Fatal Deception (41 page)

The effort to remain still and appear unaffected by what he was doing had her squirming ever so slightly, which caused her nipples to rub against the coarse canvas on the lounge. If he so much as breathed on her clit, she’d go off like a Roman candle. She floated as he started from her shoulders and worked his way down again, giving extra special attention to her ass. His fingers slipped between her cheeks, rubbing oil on her anus and drawing a sharp gasp from her as his finger slid inside.

“Now let’s talk about that text you sent me that damn near gave me a heart attack today.” Another slap, harder than the earlier ones.

Sam would’ve laughed but she was too busy trying to breathe.

“I’m also not at all happy about the fact that you’ve been keeping things from me again.” His free hand came down on her ass again as his finger tunneled deeper into her.

“What things?” She squeaked out the words as an orgasm of epic proportions grew and built. The foreign sensation of his finger in her ass sent her out of her mind. She’d had no idea she would like that so much. She’d had no idea she’d like any of this as much as she did.

“That you like this,” he said, slapping her other cheek. “And this,” he said as he pushed his finger in and withdrew it before pushing it in again.

Sam came harder than she ever had in her life, and he hadn’t even touched the spot that usually required focused attention. She cried out from the overwhelming sensations that rocketed through her like an out-of-control freight train. Nothing she’d ever experienced could compare. Keeping his finger firmly lodged in her ass, he drew her up to trembling knees and thrust his cock into her.

Sam cried out from the dual assault on her senses and the near pain of his entry. Had he ever felt bigger or thicker inside her? Not that she could recall. Apparently, this new phase in their sex life was having the same overwhelming effect on him. That thought had her climbing toward another orgasm as he timed the thrusts of his finger and his cock so some part of him was inside her at all times, pushing hard against her with each reentry.

When he reached around to pinch her clit, she went off again, harder and longer than the last time, screaming out her release as he slammed into her and roared with his own climax. Long after they collapsed onto the lounge, he kept his finger and his cock inside her, absorbing the trembling shockwaves that followed two of the most astonishing orgasms of her life.

“Well,” he said, as he slowly and torturously withdrew his finger, “who knew?”

Sam let out a wobbly laugh as he pulled out of her and kissed her shoulder on his way to the bathroom. She lay there, still facedown, breathing as hard as she did when she sprinted after a suspect. He had taken her somewhere she’d never dreamed of going, and she’d loved every minute of it. Probably because she loved him so much.

As a woman who prided herself on a hard-core, take-no-prisoners personality, she should be embarrassed by the way she’d let him completely dominate her, but she wasn’t. She’d loved it, and she wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. Because he was Nick, he fully understood the rules of their game without her having to tell him she’d never tolerate such behavior anywhere else.

He returned to the lounge and stretched out next to her.

Sam curled up to him, resting her face on his chest and listening to his heart pounding as hard as hers was.

“So?” he said after a long period of contented silence.

“So what?”

“Did you like it?”

She laughed—hard. “Two screaming orgasms didn’t paint a good enough picture for you?”

He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “They gave me a pretty good idea, but I’d still like to know what you’re thinking.”

“I didn’t know I’d like that,” she said.

“I didn’t know I would either.”

“So you liked it too?”

“Oh yeah. I felt like I was going to explode watching my finger sink into you as your cheeks got redder and redder.” His hand slid down her back to caress her bottom, which was warm and tender. “It didn’t really hurt, did it?”

“It stung, but in a good way.”

“I was worried about losing control and hurting you. I was so turned on. I’ve never been more turned on in my life.”

“Me either.” She tipped her head up so she could see his face in the candlelight. “I couldn’t have done that with anyone but you. I hope you know that.”

“Baby, believe me. I know. If there’s something else you want, I hope you’ll tell me. I don’t want you to ever feel embarrassed to ask me for anything.”

“I liked what you did with your finger,” she said, her face burning despite her earlier bravado. “I wouldn’t mind more of that.”

He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “How much more?”

She ran her hand over his belly to grasp his cock, which was hard again. “As much as you can give me.” She stroked him to make her point.

Releasing a jagged breath, he said, “Have you done that before?”

She shook her head. “Have you?”

His shrug answered for him. He rarely talked about the other women he’d been with, and Sam was dying for details he clearly didn’t wish to share.

What did it matter? He was hers now, and she planned to make sure he never wanted anyone else ever again. With that in mind, she raised herself up and straddled him, sinking down on his erection and drawing a moan of pleasure from him.

He cupped her breasts and tweaked her nipples as she rode him to a fast, hard release that drained the last of her energy. She collapsed on top of him and felt his strong arms come around her as she flirted with sleep.

“I need to go clean up the clothes we left downstairs.”

Laughing, she said, “You do not!”

“I can’t sleep if I leave them there all night.”

“Try. I stepped way out of character for you. Time to return the favor.”

Chuckling, he said, “I love you, Samantha Cappuano.”

Sam, who had never planned to change her name for any man, loved the sound of her new name coming from him. “Love you too.”

* * *

Sam’s first stop the next morning was the city jail, where her two prisoners looked as if they hadn’t slept a wink all night. Unfortunately for them, she’d slept like a baby and was feeling energized and ready to rumble after the best sex of her entire life. They’d ended up sleeping in the loft and had engaged in some rather stupendous morning lovemaking. Whoever said married life was supposed to be boring hadn’t met her insatiable husband.

“Good morning,” she said to the two men, doing nothing to hide her chipper disposition. “Hope you slept well. Did you get your breakfast?”

“If you can call it that,” Porter mumbled, diminished by prison orange. Apparently, city jail fare wasn’t up to his usual standards. Imagine that? His dark hair stood on end, and his jaw was rough with whiskers. While it wasn’t as pungent as it had been the night before, the aura of urine was still present. Once Porter lost his polished veneer, he lost his bravado too, Sam noted.

“We haven’t heard anything from your attorneys,” Sam said, not mentioning that she’d been elated to learn she’d been right about that too. She’d been right more often than usual in this one, and that was saying something, since she was usually right. She liked being right. Her day had already been made by the news that crime scene detectives had found bloody clothes in Jerry’s hotel room. Could he be any stupider? It was proof that he’d never expected to be caught. He’d never expected her. “Is there someone else you’d like us to call?”

They exchanged nervous glances.

“We’re not from here,” Porter said. “We need to call people in Ohio and get them here.”

“I can get you someone from the public defender’s office if money is an issue,” Sam said.

“It’s not,” Porter snapped. “We can pay for our own lawyers.”

“Speak for yourself, a-hole. Christian and Colton will send someone for me. I’m going to wait.”

Porter glowered at Jerry. “They’re not going to send anyone,
a-hole
.”

She was glad to see that at least one of them had realized they were on their own to face the charges with no help from the Patterson camp. Jerry was still holding out hope.

“Can I call someone in Ohio?” Porter asked. “He’ll know who I should call here.”

Sam passed her notebook and a pen through the bars. “Give me the number, and we’ll do it for you.” She watched him process that information and could tell he was once again on the verge of mentioning his rights, but he wisely refrained. According to the officers monitoring the cell, they hadn’t said much of anything to each other during the night.
Too bad
, Sam thought. It would’ve made things nice and tidy if they’d shared a few confidences while they were the guests of the city.

No such luck. While it galled her that they might not nail any of the Pattersons for their involvement in Victoria’s murder, at least they had the guy who’d actually murdered Victoria as well as one of his accomplices.

Porter returned the notebook to her. “I don’t have his number memorized, but I wrote down his name and address.”

“I’ll make the call and let you know what he says.” She paused before she added, “If either of you is willing to speak to us without an attorney present, we’re willing to listen to what you have to say.”

They exchanged glances again.

“What do we have to tell you?” Jerry asked.

“The truth,” Sam said with a shrug. “We want to know why Victoria was planted close to the Nelson administration. We want to know who was behind the scheme. We want to know who gave the orders, pulled the strings, paid the bills. We want to know it all.”

“In exchange for?” Porter asked.

“That’ll depend on what you give us.”

The two of them stood with their arms crossed and mulish expressions on their faces as they contemplated what she’d said.

“I’ll let you think about it,” she said with a jaunty wave as she started to walk away.

“What’re we supposed to do in the meantime?” Jerry asked with a snarl.

“Chill out and relax,” Sam said with another cheerful smile as she headed out of the jail and took the stairs.

Gonzo met her in the pit. “Derek Kavanaugh is waiting in your office with something he said he needs to show you. Looks like he’s been crying.”

“Shit,” she muttered, hoping her good mood wasn’t about to take a hit. She went into her office and shut the door. Derek was sitting in her visitor chair with his elbows propped on his knees and his head hanging between his shoulders. He was the picture of devastation. “Derek?”

He raised his head to reveal a grief-ravaged face.

“What is it? What’s happened?”

“She loved me,” he said softly. “It was real. We were real.”

Relieved and curious and instantly on alert, Sam leaned against her desk. “How do you know?”

He handed her a large white envelope. The address portion contained a printed label with Derek’s name and his parents’ address but no return address. There was no other information on the envelope except for a registered mail tag.

“It arrived via registered mail to my parents’ house first thing this morning. She arranged it in advance in case anything ever happened to her. It’s the whole story with a notarized statement in her legal name attesting to the fact that it’s from her so it can be entered as evidence in court. There’s a note from a lawyer that said he had to retrieve the documents from storage, so it took a couple of days to get them to me. He also said he’d be available to testify to the fact that he handled this matter for her.”

“Oh my God,” Sam said as she skimmed the letter written in Victoria’s own hand, in which she professed her profound sorrow for her involvement in a scheme that had gotten so far out of her control she’d seen no way out of it. Sam read as fast as she could, devouring the details of how Valerie Taft’s father George worked as Arnie’s second in command at the Patterson Financial Group until he quit abruptly. A few days later, he and his wife perished in a fire at their home.

Authorities had suspected arson, but they’d been unable to prove it. Valerie, who’d dated Colton Patterson in high school, had been working in Pennsylvania after college at Bryn Mawr when her parents died. Devastated, she’d returned home to Defiance. The Patterson family had taken her in, treated her as a member of their family and helped to soothe the raw ache of her loss.

She detailed meeting with her father’s attorney, at which time she learned he’d uncovered a massive fraud within the Patterson empire, which was why he’d resigned. The company was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme, a house of cards that could fold at any time. He’d detailed everything he knew and had given the information to his attorney the day before the fire, intending to contact the state attorney general. Her father’s attorney suspected her parents had been killed by Patterson to keep her father quiet about what he’d discovered. Shocked and dismayed that people she considered family could be responsible for her parents’ tragic deaths, she’d made the egregious mistake of confronting Arnie Patterson about what she’d learned.

The lawyer who’d been so kind to her had been found dead the next day, his office firebombed, leaving Valerie without any of the evidence her father had so carefully accumulated to prove the Ponzi scheme. Arnie had made her a virtual prisoner in his home, refusing to let her leave or contact anyone. After two weeks of lockdown and deprivation, he and his sons had presented her with an ultimatum—participate in their plan to gain access to the top levels of the Nelson administration or they would pin the fraud at Patterson Financial on her father.

They’d made it very clear that they would ruin his good name—and hers—unless she gave them a year of her life and did exactly what they told her to. The only thing the Patterson family had more of than money was ambition.

“I’d once heard Arnie say at a dinner party,” Victoria wrote, “that if he had to choose between being president and never having sex again, he’d choose being president because power was the greatest high on earth.”

Since she’d been their prisoner at the time, she’d taken the deal, hoping to find a way out once she was free of their estate.