by Taylor Lee
Leaning against him to get her bearings, she allowed herself to feel his strength. It was a mistake. His sexy scent alone made her stomach pitch and her knees buckle. If that wasn’t enough, she felt the cool air wafting between her legs, reminding her that she was no longer wearing panties. Granted, her thong wasn’t much of a shield, but being completely bare under her dress was a new experience. She was glad that Jude had insisted she wear his jacket over her miniscule dress, until she shoved her hand in the pocket and discovered her missing thong. Not able to suppress a shocked gasp, she was horrified when he chuckled and captured her hand in his and unwound the strip of satin from her fingers.
Raising the lacy confection to his nose he breathed in deeply. “Uh-uh, little girl. This belongs to me now. Whenever I want to remember the glorious fragrance of your cunt I’ll have this to remind me. Until I have access to the real thing, of course.”
Shocked by his brazen taunt, Skylar ran to the car and practically dove in. She was grateful that the seat belts provided at least some protection from his overwhelming presence and that he was silent on the short drive from the crime scene to her apartment. Reliving the remarkable events of the evening, she didn’t know how she could explain to either of them why she’d given in to his outrageous and terrifyingly-sexy assault. Although the words give in didn’t begin to describe the way that she’d attacked him in response.
Truthfully, she was afraid he was going to apologize, say he hadn’t meant to do what he did. She needn’t have worried.
Pulling to a stop in front of her apartment, Jude hopped out, then rounded the car and yanked open her door. He reached in and scooped her up in his arms. Holding her tight against his muscular chest, he carried her to the door. Setting her down in front of him, he tipped up her chin.
Skylar closed her eyes, afraid of the emotion in his emerald gaze but he shook his head, forcing her to look at him.
“Uh-uh, Sprite. Look at me and listen up. No way we’re gonna pretend that what happened tonight didn’t happen, or that it was a mistake. Jesus God, darlin’, if that bridge railing wasn’t so damned narrow I might have taken you on the top of it, if not on the bridge itself.”
When she tried to twist away he held her chin more firmly. “No, baby. You’re not allowed to look away, any more than you can pretend that you don’t want me as much as I want you. And sweetheart, I’ve never wanted a woman more than I want you. There’s no turning back, Skylar. I am going to take you, and, baby, when I do, you’ll be begging me for more.”
Still holding her chin, he leaned down and kissed her. At first he was gentle, his lips softly probing. When she couldn’t suppress a soft moan, he groaned in response. In seconds he was grappling with her, touching her everywhere: her breasts, her thighs, clasping her naked bottom in his big hands.
When she cried out, unable to hold back the violent sensations coursing over her, he pulled her up on his knee against his raging arousal. “Can you feel that, sweetheart? Feel my cock pressing against your weeping pussy?” His rough query shot sparks across her core.
Her agonized moan at his explicit question wasn’t enough for him. “Uh-uh. Tell me, sweetheart. Tell me what it feels like…in words!”
Skylar didn’t know how she was able to answer him. It was challenging enough to breathe. Somehow she managed to whisper, “You…it…feels…big…hard…and scary.”
Jude’s low, sexy chuckle vibrated against her ear, sending a shower of sparkling sensations across her thighs to her admittedly damp pussy. “Good, darlin’. That’s exactly how it should feel.”
He relaxed his hold somewhat. “You have to be exhausted, Squirt. I’ll pick you up in time for the 7:00 a.m. meeting.”
“No, don’t, Jude. Jared already said that he would bring Hailey and me in to work.”
“Hmm. Okay. But, Skylar, when you come in tomorrow? Bring an overnight bag. And one more thing, baby—no underwear. On second thought, wear another one of those thongs. I’ll add it to the collection I’m starting.”
Chapter 18
“I was likely the last person to see Charlie alive, except perhaps, for his murderer.” Sky knew she was blushing, but good God, given the fulsome praise heaped on her by Jared, Jake, and Solly, you’d have thought she had singlehandedly found the evidence that could convict O.J. Simpson.
Jude leaned back in his chair at the head of the table. He winked at his two brothers and shot her a narrow, languorous gaze. “And that was the moment you knew he’d been poisoned, Squirt?”
Knowing that he was teasing her, she lifted her chin and shrugged. “No, I assumed his angry outburst and unsteady gait as he stormed out from the party was the result of too much alcohol. I thought he was intoxicated.”
Jude nodded and glanced over at Solly, who had been the only member of the first responder team whom he had invited to the private meeting. “Which is what we were supposed to think, right, Sergeant?”
“Damn straight, Jude. Sure as hell what I thought, until you called me and Jake in and Sky enlightened us.”
Jake shook his head and didn’t hide his amazement. “One more time, Sky.Honest to God, you smelled it on him?”
When she just nodded, Jared chimed in, his voice filled with admiration. “Solly will tell you, bro. No one on the scene picked up on it. The DUI was too obvious.”
Skylar murmured, “Hmm, too obvious to be true.” At Jared’s frown, she added in explanation, “Sherlock—or to be precise, Arthur Conan Doyle—is one of my heroes.”
“Jesus, Sky, now you’re quoting the master detective?” Jared grinned at Jude. “Better watch out, Detective, our intelligence analyst is soon gonna be relegating you to the back bench behind the water boys.”
Jude cocked a brow and huffed, “Fortunately, I never presumed to have logical reasoning that borders on the fantastic, as Specs here does.” He added, “Besides, bro, I’m learning that there are more layers to our bespectacled pixie than a five thousand-year-old bristlecone pine tree has rings.”
Praying that her cheeks weren’t as red as they were hot, Skylar sought to put her findings in perspective. “Actually, the fact that Solly and his men found Charlie when they did helped immensely. My understanding is that it was sheer luck that hikers spotted Charlie’s car at the bottom of the ravine. The murderer probably thought it would be days before he was found. By that time, I might not have picked up on the acetone smell.”
Jude guffawed. “Don’t sell yourself short, Squirt. Doc Evans said your sussing out the acetone was a brilliant stroke. Apparently the reason it’s such a clever weapon is because of the way it mimics alcohol. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time the victim would be written off as intoxicated. And yeah, we’re lucky we found him when we did, but none of us had a clue about poison, Skylar. Even Doc Evans said that he wouldn’t have tested for acetone in a million years.”
Grinning at her, Jude added, “Sorry Squirt, you’re just going to have to accept that once again your level-ten computer-brain has all of us lumbering, fist-dragging cavemen grunting in appreciation.”
Knowing from Sky’s strained expression how uncomfortable she was with the focused attention, and determined to get the spotlight off of her, Jude let the silence stand for a long moment. Eying each of the four people at the table, he expelled an audible breath. “Which brings me to the next step. It should be evident why this is a private meeting. It’s essential that Charlie’s murderer or murderers think they were successful. For that reason, we need to keep this information on the down-low at least for a couple of days. We’ll let the word spread that Charlie’s death was likely caused by his being intoxicated. A lousy thing to do to the guy and his family, but we will correct it as soon as we can.”
He nodded to Jake. “I invited you for obvious reasons, Jake. While I’m leading the investigation, as the DPD Commander, you’ll handle most of the PR and contact with the community at large. You can make sure the media gets the information we want them to have when we want them to have it. Jared is
backing me up, and Sky is…Sky.”
He winked at her and then narrowed in on Solly. “As for you, dude, you’re the only member of the crime scene squad who knows that Charlie was poisoned. You’ll need to make sure that it stays that way until we’re ready to release our findings.”
Jude paused for effect, then grinned at Skylar and said with a chuckle, “Since you’re the one who figured it out, you wanna tell the rest of us just how important this information is, Squirt?”
Sky breathed a hard sigh, not hiding her relief that they were on the same page. “You’re right Jude. Knowing the poison they used is helpful in more ways than one. Given the shelf life of acetone, we know that it had to have been put in Charlie’s drink at the party. And I think I can narrow the time frame even farther. I heard him jock-talking with a group of men. He was cheerful and articulate. Twenty-five minutes later when he verbally attacked me, he was sweating, angry, and unsteady.”
Her dark eyes flashed behind her thick-rimmed glasses, signifying that she could barely contain her excitement. “Which means that whoever killed Charlie put the acetone in his drink at the party sometime between 8:35 and 9:00.”
‘Right on, Squirt. Of course you would know the precise time you spoke with Charlie.” At the chuckles from the other men at the table, Jude conceded their challenge with a self-deprecating laugh. “Granted, we will need to narrow the field a bit. But at least we now know that one or more of the 175 honored guests at the Judge’s Summer Solstice Celebration murdered Charlie Berkley, and, not incidentally, Hank and Carol Parker.”
Running his fingers through his tousled hair, he muttered, “And the fucking party was already the most famous shindig in the Upper Midwest. Whew. Dateline NBC, here we come.” Jude leaned forward, his forearms resting on the table. “That said, we need to narrow that 175-person field. Let’s start with the people who might actually be able to help us do that—the Parker siblings.”
At Jared’s raised brow, Jude explained, “As Skylar said from the beginning, either sex or money is at the base of these hideous crimes. At this point I think we need to look at the money angle. From what the Judge said, Hank and Carol Parker had no dearth of people they’d wronged, in many cases, people they ruined. Which brings me back to the Parker siblings. Let’s look at the people who they thought might have it in for their parents. Everybody on the lists they gave us was at the party last night.”
“You’re right, Jude. That’s the best place to start. At least that only gives us seventeen suspects instead of 175. Make that thirteen, since Charlie was on all four of their lists. Which brings me to the question I’ve been wrestling with all night.” Jared included Skylar in his questioning gaze. “Why the hell did someone kill Charlie? And, not incidentally, why was he on all four of the Parker sibs’ lists?”
Jude looked to Skylar and raised a brow. “You want to take that one on, Squirt, or do you want me to?”
Skylar gave him a saucy smile and shrugged. “Please, I’d like to hear your theory.”
Jude laughed. “Ah, the pressure’s on. You daring me to perform, Squirt?”
Relishing the rosy blush that flooded her cheeks at his double entendre, knowing that it was as obvious to his brothers as it was to Sky, Jude chuckled. “Although I’m usually up for a challenge, I know when I’m in over my head. Instead of conjuring up a theory of my own, I’ll latch on to yours, Specs. As you brilliantly summarized this fucking mess from the beginning, it’s either sex or money. In Charlie’s case, I’d add knowledge. Chances are, since he was part of the family even though they were in the process of throwing him out, he likely knew the people who hated Hank and Carol as well as their children did. And he just might have been angry enough to expose that person.”
“Or blackmail him.”
Jude whistled at Skylar’s interruption. “Fuck it, woman. And to think at one point I might have underestimated you.” Leaning back in his chair, he studied her and allowed a slight smile to quirk his lips. Seeing his brothers both smirking at him, he nodded in agreement. “Yep, I should have listened to you two assholes. But then, I did say from the beginning the squirt was the most damnably disquieting woman I’d met.”
He didn’t add that he’d also called her the most unappealing woman he’d met. From the rosiness staining her cheeks, he knew Skylar understood his reference. Given that last night they’d forever put to rest the notion that fucking her was a non-issue, he delighted in her obvious embarrassment. Although, he was the one who should be embarrassed. Hell, fucking her was all he had thought about since he saw her leaning over the bridge railing. The memory of that miniscule dress riding up her backside showing off a pair of gorgeous legs and a curvy ass had his cock straining at his zipper.
With a sigh, Jude admitted that Skylar had intrigued him from the beginning. She’d challenged him in a way he wasn’t used to being challenged, particularly by a woman. She’d gotten under his skin, made him want to know what made her tick. But instead of acknowledging that he was impressed with her formidable brain and uncanny instincts, he’d focused on how odd she was. And chauvinistic asshole that he was, he rated her the way he did all women—with a peremptory thumbs-up or down, based solely on their rack to ass ratio.
Staring at her now, Jude marveled that he’d been too blind to see what his brothers and others had seen. Behind those crazy glasses were stunning, multi-hued eyes that he now knew could flash with fury and blaze with lust. Under the weird clothes she wore to camouflage her beautiful body was a sexy, passionate woman. His cock hardened at the memory of her earthy moans and whimpering cries when she wrapped her gorgeous legs around him and rode his iron-hard dick.
Christ, he had to give his dick credit. The damn thing was a hell of a lot better judge of women than he was. To think that he’d made do with the likes of Jerri the Juggernaut and her look-a-likes when the sexiest, most surprising woman he’d met was right there beside him. Jude stifled a groan, knowing what he planned to do to her tonight. Looking up, he saw Jared and Jake grinning at him. He shrugged in acknowledgement. Christ, thank God for tight jeans and tabletops or his aroused condition would have been as obvious to Sky and Solly as it was to his randy brothers.
He forced himself to focus. “Solly, you need to get back to the team and head up the onsite investigation of Charlie’s ‘accident’. It’s imperative that the guys assume we’re dealing with a DUI. I had a long conversation with Doc Evans and he knows the importance of reinforcing that conclusion.”
Turning to Jake and Jared he said, “I’ll catch up with you both later, maybe over lunch. Right now, Sky and I are going to go interview the Parker siblings.”
At her surprised start, he explained, “I told Bernice to let them know we wanted to talk with them. Alicia asked if we could meet at their boutique. Blake’s office is a couple blocks away so it will be convenient for him to come there.”
“Do I need to come, Jude? I had planned to go back to the Larson, McClellan offices. Mr. Larson agreed that I could have access to the Parker financials. I want to examine the ventures that involved people on the lists.”
“That’s important, Skylar, and you can do that this afternoon. But this morning I want you to go with me to interview Blake and his sisters. They’re all obviously on guard, and hostile isn’t too strong a word to describe the sisters. By double-teaming them we’re likely to get more information than one of us could alone. Besides, I want to see how those nasty women treat you after last night. They have to have been impressed with your, shall we say, altered appearance.”
He caught up with her at the doorway and murmured in her ear, “And to think all the sisters saw was your designer dress. Wonder how they would have reacted if they saw what was underneath it.”
***
As they prepared to walk into the Second Chance Boutique to meet with the Parkers, Jude pulled her up next to him. “Hope for your sake you did as you were told, Squirt.”
When she frowned up at him, not understanding, he laughed. “I’m
just being protective, little girl. I’d hate for you to have to wear the same clothes tomorrow morning that you have on today. Might make the guys wonder where you spent the night.”
Not waiting for her to respond, he opened the door to the Second Chance Boutique and ushered her in.
Chapter 19
Marion greeted them at the door. To say she was cool made an iceberg seem like a steam bath. Surveying Sky’s ill-fitting pants and t-shirt, Marion’s thin lips tightened further with obvious distaste. Answering Jude’s pleasant greeting with a stiff nod, she motioned for them to follow her. Striding through the boutique to the back of the store, she pointed to the door at the end of the hallway. Her voice was curt. “My brother and sisters are waiting for you. I’ll be there shortly.”
Skylar exchanged a raised eyebrow with Jude at Marion’s rudeness, then followed him into what looked like a studio apartment. A sitting area with a sofa, comfortable chairs, and several occasional tables was off to one side. A kitchenette with a full retinue of appliances stood along the opposing wall behind a counter with four stools at the front. A large rectangular table was in the center of the room, Blake sitting at one end. Alicia and Charlotte were sitting on both sides of him.
Skylar didn’t resist when Jude reached for her elbow and pulled her next to him. Given the openly hostile glares the two sisters were shooting her way, Jude’s powerful presence was comforting.
Unlike his stony-faced silent sisters, Blake was on his feet and beside them in seconds. Grasping Skylar’s hand in one of his and Jude’s arm with the other, Blake said, “Thank you both for coming. This is a terrible, terrible day. None of us had heard about Charlie’s awful accident until your sergeant called us, Jude. Thank you for notifying us. We were all stunned, horrified.”
Clearly flustered, he pointed to the table. “Please, please sit down. Can I get you something to drink? Coffee, water? I…I can make tea if you prefer, Skylar. I mean, Ms. Hughes.”
