Her heart beat faster and faster. The dark hair sprinkling his bronzed skin tapered to a V at his waist. His upper arms and chest were all muscle. Grayson was one fit man. One perfect man.
She was suddenly feeling self-conscious.
“Let me,” Grayson said. He gently pushed her hands away and finished unbuttoning her blouse. Then he slid it down her arms.
Her bra was lacy and sexy as hell, her breasts full. Grayson reached for the clasp and removed the garment. It dropped to the floor. He was desperate to touch her. He slowly glided his fingers down to the small of her back. “You’re so soft everywhere, so beautiful.”
Olivia’s breasts rubbed against his chest, and an electric sensation coursed through her body. His skin was warm, his muscles hard beneath. She could feel his strength and power under her fingertips, and his dark curly chest hair tickled her breasts when she moved. The erotic feeling intensified when she put her arms around his neck and her breasts rubbed against him again.
Resting the side of her face against his chest, she could hear his pounding heart and knew he was as excited as she was. It had happened so quickly. She wanted to kiss him, to touch him everywhere.
He unbuttoned her jeans and pushed them to the floor so she could step out of them. When he slipped her panties down, she felt a tingle that started at her toes and shot up through her body. Olivia watched as he slipped out of his own clothes. He was so magnificent, so perfectly sculpted, like one of Michelangelo’s statues.
She pulled the covers back, and Grayson followed her down onto the sheets. He covered her with his body. Bracing his weight with his arms, he lifted up and stared into her eyes.
“You feel so good,” he told her.
He clasped the sides of her face and finally kissed her. He wasn’t gentle. His mouth took possession of hers, his tongue forcing her to respond. He couldn’t get enough of her.
The kiss went on and on until Olivia was burning in every cell of her body. Her fingers glided over his hot skin, caressing his shoulders and his back while her hips moved erotically against his hard arousal.
Grayson ended the kiss and looked at her. He could see the passion and knew she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He kissed her again, then moved slowly down her body. His lips gently nibbled on her neck and the valley between her breasts.
His thumbs brushed across her nipples, once, then again. Her body responded by arching against him, and she moaned softly, telling him without words how much she liked his touch. He began to caress her breasts, then leaned down and took one nipple into his mouth, sucking hard. She cried out and moved restlessly against him. She couldn’t keep still. Her hands stroked his shoulders, and she shifted under him until she was cuddling his arousal and forcefully moving against him. Her toes rubbed against his legs. His skin was hot, and she could feel his strength, but it didn’t overwhelm her, for he was being so incredibly gentle, so loving.
His hands were everywhere, stroking, teasing. He was gentle and rough, and he was driving her wild. She wanted to make him as crazed as she was. Her hands slid down between their bodies, and she caressed his arousal. She knew he liked that because he groaned and tightened all around her. He couldn’t take the torment long. His mouth claimed hers again in a hot, wet kiss that ignited the fire inside her.
She arched up against him. “Now, Grayson,” she demanded. She was close to screaming if he didn’t end the teasing and come to her.
He moved between her thighs and looked deeply into her eyes. When he thrust inside, he was immediately surrounded by liquid heat. She was so tight, so perfect for him. She drew her legs up to take more of him, and he groaned again. He began to move, slowly at first, and then with growing need. Losing all control, his mind was consumed with finding release for both of them. It was a blissful, pulsating torture as he reached higher and higher peaks of ecstasy. She dug her nails into his shoulders and arched up against him each time he withdrew, quickening the pace. Suddenly, she tightened and squeezed him, crying out his name with her climax. He couldn’t stop his own release. He held her in his arms while he lost himself in her.
Her orgasm overwhelmed her, consumed her. The world seemed to splinter into a million brilliant stars, and she felt as though she had skyrocketed to the heavens and was slowly floating back to Earth. She was stunned by the intensity. She had never lost control like this, and it was terrifying. Yet Grayson had held her, whispered to her, telling her she could let go, she could trust him. And, oh God, how she did.
“Wow.”
One word, that was all, but it was enough to tell her how pleased and satisfied he was. She recovered before he did. His breathing was still harsh, and she could feel his heart racing. Then she realized she was having just as much trouble. She was still tingling everywhere and continuing to stroke his back and his shoulders.
Grayson lifted his head and smiled at her. She looked properly ravaged, and that gave him an arrogant satisfaction. Her lips were red, and he could see the passion still there in her beautiful eyes.
“I love your mouth,” he whispered before he kissed her again.
Realizing he was probably crushing her, he gathered enough strength to roll away from her. He lay on his back and took a deep breath. He was amazed it was taking him so long to clear his mind. Making love to Olivia was nothing like he’d ever experienced before. It was different. She was different.
“You said, ‘Wow.’”
He could hear the laughter in her comment. He rolled to his side, propped his head with his arm and said, “No, I didn’t.”
Her eyes were closed, but she was smiling. “Oh, but you did, Agent Kincaid. You said, ‘Wow.’ Is that your sweet talk?”
“Did you want sweet talk?”
“No. ‘Wow’ pretty much said it all.”
He trailed his fingers from her neck to her stomach. “You screamed my name.”
“I didn’t scream.”
“Oh, but you did, Miss MacKenzie.”
His mood darkened in the space of a heartbeat. He stared at the scar from the bullet wound on her shoulder and was suddenly enraged. He wanted to kill the man who had hurt her and hoped he got the chance. She was lucky, the surgeon had told him. Both the injury to her shoulder and her side were considered minor. The bullets had gone straight through and hadn’t hit anything vital. The hip was more serious because the bullet had lodged in bone.
“Does this still hurt?” he asked as he gently traced a circle around her shoulder.
“No.”
“What about this?” He circled the small, raw wound on the side of her waist.
Olivia shivered. He was giving her goose bumps. “No.”
He touched her hip. “And this?”
“Better,” she admitted.
“What about your throat?”
She frowned. “What about it?”
“Does it hurt from screaming?”
She smiled. “I did not scream.”
“Only one way to prove it,” he told her.
Suspicious, she asked, “How?”
He pulled her into his arms. “I gotta make you scream again.”
* * *
Olivia was curled up against his side sound asleep. Grayson wasn’t going to spend the night, but he was too comfortable and content to move. He decided he would call Ronan tomorrow and remove himself from the case. He’d still follow what was being done, might even make a couple of suggestions here and there, but that was all. He couldn’t sleep with Olivia again and run the investigation at the same time. Actually, he supposed he could; he just wasn’t going to.
Maybe he’d stay with Olivia until early morning after all. He’d get up at five and leave. Yeah, that’s what he would do. He pulled the covers up and yawned loudly. Olivia scooted closer and put her head on his shoulder.
He had made her scream twice
, and he was damned proud of that accomplishment. He was thinking about how aggressive she had become after her second orgasm. She’d pushed him onto his back and proceeded to drive him crazy with her hands and her mouth and her tongue. Her enthusiasm staggered him. He realized he was getting hard again, and was seriously thinking about waking her up, when his cell phone rang. He gently lifted her off him, grabbed his phone from the bedside table where he’d put his gun and holster, and answered.
Henry was calling. “Uncle Grayson. I think I’m sick. Can you come get me?”
Grayson sat up. He heard the worry in Henry’s voice but didn’t ask for an explanation because he knew what was wrong. Henry was homesick. As much as the boy wanted to sleep over with friends, he couldn’t seem to get through an entire night. Grayson had thought about Henry around ten o’clock, and when he didn’t call, he had thought Henry had finally gotten over his problem.
He was getting better, though. He’d made it until eleven thirty this time.
“It’s okay. I’ll come get you.”
After he’d dressed, he kissed Olivia on the forehead and nudged her.
“I’ve got to go. You’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” she told him. “Good night.”
She disappeared under the covers. He stood there for a minute and then began to laugh. Had he been wanting some praise or a testimonial about their time together, he would have been disappointed. Apparently she wasn’t much for sweet talk either.
FIFTEEN
Grayson asked Ronan to take over the MacKenzie investigation and to assign another agent to assist. Ronan refused.
The football was flying across the office as the two men argued. It was late, after nine in the evening, and both Ronan and Grayson were sitting at their desks catching up on paperwork. They had already discussed pending investigations, none of which were pressing, and then they began to talk about the progress on Olivia’s case. That was when the argument started.
“I’m serious,” Grayson insisted. “I’m going to remove myself from the investigation. I’ll talk to Pensky tomorrow.”
Ronan hurled the football to Grayson. “No, don’t talk to her. I’ll take the lead, but you’re staying on. You can assist. Or . . .”
“Or what?”
“Distance yourself from Olivia until we get the shooter.”
That was easier said than done. Grayson couldn’t get her out of his mind. All he wanted to think about was taking her to bed again. “I don’t know if I can distance myself.”
“Jeez, Kincaid. What happened to your discipline?”
Ronan feigned disgust, which made Grayson laugh. “I don’t know what the hell happened to it.”
“It’s different with her?” Ronan asked, serious now.
“Yes.”
“Okay, so you care about her.”
“Of course I care.” He was getting irritated. He put a spin on the football and sent it spiraling back to Ronan.
“Tell me how you can walk away.”
“I’m not walking away—”
Ronan interrupted. “Do you think someone else—besides me, of course—could do a better job protecting her and finding the shooter? You’d put her safety in someone else’s hands?”
“I trust you to do the job,” he snapped, “but no one else.”
Ronan was hitting a nerve. Grayson didn’t want to leave the case, but he didn’t know how he was going to keep his objectivity.
“I’m not working this without you,” Ronan said. “Don’t talk to Pensky. All right?”
Grayson snatched the football from the air and held on to it as he thought about his options. Finally, he gave in. “Yeah, okay, for now anyway. I’ll find a way to keep my distance.”
“Good.” Ronan swiveled in his chair and picked up a notepad from his desk. “I’ve got another name to put on the list of suspects.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“Jorguson’s bodyguard. Remember him?”
“The tank? That’s what I felt like I was hitting when I tackled him. His name is Ray Martin.”
“Jorguson fired him, blamed the whole incident on him.”
Grayson laughed. “I thought he blamed Olivia. Didn’t he say it was all her fault?”
“For a little while he did. Then it became a misunderstanding. Jorguson just found out Olivia’s going to testify against him, and now there’s a court date set.”
“His attorneys will delay, probably keep it out of court for at least a year, maybe two.”
Ronan didn’t disagree. “Jorguson pointed the finger at Martin. He said after he was fired, Martin ranted to some people that it was all Olivia’s fault, actually said he was going to get even with her.”
“Who did he say that to?”
“According to Jorguson, Martin made the threat in front of him and his assistant, Xavier Cannon. He claims he said it to a couple of clients. We’ve checked them out, and these clients have less-than-stellar reputations themselves.”
“They’re setting up Martin so the heat’s off Jorguson.”
“Could be,” Ronan agreed. “Guess what Martin drives?”
“Tell me.” He spun the football with one hand then sent it in a high arc across the room.
“Brand-new black SUV. Ford Explorer, to be exact.” Ronan caught the ball and lobbed it back. “There’s more,” he told him. “I sent two agents over to his place. Martin lives a couple of blocks from that drug house we broke into to get the kid for Olivia.”
“Gangland.”
“Yes,” he said. “The agents showed up to bring him in for questioning, and right there in plain sight on the table was a whole display of weapons. Gave the agents cause to search the rest of the house. They found an arsenal. Turns out Martin has a thriving business on the side selling guns to the neighbors. He said he just wanted to help them protect their homes.”
“Now see, that makes him a nice guy.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“What about George Anderson?” Grayson asked.
“I did what you suggested and had one of our agents in Las Vegas check out the loan shark, figuring he’s like all the others—you know, a real businessman who breaks legs and arms to get his clients to pay up but doesn’t see the feasibility in killing them because then he’d never get paid. Anderson’s loan shark, Subway, is different. Every now and then one of his clients turns up dead. Looks like he’s sending a message to other slackers. Word is, he gave Anderson a deadline. He’s got three months to pay it all back.”
“Do you think Anderson would know how to find a shooter?”
“No, but I think Subway would have names, and if Anderson mentioned how much money his wife would get if Olivia were dead, then, yeah, I think he’d help him find a driver and a shooter. He might have hired them for Anderson.”
“Anderson’s a weasel . . .”
“Is he capable of hiring a hit?”
Grayson didn’t have to think about it. “To save himself, yes. But then, so is Martin.”
“Then there’s also the possibility it was random. It could be a gang initiation. She was about the only person out during that freakish snowstorm. A blizzard that early in the season is unusual, and weathermen had only predicted flurries, so how does a kid anxious to get in a gang pass the test when there’s no one around to kill? Maybe Olivia was just a handy target.”
Grayson realized he was holding the football and tossed it back to Ronan. “She’s made a lot of people who haven’t paid their taxes very angry.”
Ronan offered yet another option. “What about the kids she’s helped? One of their relatives or guardians could be out for vengeance.”
“I’ve talked to Judge Thorpe and Judge Bowen, and they gave me the names of the boys and girls she’s been assigned. I tell you, Ronan, some
of the places she’s gone into, some of the god-awful situations those kids were in . . . I would have unloaded my gun on all of them once I got the kids out.”
“No, you wouldn’t have. You would have wanted to, but you would have taken them in.”
“I swear I don’t know how she does it,” Grayson said. “She admitted she likes working for the IRS, partly because it’s more mundane and balances out the horrors she sees in the other job.”
“Were there any suspects? Relatives of these kids who want her dead?”
Grayson caught the ball, tucked it under his arm, and shuffled through a stack of papers on his desk until he found the one he wanted. He skimmed over it and said, “Two cousins of one little boy. Guess she really nailed them in court. They each got twenty years.”
“So we’ve got motive . . .”
“Neither one of them have the connections outside of prison or the funds to hire a hit. I’ve got a few others I’m still checking out, but nothing looks promising.”
“I want it to be Carl Simmons, her dad’s attorney. After I interviewed that son of a bitch, I really wanted it to be him. Listening to all the trash he was talking about Olivia, trying to get her fired, calling her crazy . . .”
“She’s been getting threatening phone calls,” Grayson said. “She thinks it’s Simmons. He disguises his voice, but she’s pretty sure it’s him. He only calls her cell phone number . . .”
“Were you able to trace the number back?”
“Every call came from a different public phone.”
“Every call?”
“Olivia told me there have been four in all.”
“Is she scared?”
“No, she’s angry.”
Ronan nodded. “You know who Simmons reminds me of? A game show host. He’s got this phony yellowish-brown tan and these capped teeth that are a little too big for his mouth, and the color is beyond white. Creepy smile, too. He’s tall and skinny, and when he opens his mouth, it’s freaky.”