Ropes and Revenge (18 page)

She was still thinking about how perfect his arms had felt around her, and daydreaming about a slow dance in the privacy of her hotel room, when she slit open the envelope waiting for her at the front desk and all her light and airy thoughts evaporated in a rush of fear.

The note was only two sentences long, but it was enough to make her skin crawl—

Get out of town while you can.

Before you become one of the ghosts you love so much.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

John

John broke every speed limit on the way back to his house, some irrational part of him insisting Percy wouldn’t be safe until he had her behind closed doors with his security system armed. But even after he’d ushered her inside and locked the front door behind them, he felt on edge.

They couldn’t stay here forever and there was no longer any doubt that someone knew they were getting close to discovering who’d killed Lily. There was also no doubt—at least in his mind—that Lily had been killed and the person who’d done it was willing to kill again to keep his secret.

Which meant there was only one thing to do.

“I’m going to the police tomorrow morning,” John said, setting Percy’s suitcase at the foot of the stairs. “And I want you to come with me and show them the note.”

Percy’s brow furrowed. “Are you sure? I thought you said the police weren’t equipped to handle an investigation like this.”

“They aren’t,” John said. “But I’m not equipped to handle anything happening to you. I think it’s better if we tell the police what we’ve been up to, let them know you were threatened, and have them take things from here. Hopefully, we’ve uncovered enough evidence that they’ll be willing to reopen Lily’s case.”

“But what if they’re not?” Percy asked. “Are you going to be able to live with getting so close and still not having answers? I know how much this means to you.”

He reached out, wrapping his arms around her waist. “It does, but you mean more. I care about you. A lot. And that’s putting things in a different perspective.”

“I care about you, too,” she said, linking her arms around his neck. “So does that mean you’re not going to ask me to leave again?”

His sighed, torn, the way he always seemed to be these days, especially where this woman was concerned. “It would be safer for you if you left. I doubt anyone around here would follow you to New York to make trouble.”

“No,” she said, lifting her face to his, putting her lips within kissing distance. “But I think you know by now that safety isn’t my first priority.”

“What is your first priority?” he asked. In some ways, he understood Percy perfectly, but in other ways, she remained a mystery.

“I don’t want to regret a day of life that I’ve been given,” she said. “And I know I would regret getting on a plane tomorrow. My flight out isn’t until next Wednesday. I’d like to stay until then.”

“But if you do, I’ll need to know you’re safe,” he said, fear and longing mixing inside of him. “I’d need you to stay in the house with the alarm on unless I’m with you.”

She cocked her head as her gaze drifted from his eyes to his lips. “So I’d be your captive, then?”

“You’d be my responsibility.”

“I like captive better,” she said, mouth curving on one side. “And what would you do with me, John? If you had me trapped here, completely at your mercy?”

He shook his head, but his body was already responding to the wicked lilt in her tone. “There will be kids here a lot of the time. And I’ll have work. It could get very boring.”

“But you’ll eventually get home from work. And kids will go to sleep. And then it will be just you and me and long nights stretching out ahead of us.” She glanced up at him, lifting one brow. “Do you think we’ll be able to find ways to keep ourselves entertained?”

“Is this your way of saying you’re ready for me to take you against the wall?” he asked, his voice husky.

“Yes.” Percy leaned in until her breasts flattened against his chest, setting his heart to beating faster. “I don’t want to think. I just want you.”

The need in her eyes and the way she fit so perfectly against him left him no choice but to give her exactly what she asked for.

He pulled her into his arms, urging her legs around his waist as their mouths met. Her lips parted, and her sweet, addictive taste danced across his tongue, kicking his hunger into overdrive. He turned toward the stairs, taking them two at a time, his fear, worry, and doubt vanishing in the passion that flooded through him every time this woman was in his arms.

Percy

Percy was dimly aware of the bedroom door slamming behind them, but she was too drunk on John’s taste, his touch, his big hands cupping her bottom, and his arousal thick and hot between her legs, to focus on anything but getting closer to him. She was dying to have his skin bare against hers, to feel him pushing inside her, banishing awareness of everything but the bliss she found in his arms.

When he sat her back on her feet a few steps into the room, she moaned in protest, not wanting to be apart from him for a moment. But then his hands were at the bottom of her sweater, drawing it over her head and she hurried to help. A moment later, her linen pants dropped to pool around her ankles, her camisole had joined her sweater on the ground, and John was kneeling in front of her, kissing her stomach as he pulled her panties down her legs.

She leaned against the wall behind her for support as John’s fingers slid inside her, making her knees weak with a single touch.

“Is this for me?” he asked, his fingers teasing in and out, drawing more heat from her body. “Do I make you this wet, Percy?”

“Yes,” she moaned, her head falling back as he guided her right knee over his shoulder. “All for you. I want you so much.”

“You want this?” he asked, pressing a kiss to her mound, barely an inch from where she was dying for him to touch her.

“Yes, please,” she whispered, her words ended in a soft gasp as his tongue found her clit, teasing the bundle of nerves in circles as his fingers continued to thrust inside of her. Percy’s breath came faster until the world was spinning and she knew she would have fallen if John weren’t propping her up.

“Touch yourself,” he said, his voice vibrating against her swollen flesh, making her moan again. “Touch your nipples. Tease them for me.”

Percy swallowed hard, a shudder working through her as she brought her shaking hands to her breasts. She’d never done anything like this before—never even had sex that didn’t take place on a bed—but she wasn’t embarrassed to know John was watching her roll her nipples between her fingers. It only made her hotter, wetter, driving the need building inside of her to the tipping point. She was shamelessly wiggling her hips to get closer to his perfectly wicked tongue, when he suddenly pulled away.

Her lips parted in protest, but then his mouth was on hers, kissing her with the salty, intimate taste of her body still on his tongue, making her tremble again.

“Please,” she begged into his mouth as their tongues swirled hungrily against each other.

“I’m going to get a condom,” he said. “I want you to stay here and keep touching yourself. When I come back, I want your nipples hard for me. Can you do that, Percy?”

Percy nodded, swiftly moving beyond words. She didn’t know how John did this to her, but when she was with him there was no shame, no hesitation, no worries that she wasn’t experienced enough or adventurous enough or all the other “enough” fears that had plagued her with her other lovers. The hunger in John’s eyes, the reverence in his touch, and the way his hands shook as he squeezed her hips one last time before striding toward the bathroom left no doubt that she made him crazy.

As crazy as he made her.

Her fingers returned to her breasts, plucking and teasing the already erect flesh until her breath came in swift pants and the ache building inside of her became painful. But just when she was certain she couldn’t bear any more, John was back, claiming her mouth for another kiss as he shoved his jeans and boxers down around his hips and slid the condom on.

And then his hands were beneath her thighs and he was lifting her into the air as he drove inside her, ripping a cry of satisfaction from her throat.

Their mouths met again, tongues warring as he shoved into her, again and again, filling her with his heat, his thickness, doing exactly what he’d promised.

Taking
her.

This wasn’t like the other times they’d made love. There was nothing sweet about this. It was hot and demanding and so intense Percy’s fingernails dug into John’s shoulders through the tee shirt he still wore, wishing she could score his skin, leave her mark on his flesh the way he’d left his mark on her heart.

But there was something unbearably sexy about this, too, about being naked in his arms while he still wore all of his clothes. Being skin to skin in only the most intimate of places made it easier to focus on the erotic way they fit together, on the way his cock slid in and out of her wetness, the ridge of him rubbing against the place deep inside that ratcheted up her desire notch after torturous notch.

Aware of the way he seemed to grow impossibly thicker, stretching her inner walls, as he neared release.

“Come for me, Percy,” he said, his fingers digging into her hips. “Come for me. I need to feel you. I need—”

Percy called his name, her body clutching desperately at his cock as she came. Her pleasure crested with a fierce contraction of her womb, but the waves didn’t fade away the way they normally would. Instead, the tension immediately began to build again, swelling inside of her as John’s rhythm grew frantic, punishing, desperate. He slammed into her, taking her so hard and fast her hips ground into the wall behind her, but she had no awareness of pain. There was only pleasure, immense, unbelievable pleasure that fisted around her, taking her over the edge a second time.

This time she screamed. She didn’t know what she screamed—words or some primal sound of surrender—only that she had never felt anything like the orgasm that rocked through her as John came with a long, low groan. She only knew that she left her body, soaring up, up, up, until she kissed the stars. Until she tasted oblivion and found it sweet and ferocious in her mouth, so much better than she would have imagined.

But everything with John was better than she thought it could be.

“Too rough?” John asked, his breath coming fast against her throat as they clung to each other after, chests pressed tightly together and his softening length still buried inside of her.

“No.” She shook her head dreamily. “Good rough. Perfect rough.”

He dropped his forehead to rest against hers with a sigh of relief. “Good. I didn’t mean to move so fast, but I saw you standing there touching yourself…”

“So you liked it?” She bit her lip.

“Liked it?” His arm tightened around her waist. “It was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. I could get hard again just thinking about it.”

Percy smiled. “I hope so. Because we still have the bed and the shower to mark off our list before the night is through.”

John growled low in his throat, a hungry sound that sent awareness prickling across her skin. “How about a bath instead? I’ve got a giant bathtub. I could wash you off and then get you dirty again.”

“Yes,” she said, cheeks heating at the thought. “Get me dirty. Really dirty.”

John pulled back to look down at her, a dangerously sexy expression on his face. “You start talking like that and we’ll never make it away from the wall.”

“Does that mean you’d rather I be good?” Percy asked, innocently.

“Never,” John said. “I like your naughty side. And your sweet side. And the side that bosses me around when I’m being a short-sighted asshole.”

Percy laughed, but the sound turned to a soft cry of dismay as her laughter forced John’s thickness from inside her. “Oh, no. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

He smiled as he set her back on her feet. “Don’t worry. He’ll be up for round two any minute. But first, I’m going to wash every inch of this sweet, naughty, bossy body of yours.”

With a shiver of anticipation, Percy took his hand and let him lead her into the bathroom, where he kept all his promises and then some.

And later, when she was lying in the cooling water, floating happily in his arms, with her head resting on his chest, he said the sweetest words she’d heard in a long time.

“I’m going to talk to Cole tomorrow and see about taking that week off I was supposed to take last April.”

She turned her head, smiling at him over her shoulder. “So we can do this all day long while the kids are at school?”

John winked. “That might have crossed my mind.”

“I think that’s a perfectly wonderful idea.” She turned until her cheek was pressed to the skin above his heart and she could hear the constant, determined beat echoing in her ear. “Perfectly perfect.”

He hugged her close and her eyes slid closed and Percy was consumed with the feeling that she was finally where she was supposed to be, that she’d found the home she’d been looking for, here in John’s arms.