The Naked Detective (8 page)

“Of course not.”

She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “You’re a much better kisser, you know. Joe Jersey over there has an excessive amount of saliva. It was very…moist.”

“Good to know.”

“It
is
good to know. I can kiss moist men. I’ve cracked the code, Nate. I can touch people again. Not just you,
people
. Do you know what this means?”

“No.” He was still playing catch up on the she’s-not-a-thief-and-she-kisses-like-a-siren front. The implications of the touching stuff were beyond him.

“It means I don’t have to live like a hermit anymore. It means I’m not a freak. It means I can finally have a
life
.” Ciara closed her eyes and shook her head sharply. “God, I can’t believe what an idiot I’ve been. All the time I’ve wasted just because I didn’t try. Just because I didn’t
listen
.” Her eyes popped open, their black depths sparkling wetly. “That’s all it took. All I had to do was stop fighting my own abilities, stop bracing myself for every attack and just accept it. If I didn’t want to waste even one more second on regret, I’d be so angry with myself right now.”

She didn’t look angry. She looked a breath away from laughter or tears, but not angry.

Ciara had been a vibrant force from the second he laid eyes on her, but now it was like the life in her was amplified, like a raw diamond cut and perfectly set to show off every sparkling facet. Before she had been beautiful, now she
shone
.

And there was quite a lot to show.

“What the hell are you wearing?”

Ciara laughed and twirled. “You like? Not bad, eh?”

Not bad. Sweet Jesus. She looked like temptation incarnate in that red dress. It was short and tight and the color of a luscious apple. Eve didn’t need a piece of fruit. All she needed was a dress like that.

Ciara clutched her winnings against her ribs, her arm pressing her breasts up like offerings above the low neckline. Nate placed a finger against one narrow strap at her shoulder. He traced the strap down until he brushed the warm upper curve of her breast. Her breath caught, her inky eyes locked on his.

“I like,” he murmured. He fixated on her mouth—the smooth curve of it. He’d never noticed before, but her mouth was a little lopsided, quirking up on the right. He wanted to kiss that up-tilted edge, nip the full lower curve and suck it into his mouth.

She stared at his lips, caught in the same moment he was, as the noise in the casino seemed to recede. He leaned down, hypnotized as her tongue snuck out to trace her lips. She rested her free hand on his chest and stretched up to meet him.

A slot machine erupted ten feet away from them, bells and whistles shrieking merrily as some lucky bastard hit the jackpot. Nate didn’t even glance in that direction. He was too focused on his own jackpot. But Ciara’s eyes flicked over. She gasped. Her spine stiffened.

“Nate,” she whispered urgently. “Nate, look. That woman over there. In the pink.”

“Is she
the
woman in pink?” He reluctantly gave up on his own payday and straightened, turning to look. At first he just saw the middle-aged couple in matching sweatsuits clapping and jumping next to the slot machine. Then he saw the woman. She was pretty damn hard to miss. She looked like an Austin Powers Bimbot who’d been dunked in Pepto-Bismol. Pink brassiere, pink hot pants, black fishnets and sky-high boots. Her blonde hair was poofed up in a platinum bouffant and silver fake eyelashes sparkled in the flashing lights from the slot machine.

“No,” Ciara drawled slowly, “no, that isn’t her. But she’s dressed just like that. Are there showgirls here?”

Nate shook his head. “No floorshow. Are you sure that isn’t her? What are the odds that there are two women here dressed like that?”

As soon as the words left his mouth, a second woman, this one African-American but dressed almost exactly the same way, appeared. She spoke to the bouffant blonde, waving her hands expressively. A fraction of a second later the two women took off, jogging through the casino.

“They’re getting away,” Ciara yelped. “We have to follow them. They’ll lead us right to her.” She started sprinting through the casino after them.

Nate swore and began limping after as quickly as he could, using his cane like a pole vaulter’s stick whenever possible.

“Come on, Nate,” Ciara called over her shoulder, her eyes dancing. “Follow that slut!”

Chapter Nine—In Pursuit of Slut

Ciara tottered as fast as she could in the wake of the pink ladies. Suddenly she had a profound respect for women who could sprint in four-inch heels. Like the pink ladies. Those tramps could book. They must be wearing the Adidas of platform boots.

They dashed through the casino, dodging games and slow-moving gamblers like Olympic hopefuls in skankwear.

Ciara struggled to keep them in sight. As they bobbed, she weaved, and then glanced back over her shoulder. Nate kept pace amazingly well for a guy with only one good leg. He was definitely getting the hang of that cane.

She grinned at him, having too much fun in the slut-chase to match the severe expression on his face. Nate needed to learn to live a little. So what if they were chasing trollops across a massive casino floor in the hopes of locating a specific trollop who knew the location of a stolen necklace? That was no reason not to enjoy the moment.

Ciara nearly crashed into a Wheel of Fortune slot machine and untwisted, deciding it was safer, while running in four-inch heels, to watch where she was going. She rounded a corner and slowed to a stop.

The pink ladies were nowhere in sight. Ciara bent at the waist—she was so damned out of shape—as she scanned the area for a flash of hot pink trampiness.

Nate staggered to a stop at her side.

“Did you see which way they went?” she asked.

He shook his head, panting heavily beside her. At least they were out of shape together. Though Ciara didn’t have the excuse of a heroic injury in the line of duty and being laid up for a month in a lengthy recovery. She just had pathetic muscle mass after spending the last decade of her life floating in her pool.

She would have to start working out. Training. In high heels. Next time she’d be ready for the Olympic skanks.

“Here, hold these.” She divided her winnings into two stacks and shoved them into Nate’s suit-coat pockets. She stretched up as tall as she could, craning her neck for some sign of the skankettes.

In front of them was a row of blackjack tables, off to the left was one of the gourmet restaurants and directly behind them was the darkened, black-velvet-rope-lined entrance to a dance club. Ciara heard the bass beat humming distantly, more a vibration through the soles of her feet than actual sound. A slim brunette dressed all in black stood at the podium at the front of the velvet-rope line, tapping her manicure against a clipboard.

Ciara tugged Nate’s arm and nodded in the hostess’s direction. “She must have seen which way they went. Come on.”

Ninety seconds later, Ciara was ready to throttle the little hostess—not that she had a good excuse for strangling the twit. She hardly qualified as a hostile witness. It had taken Nate all of fifteen seconds to find out that the pink ladies—Ashley and Monique—had indeed passed this way. In fact, they’d run down into the club. Late for work again, tsk tsk.

There weren’t showgirls at the Borgata, but there were certainly go-go dancers.

If the hostess hadn’t been dripping drool all over Nate, Ciara might have hugged her for being so helpful. As it was, the brunette was lucky Ciara didn’t pull out all of her big Jersey hair. Yes, Nate was a hunky piece of manflesh, but he was
Ciara’s
hunky piece of manflesh, thank you very much. At least until they found the necklace.

Ciara dragged Nate away from his newest fan and down the escalator into the club,
mur.mur
. As they descended, the heavy beat rose up to slap them in the face. The club’s name was a total misnomer, unless it referred to the range of hearing that would be eliminated inside.

They moved through the dark cave of the entrance. The club, tucked beneath the floorboards of the casino, opened in front of them. In the center of the room, a crowded, sunken dance floor was surrounded by couches and low circular tables. The go-go dancers they’d chased across the casino shimmied atop platform tables strategically placed at the edges of the dance floor.

Directly in front of them, the bouffant blonde dropped down into a feline crouch and straightened with sensual aplomb. Ciara stared. She’d thought the outfits were trashy, flashing every semi-decent inch of skin and then some, but under the strobe light with the beat pounding through her blood, the costume sort of worked and there was a certain style to the go-go dancer’s gyrations.

And a distinct sexiness. These women
knew things
.

“I should become a go-go dancer.” She spoke the words softly, knowing no one could possibly hear them.

“Do you see her?” Nate shouted over the thundering bass. His arm was tense beneath her fingers, his cane held in a white-knuckled grip.

There were six dancers altogether. All of them in various hot pink porn-star getups, but not one of them was the woman from her vision. Above the dance floor, a wide walkway wrapped around the room. A bar immediately to their left was mirrored by another on the opposite wall. The walls not occupied by bars were lined with shadowed nooks, the curved couches and fabric hangings giving the illusion of privacy.

“Not yet,” Ciara shouted back. “Let’s dance until she shows.”

Nate slanted a glance toward the crowded dance floor and frowned, but Ciara didn’t give him a chance to object. She grabbed his cane-free arm—the one she’d been dragging him around by all week—and hauled him toward the pulsating mass of humanity.

He shuffled awkwardly to the music—which she should have expected, really, since a man with a permanent limp could hardly be expected to be graceful. Especially when the nearby dancers were constantly jostling them with misplaced grinds, thrusts and booty bumps.

Nate angled his shoulders to block one particularly enthusiastic flail. Ciara watched as he jerked back the other direction, shoulder-checking another dancer who was bobbing dangerously close on her right. After a few more similar moves, realization smacked Ciara in the forehead with a tire iron.

He was protecting her.

The dance floor was crowded, people bouncing off one another, pushing and squirming, but since she’d come down here
no one had touched her
. He wasn’t awkward because of the cane. He was awkward because he was trying to protect her from the casual touches of the other dancers.

Her heart clenched.
They just don’t make ’em like that anymore.

Ciara moved in closer, twining her arms around his neck and sliding her body against his. He looked down at her, a little frown wrinkling his Everybody’s All-American brow. Ciara smiled, suddenly feeling dippy and sentimental. “You’re the real deal. Aren’t you, Agent Smith?”

“What?” he shouted down at her.

Ciara just smiled and mutely shook her head. It was probably a good thing he couldn’t hear her. She felt frighteningly sappy at the moment.

The music was anything but sappy. A driving, unapologetic, pulsing invitation to sex. The bass vibrated through the soles of her Ferragamos.

Ciara tucked herself against Nate’s chest, brushing aside the lapels of his suit jacket to press closer still. He was warm and hard, strong and reliable. He gave her adventure, but made her feel so safe. He would never let anything happen to her. She could fly as high as she wanted and he would always be there to catch her.

But Ciara wanted more than a safety net. She wanted
flames
. She wanted to be incinerated by passion, melted in the heat of her own need.

The music spurred her on. She arched against Nate, rolling her hips in time to the beat. Her hands roamed over his shoulders, smoothing down over the muscles of his chest and sliding beneath his suit jacket to wrap around his waist. His good leg slipped between hers. Ciara’s gasp was lost in the heavy thrum of the music as the pressure of his thigh between her legs sent a spike of pleasure straight to her core. He splayed one hand against the small of her back, keeping her pressed close. Ciara’s hips continued to work in rhythm.

Just a dance. It’s just a dance.

Ciara’s head fell back, her eyes closed. He bent down, his large frame curling protectively around her smaller one, and brushed his rough cheek against hers. She turned her head, seeking his mouth, but he evaded her, his lips moving beneath her jaw and along the column of her throat.

He leaned into her, guiding her backward through the crowd. When her heels hit the steps up off the dance floor, they were forced to break away from one another. She stayed tucked against his chest, beneath his suit jacket, as they swayed together up the steps and toward one of the cozy alcoves along the wall. The first two they came to were already occupied, but the third was blissfully empty.

Nate immediately sat on the low couch, pulling Ciara onto his lap. Her back was to his chest. If she looked through the break in the dark curtains shrouding their alcove, she could see the rest of the club. Which meant if any of those clubbers glanced this way as they walked past, they’d be able to see her, clear as day.

Nate’s hand snuck beneath the short skirt of her dress. His other arm wrapped snuggly around her ribs, keeping her in place and rubbing against the underside of her swollen breasts. His fingers unerringly found her clit through her drenched panties, and he rubbed the nub in a small circle, the friction and pressure unbearably delicious.

Ciara watched the gap in the curtains, electrified by the thought that they were utterly exposed. She definitely had some latent exhibitionist tendencies. So what if they were in semi-public and anyone could see them? Let the world watch.

Then Nate changed the direction of his circling finger and the world faded into insignificance. All that mattered was his hand, his touch, the drawing ache building inside her, begging for release.

“Oh God.” She clung to the arm around her ribs, hanging on for dear life as his fingers worked her closer and closer to that beautiful madness.