Dangerous Kisses (Siren Publishing Classic) (5 page)

Drake took a long drink, studying her over the rim of the glass. She wasn’t going to let him forget. At least not yet. Not until he told her everything. But,
Christ
, he didn’t want her to have to live with the images that were now permanently planted in his mind. Forget that, as a homicide detective, she had no doubt seen far worse. He didn’t believe any woman should ever have to see such a gruesome sight.

Thank God she had already left when it happened.

But Debbie hadn’t. The poor girl had seen it all the same as he had and had still been in hysterics the last time he caught a glimpse of her.

“You were still there, weren’t you?” she said when he didn’t answer.

Drake nodded, downed the rest of the wine, and set the glass on the end table. “He died in my arms.”

Megan’s eyes swam in tears, but none of them fell. He was grateful for that. Something about seeing her cry tore at his insides. He knew she had been crying already when he rang the doorbell. He had seen the single tear she hadn’t dried from her face, noted the redness in her eyes her crying had left behind. If she started again, he would have to hold her and he couldn’t be responsible for what he might do when he got her into his arms.

Her softly whispered, “Oh, God,” and the hand she placed on his thigh were torturous enough.

He forced himself to ignore that contact and continued. “I was too late. I heard him scream, but by the time I got to him, it was too late. I got him out of the tank, but…” He left it at that. He wouldn’t describe the half-mutilated body he had pulled from the shark tank, the pain he had witnessed in his old friend’s eyes as he watched the last of the man’s life fade away.

Megan bowed her head, staring at the finger she idly dragged around the rim of her wine glass. After several heartbeats, she looked up at him again, her eyes thankfully dry now. “Where did it bite him?”

“His midsection.” The shark hadn’t just bitten Paul. It had taken a sizeable amount of flesh and who knew what else with it, but he kept that part to himself.

She drew her brows together and shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. A shark usually catches a leg or an arm. Reflexes alone prompt a person to try to defend themselves from an attack by pushing or kicking away.”

“Usually, yes,” he agreed. “Something about this time was different. All I know is around eight o’clock, Brandon found me feeding the penguins and asked me to let him out. He said he had forgotten his keys and we had already locked up for the night. I let him out the front door and was headed back to the penguins when I heard the first scream.”

“The first scream? So the shark bit Paul more than once?”

“No. The next scream came seconds later from Debbie. She made it to the tank room before I did. She—”

“What was she still doing there?” Megan cut him off. “She works in the gift shop. The place had been closed for two hours. She should’ve been long gone by then.”

“I don’t know.” Drake shrugged, a small part of him amused by the question. He could actually see Megan slipping into detective mode. Her question only substantiated the pensive expression on her face. “When I reached the room, she was bending over the side of the tank, trying to reach Paul. I saw what she was doing, saw all the blood and Paul sinking to the bottom of the tank, trying to swim away, but he didn’t have the strength. The tiger shark was circling the top, getting ready to attack again. I dove in after Paul, shielded him with my body the best I could, and pulled him out just before the shark came after us. I sent Debbie to call 911, but I already knew it was too late.”

Megan sipped her wine, her gaze moving from him to a point across the room. He knew she wasn’t really seeing anything around them. She was lost in thought, picturing what he had just described, and attempting to understand it all.

“It doesn’t make sense,” she said after a long moment. “You and I both know how sharks attack. They aren’t the vicious creatures people make them out to be, not unless they’re provoked.” She looked back at him. “Did you catch the name of any of the officers that responded to the call? Did they investigate at all?”

He hadn’t needed to catch any names. He had recognized one man the moment he had stepped into the facility. “Jerry Cusack.”

“Cusack was there?”

“Yes, and he questioned me repeatedly. I practically ran down the entire day second by second for him, everything that happened today right up until the moment he walked in.”

“Did he tell you anything?”

“Yeah, to go home.” He didn’t add the sense he had gotten from Cusack that the sergeant would have much rather slapped a pair of cuffs on Drake’s wrists than to send him home. Drake had only crossed paths with Cusack a few times back when Cusack and Megan were dating, but he had caught on real quick that Cusack didn’t like him. The man obviously felt threatened by Drake. He had picked up on Drake’s attraction to Megan, an attraction Drake hadn’t bothered to hide from the man, and had let his jealousy fly. Drake hadn’t given a rat’s ass then any more than he did now. He wasn’t into stealing another man’s woman and never would have made a play for Megan when they were together. Still, he hadn’t seen it as his fault if Cusack had wanted to butt heads over a few looks and a friendship.

“But instead you came here.” She didn’t ask why, but he could see the question dancing in her eyes.

“I came here.” He didn’t offer any further explanation, and she let it go at that.

“Paul talked to me about you when I was there today.” She paused, licked her lips, and his gaze was instantly there. Her pale-pink tongue trailed over her bottom lip, and his cock pulsed painfully. He wanted to feel those lips locked around her shaft, feel her velvety tongue as it licked across his sensitive flesh. “He told me I should call you when you got off work tonight.”

Okay, apparently she isn’t letting it go. And isn’t that interesting? Paul told her to call me.

He thought about his last conversation with Paul and knew Paul’s suggestion to Megan couldn’t have happened more than an hour or two before the man had started drilling him about her. “What for?”

Megan’s lips twitched. “To ask you out.”

Drake chuckled. So one of his old friend’s last feats had been matchmaking.
Why am I not surprised?
“Why didn’t you?” He went for point-blank. What the hell did he have to lose?

She straightened her legs and got to her feet, rounded the coffee table and disappeared into the kitchen.

Drake started to follow her, but decided to see where and how this played out instead.

“I knew how worried he was about that tiger shark,” she said from the kitchen over the sounds of the refrigerator door opening, the cork popping on the bottle of wine, the refrigerator door closing once more. “I also know you. You wouldn’t have left that place tonight if—” She broke off as she walked back into the living room, sheer grief back in her eyes.

“Then you were planning to call me tomorrow?” Drake stood and closed the distance between them. Indecision swirled in her eyes as she held his gaze and actually took a step backward. “Or had you thought you would wait until the next day?”

Challenge sparked with the indecision and she angled her head, studying him. “Maybe I hadn’t planned on calling you at all.”

“Why?” Being this close to her was destroying his common sense. He should stop breathing before he took in more of her strawberry scent laced with tantalizing female arousal. He should step back so that her hardened nipples weren’t brushing against his abdomen. The trouble came in telling his body to do what his mind knew it should.

“Isn’t the guy supposed to make the first move?” she asked, her voice low and damnably sexy.

Drake felt the dynamite explode. The excess of testosterone surged through his bloodstream. He couldn’t stop himself from touching her at that moment any more than he could stop his heart from beating.

“I am.” He hooked an arm around her waist and yanked her hard against him. The wine in her glass sloshed over the rim onto his bicep, and she sucked in a quick breath of surprise. “Right now.” He dipped his head, stopping with his lips the smallest fraction from hers. “Are you going to tell me to stop, Megan?”

He felt her tremble and saw a dart of fear shoot through her heated blue eyes, but neither of those sounded in her voice when she spoke.

“I’m going to dare you.”

A growl rumbled from low in Drake’s throat, and he didn’t stand a chance of swallowing it down. “Bad idea.”

Did he mean those words as a warning to her or himself? He didn’t know and no longer fucking cared. He tightened his arm around her waist, reaching for the glass of wine she held with his other, and crushed his mouth to hers. He didn’t wait for her lips to part in invitation. He invaded, driving his tongue between them into the cavern of her mouth.

Absently, he took the wine glass from her, set it on the nearby bookshelf, then captured her wrist in his hand. He backed her against the wall behind her, brought her wrist up, and pinned it to the wall. He caught her other arm when she attempted to wind it around his neck and pinned it, too. All the while, he continued his assault on her mouth.

She tasted amazing, sweet from the remnants of the wine with a dash of a vixen sexuality he wouldn’t have guessed she possessed. Her tongue met his plunge for plunge, tangling and tasting, stroking his hunger for her into a frenzy.

He pushed his leg between hers, lifted his knee, and pressed his thigh against her pussy. She was wet, hot, and the sounds she made into his mouth as she started gyrating on his thigh were so fucking erotic he damn near came in his shorts. Jesus, no woman had ever driven him this close to blowing his wad with a simple kiss and a hump against the wall.

Could he make her come this way? He was almost tempted enough to try. Instead, he wrenched his mouth from hers and stared down at her. She was breathing hard, her lips swollen from the kiss, and looking up at him with so much fire and challenge in her eyes that he damn near rethought his decision.

“Be careful what you dare me to do next time. It might not end there.” Yes, that warning was definitely meant for her. He knew when he got his mouth on her again, he wouldn’t stop with a kiss. “Go to bed, Megan. Take off those pajamas, get your vibrator out of your nightstand drawer, and masturbate for me.” He didn’t know if it was his order that made her eyes widen or the fact that he had nailed exactly what she would be doing after he left and precisely where she kept her toy. He didn’t know, really. He went for the obvious and, apparently, he had been right. “Think about me when you’re doing it. I’ll know if you don’t.”

He released her wrists, slowly glided his hands down her sides, and turned away. He walked out of her apartment without a backward glance, doubting she had managed to move away from the wall.

He would see her again and he would know. If she followed his order tonight, the next time he would take it further. And if she didn’t, well, he would just have to make sure she listened the next time.

* * * *

Megan slumped against the wall, her mind reeling, her body burning so hot she wondered she didn’t burst into flames.

What just happened?

She touched her swollen lips.
He kissed you, that’s what.

No, Drake hadn’t merely kissed her. He had inhaled her, consumed her, possessed her, and she had let him. The instant he hooked his arm around her, she had felt dizzy, intoxicated, as if his fingers came equipped with tiny needles that had penetrated her flesh and injected her with a heavy dose of erotic desire. Not that she had needed a heavier dose. Being alone with him had already put her in a state of sensory overload.

Obviously, given the way you let him manhandle you.

Her wrists tingled from the memory of his strong fingers clasped around them, pinning them to the unyielding sheetrock. He hadn’t
manhandled
her really, but he would. She didn’t doubt that. If she gave him the chance, surrendered so easily again, allowed him to touch her again, she would find herself bound by not only her wrists, but her ankles, too, while he did what he wanted to her body.

Christ
, she wanted that, and it terrified her. He scared her. The possibilities of what he could be capable of sent wicked chills of fear and devious desires zinging down her spine. Megan Pontius didn’t get scared, didn’t even get rattled, and she damn sure didn’t surrender to men. She never allowed a man to run the show. She was tough, steel willed, headstrong, and could hold her own in any circumstance.

Except with Drake.

No, she could hold her own there, too. Yet, a part of her she hadn’t known existed until shortly after meeting Drake didn’t want to. That part craved nothing more than to admit defeat and enjoy the promised dark pleasures she had seen swirling in his eyes tonight.

Bad idea.

Yeah, he’d had it right with that statement. Daring him had probably been a bad idea, a very tasty, hormone-rocketing, sense-shattering plan, but a bad one nevertheless. The man was lethal. He held the power to destroy her. He awakened things inside her she didn’t want to face, things she wasn’t sure she was ready for despite the desires churning in her soul.