Beg for Mercy (16 page)

Still… Cole tightened his hold around her, wishing there was some way he could take away her pain. Wishing the truth really would set her free. But even that was bullshit. If she accepted Sean was a killer, where was the relief in that?

“I hate this. I hate how this is hurting you,” he murmured. Her misery ate at him like an open, festering wound in his chest.

Megan lifted her head. Her green eyes were swollen and red, her nose was red, her pale skin blotchy. She was so beautiful it felt like his heart was being squeezed by a giant fist every time he looked at her. “So help me,” she whispered. “Help me find out the truth.”

“Goddamn it,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “I showed you the truth. It sucks, and it’s awful, but there’s nothing else to do.” He brushed her hair back from her face and cradled her cheek in his palm. Unable to resist touching her. Torturing himself with the silky grain of her skin under his fingers.

Megan’s full lips trembled. “I can’t accept that, Cole. I won’t. Sean’s all I have. I’ll never believe he killed Evangeline Gordon. And if I let him die without doing everything I can to prove you wrong, I’ll never forgive myself.”

So brave. So delusional. He wondered what it felt like to be loved like that. To inspire faith like that.

How would it feel to be loved like that by
her
? He’d almost had it once. Had been so close he could taste it.

He became aware of her weight on his lap, the firm
curve of her ass against the muscles of his thighs. The softness of her breast where she rested against his rib cage. His breath hitched and warmth spread in his groin.

Her mouth was mere inches from him, plump, succulent. Megan’s cheeks flooded with heat, and when he looked in her eyes, he saw it again, that flash of awareness that told him he wasn’t the only one here with unresolved feelings.

Get up, get out of here, and stop torturing yourself with this. It’s a dead end. The only reason she even let you near her is because you pushed her into an emotional meltdown.

But he couldn’t resist. He bent his head the last few inches, tasted her soft gasp as his mouth covered hers.

Ah, sweet, so goddamn sweet.
Even that slight pressure sent heat surging through him. One taste, one brush of her lips and he was as hard as a spike.

His hips rolled under her, pure reflex as he sought to get closer. He wove his fingers into her hair, angling her face to kiss her deeper, harder.

He knew he was taking advantage of her, knew she was in a fragile state that he’d created. Knew this was going nowhere, that in seconds she’d probably come to her senses and slap him silly.

He didn’t care. He parted her lips with his tongue, sucked on hers, drinking in her taste. Greedy, selfish, unable to resist taking everything he could get.

But Megan surprised him with her own hunger. Her hands came up to cradle his face as she kissed him with a ferocity that rivaled his own. Hot, wet, deep. She tasted so good, felt so good. He wanted to bury himself inside her, lose himself until the rest of the world fell away.

His hand skimmed down her back, his fingers dipping into the waistband of her jeans. Warm, smooth flesh gave under his fingers. He slid his hand back up, burrowing under the hem of her sweater to stroke baby-soft skin.

She gave a little shiver as his hand coursed over the curve of her waist and the bumps of her rib cage. Silk and lace, her flimsy bra was no barrier against the heat of his hand.

The sound of pure delight she made as his hand closed over her breast sent his cock straining against his zipper. He brushed his thumb across her nipple, deepening his kiss to swallow her moan of pleasure.

God, she felt so good in his hands. Soft and round and big enough to fill his broad palms. Making him ache to see them, taste them with his lips and tongue. Tearing his mouth from hers, he pulled her sweater up and over her head and pressed her back into the couch.

He went for her pants next, unbuttoning and unzipping with shaking fingers before he pulled them down her legs.

He wanted her with a force that bordered on insanity. An asteroid could hit the earth and it wouldn’t distract him from the driving need to have her, all of her, to find out once and for all how it felt to sink his cock into her wet heat.

To finally feel the sweet grip of her body as she came with him buried deep inside her. Maybe if he finally had that, she would stop haunting his dreams.

He paused for a moment, transfixed by the sight of her laid out on the couch in front of him, wearing nothing but a couple of scraps of cream-colored silk. She stared up at him with hot green eyes, a delicate flush spreading
across the curves swelling over the top of her bra. Slender curves and pale silky skin. More beautiful than his fevered memories, sexier than any fantasy he ever could have conjured.

He came down over her and captured one nipple through the flimsy silk of her bra. It nudged eagerly against his tongue. He shoved the bra out of the way and sucked her in, groaning at the taste of her, salty sweet. Megan moaned and dug her fingers into his hair, urging him on.

He sucked her hard as his other hand slid down to cup between her legs. Hot, damp, pulsing against his hand. Something that sounded like, “Oh please” escaped her throat.

She wanted this, wanted
him
as much as he wanted her.

The thought almost made him come, right then and there.

He reared up off of her and fumbled with his belt. He wanted to spend hours, days, exploring every secret spot, licking and sucking every inch of skin from the top of her head to the soles of her feet until he knew her body as well as he knew his own.

But he was so primed he knew he’d be lucky if he lasted more than a few thrusts.

Just this once. This is all I’m going to get and I promise I’ll never ask for more.

He was dragging his zipper down when his phone rang in his pocket, the vibration against his aching dick almost knocking him off the couch.

Déjà fucking vu.

He considered ignoring it, but even if he did, it was too late.

The cell phone’s sharp ring had snapped Megan out of her haze. She scrambled up to sitting and looked down at herself in horrified disbelief, as though shocked to find herself nearly naked and about to have sex with him.

Again.

Cole zipped his pants and yanked the phone from his pocket. He didn’t try to stop her when she scrambled off the couch, grabbed her clothes, and made for the bathroom, slamming the door so hard the was shook.

He looked at the caller ID. “What’s happening, Petersen?” he asked, hoping nothing in his voice would tip Olivia to the fact that he was nursing a massive case of blue balls.

“Why are you breathing hard?”

Shit.
“I was walking fast.”

“Where are you anyway?”

My own personal hell.
He considered lying, then quickly dismissed it. Petersen was too sharp for that. And he didn’t want to lie any more than he had to. “I’m at Megan Flynn’s place,” he said. A cover story always worked better when it included some truth.

Dead silence echoed across the phone line.

“I wanted to ask the girl, Devany, more about the night of the murder. But I wanted to check with Megan on her emotional state first.” That sounded reasonable.

“You couldn’t do that over the phone?”

“Petersen, do you have something to tell me or not?”

Megan emerged from the bathroom then, carefully averting her gaze, once again covered from neck to toe by her heavy wool sweater and tight-fitting jeans. Her wavy brown hair was again pulled back in a tight braid. Prim, proper, and buttoned up like nothing had happened.
But one look at her flushed cheeks and red, kiss-swollen mouth and it was all he could do not to throw his phone against the wall, toss her back down on the couch, and pick up right where they’d left off.

“Is she what’s making you pant like that?”

You have no idea.

“Wait, don’t answer that. Just get back to the station. We just got an ID on the latest victim.”

Anticipation pricked the hairs at the back of his neck as he buckled his belt.
Don’t get your hopes up.
“Two of the other victims were ID’d, too, and that led nowhere.”

Megan, who was sitting back at the kitchen table, pretending he didn’t exist as she put the case files back in order, snapped to attention.

“It’s different this time,” Olivia said, excitement evident in her voice.

“This must be good. I haven’t heard you this excited since you heard Heidi Klum was going to be on the cover of
Playboy
.”

“Come on, with Karen’s pregnancy hormones kicking in, I have to get my thrills where I can. Anyway, one of the FBI’s computer jockey’s ran the vic’s picture through the facial-recognition system and linked her up with a cold case in San Diego. We need to verify, but it looks like our victim was really Bianca Delagrossa, who disappeared at age sixteen on her way home from a party.”

“We have a real name. A real person this time.” It was flimsy, but it was something. Every victim had a story. Maybe this one would fally be able to tell them something. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”

“A real name? What does that mean?” Megan snapped as soon as he hung up.

He paused, weighing how much to tell her. On the one hand, the information wasn’t public yet. On the other, it was likely Tasso would release the victim’s name and alias to the press in a call for any information on the victim. “We have an ID on the latest victim.”

“Who is she?” The pale, pinched look was back on Megan’s face. That tight look of despair that had disappeared for a few minutes in the heat of passion.

He reached out to her but she jumped back. “Don’t. Don’t touch me.” It was then he saw something else in her eyes. Shame. Guilt. Like she’d done something dirty by letting Cole touch her.

Or worse yet, betrayed someone she loved.

Fuck it. He couldn’t wipe away the grief or the guilt. But he could throw her a bone. Knowing the victim’s name before it was released to the press wouldn’t help her, but it wouldn’t hurt the investigation either. “Until Tasso makes a statement to the press, what I’m about to tell you is strictly confidential.”

Megan looked at Cole as he walked out the door. Her body hummed with a combination of unfulfilled sexual need and nauseating guilt.

She sank into a kitchen chair and buried her face in her hands. What was wrong with her? Not only did she let him touch her, kiss her, she’d kissed him right back, given as good as she’d gotten. She could make up all the excuses she wanted about her fragile emotional state, but bottom
line, she knew if Cole hadn’t gotten that phone call, she would be under him on her couch right now with him buried deep inside.

The thought was enough to send a jolt of desire straight to her core, so keen it nearly hurt. Her skin felt too tight for her body, so sensitive that the silk of her bra felt like sandpaper across her nipples. She shoved away from the table and retrieved her laptop from her bag, determined to take her mind off Cole and what had almost happened.

She pulled up a search engine and typed in the name of the Slasher’s latest victim, Bianca Delagrossa. Cole had surprised her by telling her the victim’s name, but she figured he was trying to make up for refusing to pursue the connection to Sean’s case.

And maybe for some of the other stuff that had happened.

Not that there was much information to be found, she realized as she quickly scanned through the results of her search. The articles were all old, dated over six years ago when Bianca had first disappeared. An apparent runaway, then sixteen-year-old Bianca had gone missing from her home in San Diego sometime in the middle of the night and hadn’t been seen since.

Megan clicked over to a Web site that kept a database of missing children and pulled up a photo and description. She swallowed hard, trying to reconcile the beautiful, smiling girl in the picture with the images of her mutilated body from the crime scene. Megan had known too many girls like Bianca, girls who ran away from a bad situation only to find that what waited for them on the streets was a thousand times worse.

She got more depressed as she scanned through what
little was written about her disappearance. Because she was a runaway from a working-class family that didn’t have the resources to launch a massive media campaign, Bianca’s disappearance had received minimal attention beyond the first week. And it didn’t help that Bianca’s family and close friends depicted her as a troublemaker who’d already been in trouble with the police after she was caught trying to sell Percocet she’d stolen from her parents’ medicine cabinet. The most recent article had been published a little over two years ago, when Bianca had turned eighteen, when a reporter revisited cold cases from his neighborhood. By that time, even her parents had given up. “If she wanted to come home,” her mother said, “she would have done it by now.”