Shadowed Paradise (26 page)

Fat chance.

Correctly assessing Claire’s lack of response
for the waffling it was, Brad stretched his length on the hard wood
floor beside the mounded sleeping bag and comforter. Propped on one
elbow, he hovered over Claire’s face. “So?” he inquired
smoothly.

Claire fixed her gaze on the moon, which was
still making its way through the branches of the massive oak.
Somehow she had to explain that silence didn’t mean yes.

“
I’m hurting, woman,” Brad pronounced
dolefully. He nibbled at her ear lobe, deftly lipping away a
mouthful of dangling cloisonné. “What’s it going to take, Ms.
Langdon?” he murmured into her ear. “Sackcloth and
ashes?”

Fingers flickered, Claire’s earrings
disappeared into Brad’s shirt pocket. He began to nibble his way
around the rim of her ear. A soft, slow puff of his breath filled
her inner ear. The whispered warmth might as well have been a hot
sirocco off African desert sands. Claire was scalded to her soul.
Her body quivered, her heartbeat accelerated off the chart.

“
I’m not the big bad wolf,” Brad
whispered silkily as her body jerked. Starting at her forehead, he
brushed his lips down her nose, skimming her mouth to come to rest
in the hollow of her throat.

“
It’s sex, not love.” Her moan, as his
busy tongue nuzzled its way back to just beneath her ear, rather
spoiled the effect of her admittedly feeble protest.

In one fluid movement Brad shoved Claire’s
shirt and loosened bra up under her arms, revealing an expanse of
skin topped by two enticing mounds of flesh, the nipples taut,
inviting his touch. Ignoring the temptation, he turned his
attention to her shorts. Button, zipper, a slight tug and her belly
button was exposed to his teasing, tantalizing mouth. Her body
arched and bucked as he licked, then blew into that tiny orifice as
well.

A chuckle rose in his throat. “If you want
more of that, you’re going to have to marry me.” Brad skinned off
her lace-trimmed shirt, tossed her shorts on top. He had not, he
discovered with satisfaction, lost his passing arm. The bra was a
five-second job. The silky flowers and lace might be intoxicating
to some, but he preferred what was underneath.

“
Now I might still do
this
,” he conceded as he took a
breast into his mouth, suckling sweetly while his hand kneaded and
teased her other tender mound of flesh.

“
Keeper quality. Definitely,” he
breathed as he switched to savoring the other side. He licked and
nibbled his way around her breast. Slowly, tantalizingly, his hand
crept down past her belly button, into the hair covering her other,
smaller mounds of flesh. Where moisture spilled over his fingers as
he found her warm and wet and willing.

It was hopeless, Claire conceded. Her body
had betrayed her. If he stopped, she’d shrivel and die. She
couldn’t hide a cry of dismay as Brad rolled away, kneeling beside
her, breathing hard. As he ripped off his shirt, the buttons
bounced against the wood, scattering across the floor like
something live. Jeans and minimal black bikini followed.

Even by moonlight he was magnificent. A
bronze sculpture, well-muscled and ready. Very ready. Claire arched
into the thumbs he slipped under her bikini elastic, aiding their
mutual rush to get as close as a man and woman can get.

As he lowered himself full length above her,
Claire gave up her last feeble semblance of indifference. With avid
hands she tugged him down, her fingers groping at the back of his
neck, loosing the thong, allowing his wild blond mane to flow free.
As Brad’s mouth once again took hers, Claire ran her hands through
the thick glorious strands. Her hand hard behind his head, she
pulled him tighter yet, demanding, giving, promising, loving.

Yes, oh yes, oh yes! Once again, her
litany—nothing that felt this good could possibly be bad.

Brad lifted his head, a wicked grin clear in
the light of the full moon. “As long as we’re doing this the
old-fashioned way, we might as well practice another time-honored
custom.”

“
Umm?”

“
The shotgun wedding,” he murmured.
Then, as if he had not dropped a bombshell into the summer night,
Brad returned to what he had been doing, nibbling and nuzzling his
way down her body.

Claire’s hands fisted in his silky
hair. Not gently. “
What
did
you say?” she inquired, pulling him up sharply just short of his
ultimate goal.

“
You know,” he replied with a wide-eyed
innocence Jamie might have envied. “Little old ladies whispering
over the tea cups, counting on their fingers.”

Claire yanked at the long pale strands,
rolled swiftly to one side, and flopped back into her cocoon of
bedding with a resounding thud as Brad flattened her by the simple
expedient of letting his full weight fall on top of her.

While she was still catching her breath, he
thrust a knee between her legs, his hand clamped hard against her
thigh, ready to shove her legs wide. “Scream now, Claire,” he
warned. The threat was not idle.

Scream? It was far too late to scream. This
wasn’t rape. And if she’d had a lick of sense, she would have gone
back on the pill the day she met him.

Scream, no. Common sense, yes. If he really
loved her, Bad Boy Blue would listen. “Condom,” Claire ordered. “Or
pack up your marbles and go home.”

“
Long walk back, lady. Snakes, gators,
wild hogs-–”

“
Condom or bust.”

She thought she caught a hint of a chuckle in
his groan. “What if I left ‘em in the truck?”

“
The stairs are that way.” Claire
pointed toward the gaping front door.

With a long-suffering sigh, Brad sat
back, patted the shadows around them to find his jeans, produced a
foil packet from his pocket. “
Voilà
,” he declared with a flourish. “The honor
is yours, Ms. Langdon.” He sketched a mocking bow, which from a
kneeling, very large, fully aroused male had Claire fighting the
giggles. Biting her lip, she concentrated on the challenge of
recalling a skill she hadn’t practiced in more than a
decade.

While she rolled the condom over a
challenging length of arousal, she had time for a moment of
satisfaction. Maybe, just maybe she could handle the Bad Boy of
Golden Beach after all.

Like the night in the hot tub, they were
close to the edge before they began. Blindly reacting to the
world’s strongest urge, they clung together, gasping, as wave after
wave exploded, drowning them in nature’s most glorious gift.

With my body I thee worship
. .
.

From a branch of the live oak the green eyes
of a bobcat peered into the room, watching the rocking, writhing
bodies, ears tuned to the small cries, gasps and moan. Far below
along the river alligators prowled in their nightly search for
food. Armadillos waddled, snakes slithered, and raccoons carefully
washed their food in the tea-colored river.

The owl hooted a benediction.

Two new lives had just been added to the
jungle habitat along the Calusa.

His handsome face distorted by a
furious sneer, he plucked a carving knife from its wooden holder
and stalked back toward the breakfast table and the morning
newspaper, which was lying where he’d left it. So they’d figure it
out.
Slice
. The long knife’s
serrated edge ripped across the newsprint. Forming a Special Task
Force, were they?
Slice
. So
everyone who didn’t already have a cell phone was buying
one.
Slice
. “A mobile
lifeline,” that’s what the newspapers called it.
Slice, slice, slice!

He stopped his dissection of the morning
paper to examine the lethal edge of the long blade. Slowly, he drew
the knife in a precise diagonal across the neat straight cuts he
had already made. Suddenly, he smiled. Anger was stupid. All this
attention just made the game tougher and more interesting. It was
the others who were running scared. And all because of him. He was
in control. As always.

They
were the
stupid shits, the blind dummies who could only panic, not seeing
what was under their noses. Trusting a handsome face,
respectability, the whiff of money.

He jabbed the point of the knife through what
was left of a photo of customers clustered around a phone kiosk at
the mall.

Stupid, fucking shits.

He savored the words his mother never let him
use. They were freedom. Independence. He was grown up now. At last.
He could say and do any damn thing he pleased.

If only he could get off on whores . . . the
eager working girls who swished their tails along the Tamiami Trail
in Manatee Bay. Easy to find, easy to get.

Easy to kill.

But his mama had warned him about
prostitutes. They had diseases . . . and their sleazy little
outfits repelled him. He
liked
Realtors. They had class. They were well dressed, well
groomed, well spoken.
Not
an
easy lay.

And there were so many of them. Open,
friendly, ready and waiting. And all so much more tempting now that
he knew how to do it. Now that he’d found what turned him on . .
.

He eyed the long knife. He liked the feel of
it, the smooth firmness of the bone handle against his palm, the
gleam of the blade. The power. With the tip of the blade he lifted
a shred of newspaper, flicked it off the breakfast table, watched
it flutter to the floor.

His hands were powerful, but with a knife?
With a knife, he was God.

“
You’re reaching, Blue,” Bill Jeffries
scoffed. “Been out to pasture too long.” The Task Force was meeting
at the South County Sheriff’s Department, and Brad had just sparked
the sheriff’s derision by suggesting a possible connection between
the skull brought home by a dog in Pine Grove and the Realtor
murders in Manatee Bay and Golden Beach.

“
The body’s female, it’s been there six
months to a year,” Brad said, biting out each word. “The first
Realtor death in Manatee Bay was two years ago, shortly after I
came back to Golden Beach. Then nothing until this summer. It’s
very likely the killer didn’t really go two full years before this
latest rampage. It’s stupid to rule out the Pine Grove
skull.”

The sheriff, a lean, hard fifty, could
outshoot and outparty men half his age. Nor was he absent when
brains were passed out. But he had an election coming up and a
county full of people quaking in their boots. No sense adding
another body. “Probably just some Alzheimer case wandered off and
got lost,” he drawled, leaning back in his chair and regarding the
mouthy ex-fed from under half-closed lids.

“
And dug her own grave, lay in it, and
piled the dirt on top.” Not to be outdone, the slow rhythm of
Brad’s drawl matched the sheriff’s. Sarcasm oozed through the
southern honey of his soft baritone, making his sudden switch to
short-tempered northern supercop all the more dramatic as he added,
“Cut the bullshit, Bill. Don’t rule this one out.”

In the end the Task Force authorized bringing
in a state forensic specialist to reconstruct the facial features
that had once belonged to the skull. They also put into motion the
tough task of tracking the dental records through two counties of
dentists in an area where most people came from somewhere else.

Though gratified by the Task Force’s
concessions—which were as much due to his status as a good ol’ boy
as to the respect due his former job—Brad sensed nothing but
skepticism from the local experts around him. Old bones in Pine
Grove were not high on the Task Force’s list of priorities. Best to
pursue that particular line of investigation himself.

Giggling like a six-year-old instead of a
dignified, professionally employed sixteen, Jody Stevens held the
canoe steady while her friend Kim Dawson gingerly stepped inside.
Jody couldn’t believe they were doing this. She and Kim had lived
here all their lives and never thought to take a Saturday afternoon
off from their ranch chores to do something as touristy as rent a
canoe and paddle along the Calusa. She hoped no one they knew was
watching. It was positively embarrassing.

After Kim settled herself on the rear seat,
Jody gingerly planted her sneaker in the center of the gently
bobbing craft and, grabbing for the sides, stepped forward and
lowered herself onto the front seat. In unison, the girls heaved a
sigh of relief and reached for the paddles.

“
Okay,” Kim inquired, “which way do we
go?”

Jody looked around, shrugged. “I don’t think
we have much choice. Tide’s flowing upriver, and until we know what
we’re doing, we’d better go with it.”

Kim snorted. “Speak for yourself. I went
canoeing with my brother once. Just keep paddling, don’t stand up,
and everything’ll be fine.”

“
What if we see a gator?”

“
What are you, some dumb tourist?
You’ve lived here all your life. Just keep your eyes open and try
not to run one down.” Kim thrust her paddle into the mud close to
shore and shoved hard. Slowly, the canoe swung out toward the nut
brown current flowing upstream. With a sigh, Jody put the flat of
her paddle into the water on the opposite side, and pulled. The
feeling of power as her tentative thrust propelled the canoe
forward startled her. On her second try she did better, feeling the
pull of the water, the satisfying surge of the light craft as the
current helped thrust them forward. Behind her, Kim settled into a
matching rhythm, and they were soon round the bend and out of sight
of Bud’s Fish Camp.