Fifth Grave Past the Light (5 page)

What if he were the arsonist? What would I do? On one hand, I had Uncle Bob to consider. He’d done so much for me, was always there for me, but so was Reyes. He could be an ass, but he’d saved my life more times than I could count. Could I really accuse him of arson and turn him over?

Maybe I should just ask him. Maybe he would be honest with me and we could figure out what to do, where to go from here, together. And maybe they would get air-conditioning in hell.

I set my glass on the coffee table and rose to leave. “Thank you for tonight, though. Thank you for everything.”

“That sounds ominous,” he said without rising. He arched a brow in question. “Planning on never coming back?”

“No, just… I don’t know. I need to check on a few things.” And get the image of him in a prison uniform out of my head. Earl Walker had done a number on him growing up. Torture. Abuse beyond imagining. Was he trying to erase his past? To remove any evidence that it had really happened by burning down the places in which he’d lived? My chest tightened.

I walked to the door and pulled it open. Then Reyes was there. Behind me. He didn’t just close the door. He slammed it, the handle jerking out of my hand. Then he pressed in to me.

“What are you doing?” he asked, and he sounded hurt. Confused.

I laid my head against the door. “I’m just going to check on a few things. I have some research to do for a case.”

“Why is every breath you release filled with pity? Why in damnation would you feel sorry for me when you know what I am? What I’ve done?”

Of course he would be able to feel my compassion. My sympathy. I turned to face him even though he gave me no margin. His arms were braced on the door above my head. His crystalline gaze hard. But just as he felt my compassion, I felt the cut it left, the wound.

“I don’t feel sorry for you,” I said.

He scoffed and pushed off the door to head back to his kitchen. “And once again she lies.”

Regret consumed me. I didn’t want to fight with him. “I’m not so much lying as trying to keep the peace.”

“Then you should probably walk away.”

I glanced over at a message board he had on the wall. It had dark cork on it and silver pushpins, but only one note had been tacked onto it. I walked closer and recognized the handwriting. It was the bill I’d presented him a couple of weeks ago. The one I’d written on a Macho Taco receipt. The one that stated one Mr. Reyes Farrow owed Davidson Investigations a cool million. With interest. He’d kept it. That ridiculous bill.

And a new realization dawned. We were fighting. Well, we always fought, but we were fighting like real couples did. In an apartment with him flesh and blood and me flesh and blood and him so adorably sexy, he could melt the polar ice caps.

We were almost kind of sort of like a real couple. And he’d kept my bill.

The noise level rose in the kitchen as Reyes banged dishes. Slammed doors. Quite possibly threw a pan. It was enough to make my heart burst with joy. Walk away from him now? I would rather swim through broken glass.

He stopped what he was doing and though I couldn’t see him from my vantage point, he called out, “What?”

Could he feel my abrupt change of emotion? Did I give a crap? Not so much.

Whatever tomorrow brought, tonight he was mine. Sure he might be burning down half of Albuquerque, but he’d targeted condemned buildings and shoddily constructed cubbyholes that were eyesores anyway. Nobody missed the shacks he torched, and the owners were collecting a heap of nice coin from the insurance companies for their piles of rubble.

He was doing Albuquerque a favor.

He was a hero!

Okay, that might have been stretching it a bit, but still…

“Double or nothing!” I called out to him.

After a moment, he stepped around a wall, his forehead crinkled in mild interest.

“Double or nothing,” I repeated.

He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall. “I’m listening.”

“I’ll make you a bet. You can win your money back. Every cent. But if you lose, I get double.”

“And what money would that be?”

“The million you owe me.”

“Ah.” He thought for a minute, then asked, “And just how do I manage to do that?”

“Uh-uh-uh,” I said, stepping closer. “You’re going to owe me
two
million if you lose. Are you sure you don’t want to think about it? Perhaps put it on the back burner, let it simmer?”

His gaze took a leisurely tour of my body, pausing on my girls, Danger and Will Robinson, before continuing. “I’m pretty sure I’m up for whatever you throw at me.”

“It’s your funeral, buddy.” I looked around his apartment and found just the thing. After retrieving a tieback off his curtains, I walked back to him and explained the rules. “Okay, you have to trust me. Stand here and put your hands behind your back.”

He pushed off the wall and walked over to me, his expression wary but intrigued. “Is this going to hurt?”

“Only your bank account.”

He did as instructed, putting his hands behind his back.

“Do you trust me?” I asked.

“As far as I can throw you.”

“Good enough.” He was strong. He could probably toss me a goodly distance.

I tied his wrists together behind his back, and while I knew his history, knew all the horrible memories that could surface with that one act, I also hoped this would begin to form a bond of trust between us. A thread of peace. He had to know that I would not hurt him. True, I couldn’t hurt him physically if I wanted to, but he had to know that sentiment applied to our emotional relationship as well.

He tilted his head. “Seems promising.”

“If you can hold this position without moving for —” I looked toward the ceiling and thought about it. “— for five minutes, you win. But if you even so much as flinch,” I added, shadowboxing to warm up, “then I win.”

“I can’t flinch?”

“No flinching. This is a flinchless game of concentration and control. I learned it in the air force.”

“You were never in the air force.”

“No, but the guys who taught it to me were.” I danced around, showing off my mad skill, probably intimidating the holy macaroni out of him. Poor guy. “These are fists of fury. They will get close. You’ll feel the air as they swoosh by you. You’ll stand in awe of their speed and accuracy. But if you move, you lose. You still up for this? Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

The lopsided grin he wore was a ploy, a ruse to get me to lower my guard. He cleared his throat and nodded. “I’m good.”

“Are you sure?” I threw a few punches in quick succession just to let him know what he was up against. He had to be at least a little nervous. “We’re talking a lot of money here. No one would blame you if you begged off now.”

“Have you ever boxed?”

“Took some lessons. Didn’t want to be anybody’s bitch in detention.” He didn’t look convinced, so I explained. “I went to a rough high school. Our mascot was a hit man named Vinnie.”

“I thought you went to La Cueva.”

“I did. I went to a subdivision of La Cueva called La Bettawatchyaass, Girlfriend. It was a portable building a little south of the main school. We didn’t get invited to many events.”

He acted as though he were fighting a grin, but I knew better. The only thing he was fighting was the paralyzing fear rushing through his body. He tried not to let it surface, to let it ruin this majestic image I had of him. Too late.

“In case you are unaware of this fact, my nickname in high school was Uppercut Davidson.” I threw one in to demonstrate.

“I thought your nickname was Charley.”

“Only to those who had nothing to fear from me.” I totally needed a tattoo on my neck.

“Has the clock started?” he asked, a dimple appearing on his left cheek.

I let my arms fall to my sides, and gave him one last chance with a challenging quirk of my brow I saw in a movie once. When he held fast, I couldn’t help but be just a little impressed.

“You are a worthy opponent, Reyes Farrow.” I took a deep breath, raised my fists to first position as it was called in ballet, and said, “Time to pay the piper.”

He watched, waiting for me to throw a punch to see if he would flinch. His eyes smiled behind his mask of concentration. I almost felt sorry for him. Especially when I dropped my arms again and gazed at him from beneath hooded lids.

“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

He sobered and regarded me a bit more warily now.

I stepped to him, leaving only inches between us. Without releasing his gaze, I said, “Ever since the first time I saw you, when Earl was hitting you that awful, unforgettable night, your image has been burned into my mind. You were so unimaginably beautiful. And noble. And strong.”

He watched as I raised my hands and began unbuttoning his shirt. His mouth parted and he started to bend down to me, but I held up an index finger and wagged it.

“No moving, mister. Those are the rules.”

He narrowed his lids and straightened.

I unfastened the last button and pushed his shirt over his shoulders. The tattoos that ran across his chest, back, and shoulders were darker than most. Then again, they weren’t made of ink, but something supernatural, something otherworldly. Their lines interlocked like a maze with dead ends and traps that would keep a soul locked in the oblivion of space that existed between dimensions, lost for an eternity.

Scars from the abuse he’d endured growing up still marred his perfect skin, but only a bit. And then I found what I was looking for. The point of entry for the .50-caliber bullet that had torn through his body only days earlier. What would have ripped a normal man to shreds merely wounded Reyes. It entered through his rib cage and punctured a lung, exiting out his back. But all that remained as evidence of that night was a small scrape on his skin. I pushed his shirt down his arms farther and walked around to check his back. The scrape was better, but he healed even faster than I did.

“That’s not pity I feel, is it?” he asked, his voice suddenly hard.

I walked around to face him and crossed my arms over my chest. “What if it is?”

“I wouldn’t suggest it.”

“You can’t stop me from feeling sympathy for what you’ve been through, Reyes.”

“Would you care to test that theory?”

“Yes.” I raised my chin. “I would.” I put my hand on his chest, his skin scorching against my palm. “You are everything to me. How can I not empathize with you for what you’ve endured?”

The heat in the room magnified with his anger. “Stop.”

I shook my head and stepped closer. “No. I am in agony every time I think about what happened to you, and that’s not something you can change just because it makes you mad.”

And there it was. That blistering heat that burst from him when his temper got the better of him. “Would you like to know what true agony is?” he asked, his voice a husky shell, fragile, in danger of crumbling at any moment.

I stepped into the flames that engulfed him. Though I couldn’t see a fire, I could feel it, blazing across my skin, lapping over my nerve endings. I wrapped an arm around his waist, his hands still behind his back, his expression murderous. Then I reached up and touched his face. “If it meant I would know more of what you went through, then yes. If it would bring me closer to you, to understanding how you think, how I can best help you, then a thousand times yes.”

He bent his head, losing the game in the process, and whispered in my ear. “You got it.”

His arms were free at once and around me. He moved in a different time, a different reality. I wasn’t prepared. One second we were standing in the middle of his living room; the next I was against a wall, his body hard against mine, unforgiving. But if he meant to bring me agony, the only kind he brought was the anguish of longing for more. His mouth trailed hot kisses down my neck. His knee pushed my legs apart. His hand twisted into my hair while the other ripped my blouse and sought the weight of Danger and Will.

Then my pants were down and his blistering touch pushed inside me.

I gasped and took hold of his wrist as that familiar spark ignited in the core of my viscera. As molten lava spread through me, burning me from the inside out, I guided his fingers deeper and heard a growl a microsecond before I found myself on the ground. This was not the sensual being I had come to know. This was not an act of love but of punishment. Yet all he managed to do was drive me closer to the brink of ecstasy. It was as though he wanted to hurt me, to force me into not caring, not sympathizing, but that simply wouldn’t happen. I felt his desire mount as quickly as mine. As much as anger led him, so did his raw sexual appetite, and in that area we were a perfect match.

He lay on top of me with a hand around my throat to hold me beneath him as he unfastened his pants. I plunged both my hands in his hair, twisted my fingers in a firm grip, then pulled his mouth down to mine the moment he entered me. And a jolt of pleasure bucked inside me with his entrance. I breathed in the air he breathed out. I tasted him on my tongue. I sank my fingernails into his back when he pushed too hard too fast. But he didn’t stop. This wasn’t about pleasure. This was about reprisal. Revenge. His mouth tasted of wine and fire and his kiss grew just as hard as his fucking had become. A piercing arousal rippled through me as his thrust went deeper. He had clamped me to him so he could punish me, and yet even with all his anger and all his indignation, he did not hurt me. Just the opposite. Stinging tendrils of ecstasy spread throughout my body, hot and hungry and carnivorous.

But was he solely punishing me or was he enjoying the act as well? I wrapped my arms around his head as he thrust into me, his breathing labored, his body molding into a marble-like hardness, and I did the unthinkable. I whispered into his ear the last thing he would ever want to hear. But I had to know where he was at.

“Is this what he did to you?”

He hesitated. Faltered. And my body cried out. It wanted that peak it sought. That prize at the top. But my heart wanted Reyes. With me. Not fighting me. Not punishing me. But riding this incredible wave together.

There was a wall above my head and he braced a hand against it, our bodies still entwined and locked together. His mouth sought my ear. “You would still feel pity for me?” He nipped at my earlobe. The small amount of pain caused a sharp spike of arousal. “I am a monster, Dutch. A demon. Unworthy of you.”

I still had my arms wrapped around his head. “I don’t pity you, my beautiful man.” His hold tightened. “I have sympathy for what you’ve been through. And you are not a monster. If you want to punish me for the feelings I have – ” I put one hand on a steely buttock and led him deeper. He hissed in a breath. Pressed harder. “— then I accept.”

My body won. The heat swirling and bubbling inside me needed release, somewhere to go, and Reyes was just the one to set it free.

His mouth sought mine, the contact rough, raw, and he drank me in as though my kiss were the only thing keeping him alive. An exquisite pressure trembled throughout me as he buried himself over and over, urging me closer to the edge with each thrust, with each powerful stroke. The air disappeared from the room as his erection milked the tide swelling inside me, summoned the wave of lava, drew it closer and closer until it burst through and crashed against my bones, surging like a boiling sea throughout me.

He groaned in agony as he met his own climax with a shiver of ecstasy; then he lay on top of me, breathless and spent. When he went to push off me, I wrapped every available limb I had around him and kept him locked to me. He relaxed at last and I felt everything negative, every doubt, every grain of insecurity, every fragment of anxiety drain out of him. I kissed his brow and ran my fingertips over his back and if I didn’t know better, I’d say he was happy. A ray of hope broke through. Maybe, just maybe, the lion could be tamed. Then again, did I want to tame such a wildly passionate beast? Such a stunningly feral being? I’d have to think on that one.