Illicit (14 page)

Midway through the return trip to the truck, her flashlight died, her lack of sight making the trip twice as long. The first thing she saw on approach was a blinking light coming from inside the cab. Apprehension pricked. Her cell phone. She’d left it inside the cab. The flashing stopped for a second, then resumed in a fast rhythm to signal an urgent message. Three messages, it turned out. As Peter retied his boots, she listened to her voicemail.

“
Eva
…” There was a pause, but the one word was enough to tell her the caller. James. “
God, Eva. I don’t know how to tell you this, but Becca
...” A long, silent gap filled the airway, and she imaged her uncle running a hand through his beard, thought maybe she heard the rasp. Her heart hammered inside her chest. Already her brain spun, desperately finishing the sentence in a number of different ways, none of them good. Her palms grew moist with sweat. “
She’s dead, Eva
.” Her hammering heart stopped. “
Murdered at the clinic. The cops are here. Grady needs you to come by the scene, wants you to bring Peter with you. Get here as soon as you can
.”

Dropping her phone, Eva pressed a hand to her stomach, a choked sob breaking free.

“What is it?” Peter asked from the other side of the truck.

She swallowed, the sting of hot tears against her cold cheeks the only sensation she felt. She looked up, met his gaze. “There’s been another murder.”

The lines around his eyes and mouth deepened, his only show of emotion. “Who?”

Guilt consumed, made it hard to speak the leopard’s name aloud. “Becca, at the clinic, James needs us there. The cops want to ask us a few questions.”

“I’ll kill Grady.” Peter ripped open the truck door and climbed inside. The trip into town, much like the ride to the cabin, was made in brooding silence.

The scene they drove into was familiar, one she hadn’t been able to get out of her mind since finding Greg’s body. Policed milled around, the entire station in attendance. Blue and red lights spun, and she cast her gaze to the plain, unmarked corner’s van.

Peter’s truck slid into the parking lot, jerked to a stop that threw her against her seatbelt. He was out of the truck before she could wrestle out of the safety restraint. Panic grew as she watched Peter through the windshield. Peter locked gazes with Grady. The detective hissed something under his breath and trudged across the parking lot toward Peter.

She scrambled out of the truck and almost fell on her face in her haste. At a dead run, she sprinted to catch up with Peter’s long stride. He’d made it half way across the lot. Evidence or no, he was going to tear Grady’s throat out in front of the entire Bellows Falls Police Department.

She threw herself in front of Peter, her chest colliding with his. He never took his gaze off Grady, never stopped moving forward. He pushed her along, her feet scrambling over the snow in an awkward, backward jog.

“Peter, stop,” she whispered.

He ignored her. Grabbing his face, she forced his gaze to hers. The corners of his eyes changed, enlarging and lengthening. Sharp canines pressed from his mouth.

“Look at me,” she demanded, and almost fell when he came to an abrupt halt.

He curled his lip, snarling, presumably at her order. Behind her, the approach of boots crunched through snow. Grady was still far enough away that she had time to get Peter to rein in his anger.

“You have to get yourself under control. I know you want his blood, but now is not the place. They will shoot you the second you lay a hand on him. Do you want to expose the entire Pard? Because right now you're seconds from sprouting fur.”

He took several deep breaths, his chest rising and falling against hers. His eyes slowly melted back to normal. Teeth receded. He gripped her hands where they cupped his cheeks and she thought he’d pull her grip off. Instead, he pressed into her, tightening her hold.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” he said quietly, and she knew how much the admission of weakness cost.

She shook her head, looked deep into his eyes. “You will because you’re strong and smart and whether you admit it or not, you care about Greg, James, and the rest of the Pard. You will protect them above all else. You are Alpha. You told me it’s instinct to put them above yourself. You need to do that now, for the Pard, for me.”

Snow began to fall, flakes swirling. They landed in his hair, on his shoulders. He looked like a fallen angel, his dark hair and eyes glittering with fury and indecision.

“Is there a problem here?” Grady asked.

Eva turned, but didn’t break physical contact with Peter. In front of her, Grady stood erect with a hand on the butt of his gun. A few of the milling officers noticed, including his father, the Chief, and made their way closer to the potential problem.

She stepped backward into Peter, the heat of his chest lining her back. He curled a hand around her waist, dug his fingers into her clothes.

“No problem,” she answered quickly, had a hard time meeting Grady’s swollen face. She knew what Peter was capable of doing. “Peter is very close to the Graysons. He isn’t taking Becca’s death well.”

Peter grunted something she didn’t understand.

Grady looked them both over, assessed, and then withdrew a notebook from his back pocket. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted James deep in a conversation with the chief of police. Her uncle had stopped him from coming over. She also saw the clinic. Her breath caught and she took an automatic step toward the damaged single-story wood building.

Greg’s dream, his sole focus for the last fifteen years, had been ravaged. Peter tightened his hold, kept her from running across the parking lot. Glass littered the ground in front of the empty holes where darkened windows once stood. Bright red paint marred the brown wood structure with words like “whore” and “mine.”

Hadley Grimes, not dressed in his usual suit, now wore a dark jumpsuit. He exited through the front entrance of the clinic, pushing a sheet-covered gurney. Becca.

She turned in to Peter, remorse coalescing. He cupped the back of her head, made a soothing noise against her ear and held her closer. She broke apart in his arms, no longer caring about anything except how many lives she’d ruined. Becca had been so young, so beautiful, and now she was dead because of Eva. The guilt was unbearable.

“Peter,” Grady voice penetrated. “I need to ask you a few questions. Let’s take a walk.”

“Now?” he growled, the rumble shaking her.

“Or at the station. It’s your choice.”

“Grady,” James interrupted, joining the group. “Can’t you see how upset Eva is? Don’t make it any worse.”

“Make it worse?” Grady hissed, voice rising. “I’ve got two dead bodies, both at Eva’s clinic. She’s got a new boyfriend who happens to show up right when the murders started. I don’t believe in coincidences. I know he’s violent, I saw the marks on Eva the night after they were together. He broke my fucking nose.”

“Watch your language,” James demanded, stepped closer to her.

Peter let out a low hiss of warning, a sound she hoped Grady didn’t hear.

“Oh come off it,” Grady said, totally unmindful to the power struggle mounting around him. “She isn’t a little girl. This entire situation pisses me off, and Eva is right smack in the middle of it! I don’t want the next dead body I find to be hers.”

James turned to her, avoided Peter’s gaze. “Eva, why don’t you come with me? I’ll drive you home so Peter can talk to Grady. You don’t need to be here, to see any of this.”

“The fuck you will,” Peter said. “Last night I stayed at Eva’s. I left about midnight to get a change of clothes from the cabin I rented. I lost my key, had to go to the office, Gloria can confirm that. I was out of there by one, returned the key and checked out. By one-thirty, I was back at Eva’s. I woke her up and we took a road trip in the middle of the night, decided to go to the hunting cabin. I got gas on our way out, you can check with Larry at the station. We came back as soon as James called.”

Grady sneered, scribbled in his pad hard enough to impress the text into a few layers of paper. “You better believe I’ll be checking that out. Eva, you agree with everything he just said?”

She nodded, looked into his smoky eyes, tried to picture him shooting Greg, killing innocent little Becca.

Apparently as satisfied as he was going to get, Grady closed his notebook. “Don’t leave town,” and he walked away.

“He’s a dead man,” Peter growled.

“What’s the real reason you went to the cabin in the middle of the night?” James asked, coming in close so they weren’t overheard.

“Don’t worry about it,” Peter said, walking away from James and pulling Eva with him toward the truck.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“I’m Alpha, it’s my responsibility to talk to the Graysons. I won’t let Becca’s murder go unpunished. I will prove Grady killed her, and when I do, I’ll let the Graysons have a piece of him. That’s Pard law.”

“Then I’m going with you. I can help them, heal a little of their pain. It’s the least I can do.”

He stopped walking. With narrowed eyes, he searched her gaze. “Heal them. You mean that literally, don’t you.”

She drew in a deep breath. Things she’d imagined herself telling him over the last few days, but never dreamed of actually doing, spilled out. “I don’t remember the year I came to Greg, but he told me the story. He’d walked into a bear trap, the clamp shattering his ankle. I stumbled upon him, ‘a battered angel from heaven,’ he said. I put my hand on his wound and healed it.” She paused, cupped Peter’s cheek. “I didn’t just fix his ankle, I healed his broken heart. He told me I gave him the ability to love again. The last couple of days I’ve been going through his stuff. I found pictures of your mom, of you growing up. There were letters, Peter, dozens of them addressed to you in Montana. I don’t know what happened between you—”

“Stop,” Peter said, pressing a finger against her lips.

“The Greg I knew was an unloving asshole who drowned his sorrow with liquor and wallowed in guilt. Maybe you did heal him, Eva, and maybe,” he glanced at the clinic, a place where Greg had devoted his life to helping others, “maybe, he became a changed man from the selfish drunk I knew. But the dad I remember and the father you knew aren’t the same person. He loved my mom and when she died he stopped loving me. End of story.”

His pain ran deep, was a wound she felt in the pit of her gut. His hurt called out to her on a visceral level, begging her to take it away. She didn’t know if Peter would let her. Taking a chance, she lifted on her toes and pressed a soft, tender kiss against his mouth.

As she’d done with his leopard, she pressed her forehead to his. “You are wrong, Peter. It’s not the end.”

The insistent pounding of a soon-to-be migraine sent starbursts of pain through Peter’s skull. His vision blurred. He forced himself forward, told himself he’d come inside Eva’s house only to make sure she was safe. A chivalrous lie. Hours with Becca’s mourning family left him raw and pissed off about it. An Alpha had no business feeling, period.

He made it as far as his father’s study before the past and present collided. Suppressed memories from his mother’s death, his father’s subsequent isolation, unfurled. Things he hadn’t thought about in years ripped through him. The fights. The blood. The isolation of living without his Pard. Pain slipped past his self-control, and like a tidal wave, the current gathered momentum.

The front door closed, a soft sound that had him turning toward it. Eva pressed back against the wall, as if no longer able to stand unsupported. Her gaze rose from the shiny wood floor, met his penetrating one. The weariness in her eyes tightened the invisible hand closing around his throat. He hated her discomfort. Hated the scent of her tears tracking down her pale, smooth cheeks. He hated the vulnerability shining her eyes.

He clenched his fists, fought to stay where he was, several feet away from her. Her heart, innocent and fragile, was his for the taking. For the first time in his life, the temptation to take what didn’t belong to him reigned.

“That was awful,” Eva said, her voice cracking, her body trembling.

She undid him. “Come ‘ere,” he rasped, knowing his mistake and making it anyway.

Tears streamed down her face. She crossed the distance between them, slow at first, then sped to a run. He stepped forward, catching her when she threw herself against him. As if he would never let her go, he buried his nose against her neck and clutched her tight. It was a lie he’d let her believe, one he’d let himself fall for as well. The sobs she’d held back for the Graysons’ benefit released with the force of a hurricane.

In both hands, he cupped her cheeks, tilted her head up. Thumbing away the streaming moisture, he searched her eyes. Grief. Love. A knife across his Achilles tendon wouldn’t have been more paralyzing.

Fucking hell. She’d fallen in love with him.

The look in her gaze sucked him in, had him lowering his mouth to hers. One kiss and then he was leaving. One taste of heaven was all he would allow himself. He wouldn’t break her heart, not more than he was already going to.

At the first touch of her hot, silky tongue, all thoughts of nobility vanished. In the same instant Eva licked into his mouth, she scratched her nails up the indent of his spine, then along the nape of his neck. A shiver tightened his skin, had him groaning into their kiss. He fisted the back of her shirt, fought to hold himself in check. Desire pulsed and blood rushed to his rock-hard cock.

Her scent, the one he’d been trying so hard to ignore, invaded. She clutched him closer, as if she could burrow inside him. Stupidly, he let her in all the way. Eva’s tongue caressed his, wet, slow, and delicious. Her soft body pressed into his hard one. Passion built, the kiss changing when she pulled back to nip at his lower lip. He chased her mouth, reciprocating her bite and soothing the sting with his tongue. Her soft, mewling moan broke his restraint.

He growled from the place deep inside him, the place where his predator lived, and took control. Without breaking their kiss, he lifted Eva, wrapping her legs around his waist.

Inside her bedroom, he set her down only long enough to unlace and tug off their boots. He found her kiss-swollen lips again, an addiction he’d need professional help to get over.

Together, laid out in the middle of the decadent bed, he settled into the vee of her legs and rose above her. Beneath him she was tiny and delicate. His. He stared into her chocolate eyes. He moved the hair from her face, swiped the rest of her tears away. The tip of her nose was red, her forehead blotchy and her eyes bloodshot. Still, she was stunning.

Eva looked up at him. Silently she gasped to recover the breath he’d stolen from her lungs. Mouth to mouth, he would give her all the oxygen she needed. His tongue swept inside, teased and caressed. She pushed at his long-sleeved shirt, got it half way up his back before he lifted enough to pull the material over his head. In between drugging kisses, he took his time removing her sweater, exposing the soft swell of her stomach. Beneath black lace, her breasts strained.

He ran a knuckle from her throat down her chest, and then to the front clasp of her bra. She sucked in a breath, trembled. Her hand smoothed across the planes of his back, a soft, simple caress. His lust spiked, had him tearing at the closure, anxious to free her creamy mounds. Between them, he cupped a full, round breast.

The moment he touched her, Eva moaned for him, arching into his touch. Her desire spurred him to take her hard and quick, but he held back. He wanted something different tonight. Something slow. Sensual. Forbidden. He drew his lips over her chin, down the center of her throat.

Nibbling on the sexy line of her collarbone, he plumped her full breast, loved the way she filled his hand. She was so fucking perfect. He trailed his mouth lower, bent to take a peaked nipple between his teeth. She cried out, the erotic noise encouraging him to sooth the sting with his tongue.

He sucked her into his mouth, her hips rocking against the length of his erection. If he didn’t have her soon he was going to explode. Delicate hands curved over his shoulders and drew a wake of goose bumps before changing directions. She cupped his ass, and he needed no further encouragement to thrust against her.

“So good,” she moaned.

His cock pulsed. She was so hot. So willing. Fuck, he wanted her now. He released her nipple with a pop, nipped the wet swollen bud and shifted his ministrations to the other breast. Giving the rosy flesh the same attention, he devoured, didn’t stop until he had her on the edge of climax.

He let go of her breast and looked up, meeting her glassy, pleasure-filled eyes. He never broke their gaze as his lips moved down the center of her quivering stomach. With more finesse than he felt, he unfastened her jeans and guided both the denim and her panties over her hips. The sweet intoxicating fragrance of her need hit him.

His feline, suddenly starved, surged to the surface, no longer satisfied to wait. Peter forced the leopard into the back of his mind and concentrated on Eva. He spread her legs wide, exposing the hidden treasure. The slit of her pussy glistened with arousal.

“You are so Goddamned beautiful,” he whispered, lowering to lick a line from the bottom of her entrance all the way up to her clit, her delicious taste an explosion on his taste buds.

“I ache; please, touch me,” she said.

More than happy to oblige, he pushed one finger into her core, and then two, needed to feel the ripples of pleasure when he made her climax. He settled his mouth against her and the world faded away. One lick at a time, he brought her higher and higher, satisfying her in tasting every inch of her pussy. He listened for the change in her breathing, the subtle tightening of her vaginal walls. He’d made her come enough times to know she was close. Not yet. Against her clit, he made tight circles with the tip of his tongue, backed away at the first pulses of pleasure.

Again and again, he brought her close, drew her back, and then started over. The slow, hard pumping of his fingers changed. No longer teasing, he flicked the hard bundle of nerves, sucked. Her inarticulate moans grew louder, louder, louder, and then she was crying out his name, her hips thrusting.

Not until he milked the very last drop of her pleasure did he remove his jeans, the only barrier keeping him from shoving his cock inside her. Naked, skin slick with a fine sheen of sweat, he settled above her.

“Is this what you want?” he asked, smoothing her tangled curls from her face.

“Yes.”

He cupped her thigh, squeezing the flesh before bringing it around his waist, opening her to him. Bending over her, he found her mouth and thrust home. Liquid heat sheathed him from base to tip. Flesh against flesh. No barriers. She gasped, her hips lifting to bury his shaft deeper. Sensation gripped him, had him pulling out and slamming forward. Damn it, she was wet and slippery and so fucking tight.

He broke the seal of their mouths and thumbed her wet lower lip. His body tightened at the sight of her beneath him. Unblinking, she stared up at him, her dark, sensual eyes smoldering with pleasure. He drank in her flushed cheeks, swollen lips and lowered lids. She was a fantasy come to life.

Their gazes never parted as he made love to her. With each thrust the pleasure ebbed and flowed, started something he wasn’t sure he could stop. He took his time with her, let their coupling draw him into a place where only sensation mattered.

Every touch heightened his awareness. Almost absently she stroked his shoulders, neck and back, as if she couldn’t get enough of him. He lowered his mouth to hers, coaxing her tongue out to play. The wet, gentle slide made him groan against her, thrust just a little faster.

In response, she clutched his back, her nails scoring his skin, a delicious bite of pain he’d missed when tying her up. He hadn’t wanted the intimacy then, but now, now everything was screwed up and he was so fucking lost it seemed nothing could bring him back to reality. Her soft lips caressed his sweat-slicked skin, had his hips pumping in a deeper, faster rhythm. Desperate to touch her, he cupped her breast, her throat, stroked her shoulders and arms until he brought her hands over her head.

Words formed in his head, and he struggled to hold them back. No longer in control, they spilled free, his confession ripping through him. “You undo me.”

Her slow, intimate smile stole his heart. Palm to palm, he laced their fingers together, uniting them as one. They never stopped touching, kissing, rocking against each other. Only when she cried out, her body tight in the grip of another powerful climax, did he give up the fight for restraint.

The leopard surged forward but Peter had enough control to keep from shifting on top of her. His thrusts sped until he pounded into her welcoming body, the animalistic urge to mate too strong to ignore. He released her arms to grip her hip. His other hand found her breast. Holding her in place, ensuring she wouldn’t run, he let himself go.

Ecstasy drew her name from his throat, over and over again. He said that and so many other things.

“I’ll never be able to leave you,” he growled against her mouth, his low voice foreign in the darkness. “Fuck, Eva, what have you done to me?”

A tear rolled from the corner of her eye. “Then stay.”

He shook his head, brought his damp forehead against hers. “You know I can’t.”

She tilted her head and sucked his bottom lip into her mouth. Their tongues tangled. Her nails drew down his back, bit into skin, then added pain—the last spike in his coffin. Pleasure ripped through him. The head of his cock swelled, knotted inside to ensure a successful mating. He jerked, a full-body shudder stealing his breath as his semen jetted deep. The fluid made her wetter, encouraged the shallow thrusting of his cock to slide faster.

Locked inside, he could do nothing but ride out the nearly painful sensations of bliss. She milked him dry, took his seed, and claimed his soul.

* * * * *

He didn’t remember falling asleep, didn’t remember curling his body around his female and holding her close. When he woke, the room was darker than the abyss he’d fallen into. The only sounds came from Eva’s even breathing and their echoing heartbeats. He raised his head only enough to look at the clock. Midnight.

He jolted, shaking the sleep from his head. Damn. They’d been asleep for hours. All the plans he made while sitting in Becca’s family living room went to shit. He should have never touched Eva. He should have sent her to bed and waited. Tonight he planned to prove Grady was the murderer. When he was through disposing of the asshole’s corpse, he planned to break Eva’s heart.

Eva stirred. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice a sleepy murmur.

“We fell asleep,” he said, already gingerly untangling their limbs so he could sit up.

He ran a hand down his face, stiffened when Eva pressed her lips against the middle of his spine. He scooted forward a little, just out of range. The separation started now. The bed dipped and before he could get up, the hard tips of Eva’s breasts pressed into back. Her hands caressed his shoulders, moved down until they rested flat on his chest.

Picking up her wrists, hating himself for it, he removed her touch and rose from the bed. “I’ll take the first shower.” He didn’t look back, couldn’t.

“I understand.” Her voice was soft, too soft, as if maybe she hadn’t meant for him to hear.

A half hour later he sat at the breakfast table, dressed from head to toe in black, prepared for their B&E at the police station. Eva walked in, her golden curls darker against her dark sweater and jeans. Not making eye contact, she sat across from him, the scraping of the mug he pushed across the table the only sound. In silence, they drank coffee. This appeared to be a habit between them.

He had no experience ending relationships, not that he and Eva were in one. His dating rap sheet consisted of one-night stands he never had to deal with the next day. Looking away from the black liquid in his cup, he focused on the woman across from him.