It rang, then clicked over to voicemail. She killed the call, paced, stopped, stared at the drugs.No. No. No.With trembling fingers she punched in the detective’s cell number again. Once more, it kicked to voicemail.
CHAPTER 63
It was near midnight when Maddocks parked in the West Bay Marina parking lot and made his way along the boardwalk to the marina gate in the blustery wind and rain. The beers with Holgersen and the guys at the Flying Pig had done zip to tamp down the effects of the cortisol still fizzing through his veins—helluva two days. And he remained worried about Angie. Hungry for Angie. Edgy about Angie. She was consuming his brain—he’d driven past her apartment block on the way home and looked up at the top floor at the corner unit where Holgersen had told him she lived. No lights had been on.
He reached the gate, but as he punched in his code, a movement in the shadows came from his left. He jerked around, his hand shooting into position near in his holster. Shock rustled through him as a figure emerged from the wet blackness.
“Angie?”
She didn’t say a word. Her coat glistened with rain. She wore a black ball cap, and her skin looked ghost-white against the darkness. Her eyes seemed wrong, too. Bigger, blacker, deeper, as if smudged with eye makeup. Worry sparked through him. On the back of his concern came a sinking feeling that she’d been to the club.
“What’re you doing here at this hour? You okay?”
Without replying, she came right up to him, reached up, slid her icy-cold hand around the back of his neck, and threaded her fingers roughly into his hair. She looked up into his eyes—deep into his eyes.
Maddocks swallowed. “How long have you been waiting out here, Angie?” he whispered.
In silence, she drew him down to herself, and her cool lips—wet with rain—met his. She leaned up into him, pressing her body against his, and she moved her lips against his in a gentle, exploring, drowning kiss that clean stole his mind. His breaths came faster as he felt her hand going inside his coat, moving down his abs. She cupped him between the legs. A groan built low in his chest as he kissed her back, opening her mouth, wider, tasting her, his tongue twisting with hers. She massaged the growing length of his erection in his pants. But while she was blinding him, stealing his brain as all his blood flooded south into his cock, a small voice of caution in Maddocks said this was wrong. Her need was different. It was not the same hot, raw lust—the sexual aggression—that had fired her previously. He pulled back, breathing hard.
“Angie?” he whispered. “You haven’t returned my calls. What’s happened?”
“Are you going to invite me in, James Maddocks?” Her voice was thick, hoarse. Maddocks hesitated and then took her hand in his, unlocked the marina gate, and led her down along the dock, which rocked in the swells. His heart thumped with anticipation, promise. Fear. Conflict ...
We’d like you to formally evaluate Detective Pallorino’s performance over the next few weeks, as she continues to work under you ... she’s had performance issues, including an incident that resulted in the recent death of her senior partner. Sergeant Hash Hashowsky was one of our longest-serving, most highly respected, and well-liked detectives. I called him a friend ...
“Want something to drink?” Maddocks said once they’d come down the companionway and entered his yacht.
She shook her head, slid his coat off his shoulders. Dropping it to the floor, she took both his hands in hers and led him backward into his sleeping cabin. His mouth turned dry. He half expected her to shove him backward onto the bed, rip at his buttons and zipper, strip him wild like that night at the club, straddle him, fuck him hard.
Instead, she seated him fully clothed on the bed and slowly undressed herself in silence, in front of him, lights on. As if she wanted nothing left to hide, no games left to play. She stood naked in front of him—pale breasts, nipples tight nubs, the hair between the apex of her thighs the same color as the long, dark-red hair spilling damp over her shoulders. A poignancy surrounded her, a vulnerability. A fragility that made Maddocks think of perfect glass—a thing of perfection that if he touched, would break. The beat of his heart boomed in his ears. He felt it in his erection. Tentatively, unsure, he reached forward to place his hands on her hips, but she moved them away. She began to undress him—painfully, exquisitely slowly.
When they were both naked, she lay down beside him and drew him atop her. Her pale-gray eyes were almost consumed by her dilated black pupils, making them look huge and dark. Haunted. Shock?
“Angie,” he said again, fighting to concentrate, fighting the wildness crackling under his skin as she tilted her pelvis under him, and her hands guided his erection into her folds. “What ... what in the hell happened?”
Her eyes began to glisten slightly, and she shook her head, as if to sayNot now.She opened her thighs, arching her spine, an urgency entering her movements now as she strained for him, her breathing becoming faster, her skin warm.
His vision swirled as he thrust and entered her hot wetness. She sighed softly as if with relief. Maddocks moved slowly, tentatively at first, rocking into her, and she met each of his thrusts with soft, sure movements of her hips—a pace as old as time, a rhythm that matched the waves upon which his boat rocked. And inside him a blinding pressure began to build. He could feel her growing hotter, hungrier, beginning to move faster. He thrust harder, faster. She wrapped her legs around him, hooking her ankles behind him, taking him tight into her arms, as if she couldn’t get him deep enough, as if she wanted to absorb and consume him wholly.
Suddenly, she gasped, went rigid. Her nails dug into his skin. She clutched onto him, unbreathing, unmoving. Then she cried out, and he felt her muscle contractions, wave after wave after shattering wave as she arched her head back, mouth open, eyes wide, and he couldn’t hold back. One more hard thrust to the hilt and he came right inside those rolling waves, collapsing onto her.
For a while afterward they just lay there, entwined in each other, breathing hard, skin slick. Then he felt the wetness of her tears against his neck. His gaze jerked to her face. She was crying, her nose and cheeks pinked.
“Angie?”
She shook her head, cupped his jaw. “That was beautiful,” she whispered, drawing his mouth down to hers, kissing him again through the salt of her tears on her lips. “So beautiful. Thank you,” she murmured again, against his mouth. “Thank you.”
CHAPTER 64
Angie looked up into those impossibly dark blue eyes that had drawn her so on that first night in the club, and a little faraway voice inside her whispered ...
You could learn to love this man ...
He’d slid out of her, rolled onto his side, and was propping himself up on his elbow as he studied her. He no longer wore the bandage over his nose, but the swelling was still evident. As were the bruises she’d put there. Her heart crunched.
You really could learn ...
But at the same time, she knew she wasn’t ready. Not yet. She first had to find herself, learn who she was. Those cops might have closed her case all those years ago, but she was determined to see it reopened.
