by Libby Rice
Seconds ticked by. Finally, he ground out, “Anna Chamber bled out on the scarred linoleum of a homeless shelter.” His attention snapped to Scarlet, now propped against the cupboard with her knees raised against her chest. “This is what I meant by Gerard having a message for you. As graphic as these are, we knew about Anna. This can’t touch you.”
But Gerard could. “Now I see his plans for me.”
Ethan tried to shove the pictures into the envelope, but they hit something, jamming it further toward the bottom of the pocket. He reached in and pulled out a folded piece of stationary. A note?
Cold seeped through every exposed pore on her body. In seconds, her limbs shook, and even though she forced a shallow pant, it didn’t feel like oxygen traveled to her brain.
“From him?” She heard the question, knew she’d asked it, but suddenly she didn’t care. The gruesome scene played out in another life and time, someone else’s kitchen. From far away she heard Ethan unfold the paper and press the crease from its middle.
“No.” The savage syllable ripped from his chest, and her mind registered that the message had been the game-changing element of her anti-care package.
“No?” she echoed faintly.
Her vision tapered to bright pinpricks of light through which Ethan moved like the moon in a solar eclipse. Close now, he reached out and gently felt along her neck with cool fingertips. “That’s my girl. Take a breath, slow and easy.”
Pervasive weakness unfurled, sapping her energy. She couldn’t nod.
“I’m going to pick you up. Is that all right?”
She tried to say “yes,” but her mouth refused, totally slack.
The floor fell away, only to be swiftly replaced with the soft pillows of her couch. A throw swept along her legs.
Ethan’s hand settled in the center of her chest, a radiant heater against the ice block of her torso. “Keep at it, Scarlet. In and out, like clockwork. Focus on something good. When this is over, think beach. Nothing but Mai Tais, that waterfront yoga you chicks dig, and couples massages for a month.”
This time she managed a small head jerk to let him know she was with him. There was an idea. Sun and sand, yes. Mai Tais and massage. And, if I make it, all the sex I’ve been stupid enough to turn down.
The weight of his hand lifted, and she heard him on the phone. Police. Of course. The night Gerard had approached on her steps he hadn’t made an overt threat. Mailing pictures of a mutilated teenager took care of that formality. Maybe now she’d get a little love from the cops.
Out of nowhere, Ethan coaxed, “Your lips are blue. Drink this. All of it.” He held a mug to her mouth and tipped it back until sweet warmth flowed over her tongue.
“As soon as you feel steady, we’ll go down to the station. We’re not leaving without a personal police shadow. Either that, or it’s a security company.” When she made a noise in the back of her throat, he snarled. “You just received a package containing ten photographs of a dead child. I don’t give a fu—”
He froze, then started again, calmer, “I don’t care about your money hang-ups. You will be safe.”
With a frantic push, her voice finally debuted. “It’s not that. Guards are fine.” Wanted. “But I’ll pay for them if it comes to that.” The earrings had left her with cash on hand, and her job had taken an amazing turn for the better.
Ethan had done that.
“Don’t make this about money.” His jaw snapped shut with an ominous crack, and he shot up from the couch, stalking toward the kitchen table. Halfway there, he stopped. “Whatever you need, Scarlet. If you have adequate protection, I’ll… deal.” The concession came in fits and starts and ended on a tortured groan over his shoulder.
Jingling and slamming roared out of her kitchen. Finally, he came into view with a pair of tongs and a Ziploc bag. Using the tongs, he slid the note into the protective plastic, careful not to touch any more of it than he already had.
Bag in hand, he returned to her side on the couch. “How do you feel?”
She took in the tendons that stood in stark relief against his throat and the way his free hand fisted and released. His calm and rational routine needed work.
“Better,” she lied. When he didn’t budge, she reached out, fluttering her fingers. “Let me have it, Ethan. I’m steady.”
“Not for long.” He laid the bagged note in her lap. “Scarlet, I’m sorry.”
The message was short and on her father’s stationary. She would forever wonder how anything so chilling could look so innocuous.
She read it once, then again. Ten years ago, her father had stood by her hospital bed, unmoved. Because he hadn’t been surprised.
Mr. Chamber,
The pictures of your sister sadden me. Really, they do. But to threaten my daughter? It only makes me thankful I don’t suffer the delusional emotional entanglements that plague you. Scarlet is smarter than you are. So am I.
Good luck,
Tripp Leore
Sickness slithered in her stomach. She’d know her dad’s strong, rigid handwriting anywhere. As usual, he’d printed the date neatly along the top, right-hand corner. Her father had written Gerard Chamber mere days before her attack outside the fight club.
All the twists and turns of the truth hit her fully formed. A hundred bullets at once. “I take it back. Tripp Leore bribed George Rosono for that permit,” she supplied in a deadened tone. “The Cora shouldn’t exist.”
The cryptic message explained everything. Gerard had recognized her in Rancor as the daughter of his nemesis. He’d issued a graphic threat against her life, looking for… what? An admission of guilt? Money? An apology? Instead, her father had wished him luck.
She hadn’t realized it was possible to feel one’s blood pressure nose-dive. Wished him luck. To do anything else would have opened an investigation capable of blowing the lid off the bribes she no longer questioned.
Her father had known about Gerard all along. How relieved he must have been when she’d uttered Ethan’s name from that hospital bed. The stars had aligned, and he’d seized the chance to bury Gerard’s suspicions, afraid they’d surface at trial and sink him and his schemes along with the man who’d tried to kill her.
“We needed closure,” he’d said by way of explanation. Yes, Dad, you certainly did.
Plain and simple, her father had placed the highest premium on his liberty. He needn’t have worried. Legal retribution had never been Gerard’s game.
Her gaze flew to Ethan’s. Never mind that Tripp’s silence before the attack had nearly killed her. His silence afterward had allowed the wrong man to go to prison. “He knew you were innocent the whole time.”
“Yes.” His tug pulled the plastic-wrapped note from between her fingers, and suddenly, he braced his hands on either side of her ribcage, his big body bristling above, daring her to take the blame. The warmth of his breath washed over her temple when he leaned in close. “And I don’t fucking care.”
Horror and shame cleaved into her chest. Copies of those tragic pictures of Anna Chamber probably rotted in her father’s safe. If anyone could have helped Ethan from the beginning, it had been Tripp Leore. But what was letting one nobody take the fall for another? Speaking up would have provoked too many questions. New York might have stumbled upon the truth of its prodigy.
“I’m sorry,” she breathed. “For all of it.”
Other than a slight undulation across his tan throat, he could have been a statue. “Don’t, Scarlet. Don’t even think about apologizing for a man who almost got you killed. What he did to me pales—and I mean glows in the dark—in comparison to his crimes against you.”
“Why didn’t Gerard pipe up at his trial? Call attention to the permitting and payoff issues he and his mother suspected?” Either way, Gerard had been destined for a cell, but he could have taken her dad down with him.
“Because he never wanted to see your dad behind bars. He wanted—wants—a different kind of revenge.”
To see me
dead.
Ethan gradually eased away, settling next to her hip. “Publicizing his real motive would have complicated his end game. As it was, he bamboozled the parole board, secured his release, and walked right up to you on the street within days of clearing the prison gates. That wouldn’t have been possible had he come clean.”
Shock took a backseat to logic. Her jaw slackened incrementally when the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. “He’s making it known now because he doesn’t think there’s anything we can do to stop him. He relishes my terror.”
Ethan took both of her cheeks between his palms. “We will stop him.”
Tripp Leore rarely paid compliments. Yet his letter to Gerard had boasted of her intelligence, as though he believed—or at least wanted to believe—her mighty intellect would save her from the clutches of a madman who thought nothing of using the bloodied images of his dead sister as a scare tactic.
“My dad got it wrong. Gerard’s outsmarting me as we speak.”
The light pressure on her jaw and cheek bones didn’t ease. “No. That was the only thing your dad got right.”
Chapter 27
Scarlet shattered the silence of the car. “Bloomingdales? Yeah?”
Ethan shook his head to clear out the fog, certain he hadn’t heard right. “Have you lost your mind?” The police station faded into the cityscape, and Ethan eyed Scarlet’s NYPD escort in the rear-view mirror.
“You’ll be there.” She gestured to their tail with a hitchhikers thumb toward the trunk. “He’ll be there.”
“The guy trying to kill you will come along,” Ethan added helpfully. “It’ll be a party.”
“I can’t stand this. I need something… A handbag that spurs positive thinking. Nothing red, like blood.”
“A bag. We’re leaving the precinct, a place we’ve spent the last four hours because you have an exceedingly violent and determined stalker, and you want a purse. Not red, of-fucking-course.”
Officer Save-a-Scarlet would trail them both and post himself within whatever building she entered. The extra hand only slightly relieved Ethan’s rampant mind fuck. Seeing those photos of Anna Chamber—really grasping Scarlet’s reality and the symbolic demonstration of how little control he had over the situation—had physically hurt.
Daddy’s added bonus hadn’t helped. The statute of limitations had run on any illegal activity her father had undertaken fifteen years ago, but the evidence they’d collected was sufficient to prompt an investigation into Tripp Leore’s more recent business activities.
If legal battles didn’t take him down, the resulting public-relations nightmare would. Whatever remained standing after the press spit him out? That could fall victim to a little private entrapment. Let Leore rot in a cell next to the one Chamber would soon return to. See how well the two got along at meals.
“Fine,” she replied in what he now recognized as a classically-deceptive surrender. Lovely little liar. “But look at this. It’s all ragged.” She held up a pristine bag with opposing, inverted “F’s” on its oversized buckle. He’d shopped for too many one-month anniversaries not to recognize a Fendi. In red. “I put those pictures in here, Ethan,” she cajoled. “I can’t use it.”
Do not turn around. Do not give in. “I know you’ve heard of online shopping. Today’s your day to excel at the one-click-and-its-yours.”
“Oh, yesss. Mine.” With an expression of concentration, she tapped her temple and lowered her voice suspiciously. “You always were a thinker, you know. But it’s not the same release, and it doesn’t fulfill the same desire.”
Release. Fulfill. Desire. He slowed the car and looked her over. That delicious mouth sounded serious, but a faint tinge of pink flooded her cheeks when she returned the perusal. Starting at his thighs beneath the steering wheel, she worked him over in an expressive visual examination. Around mid-chest, he jerked his attention back to the road when a horn blasted them through an intersection.
Jaw clenched, he drove on, eyes forward.
“Retail therapy,” she cooed, low and sensuous, “is a great pleasure. Ever heard of it?”
The passenger seat reclined until she spread out next to him like a woman buffet. He swore he heard her mumble, “Must have with all those mercenaries you’ve dated.” Then an afterthought, “Only the real thing will do.”
Oh yes, real shopping. Like the demonstration she’d provided in Copenhagen. He’d gotten on a first-name basis with every high heel in her collection, and the cherry-red numbers she’d worn that last day had been a new addition. A well-loved one if her adoration on the way to the airport had been any indication.
Flexing her feet this way and that. Petting them instead of him.
He pulled into her parking space at the Cora, punctuating his “hell no” with a hard stop. “Not happening. Overnight the bag. My treat.” Thinking of how touchy she remained about money, he added, “The shipping, that is.”
His arm spasmed in her unexpected grip, which slid upward over his shoulder and down between his pecs. She had no idea what kind of bear she baited.
“Please,” she begged. And she wasn’t asking for the goddamn handbag.
After waiting and wanting and letting her set the pace, she spoke to him of desire? She knew nothing of it. Need, elemental and raw, stretched tight beneath his skin. Worry ate at him. Those sickening pictures, her ridiculous requests… Something in him stretched and—
Snapped.
Take. Control. This time her thank-you would be worth it.
With a low curse, he bit out, “Upstairs. Now.”
She extracted herself from the car and beat him to the elevator. On the ascent, she met his unbreakable stare floor after floor. They stumbled out into the hall, and after two tries, she keyed her apartment code correctly, and they wrenched into her entryway.
“Release is it?” He yanked her to him and pressed her back against the wall, trapping her dainty wrists overhead with a single hand.
“Yes,” she squeaked, licking her lips.
Face-to-face, he memorized her. Blond hair streamed in disarray over slim shoulders. Wide, light eyes tracked him, giving both nothing and everything away. Against his chest, her breasts heaved and, with each retreat, he pressed closer, prepared to take all she offered. “So beautiful,” he rasped. “You’ve haunted me.”
If anything ever happened to you…
Her teeth clamped around the flesh at his collarbone, releasing the low groan trapped in his chest. Unable to wait, he reached down and rucked her skirt upward, hitching it around her waist. Ripping at his jeans, he managed the belt, button, and zipper one-handed, pulling his erection free.
He kicked her legs wide, feeling the head of his cock straining toward the hot shelter between her thighs, ready to plunge inside and take her furiously. Without mercy.
A viscous yank cleared her panties from his path. Dimly, he let his good side intrude long enough to squeeze her wrists. Once she focused, he growled, “Don’t tell me no. I can’t fucking stand it.” And she’d asked for it, in so many ways.
“Never no, Ethan.” Hoarse cries escaped her mouth. His favorite. They pulled him to her in subconscious invitation.
“Exactly.” He lifted her against the wall and centered himself, then pushed inside with all his strength.
A surprised gasp sounded against the bare floors and high ceilings.
His hips stilled. “No, Scarlet. Jesus, I was too rough.” Panic and regret welled from a hidden reserve he rarely tapped. Had he hurt her? “Sweetheart, let me—”
“’Ssss all right.” Her purr slurred deliciously, and her inner muscles clamped around his shaft when she curled her legs around him. Looking at her face, he saw her gaze darken, burning with lust.
He fought the urge to pull back, and then slam in too hard. “I want this”—you—“but only if you’re with me.”
“’Mmm there. Ethan, move.”
In answer, he shuddered and stirred himself inside her, dying in the heat, the wetness.
Gently at first—he still worried his entrance had caused pain—and then with increasing force. His body pressed against her, muscles tight beneath his clothes.
The ridges of sinew that curved over his hips pressed her legs wider, more open to him with each rock. Impossibly, he surged deeper.
“Need to feel you come.” Ditching his grip on her wrists, he moved his hand low on her belly to thumb her clitoris.
Slender arms wound around his neck, and with the first pass through her slick folds, he felt her nails bite into his nape. The sting shocked him, and he could scarcely grate in amazement, “Mark me. I fucking love it.”
Her head fell back, and he leaned in to lick at her throat, never slowing the pitiless thrusts. A responsive shiver shimmied along his cock. When her face swiveled upright again, his breath caught, and his mind emptied. She didn’t look at him with acquiescence, not even with simple desire.
Finally, Scarlet Leore had fallen in love.
******
She braced her shoulders against the wall and reveled in every inch Ethan gave her. The day had been a nightmarish culmination of the last horrible weeks. To have him deep, clearly at the edge of his control, smoothed the rough edges. She’d let them go—Gerard Chamber and Tripp Leore, the cops and parole officers, the job and the money—and welcomed Ethan in.
Each plunge grew more powerful, making her scream in surprised pleasure. His wildness, the utter desperation, blasted through her secret dreams.
One strong hand gripped her ass, pinning her in place, while the other swept back and forth through her wetness. When he didn’t kiss or lick her skin, his lips parted on a ragged grimace. Not once had his eyes closed. He zeroed in on her with infinite focus, missing nothing.
Ethan had totally lost it, yet he’d never controlled her pleasure to such a degree. Every move issued a fierce demand she couldn’t deny. And didn’t want to.
As her climax crackled at the base of her spine, he gritted, “Now,” and ground himself against her in persistent pulses. She felt the hot splash of semen inside and cried his name, again and again, before she collapsed against him.
