Skin Deep (21 page)

Kellan slid his index finger into her pussy in one seamless stroke. She bucked against the heel of his hand, and he withdrew only long enough to grab her hand and return it to the sweet spot of her clit.

Isabella sighed her approval, stroking herself and pushing her hips up as he slipped two fingers inside. Her inner muscles squeezed, and he watched with pleasure while she touched her clit harder, faster. Kellan pumped his fingers with ease, working her sex in slow, deep thrusts, using the slickness from her pussy to draw a path toward the sweet, tight cleft of her ass.

“
Ah
.” She dug her heels into the comforter, tilting her hips to chase his touch.

Kellan looked up at her. “Show me,” he demanded again.

And again, Isabella did.

Lowering her hand from the top of her sex, she delved lower between her legs. She skimmed her index finger over the tightly drawn muscle at the entrance to her ass, pressing just hard enough for him to feel the rest of her vibrate in response.

“There.
There
,” she grunted, and he replaced her finger with his in a flash.

“Like this?” Kellan confirmed. He circled her opening with the tip of his ring finger, a dark smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as Isabella moaned in reply. Her hand returned to the apex of her thighs, and between her fast ministrations above and his slow, purposeful movements below, her breaths quickly became shallow. Turning his hand, he increased the pressure just slightly, breaching her hole with the pad of his finger while reclaiming her nipple with a punishing kiss. A cry broke from the back of her throat, gravel and silk at the same time, but if anything, it only urged him not to stop. He sucked and pressed in time with the rhythm of Isabella’s fingers on her clit, until finally, she began to pulse from the inside out.

“Kellan. Oh, God, I’m…”

“Show me,” he demanded, thrusting the tip of his finger deeper into her ass. “I’m right here, sweetheart. Show me what you need.”

Her hips jerked, her body clamping all the way down before unraveling in waves. Kellan coaxed her through all of them, lightening his touches bit by bit as her body went lax, and Christ in heaven, how could anyone be so sweet and so sinful all at once?

“Kellan.”

The throaty tone of Isabella’s voice made his blood race. He lifted his head from her kiss-swollen nipple, pushing himself up from beside her to return her stare through the morning sunlight. “Yeah?”

She spread her legs, pinning him with a stare he felt from breath to bones. “I need
you
. Right here.” Her gaze flicked down at the same time her hips tilted up to give him an unimpeded view of her bare, glistening sex. “Right. Now.”

Kellan’s heart slammed in his chest. He knew he should take Isabella in, to go slow and discover every inch of her, but damn it, he couldn’t wait.

He
wanted
her. He didn’t want to be cautious or controlled or calm. He wanted to break all the boxes keeping his impulses in check, smashing every last one of them so he could fuck her until she screamed and feel it in his blood and breath and balls when she did.

The same deep-seated instinct that had driven him to take his time before now forced him into action. In the fastest movements possible, Kellan threw off his jeans and boxer briefs, pausing only briefly to grab a condom from his bedside table drawer. Seconds later, he knelt between Isabella’s legs, sliding the head of his cock along her folds just once before giving in to fill her with one smooth thrust.

His breath escaped on a groan. Oh hell, her pussy was so tight and hot and absolutely perfect, he was tempted to come just from the feel of her. Kellan bit his lip to fight the throb at the base of his spine, tempering his raw, dirty pleasure with the pain. Isabella arched up, flattening her palms over his ass to keep him anchored inside her pussy, the deep squeeze of her inner muscles gripping his cock and obliterating his composure.

Fuuuuck
. He didn’t have a chance in hell of lasting even thirty seconds like this. He pulled back, only an inch, searching for control. Pushing back home, Kellan repeated the movement once, then again, until he and Isabella found a slow, deep rhythm. He leaned forward to place his palms on either side of her shoulders, and Isabella gasped at the change in angle, as if he’d discovered some hidden spot inside her.

Oh, hell yeah. Now
this
he could do for fucking ever. Especially if it meant she’d keep making those hot little sounds.

Kellan gripped the comforter for balance, repeating the motion and rotating his hips. “You like that,” he said, and even though his words had been all statement, Isabella nodded in reply.

“Yes.” Her eyes glittered through the dark sweep of her lashes as she looked up at him. Opening her knees wider, she hooked her inner thighs around his waist. “Please. Oh God, Kellan. Don’t stop.
Please
.”

Something about the way her tone shaped the last word hit him square in the chest. He wasn’t shy in the bedroom, and clearly, Isabella wasn’t either. Talking dirty was a hell of a turn-on. But all at once, Kellan realized she wasn’t asking because she liked the feel of him fucking her, or even because she wanted to come for the sake of the pleasure. In this moment, she
needed
the release, like food or water or breath.

And he was going to give it to her. Even if he had to lose control to get her there.

Kellan brushed his mouth over hers, just a fast stroke of lips on lips before beginning to thrust again. Isabella met his motions, rocking with him, daring him to move faster and harder until the space between them didn’t exist. Her nails curved into the bare skin of his ass, but not even the sweet sting could distract him from his purpose. He pushed inside her, over and over, watching his cock disappear between her pretty pink folds until finally, her eyes flew wide.

“I won’t stop.” Kellan pistoned his hips, filling her pussy as proof. “I know what you need, sweetheart. Go on and take it. Come for me.”

Her voice broke on a cry as her body began to tremble, and the combination blindsided him. His release razored up from deep between his thighs, gripping him and forcing him to let go all at once. Isabella knotted her legs around his waist, her muscles clasped against him both inside and out, and the sensation was too much. With a moan that turned into a shout, Kellan climaxed, burying his cock deep as he came in wave after wave of uncut pleasure.

They lay together, forehead to forehead, chest to chest, bodies joined, until inevitably, he had to slip across the hall for a quick clean-up. He returned to find Isabella still in the middle of his bed, holding her T-shirt over her otherwise still-bare chest.

Although Kellan’s gut knotted in concern, he kept the emotion far from his face. “Hey. You okay?”

“Yeah. Absolutely,” she said, although he could’ve spotted the lie from forty paces out. “I should probably go.”

But she didn’t make a move to do it.

“You don’t have to,” Kellan told her. Yeah, saying so was a risk. But for fuck’s sake, the look on her face matched her lack of definitive movement toward the door. Something had happened yesterday, something that had prompted Isabella to come over to his apartment and wait for him to come home.

“I know,” she said, dropping her gaze to the black cotton still clutched across her front. But again, she didn’t move, and screw propriety and impulse and risk.

He wanted Isabella to stay.

Kellan grabbed his boxer briefs, slipping them over his hips before sitting down on the bed next to her. “Is that what you really want? To go?”

For a second, he thought she’d say yes—Christ, her knuckles were damn near white from her death grip on that T-shirt.

But then she looked up at him, her gorgeous brown eyes brimming with too many emotions to name, and shocked him by whispering, “No. I don’t want to go.”

G
irl
, it’s official. You have lost your goddamn mind
.

Isabella closed her eyes, digging deep for a breath that would calm her racing heartbeat and slap some sense back into her clearly malfunctioning brain. After dividing her night between pacing the floor in her living room and staring at the ceiling in her bedroom, she’d finally given up at dawn and left her apartment. She’d thought about going to the gym or taking a nice, long trip to the gun range—or hell, even making an about face back home to crack open the bottle of Patrón Silver she kept in the cabinet over her fridge in case of emergencies. But what she’d really wanted was to lose herself, to forget for just a little while that Angel had been killed and that Sinclair had tossed her off this case, and she’d come to Kellan’s apartment to do just that.

But now she didn’t want to forget at all. As impulsive and uncharacteristic and insane as it was, Isabella wanted to tell him everything.

“Okay.” Kellan’s voice brought her back to the reality of his bedroom, smoothing over her frayed nerves. He shifted from the mattress to the floorboards, pulling down one edge of the dark blue comforter to reveal a set of crisp white sheets. “Come on,” he said, getting under the covers.

For a second, she nearly panicked. She’d never post-sex-snuggled anyone in her life. Was there some kind of protocol for this? Something she was supposed to do or say?

As if he’d lasered in on her thoughts, Kellan said, “Hey. None of the questions have to be hard, remember?”

His expression was so easy, so laid back and no-great-shakes, that before her defenses could protest, Isabella pulled her T-shirt over her head and slid in next to him.

Letting Kellan in might be insane, but it also didn’t feel wrong.

“Okay,” she whispered. She turned to her side, and Kellan pulled her close just like he had the other morning on his couch, his body warm and solid behind hers. Although they were way less than fully dressed, the contact felt more comforting than sexual, and her muscles relaxed, breath by breath.

“Moreno?” His voice rumbled at her ear, and whether it was the post-sex endorphins or the pure, shocking goodness she felt at lying wrapped up in Kellan’s arms, she couldn’t be sure.

But something prompted her to say, “Isabella.”

“What?” Confusion crept into his tone, sweet enough to knock her unease down another peg.

“We’ve seen each other naked more than once.” She pressed a smile between her lips at the memory. “I’m pretty sure that means we should be on a strictly first-name basis from now on.”

Kellan’s chuckle was warm in her hair. “Okay, Isabella. Tell me something about you.”

Unable to help it, she matched his laughter with her own. “More pizza toppings? Or did you want to go for favorite flavor of ice cream this time?”

“Not quite,” he said, his voice strong and steady in her ear. “Actually, I was hoping you’d tell me what happened to make you show up on my doorstep. Not that I mind, but—”

“Sinclair benched me.”

Her heart stuttered. She hadn’t meant to blurt the words so gracelessly—God, she wasn’t even sure she’d meant to say them at all. And she
really
hadn’t expected to feel so relieved now that she’d let them loose.

Kellan’s arm tightened around her waist. “He took you off the case?” At her wordless nod, he continued, indignant. “He can’t do that. You busted your ass to make this case happen.”

“After he told me not to,” Isabella said, trying like hell not to let the bitter taste of the words filter into her tone. She took a deep breath to meter the ache blooming behind her breastbone. “I broke the rules by pursuing DuPree on my own. I had my reasons, but Sinclair thinks I don’t trust him or my team, so…”

“Do you?”

Now it was Isabella’s turn to stiffen against Kellan’s chest. “Are you out of your mind?”

“No. I’m just asking a question,” he said, so matter-of-fact that she answered without thinking.

“We work together in literal life or death situations. Of course I trust my team.”

For a minute, Kellan said nothing. Then, “But you didn’t for this. Your partner.”

He paused, and she filled in the blank. “Hollister. Liam.”

“Right. Hollister. He seems like a decent guy. He wouldn’t have backed you up? At least on the walk and talk with Carmen?”

Isabella bit her lip, the ache of her sadness growing more insistent between her ribs. Confiding what had happened with Sinclair was one thing. But she couldn’t tell Kellan this part. She couldn’t tell him why she kept her distance from her team, hell, from everyone.

She couldn’t tell him that her cousin—the very best friend she’d ever known—had been murdered eleven years ago, and it was her fault. That when people trusted her, they died.

She couldn’t let Kellan get
that
close. So she said, “He might have backed me up. I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. I still screwed up in the end.”

“Sorry, I don’t follow. You got Sinclair to open a case, right?”

Isabella laughed, hating the harshness in the sound, and every emotion she’d been trying to keep at bay pushed forward all at once. “What good does that do Angel now? I promised…I promised her she’d be safe. I
promised
, but still she’s…he still…”

Kellan wrapped his arm around her tighter, saving her from having to speak the one word that would wreck her right now.

Dead. Angel was dead. Just like Marisol.

And just like Marisol, it was her fault.

“Okay. Okay,” Kellan said softly, but her anger welled up, driving her to fight his embrace.

“It’s not okay!” she snapped, unable to stop her emotions from clawing their way out. “Angel is
dead
, Kellan. DuPree killed her because she was coming to talk to me. Not the FBI or Sinclair or anyone on my team. I’m the one who promised to keep her safe. Sinclair was right to take me off this case!
I
did this. It’s my fault.”

“No.” Kellan pulled back, closing both palms over her shoulders. Turning her so they were face to face, he pinned her with a scalpel-sharp stare. “Think about the conversation you had with this mystery guy who called when you were in the diner. He said ‘now that I know you’re a cop’, right?”

Isabella blinked, the question stealing just enough of her fight for her to actually answer. “Yeah. So?”

“So, DuPree didn’t know you were a cop until after we left.”

“There’s no chance he’d have let us make it to the door if he’d known all along,” she agreed. “But it doesn’t matter. He still found out, and Angel is still dead because of me.”

“It does matter,” Kellan insisted. “DuPree’s got to have one hell of a security guy to find out you’re a cop as fast as he did, which means he’d have almost certainly known if the FBI had opened an investigation into his parties. If you’d gone to Sinclair from the beginning, DuPree would’ve seen you coming. You’d never have made it past the door of that penthouse, and you wouldn’t have the intel you need to build this case.”

Isabella’s brain spun. Could he be right? “We did get a lot of intel from that party that we’d never have gotten otherwise. But that doesn’t change the fact that Angel is dead.”

Kellan’s eyes darkened, stormy blue and fierce with emotion. “You’re right, and her death is a horrible thing. But Angel wasn’t stupid. She knew who you were. She knew the risks involved in talking to you, and she wanted her freedom badly enough to take them.”

“I…” Isabella’s heart squeezed, and she pressed her forehead to Kellan’s. His arms felt so good, holding her close beneath the bed sheets, that she whispered the truth without thinking twice. “I know, but I promised. She died on my watch. Not Sinclair’s or Peterson’s. Mine.”

“But
you
didn’t kill her, and I’m not going to let you say you did.” Kellan’s jaw tightened, his muscles pulling taut beneath the dark stubble covering them. “DuPree killed Angel, and now that Sinclair is opening an investigation, he’s going to go down for that.”

Despite the sadness still crowding her chest, Isabella nodded. Sinclair might not agree with her methods, but he’d believed her when she’d insisted DuPree was behind these murders. He wouldn’t stop until the case was closed.

A thought that had been lodged in her brain for the past twenty-four hours reared up, and she swallowed past the knot in her throat to ask, “You pulled her from the house, right? That’s what you told Sinclair yesterday, when we were going over the fire scene.”

Kellan exhaled, his callused fingers brushing her cheek in a shockingly soft touch. “Isabella, don’t. Don’t do this to yourself.”

“I need to know, Kellan. I just…please. I need to know.”

After a second, he nodded. “Yes. I found Angel in the bathroom, and I brought her down to our paramedic, Quinn. The two of us did every single thing in our power to try and save her.”

“I know you did,” Isabella whispered. “Thank you.”

“This isn’t your fault.”

Although she didn’t agree—how the hell could she?—she was also beginning to learn Kellan’s expressions. The V between his dark brows and the ice-blue intensity of his stare said with certainty that he wouldn’t let this go, so she eked out a nod.

“I guess I’m just fried,” she said, because
that
was true enough. God, the last few days felt like they’d lasted for a month.

Kellan pulled her close, turning to his back and fitting her tightly against his side. “You’ve had a hell of a long twenty-four hours. Why don’t you try to get some sleep, and we can talk about this more in a little while.”

Isabella knew she should dodge the topic, just like she knew she should get out of Kellan’s bed and regain the space that would keep her safe. Letting him get too close was dangerous. She needed distance.

But instead, she fell asleep in his arms.

J
ulian waited
until the last possible second before taking off his bathrobe to enter the shower. Although his en suite was as private as the rest of his quarters—perhaps even more so, considering the extra set of biometrically locked doors keeping it separate from his bedroom—he still couldn’t be too careful.

No one had ever seen his scars. At least, no one who still breathed, and he was already light on dependable staff.

Speaking of which…

Julian stepped beneath the spray, welcoming the pain of the scalding water on his hyper-sensitive skin for a moment before turning his thoughts toward business. Although the house fire had gone exactly as planned, there were still a few necessary moves to be made in order to have Detective Moreno exactly where he wanted her.

Detective Moreno
.

Julian’s breath quickened, his member stirring between his scarred thighs. Shame filled him at his impure reaction to such a filthy, brazen woman, and he turned the water even hotter until it blistered his skin.

Dirty boy!
The voice screamed up from his past.
You’re a dirty, disgusting boy, and you must be punished for your sins!

No. Detective Moreno needed to be punished. She made him feel this way, with her whore smiles and her hidden agenda. She thought she could outsmart him, but she was wrong. He knew all about her past. The cousin who’d died after three long days of being locked in a basement and repeatedly raped. The ridiculous dedication she’d thrown into becoming a police detective, almost certainly to avenge the crime. The way she’d shamelessly thrown herself at that firefighter, rutting against him for the sole purpose of getting what she wanted. Of trying to get to
him
and shut him down.

Isabella Moreno was dirty and disgusting and the worst sort of whore. And he was going to break her.

Scrubbing his body until the pain made him numb, Julian finished his shower. He dressed quickly, rebuilding his composure with each movement. He couldn’t allow savage anger to lead him toward mistakes.

He would kill Isabella Moreno. But first, he would make her pay.

Julian made his way to the surveillance room, where Vaughn and Charles and Franco had gathered at his demand. “Gentlemen,” he said, though the address was far enough from the mark to leave a foul taste in his mouth. “An update, if you please.”

All three men exchanged uncomfortable glances from across the bank of computer monitors, and finally, Vaughn spoke. “The news isn’t great, boss. The fire department is ruling the, uh, incident on Oakmont as ‘undetermined’, which wouldn’t be so bad, except the RPD just reached out to their friendly neighborhood field office to request an official investigation into the deaths. All they need is one connection between you and Angel or Marcus, and they’ll be on us like a bad rash.”

Julian arched a brow at Vaughn. From the other two, he’d expect this lack of insight. Perhaps his hacker was slipping. “Fine,” he said, waving a dismissive hand. “Then things are proceeding exactly as expected.”

“You want the Feds crawling up your ass?” Franco asked, shock covering his scarred face. Christ, the man was as big an idiot as he was a brute.

“Of course not,” Julian replied, speaking as he might to a child. “But their investigation will serve as a means to an end. The FBI, like the fire department, won’t find anything they can use to indict me, for the deaths or for my gatherings. While they struggle in vain to try, however, I’ll gain access to something I want very much.”

“I don’t get it,” Charles said, blinking his beady eyes. “What do the cops have that you want?”

Vaughn straightened, staring at Julian from beneath the hood of that infernal sweatshirt. “The woman. You want the woman.”

At last, a light among the dimwits. “Bravo, Mr. Vaughn. I want the lovely Detective Moreno to pay for her audacity, and what better way than to have her come to me.”

“You think she’ll come to you as part of the investigation?” Charles asked, and truly, Julian had to question how the man functioned with such slow uptake.

“I think she came to me when there
was
no investigation. She’s too impulsive for her own well-being. Certainly we can motivate her to act without too much effort. And when she does, I’ll be ready.” He turned toward Vaughn and lifted his eyebrows expectantly. “So tell me, do we have eyes on the detective’s apartment?”