“Can’t we go out the windows?” she asked holding the comforter under her armpits.
“Yup. I’ll be right back.”
Crap. She had left the box of condoms in her bedside table. Not that there had been many left after their weekend. But although she had grabbed her gun, the condoms hadn’t even registered as a thing. She was such an idiot. Pierce was going to be mad at her forgetfulness.
He emerged from the bathroom as naked as the day he had been born. He was just as delicious as he had been before. More delicious, because now she knew how skillful those long fingers were, and how his thick cock felt in her pussy. Her mouth dried.
He flipped the bathroom light off. The pool of light from the bedside lamp might have been placed to call attention to his cock. He was already fully erect. Her stomach clenched with tingling anticipation and her pussy began to throb with remembered pleasure. It made her feel so desirable to see the visible evidence of his lust, when they had not even kissed.
He turned the covers back on his side. “I like to look at you,” he said. “And I like what I see. Shall I turn the light out?”
“Please?” Her voice sounded thin and dry.
He snapped it off. “I will have to look with my hands,” he warned. He tugged at the comforter and she let her death grip go.
In the darkness his chuckle sounded very deep and close and then his lips closed over her earlobe and nibbled gently. One hand traced the line of her collarbones and vanished. His mouth left her sensitive ear. Her skin felt cold and needy. Then his moist fingertip played in the hollow of her throat and slid down her gaping neckline to the plump slope of her breast.
She ought to be getting used to the cascade of sparks that followed Pierce’s touch, but every single time they took her senses by surprise and became more intense. It was as if in his arms she became a wanton hussy she did not recognize. Except that if she was wanton so was he. He was moaning as deeply as she was. His nipples were puckered just as tight as her own.
His mouth sought hers. She was expecting the unhurried nibbling along the outer edges of her mouth. The delicate suckling on the bow. The tender sweep of his tongue. His mouth pulled back as hers opened and he let her tongue wander in and glide alongside his tongue. With Pierce, kissing did not feel like a prelude to sex. It felt like sex. Intimate. Exciting. Something to savor and linger over.
She loved that he was such a patient lover. He touched her so tenderly. So slowly — as if her flesh was delicate and she was a fragile blossom. His seductive gentleness made her feel deeply feminine and loved. As she had not really felt since the doctors had told her she had miscarried her son and would never have another. Crap. She was falling in love with Pierce. And he was going to break her heart when he left her.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Pierce was not so foolish as to believe that he could make Diana fall in love with him by seducing her. But he could sure try. She was so responsive. Everything he did seemed to give her intense delight. Being around her made him randy at the best of times. In bed, her lightest caress sent his libido into overdrive. How had he gotten so lucky as to find a woman so lovely inside and out? He had to figure out a plan to keep her forever.
But her tongue was shyly sweeping the length of his and those sexy little noises she was making had turn into one of her hums of joy. A paean to sex — to love. Or perhaps it was just his lovesick phoenix that interpreted it like that. Abruptly he felt he couldn’t wait another moment to get rid of that ugly nightgown of hers.
“This is coming off,” he growled against her hair.
She nodded and lifted slightly so he could pull it over her head. He resisted the temptation to rip the wretched thing to pieces and contented himself with balling it up and flinging it in the direction of the wastebasket. It landed with a gentle whoosh. Perfect. He was totally looking forward to wrapping his luscious bride in the gowns he had purchased online.
He adored the resilient feel of her belly and thighs. Her skin was soft and fragrant with her arousal. He buried his face between the generous pillows of her breasts and inhaled deeply. Essence of Diana. He could die happy with that scent in his nostrils. She held his head in place, her fingers teasing the outer rim of his ear as he had teased hers. As if he needed his arousal goosed.
He was balanced on his elbows, trying to keep his cock from ramming into her sweet, curly delta. He had a feeling that Diana’s experiences had been limited to that asswipe she had married. In other words, that she was used to being used. He wanted her to be aching for him before he touched her pussy, let alone fucked her.
“You’re so beautiful,” he told her.
“You’re the beautiful one.”
“I’m covered in scars,” he objected. Which was true. A phoenix might regenerate, but not even phoenixes could obliterate all traces of misfortune — of life.
“Proof of a noble heart,” she whispered shyly.
He kissed her hard on her flattering mouth and then licked a path down her body from neck to belly to bush. Nothing had ever tasted as sweet as her moist flesh. He huffed open-mouthed into her curlies and her hands clutched his hair. He kept it Air Force short even on leave, so her fingers didn’t get much grip.
“You can’t,” she protested.
“No? Please, baby?”
“You can’t want to,” she said.
He came up on his knees, legs straddling hers. “Why not?” he demanded incredulously.
“Because.” His girl was one hot blush. Her voice was small and ashamed. “I smell.”
“Of woman. Like a sex goddess.”
She smiled a little. And her legs stayed clamped. But although her throat worked, no sound emerged.
“I won’t if you dislike it,” he promised. “I won’t do anything you don’t enjoy.”
“It’s dirty there,” she blurted.
“Could I be the judge of that?” he asked stroking her hips and the curve of her waist. “I don’t know who invited your ex in here. But I think I hear an echo of his voice. Did he tell you that you were dirty?”
“Yes.”
“The man was an idiot. May I kiss you, darling, here?” He petted her soft curls. “And here?” He slipped a finger between her thighs.
“I guess so.”
“Stop me if you don’t like it.” He buried his nose in her muff and started over.
This time her legs fell open and her folds parted under the soft lash of his tongue. She was damp with pussy juice and her petals dripped with her moisture. He lapped each delicate furrow and sucked the sweetness off, nibbling the edges tenderly. Her opening clenched and unclenched in an increasingly desperate rhythm that made him feel like a king. King of her pussy. Best not say that aloud.
He taunted the hood of her stiff clit with the gentlest scrape of teeth and soothed it with a swipe of a lax tongue.
“More,” she shrieked.
That was better. He took the hard little berry fully into his mouth, conscious that it might be too sensitized for sucking hard. He licked it like the smallest, sweetest ice cream cone. His beauty grappled with his hair and came. Juices spurted and he lapped those up too. Her sex was open to him. His phoenix vision could see it was every shade of deepest crimson and hottest purple, fringed with black and pulsing with release.
Pierce ignored his own urgency. Diana needed to feel her full sensuality first. And he knew a trick that most women loved. If there had ever been a reason for his former dalliances, knowing how to pleasure his mate had to be it.
He settled beside her and swung her on top of him so he could caress her from nape to coccyx. He lingered on every vertebra and let her savor the rhythmic waves of her release as he slowly moved over her skin with slow, deep strokes. She was so enervated her murmurs were just an inarticulate protest.
“Let me,” he said. “Just enjoy the feeling.” He stroked delicately down her spine and stopped to trace the knobs beneath the skin. “Feel how your climax tapers off and comes back in pulses?”
�
��How did you do that?” she asked relaxing completely on his granite hard body.
She felt boneless to him. He felt ready to explode. But this torment was worth it to teach her that her body was meant for giving and receiving delight. “You always have those aftershocks,” he said. “I only wanted you to feel them.”
“Huh.”
He kept up his gentle massage until her furious pulse settled and her breathing evened out. He ached for her. But it felt good to have her soft weight pressing him into the mattress. He wriggled the comforter up over her shoulders and let himself fall asleep with his best girl purring on his chest.
* * *
Steve Holden looked between his two operatives. Ames and Gardiner lounged in the chairs in front of his desk, feral smiles on their seamed faces. Two grizzled cats with hard gold eyes. “Want to tell me why you two are not halfway to Window Rock?” he asked conversationally.
“We went over the dossier one more time, Bear One, preliminary to leaving,” Gardiner said placing hands like snowshoes on his knees and leaning forward. Like Ames his left ring finger was circled by an elaborate tattoo instead of a ring. “We noticed something. We decided to work on it before we headed to Arizona.”
Steve took another look at the report in front of him. He nodded. Ames and Gardiner were partners in every sense of the word. Wherever one went, so did the other. “We should have noticed this before,” he said. “Do you think it’s diagnostic?”
Ames yawned like the big mountain cat he was. “Oh, yeah. We’ve been looking at the victims all wrong,” he said. “Trying to figure out what made the subject pick them. How about if someone else is doing the picking?”
“I see what you mean,” Steve said. “Twenty-two women. What are the odds that their partners were all in prison at the times of their attack?”
“Slim to none,” said Ames decisively. “Could be a coincidence if half had husbands doing time. All twenty-two? Couple of chances in several billion. And I didn’t bother to calculate the odds that all the men would have passed through Florence Federal at some point.”
“If we’re guessing correctly,” Holden said, “This is about revenge. Sick and twisted revenge.”
“Yup. Does it change anything about our mission?” Gardiner asked, his lynx eyes dancing. Gardiner loved the hunt almost as much as he loved Ames.
“Not really,” Holden said. “Your task is still to permanently neutralize Venom.”
“Yes, sir. We’ll do our best.” Gardiner and Ames stood up and stalked out of the office with feline grace.
* * *
The closer they got to Window Rock the antsier Diana got. She had woken feeling the golden glow from the night before. She and Pierce had enjoyed each other all over again. But now that the city limits were in view, she felt her belly cramp with fear.
“It’s okay. I won’t let that dirtbag hurt you,” Pierce said.
“Are you reading my mind?”
“Not really. You tensed up. And dirtbag is on my mind too. I want to check out your car in case he decided to play another little prank on you. I don’t want you stranded without gas or with slashed tires.”
“Thank you.”
“No trouble at all.”
“Except it is. You’ve disrupted your whole life for me.”
He chuckled. “I’ve waited thirty-four years for someone like you to disrupt my life. Not that I won’t be happier when this pervert is dealt with. But we’ll get him — never fear.”
“Who’s we?” she asked.
“Guys who work the tough cases and take down the bad guys the cops can’t handle. The police are great at catching ordinary crooks. But the psychopaths who specialize in stranger crimes are tough. Even the FBI has a hard time with those ones.”
“What makes you guys different?”
He shrugged. And his jaw clamped. Weird. But she knew when a man had decided to go mute. Her heart sank. They turned into her apartment building lot. At 7:00 a.m. it was mostly still full. Her little red hatchback was parked as usual between Carmody Jensen’s blue sedan and Miles Sycamore’s truck. Pierce pulled in behind her car and got out.
Diana didn’t wait for him to come around to her door. She hopped out and fumbled for her key fob in her purse. Pierce opened the passenger door while she was still retrieving it. Cripes.
“Pierce,” she held up her keys. “Why was my car unlocked?”
“You didn’t press the button?”
“Nope.”
Pierce waved her back. He waited until she had retreated a half a dozen paces before he stuck his head in the car with his hands behind his back. When he stood back up, he looked outraged. “Where is your spare key?” he demanded.
“In the drawer of the bedroom.”
“Take a look at this first, we’re going to see if they are still there.”
On the driver’s seat was a rolled up bright red spandex garment. Diana recognized it as one of her sports bras curled up from being removed when it was damp and sweaty. It was Saturday’s bra which she had placed in her washing machine with the rest of her gym clothes. It should have been in the dryer with the rest of yesterday’s laundry. She tasted bile. Pierce’s arms closed around her shoulders.
“Steady,” he said. “It’s going to be okay.”
Which was a lie. But a comfort anyway.
“Let’s go look for those keys. No, leave that there. I want the other guys to see it in situ.”
Obediently she went upstairs to her apartment.
“Remember last night, one of the cops asked if anything was missing,” he said. “You said no. Did you look?”
“Just for my passport and checkbook. I bank online, but I still have a checkbook.” Why was she babbling?
“Right. Now you are going to open every drawer. Look inside every box, hamper and on every shelf. If that bastard has taken so much as a paper clip you tell me. Okay?”
“Okay.” She opened her door.
“Are there spare keys to these locks?” he asked.
“Should be with my spare car keys,” she said.
“Let’s take a look.”
The keys to the apartment and her storage locker were gone. So were the spare set of car keys. A goose ran over her grave. Pierce’s big hand rubbed comfortingly in the small of her back.
“We’ll change your locks today. I’ll get on that ASAP. You’ll need to tell your building manager about the missing keys. And the cops.” Pierce pulled out his cell and began to take notes.
“Where did these come from?” Diana looked distastefully at three plastic wrapped condoms she had found lying loose between two sewing magazines in the second drawer of one of the bedside tables.
Pierce looked over her shoulder. “I left mine in their box in the other table. Top drawer,” he said.
Diana rounded the bed and opened that drawer. The box of condoms sat beside a tube of KY, nestled up against a small intimate appliance and a shallow box of tissues.
“Anything missing?” Pierce asked.
“No. That creep put those rubbers in my drawer.”
“I think so.”
“Should we call the cops?” she asked.
Pierce pulled out his cell. “Yup. They did say we should report if we found anything missing.” He dialed the number on a business card and spoke briefly. “Someone will be by. Better do a systematic search of your bedroom. Do you have disposable gloves?”
“In my first aid kit.”
“Grab me a pair too, please.”
Officer Paloma was less than impressed by their list of missing items. “Are you sure about the knife? Why didn’t you miss it yesterday?”
“The boning knife was a gift last Christmas from my sister. I have a photo on my laptop of me passing it around after I unwrapped it. And I didn’t miss it, because I didn’t come back into the kitchen after you left,” Diana explained. “I looked at Mrs. Benoy’s feet and Pierce threw out the rotting meat.”
“Hmm.” Officer Paloma was noncommittal. “You sur
e you didn’t stash those condoms and forget about them?”
“I’m sure.” Diana had no intention of telling Helen Paloma that she had not used rubbers since she had divorced Cody — that until Pierce had started to share her bed, she hadn’t needed any. Mr. Vibe. could be trusted. Although she was not putting her vibrator inside herself if he had been touching it. In fact, she was going to have to move. Just the thought depressed her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ames and Gardiner were waiting for him in the gym parking lot. They looked like what they were. Two hardened veterans who had survived the unspeakable and lived to shut up about it. Pierce didn’t know either man. But he sure as hell knew men like them. Men you could trust to hell and back.
“You’re late,” Ames said. He was a cougar.
“Yeah. Sorry,” Pierce said. “The subject left a souvenir in Diana’s car. We had to call the cops.”
“What sort of a souvenir?” Gardiner asked. Appropriately enough, the lynx’s graying eyebrows were tufted like a lynx’s ears.
“He took a bra out of her washing machine,” Pierce said. “Left it on the front seat. Turns out he helped himself to her keys — car and apartment both.”
“And she didn’t notice this because?” asked Ames softly.
“Because she was rattled. The stuff in her apartment was overkill. Like Venom had a million ideas and had to use them all. Take her keys. Take a bra. Take a knife. Open the blinds. Leave meat out of the fridge.”
“Thought the cops didn’t believe Miss Diana,” Gardiner pointed out.
“They didn’t,” Pierce confirmed.
“Then it wasn’t overkill,” Gardiner said grimly. “Bastard probably feels cleverer than God. Wonders how far he has to go before the cops will credit a woman with having enough brains to know how she keeps house.”
“That’s so. How about we take a look at Miss Diana’s apartment?” suggested Ames.
So much for Pierce’s workout. Not that Diana wasn’t more important any day. But his routines had been standing between Pierce and the black hole for so long, that skipping them felt dangerous. Not that he said so. The other men agreed to follow him back to Diana’s.
Phoenix Ablaze (BBW / Phoenix Shifter Romance) (Alpha Phoenix Book 1) Page 11
