Intimate Knowledge Book 1 Part 2 (6 page)

Raisa blanches for a moment before quickly covering, what I’d swear, is real distress as she struggles not to tremble.  Yet when she looks at him, her face draws a blank, and I am quite convinced she doesn’t know him. 

As is he, once he gets a closer look.  He leans in and shakes his head.  “Sorry, my mistake, the resemblance is uncanny, but now up close I can tell you’re not her.  Can’t mistake those turquoise eyes of hers.  Pity.  It was a shame the way her and her kid just up and disappeared.”  His voice drops on the last few sentences, he seems to be saying them to himself rather than to us.

Raisa blanches again on his last sentence and the tremble turns into shaking.  She turns and downs the limoncello in one go, keeping her back to me, determinedly. Moving towards her, intent on providing comfort, I feel an insurmountable barrier and am flushed with sudden, violent anger.  Torn between anger at her withdrawal and Tony’s hand in it, I turn to him as the easier of the two to deal with.  Careful to direct my speech so Raisa can’t hear, I reprimand him through clenched teeth in the dark, forbidding tone I reserve for insubordination.  “Since when did you think you can just butt in without permission.”

Tony blanches now.  I seldom resort to this and the consequences are known and feared throughout the family when I do.  “Sorry, boss,”  he offers, his voice thick with apology and considerable fear.  “Didn’t mean any harm.  I’ll just go. Leave you to it.”

He backs away, but I grab his shirt and pull him close towards me up on his toes, so I am looming over him, speaking in the same low, intimidating tone, even more careful to block our bodies and words from Raisa.  “Who is this Marguerite?  I want all you know about her, understand!  Send it to me before the end of the day.”  I drop him and he nods and backs off as quickly as he can.

I run my hand through my hair, disheveling it, taking deep breaths, struggling to calm my anger.  Turning to Raisa, I see I have no reason to worry about her noticing or overhearing my interaction with Tony.  She is immersed in her own world.  The way she holds herself and the emotions on her pale face tell me it is not a pleasant place to be and I wonder what demons she is grappling with.

“Raisa.  Talk to me.”  She doesn’t react and I begin to fear she is in shock.  I sit back in my seat beside her and make to draw her onto my lap.  She reacts to this, standing and pushing away from me.

“Sorry.  It was just weird being mistaken for somebody else by a guy like that.  I’m fine now.”

“You don’t look fine.  Come here, cara.  Let me hold you.”  My tone is tender, but I inject a touch of command into it attempting to compel her to open to me.  It has little effect.  Clearly, I don’t hold the same sway over her as I do the likes of Tony Gold.  Not that I want to intimidate her, but I wish she would trust me.  Allow me to comfort her, unburden herself onto me, even just a little.

Shaking her head, she starts to get up.  “No, really.  It’s all good.  No worries.  This was great, but I need to go.  I have to stop into work for a bit before I meet my friend, Terri.”

She still appears deeply distressed, but is sublimating it well.  Part of me is proud of her command, but mostly I want her to be more transparent.  I wish now I had taken her fully back in the gallery.  Surely, that bond would make her open to me, now.  Too late to wish for that missed opportunity, she is well beyond my reach in her current state. 

“I really have to go.  But I am back tomorrow for more
slow death by pledgedom
.”  She laughs offering our secret joke as a sop to my concerns. “I’ll see you then.”  I am not convinced, but have no choice other than to let her slip away from me.  Watching her merge and disappear into the cosmopolitan crowds, I feel frustratingly impotent.

Flipping back my phone, I speed dial Nick Rafferty.  “Hey Nick.  I need you to dig deeper on Raisa.”

“Ok.”  His tone is wary.  “How deep?  What gives?”

“As deep as you can.  There is no way she adds up.  I want the works, everything you can find and then some.”  I am just about to tell him to see what he can find out about her and a Marguerite, but something stops me.  I decide to wait for what Tony sends me.

************

I weave my way through the crowds in a daze.  What the fuck just happened!  I have never seen that thug before.  They way he kept looking at me, I was starting to get worried that even if I didn’t know him, he knew me from one of my undercover gigs.  When he said Marguerite’s name it was all I could do to keep it together.  How long has it been since anyone said her name to me?  It doesn’t matter, everything still crashes into me with the sorrow and anguish as fresh and raw as the moment it first happened?  How come it doesn’t heal?  How come solid skin doesn’t grow over the wound? Why is it still only an ugly scab that bleeds incessantly and agonizingly when ripped off?

I duck into the next alley and lay back against the wall.  Attempting to calm myself using police protocols, I start my breathing techniques.  I feel I am taking command, calming my fears.  That is why I am so stunned to find I have slipped down the wall and am now sitting in the cobbled street, wracking sobs shaking my body.

Intimate Knowledge – End of Part 2

A note from Helen

Hi,

I hope you enjoyed this book.  I love feedback from my readers and would appreciate it if you could take the time to rate it and write an honest review on Amazon.  Just a few words really count!

Helen Karol x

Can’t Wait for the Next Installment?

If you would like an advanced complimentary copy of the next installment to read for review, email me at
[email protected]
and I will send you one.  (Available to the first twenty readers to email me)

Scroll down to see some more of my current titles and excerpts from my two planned 2014 releases
Haunted Spaces
and
A Calculated Choice
.

Detectives & Desires Series
.
  By Helen Karol

Detectives & Desires
is my new erotic romance series.  Each story centers on a detective, their cases and most importantly the passionate desires that bring them, eventually, to their HEA.  The three detectives are Detective Raisa Gordon, a Boston 15
Precinct vice-cop, Detective Rick Andrews, a small town cop for the Lake Andrew’s Sheriff’s department, and Detective Luke Kincaid, Boston 15
Precinct homicide detective.  The action takes place in Raisa’s and Luke’s Boston.  Rick and Sara’s Lake Andrews.  As well as in Leo’s native Italy.  Although separate novels, the characters visit in each other’s stories and the plots entwine now and then.  Each story is a trilogy told from the alternating POV’s of the two main characters.  I will release the books in installments as I am writing them only a few installments ahead.  I try not to make them too horribly cliffhanging, but it is inevitable to have teasers, as that is a big part of the fun of a series.  I hope you will join me in the world of
Detectives & Desires
.

Intimate Knowledge
 
Detective & Desires Series#1

  A
Fifty Shades
and
Because You Are Mine fan
, but are ready to move on from reading about 20 something virgins and young tortured CEO’s?   You will fall in love with this new series of a seasoned vice-cop and her obsessive younger lover.

How long can Detective Raisa Gordon resist, Leo Gold, her undercover target?  It is one thing to imagine and explore all kinds of hot scenarios in the safe haven of your own head; it is quite another to be in the position of actually having to pay the piper.  That is exactly the position Raisa finds herself in when her fantasies start materializing into reality everywhere she turns. 

One of Gold’s operatives stumbled upon an encrypted file of letters she wrote years ago exploring her deepest darkest taboos.  Now, Leo possesses intimate knowledge and is setting out to to satisfy her needs by enacting those taboos one by one.  Will the FBI’s plan to use his passion for her to bust the entire Gold operation wide open succeed?  Or will Raisa surrender to her treacherous desires?

This the first part in a series that will unfold over multiple volumes ranging from 10,000 to 20,000 words each.  Intimate Knowledge is an erotic romance with explicit sexual content with elements of BDSM.  It has a delectable slow build to consummation

Her Keeper
  Detective & Desires Series#2

  
The feud between Detective Rick Andrews and Sara Michaels is legendary and no one ever wants to stand in the line of fire when they go at it.

Rick can’t deny the chemistry between him and Sara.  Hell, just the thought of her makes him hard.  Her intelligence and her spirit intrigue him and, for some unfathomable reason, the need to protect her consumes much of his waking hours and a few of his dreams as well.  But she’s too high maintenance.  Especially as she holds a long time grudge and knows just how to push his buttons.  No way does he want an argument with his woman every time he turns around, no matter how beautiful her face and adorable her ass.

Sara Michaels has never forgiven Rick Andrews for humiliating her during her freshman week in college.  Now eight years later, their ongoing feud is reaching combustion level, in no small part because of the throbbing his angry, alpha male hotness creates between her thighs.  If only he wouldn’t frame his advice in ‘do as I say’ commands, she might be inclined to listen now and then.  His dominant attitude just makes her go for the knee-jerk response every time  Only, now Sara has crossed the line and Rick is determined to use the power her transgression grants him to lay down the law in a way she can't escape.

This the first part in a series that will unfold over multiple volumes ranging from 10,000 to 20,000 words each.  Her Keeper is an erotic romance with explicit sexual content with strong elements of BDSM.  It has a hot cop (two actually), sexy frisking, spanking, cuffing, a crazy, hot proposition yet to come and two people who are stubbornly in love.

Haunted Spaces
  Detective & Desires Series#3

Excerpt

  She is hauntingly lovely.

Luke Kincaid doesn’t often depart from the down to earth and straight and narrow – but she plucks at him and draws him from the mundane.   Not that murder could ever be mundane, but the paperwork is another matter.   She seems familiar, but he knows he’s never seen her before.  Despite her beauty, nobody pays her any attention and she makes no claims on anyone in the bustling detective room.  Here, tragedy is commonplace and victims invisible, so it is no big deal that no one appears to notice her.