s SUV exiting the parking lot.
At that moment her cell phone rang, and she quickly pulled it from her pocket, silenced it, and turned her attention back to Ruth.
“That was my…friend, Bryan McAvoy. Do you know him?”
Ruth crossed her arms. “It looked to me like he was much more than a friend.”
“I—” What could she say? Normally, her personal life was not a topic she discussed with clients.
“This must all be very convenient for you, huh?” Ruth said, her tone unusually sharp.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I came here today to talk about feeling conflicted over the lawsuit. I wonder what you would’ve told me to do. To drop it? That’d be better for your boyfriend, now wouldn’t it?”
Several things clicked into place for Emily at once. Ruth’s son had been a teenager when he’d died. It had been sudden. Unexpected. An accident. She was suing the person responsible.
She was suing Mac.
“Ruth. Oh, my God. I swear—I never made the connection until now.”
“I can’t believe you let me sit in your office and talk about my son…and the whole time…you knew. You knew he’d killed him.” Ruth pulled her jacket together more tightly, the wind whipping her wavy blonde hair across her face.
Emily felt sick. “No, Ruth. I swear to you—I just met Mac a couple weeks ago. I had no idea until just now. I swear it.”
“I trusted you…” Her narrowed eyes shimmered with tears. “I trusted you,” she said again, this time a whisper. She turned and walked quickly back to her car.
“Ruth! Please wait! Let me explain.” Emily hurried after her, but Ruth slipped into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut behind her. She didn’t look back at Emily, but threw the car into reverse, backed away, and screeched out of the parking lot.
Still reeling from the revelation that her client was suing Mac, Emily could do nothing but stand there and watch Ruth go.
* * *
Numb, Emily walked into the office suite. How quickly things could change. This morning, she’d woken up giddy and hopeful, finally ready to embra
ce life and take a chance on happiness. But just as she’d always suspected, fate had other plans.
Asha looked up from the papers she’d been showing Nancy at the reception desk. “Emily? Are you all right?” Both women looked at her with concern.
“I—I think I may have unknowingly gotten myself into a bit of a…conflict of interest. Can we talk in your office?”
“Of course.” Asha quickly finished giving billing instructions to Nancy and followed Emily down the hall.
Asha’s office was set up in much the same way as Emily’s. A beautiful cherry desk in front of the window, two overstuffed armchairs angled around a coffee table in the middle of the room, and a small sofa for when she met with couples. Asha was also partial to watercolors, and Emily had always been particularly fascinated with the small rowboat on a stormy sea, painted almost entirely in shades of blue and gray, which hung behind the sofa. She had the feeling now, as she’d had many times before, that she was like that rowboat, nothing more than a small vessel in a vast ocean of turbulent waves and dark pelting rain.
“Now, tell me about this conflict of interest,” Asha said.
Emily explained how she’d been seeing Ruth for grief counseling and how their sessions had focused primarily on the aftermath of her son’s passing and not on the circumstances of his actual death. Asha knew Emily struggled with short-term memory issues and nodded sympathetically when Emily told her how the details of the shooting had been lost in her mind. It made sense. At the time Ruth told her about it, she hadn’t known Mac. She’d had no personal connection to the story. The important part, the piece they focused on in counseling, was how Ruth continued on. The how she had lost her son had never been as important as the fact that she had lost her son.
Emily glossed over the details of how she and Mac had become involved, knowing that Asha would understand the conflict that now existed. “So now, she thinks I have an ulterior motive. That I planned to counsel her to drop the suit against Mac, because he’s my…”
“Boyfriend?”
Emily sighed. “Well, I wouldn’t say we’ve actually established what we are to one another, but yes, as far as Ruth is concerned…boyfriend.” Emily studied the rowboat painting, lost in thought. “I don’t know what to do. She doesn’t trust me at all, but I think if I could just explain what happened…”
“You feel very guilty that she’s upset and that you were unknowingly the cause, and that is certainly understandable. I think the question you need to ask yourself is—do you need to smooth this over for Ruth’s sake or for yours?”
Emily paused to consider Asha’s question. “Is both a possible answer?”
Asha’s smile was gentle, understanding, and almost maternal. “Emily, I think you know that in life there are very rarely clear-cut right or wrong, yes or no answers.” She steepled her fingers against her chin thoughtfully. “I suppose you have a few choices. You could refer Ruth to another counselor, knowing that it will take time for her to build a trusting relationship with that counselor—possibly even longer than usual after having her trust recently broken, at least from her perspective. Or you could try to explain what happened to Ruth, attempt to regain her trust, and cut things off with Mac, because after all, she is right. It would be a conflict of interest for you to counsel her through this lawsuit when she’s suing your boyfriend.”
It was a lose-lose situation. It wasn’t fair for Ruth to have to begin again with a new counselor, to have to start from square one. It would be a huge setback to her progress and an option that Emily found professionally unacceptable. But cutting things off with Mac? She felt nauseous.
It was still so new, but these feelings she had for him, they were strong. Stronger than anything she’d ever felt before…
She had tried to keep her distance in the beginning, because she was afraid she would lose him. And this was worse than losing him. Losing him would have been outside of her control, something that wouldn’t have been her choice. But this…this was far worse. Because, in this situation, she’d be choosing to let him go.
* * *
Freshly showered, Mac took the stairs two at time up to Dorsey’s office, unable to suppress his newfound enthusiasm for…everything. Did everyone wake up this morning thinking the world had never looked brighter? Probably not, because not everyone had woken up next to Emily. And Emily was the sun that lit his world. His life. His heart.
He walked into the Detectives unit, passing cubicle after cubicle, his Nikes not making a sound against the tile floor. In the busy office, no one seemed to notice his presence, not even Sean and Dorsey.
Sean, dressed in casual street clothes, sat on the edge of the detective’s desk, an infraction that had Dorsey glaring.
“You need to lean on him harder,” Sean said. “The guy’s guilty as fucking sin, and he’s going to admit to something sooner or later.”
Dorsey rolled his eyes, plucking a manila file folder out of Sean’s hand. “Look kid, I called to let you know we had him in custody as a courtesy, because I know she’s your sister. I did not call you to get your advice on how to interview a fucking suspect. I’ve been doing this since you were in diapers, pissing your pants, and sucking your thumb. I don’t need your help.”
Alerting the other two to his presence, Mac said, “You’ve got Carl Franks in custody? That’s great.”
Dorsey raised two gray eyebrows, assessing Mac. “Well, aren’t we in a chipper mood this morning? You get laid last night, McAvoy?”
Jesus. Was it that obvious? “I got a few good hours of sleep for once,” he said.
Sean’s grin stretched from ear to ear. “You dog, you. You did get laid. Look at his face Dorsey, he’s blushing like a school girl.”
“Get off it,” Mac grumbled. He hadn’t considered what Sean would think of him sleeping with his sister, and he didn’t really want to share that information until Em gave the okay.
Sean frowned. “Well, I guess you couldn’t have gotten laid last night though since you were with Emily, right?”
Mac changed the subject. “Why did you tell Dorsey to lean harder on Franks? Is he saying he didn’t do it?”
Sean just frowned at Mac, so Dorsey answered. “He’s not talking. Says he wants a lawyer. We checked his prints in IAFIS against the ones you collected in Emily’s office, and it looks like a match.” IAFIS, the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Franks evidently had a criminal history if his prints were catalogued there. “They’re so backed up though, it’ll be months before the lab can officially confirm,” Dorsey added.
Mac nodded, now completely avoiding Sean’s scrutiny and turning his full attention to Dorsey. “I suppose his lawyer will say the prints in her office mean nothing, since he was a client who was frequently in that room.”
Dorsey’s head bobbed up and down, exposing his bald spot with each descent. “Exactly, but you got clear prints from the windowsill and the computer monitor, things he wouldn’t have been likely to touch as her client. The only file missing was his. Not very likely that someone else would have broken in for just his file. And he had the most to gain from that file disappearing.”
“Exactly. Let’s hope that’s enough.”
Dorsey grunted his agreement and gathered up his files. “I need to get back to it. You boys have a good day.” Turning his attention to Sean, with surprising sensitivity for an old codger, he said, “I’ll call you with any updates, but I think your sister’s in the clear now that Franks is in custody.”
“Thanks, Dorsey.”
The older man left, and Mac prepared to follow, but Sean’s voice stopped him. “I guess you’re off the hook now, huh? No need for Emily to stay at your place now that we’ve got Franks.”
“Right,” Mac said, unable to hide a note of disappointment from his voice. He’d miss having her around all the time, but he was looking forward to talking her into the occasional sleepover. Scratch that. Regular sleepovers. Not that he was willing to share those plans with Sean.
“Would it be a problem if there was?”
“I just don’t want to see her get hurt.”
“So, let me get this straight. A couple weeks ago, you tried to set me up with her, and now you’re worried that I’m going to hurt her? Isn’t that a little fucked up?”
Sean smiled. “I forgot. You don’t have sisters.” He gave Mac a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Listen brother, you know I love you—think you’re the best. And if it worked out between you and my sister, I’d be fucking thrilled.” His hand tightened on Mac’s shoulder. “But if you hurt her, I’m going to have to hurt you.”
“Been waiting your whole life to use that line, haven’t you?”
Sean’s lips didn’t even twitch, which pissed Mac off. Was this guy for real? Did he actually think Mac would ever, could ever, hurt Emily?
“I’m serious, man. Don’t fuck it up.”
“Got it,” Mac said through his teeth. He’d eat a bullet before he’d do anything to cause Em even a moment’s pain. And he didn’t need Sean to bully him into it. He’d already made that vow all on his own.
* * *
Emily tapped her foot under her desk. Mac was due any minute, and she dreaded having to explain things to him. She couldn’t stay at his apartment anymore. She’d have to risk going back to her place, but at the moment, that was the least of her concerns.
A quick rap at the door, and Emily’s stomach flipped. “Come on in.”
Mac strode in, looking incredibly sexy in jeans and his standard polo, freshly shaven and smiling. “Hello, beautiful. I come bearing gifts.” He placed a white paper sack on her desk and swiveled her chair to give her a hello kiss. She closed her eyes, savoring the kiss, knowing it might be their last.
He pulled away, pausing to study her features. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
“I—I have to talk to you about something.”
Talk to Me Page 20
