A Touch Of Heat (H.E.A.T. Book 2) Page 23

  He shook his head.

  “Damon,” I said carefully. “You can’t say probably to a police detective and expect them to ignore it. We work in facts. Hard truths. Probably is not a hard truth.”

  “Black and white,” he murmured.

  “Yes,” I said, getting angry. I tried to rein it back in. “Black and white are facts. It’s what we’re trained to uncover. There will always be grey, but grey doesn’t stand up in Court. We might use it, to get a feel for things, for certain people, to give us a lead. But not in Court. And Court is where justice is served. Not out here. Not on the street. But in front of a judge and jury. In front of a very black and white law.”

  He stared at me, his chest rising and falling heavily.

  And then he said, “I’d never thought about it like that before.”

  All the breath left me in a rush. I felt lightheaded. I had to lean my butt against a cupboard.

  “So,” I said, aware his eyes were watching my every move. “These tip-offs have been enough to convince Cawfield you’re up to no good. And he started following you.”

  “Following me?”

  I nodded. “I don’t know for how long, but long enough to see you enter Sweet Hell. To connect you to that world. To make him question just what sort of man you are. And then Samantha Hayes was murdered, and he says you don't have an alibi.”

  “That’s why you asked.”

  “So I could shove it in his smarmy face,” I growled. Damon smiled. It stole my breath. But in a way that made it easier to breathe. I couldn’t explain it. He just did.

  When Damon was happy, even just fleetingly happy, I was ecstatic.

  “He was at the Irreverent Inferno.” Silence met my words.

  Then, “He’s a member?”

  “Apparently his informant got him in. Told him you’d be there. That your actions would speak louder than words.”

  “Fucking hell.”

  “Eagle was a set-up. I don’t know for sure if Cawfield’s informant arranged it, or Cawfield did. But Joe took photos of what happened and delivered them to my house.”

  “Jesus,” Damon whispered, looking away, unable to face me.

  “Eagle said he was there willingly, so we have to go with that being the truth.”

  “He was drugged,” Damon argued.

  “But coherent.”

  Damon shook his head.

  “It’s not the real problem.”

  “There’s more?”

  I nodded. “We suspect the bomb at Cawfield’s house was the informant attempting to clean shop or, more likely, set you up again.”

  “The accelerant,” he guessed.

  “It’s circumstantial. But enough to cast a shadow of doubt over your head.”

  He moved away from the bench and crossed his arms over his chest. A defensive move that wasn’t aimed at me.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “This links the HEAT saboteur with Sweet Hell, which is under investigation in regards to the Samantha Hayes homicide and the Boardman Lane assault. Both victims are connected to the club. Either a member, in the case of Malcolm Warren, the Boardman Lane victim, or had attended the casino at one time, in the case of Samantha Hayes, the murder victim.”

  “Fucking hell.” He seemed unable to say much more.

  I understood. I felt every single blow along with him. I felt his pain. I felt his joy. I realised, what Damon and I had was special. I’d never felt so much through someone else before. And I’d lived my life through others.

  “We have four current suspects,” I said. “Kyan and Nathaniel Marcroft, the owners of Sweet Hell. David Gordon, Samantha Hayes’ ultimate boss. And my father, who had a relationship with the woman.”

  Damon’s mouth dropped open.

  “A potentially kinky relationship,” I added.

  His mouth snapped shut.

  “I need your help.”

  “My help?”

  “I can’t do this alone.”

  He swallowed.

  “I don’t want to do this alone anymore.”

  “Lara?”

  “This is me,” I whispered. “This is me standing before you telling you that I care.” My eyes began to sting. My heart started racing inside my chest. “Telling you that it's easier to breathe when you're with me. That Carl is quiet when I feel your touch. That only your heat can melt the ice I've been forced to live with since I was just a young girl.”

  The tears were flowing freely now. I couldn't stop them. I didn’t want to. I had to get this out. Something drove me. Held me in its fisted grasp and squeezed tight. I was sucking in gulps of air, while parts of me sluiced away in a torrent of melted ice.

  “And I don’t know what to do with this... this need,” I stressed, my words becoming desperate. “This obsession you've created inside of me. I don’t know how to breathe when you're not there. You're my air, Damon. And part of me hates you for it, but another part, the biggest part, the part right here,” I slapped a hand over my chest, “it wants to shout to the world that you're my air!”

  I stared at him, holding my breath, while he stared back slack jawed.

  Time stretched, the room seemed to close in.

  And for the longest moment I was sure he wouldn’t talk.

  I stood there, bared to him, the ice all melted and gone, and realised I finally knew what true loneliness meant.

  How being really alone actually felt.

  Chapter 25

  “The dead demand our attention.”

  “Lara,” he finally said, his voice reaching me down a very long and desolate road. “That's not just caring, baby.” He took a step closer, then another. “That's what we call mad, crazy love.” He smiled. It reached the very core of me. “I feel every torturous bit of it along with you,” he added. “I feel it here.” He slapped a hand over his heart, in a mimic of me. “I feel it everywhere. You’re in my blood. And I’m in yours. Always have been.”

  He stopped advancing, now just this side of the bench he’d been working at. Still a few feet away, but he’d never felt closer. Not even when rubbed up against me, skin on skin. His eyes held mine, melted dark chocolate; beautiful, rich, and so fucking compelling. His lips spread in a small smile, but one that lit up the room brighter than any halogen. He held out a work roughened hand.

  “Now,” he whispered, voice low and seductive. “Come here, love. I think I deserve a kiss after waiting this long.”

  “You deserve a kiss?” I remarked, taking a step closer. “What about me?”

  His head shook, his eyes sparked with humour and… love.

  I saw it now. I recognised it. I felt it along with him.

  “No way. You’ve kept me waiting, hanging on a string,” he mock growled.

  I reached him, staring up at dark brown eyes that seemed to suck me in, and waited. His hand came up, cracked knuckles bent to stroke my cheek. I felt the roughness of the scrapes on them. I felt his control when the wounds barely brushed my skin.

  “I intend to use that string to bind you to me,” he whispered. “To never let you forget how you feel about me. Every time you think of closing down, of shutting me out or using ice to hide behind again, I’ll pull on that string. I’ll tug it and wind it, and wrap you up until there’s nothing but you and me. Me and you. And this.”

  His hand wrapped around the back of my neck and his lips crushed down on my mouth. Our bodies crashed together, two opposite magnetic forces set to collide. I wound myself around him, as if we’d never been apart, as if he’d always been a part of me. I kissed him back as hungrily, greedily, possessively as he kissed me. Hot bodies, wet tongues, racing hearts.

  “You’ve said the words now,” he whispered against my lips, in between heated kisses and soft licks. “You’ve said it aloud.” Another nip, another tongue tangling thrust. “You’ve admitted it to yourself.” Kiss. Lick. Bite. “To me.” A moan, either his or mine, I couldn’t tell. “You’re mine,” he breathed against me, one hand tangled in my hair, one hand
holding my chin at just the right angle. “I’m never letting you go again.”

  I melted into him. Lost all sense of the here and now. Just him. His strong body, his firm hands, his devouring mouth.

  His soul destroying words.

  “And I am yours,” he said, kissing across my cheek and down the side of my throat, until he buried his face in the crook there, where shoulder meets neck, inhaling deeply. “I’ve missed you,” he whispered, moistening the skin deliciously with his breath. “So much, love.”

  “I know,” I said, running my fingers through his thick hair. “I was so lost without you, too.”

  His arms tightened around me, held me like that for the longest time, and then we both smelled the coffee. I made a move to step back, but Damon’s hands gripped me harder. He growled low in the back if his throat, hot breath coasting over my skin, making it pebble with goosebumps. The air conditioning in the lab suddenly felt too cool. Or my skin was too hot.

  The doors behind me swung open and caffeine permeated the air.

  “You two finally kiss and make up?” Flack asked. I could hear the sound of cups being set down on stainless steel.

  Damon still did not release me, though. Ignoring Flack’s presence easily. I couldn’t. I turned my head enough to catch a glimpse of Flack grinning. He rarely grinned. He was as serious as Damon, but with a harder edge to him. Flack was all strong lines and sharp angles, mixed in with tight shirts and a couldn’t-give-a-shit attitude. It was appealing, or at least, seemed so, to half the female population out there.

  “Not finished with the kissing yet,” Damon murmured.

  “Is that a hint for me to get out?” Flack asked, picking up a mug and grinning into it. Clearly we were amusing him today.

  “Not at all,” I returned before Damon could, pushing against his chest ineffectually while I was at it. “We were just discussing the case.”

  “Yeah, Keen,” Flack drawled. “That’s how you discuss the case with all your colleagues.”

  “Damon,” I ground out, still pushing against his chest and shoulders. “Cut it out.”

  “Stop fighting it and I will,” he shot back. Then leaned down, intent evident in his dark assessing eyes, and whispered in my ear, “Surrender.”

  A bubble of laughter burst out before I could stop it.

  “I wasn’t being funny,” Damon remarked.

  The laughter died but the smile still held in there.

  “Argh! OK,” I said, lifting my hands up in a show of defeat. It reminded me of the way the hooded figure at the Irreverent Inferno kept lifting his up in a mock prayer to God. I stilled, sucked in a breath, and stared at Damon’s chest.

  “What?” he said, not exactly releasing me, but easing his grip and pulling back to look at my face. “What are you thinking?”

  “Why was she murdered?”

  “Isn’t that always the question?” Flack asked behind me.

  “It looks like a kinky lover’s tryst gone too far,” I commented.

  “Erotic asphyxiation,” Damon provided.

  I nodded my head, found myself pacing, and hadn’t even realised Damon had let me go. I was no longer touching him. He was no longer touching me. But I still felt as if we were.

  Had we resolved everything? There was still Carole. Still Carl. Maybe we’d never resolve everything, but I knew I couldn’t breathe properly without him. And he knew I was in his blood.

  I wasn’t sure if it was healthy, what Damon and I had, but it was essential. As essential as breathing and blood.

  “Yeah,” I said, refocusing on Samantha Hayes. Or more appropriately, the Irreverent Inferno. “Breath control play but was it?”

  “The victim enjoyed those types of sexual pursuits,” Damon pointed out.

  “She also attended that member’s only club more than once, didn’t she?” Flack offered, leaning against a bench and sipping his coffee. He wasn’t used to the way I thought through a case. The way I connected the dots in my head like a case-map on a white-board. But he was prepared to follow Damon’s lead. “Where sex was just another form of gambling.”

  “Another addiction,” I murmured. Then shook my head. “What if she was chosen on purpose? Because of exactly those things. Her penchant for kinky sex. Her presence in the casino part of the club. Of course, once we started looking into her background we’d suspect erotic play gone too far. We’d look at her boyfriend, who happened to have a solid alibi.”

  “A liaison with two women witnessed by security cameras in every hallway and lift in a hotel downtown at the exact time of death is pretty hard to fault,” Damon commented, striding over to Flack and picking up a coffee cup.

  “But entirely believable, if you credit their open relationship,” I added. “So, boyfriend’s out, we look at her boss. Merely because he attends Sweet Hell.”

  “And has a submissive wife,” Damon offered.

  I wasn’t convinced he did. Certainly David Gordon was very protective of his wife. He called her fragile. Easily upset. But when she opened the door to Jones and myself she didn’t look cowed. She even glared at us for not taking off our shoes once inside. A submissive would not behave that way with authority figures, would she?

  “Maybe,” I concurred. “But he’s not our only suspect.”

  “The Marcrofts,” Damon supplied.

  “Because they own Sweet Hell,” I mused. “Because the murder was performed across the street from their building at a time where they’d obtained an extended license to open beyond normal closing hours. Because they are shrouded in secrecy and gag order their clientele. Because their cameras failed.”

  “Convinces me,” Flack offered.

  I nodded. “But not because of all of that.”

  “Then what?” Damon asked.

  “The hooded figure who does all the talking,” I said, still pacing.

  “The Grand Master,” Damon supplied.

  “That’s what they call him?” I asked, coming to an abrupt halt.

  Damon nodded his head, then sipped from his coffee mug.

  “Like the Knights Templar and similar religious orders?” I queried.

  “I guess so.”

  I huffed out a breath. “And yet they’re not religious.”

  “Neither are the Freemasons and they have Grand Masters as well,” Flack provided.

  I rubbed at my face.

  “What are you getting at, Lara?” Damon asked.

  “I don’t know. This is too… mixed up. We’ve got high profile businessmen, prominent police officers, a boutique gaming establishment, and a secretive order that meets in a cavern not to honour Heaven, but celebrate Hell.”

  “And a murder across the street,” Flack added.

  “Don’t forget the assault in Boardman Lane, the missing street workers, and Carole.”

  I looked over towards Damon and held his steady, slightly challenging gaze.

  “You know we’ve found no evidence of Carole being anywhere near the Irreverent Inferno,” I pointed out carefully.

  “But she was seen in Sweet Hell.”

  “Once. The weekend she broke free of her halfway house restrictions.”

  “Then where is she?” Damon demanded.

  I forced myself not to sigh or show any defeat.

  “We’re still looking,” I offered.

  “But a dead body trumps a potentially dead one any day.” It wasn’t said bitterly, but the words most definitely were.

  I moved on. He was hurting. Worried. I understood. Really I did. It’s just that he was right. The dead demand our attention. Carole wasn’t confirmed dead or alive.

  Just missing.

  Samantha Hayes was lying on a cold slab of stainless steel waiting for her family to bury her.

  “The Grand Master,” I said, pulling us all back to the original topic.

  “What about him?” Flack said, when Damon remained silent. He wasn’t pouting, his body looked relaxed. I just think he was unable to talk.

  “He makes a show of i
t,” I offered. “Raised hands and cries up to Heaven.”

  “The goal is to traverse Hell so you can be worthy of Heaven, isn’t it?” Flack said.

  “Is it?” I shot back. “Dante’s Inferno is all about exploring one’s excesses of desire. In the higher circles it’s personal, pertaining to man’s own lusts and greed. In the lower, it’s desire through someone else’s pain.”

  “Sadomasochism,” Damon said, joining the conversation again.

  “Cawfield was your mentor,” I announced.

  Damon almost dropped his cup of coffee. He’d known. I’d already told him Cawfield had been present last night. And the photos should have told him which hidden face Cawfield’s had been under those hooded robes that had watched on behind the screen. The set-up involving Eagle would have only clinched it.

  But I was thinking it would take Damon a while to get over what he’d had to do in that cavern. What Eagle had begged of him. What Cawfield had witnessed.

  “He wasn’t a member, but his informant knew the rules,” I went on.

  “The rules?” Flack asked.

  “The rules for the Irreverent Inferno. The fact that each circle is a personal test. ‘Prove your worth.’ The member pushes himself outside his boundaries in order to exit each one, to pass the test and move on, but he knows it will get harder and the stakes higher, the further he progresses through Hell. Cawfield tried to sell Eagle’s corner last night. What did he say?”

  “‘That’s the winning ticket,’” Damon said, staring at the floor. His cup of coffee forgotten in his hands.

  “Yeah,” I said. “‘You claim that one and you’ll skip right to the eighth circle.’”

  “How?” Flack asked.

  “Last night was all about the third circle: Gluttony. Overindulgence of addictive activities. Fourth through seventh are greed, anger, heresy, and violence. The eighth is fraud.”

  “So how does it work?” Flack pressed. “Damon skipping five circles in one night?”

  “If Cawfield is to be believed. And I believe him,” I said. “Or, at least, I believe his informant is a full member of the Irreverent Inferno and was not leading him astray. In which case, gluttony was achieved because it was assumed Damon was exploring his excess of desire through the sexual aspect of whipping Eagle. Overindulging in it, in fact.” Damon had been forced to stay with Eagle all night. Until Sweet Hell closed its doors at four.