For the life of him he couldn’t remember any such call or any laughing woman in his apartment save for his sister-in-law Barbara, who, when he’d told her what had happened with Alex, told him to man up and make things right with her. But by then it had been too late.
“There was no other woman, Alex.” In many ways there hadn’t ever been another woman, not one who gained more than a little piece of him, not even Sherry. Yes, she’d been needy, like Stevie said, but he’d done that to her, casting her in the position of constantly knocking on the door never to be let in. That’s why he’d never really found it in his heart to fault her for what she’d done.
It occurred to him that when it came to Alex, both of them had let their insecurities waylay them. He’d believed she’d never forgive him and she’d believed that any interest in her on his part ended with her father’s death. Then they’d each proved the other right, at least as appearances went. He could understand Alex’s behavior, as she’d been little more than a child; he’d been a grown man who should have known better.
But did any of that really matter now? He stroked his thumb over her cheek. Her eyes were, huge, luminous, and trained on him. He had no idea what she was thinking, but when her tongue darted out to trace her bottom lip, his first impulse was to lower his head and claim it.
He stopped himself, knowing she’d never really answered his question about what she wanted. As much as he wanted her, he wanted more not to make another mistake with her. He started to pull away when she leaned up and pressed her open mouth to his.
Zach squeezed his eyes shut at the pleasure of the contact. His tongue plunged into her mouth and his arms closed around her, crushing her to him. Her arms wound around his back and her fingers went beneath the fabric of his shirt to touch his bare skin. She pushed the fabric upward, obviously seeking to divest him of it. He obliged her by pulling the shirt over his head and tossing it aside.
Then she was back in his arms, her mouth under his, her fingers gripping the flesh at his shoulders. This is what he remembered of her, the all-consuming heat of the passion she aroused in him. He was no more able to resist her now than he’d been then. He ran his hands down her body to grasp her buttocks in his palms. She moaned into his mouth, a guttural cry that inflamed him further.
He lifted her with his hands under her hips, carried her to the narrow bed, and laid her down on it. He straightened, long enough to set his gun on the small end table next to the bed and toe off his shoes. He gazed down at her. What a sensuous picture she presented with all that dark, dark hair spread around her and her eyes narrowed in passion. Maybe he should put an end to this madness now, since he knew in many ways there would be no turning back if he did what he wanted.
But she offered him a siren’s smile and called his name. He couldn’t walk away from that, not that he wanted to. He wanted her, whatever she would give him. He covered her with his own body, his lips finding hers, then the side of her throat, then the valley between her breasts over the cover of her clothing.
She pulled the shirt over her head, exposing a lacy black bra. Leaning up on one elbow, he undid the front clasp of her bra and ran his hand over one breast and then the other, squeezing, kneading the malleable flesh. His mouth sought one hardened peak and then the other. Her head tipped back and a soft sound of pleasure escaped her lips. She moved against him restlessly, one of her thighs insinuating itself between his legs. A groan rumbled up from his chest having any part of her rubbing against his erection.
She laughed, the only sound in the room aside from the rasp of their breathing. The only light in the room washed in from the hall, casting sensual shadows on her body. The only scent in the room was the aroma of their arousal mixed with the perspiration that had broken out on both their bodies. It was a heady mix of sensations that left him feeling reckless, out of control.
His hand strayed down her rib cage to her belly and his lips followed. He unbuttoned her jeans and pulled down her zipper, using his lips and tongue on the skin he uncovered. Her stomach contracted beneath him and her fingers gripped his shoulders. He slid the rest of her clothes from her body, then shed his own.
And then he was inside her. His entire body shuddered with the pleasure of it. His mouth found hers as he started to move inside her, slowly at first, but neither of them could handle that. She wrapped her legs around his waist, urging him to go faster. He buried his face against her throat and thrust into her, giving her what she wanted.
Her hips bucked against his, as her orgasm overtook her, serving as the catalyst of his own. His fingers locked with hers as he came in several bursts of the most intense pleasure he could remember.
For a moment, they lay together recovering, their bodies still tangled, their fingers laced. When he could breathe somewhat normally, he rolled over, pulling her on top of him. With her cheek resting on his chest, he couldn’t see her face. She seemed contented, but he didn’t know what he’d do if he looked in her eyes and saw regret.
He scrubbed his hands up and down her back. “How are you doing?”
Only when she lifted her head and smiled down at him did he relax. “Do you really have to ask?”
What they’d shared had been spontaneous, hot, unadorned sex that had almost literally left him breathless. “Yeah, I do.”
Somehow she managed to stretch her whole body without toppling off him. The way she moved against him almost brought him to life again. “If I weren’t so damn tired, I’d feel great.” She laid her cheek on his chest again.
Contented, sated, exhausted, he tightened his hold on her. He had one more question for her before he’d let her sleep. “Just how crazy was your husband?”
She lifted her head. “What do you mean?”
He brushed her hair away from her face. “How’d he walk away from you?”
She rolled her eyes and a mocking smile came over her lips. “It was more of a gallop than a walk. Although Devon worked, his family had been wealthy for a couple of generations. Still nouveau riche by some standards. I think he enjoyed my work as a novelty and the source of occasional funny stories at dinner parties, but he never took it seriously. When my name started appearing in the papers and not in a good way, he took off. His family couldn’t tolerate any scandal that didn’t in some way make them richer.”
Rat bastard. “Did you love him?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know if that’s what I was looking for when I met my husband. I wanted someone stable, even tempered. Someone I might have children with one day. I think I mistook stodginess for dependability. See, even headshrinkers make mistakes.”
She snuggled against him. Whether this was an attempt to stifle this avenue of conversation or simply a sign of her fatigue he wasn’t certain, but he was willing to let the topic go. He secured the covers more tightly around them. “Good night, sweetheart,” he whispered against her ear.
He held her until he was certain she slept; then he carried her to his room where they would both be more comfortable. After arranging her under the covers, he went to the bathroom to wash up. When he returned to the smaller bedroom to retrieve his weapon, a thought occurred to him. How had Alex known that there were condoms in the nightstand drawer? Even he’d forgotten they were there. He wondered if there were more of them in there should the need arise. He hadn’t had much reason to take a condom inventory of late.
He picked up his gun from the nightstand with one hand and slid open the drawer with the other. Amid a smattering of condoms lay a little .22 revolver that he knew didn’t belong to him.
Alex woke again while it was still dark. She didn’t immediately recognize where she was but she knew the man lying beside her. His nose was buried against her neck and his arm draped over her belly. She inhaled and stretched without dislodging his contact with her body.
She let her breath out in a long slow sigh. If it weren’t for the fact that they were both here and both nude, she could have imagined that last night had been a dream. She’d spent years wonderi
ng what it would be like if the two of them even got in the same bed again, but the reality outstripped what she’d imagined: sexy, hot, sweaty sex that rocked her down to her toes. It wasn’t pretty but it was what she’d wanted. Other women might long for romantic interludes and pretty words. She preferred the honesty of what they’d shared.
She shifted on her side to face him more fully. His hand went to her hip, stilling her. “Quit wiggling around,” he said in a rough, sleepy voice. “I have to get up in an hour.”
She hadn’t realized he was awake. The smile on his face told her he was teasing her, but he still hadn’t opened his eyes. “I’m not wiggling. I’m getting comfortable.”
“Then come here.” He turned onto his back and pulled her into his arms. “Now hush.”
She laid her head on his shoulder and let her hand wander where it wanted to, over his chest, his belly, and lower. She liked his body, though it wasn’t as tight as it had been in his twenties. He possessed a man’s physique, not a boy’s, now. She liked it especially that he groaned and his body jerked as her fingers closed around his shaft. She leaned up and whispered, “And I thought you said you wouldn’t be up for another hour.”
He opened his eyes then and looked down at her incredulously. He shook his head. The Alex he’d known would never have made such a comment. Maybe he should understand right off that she wasn’t the same girl anymore.
He flopped back against the pillows and closed his eyes. “Are all of you shrinks such perverts?”
She answered honestly, “Pretty much.”
He chuckled, but the next time he spoke his voice was more serious. “What are we doing here, Alex?”
She answered him truthfully again. “I don’t know.” She only knew she didn’t want to kill it through analysis. She didn’t want any promises from him and she had none to give. She’d managed to do the impossible: let him in a little without giving away all her secrets. She never would if she could help it.
Last night he’d held her, he’d comforted her, and he’d loved her. That was enough for now.
She leaned over him and pressed her mouth to his. He responded by pulling her on top of him to straddle his body. And in a moment, nothing else mattered.
Joe Morgan wanted no part of the Amazon Killer. Not since the night he’d discovered the man’s handiwork in an abandoned car. But he’d been pulled from his regular assignment to help the CSU and the detectives sort through, sift, and bag up any of the crap in this old abandoned house where they’d found Walter Thorpe’s body. They’d been at this for hours.
Well, mostly he was there to guard the perimeter from the prying eyes of the curious, be they civilians or cops. It was a need-to-know basis and most of the people here didn’t need to know jack.
The real pain-in-the-ass part was that a case like this brought out the brass. Like he was really going to tell the chief of detectives or the deputy commissioner their presence wasn’t wanted inside. Let one of the brilliant geniuses from the dick squad handle that.
The very worst part was he had to take a wicked leak, and a smoke wouldn’t do him any harm either. One of the home owners about a half mile back had opened her house to them, offering them coffee and the use of her john. When it came his turn, he took a shortcut someone had found through the brush. It wasn’t much of a path and it was mostly overgrown. He didn’t have any problem finding the house, but on the way back he noticed something peculiar. At one point the path seemed to fork, one way leading back the way he’d come, that seemed to lead off away from the house.
He followed the second path, more out of curiosity than anything else. Maybe this was a shorter shortcut than the first. He could see the house, maybe a hundred feet in the distance.
What drew his attention next was the sound of the tall grass rustling. Up ahead he saw movement in the foliage and figured it was maybe rabbits or raccoons or skunks. God only knew what lived out here only five minutes from civilization. He shone his flashlight on the area, but found nothing.
Laughing at himself he shook a cigarette free from his pack. He was still far enough away for no one to notice him in the moonlight. He paused for a minute to light his smoke, when the ground beneath him shifted. He found himself tumbling down a set of stone steps trying as best he could to protect himself and his weapon from the fall.
When he reached bottom, he lay there for a moment, trying to assess the damage before he got up. His left shoulder ached and his right ankle throbbed, but other than that he seemed okay. He stood and turned on his flashlight. He was in a large square room with a low ceiling. The walls were made of stones piled one on top of the other. The smell of damp musty earth pervaded his nostrils.
Everything in the room was made of metal, save for the mattress on the neatly made single bed in the corner of the room. A large metal table sat in the center of the room. Metal shelving ran the length of two of the walls. Careful not to touch anything, Joe moved closer to take a better look at what they contained. Wicked-looking knives were laid out on one shelf on top of a blue cloth as if they were a surgeon’s instruments. Several strops in various widths lay coiled on another shelf.
Everything about this place was obsessively neat; even the line of jars that sat on one shelf were spaced equidistant from one another. He shone the flashlight on the first of them. Something floated in cloudy liquid inside. He counted eight full jars and then and empty one. The last contained the unmistakable shape of a pair of balls.
Joe turned and vomited onto the earth floor. He retched until there was nothing left to bring up. He knew what he’d found and it terrified him to be there alone and injured. Forgetting the stairs behind him, he pushed forward to a passageway cut out of the far wall. He found himself in a narrow tunnel that was pitch-black and spanned as far as he could see.
It wasn’t as bad as he thought since the tunnel curved upward and he could hear the sound of familiar voices once he’d gone a couple of feet. After he’d gone about as far as he could go, he felt along the wall with his fingertips. A thin panel of wood was loosely nailed to a wooden frame. He pulled back the panel that turned out to serve as the back of the only closet in the house where Thorpe’s body had been found.
Twenty
Zach stood beside the bed watching Alex sleep. She looked so peaceful he was tempted not to wake her to tell her he was going. Considering how well it went over the last time he’d tried that, he decided against it. He sat on the bed, braced a hand on either side of her, and leaned down to kiss her shoulder. “Baby, wake up. We’ve got to go.”
She turned onto her back, dislodging the covers around her. He tried to concentrate on her face rather than her bare breasts, but wasn’t entirely successful.
She smiled a knowing, sleepy smile. “Did you just call me baby?”
He chuckled. He’d surprised himself when that word slipped out of his mouth instead of her name. “What? Too much?”
She lifted her shoulders in a way that suggested she was considering it. “I don’t know. I don’t think anyone aside from my mother has ever called me by any sort of endearment. The closest my father got was ‘little girl’ and that was a put-down, a reminder that I amounted to less than big bad him.”
Zach smiled, remembering that he’d once tried to give her a nickname a long time ago—squirt or munchkin or something. She’d stared at him with a look of such unconcealed disgust that he’d given it up.
But what about her ex-husband? No sweeties or honeys or sweethearts from him, either. He guessed that wasn’t too surprising either since she’d practically confessed to him that her marriage had been loveless, or tenderness-free, maybe. God, he hoped he never had the displeasure to meet that man.
In regard to the topic at hand, he said, “I’ll try it out a few more times. You tell me what you think.”
She reached out and touched her fingertips to his cheek, the first time she’d touched him of her own volition in a nonsexual way. “What’s going on?”
He’d intended from the sta
rt to go back to the precinct to continue working on all the loose ends he’d dropped every time a new piece of evidence presented itself. He hadn’t finished reinterviewing the girls’ families or tracked down the perverts on the list Alex had given him. With McKay off the case, the rest of them would have to take up the slack.
Smitty had called a few minutes ago to tell him they’d found the prime crime scene. One of the uniforms had literally stumbled onto his work area. Zach wanted to see it for himself. “They found the primary crime scene.”
She sat up. “When? Where? Why didn’t you say so?”
“I just did. Now hurry up and get ready.”
He started to rise but she pulled him back with a hand on his arm. “Why do I get the feeling that you’re not all that enthused about going?”
She misread him. He wasn’t all that enthused about her going. He wanted her somewhere safe with someone who would protect her in his stead. But he knew how she would feel about being left behind. They’d invited her to this dance and she’d want to stay till the last song played. He knew he would, too. That’s why he’d contemplated leaving without waking her for a second and a half. Considering how well that had worked the first time he’d tried it, he decided to skip it.
She gritted her teeth and huffed out a breath. “Don’t tell me it’s some kind of macho crap. I let you sleep with me, and now you want to treat me like a girl. I am not some helpless female.”
“I know that. By the way, where’d you get the gat?”
She laughed at his use of slang, as he knew she would. He didn’t want her angry with him over feelings that were, to his mind, natural. What kind of man didn’t want to protect a woman he cared for?
Body of Lies Page 20
