Nobody's Angel (The Earth Angels) (6 page)

Chapter Six

Kendall’s gear-stripped brain couldn’t come up with an adequate answer, but she soon discovered no verbal response was necessary. Body language was what was important now, and Zeke seemed to be fluent in this particular form of mind-melting communication. There was no hint of hesitancy in his kiss, no tentative getting-to-know-you pressure. From the moment their lips touched, it was a bold devouring that conquered her mind, body and soul.

This wasn’t a kiss. This was a claiming.

From the moment he’d entered her life, she had wondered on some basic, purely feminine level what his mouth felt like. Tasted like. His full lower lip fascinated her, and the corners that curved with wicked sensuality made her suspect it was capable of all sorts of voluptuous sin. But to have it pressed against hers as if he had wondered the same thing was enough to dissolve her every lucid thought. He kissed her as if it were the one thing he had been put on earth to do, and he was going to do it until he’d mastered the craft.

His mouth was molten steel covered in crushed silk—hot and firm, yet pliant enough to mold to hers with breathtaking hunger. A riot of dizzy delight exploded in her chest, shooting fireworks of desire, heat and crazed joy through her senses. His hand at her shoulder moved up to slide through her hair as the temperature between them soared, and with a gentle clenching of his fingers, he tilted her head back so that he could perfect the fit of his mouth against hers.

A rumble of pleasure sounded from him as he took the kiss deeper, coaxing her lips open and tasting her tongue with his. Shivers of giddy excitement raced through her at how easily their mouths mated, twining and teasing and begging for more. But beneath the building flame of desire was a piercing tenderness, as though with every touch he cherished her. There was no way to fight its sweet allure, and she didn’t want to. Instead she dived into that sweetness, her heart squeezing with an exquisite anguish she couldn’t name.

His hand drifted from her hair to her nape where he kneaded the taut muscles he found there. Those muscles melted beneath his expert touch, singing with luxurious delight at the unexpected massage. Her bones liquefied as he urged her closer, and only later would she worry about how they were in a public place, rolling over each other like they were the only two people on the planet. For now, the rest of the world was an inconsequential triviality, and with unbridled eagerness she leaned into his embrace because it was the most natural thing in the world to do.

The tips of her breasts brushed against the wall of his chest, and beneath the thin veil of her blouse and bra the sensitive peaks sprang to aching life. A sigh of delight escaped her as she brushed against him again to chase after that tantalizing friction, supporting her weight by resting her hand on the rock-solid column of his thigh.

Another sound rumbled from him, a purr of pleasure more addictive to her than any narcotic. Her fingers contracted on the delicious muscle-padded platform on which she supported herself, even as he found the hem of her blouse. His hand dived underneath the veiling material to flatten against her back as if wanting to absorb the feel of her into the pores of his skin. Minute tremors of sensation along her nerve endings emanated from wherever he touched, and the shudder in her breath made his lips curve in triumph. She didn’t care. Though logic told her he was little more than a stranger, she
knew
him. He was the safe harbor in a suddenly tempestuous sea full of monsters that shouldn’t exist, but did.

And with that thought came another—the image of a mysterious masked man who made her toes curl just as much as the man in her arms now.

Kendall retreated before she was consciously aware of doing so. But there was no help for it. Zeke was all sorts of perfect when it came to her personal taste in men, except for one problem. It wasn’t kosher to react in such a headlong rush when part of her was thinking of someone else. She wouldn’t want a man to have another woman in his head when he was kissing her, so it was hardly fair to do that to Zeke now.

Damn it, he deserved better.

“Kendall.” Her name sounded seductively melodic coming from lips that still held the imprint of hers. “Lady, that’s no way to end a kiss.”

She pressed a hand to a heart that pounded with unfulfilled desire and a shame she couldn’t ignore. “There’s a right way and a wrong way to end a kiss?”

“Absolutely.” His mouth came to hover near hers, threatening. Promising. “There’s the sweet, lingering way that leaves a vow of better things to come. That’s the right way.”

“What did I do?”

“You tore away as if you tasted something bad.”

That surprised a laugh out of her. “Trust me, you taste...”

He guided her gaze back to his when it faltered along with her words. “Yes?”

“Delicious.” Kendall could feel the heat crawling up her neck to flood her face, so she decided quick diversionary tactics were in order. “I just believe in taking things one step at a time.”

“You’ve never struck me as the overly cautious type.”

“I am when it comes to the important things in life.”

“And that’s what I am? Kendall.” A brilliant smile blazed across his face, and it made everything inside her melt into a puddle of goo. “Damned if you didn’t just say the very words to keep me at your mercy.”

* * *

“The Dean will see you now, Ms. Glynn.”

Kendall nodded her thanks as she was shown into the office of Bayside Community College’s dean, Eustace Pringle III, secretly amazed anyone thought that was a name worthy of being used three times over. Considering the stress the man had to be under since random violence had visited his campus, however, she was just happy he had agreed to meet with her.

Unfortunately, his opening statement was enough to douse her glowing sense of gratitude before she could begin to express it.

“I refuse to answer any questions directly connected to Professor Carmichael or Denise Draper, the student involved in this unfortunate incident.” Dean Pringle, a pale little man with horn-rimmed glasses and a bad comb-over, matched his whitewashed prefab office to a T. His nonexistent lips had a way of twitching at the corners, as if he’d put his mouth on wrong that morning and was now trying to make it fit. As they settled into seats with the desk between them, Kendall wondered how she was going to manage to look at it without going batty. “Though the parents of Ms. Draper haven’t filed a wrongful death lawsuit, that phrase has been bandied about often enough for our legal department to put forth an order of silence when it comes to that particular subject.”

Kendall’s heart executed a leaden swan dive into her stomach. “Then why did you agree to meet with me, Dean Pringle?”

“I’d think that would be obvious.” Mouth twitching away, Dean Pringle picked up a brass letter opener that looked like a miniature rapier and began to fiddle with it. “It’s imperative the public knows BCC is a safe campus. Our community must be assured that we meet or surpass the security standards California state law requires.”

Kendall’s gaze fell to the Barbie-sized rapier twirling in his pale fingers, and tried not to think of the equally innocuous pen Dave Beamer had used to puncture his jugular. “Yet despite that, two deaths happened right here on campus.”

“A terrible incident occurred here, yes, but it could have happened anywhere, at any time. Despite being a small community college, I can assure you we are as safe as any big campus in this country.”

Frustrated by the restrictions he’d collared her with and more distracted by the letter opener than she wanted to admit, Kendall searched Dean Pringle’s muddy-brown eyes for any hint of whitening. “Do you include regular drug screening and psych evaluations for your staff, as per state guidelines?”

“We wouldn’t have it any other way here at BCC,” came the rah-rah reply. The only things missing were the pompoms and the cute outfit. “Professor Carmichael’s files have already been turned over to the police, but I can assure you nothing untoward will be uncovered there. He was as clean as a whistle, with nothing but commendations in his record.”

“He sounds like a good man. But even good men can have bad days and take it out on the people around them.”

“Every witness present that day insists Professor Carmichael was in a good mood, laughing and joking around as usual.” Dean Pringle’s mouth twitched like he was having a seizure even as he blew by the restraints he’d put on the interview. “I had invited one of those witnesses in for this discussion to tell you as much, but unfortunately she had a schedule conflict. Whatever happened that day, the problem didn’t lie in something our security could have done. I believe the explanation will prove to be much more complex than that.”

He didn’t know the half of it. Kendall sighed as the interview came to a less-than-satisfying end. She pushed through the glass door leading out into the late afternoon sunshine, the scent of freshly mown grass emanating from the tree-shaded quad that separated the faculty building from the main parking lot. She suspected she had an explanation for Professor Carmichael’s fatal burst of violence—albeit a fantastic one Dean Pringle would never be able to swallow—but when it came to information-gathering for her own purposes, she had come away with zilch. This had been nothing more than a wild goose chase, a distraction hardly strong enough to pull her thoughts from her ever-growing obsession with Zeke Reece.

Her brows drew together as she dug in her purse for her sunglasses. Heaven knew she wasn’t a prude, but blurting out that she’d found him delicious wasn’t one of her smoother moves. It was just so out of character for her; she’d always been cautious in building her relationships, moving with great care from that getting-to-know-you awkwardness to more intimate waters.

But it was different with Zeke. It was as though she already knew him. Maybe when you allowed a man to wipe arterial blood-spray off your face, there was no way to escape the bonding.

Now, if she could only figure out which man attracted her more—the sexy-as-hell Zeke, or the man she knew only as The Guardian Angel.

“Excuse me. Are you the reporter from KPOW?”

Kendall swung around, her attention swerving from her convoluted man trouble to the cheerleader-type approaching her. The young brunette had her hair tied back in a casual ponytail, a jaunty quilted satchel slanted across her body, and an incongruous expression of stress etched into her face.

Hastily she checked the girl’s eyes for the cataract-whiteness of the geist, then put a shaky hand to her heart when she saw clear eyes staring back at her. If something wasn’t done about this geist soon, she was going to have a nervous breakdown. “Yes, I’m Kendall Glynn. Who are you?”

“Krista Townley, Denise Draper’s best friend.”

Her internal radar pinged. “Denise Draper was the student murdered here on campus this past week, yes? I’m sorry for your loss.”

Krista shrugged, as if she didn’t know what to do with that. “Dean Pringle asked me to come and talk to you about the drama, but I knew he just wanted me to whitewash the whole deal, so I blew him off. What I really wanted to do was talk to you in private.”

“I would love to hear what you have to say.” Hiding her delight at this lucky turn of events, Kendall gestured to a nearby bench in the quad. “Let’s make ourselves comfortable, and you can tell me about Denise. What was she like?”

“She was the sweetest girl you’d ever want to meet.” They settled on the bench under a eucalyptus tree, with Krista darting wary glances at the faculty building’s front doors, as if she expected Eustace Pringle III to come out brandishing his teeny letter-opening rapier in protest. “I was there that morning when Professor Carmichael went psycho. The main thing I wanted you to know was that he was a good guy. We all trusted him, Denise most of all.”

“I see. What sort of relationship did they have?”

“Not that kind,” Krista said with an eye roll only those fresh out of high school can execute with any real clout. “He was cool, you know? Very easy to talk to, to the point where Denise trusted him enough to tell him about a problem she was having with another student in our art class.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“The creepy stalker kind.” Again Krista looked around, this time with a sharp eye cutting across the faces of every student who happened to be passing through the quad. “I tried telling Pringle about this after the carnage, but he didn’t want to hear it. Something about not wanting to put the school in a position of getting into another possible lawsuit by besmirching an innocent student’s name. I don’t know what besmirching is, but this dude is no innocent. I think he’s the real reason Denise is dead.”

Kendall frowned. “I’m not sure I understand. There were a dozen witnesses who said they saw Professor Carmichael choke her to death before planting a palette knife into his own neck.”

“It does make sense if you know the whole story,” Krista insisted. “Somewhere along the way, Denise picked up this weird guy—he was like her second shadow. No matter where she went, he was always there, just watching her. She tried to ignore it, but he worked it so that he got to sit next to her in class, and before she knew it some of her things began to disappear. We suspected it was him, so we laid a trap by leaving one of her scarves behind, then took video of him sniffing it like a perv before he stuffed it into the front of his pants. Classy, right?”

Kendall kept her expression neutral while her skin crawled. “Did you go to the police?”

“I wanted to, but Denise didn’t want the guy to get in trouble. She just wanted to be left alone. So we went to Professor Carmichael instead, and told him the whole story. The next day the professor told us he’d kicked the creeper out of class so Denise wouldn’t have to deal with him there. What’s more, he’d alerted campus security that they had a thief and potential stalker on their hands. Then the bell rang, and Professor Carmichael sort of cricked his neck around, like, scary-hard.”

That telltale gesture made her pulse skip a beat. “Go on.”

“Then he looked at Denise and said, ‘You think you’re the one who’s got the power? You don’t even know what power is, bitch.’ Then...” Krista lifted a shoulder. “All hell broke loose.”