His tongue teased the seam of her lips, not begging or demanding but promising something too sinfully good to miss. And she was done with denial.
She opened underneath his sensual assault and let him in.
Warm. Strong. Dangerous. His kiss delivered on all of the sexy swagger that made her want to jump him, no matter how many times she’d tried not to. And God knew she’d fucking tried—but not tonight. Tonight was all about giving in. About releasing the tension building since she’d gotten on his motorcycle outside of the Orton’s brownstone.
The pounding of his heart vibrated against her palm as she trailed her hand down his bare chest, through the pale hair that covered his hard pecs, and continued down the center of his hard-earned six pack, then disappeared behind his unbuttoned jeans. Downstairs in the kitchen, she’d been so distracted by the valiant effort of his zipper to stay up without the aid of his top button that she’d put mustard on her sandwich. She hated mustard.
Desire pooled low in her core as she skimmed her fingers across his warm skin, desperate to touch him everywhere at once. She grasped the cool metal of his zipper tab with bold intentions, but he had other ideas.
In a swift move, he captured her wrists, raised them above her head, and pushed her back against the wall. Her upper arm hit the light switch, turned it off, and threw them into a darkness that only served to intensify every delicious touch.
“What’s your hurry, Drea?” His words caressed her throat as he kissed his way down her neck, leaving a devastating trail of want and need in his wake.
One by one, he unwound his fingers from around her wrists before inching the back of his hand down her still upstretched arm. His knuckles traced the line of her forearm, followed the curve of her elbow, and caressed her upper arm. Slow and deliberate, he acted like a connoisseur savoring every inch of her. She could only close her eyes and surrender to the wanton heat burning her from the inside out as he traced the outside curve of her breast with the side of his thumb. The soft contact was enough tease, but not nearly enough to satisfy, and it was going to make her lose her mind.
“Why so slow?” She arched into him, her tank’s thin cotton a weak barrier between them, and elicited a tortured groan from him. “Worried you can’t keep pace with me?”
“Sugar.” He pressed his hard cock against the damp center of her shorts, and she nearly came undone. The thrill coursing through her was like a weak preview of coming attractions. “You should know better than to doubt me.”
“Prove it.” She stretched herself as tall as she could and kissed him, hard and demanding. “I won’t break.”
“I might.” His hands settled on her hips, and his fingers curled around so the tips rested on the upward swell of her ass. He tucked his thumbs into the elastic waistband of her cotton shorts and dipped below her belly button, though not nearly as low as she needed him.
The man was trying to kill her. Every nerve in her body screamed for attention, for relief. Instead, he kept her right on the edge.
“I don’t know why it’s different with you…” He slid his hands up, sweeping her tank top up as he slid down to his knees so his mouth hovered above her waistband. “But it is.”
His words branded her skin with their intensity, and her knees threatened to give way.
She shouldn’t believe him. He went through women the way she went through eyeliner before the social gala of the year. But as idiotic as it was, she did.
She looked down at him as he kneeled before her like a golden Apollo, and something shifted inside her, scattering everything from her brain except for the truth. She needed him, even if it was just for tonight. Needed his touch. His body.
She’d spent the last year running away from Cam before he could run away from her, even when she was sleeping with him. Yet here she was with him now and without regrets. “God, you’re dangerous.”
He winked. “You have no idea.”
Out of nowhere, the Star Wars theme song sounded. She jumped, and the motion nearly knocked Cam onto his ass. He recovered, stood, and pulled a phone out of his pocket. “It’s Carlos. I told him to call the burner phone if he heard anything.”
Her heart choked to a stop and rattled against her lungs. As Maltese Security’s resident computer guru, Carlos specialized in finding bad news. “Put it on speaker.”
He stood and fished the phone out of his back pocket. “It’s probably not good.”
“Shocker.” She crossed her arms and kept her mouth shut.
He mumbled something under his breath, but he swiped the screen to answer on speaker. “What you got, ‘Los?”
“The Harbor PD just put out an all-points bulletin for Drea. They charged her with Natasha Orton’s death.”
Murder…? But that didn’t make sense. The shooting at her apartment. The broken glass everywhere. The bullet lodged somewhere in her kitchen wall. It all should have been enough for them to at least doubt that she was the murderer and start suspecting that someone was after her.
The whole world shrank to the size of a pebble with darkness closing in fast and without mercy. They’d arrest her. There would be a trial. Her legs failed her, and she slid down the wall. If Diamond Tommy didn’t find a way to gut her first, she’d spend the rest of her life in jail. The room wobbled beneath her, and she had nothing to hold onto.
Cam sat down beside her and clamped his hand around hers, drawing her away from the edge of oblivion. “What changed?” he asked Carlos.
“I’m bringing up the arrest warrant now, give me a second.” The sound of clacking keys sounded as he typed. “Okay, they executed a search warrant at her apartment based on information from a confidential source that a shooting had taken place at the residence. When they arrived, officers found no signs of a disturbance, but did find the remains of a puffer fish in the garbage. The fish’s liver was missing. That organ is a source of Tetrodotoxin determined to be the victim’s cause of death. They added in more about the lipstick Drea brought with her having traces of Tetrodotoxin and her uncooperative attitude when questioned at the scene.”
They’d staged her apartment. She hung onto Cam’s hand like a lifeline while she tried to wrap her brain around what was going on before she lost it completely. Even when the coffee cup had exploded in her hand at her apartment, she hadn’t really believed—not on a gut level—that this was all really happening. But she couldn’t deny it any longer. This wasn’t a misunderstanding. She was being set up.