{Nauti Boys 5} - Nauti Deceptions (6 page)

“What about enemies?” Zeke asked. “Did they have any you’d believe would want to hurt them?”

She stared back at him heavily. “I can’t think of a single enemy those two boys had. For all their womanizing, they were well liked. I never knew of anyone wanting to hurt them. And why ask that question if it’s a cut-and-dried murder-suicide as your deputy believes?”

She watched Zeke suspiciously now. Why the questions if he believed Joe had murdered Jaime, then killed himself?

“There was a murder, no matter what happened or why,” Zeke told her. “I need to figure out the what and the why to close this case, Rogue. I don’t like questions left dangling.”

“Then you have a hell of a question going on there,” she told him. “Because I’m telling you, Joe wouldn’t hurt Jaime. He was the oldest twin. He was more protective toward Jaime. No one hurt Jaime that Joe didn’t come running.”

He still watched her closely, that somber gaze moving over her face, almost to her neck. For a second, she had a feeling that he would have looked lower, but he didn’t. He kept his gaze on her face, and that pissed her off.

He was sitting here questioning her over her cousins’ deaths, deaths he had to suspect couldn’t have played out as it was made to look. He could have come to question her at any time, but he came late, after he was off duty, in plainclothes, and aroused.

Unlike him, she’d had no problem looking below his neck. Or his waist. She sure as hell had no problem looking below his belt.

“Look, Zeke, I can’t tell you anything you obviously don’t know already,” she told him. “I know Joe or Jaime—neither one would have hurt the other. Whatever happened up there is bogus. It was a setup and I can’t figure out why, because Joe and Jaime were a threat to no one.”

“We thought you were a threat to no one last year when you were attacked as well,” he reminded her. “It wasn’t what you knew on Mackay and Grace that landed you in the hospital, Rogue, it was what they were afraid you knew. What could Joe have been afraid of that would have made him kill his brother and himself?”

Last year she had managed to get herself twisted into a Homeland Security investigation into Nadine Grace and Dayle Mackay. As he’d said, it wasn’t what she had known but what Grace and Mackay thought she might have known that had been the problem. When the investigator, Dayle’s son’s lover, Chaya Dane, had questioned her, it had drawn Rogue within their sights once more.

She’d spent a week in the hospital, bruised, with a cracked rib and a bruised skull, but she’d come out of it alive.

“Someone else killed Joe and Jaime,” she told him. “Get that in your head, Zeke. Someone set that scene up. Because I know to the soles of my feet neither of those boys would have hurt the other. It wasn’t in them.”

His jaw flexed, and his gaze jerked to her feet where they rested at the side of her body, then back to her face. How interesting.

God, he made her mad. Never more mad though than he was making her tonight. He was almost foaming at the mouth to touch her, as desperate for it as she was, and still, he denied both of them.

He nodded. “I’ll keep checking things out,” he told her. “But unless forensics or the coroner comes up with something, then murder-suicide is what we’re looking at. And it damn sure looks as though Joe killed Jaime and then himself.”

Her lips twisted mockingly. “Yeah, and there are pictures on the Internet that make me look like a world-class slut,” she reminded him. “Trust me, looks are incredibly deceiving.”

His gaze darkened, though it never moved from her. Sometimes, she wondered exactly what was going on behind that fierce gaze. Hawklike light brown eyes that seemed to reflect shadows of emotions that she could never really decipher.

“I’ve never seen the pictures,” he finally said, surprising her.

Rogue’s brow lifted. “Really? You must be the only man in the county that hasn’t managed to find them.”

Zeke wasn’t a man to lie, about anything.

“I never went looking for them,” he told her. “I didn’t want to see them, Rogue, because they didn’t matter between you and me.”

Of course they didn’t. Those pictures, one way or the
other, would never change the fact that he might want her, but he had no intention of touching her.

She’d tested that theory over the winter. All the rides she’d requested after the long hours she had put in at the Mackay restaurant. The nights she had invited him up for a drink or tried to linger in his vehicle to talk, to flirt. She’d given up. She’d let it go. She wasn’t begging him.

She unfolded herself from the couch, reached down, and picked up her shoes before staring down at him.

“Do you have any further questions, Zeke? It’s late, I need a drink, and I was looking forward to a bubble bath. Honestly, I don’t know what else I could tell you about Joe and Jaime that you don’t already know. Or think you know.”

And she couldn’t handle being in the same room with him tonight. She wasn’t as strong as she had been in the winter. Perhaps those winter months had weakened her. Hoping against hope each night that she had flirted her way into his car that something, anything, would come of it. Only to have her hopes dashed time and again.

“You’re throwing me out?” He tilted his head and looked up at her, his gaze flashing with a heat she was afraid to delve too deeply into. “After weeks of trying to get me up here to your apartment, you’re not even offering me a beer?”

“No. I’m not. Good night, Zeke. Lock the door on your way out.”

She turned and walked to the open bedroom door. She could feel his gaze on her, felt him watching her, his eyes burning into her. Suddenly, her skirt was too short, the vest flashed too much skin at her midriff and back. She felt exposed, vulnerable. She felt weak.

“Hell of a change, Rogue. You tried to seduce me half the winter. What happened?”

She stopped and turned around slowly to see him standing, cocky, assured, confident.

“I gave up,” she replied shortly. “As you said, I
tried
to seduce you. You weren’t willing. I don’t beg. End of story.”

His expression tightened, a muscle jumping at his jaw as his gaze raked over her then.

“You’re too damned young,” he finally berated her, and perhaps himself as well, she thought. Or he was trying to convince himself.

“I’m too damned tired to play games.” It was all she could do to keep her shoulders straight and to fight back the tears. “Joe and Jaime were family. This has hit me rather hard, and as you see”—she lifted her arms wide to encompass the empty apartment—“it’s just me and the bubble bath for comfort. I don’t need to add games to tonight’s stress if you don’t mind.”

Zeke watched Rogue closely. He saw it then. That shadow in those deep violet eyes that had held his attention. A shadow he had never seen before. Loneliness. Loss. He knew that feeling. And in the past five years whenever it struck, it was Rogue that came to mind. Her smile, the promise of passion in her eyes, the need to touch her, the certainty that she could calm the beast that raged inside him.

Damn her. She’d managed to worm her way into his life, there was no doubt of that. He’d missed her in the past few weeks since she had started riding her Harley to the restaurant rather than calling him and bumming a ride. Hell, he’d more than missed it. It was as though something were suddenly missing from his life. There was an emptiness where those hours lay now, a sense of waiting.

“Why don’t you have a lover, Rogue?” He looked around the apartment. To his knowledge, as long as she had lived in Somerset, Rogue had never had a lover.

He didn’t count the pictures that had ended up on the Internet. He’d investigated that himself, and though he could never find proof, there was enough suspicion to prove to him that Rogue had been used somehow. Rumor was Nadine Grace and Dayle Mackay had targeted her when she had defended Zeke’s son over a test at school. Nadine had never liked Shane because Zeke had refused to walk the same path his father had walked. Thad Mayes had held the position of sheriff for years, and through that time he had protected Dayle Mackay and the Freedom League’s collective asses. He hadn’t just protected them, he had been part of them. Zeke refused to follow that path, and Nadine had finally found a way to strike back, through Shane.

A month after standing up for his son, Rogue had left the bar with a strange couple. She hadn’t been well known then; no one had thought to question her when she left. And then Rogue had been out of a job in the school system and the pictures had shown up on the Internet.

Oh, Zeke knew how Grace and Mackay had worked, he thought as he found himself moving across the room, his gaze drifting, again, to the scalloped lace that peeked over her leather vest.

Bra or camisole? he wondered. Probably one of those short little camisole things. Scarlet red and flirty. Just like the shoes she carried in her hand.

“You didn’t answer me, Rogue,” he reminded her. “Why don’t you have a lover?”

And he wasn’t certain he wanted to hear the answer to that question. The same reason perhaps that he didn’t have a lover. Because he couldn’t have Rogue.

“Does it matter why?” She stood still, determined as he moved to her, stopping within a breath of touching distance.

He stared down at her, feeling things he knew he had no right to feel. Things he knew he shouldn’t feel, not for this spritely little woman-child that was much too young for him.

He was playing a dangerous game tonight and he knew it. But he needed a taste of her. Just enough to hold him over, to dampen the lust raging through him.

“Don’t play games with me, Zeke,” she breathed out wearily. “Honestly, I don’t have time for them. I don’t have the strength for them right now.”

“Have I ever played games with you, Rogue?” he asked, reaching out to touch her cheek, knowing, damn, he knew this was a mistake. The worst mistake he could possibly make right now. Because he couldn’t follow through. He couldn’t have her and revenge. It wasn’t possible.

She didn’t answer him. He could have used one of her smart remarks right now. Something to remind himself that she was way too young. Twenty-six, even if it was almost twenty-seven, was too far from thirty-seven years old. Eleven years. Two years less than that which separated Alex Jansen and his fiancιe, Janey Mackay, Zeke thought. But just because Alex could handle it didn’t mean Zeke could. Hell, his son, Shane, was nineteen. He was closer to Rogue’s age than Zeke was.

“You don’t play games,” she whispered, her expression softening, transforming, turning sensual, tempting.

Damn, the things he wanted to do to her. The ways he wanted to do them. He was here to question her about her cousins’ deaths; instead, he found himself relishing the softness of her cheek. Skin like satin and silk combined. And as he looked, he realized it was all but devoid of makeup.

She looked like a temptress with those violet eyes though. Those long, riotous red gold curls flowing around her, making a man wonder what it would be like to be bound within them.

“This is a bad idea.” He sighed, lowering his head and allowing his rougher cheek to brush against hers. “Tell me to leave.”

“Leave,” she breathed as she softened against him.

He almost laughed. Damn her, she could make him laugh when no one else could. “That wasn’t an order, Rogue.”

“Oh. It was supposed to be an order?” A little, knowing smile tugged at her lips.

Oh yeah, she knew he wanted her until he ached with it. And she wanted. She wanted with the same hunger. He could see it in her eyes.

Her shoes dropped to the carpet, the light thud barely registering in his head. Hell, he could barely hear anything over the race of his own pulse and the thunder of lust in his veins.

He let his lips skim her cheek. The need for her threatened to erode his control and his senses.

“I’m leaving,” he told her. “This is too damned dangerous.”

“Of course it is.” One small hand clenched on his upper arm. The fingers of the other were pressing against his stomach. She could feel his abs flexing; he could feel the warmth of her through the material of his shirt.

His cock pressed imperatively against his jeans. The hard throb was making him crazy. It had made him crazy all evening. How much hell was one man supposed to endure before the hunger overrode control? he wondered. And what was it about this one woman that threatened his control?

He let his lips brush against the curls at the side of her face. They were soft, fragrant. Like silk that smelled of dawn. He wanted to crush them between his fingers, hold her in place, and eat her up with kiss after kiss. He wanted to taste those lush, sensual lips. He wanted to feel her tongue against his, hell, he wanted all of her.

“You’re teasing me.” Her voice was weak, a hint of need quivering within it as she shifted closer to him. “Don’t tease me, Zeke. Kiss me, or let me go.”

“You’re supposed to tell me to leave,” he reminded her.

“Kiss me or leave. Do one or the other.”

“Kissing you would be a very bad idea.” So why wasn’t he stepping back? Why wasn’t he letting her go? Instead, he was moving closer, one arm curling around her back as he gripped her jaw with his hand and lifted her head.