Deadly Attraction Read online

  “I’m going to stamp it right now,” she cooed. Leaning over, she ran her tongue up his chest and then settled herself on top of him.

  As her slick folds parted to let him in, he grabbed her hips and guided her down. “I can’t wait to get you on my motorcycle.”

  Her body began an erotic rhythm, breasts bouncing as she gyrated on top of him. Her bun had come undone and her hair fell in waves over her shoulders. “Ooh, your motorcycle. I’d almost forgotten about that. I bet I could come up with a fantasy or two involving you and the bike.”

  Oh, yeah, he was definitely up for those fantasies. His thumb probed her sensitive spot, rubbing her into an even more heated frenzy. “Anything you want, sweetheart.”

  “Anything?” Her voice was ragged and breathy.

  “Anything,” he promised.

  That was the last word he spoke until he felt her coming with the force of a freight train, her body snapping into an arc that pushed those luscious breasts of hers into an evocative vignette above him.

  As his hips bucked under her, he swore under his breath. The flesh-and-blood woman riding him was better than any fantasy. He lasted another couple of thrusts before climaxing himself.

  Emma collapsed on top of him, her breasts pressing into his heaving chest, her hair fanning out over him like a protective cocoon. He rubbed her back and closed his eyes, wishing this night would never end.

  Funny thing that. The past five Christmas Eves had felt like a never-ending hell on earth, and here he was on the anniversary of his twin’s death, wishing it would go on forever.

  The desk wasn’t made for post-sex cuddling. Mitch helped Emma into the bathroom where they both remained silent as they waited for the water to heat, the deep hour of the night—this night—suddenly seeming to deserve a quiet reverence.

  Once he had Emma in the shower, Mitch soaped her up, rinsed her off, and kissed her wet skin from the top of her shoulders to the sensitive spot behind her knees. She swooned, eyes closed, her fingers moving over him languorously. A blind woman learning the planes and valleys of his body.

  After drying her off, he started to lead her back to bed, but she wrapped herself in a blanket and tossed a second one at him. “I want to show you something.”

  Her hair was wet and wild, her face solemn but sanguine. “As long as it isn’t in the horse barn,” he teased.

  She smiled, then led him down the hallway to the pull-down stairs.

  He helped her lower them and enjoyed the view as she climbed the narrow steps. Waiting until she was at the top so he could get a could peek at what the blanket couldn’t hide, he tossed the one she’d handed him over his shoulder and made his own way up.

  A few adjustments and she had the telescope positioned at the window. “I think the smoke has cleared enough we can see it.”

  “It?”

  She nodded, motioning him over.

  Earlier, he’d checked his phone, hoping for a text or voicemail from Cooper, but there hadn’t been any. Maybe the satellites had been down when he’d tried to call or maybe the SWAT team hadn’t breached the house where Goodsman was yet.

  And it was Christmas Eve, after all. People had places to go and presents to hide under their trees. Cooper had a young son and a fiancée to take care of. He might have gotten a bit distracted and would try to contact Mitch again as soon as the sun came up.

  Dropping his blanket, Mitch came up behind Emma where she stood behind the telescope’s lens. Her blanket had fallen off one shoulder as she adjusted a knob on the long, fat tube, and he kissed the soft skin at the curve where her shoulder and neck met.

  She shivered under his fingers and he tucked her in close, spooning her as they stood.

  “What are we looking at?” he asked.

  “Skye.” She twisted another knob as she stared through the viewfinder. “There she is.”

  Not the sky. Emma wasn’t talking about seeing the swath of heavens stretching out over the hills and valleys here.

  Skye. Her daughter.

  This woman had lost so much—her child, her husband, her marriage. The potential to have more children. Yet, she had found a way to help other lost souls.

  Mitch’s hands tightened on her waist. “You named a star after her?”

  “The constellation already has a name—Blue Snowball Nebula, but I don’t care.” Emma shifted her head aside so he could look into the lens. “See the brightest star in this field? That’s her.”

  Her face was an open book, as Bobby Dyer liked to say. Mitch saw an innocence there—a young girl who wished on stars—and behind it a layer of steel grit, forged from great loss.

  He lowered his eye to the eyepiece and saw the star she was talking about. “I’ll be damn. It does have a slightly bluish disc around it.”

  “That’s the central star. It’s a dwarf and it’s super hot. Hence the color.”

  “That’s amazing.” And it was. Almost as amazing as the woman showing it to him. Turning his face to look at her, he saw the relief in her eyes. “You’re quite the little astronomy buff.”

  She grinned. “Not really. I’ve studied Andromeda a bit, and good ol’ Blue here, but the sky is vast. There’s a lot more to explore.”

  Mitch had the feeling he had a lot more to explore as well. “Looking at the sky is peaceful.”

  “It is, isn’t it? I wish I could give sky therapy to all of my patients. I think it would give them some perspective about their lives.”

  “Sky therapy? Is that a thing?”

  “Not that I’m aware of, but it should be. Nature, in all its forms, has the ability to heal.”

  “Maybe you should invent this sky therapy stuff.”

  Her head dipped so she could look in the eyepiece again. “Maybe I should.”

  He hugged her from behind again and they lingered in front of the window, taking turns with the telescope. Emma would move the lens a fraction of an inch and then make him look at some random star. He didn’t care about the actual constellations so much as her eagerness to share this private love of hers.

  No one knows that. Her name, I mean. You’re the first person I’ve ever told.

  Why him? Was it this night? Was it the fact he was only the second man she’d ever slept with and that alone perpetuated an unusual intimacy?

  Either way, he felt honored and just a little righteous about it.

  “You haven’t told me about your parents,” he mused. “Or your siblings. Do you have any?”

  “Parents or siblings?” she joked.

  He nuzzled her neck. “Smartass.”

  “My parents live in Boston. They’re both professors who met and married late in life. I came along a few years later. I’m an only child and my parents were nearly old enough to be my grandparents. They’re both retired now. Dad lives in the basement, reading biographies and history texts. Mother travels constantly with friends. I see them on occasion, but… Well, we aren’t a dysfunctional family by today’s standards, just a distant one.”

  “No wonder you’re so damn smart, being raised by a couple of college professors. What in God’s name made you decide on psychology? Was one of your parents a psych professor?”

  “Literature and economics, I’m afraid. For me, it was always psychology. I find the brain fascinating, and there are people who are truly, clinically, out of their mind when they commit a crime. There are also those who are not fit to stand trial for a crime they committed. They are rare, but it does happen. Allowing people like Chris Goodsman to dissimulate and mislead a judge, jury, and trained therapists—supposed experts in this field—to get acquitted of, or to receive a lighter sentence for, committing murder is an injustice.”

  “You like to see justice served.”

  She turned in his arms to face him. “Don’t you?”

  Of course he did. “That’s why I do what I do.”

  “From a macro viewpoint, my job isn’t all that different from yours. You analyze terrorists. I analyze criminals.”

  When she
put it that way… “At the end of the day, we both want justice for the innocent.”

  She went up on her toes and kissed the tip of his nose. “Thank you for what you do to keep our country safe.”

  Jesus. He didn’t remember ever being thanked by anyone. “Back atcha, Doc.”

  He wanted to ask her why she’d switched from adult criminals to kids, but deep in his gut, he knew the answer. She was a mother with no child trying to help children living without their mothers.

  Taking her hand, Mitch led her out of the attic and tucked her into bed, climbing in beside her and holding her until she fell asleep in his arms.

  Chapter Fifteen

  They woke to rain.

  Rivulets ran down the bedroom window and Emma nearly laughed. The one, brief blip of the weather report they’d heard the day before had been on the money. Santa Claus, or Jesus, or whoever one attributed miracles to, had come through.

  In the yard below, she spotted Will heading to the house in his slicker and wide-brimmed hat. Lady trotted along behind him, both of them wet and kicking up water, and neither seeming to care.

  “Oh, crud,” Emma swore, seeing the time.

  Mitch yawned from the comfort of the bed where he lay on his stomach. “What’s up?”

  The pie plate sat on the floor, licked clean by two obvious culprits who’d somehow ended up in bed with them. The dirty coffee cups were on the nightstand, Mitch’s cell phone next to one.

  Wrapping a robe around her, Emma chased the dogs off the bed and smacked Mitch on his butt through the covers. “Danika will be here in an hour if her driver can get here. We need to get moving.”

  “You’re kidding, right? I thought you were going to cancel your appointments.”

  “I did, but not this one. I recommended to Danika’s social worker that she be allowed to come here on Christmas and I couldn’t in good conscience take that back once I knew we were staying. The girl is lost, Mitch. She’s a decent kid who made a terrible mistake and I truly feel like she’s on the edge of making another. It’s one day, but an important one emotionally and psychologically for her. If I can get her through today, she stands a fighting chance of turning her life around.”

  He sat up and swung his legs off the bed. Long, sturdy legs that had put her through her paces all night. “Got it. Save Christmas, save the kid.”

  His hair was ruffled, his voice husky. Emma dropped to her knees in front of him and looked up at his sexy eyes, still drowsy from lack of sleep. She’d put him through his paces during the night as well. “Last night was amazing. I’ve never experienced anything like it. Thank you. I’ll never be a basket case on Christmas Eve again.”

  He reached down and stroked her hair, a crooked grin lifting one side of his face. “My pleasure, ma’am. You get dressed and I’ll start coffee. I need to check in with Cooper anyway and see what happened with Goodsman.”

  She rose up on her knees and kissed him. At this point, she didn’t care what had happened with Chris and Linda. All she cared about was enjoying every last minute she had with Mitch.

  He kissed her back, drawing her in close between his legs and letting her feel his morning erection. A part of her debated whether getting dressed was all that important. Climbing back into bed and helping Mitch out seemed like way more fun.

  But then she heard Will knocking on the back door downstairs and the Labs went tearing off, barking like the Second Coming, and Mitch broke the kiss and helped her to her feet.

  “Last night meant a lot to me too,” he said, holding her hand. His serious tone lightened and he winked at her. “I’m hoping I can get a replay tonight.”

  Smacking him playfully, Emma went to find clean clothes.

  While Mitch threw on the blue flannel and his pants and headed downstairs to let Will in, Emma washed up, dressed, and put a touch of makeup on. Coming out of the bathroom, she paused for a moment to look at the bed.

  The comforter was on the floor, the blanket and top sheet askew, pie crumbs and dog hair in the creases. The pillow Mitch had used was dented from his head, and hers was tucked up close to it. The bottom sheet had come off the bottom right corner.

  The room hummed from the night’s intimate sharings. She and Mitch had shared their bodies, their stories, their secrets. She’d let him into her inner sanctum, a place few people had ever been. The old Emma wanted to straighten the covers and brush off the crumbs. The new Emma smiled and left it all exactly as it was and hoped the two of them would, indeed, replay their night of fun tonight.

  The scent of strong coffee and the murmur of male voices hit her at the top of the stairs. A sense of rightness, of belonging, hit her as well. It was good to have purpose with one’s life. It was even better to have hope.

  As she blew into the kitchen, all three dogs greeted her, and she realized one of the voices she heard came from Mitch’s cell phone. Will was putting the coffee carafe back on the burner. When he saw her, he handed her his just-poured coffee and grabbed another cup for himself.

  The small TV she kept in the corner on the counter was on, but the volume was muted. Mitch didn’t look at her, his arms crossed over his chest, his gaze locked on a spot on the table near the phone. “And you have no other leads?”

  “It’s Christmas,” the man on the other end stated over the speaker. “People are with their families or trying to get back home from the evacuation. They aren’t out shopping or grabbing groceries or hanging out at the local bar. Outside of some die-hard paparazzi or a crazy fan, I doubt anyone’s looking for our guy.”

  Emma’s stomach dropped. “Chris?” she asked Will softly.

  He made a stony face. “He wasn’t in the house. They don’t know where he is.”

  Her stomach dropped farther, hitting somewhere around her ankles. As she listened to Mitch end the call with Cooper Harris, she tried to sip her coffee, tried to wrap her brain around the fact that Chris was still out there. The coffee burned like acid down her throat. She set the cup down on the counter.

  Mitch pocketed his phone and turned to face her. “The SWAT team went in just before midnight, found two people in the house. Neither was Brown or Goodsman. The couple inside the house claimed they’d never been there, but Cooper found a receipt for clothes, makeup and a couple of wigs that the couple claimed ignorance about. None of the items from their shopping excursion were in the house. Coop and Dupé think Goodsman and Brown might have been there and left wearing disguises before the team arrived.”

  Emma had to lean against the counter. “So they’re still on the loose and no one knows where they’re headed?”

  “Correct.”

  She glanced at the TV screen. The rains were a godsend, already helping to tame the fires and the news showed people on the roads, heading back to their houses. On one hand, she still needed a bodyguard and that bodyguard was Mitch. On the other, needing a bodyguard wasn’t something to be happy about. “But they were a good ways away, right? So they’re probably doing what I said, heading to Mexico.”

  Mitch interlaced his fingers and wrapped his hands around the back of his neck. He blew out a tired sigh. “You also said it’s not Goodsman’s normal MO. He likes the limelight. He wouldn’t break out of jail and go on the run because then he wouldn’t get the attention he needs.”

  The news now showed a picture of the very actor they were discussing. “And yet, he is getting plenty of attention,” she said, pointing at the screen.

  Will reached over and turned up the volume. What sounded like a recorded voicemail was playing as the picture went full screen with Chris’s face—a photo-shoot-perfect smile. “I am here for you, my resistance fighters. I will not stop in my search for justice. Thanks to those who stepped in to lead you in my absence, I’m now free of the prison system the cyborgs built to hold me. I’m once more ready to take up the fight and lead you to victory.”

  Will shook his head and snapped off the television. “He’s as wacko as they get.”

  For a moment, Emma wondered if Chr
is Goodsman truly was afflicted with a mental disorder. Maybe she’d been wrong all along.

  “Doc?”

  Mitch’s voice cut through her reverie. “What?”

  “I think it’s time you reconsider the safe house. With the highways clearing out, we can probably get there by lunch time.”

  At that moment, they heard a vehicle pulling into the drive. Through the kitchen curtain over the sink, Emma saw the van from the juvenile detention center.

  Danika.

  The poor girl had come all this way to see Twinkie and keep her mind off the holiday. Emma couldn’t let her down.

  “Chris Goodsman may indeed be certifiable,” she admitted as much to herself as the two men in the kitchen with her, “but he’s miles away and I promised Danika time with her horse.”

  “Danika is not my biggest concern at the moment,” Mitch argued.

  “I respect that, but can’t we give the girl an hour at least? The roads will be even clearer by then, I bet.”

  Mitch squeezed his eyes shut and took a long, slow breath, before he opened them, dropping his hands. “I don’t like it.”

  “I’m not surprised. I don’t relish it either, but it’s important.”

  He gave her an exasperated look. “Will can take care of Danika.”

  “Me?” Will said. “I don’t know what to do with that girl.”

  He did, but he was too much of a curmudgeon to admit it. Emma didn’t like the way he always referred to Danika as that girl, but understood it was Will’s way of keeping his distance emotionally. Like their vet, Danika had gotten on Will’s good side months ago but the big dummy was afraid to admit it. He was afraid he’d jinx them.

  Emma’s fingers itched for a bag of M&Ms. “Danika can’t be here without me to supervise.”

  Mitch looked like he was ready to combust. “Will, would you go get Danika from the van and take her to the horse barn? I’ll get Emma packing and bring her out in a few minutes.”

  It was obvious he wanted her alone for a minute so he could talk her out of staying for even an hour. Fat chance of that.