An acute sense of dread slithered across Mike’s bare shoulders. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“They found him in the woods about five miles from the main house. Not much left of him. Doc G.’s not talking, but Tiffany called me. Seems the remains are in the same condition as the humans and bears found over the last few months. Pincer’s requested that Doc G. sit in on the autopsy. They got the county coroner out of bed. Pincer wants the prelim report before nine in the morning.”
Mike massaged the back of his neck. “Cancel the press conference indefinitely. It won’t do to go ahead with the PR while tragedy’s evolving. Let’s hope this doesn’t get picked up—”
“Already has. The hotel’s chock-full of reporters wanting rooms, and the parking lot behind Fiesta Square’s packed with news trucks. There’re going to be cameras every which way tomorrow. Already there’s a crowd camped out at the sheriff’s office and at the clinic.”
Shit, shit, shit
. Mike gritted his teeth.
“Melanie’s not going to handle that well.”
“Don’t think I don’t know that? If Doc G.’s in autopsy tonight, there’s no way he’ll be at the clinic first thing tomorrow. I’ll call him.” The clinic would remain closed the following day. Either that or he’d man the fucking place himself. “How the hell did they get ahold of this so fast? Someone had to have tipped the media off.”
“More than one person if what Tiffany’s heard is true. At least two of the barn staff took photos. It’s all over the local and county news.”
“What a mess. And bound to get worse. The whole town’s going to be under scrutiny.”
“Yeah. No way the past won’t be rehashed now. What’re we going to do about Mom? This could send her back to
that
place.”
Drake never, ever used the word
institution
. Both men had a hard time dealing with the word. But what his brother didn’t know was that the blame for pushing Mom over the edge and into a mental hospital lay squarely on Mike’s shoulders. It was the reason he had refused to give up when all the shrinks proclaimed Mom would never function in the outside world again.
“Not going to happen. I hate to do this to you, but—”
“Already planned on dropping by the house around eight for a cup of coffee with Mom. That means I’m not going to be able to finish Pincer’s backgrounder.” Stress laced Drake’s bass voice.
“It can wait. Get some rest. I have a sinking feeling that neither of us is going to be getting much shut-eye over the next few days.”
“Ditto.” Drake cleared his throat. “What about Melanie? And the perimeter?”
“My bad. Installed and activated the perimeter this afternoon. All you need to do is set up the controls. Melanie’s with me—”
“No shit. That’s one piece of great news. Happy for you, bro. ’S about time you get some. It’s been months.”
Mike grunted. “Don’t go there. And no snarky comments when you see her or us.”
“Christ on a bike, Mike. I know better than that. I’m the sensitive one.” Drake heaved an audible sigh. “’Kay. I’m hitting the sack.”
“Soon as I know my plans in the morning, I’ll call.”
“Later.”
“Later.” Melanie had rolled onto her back, and her chest rose and fell in even rhythm. Strange that he derived pleasure and comfort from the simple act of watching her breathe. This mate stuff proved all-consuming. A wayward breeze skedaddled across the porch and splattered raindrops over his back. The frosty impact of the spray jerked him back to the here and now.
The maples behind the barn had suffered a violent loss of foliage, the once-riotous blaze of fall glory lying muddied and heaped against sodden tree trunks. The air had the fragrance of nature’s cleansing—dirt, flint, and green all mingled into an aroma he relished.
Augustus Balden. Mike tried to visualize the man but failed. The Baldens hailed originally from Boston but had settled in the county near the turn of the last century. Country club members, part of the horse-racing elite due to the amazing success of their stud farm, they moved in the same circles as the Dorlands.
But while the parents might have been friendly, the generation gap between the kids had been too great for much contact. He knew little of Jim other than what Melanie had told him earlier. He, Drake, and the Internet would remedy that weakness by the end of day.
Three murders in less than three days. No pattern to the MOs. His gut told him they must be related even though the odds were stacked against that conclusion.
Eddie Mato, the murder in Hurit County, and Augustus Balden. Could the killings be random coincidences? Until he knew the details of the autopsy reports for all three deaths, no assumptions could be drawn.
Okay, scrap the Hurit slaying. Eddie and Augustus Balden. What did they have in common?
Before hiring Eddie, Mike had checked him out. Eddie had a predilection for married women and booze, but he’d never crossed the violence line. A couple of saloon brawls, but that was about it. The man had never kept a steady job after his father died in the fire. The Dorlands owed Eddie just like they owed everyone who’d been injured or killed when the mill burned to the ground.
He blew out a sigh. Should he tell Pincer about Eddie working for him? Why open a can of scorpions? Ten to one the connection would remain unnoticed. He’d dealt with Eddie only in cash, and they’d met three counties down and across. Even Drake hadn’t picked up on his communications with Eddie. There was something to be said about pay phones, snail mail, and rented post boxes.
What had he missed? Every instinct told him the connection stared him in the face. Mike went through what he knew of Eddie from every which way and then some, over and over, and came up with zero, nada, not a fucking connection.
He cleared his mind. Forget Eddie and Old Man Balden.
Whisper. Her foal.
He understood the media interest, at least from the horsey-crowd side. Before Whisper’s injury, all the talk had been of the horse being the first filly to win the Triple Crown.
That a filly could even challenge Secretariat’s record had been touted as all but impossible. If Augustus Balden had mortgaged everything on the race, then his son had little to gain from his death. Unless Old Man Balden’s life had been insured to the hilt?
Brinda.
Definitely a problem. But there wasn’t a single reason for her to blab. Not now. Not after he’d come clean about certain things.
A shoulder peeked out from the covers. She’d relaxed thoroughly and was now probably in full REM. The cell’s LED read two. Melanie’s shift at the Caboose started at six. He’d wake her in a while. Guilt attacked him. He should really let her rest, but lack of sleep would make her walls easier to bust down.
The clouds parted, and a spray of stars twinkled a magical diamond web. The rain stopped altogether, and a gentle draft wandered across the porch.
He had his laptop in the pickup; a good way to kill an hour or so. After retrieving his PC, he sat in the swing chair and researched the Baldens, Whisper, and her foal’s sire. The open door allowed him to monitor Melanie. She slept without moving, lying on her back, chin under the covers, and the tip of the pert nose—which he loved to admire in profile—showed.
The research failed to hold his interest. His attention kept wandering to Melanie, his cock kept nudging him into action, and he finally surrendered to the need to hold her. Leaving the PC on the swing, he edged into the cabin, closed the door, and made his way to the barely flickering fire. After adding a couple of pine logs and a handful of twigs, fatwood, dried leaves, and grass, Mike stoked the wood and kindling to a crackling blaze. He waited until the heat of the flames had warmed his flesh before he joined his mate on the bed and slipped under the sheets.
For a while, he drank her in, relishing the opportunity to study every detail of his woman unobserved. Inky waves lapped at one bare shoulder; the contrast between her olive skin and black hair mesmerized him. Even in sleep, her jaw remained stubborn, tilted just so, and he smiled as he remembered her saying, “
Apology not accepted
.”
Underneath that mild exterior lay a wild woman. She’d met him move for move, biting and clawing and insistent. Mike fingered his earlobe, certain he’d bear her imprint on the morrow. The notion pleased him inordinately. He’d expected to have to woo her gently.
He slid closer and nuzzled her shoulder. His scent was stamped on her, all right. Working quickly, his touch light, he bound first her right hand to the headboard’s rail, and then the left. The ties were loose and her arms close to her head. Melanie slept on; the cadence of her breathing didn’t hitch or hesitate.
Carefully he peeled the sheets from her skin, nudged her legs apart, and settled on his haunches in the triangular space between her limbs. His cock throbbed, and precum seeped from the slit. Never would he forget the sight before his eyes. Rosy labia, onyx curls, and that mouthwatering center. Desire surged.
She wriggled her shoulders as if cold. Mike whipped the sheet from the bottom of the bed, covered her from the neck down to feet, and then slipped below the soft cotton. He began with her plump, fascinating toes, running his tongue over the creases, and then traced the arch of her foot. She squirmed and muttered something undecipherable, but her sex blossomed and filled his lungs with the perfume of her arousal. Mike adjusted his aching balls and then found that back-of-the-knee sweet spot and lovingly traced the join line.
“Mike.” Her raspy rendition of his name had his prick on fire.
He licked his way up her inner thigh and grasped the other leg when she arched off the bed. “Hmmm.”
She squealed when his nose brushed her pussy lips on the journey to her belly button, and then moaned a stretched version of, “Oh.”
“Ever thought about a belly ring?” Mike asked and traced the rim of her oval-shaped navel.
Her rapid panting pleased him. “Why. Am. I. Tied up?”
Good. ’Bout time he reduced her to one word at a time. “Because this one, Melanie mine, we do at my pace, and on my terms.”
“Mike, we shouldn’t—”
Frowning, he tweaked her nipples and tongue tickled the hollow between her ribs, then smiled when she gasped audibly and wriggled her hips. For the next couple of hours, he intended to keep his mate on the brink of orgasm.
Chapter Eight
She was going to die from a heart attack brought on by extreme sexual frustration; Melanie just knew it. Squinting down to his sheet-covered form tenting the cotton right at her vagina, she dug her heels into the mattress and arched.
A low, muffled chuckle rumbled to her ears. Balling her hands into fists, she bit down on her lip. Her clit throbbed, burned, had become the center of the world, the galaxy, no, the entire universe, and he ignored it completely. A lick with that rough tongue, a nip with those sharp teeth, that’s all it would take. Lordy, her vagina was acting like a dryer stuttering on spin cycle: start, stop, go, halt, fast-forward, rewind. She yanked at the soft cotton binding her to the headboard’s slats.
“I love your pubes.”
His calloused thumb traced the outline of her pubic hair, sliding down between her thighs, crossing the crease of her ass and lingering for a few too-short seconds on the sensitive indentation before sketching a whisper of a path to the other leg. She whimpered when his breath wafted across her slickened folds. The heat of his soft blowing served to engorge her swollen labia to an agonizing pain-pleasure point. Not being able to see him, only to feel and hear, and incapable of anticipating his next move proved exciting beyond reason.
Her body smoldered and tindered, demanded, craved a full-flame, mind-shattering ignition. The sheet-abraded nipples budded taut and primed. From belly button to thighs, every inch of flesh pulsed and crackled, waiting, yearning for a swipe of his tongue, a graze of teeth, a suckling, but most of all, that first, incredible, rocket-blasting moment of penetration.
“Want to see you.” The words came out a ragged, wild, needy plea. “Please. Mike.”
He whipped the covers off and there he was between her legs, dark curls tousled, canines bared, forged pecs heaving, a thin film of sweat glossing his bronzed skin, and he looked for all the galaxy like the epitome of the primordial Tarzan. He pierced her with the stare of an alpha claiming his mate. “Mine. Say it.”
She couldn’t deny his claim, yearned to surrender, to submit, but a niggle of sanity held her back. The moment held and held, and the passion, the intensity of his fevered desire snapped any remnants of rationality. “Yours. All yours.”
The triumphant red-riding-hood-wolf grin that flashed across his face all but melted every bone she possessed. He crawled up her torso and, with a quick turn of fingers, loosened her bonds. His mouth captured hers, and she sank into the mattress. The man kissed her into oblivion, his talented lips, teeth, and tongue probing, nipping, stroking, finding every sizzling, sensitive inch of flesh while he lay hard and heavy on top of her. His penis grazed her sex every time he angled to capture her mouth from a different direction.
A lust craze singed her nerve endings; she wrapped her legs around his waist and kissed him back, framing his jaw, suckled the tip of his tongue, and then bit down hard, sharp, letting him feel her need.
He tore away from her. His fingers knitted in her curls, and he tilted her head up and back. Their gazes met, and all the air whooshed out of her lungs. The silver in his eyes had all but disappeared, leaving only dilated black pupils.
Locking her stare to his, he gathered her hands together, tightening his hold on the fistful of hair he gripped, and prevented her from moving. He raised her hands to a slat and curved her fingers around the smooth wood. “Stay.”
The one growled command fired every synapse and sent a spurt of hot cream trickling down one thigh. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. The pungency of his wolf arousal had her nostrils flaring, her lungs expanded to suck more, more, more, and she grew drunk on his scent.
Cupping a hand over her mound, the contact so light she wanted to scream and batter his chest but bit her lip instead and clung to the headboard, he licked a moist trail around her navel. When his hot, wet mouth closed over one desperate, destitute nipple, her pussy walls clenched and she drenched his blazing palm.