Authors: V.K. Forrest

Ravenous (23 page)

BOOK: Ravenous

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Liam woke to find the morning dull and gray. After lying there for a while, he decided he needed a hot shower. It might not wash away the guilt he was feeling over Anthony’s death, but at least it would prepare him for whatever the day brought.

He slipped out of bed, leaving Mai to sleep, and walked down the hall to the bathroom, his clothes under his arm. He’d probably been standing in the shower for five minutes, hot water streaming over him, when the bathroom door opened, then closed.

Through the steamy glass of the door, he saw Mai.

“‘Morning,” she said, sounding as if she was not quite awake. “Mind if I brush my teeth?”

“No. No, of course not.” Feeling awkward, he squirted some soap into his hand and began to lather his whole body. He wasn’t used to sharing his morning ablutions and it felt weird to have her in the bathroom while he showered.

But as he washed, listening to the sound of her running water, dropping the cap from the toothpaste, brushing, he realized that it was kind of nice to have a woman brushing her teeth in his bathroom. It was nice to have had her in his bed last night when he’d woken from the nightmare.

He thought about what she’d said the other night, about loving him. He felt like it was hanging over his head. He’d had other women who’d confessed their love for him and he’d never responded to them, either. But it had never bothered him. He’d told himself they deserved honesty. And they certainly deserved to love and be loved by a better man than him. So why did he feel like such a jerk this time?

The sound of the shower door startled him and he turned around. Mai was standing there, naked. “I need a shower, too. Mind sharing?”

He grinned, stepping back. “Not a lot of room, but, sure, come on in.”

She closed her eyes and backed up toward the shower spray, letting the water cascade over her head, washing her long, dark hair.

Come to find out, Liam liked a woman in his shower, too. Not that he’d never bathed with a woman before, but this somehow felt different. More . . . domestic.

“Turn around. I’ll shampoo your hair,” he told her. “All I’ve got is the herbal stuff from the drugstore. I can get something else, if you want.” He squirted some into his hand. He was babbling. He didn’t know why he was babbling.

She turned in the tight quarters, presenting her bare bottom . . . and wet head of hair. “Mmmm,” she said with a sigh as he lathered up her hair. “This is as good as sex.” She backed up, massaging his groin with her bottom. “Okay, not quite.”

He smiled, digging his fingernails into her soapy scalp. “Sorry about that,” he said, apologizing for his growing erection.

“Don’t be.” She turned to face him, lifting up on her toes to kiss him.

Liam drew his soapy hands over her slick shoulders, enjoying the feel of the hot water streaming over him. “Did you check on your dad?” he murmured, nuzzling her neck.

“Bedroom door’s closed. Still asleep.”

“You don’t think he’ll”—he pressed his lips to her throat—“get up and—”

“Locked the bathroom door,” she said, her breath already coming quickly.

“So this was preplanned?” he teased, reaching up to wash the last of the shampoo from her hair.

She lifted her wet lashes to look into his eyes. “That a problem?”

“No.” He kissed her softly on the lips. “Not a problem.” The next kiss was more forceful.

Mai ran her hands over his buttocks, stroking, kneading. He pushed her back against the wall of the shower stall and she lifted one leg, wrapping it around him, pulling him closer.

Liam cupped one breast, kissed it, stroked her nipple with the tip of his tongue, lapping the warm water, then lowered his hand over her hip, across her belly, and then lower to the triangle of dark hair.

Mai moaned. She was wet for him, ready . . .

He kissed her collarbone and drew a trail of wet kisses up to her neck again as he drew his fingers between her legs, stroking her.

Mai slid her arms around his shoulders, holding tightly to him. “I can’t balance like this long,” she said with a laugh. “Get over here.”

She wrapped her fingers around his cock, guiding him into her, and Liam was powerless to argue. Not that he really wanted to. He pinned her against the shower wall, sinking into her, both of them wet and slippery.

She was warm and welcoming and he groaned with pleasure at the first stroke, closing his eyes, reveling in the feel of Mai in his arms and the water pouring over them. In a way, it was as if the water formed a curtain around them, isolating them from the harshness of the world, if only for a few minutes.

It didn’t take them long to finish. Mai dug her fingernails into his back until it almost hurt, making that sweet sound that he knew meant she was coming. Which was a good thing because he wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold back.

Mai cried out and Liam gave in, bursting with pleasure. He had to make a conscious effort to hold on to her to keep them both from falling in the wet shower. She laughed as he withdrew from her, then she clung to him, resting her cheek on his chest. “I’m going to miss you, Liam,” she said.

He started to say something, though what, he wasn’t sure. Before he could, she reached up and pressed a finger to his mouth. “Don’t say anything. Please. It’s one of the things I like most about you. I don’t expect you to respond, just like I didn’t expect you to respond to what I said the other night.”

She leaned back, looking into his eyes. They both knew what she was talking about. “I don’t need you to say those things. I don’t want you to.” She lifted up on her toes, kissed him, and then pushed on the door and stepped out. “I’m going to steal all your clean towels.”

She closed the shower door and grabbed a towel off the rack to wrap up her hair. Then she wrapped herself up with the towel he’d left on the toilet seat to dry off with.

Liam squirted body soap into his hand and began to soap up again. “There’s more in the hall.”

He watched through the steamy glass as she went out the bathroom door into the hall, one towel wrapped around her slender body, the other in a turban around her head.

He reached down with sudsy hands to wash his groin.

“
Babbo?
” Mai called from the hall. Her voice got louder as she passed the open bathroom door, walking toward the kitchen. “
Babbo?
”

There was something in her voice that told him he needed to get the hell out of the shower. He rinsed off and stepped out, dripping wet. “Mai?”

She came back to the bathroom door. Seeing he was naked and wet and without a towel, she pulled off the one on her head. “He’s gone,” she said, tossing him the towel. “I can’t believe this. My dad and the dog are gone again.”

Chapter 23

“I
can’t believe he would do this again,” Mai muttered, her wet hair dripping down her back.

Liam ran the towel over his muscular body, then his hair, then dropped it on the floor and walked out of the bathroom. “Get dressed.”

“I told him he couldn’t go to the beach without one of us.” She went to her room and put on a bra and panties. Sometimes she felt like her father was a child,
her
child, instead of the other way around. In her underwear, carrying jeans, a sweatshirt, and socks, she went down the hall to Liam’s bedroom. “I thought he understood clearly why he couldn’t go out alone.”

Mai found Liam at his chest of drawers, already wearing boxer briefs and a black T-shirt. Mai had left his clothes there just the night before. She’d fallen into the routine of washing Liam’s clothes when she washed hers and her father’s. She washed and folded Liam’s things but never put them away for him—some sort of concession. As long as she didn’t do his laundry
completely,
there were no real ties between them to break when this nightmare was over and they both went back to their own lives.

Stupid.

She closed her eyes for a second and groaned. “You know, I’m tired of his games. I’m tired of all of this. Maybe it’s time I go to the police, tell them about the Weasel and about my uncle’s involvement with the stolen diamonds.”

“I don’t know that the police can protect you from them, Mai. There are only a certain amount of resources.”

“I know. I don’t really want to go to the police. We’d be in so much trouble by this point, we’d be lucky if we didn’t all go to jail. I just want my life back, Liam.” She stepped into her jeans. “The way it was. That’s all I want. I want—”

“I think we need to hurry.”

The annoyance she felt slipped away and was replaced with sudden fear. The look on Liam’s face told her he was genuinely worried about her dad. His eyes told her he didn’t think Corrato had gone for a walk. Not this time.

“He’s just gone down to the beach again, right?” she said, quickly pulling the sweatshirt over her still slightly damp body.

Because she believed Liam. She trusted him. He was a strange guy, she’d give him that. And she knew he held deep, dark secrets that she was better off not knowing, but she sincerely believed he had her best interests at heart. And her dad’s, too. “Maybe he’s skinny-dipping, like the other day?” She tried to laugh, but the sound didn’t come out right. Here she had been thinking terrible thoughts about her dad and he might really be in trouble.

“We have to find him.” He pulled on jeans that he’d left thrown over the chair the night before. “The Weasel killed someone else, an informant who provided me with information. I think.”

“You
think?
” She sat down in the doorway to pull on her socks. “You think he gave you information? Or you think the Weasel killed him?”

He threw her a look that told her he meant what she thought he meant.

“Grab the keys to your van.” He took a key from his pocket, a key she’d never seen before, and unlocked his closet door. She’d never gone into his closet, so she’d never noticed the doorknob
had
a lock. From the closet floor, he slid out an old hard-sided suitcase that had been pushed to the back. He went down on one knee and popped the latches.

Mai watched from the doorway wondering what the hell he was doing with the suitcase. When he opened it, she covered her mouth with her hand.
This
was why she didn’t have a boyfriend, a husband, a significant other.

Tears welled in her eyes as she scrambled to get to her feet.

She didn’t have a man in her life because she was lousy at picking men. It was always the crazies she was attracted to. The
dangerous
crazies.

He only opened the suitcase for a second, but it was long enough for her to see several guns, including some sort of high-tech automatic rifle nestled in foam. He pulled out a pistol and a clip of ammo, slammed the suitcase shut, and locked the closet again. When he turned to her, he was holding the pistol.

“You have a
gun,
Liam
?
” She looked at him. “What is it you do for a living?”

“We need to go. Now.”

“Who are you?”

“The man you’ve been sleeping with for the last couple of weeks.” He looked down, checked the gun, and slipped it into the rear waistband of his jeans. Like he knew what he was doing. Like this wasn’t the first time he had armed himself. The spare clip went into his pocket.

“I’m the man trying to help you. I can’t tell you much more than that.” He grabbed a long-sleeved T-shirt from the pile on the dresser. “Are you going with me, or you staying here?”

“I’m going with you, but not with that gun.” She stared at him accusingly. “You’ll scare my father half to death.”

“I don’t intend to use it if I don’t have to.” He grabbed his shoes. “But don’t be so naive as to think your father hasn’t seen one before.”

Mai dropped her gaze to the floor. All of a sudden, she felt like she was going to crumble into a million pieces. All this time she’d been telling herself that her father was innocent, that he knew nothing of Donato’s dealings with the mafia, nothing of the diamonds.

But she’d been lying to herself since she found Uncle Donato’s body.

They cruised the streets of Clare Point for an hour, checking the boardwalk, the beach, the closed five-and-dime they had visited before Halloween. They checked everywhere they thought Corrato could have gone.

With no sign of him, Liam pulled up in front of The Hill. “Wait here,” he told Mai. “Lock the doors when I get out. You see anything suspicious, you hit the horn. You
do not
get out of the car. Do you understand?”

She’d barely said a word since they’d left the apartment. She was upset about the guns in his closet; it was stupid of him not to have waited until she left the room to retrieve his Glock. He didn’t know why he’d done it. Was it a subconscious ploy to chase her off? To hurt her before she hurt him?

It didn’t matter why at this point. And there was no sense trying to explain the guns to her. No lie, no matter how plausible, was going to satisfy her right now. Now he had to find Corrato. Later they’d talk about his munitions cache. Or not. He hadn’t decided.

He walked up the crumbling brick sidewalk to the old pub. The door was locked. It was Sunday morning. What else would he expect? He banged on it. When Tavia didn’t come, he tried her cell. Then he stepped back and hollered at the window over the street that he knew was her living room window. Finally, with
still
no answer, he resorted to mental telepathy, which he probably should have tried first. But he’d been away from Clare Point so long and spent so much time with Mai and Corrato that he sometimes forgot he had alternative means of communication.

Tavia! Tavia, it’s Liam. I need your help.

Liam?

My old guy is missing again.

Where the hell are you?

Downstairs. At your door. Let me in.

Wait a damn second. I’ve still got conditioner in my hair.

As he waited, rocking on his heels, he glanced in the direction of the minivan. Mai sat stiffly in the passenger seat, looking straight ahead. She looked so scared. So vulnerable. So damned beautiful. It was funny, but until he’d met Mai, he’d never had any strong feelings one way or the other about Asian women, vampire or human. Right now, he thought Asian humans were the most beautiful in the world.

He heard the window open on the second story and stepped back. Tavia had her gorgeous red hair wrapped up in a towel turban, just like Mai had had this morning. She was toweling off, not caring how much of her body she bared. He and Tavia had been lovers, though not in this lifetime.

He glanced back at the van. Mai was watching them.

“You say your guy’s gone again?” Tavia called down.

“Yeah, but I’ve got a bad feeling this time. He’s not skinny-dipping. I need your help. I need everyone’s help. I think he’s been kidnapped.”

She hesitated for a second. “You know, this is where I could say I warned you. That more than one of us warned you that keeping them here was a bad idea.”

“You
could
say that.”

She exhaled, taking her time before she spoke again. “Okay, fine. You take your HF back to your place. I’ll rally the troops.”

“Maybe I should keep Mai with me. Keep her safe. Her life could be in danger, too.”

“Take her back to your place, Liam. I’ll send Kaleigh over to sit with her. I’m sure everyone in Clare Point will look for the old guy, but they don’t want to get involved with your little HF girlfriend. I’ll call you in a few minutes. Now I’m freezing my ass off, so if you don’t mind . . .” She slammed the window shut.

Liam went back to Mai’s van and waited while she unlocked the door. He got in.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“A friend.”

She bit down on her lower lip. “She’s pretty. She was also naked.”

“An old friend, okay?” He turned the key in the ignition. “Tavia’s going to let everyone in town know your dad’s gone on walkabout again. If he’s here, they’ll find him.”

She drew her knees up, hugging them to her body. Her hair was still damp and hung over her face so that he couldn’t see her eyes. “He’s not on walkabout,” she said softly. “Not this time.”

Liam knew in his gut that she was right, but he didn’t say so. The truth became pretty clear when they pulled up in front of his shop. The Prince of Dogs sat waiting for them at the door, his leash dangling from his collar. He was alone.

Liam returned to his antiques shop two hours after he’d left Mai and the dog in the care of Kaleigh. He carried a plastic grocery bag. When he walked into the kitchen, Mai was stirring a pasta sauce while the teen sat at the dinette table. He’d known Mai long enough to know that cooking was one of her favorite emotional outlets; she cooked when she was happy, when she was sad, when she was scared out of her wits.

Everyone turned to look at him, including the dog, when he stopped in the kitchen doorway. It was the look in the dog’s eyes that made him feel sick to his stomach.
I tried, buddy,
he telepathed.

It might have been Liam’s imagination, but the dog’s face seemed to soften.
I know you did,
he seemed to say.

“You didn’t find him.” Mai stirred her sauce with a wooden spoon.

“He left of his own volition this morning, I’m guessing, with the intention of walking home. On his way to Mass this morning, about seven, Father Kahill saw Corrato. He assumed he was walking his dog and that I knew.” He set down the plastic grocery bag and Prince ran over and stuck his nose in it.

“We found the bag on the road that leads south out of town,” he told Mai. “It’s your dad’s. Dog food and a crossword puzzle book. The one I bought him at the newsstand the other day.” Liam’s limbs suddenly felt heavy. He was exhausted, so exhausted he felt like he could sleep.

Mai stared at the bag on the floor. “So now what?” Emotion caught in her voice and he walked over and put his arm around her. “We just wait?” she whispered.

“I think we wait,” Kaleigh piped in. “If they were going to kill him, they’d have done it there and then. Killing him would be a last resort. You know very well that the night they killed his brother, that wasn’t the first contact they had with Donato.”

Liam looked at Kaleigh, seated at the table, then back at Mai.

“I told her,” Mai admitted. “The whole story. I . . . I needed to talk to someone. We can trust her. I know we can.”

He exhaled, walking over to the table and dropping into a chair.

“You think Mr. Ricci knows where the diamonds are?” Kaleigh asked Liam.

He shrugged. “Hard to say with Corrato.”

“But he’s smart. If he doesn’t know, he’ll buy himself some time. If he does know, he might tell, but he’ll do it in a way that at least gives him a chance of walking out alive.”

Liam looked up at Mai. “I think we have to go back to your house. Go over everything again, this time paying attention to your father’s belongings. Just in case . . .” He let his sentence trail into silence.

“I’ll go, too.” Kaleigh popped up out of her chair.

Liam’s first impulse was to tell her no. She needed to stay here and wait for Corrato, should the old guy turn up. But everyone in the room, including the Prince of Dogs, knew Corrato Ricci wasn’t going to just
turn up
. Not alive.

Mai turned the stove off. Kaleigh rose from her seat. “Come on, Prince. Let’s go find some diamonds.”

The dog beat them all to the door.

BOOK: Ravenous

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