“You want me to kill you.” He stared past me at the succubus, gaze narrowed on her. But I barely heard him, and I certainly didn’t process his meaning. I was too busy studying his chin dimple, imagining kissing it. Licking it. Trying to fit the tip of my tongue in that adorable little hollow, before working my way up to his mouth…
“No, I want to kill her, turn you in, and collect my paycheck. But that’s clearly not going to happen, so I’ve moved on to Plan B.”
Plan B. If succu-bitch had a Plan B, I needed one too. Something involving my gun and her forehead. Or maybe Murphy and a bottle of caramel syrup. Oooh, and a couple of cherries…
“Suicide?” he asked, as I stepped closer, my gun now dangling from my trigger finger.
“That depends on you, sugar. Maybe we could make a trade—you know, for old times’ sake?”
“What do you want?”
Cale Murphy, a box of Twinkies, and an hour of privacy. No, make that two hours…Oh, wait. He wasn’t talking to me.
“You help me with her, and I’ll forget I saw you here. Give you a twenty-four-hour head start.”
Murphy crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I can’t let you kill her any more than I can let Devich have the box. You know that.”
Lorelei shrugged. “Have it your way, sugar. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Lorelei turned back to me, and my eyes fell closed as a sudden barrage of images flooded my mind.
Murphy, naked in the rain, tiny rivers of water cascading down his chest.
Murphy, naked in the surf, sunlight glittering in his hair.
Murphy, naked in a pool, deeply tanned and gleaming with coconut oil.
I was sensing a theme, and I liked it.
“Lex?” Murphy asked, and I moaned as his voice slid over me, moistening me in places the rain couldn’t possibly have reached. I wanted to close my eyes again, but I wasn’t willing to lose sight of him. Something splashed in the water at my feet, then clattered to the floor. Dimly, I realized it was my gun. I’d dropped my gun, and that meant something. Something really important.
It meant…um…that I now had a free hand with which to touch Murphy.
I reached out for him. My fingers grazed the stubble on his cheek. Unseen flames whipped down my arm and throughout my body, a flash of pleasure scorching me from the inside out before settling low and deep inside me.
Murphy lurched away as if I’d hit him, moving easily in two inches of water. “Lex, pick up your gun,” he said softly, soberly, his stance unwavering.
My gun? Yeah, I’ll probably need that back. I was reaching into the water when Lorelei spoke again, her voice that of reason, it seemed, and of desperation born of desire. “You can’t touch him with both hands full.”
An equally good point…I rose, thoughts of my gun shoved to the back of my mind by mental images of the man in front of me.
Murphy made an angry sound in the back of his throat. “She’s in your head, Lex. Block her out. She’s messing with your mind.”
But my mind wasn’t the problem. My body was. My bodycravedhim. My brain had caved beneath the onslaught of need and was willing to tag along for the ride, silent for once.
“He’s lying,” Lori insisted. “He’s too cold to think straight. Why don’t you warm him up?”
I could do that. I could warm us both up. At the moment, I felt like I could warm up the whole damn continent, using my body heat alone. And oddly, I didn’t care if she watched, so long as she didn’t try to interfere with my Plan B, which was rapidly taking shape. And that shape looked remarkably like Cale Murphy.
“She’s feeding off you, Lex. Don’t let her. Don’t be her meal.”
That gave me pause, but just for a second, because it wasn’t true, and I couldn’t remember him lying to me before. Lorelei couldn’t feed from me, because I didn’t lust for her.
Shaking my head in private denial, I scooted toward his voice, vaguely surprised to realize my right arm hung limp at my side, refusing to move. The flashlight shone down at rainwater still collecting on the floor. The amputated handcuff slipped from my sleeve to rest on the broadest point of my hand, freezing against my inexplicably warm flesh, but no one seemed to notice. Hell,Ibarely noticed.
I could hardly feel my injured arm now, and I couldn’t move it at all. Yet I wasn’t afraid. Not about that, anyway. I was worried because Murphy had taken another step away from me, putting more abominable space in the chasm between my body and his.
Water sloshed on my left—Lorelei coming closer. “Go after him,” she whispered, and I wanted to do just that. “He wants you. Ask him. He’ll tell you the truth.”
