by Sarina Bowen
She sighs, and I feel like the worst traitor. The first thing I did after leaving the coffee shop was to send the Facebook photo link to Nelligan so he could chase it down. I assume he took one look and filled out an affidavit for a search warrant. That’s what I would have done.
“Have you heard from Rayanne?” I ask carefully.
“Yes. She’s terrified. She wanted lake photos of some kind of handoff. But it didn’t happen. She says Sparks sent her on a fishing expedition. And now he may be trying to kill her.”
Good thing she can’t see me flinch. Because Sparks is a nasty piece of work, and totally capable of murdering his business partner’s kid. “Do you know where she is.”
“She wouldn’t say,” Skye says immediately.
“Honey, if she’d just come in and talk to me, we could sort the whole thing out.”
“I’m scared for her,” Skye whispers.
“Me too. But in the meantime, I’m doing everything I can to lock up Gage and Sparks. If you got Rayanne to talk to me this could all be over sooner.”
“Okay.”
“Stay cool, Skyescraper.” I know she hates that nickname, but I use it when I need to prevent myself from turning into a pile of mush. “I’ll be hours here, okay? Catching bad guys is a lot of work.”
“Be careful,” she says, and I grin.
“I will. Go amuse yourself with something besides worrying about Rayanne.”
We hang up, and I turn back to my computer with a grimace. It’s time to write up a new investigative plan for one John Oscar Sparks.
I only pause in my work when my sister texts me.
Zara: Skye and I are going shopping in Burlington. She wants to pick up a few things because she didn’t intend to stay this long.
Me: Reallllly. Girls’ day out? That’s nice.
Zara: Right? Either she’s figured out I’m not a horrible teenager anymore. Or she’s just so bored that my brand of evil sounds better than sitting around waiting for your ugly mug.
Me: You kids have fun.
Zara: I’m going to get her drunk for old time’s sake.
Me: Don’t you dare!
Zara: **Insert evil laughter**
Me: Bye, bitch.
Zara: Bye, ugly.
Some things never change.
I don’t get home until eight o’clock that evening, and I don’t call first, either, because I was driving around the county checking out the known haunts of Gage and Sparks.
But I didn’t find them.
When I walk into my apartment, I’m a little stunned. In the first place, it smells good. There’s a whiff of curry in the air, and the smell of something meaty. “Wow,” I say, sniffing the air as I drop my jacket onto the coat tree.
Skye turns around, a spatula in her hand. “Hi. I cooked. Sorry. I needed something to do with my hands. And I needed comfort food.”
I cross the room toward her, putting my gun away in the cabinet over the refrigerator. As I come closer, I notice a few things. One—Skye looks amazing in my kitchen. I’ll keep that thought to myself because it might come out sounding sexist. But nobody ever cooks for me except my mom on Sundays. I lead a bachelor lifestyle of takeout food and sad microwaved leftovers.
The second thing I notice is how Skye is dressed—in a new pair of dark jeans that make her legs look a hundred miles long and a tight little V-neck T-shirt that makes me want to investigate that V of skin with my tongue.
And—I’m ashamed to say that this final detail brings out my inner caveman—she’s wearing one of my flannel shirts over the whole ensemble. That’s almost more than I can take, honestly. I’m seconds away from suggesting that she strip down to only that shirt and come immediately to bed with me.
“Hi, honey,” I say instead, because she’s watching me with big eyes. “If I wanted to kiss you, would you stop brandishing that spoon?”
She looks at the implement in her hand like she’s never seen it before. Then she sets it on the counter. I back her up against that counter and find her mouth with mine. It’s just one kiss, but I make it a good one. She smells like dinner and tastes like heaven.
I make myself pull back, because I need a shower after a long day at work, and I’m not ready to unleash my inner caveman on my girl. “I love that you cooked,” I say, my voice raspy.
“It’s a curried lamb stew,” she says shyly as her eyelashes dip.
I let out a little groan of happiness. “You cook a lot?” I’m still boxing her in against the counter, because getting close to Skye is one of my two life goals. The other one is seeing Jimmy Gage go to jail.
“On the weekends,” she says softly. I’m happy to note that she looks as distracted as I feel. “Aunt Jenny and I used to cook together. It saves money.”
“How is Aunt Jenny, anyway?” I ask.
“She’s good. She moved to Florida a year ago. I’ve been down there only twice to see her, and just for the weekend. I still live in her apartment, though. It’s rent-stabilized.”
I run out of small talk and just watch her at close range. She looks like she wants to kiss me again. “Stop that,” she says instead.
“Stop what?” I move back an inch or two, since I probably smell like too many hours in an unmarked vehicle.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
Her cheeks get pink and she doesn’t answer.
“You mean, like I want to strip off your new clothes and fuck you on the kitchen counter? I don’t know if I can stop. I want you no matter what room we’re in.”
“Dinner’s ready,” she says, blinking at me. “I already took half of it upstairs to May and Alec. But I was waiting for you to eat.”
“Ah. Well we’d better enjoy it, then.”
She blinks one more time. “Move your extra-large, extra-hot self out of the way so I can serve up the rice.”
“Yes ma’am.”
But now I’m thinking about sex. So even as we sit down at my kitchen table with a freshly opened bottle of wine and a dish of rice and lamb stew, I’m turned on. “Any new word from Rayanne?” I ask to get my mind out of the gutter. “Any idea where she went?”
Skye shakes her head. “She said she was making a point not to tell me. So I wouldn’t be in the middle of it.”
“Smart girl. So you went shopping in Burlington? How was that?” I wonder if Zara was able to charm her.
“Well,” Skye sets her spoon down. “Your sister is being ridiculously nice to me. Like really accommodating.”
“That’s good, right?” I ask, spooning up a giant bite. “My God, this is amazing. I’m going to eat an embarrassing amount of this.”
Skye gives me a smile. “Thank you.”
“What else did you do today besides shop?”
“My bossy producer called like four times because he’s shorthanded and regretting his decision to send me away for two weeks.” She rolls her pretty eyes.
“Sounds like a fun guy.”
“He’s a bully. And I made the mistake of telling him I was in Burlington. So he called back with the address of an affiliate station and asked me to just ‘swing by…’”—she makes her fingers into air quotes—“…to edit a story.”
“And you told him to fuck off, right?”
“No.” She picks up her wine glass and takes a healthy swig. “I know I should have, but my job security seems shaky right now. So I went to the affiliate and apologized profusely. They let me use a producers’ station and I wrote the danged story.”
“Wrote it? Or edited it.” I don’t know how the news works. Is that the same thing?
Skye snorts. “They refer to it as editing, but I wrote the piece. Someone else will get credit. But I took their interview footage, wrote the script, emailed it back and it will run tonight.”
“What would they do without you?” I wonder aloud.
“Write their own stories?” Skye guesses. “That’s hard to picture. I have a coveted job in TV, but most days I think my life would
be improved if I sold mascara at Sephora. At least I’d get an employee discount for my luxury cosmetics habit.”
Laughing, I gulp my wine. Everything is bliss. There’s good food, and Skye is telling me what’s on her mind. There are people who would mock me for saying I fell for Skye in one afternoon when I was eighteen. But that one afternoon was followed by hundreds of hours of talking in the woods.
I’ve missed her so much. I love her wry view of the world, her practical nature, and the soft glances she gives me when she thinks I’m not looking. After dinner I’m going to show her exactly how much I missed her all day.
But first, more food. “How did you pick journalism, anyway?”
“Ah.” She gives me a cheeky smile. “To change the world, of course. Ask me how that’s going.”
“How should it be going?” I ask instead. “What did you want to have happen?”
“Well, Aunt Jenny is a widow,” she says, taking a dainty bite. “Her husband…”
“Fell down an elevator shaft,” I supply.
Skye’s eyes widen. “Good memory.”
As if I could forget. “I remember every single thing you ever confided in me.”
She gives me one of those soft looks that I like so much. “Well, Jenny spent years trying to get the city to acknowledge that his death in that building was needless, but she didn’t get anywhere. And then the first year I lived with her we got a call from a guy at the New York Times. He was doing a piece about elevator deaths. So Jenny gave him an interview. And that guy published a big exposé about fraudulent elevator inspections. Heads rolled, and things changed.” She shrugs. “I wanted to do that, too—to call out wrongs and make people listen.”
I set my spoon down and sit with that a second. “Like dirty cops who harass sixteen-year-old girls?”
“Maybe,” she says quietly. “I never really thought of it that way.”
“I’m a cop. You’re a journalist.” I spoon up another chunk of spicy, salty lamb. “Maybe we’re both still fighting a really old war.”
“Well, that’s depressing,” she says, sipping her wine.
“No, it isn’t.” I shake my head. “Doing good work is never wrong. Although sitting here with you right now is even better revenge.”
She smiles into her wine glass.
“Finish your meal,” I tell her. “We have some business to attend to.”
“Business?”
“Naked business.”
Her cheeks pink up, but she finishes her stew. And when she eventually rises to clear the table, I stop her. “I’ll clean up. You already did plenty.” I stand up, too, but I leave the dishes on the table. “But the cleanup starts with me.”
“What?”
“I need a shower.”
“Okay, go ahead?”
“Not alone. I want company.”
Her eyes flare. “In the shower?”
“Yes, miss. There’s plenty of room for two in there. Pin up your hair or whatever and follow me. While I’m young, okay?” I beckon to her.
She gives me a pointed look. “What if I don’t need a shower?”
“You do, honey. You just don’t know it yet. Now let’s go. I need help washing my back.”
Skye rolls her eyes at this thin excuse.
“Let’s go. We don’t want to waste hot water.” I go into the bathroom and turn on the faucet. Then I start to strip.
It isn’t until I’m naked that she peeks around the corner. “I’ve never showered with anyone else before.”
This makes me irrationally happy. “So you’re a shower-sex virgin? Excellent. Come here.” I remove my own flannel shirt from her shoulders and toss it out of the room. And then I undo the button on her tight jeans.
She bats my hands away. “I can unzip myself, you know.”
“Yeah? Then you take care of that. I need something from the bedroom.”
I make a quick trip to the bedside table for a condom, which I deposit on the sink console. Skye is already in the shower, and when I open the door, it’s like all my teenage fantasies come to life. Skye is standing under the spray, the water running down her breasts as she tips her head back.
Jesus H. Christ. I’m dead. But my cock definitely isn’t. One look at water droplets on Skye’s nipples and I’m insta-hard.
Skye notices, too. I see her eyes widen, and then her shy gaze lifts to meet mine. “Let’s see this back of yours that needs washing.”
I turn around just to keep up the ruse, and I’m rewarded by soap-slicked hands running across my heated skin. “That’s amazing, honey. Don’t miss any spots.”
She gives a little snort and keeps washing me. I lift my arms and tip my head in either direction so that she’ll touch me everywhere. “Now the front,” I tease, turning around, my eager cock pointing right at her.
I hold her gaze as those slick hands work their way down my body. The only sound is the thrum of the water and my own pulse in my ears as she comes closer to touching me where I need her. “Go on,” I rasp. “Want you.”
Her eyes darken as her smooth, soapy hand encircles my shaft. I let out a groan of desire, and her breathing quickens.
I shamelessly reach for her breasts. They’re slippery in my hands. She makes a happy sound, and there’s no longer any reason to pretend that this is a business visit to the shower. I push her up against the tile and kiss her neck. And I let my hand slide down her slick skin, until I find the juncture of her legs.
“Spread for me, honey.”
She sucks in a breath and adjusts her stance, parting her legs. Her pubic hair tickles my palm as I begin to tease the softest part of her. I bury my face in her neck and taste her skin with my tongue.
The water beats down on us and I have never felt more alive than I do right now. I’m no longer in a hurry. I don’t need this to be over. The limits of my hot-water tank aside, I have all the time in the world to kiss her skin and stoke her body with pleasure.
There is no better use of this night. Hell—there’s no better use of my life.
These are my thoughts as I kiss my way down her body and sink to my knees. I grasp one of her legs and lift her calf onto my shoulder. “Lean back, baby,” I murmur. “I’m going to make you feel good. Yeah—hold on like that.”
Her hands grasp my shoulder and my hair as I nose into the center of her. She breathes in hot gasps as my tongue finds her clit. My kisses are slow and teasing. And in between, I mutter every dirty, lovely word I know. “Give it to me,” I say. “Use me.”
I give her my tongue, flattened against her clit. Her hips buck and strain for more. I missed out on twelve years with my girl, and I don’t want to miss another second. My cock is painfully hard, but I could do this all night. Slowly, I slide a finger inside her for the first time.
Her response is a gasp and a moan. She grinds against my lips, and it’s perfect. “That’s it,” I rasp. “Spread your legs wider. That’s my dirty girl.”
And Skye freezes.
I gentle my stroke, kissing her thigh. But her body doesn’t ease. So I raise a hand to check the water temperature. It’s still fine. Then I peer upward at her, tilting my head to avoid a face full of water. “You okay?”
She nods jerkily. And yet I know there’s still something wrong. Skye removes her leg from my back and puts both feet on the floor. And when I get to my feet, I see that her eyes are red. She looks like a cowering animal.
“Hey,” I say in a voice that’s still rough with desire. I raise a hand to push the wet hair out of her face, and she actually flinches.
Oh, shit. I play back our last two minutes and try to figure out where I went wrong. Use me. Wider. That’s my dirty girl.
Now Skye is hugging herself and looking embarrassed. “Sorry,” she says as I shut off the water. “I just need a minute.”
So do I. My head is suddenly in a hundred places. Reaching out of the shower, I grab a towel and then wrap it around her. “I triggered you somehow, didn’t I?”
“Probably. I don’
t know.” She sighs. “Yes. It’s stupid.”
My pulse is pounding in my ears, but for a different reason now. “Was it ‘dirty girl’?”
She bites her lip and looks away.
Shit.
With shaking hands, I find a towel for myself and dry off enough so that I don’t drip water everywhere. Then I tie the towel around my waist and leave the bathroom. Pacing into the kitchen, I open the refrigerator and stare into it for no particular reason. But it’s that or put my fist through the wall.
Only one thought rings through my brain: I’m going to kill Gage. That motherfucker is a dead man.
Twenty-Seven
Skylar
That’s twice now.
I sink down on the edge of the bed, Ben’s towel wrapped tightly around me. And I wonder—how many times can I ruin sexytimes before he decides I’m not worth the trouble?
And I’m kidding myself if I say I don’t really care. I care way too much, and I always have. Even if I leave here in a couple of days, and never return, I’ll still care.
What have I done to myself?
Benito stalks into the bedroom with a pint glass of cold beer and a grumpy expression.
Oh man. “You’re mad, aren’t you?”
“Of course,” he says, setting the beer on the dresser. “I’m livid.” Then he kicks off his towel and I’m treated to a quick view of his muscular backside while he pulls on a pair of boxers. “But not at you,” he adds. “You get that, right?”
He turns to meet my gaze, and I just blink at him. Because of course he’s mad at me. Who else is there to be mad at?
“Skye, Jesus.” He brings a T-shirt and the beer glass around to the other side of the bed and sits down on it, stretching his long legs out. “Come here, would you?”
I turn to face the music.
“Here. This is for you.” I’m stunned as he drops the T-shirt over my head. “Put your arms through. There you go. Gotta cover you up a little so my brain works while I’m trying to talk to you. Now take a sip of this.” He hands me the pint glass.
I lift the glass, and as it approaches my nose I get a whiff of cider. “Is this Shipley cider?”
