by J. D. Robb
“Aw, I feel so bad about that.”
“I warned them about you. They didn’t listen. Had this idea that you could be handled.” He turned back, met her eyes. “I’m here to order you off Ricker.”
“You have no authority to order me off anything.”
“Request,” he amended. “I’m here to request you back off your investigation of Max Ricker.”
“Request denied.”
“Dallas, you push the wrong buttons, you could screw up an investigation that’s been in the works for months.”
“An internal investigation?”
“I’m not at liberty to confirm or deny.”
“Then leave.”
“I’m trying to give you a hand here. If you just back off, we’ll both end up getting what we’re after.”
She eased a hip on the edge of her desk. “I want a cop killer. What do you want?”
“You think it doesn’t matter to me.” His voice took on heat. His eyes flashed with it. “The way those two men went down?”
“I don’t know what matters to you, Webster. Why don’t you tell me?”
“Doing the job,” he shot back. “Making sure the job gets done right, and it gets done clean.”
“And Mills and Kohli were dirty.”
He started to speak, then jammed his fists in his pockets. “I can’t comment.”
“I don’t need your comments. IAB might have its reasons for wanting to keep that information under wraps for now. Fine. As it happens, so do I. But it’s not going to stay under. The connection to Ricker’s going to explode before much longer. How many more dead cops do you want me to stand over while you guys dick around with your internal investigation? You knew they were dirty, and you left them out there.”
“It’s not as black and white as that.”
“You knew,” she repeated, heating up. “And that they were in Ricker’s pocket, that they’d helped him slide on charges that should have put him in for the rest of his unnatural life. How long have you known?”
“Knowing isn’t proving, is it, Lieutenant?”
“Bullshit, Webster. That’s just bullshit. In a matter of days I’ve put together enough on those two cops to have pulled them in and taken their badges. You left them out for a reason. Now you want me to back off Ricker. How do I know he hasn’t made room in his pocket for you?”
His eyes flashed again, and he was on her before he could stop himself, dragging her off the desk. “That’s low.”
“IAB gives lessons in low.”
“You want to go through the door with a dirty cop? With one who might hesitate just long enough to have you on a slab? There’s a reason for what I do, and I don’t have to justify it to you. You used to draw a hard, straight line, Dallas. When did it start to go crooked? About the time you hooked up with Roarke?”
“Step back. Now.”
But he didn’t. Couldn’t. “Mills was garbage. You want to risk destroying the case we’ve been building for months so you can stand for him? He’d have sold you out for pocket change.”
“Now he’s dead. Is that IAB’s sense of justice, to have your guts spilled out for being on the take? If Ricker took him out, he used another cop to do it. Does that balance it in your world?”
His eyes flickered. “That’s reaching.”
“No. No, it’s not.” She watched him closely now. “It’s accurate. And you knew it. You knew it, starting with Kohli, and that’s why you . . .”
She trailed off as pieces began to shift and fall into another pattern. One that made her stomach churn. “Kohli. You didn’t mention him. Just Mills. Because Kohli wasn’t garbage, was he, Webster? He was just a tool. You set him up. You used him.”
“Leave it alone.”
“The hell I will.” Her fury was like a living thing, and it was clawing at her brain. “He was under for you. He wasn’t taking, you were giving. To make him look wrong, so he could pick up information for you, get closer to Ricker’s police contacts.”
She closed her eyes as she worked it out. “You picked him because he was clean, and more, because he was average. Almost invisible. A data cruncher who had a strong sense of right and wrong. You’d have played to him, recruited him,” she murmured, opening her eyes again and studying Webster’s.
“His background in the MPs, that was on his side. He was good at taking orders. You probably offered him extra pay, help him save for the bigger place he wanted for his family while his wife stayed home with the kids. Put a real package deal together, appealing to his sense of duty, sense of family. Then there was the Ricker edge. He’d put in a lot of time on that, had to be bummed when it fell apart. You set him up.”
“Nobody held a blaster to his head.” Webster’s voice was raw as guilt ate at him. “There’s a serious problem at the One twenty-eight. Kohli fit the profile for what we needed. All he had to do was say no.”
“You knew he wouldn’t because he fit the fucking profile. Goddamn it, Webster, goddamn it, he was killed because somebody believed the setup. Somebody killed him for being dirty.”
“Are you going to stand there and tell me we should have anticipated that?” He had plenty of fury of his own, and mixed with it was a sticky guilt that made a bitter brew. “It came out of the fucking blue. He was on the job, Dallas. He knew the risks. We all know them.”
“Yeah, we know the risks, and we live with them. Or we die with them.” But she stepped closer, shoved her face into his. “You used me, Webster, the same way. And nobody asked. You came to me, all friendly, all unofficial, to toss just enough garbage in my path so I’d look in the right places, so I’d find the money Kohli’d put away, just like you told him to. So I’d look and I’d paint him dirty. You had me looking at a good cop and tossing muck at him.”
“You think that doesn’t make me sick?”
“I don’t know what makes you sick.”
She started to turn away, but he grabbed her arm. “He’ll be exonerated when the time comes. He’ll be put in for a posthumous promotion. His family will be taken care of.”
At her side, her hand bunched into a fist. But she didn’t use it. Instead, she used frigid disdain. “Get away from me. Get out of my house.”
“For God’s sake, Dallas, nobody meant for this to happen.”
“But you jumped right on it when it did. He wasn’t even cold.”
“It’s not my choice.” Enraged, he took her other arm, shook her once. “I’m not supposed to be here tonight. I’m not supposed to have told you any of this.”
“Then why did you?”
“The bureau will find a way to kick you off the case, or if it suits better, to put you right in Ricker’s path. Either way, you’re going to walk around with a target on your back. You matter to me.”
He jerked her against him, and she was too shocked to block the move. “Hey.”
“You matter. You always have.”
She slapped both hands on his chest, felt the rapid pump of his heart. The heat. “Jesus, Webster. Are you crazy?”
“I’d prefer that you take your hands off my wife before I break them,” Roarke said from the doorway. “But either way works for me.”
chapter eleven
The voice was rigidly pleasant and didn’t fool Eve for an instant. She knew the sound of savagery when she heard it, however elegantly it was cloaked. Just as she recognized it in the frigid blue of Roarke’s eyes.
She felt the punch of fear, like a blow to her solar plexus. As a result, her voice was sharp and clipped as she broke Webster’s hold and stepped deliberately between him and her husband.
“Roarke. Webster and I are in the middle of a meeting, and a professional disagreement.”
“I don’t think so. Go find something to do, Eve. Elsewhere.”
Insult worked hard to kick fear aside but didn’t manage the job. She felt her muscles begin to tremble and had an image of capping off the evening by arresting her husband for murder.
“Get a grip.” She did her best
to plant her boots. “You’ve mistaken the situation here.”
“No, he hasn’t. Not on my end.” Webster moved away from Eve. “And I don’t hide behind women. You want to do this here?” he said with a nod toward Roarke. “Or outside?”
Roarke smiled, much Eve thought, like a wolf might before a kill. “Here and now.”
They leapt at each other. Charged, she would think later when her brain engaged again, like a couple of rams in rutting season. For a moment, she was too stunned to do more than goggle.
She watched Webster fly, come heavily down on a table, which crashed under the weight. Galahad sprang up, hissing, and took a vicious swipe at his shoulder.
He was up quickly, she’d give him that, bleeding. Fists flew with the ugly sound of bone against bone. A lamp shattered.
She was shouting, she could hear herself calling out in a voice that seemed oddly unlike her own. At wit’s end, she drew her weapon, hastily checked to insure it was on lowest stun, then fired a stream between them.
Webster’s head whipped around in shock, but Roarke didn’t so much as flinch. And his fist, already swinging, smashed into Webster’s face.
Another table went, splintering into toothpicks. And this time Webster stayed down. Or would have if Roarke hadn’t leaned over and hauled him up by the collar.
“Roarke.” Her hand steady, Eve kept her weapon trained. “That’s enough. Let him go or I’ll stun you. I swear I will.”
His eyes met hers, hot now, hot enough to burn. He released Webster so the half-conscious man crumpled in a heap. Even as Roarke started toward Eve, Summerset slid into the room.
“I’ll just show your guest out.”
“Do that,” Roarke said without taking his eyes from Eve’s. “And close the door. Stun me, will you?” He murmured it, silkily, when he was a foot away.
She backed up, all but hearing her nerves fray. “If you don’t calm down, yes. I’m going to go see how bad he’s hurt.”
“You’re not, no. That you’re not. Stun me then,” he invited, and she heard the alleyways of Dublin in his voice. “Do it.”
She heard the doors close, the locks click. Fear had her by the throat, infuriating her even as she took another step in retreat. “There was nothing going on here. It’s insulting for you to think there was.”
“Darling Eve, if I thought there’d been anything, on your part, going on here, he wouldn’t have left breathing.” There was no change in his expression as his hand snaked out and knocked the weapon from hers. “Yet you stood between us.”
“To try to avoid this.” She threw out her arms. “This testosterone explosion. Damn it, you wrecked my place and assaulted an officer, and over nothing. Over my having a professional disagreement with a colleague.”
“A colleague who was once a lover, and what I walked in on was personal.”
“Okay, all right, maybe. But that’s no excuse. If I jumped every one of your old lovers, I’d be bashing every female face in New York and the known universe.”
“That’s entirely different.”
“Why?” She had him now, she thought with satisfaction. “Why is it different for you?”
“Because I don’t invite those former lovers into my home and let them put their hands on me.”
“It wasn’t like that. It was—”
“And because.” He fisted a hand at the front of her shirt, hauling her up until she was forced to her toes. “You’re mine.”
Her eyes all but bulged out of her head. “What? What? Like property? Like one of your damn hotels?”
“Aye. If you like.”
“I don’t like. Not one damn bit.” She shoved at his hand, twisted, and only succeeded in ripping the shoulder seam of her shirt. Alarm bells went off in her head even as she tried to break his hold with another counter maneuver. She ended up with her back pressed into him and her arms pinned.
“You’ve crossed a number of lines in a short time, Lieutenant.” His voice was warm against her ear. Warm and dangerous. Erotic. “Do you think I’m a man who’ll go meekly about your bidding? Do you think loving you has taken my teeth?”
As if to prove otherwise, he sank them lightly in her throat.
She couldn’t think, not with the red haze covering her brain. She quite simply couldn’t get her breath. “Let go of me. I’m too mad to deal with you tonight.”
“No, you’re not mad.” He whipped her around again, slammed her back to the wall, and yanked her arms over her head. And his face, the face of a condemned angel, was close to hers. “Intrigued is what you are, and reluctantly aroused. Your pulse is pounding, and you tremble. Some of it’s fear, just a touch of it to add an edge.”
He was right. She could have damned him for it, but need was crawling through her like savage little ants.
“You’re hurting me. Let go of my hands.”
“No, I’m not, but perhaps I’ve been too careful, too often, not to hurt you. Have you forgotten what you took on with me, Eve?”
“No.” Her eyes skimmed down to his mouth. God help her, she wanted it on her.
“You’re mine, and you’ll say it before we’re done tonight.” He reached out with his free hand and ripped her shirt down the center. “And now I’ll have what’s mine.”
She resisted, but that was pride, and pride was weaker than lust. She twisted her body, hooking a foot behind his in an attempt to overbalance him. He merely shifted his weight into the move and took her down with him.
The shock of the fall knocked the breath out of her, but her knee came up, an automatic jerk of defense. He rolled away from it, still gripping her hands. Pinned her. She bucked, swore at him, whipping her head to the side as his mouth came down.
He settled for her throat. Savaged it, and sent the pulse beneath his teeth and lips bounding.
He might have stopped himself. The civilized veneer he’d coated over himself was hard set and hard won. But the beast inside him had been teased to raging. He wanted it loose. And the scent of her, of his mate, was humming in his blood.
She was strong. He’d pit his strength and his will against hers before, but always with a sense of fair play underneath. Not this time, was all he could think.
Not this time.
He clamped a hand over her breast, found the skin hot and damp. She made some sound between a snarl and a moan, and when he crushed his mouth to hers, she bit.
The quick flash of pain only appealed to the primal lust surging inside him. When he lifted his head, his eyes were wild and fierce. “Liomsa.”
He’d said it to her once before, in the language of his youth. Mine. She struggled, fighting herself now, but when his mouth came to hers again, hot and hard and hungry, she lost.
Desire, with its more primitive barbs, scraped through her. She wanted. Wanted. And now her body arched not in protest but in demand, and her mouth met his with feral force.
He released her hands only to jerk her up, yanking what was left of her shirt over her shoulders. Her weapon harness tangled, locking her arms as effectively as restraints. And now the fear leaped back. She was defenseless.
“Say it back to me. Damn you, Eve. Say it.” His mouth fused to hers again, then streaked down her throat, over her breasts. His teeth raked at her. And his hands.
On a sharp cry, her head fell back. Pleasure, its edge as keen as razors, sliced at her, leaving what was left of pride in tatters.
Then she was rolling with him over a floor littered with splintered wood in something too fierce to be surrender.
She fought free of the harness and tore at his shirt. She wanted flesh, his flesh. The feel of it, the taste. Every breath she took was a desperate gasp.
His hands took, possessed, bruising as they moved over her. Those long, skilled fingers arousing mercilessly until she was mad for more. He yanked her trousers down her hips, flung them aside. And ruthlessly used his mouth on her.
Release gushed through her, a flood that scorched her system. Floundering, she dug her fingers into the r
ug, tried to find some anchor to hold her. But she was flying, catapulted out of control.
And still he wouldn’t stop.
Couldn’t stop.
The small, mad sounds she made inflamed him, whipped his already crazed blood into a fever of greed. Every gulp of air he took in was full of her, the hot, sharp taste of woman. His.
His mouth raced up her shuddering body, feasted on her breasts while he plunged his fingers into her.
She came again, brutally, and her shocked cry was a dark thrill to him, the sudden bite of her nails on his back a vicious pleasure.
“Say it. Say it back to me,” he demanded while his breath heaved, while he watched her eyes go blind as he pushed her to the edge yet again. “Damn it, I’ll hear it from you.”
Somehow, through the madness ruling her, she understood. Not surrender, even after this, it wasn’t surrender he asked for. But acceptance. Her throat burned, her system screamed to mate. As she opened for him, lifted to him, she fumbled out the Gaelic.
“Mine,” was what she said. “You’re mine, too.” And her mouth rose to his as he drove himself inside her.
She lay beneath him, enervated, stupefied. Her ears were ringing, making it impossible to think. She wanted to find herself in this body that had responded so primitively. But more, she simply wanted to wallow in the echoes of sensations that still rippled through her.
When he shifted, she would have rolled to her stomach, the position she assumed when exhaustion ruled. But he plucked her off the floor, into his arms. “We’re not done yet.”
Leaving the wreckage of her office behind, he carried her out, and took her to bed.
When she woke, light was streaming through the sky window, her body pulsed with a thousand sly aches. And he was gone.
She lay where she was, on a bed that had been well used, on sheets that were tangled to ropes, and let the tug-of-war between shame and pleasure play out inside her. Nothing was resolved, she realized. Nothing was balanced. She rose, went in to shower wondering if they’d fixed anything or only damaged it further.
