The Heart of A Killer (27 page)

Right now.

Anna had barely caught her breath, certain Dante was trying to kill her.

Could a woman die from too many orgasms?

She might like to try to find out.

She was at war with herself, still making an attempt to keep that part of herself locked tight despite Dante’s assault on every square inch of her body and soul.

But the way his mouth took possession of hers, the deep relentless kisses that made every part of her throb with need, it was as if he knew her game and he was making sure she fully understood he wasn’t going to allow her to hold back.

And how could she when his lips brushed hers like that, when the velvety softness of his tongue rasped against hers, demanding she give him everything?

How could she hold anything back when he used his mouth and hands on her in ways that made her cry out in wild abandon, and yet her body still throbbed in anticipation, wanting even more of him?

And now she sat on his lap, the tender, throbbing part of her rubbing against the thick, hard part of him, and he wasn’t even attempting to push her into moving to the next step. Instead, he was kissing her again, as if they had all night to do this, which wasn’t at all the usual way she approached sex. By now it would have been over with and the guy would have been long gone.

And she would have been frustrated, wholly unsatisfied or busy satisfying herself.

She sure as hell wouldn’t need to be satisfying herself tonight. Clearly Dante wasn’t the kind of man to leave a woman to see to her own needs. Since she’d been with him she’d had multiple orgasms. He’d had none.

He finally pulled his lips from hers and as she stared down at his incredible blue eyes, her heart lurched. She traced his lips, her fingers wandering over the stubble of beard across his jaw, remembering what that felt like rubbing against her inner thighs. She shivered.

“Cold?” he asked while at the same time sweeping his thumbs over her nipples.

“No. Hot. You make me hot.” Hot and slick and wet and so ready for him.

His lips lifted, which only made him look more dangerous.

“Good. I like you hot. Now climb on and ride me.”

Dangerous and wickedly bad. “I’m not sure I like you ordering me around.”

He gripped her hips and lifted her. “You can order me around later.”

She slid down on him and grasped his shoulders, biting her lip at the feel of him as he entered her.

It was heaven and hell as he filled her, stretched her, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt anything that made her body tingle with so much awareness. She kept her gaze glued to Dante, and this reminded her why she’d always kept herself disconnected during sex. This intimacy, the way Dante moved inside her and looked at her, forced her to connect with him.

There was no way she could rock against him, filled with him, and not be affected. This wasn’t a quick coupling in the dark—it was no-holds-barred, lights-on, open-eyed lovemaking with a man who wouldn’t accept anything less than her total surrender.

He drew her forward and grasped her hips, dragging the most sensitive part of her against him.

“You’re torturing me,” she whispered as she braced her hands on his shoulders.

“Then torture me back.” He lifted, burying his cock to the hilt inside her.

She let out a gasp, then curled her fingertips into the crisp hairs of his chest, determined not to let go, not to shatter completely.

“Everything I am is here for you to see, to touch, to taste,” he said, rising up to meet her again as he took her hands in his. “I won’t hold anything back from you.”

Damn him for his honesty, for letting her see the naked truth in his eyes. His fingers dug into her hips and he dragged her against him again, taking her so close she had to bite down on her lip to keep from catapulting over the edge.

“It’s only fair to give me the same, Anna. Let go.”

Sweat slickened their bodies as they glided over each other. Anna lay on top of him and he grasped hold of her hair in one hand, tugging until it hurt. She liked his possession of her, thrilled to it in a way she couldn’t explain.

“Let me have you.” He flipped her over onto her back and plunged deep inside her, his mouth grinding against hers the same way his body did, taking full control now.

She lifted her gaze to his, her hands sliding over his skin. “Give me all of it, Dante.”

There was such power, such passion in his eyes, but this time, she refused to look away, refused to do anything but meet that power head-on as he lifted up and slammed against her. She reveled in it as the force of his thrusts sent her over the edge. She climaxed with a wild cry, and he went with her, groaning and taking her lips in a hot kiss that shot her orgasm even higher. She’d never felt sensations like this, borne of passion that met emotion.

Breathless, she could only hold on as the waves continued to pound at her from every part of her body until she had nothing left, until she fell, lax and boneless. Dante lifted off and lay next to her, panting as hard as she was.

He grasped her hand and laced his fingers with hers. The contact was so sweet she didn’t know what to do with it, so she lay there, staring up at the ceiling, unused to this brightly lit aftermath. Usually it was dark and whatever guy she was with would be in as big a hurry to dress and get away from her as she was to get away from him. There would be no words, no cuddling, just mumbled pleasantries and a quick escape.

Instead, Dante shifted and pulled her leg on top of his body, then laid his palm on her stomach, tracing invisible patterns over her skin. He didn’t seem in any hurry to escape.

“You’re thinking again.”

She turned her head to look at him. “Yeah.”

“Can’t you just take a minute to enjoy the moment without analyzing what it means?”

“It would be a first for me if I did.”

He drew circles around her navel. “Try.”

“Everything’s changed now.”

“Between us, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“It’s supposed to. When this happens between a couple, things change. You can’t avoid it.”

She turned on her side to face him. “I wasn’t ready for it.”

His lips quirked. “You can’t plan for everything, Anna. Sometimes things happen.”

“I know that. In my line of work, I react to the unexpected.”

“But this isn’t work. This is your life. And you like your life to be orderly and planned out because it’s the one aspect you can control.”

She frowned. “I hate when you do that.”

“What?”

“Seem to know so much about me when you’ve been gone so long. Am I that easy to figure out?”

“No, but you aren’t so different from before. You think you are, but you aren’t. You always liked your life orderly, and you liked controlling the situation. That much about you hasn’t changed. Everything about who you were didn’t change that night twelve years ago, Anna.”

Huh. Interesting.

She thought it had. She thought everything about her had been altered by that one act. She’d always felt her entire personality had undergone a radical transformation, that she’d become someone completely different. “Really?”

“Really. You’re still the same Anna now as you were back then. Yeah, you grew up. We all did. And parts of you changed. You have to because of what happened. But who you are in here—” He laid his hand on her chest, over her scar. “The soul of you. That’s still Anna, the same Anna I’ve always known.”

Somehow, that gave her a great deal of peace.

Seventeen

A
nna and Dante worked diligently the next day on the list of Tony Maclin’s friends. Several were clean-cut, average students who were so far away from the drug element that after running a diligent background check they were easy to eliminate from the suspect list. A few had moved out of state, one lived out of the country, and two had died together in a car accident during college.

That left four who were questionable and who lived locally. Anna brought Roman in on the list of names.

After the three of them ate lunch in one of the interrogation rooms, they divvied up the four names and decided to head out separately to do interviews.

“I don’t think Anna should go alone,” Roman said. “Whoever is doing these killings might be tailing her.”

She bristled. “I refuse to have a watchdog or bodyguard. You two should be more concerned about yourselves.”

“And you need a partner,” Roman argued. “Neither of us had someone leaving us love notes and flowers.”

They walked out to the parking lot and Anna turned to stop them. “The notes and flowers were left when I wasn’t around. Whoever it is doesn’t want to face me.”

“Right now he doesn’t,” Dante said. “But that could change anytime.”

“We’ll get through this list faster if we split up. And I don’t want to change routine.”

She knew Dante warred with his protective, Neanderthal instincts, but she lifted her chin and refused to back down.

“Fine, but you stay in touch at all times.”

She hadn’t realized how tense she was until he gave in. “And I’ll take two of the names on the list,” Roman said, snatching two files.

“Fine. We’ll meet back here afterward.”

“At least check in with me when you’re on the road?” Dante asked.

She nodded, surprised when he came over to her and yanked her against him to press his lips to hers. “Talk to you soon.”

She blew out a breath and laid her hand on his chest. “Was that absolutely necessary to do in public?”

His lips curled. “Yeah, I think it was.”

She watched him walk away, enjoying the fine view of his ass before turning to see Roman’s quirked brow.

When Dante drove away, Roman turned to her.

“A change in your relationship?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She walked toward her car, but Roman followed, so she stopped, turned to face him.

“I trust Dante,” she said before he asked the question.

“Why?”

“We talked, got some truths out.”

“Yeah? What did he tell you?”

Things she couldn’t tell him. “I just do. You know me, Roman. I don’t lay my trust on someone easily.”

He shrugged. “I guess you know best. I still want you to be careful.”

She laid her hand on his arm. “I know you do, and I appreciate you looking out for me.”

“I always will, Anna, no matter who it is. But just because you trust him doesn’t mean I will.”

“Fair enough.”

“You be careful out there.”

“I will.”

Evan Amarola, the guy on her list to check out, apparently had moved out of his family’s home in the Kirkwood area and now lived with three of his buddies in a four-family flat off Grand, which was a far cry from the suburbs.

These were older homes, some in disrepair, and not a lot of trust in the faces of people as she drove by and parked.

The grandmother of one of Evan’s buddies owned the fourplex. She was a suspicious old woman with pink curlers in her hair, a faded flowered cotton housecoat and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. She left the screen door locked when she answered the door.

“What do you want?”

“Is Evan here?” Anna asked, flashing her badge.

The woman, Mrs. Baker, squinted as she read the badge. She wrinkled up her leathered face even more. “What’d he do now?”

“Nothing, as far as I know. I’d like to ask him some questions about a friend of his.”

“One of these other losers who lives with my grandson?”

“No, ma’am. Someone he went to high school with.”

“Eh. I guess you can come in. He’s still in bed. Let me go kick him.”

Anna opened the screen door and stepped in.

The house smelled like cat pee, cigarettes and not-recently bathed old woman. Anna was grateful for her strong stomach, because the three together were a lethal combination.

Three cats wound their way around her legs, and she saw evidence of a few more skirting in and around the furniture.

“You can sit down if you want,” Mrs. Baker said, the cigarette still clenched between her teeth.

Given the stench in the room, there was no way in hell Anna was going to sit on the furniture. “I don’t intend to stay long, but thank you.”

“Want some coffee?”

Anna’s stomach lurched. “I’m good, thanks.”

Mrs. Baker shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’m going in the kitchen to work my puzzles. The kid’ll be out in a minute.”

Anna stood in the center of stink central and waited, trying to hold her breath.

Fortunately it wasn’t too long before a barefoot guy in jeans and no shirt yawned and headed down the hall. His short hair stuck up in all directions and he looked like hell.

“You wanted to see me?”

“You Evan Amarola?”

“Yeah.”

“I need to ask you some questions about Tony Maclin.”

Evan cocked his head and frowned. “Tony? That was like, ten years ago or somethin’.”

“Twelve,” Anna corrected.

“I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that.”

“Didn’t say you did. What I’m interested in is who he was hanging out with at the time of his death.”

“Oh. Well, shit, I don’t remember. Tony had lotsa friends.”

“Any sell him drugs or get him involved in drug dealing?”

“Drugs? Probably. Tony was pretty stressed about college and it started to freak him out. He was different senior year.”

“How different?”

“Nervous. On the go all the time. Started missing school. He was always really good with his classes, but they didn’t seem to matter to him anymore.”

“You ever see him do drugs?”

Evan looked hesitant.

“Whatever you have to say isn’t going to hurt the guy now,” she reminded him. “He’s dead.”

“Yeah, I saw him do some coke and E at some parties. And before school he smoked a little pot to relax.”

“Would you say he was doing drugs every day?” Anna asked.

“Maybe.”

“Who was his dealer?”

“I don’t know.”

Anna wondered what Evan did know. According to the information she’d been able to dig up, he and Tony were close. Closer than Evan was letting on based on his answers. “Did he seem to have drugs on him pretty regularly?”