Submission Page 10

  She felt his fingertips on her back, caressing her. Down and up. Bumps peppered her skin at his gentle attention, her nipples pulsing against the sheets. His touch reached the top of her buttocks. Molly instinctively arched her back, lifting her hips to both give him easier access and tempt a more intimate touch.

  Then he was grasping her hips and entering her, thrusting all coherent thought from her mind and setting her every cell on fire.

  He filled her to overflowing, making her muscles pulse with sensation as he withdrew, then entered her again, each thrust deeper than the one before. She struggled to lift herself to her knees, wanting, needing the freedom to move. He helped her, then held her still as he thrust into her to the hilt again…and again. A deep moan made its way up from her abdomen and tore from her throat.

  Again…again.

  Yes….

  Molly gave herself over gladly to the primitive emotion, plucking at every damn bit of frustration she’d encountered over the past two weeks and more, forming it into a tight ball, then throwing it away with force. She met him thrust for thrust. Holding steady when he needed her to and bearing back against him when it seemed he might pause. She curled her fingers into the top sheet, holding fast despite knowing that no physical action would be able to ground her against the wild storm building from within.

  She felt his hand curve around her hip and slide toward her clit. She grasped his wrist, trying to stop him. She needed no more than feeling him inside her.

  Then both their hands met over her delicate flesh, and they flew apart together.

  13

  YARDS AND YARDS OF cotton buffeted Molly as she slowly awakened. She felt as though she was floating, her body sated and throbbing. She felt gloriously complete.

  Yet she sensed she was alone.

  Opening her eyes, she was first aware of the all-encompassing darkness. She blinked until she could make out vague shapes. She’d been used to the light from the street in her hotel room, but here—she shivered—here, in Alan’s place, everything was various shades of gray, with very little difference between them. Especially in the dark.

  She heard the sound of a glass on a tabletop and lifted to her elbows. She’d known the instant she’d awakened that she was alone in the bed. But where was Alan?

  She got up, grabbing his shirt from the floor and shrugging into it. She found him in the kitchen, sitting at the table alone in nothing but a pair of slacks left open at the waist. He was pouring himself a bourbon from one of the many bottles she’d seen around the apartment when she’d come in.

  “Hey,” she said quietly.

  He seemed startled by her presence, so deep in thought he must not have heard her.

  “Hey, yourself.”

  Molly wrapped her arms around her waist. She’d been around her share of drinkers. Her mother had gone on binges, usually over the weekend, when she wouldn’t be working, but sometimes they’d carried into the next week, when she’d call in sick on Monday. But they’d usually passed quickly—although it had never seemed quick to Molly while her mother was going through it—and wrought no long-term effects. So long as she and Claire had steered a wide path around their mother, everything would usually be all right.

  But over the past few days she’d gotten the impression that Alan’s drinking went well beyond her mother’s occasional binges usually brought about by a breakup. This…

  This was something she felt well out of her depth to handle.

  She swallowed hard. “Pour one for me?”

  She made out his somber expression in the dim light coming in from the kitchen window. He got up, got a clean class from the cupboard and poured her a finger. She accepted the glass.

  “Thanks.”

  She sipped the fiery liquor, fighting a shudder as its bitterness stung her tongue.

  “You know…” she began, not thinking it smart to bring up his inability to sleep or his drinking, afraid he might show her the door. And for some reason she couldn’t quite explain, she didn’t want to go. She sensed that Alan, as fiercely independent as he was, needed company. Needed someone. And if that someone happened to be her…well, she couldn’t just turn her back on him.

  Didn’t want to turn her back on him.

  She pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down, bending her knee and hugging it to her chest. “Did I tell you I visited Claire’s old apartment?” she said quietly. “I talked to her roommate. Asked her if maybe she’d remembered anything since she’d spoken to the police.”

  Alan sat holding his glass tightly, although he had yet to drink any of the contents since she’d appeared in the door.

  Molly sipped her own drink, aware he hadn’t indicated if he’d heard what she’d said.

  She felt a tightness in her chest. An ache that looking at him amplified. He looked so raw, so alone, sitting there drinking in the dark.

  She forged ahead on her own. “She was in the process of moving out—into her fiancé’s place—and happened to come across something that belonged to Claire.”

  He finally looked at her.

  Molly smiled, trying not to feel too relieved. “A key ring bearing a single key.”

  “It could belong to anyone.”

  Molly shook her head. “No. I know it’s Claire’s because I gave her the key ring myself for Christmas some time ago.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment.

  “I have no idea what it opens. I mean, it looks like it could be to a locker, but the plastic that might have held a number has been broken off.”

  He was looking at her now, although she couldn’t make out his expression. But at least she had his attention.

  “Do you think it opens anything important?”

  “If it does, the odds of our finding out what it is are virtually nil.”

  Molly nodded. That was what she’d been afraid of. She’d visited the bus terminal yesterday morning and had been overwhelmed by the rows upon rows of lockers, some big, some small. She’d tried a couple of the lockers that were missing keys, but then she’d been weirded out by a homeless man following her even after she’d given him a couple bucks for a cup of coffee, and she’d left.

  The utter silence of the room and the apartment around them was almost unsettling. Molly couldn’t even make out the sound of a car passing, music playing. Nothing.

  Nothing but the thick sound of her heart thudding against her rib cage.

  She felt a connection to the man sitting across from her so intensely that it almost alarmed her. Especially since he was determined, for whatever godforsaken reason, to keep her at arm’s length. Whether it be literally or with the help of a bourbon bottle.

  At least he wouldn’t have to drink alone so long as she was there.

  She nudged her empty glass toward him. “Mind if I have a little more?”

  He didn’t respond for a long moment. Then he reached for the bottle and began opening it, before pushing it and the two glasses aside and reaching for her instead.

  DAMN IT, BUT I COULDN’T help myself.

  I knew I should tell Molly to leave. Knew I should fight the insatiable draw to her that burned in my gut hotter than the two shots of bourbon I’d had. But, damn me to hell, I couldn’t do it.

  I grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her to the table so that she sat on it facing me. She gasped, soft strands of her hair caught in her lips as she stared up at me. I read part desire and part fear on her beautiful face as we stared at each other.

  The past few hours with her had been incredible. I kept waiting for the point when I’d tire of her. Get my fill and want to push her away. But even when we were both spent and I’d drifted off to sleep, I’d known such a want for her that I’d awakened with a hard-on.

  But rather than reaching for her, I’d headed for the kitchen.

  And now here we both were.

  I reached for the shirt she wore, finding it closed by only two buttons. I tugged, and the buttons ricocheted around the room, baring her to my gaz
e. I hungrily drank in her full breasts, weighing each in my right hand before squeezing almost to the point of pain.

  She gasped.

  I nudged my knee between hers, opening her thighs. The golden fleece between her legs glistened in the dim light.

  I had no condoms on me. I stood looking down at the way her quickened breathing moved her breasts, causing her toned stomach to inflate and deflate. I listened to the sound of my own blood thickening, my erection so hard it was almost painful. Trailing my hand down from her breast to between her legs, I parted her engorged flesh and fit my uncovered tip against her opening, waiting for her to protest.

  I heard the click of her swallow as she continued to stare at me.

  I don’t know how I knew that she was testing me, but I did.

  I also knew that if I wanted to continue sans protection, she was opening the door for me to do so.

  What kind of woman allowed that sort of sex in this day and age?

  A woman too damn good for me.

  I thrust my hands down under her buttocks and lifted her, then thrust into her to the hilt, knowing a sense of the dark and the forbidden. An untamed something within me that needed to claim her, to take advantage of her generosity, surged through my veins. A glass fell from the table and broke on the floor, the pieces stinging the top of my bare foot. I thrust again. And again. And the other glass and the bottle fell. But I was oblivious by then. Too far gone. I wanted to show Molly how I wasn’t the guy for her. I was selfish and uncaring. I looked out only for my own gratification. I didn’t want a woman like her in my life.

  I wanted to chase her away.

  But the harder I pushed, the harder she pushed back, giving as good as she got.

  She braced her hands against the sides of the table and lifted her lush hips, meeting my angry thrusts stroke for stroke, her breasts swaying, her gaze plastered to mine. My thighs struck the side of the table again and again, and I knew I’d be bruised, that she’d be bruised, but I didn’t care. In fact, I thought I’d welcome the visible reminder of just how wrong I was for her.

  What type of man would purposely set out to hurt a woman as sweet and generous as Molly?

  Her slick heat gripped me as she tightened her legs around my hips, her cry heralding her climax.

  And as my own crisis built in the depth of my balls, I knew that the type of man who would do this was me. A man in need of something he was afraid only one woman could give him. Something he was afraid he’d never be good enough to receive….

  WHEN MOLLY AWOKE HOURS later, she knew this time that she was not only alone in the bed but in the whole apartment. And as she sat up and drew her knees to her chest, she experienced what it felt like to be not only completely alone but utterly lonely.

  ONE OF THE HARDEST things I’d ever done up until this point in my life was leave Molly as she lay in my bed this morning. Despite my strongest efforts to ward her off, the damnable woman was working her way under my skin. Reminding me of my own vulnerabilities. My own humanity.

  My own need to touch and be touched.

  But I found myself fighting her every step of the way, telling myself my reason for doing so had to do with my career—though I was beginning to suspect I wasn’t ready to face the real reason.

  So I’d left her lying there, her head against my pillow, looking like an angel.

  But long before I’d received the call telling me of what had gone down, I’d been playing with something connected to the Arkart murder in my mind. Namely a piece of the puzzle that refused to fit.

  Philippe Murrell.

  The instant Molly had brought up his name, saying that she’d run into him outside Josie’s hotel and that he hadn’t seemed happy, an alarm had gone off in my mind. But I’d been too distracted at the time to act on it.

  Perhaps if I had, I wouldn’t be standing on Bourbon Street as the sun rose, watching NOFD try to put out the flames leaping from the fourth floor of the old hotel.

  I scratched my jaw and turned toward where Josie herself was talking to Drew Morrison, her friend the tarot-card reader standing nearby. A cat meowed. I looked down to find a scruffy black cat staring up at me. Apparently having gotten what he wanted by gaining my attention, he flicked his tail, then scampered toward Josie.

  “Sir, we’re going to take the victim to New Orleans General now,” a uniformed officer told me.

  “He’s a suspect, Jasper, not a victim.”

  I didn’t care if Murrell had taken buckshot to the groin or not. If he had indeed murdered Frederique Arkart in a bid to get Josie to sell her hotel and gain himself a large paycheck from the same people Drew Morrison had been working for…well, he deserved a lot more than what Josie had given him.

  I remembered the sawed-off shotgun behind her front desk and grimaced. Too bad she couldn’t have aimed a little higher. There would have been less paperwork.

  I walked toward my car, my presence unneeded since there weren’t any murder victims and Arkart’s killer had been caught. I should have felt better that I had one less murderer walking the city. And I did. To a certain degree anyway.

  What I didn’t feel good about was what I’d done to Molly last night.

  I winced and pulled the car door open harder than I had to. After climbing inside, I sat for long moments before starting the engine.

  Molly….

  Well, Molly had proved she was made of sterner stuff than I’d given her credit for. Not only hadn’t she turned away from the darkness that had unleashed itself during our lovemaking, she’d stared it straight in the face without blinking.

  I wasn’t too sure I was that courageous.

  I turned the key in the ignition and put the car into gear. I wondered if she’d been awakened by the phone ringing an hour ago. Or whether she was still asleep in my bed.

  I stopped for coffee and beignets, then headed for home. But when I opened the apartment door, I knew she was already long gone.

  14

  MOLLY HAD PURPOSELY kept out of touch with Alan since their night together. Not because she hadn’t wanted to see him. But in spite of it.

  It had been difficult to keep her distance. Every part of her had wanted to stay in his apartment the morning after, to wash up the few dishes in the sink, maybe make breakfast in case he returned.

  Even though she’d surrendered herself to him in a way she never had with any man before him, she knew that to bend any more would be to risk snapping. And she couldn’t do that.

  No. If they were to go any further on a personal plane, Alan would have to be the one to take the next step. She knew that as surely as she knew her own name.

  She also knew that he wouldn’t respond immediately.

  From the moment she’d first glanced into his deep green eyes, she’d guessed the dark detective was battling demons she couldn’t begin to comprehend. But for a few brief hours Saturday night, she had glimpsed those demons from such a close proximity it had taken her breath away. She’d danced in that darkness, felt it swirling around her, sucking her in. And she’d willingly given herself over to the temptation of it. For Alan’s sake.

  For her sake.

  But now she had to face that it was Monday morning and she hadn’t heard from him. After a long Sunday at the hotel, going over notes and files and her sister’s things while waiting for the phone to ring or someone to knock at her door, she was beginning to fear that he wouldn’t make the next move. That he would stay in the shadows and not reach out for her.

  Straightening her skirt, she stood a little straighter and told herself she’d known the consequences of her actions.

  But that didn’t make Alan’s silence go down any easier.

  She lifted her hand and knocked at the door to a nice middle-class home that seemed to be on the fence between the city and the surrounding bayous. It opened immediately.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” Molly said to FBI agent Akela Brooks.

  “Don’t worry about it. I don’t have to be anywhere until ten.” S
he motioned for Molly to follow her down a hall.

  Molly noticed the agent looked flushed and happy. The apparent reason for her state stepped up behind her in the kitchen, tall and forbidding-looking.

  “Molly, this is Claude Lafitte. Claude…Molly.”

  Molly stretched out her hand, amazed by how large the Cajun was.

  “Mon dieu, you look exactly like Claire,” he said quietly—and none too discreetly in front of his fiancée. After all, he’d spent the night with her sister before she’d been found dead the following morning in the bed they’d shared.

  His eyes narrowed and he shook a long, thick finger at her. “Then again, maybe not. There is something different about you, isn’t there?”

  Molly wasn’t sure an answer was expected from her, so she didn’t offer one.

  “Please, have a seat,” Akela said. “Coffee?”

  “Please.”

  Molly sat down, noticing that Claude chose to lean against a counter nearer the back door rather than sit.

  “Never mind him,” Akela said as she poured the coffee. “He still feels hunted. Being near the door gives him a quick escape route.”

  Molly’s gaze went back to the Cajun. “I see.”

  Although she really didn’t. She couldn’t imagine living always under suspicion, always on the run. And it intrigued her that as an FBI agent, Akela was the one who usually did the suspecting and the hunting.

  Two halves of the same whole? She watched as Claude took the coffeepot from Akela, his fingers subtly lingering on hers. Molly dropped her gaze at the obvious look of love they exchanged, feeling like a Peeping Tom even though she was an invited guest.

  “Thanks so much for agreeing to see me,” she said, clearing her throat and taking out her notes. “I trust you both have heard about Hotel Josephine.”

  “Yes,” Akela said.

  “The copycat killing has rolled back attention to the first murder—that of your sister,” Claude said, with deference, “which means I’m also back in the spotlight.”