Skin Deep (20 page)

“Of course I’m going to act,” Sinclair said, the stone cold certainty both in his voice and on his face killing the rest of the argument she’d been about to launch. “I’m calling Peterson with a recommendation to start a full investigation, starting immediately. If DuPree is behind these murders, I want him to answer for them, along with every other heinous thing he’s ever done or even thought about doing.”

Isabella opened her mouth. Tried like hell to verbalize an intelligent thought. Couldn’t make it happen for all the world.

“I don’t understand,” she finally managed. “You just told me you weren’t calling him.”

“No. I said I wasn’t calling him
yet
.”

Nothing followed but the far-off ringing of phones from the homicide office down the hall and the muffled white noise of afternoon traffic moving over the street two stories below, but she wasn’t about to get shy—about this case or anything else—now. “What are you waiting for?” Isabella asked.

Sinclair scrubbed a hand over the dark blond stubble peppering his jaw and leaned back in his desk chair, although the increased space between them did nothing to dilute the seriousness in his expression. “I’m waiting for you to go home.”

“E-excuse me?” Isabella sputtered, her pulse tripping through her veins. “Why would I go home if we’re opening an investigation?”

“You’re going home because that’s where I’m sending you. As of this moment, you’re off this case.”

“Sam.” The single syllable was all she could push past the dread keeping her pinned into place. But he couldn’t kick her off this investigation. Not when Angel had been killed for agreeing to meet her. Isabella had to make this right.

Sinclair shook his head. “You’re a great cop, Moreno. But even great cops can’t freelance in this unit. And they sure as shit don’t get to buck the chain of command that starts with me.”

“You bend the rules all the time,” she said, clamping down on her lip as soon as the words were out. Okay, so pointing out his rules-are-mostly-just-guidelines mentality might’ve been a teensy bit brash. But Sinclair didn’t exactly go by the book all the time, or hell, even
half
the time.

Just when she was certain she’d surpassed her daily quota for total fucking shock, Sinclair said, “You’re right. Sometimes I do. But there’s a huge difference between massaging the rules to get the job done and going completely rogue. You repeatedly put yourself in danger for evidence the State’s Attorney can’t touch because you had no search warrant when you obtained it, you showed a blatant disregard for a direct order given to you by your commanding officer, and don’t even get me started on the fact that you brought a civilian on not one, but
all
of these field trips of yours.”

“Believe me, that part wasn’t by choice,” she argued, but Sinclair wasn’t having a single word of it.

“Everything you did was by choice. Your decision to pursue DuPree off the books—”

Despair drove her to interrupt. “You wouldn’t let me pursue him
on
the books!”

He interrupted right back. “Your decision to keep me and the rest of this unit at arm’s length rather than trusting us to back you up once you’d talked to your CI—”

No. Way
. “Is that what this is about? You’re booting me from this case just because I don’t want to share my feelings while we all have s’mores around the campfire?” Un-be-fucking-lievable!

“No,” Sinclair bit out. “I’m booting you from this case because you need to learn that being a cop isn’t just about you. It’s about solving cases as part of a team. And if you can’t work with me and Hollister and Maxwell and Hale and Capelli—if you can’t trust us when you need us, either out there or in here—then you’re not working this case.”

Isabella blinked through the afternoon sunlight slanting in past the shades. Sinclair knew her. He’d read her personnel file cover to cover a thousand times—shit, he’d put the full court press on her recruitment to the intelligence unit the second she’d been promoted to detective. He knew why she’d become a cop, why she’d made it her mission to become a detective so she could stop men just like Julian DuPree. He couldn’t. He
wouldn’t
do this to her.

“Sam,” she whispered, her throat rasping over her words. “You can’t take me off this case. Please.”

But Sinclair simply shook his head. “I’m sorry, Moreno, but I just did. You’re on restricted desk duty, updating your unrelated paperwork until further notice. And if you so much as look at this case again without my permission, I’ll see to it personally that you walk the beat at the shopping mall for the rest of your career. Are we understood?”

K
ellan pulled
himself from the driver’s seat of his Camaro, every one of his muscles feeling as if it had been strung up and stretched thin. Captain Bridges had given him a lot of latitude during yesterday’s shift, sparing him from his duties on engine in order to take Isabella and Sinclair through the scene of the fire, inch by inch. But Seventeen had rolled out on four back-to-back calls after that, and while two of them had been relatively minor, the three-car smash-up on the highway and the utility worker they’d rescued from a drainage pipe had sucked away energy he’d had to manufacture out of sheer will. Add to it the fact that DuPree had somehow managed to ID Isabella as a cop and kill both Angel and Danny Marcus, then cover it up while still flaunting the crime in their faces?

Yeah. Stick a fork in him. He was freaking cooked.

Kellan sent a few extra covert gazes around the parking lot in front of his apartment complex, his awareness on full-alert as he walked the path from the asphalt to the building’s double-wide glass front doors. If DuPree knew who Isabella was, chances were high that the bastard had ID’d Kellan, too. He’d called Kylie and Devon as a precaution, his sister kicking into what-the-hell mode and Devon kicking equally hard into oh-hell-no mode. Kellan had assured Kylie he’d be fine (and Devon had assured Kellan
she’d
be fine—thank fuck), passing along the same assurances to Bridges and everyone else at Seventeen when Sinclair had told them all to be extra vigilant for the time being, just in case. Gamble had even gone so far as to get all Special Forces on his ass, making him swear to check in at regular intervals between now and their next shift. And Kellan thought
he
was paranoid. He didn’t even want to know what had happened to make Gamble so sharp around the edges.

Speak of the devil
. Kellan liberated his ringing cell phone from the back pocket of his jeans and tapped the icon to take the call. “I left the fire house ten minutes ago, you know.”

“Yeah. You home?” Gamble asked without pretense.

Kellan swiped his way into the building with his electronic key card, stepping into the empty lobby and hitting the button for the elevator. “Copy, jackass.”

“That’s all I needed to hear,” Gamble said. Leave it to a Marine to set their code word for the all-clear to
jackass
. “Later. Jackass,” he added, and Kellan could swear he heard an oh-so-rare smile in the guy’s voice just before he disconnected the call.

“Nice talking to you, too,” Kellan said to the dead air, a small huff of laughter crossing his lips. Sharp around the edges or not, there were far worse people to have his back.

The elevator arrived seconds later and he stepped on, looking down at the cell phone still in his hand. Scrolling through his list of contacts, his finger hovered over the icon labeled
Moreno
, his brain doing the yes-no-yes-no dance the whole way to the fourth floor, and screw it. He might have some ironclad impulse control in all other situations, and Isabella might be more than your average badass. But DuPree was a psychopath who had killed two people in direct connection with her investigation, and she’d taken Angel’s death as hard as he’d expected. Kellan needed to know Isabella was okay.

Shit. For all her tight-lipped caution and chin-up bravado, he missed her. And dangerous or not, he wasn’t quite ready to lock that feeling away with all the rest.

His finger came down on the icon two seconds before the elevator doors opened, but it wasn’t the sound coming through his phone that shocked him into place as soon as he stepped into the corridor.

It was the sound of someone else’s phone, ringing from a few doors down, that blew Kellan the fuck away.

“Moreno?” He blinked, certain his weary, bleary eyes weren’t cooperating with reality. But Isabella looked up at him from the spot where she’d been sitting outside the door to his apartment, her cell phone in her hand and a look of total shock on her face.

“Hey, I…are you calling me?” she asked as she stood, and Christ, could Kellan be any less suave?

“Sorry, yeah.” He hit the
end call
icon with the edge of his thumb, and her phone fell silent. “I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“Oh.” Isabella nodded, her hair spilling forward to shield her eyes. “Sorry to just show up like this. I’m sure you’re really tired. Or, you know. Maybe busy. This was probably a bad idea.”

Kellan lowered his brows in confusion, and what
was
that look on her face? “No. I’m glad you’re here.” His smile lasted only briefly before he asked, “So,
are
you okay?”

“Not really. No. I mean, I’m safe,” she added, likely in response to the swift step he’d just taken in her direction and the tactical stare he’d just lasered over either side of the narrow, empty hallway. “But yeah. I’m not okay.”

“You’re not hurt,” he said, and looked like his tactical tendencies weren’t on the shelf just yet.

“No.”

“Are you hungry?” While he might not share the chef-level cooking gene with Kylie, he could still throw together some basics. She needed to eat if she was going to keep up her strength for this case.

But Isabella shook her head. “No.”

Remembering the look on her face when she’d arrived at yesterday’s fire scene, he quietly asked, “Is it Angel?”

She didn’t answer. Unable to help it, Kellan reached out, his fingers tracing the curve of her cheekbone. “This isn’t your fault, Isabella. You had no way of knowing DuPree would find out you’re a cop. You were doing your best to keep Angel safe.”

A laugh crossed her lips, although the sound held no humor. “I don’t…I really don’t want to talk about what happened to Angel, if that’s okay with you.”

“Okay. Then what do you want?”

Isabella leaned her cheek against his hand for only a second before stepping in to obliterate the space between them. “I want you to let me come inside.”

Her mouth met his in a rush, and holy hell, he could taste her for a month and still not want to come up for air. Capturing her face between both palms, Kellan slid his fingers through the sweet, coconut-scented fall of her hair, holding her in place so he could lay claim to every last bit of her mouth. But for as much as he took, Isabella took it right back, kissing him harder and faster until they were pressed together from mouth to chest to hips with no sign of stopping.

“This,” she murmured, sliding her hand between Kellan’s legs. “I want this, right now.”

His cock jerked at both her touch and her demand, and yeah. Yeah, not stopping sounded like a Nobel Prize-winning idea.

The elevator rumbled softly from a few doors down, momentarily breaking the spell. “Inside,” he said against her mouth, groaning at the friction of Isabella’s lips on his as she nodded a fervent yes. He managed to get his key in the lock on the third try—thank you, raging hard-on—and they spilled into his foyer in a flurry of hot kisses and near-desperate grabs at body parts and clothing. But damn it, he and Moreno had been put on high alert for a reason, and the ingrained defenses of his training weren’t going to let go of him, no matter how badly he wanted to pull off her jeans and fuck her right on the spot.

“Wait,” Kellan grated. “Need to check the apartment, just in case.”

Isabella nodded in agreement, and hell, this woman was perfect. “Your bedroom’s this way?” she asked, pointing down the hallway to the right.

“Yeah. I’ve got the main room and the kitchen.”

“Okay. I’ll take the rest,” she said, turning back to give him one last kiss. “Just do me a favor and don’t dawdle.”

Kellan kissed her back just as hard. “Believe me, sweetheart. That is the
last
thing on my mind.”

He moved through his apartment, checking both the kitchen and main living space with fast, methodical precision. While the interruption and distance might have killed the mood under different circumstances, he found himself shocked to discover that the wait to have Isabella only heightened his want and turned him on more.

At least, until she didn’t come out of his bedroom.

“Moreno?” Dread pushed his pulse faster against this throat. Coiling his muscles and preparing to strike, Kellan inhaled soundlessly, slipping past the door with his senses on high alert.

And then he caught sight of her, and his heartbeat sped up for a whole different reason.

“Hey.” Isabella looked at him from the center of his bed, where she lay across the comforter in nothing but a lacy black bra and a matching pair of panties. “Your bedroom’s clear. Took you long enough.”

A chuckle rumbled up from his chest. “You’re going to pay for that.”

Her reply rode out over a sassy smile that made him think a thousand dirty things about her mouth. “I certainly hope so. Now come here and take off my panties.”

Kellan whipped his shirt over his head and kicked off his boots, discarding both on the floorboards at the foot of his bed. But as much as part of him was tempted to finish losing his clothes so he could lose his mind in the tight, hot space between Isabella’s legs, a deeper, more instinctive part of him paused.

“No.”

“What?” Her brows shot up, her spine straightening against his bed pillows.

But he didn’t recant. “No.”

Moving to the side of the bed, he took her in with a lingering gaze. Her lush curves surrendered to the black lace that cradled them, dusky brown nipples just visible beneath the fabric, and Kellan barely fought the urge to taste them as he slid in next to her on the mattress.

He kissed her neck, cupping one breast lightly in his palm. “I didn’t spend a lot of time here the other night because I was in such a hurry to fuck you.”

Letting go of a moan that nearly wrecked him, Isabella canted her hips in a touch-seeking thrust. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It’s not a bad thing that I wanted to be inside you,” Kellan agreed, skimming a thumb over her nipple, a bolt of wicked satisfaction laddering up his spine as it tightened to a stiff point behind the lace. She was so responsive, so brash in taking exactly what she wanted, and hell if that didn’t make him want to slow down and touch her all the more. “But now I want to make up for my oversight.”

Another moan, and she trailed a hand over the flat of her belly. “Don’t make me start without you.”

The thought of Isabella slipping her fingers beneath that tiny triangle of lace to make herself come sent a hard ache from the base of his spine to his balls. “Go right ahead.”

Her mouth parted in a soft O, prompting Kellan to lean in and taste her surprise. “What?” she asked.

He bit down on her bottom lip with just enough pressure to skirt the boundary between pleasure and pain. “I’m about to turn you on in ways you’ve only imagined before now. You don’t really think I’m going to tell you no if you want to return the favor.”

“You want to watch me touch myself?” Her fingers inched lower, down past the indent of her belly button, and clearly, she was warm to the idea.

Kellan grasped her hand and placed it directly between her legs, because he was fucking
incendiary
for the idea. “Yes. I want to see exactly how you need to be touched.”

“What else do you want?” Isabella pushed her hips up in a slow glide, her fingers pressing against her lace-covered sex.

He bit back a groan. Jesus, she had no idea how hot her tenacity was. “I want to take this off”—he dipped his head to the slim line of her shoulder, running his tongue along the ink-colored ribbon of her bra—“so I can learn your gorgeous tits with my hands and my mouth, just like I did with your pussy the other night.”

Her back arched, and Kellan didn’t wait for another invitation. Moving his hand to the back of her rib cage, he found the delicate clasp nestled between her shoulder blades, freeing it with a quick turn of his wrist. Isabella looked at him, just a second’s worth of sweetness in her milk chocolate eyes as she slipped the lace from her body.

Gorgeous didn’t even touch this woman.

He looked back at her, wanting to memorize every nuance and curve. The way her hair framed her face and shoulders, how her nipples pointed up, tight with the need to be touched. The sight of her long fingers still pressed to the lace between her tawny thighs.

“Kellan,” she whispered. “I need—”

The rest of her words became a keening cry as he closed his lips around one nipple, because as much as Isabella needed to be touched, he needed
her
, just like this. Sliding his tongue in a slow circle, Kellan tasted and sucked, angling his body over hers as she lay back on the bed.

“Ohhhh.” The sound spilled from her mouth, her exhale heating the back of his neck. Her soft, sensual cries made his cock throb behind the fly of his jeans, but when her fingers delved beneath the edge of her panties, he damn near lost his mind.

Kellan let go of her breast, his eyes fixed on her fingers as they disappeared provocatively between her legs. “That’s it,” he grated, his breath shaky with want. “Show me what you want.”

“I want…” Isabella’s knees widened, her back bowing. “Don’t stop doing that with your mouth. And don’t stop watching.”

“My pleasure.”

Continuing to keep his body weight braced on one side, Kellan dropped his mouth back to her nipple, curling his fingers beneath the swell of her breast to hold her close. The angle gave him a perfect vantage point to watch her busy fingers, his breath moving faster and his sucking growing harder as she circled her fingers over her clit.

Isabella moaned, her nipple pebbling harder beneath his lips. She buried her thumb at the top of her sex, tilting her hips up and letting her fingers drift lower, then lower still.

Kellan froze, his cock turning to absolute steel as he realized exactly where she was touching herself. Keeping his mouth on her nipple, he let go of her breast, gliding his fingers over her body until they twined with hers. She stilled at the contact, but he didn’t hesitate.

“Show me.”

He didn’t know whether to be more stunned or turned on when Isabella complied. But then she was pulling the lace from her hips, returning her hand to his and guiding it to the heat between her legs, and yeah. He’d never been so turned on in his fucking life.