He did. He drove as he had never driven before, with a desperate concentration that still wasn’t enough to block out what she was doing to him. A rough laugh escaped his throat. “You little witch, you’re enjoying this.”
She gave him a slow, satisfied smile. “Of course I am. You usually drive me crazy. How does it feel to be on the receiving end?”
“Like I’m going to die,” he gasped.
She looked around and pinpointed their location. “We’ll be home in another five minutes. You can hold out that long, can’t you?” She continued caressing him, using every bit of knowledge she had about his body to enflame him further. She licked him very delicately.
He gasped again, his body going rigid. “Maybe.”
By the time they got home he was wild, his hips surging upward with every lingering stroke of her hand. He literally dragged her out of the car and into the house, where they stumbled into the bedroom, tearing and pulling at each other’s clothes. They were still half-clothed when they fell onto the bed. Dane managed to delay until he got a condom on, then he flipped her onto her stomach, kneed her legs apart, and drove into her with battering force.
Marlie dug her fingers into the bedcovers, her body shuddering under the force of his thrusts. She was as excited as if she had been the one so deliciously tormented. She lifted her buttocks, wriggling against him to take him deeper, though that didn’t seem possible. He groaned with every thrust, wild, guttural sounds that hung in the darkness of the night. And then his entire body tensed and he shoved violently into her and held himself there, shuddering, hoarsely crying out his satisfaction as his climax shook him to the core.
Afterward he eased down to lie half beside her and half on her, his movements blind and uncoordinated, his big body trembling. His chest heaved as he struggled to get enough oxygen, and she could feel the force of his heartbeats thudding through his body. “Oh, God,” he wheezed. “That damn near killed me.”
“Really?” she murmured. “I thought you enjoyed it. But if you didn’t like it, I won’t do it again—”
He thrust his hand into her hair and turned her head so he could stop the words with a hard, forceful kiss. “I’ll try to bear up under the strain.”
“My hero,” she said, nipping at his lower lip, then returning for a deeper kiss.
A bass purr rumbled in his chest. He turned her in his arms and lifted himself to loom over her. “Now, lady, let’s see about you.”
He took care of that very well, leaving her exhausted, limp, and satiated. Afterward they lay together in the darkness, listening to the rain. She absently played with the curly hair on his chest. After a while she yawned and said, “Did you close the car door?”
He went still, thinking very hard. Then he said, “Oh, hell,” and heaved himself out of bed. She lay there giggling while he pulled on his pants and stumbled through the dark house. She heard the front door open, then close again a couple of seconds later. In another minute he came back into the bedroom. “Yes, I did, smart-ass,” he rumbled.
“Well, I didn’t remember.”
He chuckled. “I didn’t either.” He shucked his pants and crawled back into bed. He yawned as he gathered her close to him again, tucking her protectively into his embrace. “When this is over,” he murmured into her hair, “we’re both going to need a vacation. Which do you like, the mountains or the beach?”
Her heart gave a little skip of happiness. It was the first time he had said anything about a mutual future, even if it was something as casual as planning a vacation. “This is Florida,” she replied. “We can go to the beach anytime.”
“Mountains it is, then. We’ll rent a cabin with a hot tub, get naked, unwind, and shock the squirrels.”
“It’s a deal.”
The phone rang, and Dane stretched out his arm to get it. “Hollister,” he said lazily. Lying against him as she was, Marlie felt him tense. He sat up and swung his feet to the floor. “Okay, okay, I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes. Try to keep the media from driving everyone into hysterics.”
He hung up the phone and turned on the lamp. “There’s been another slashing murder,” he said, hastily pulling on his clothes.
Marlie sat up, fear consuming her as she remembered earlier in the day when she had felt the killer searching for another victim. She and Dane had gone for that drive out of town; had they been so far away that she wouldn’t have been able to pick up the killer’s energy? Had he acted, after all, and somehow she hadn’t felt him?
19
WHAT’S THE VICTIM’S NAME?” DANE ASKED, LOOKING AT THE body as the police photographer snapped pictures from different angles.
It was a typical murder scene, if there was such a thing. The place was working like a beehive, and most of the people weren’t doing a damn thing except standing around. The house was crawling with policemen, and the neighborhood was crawling with reporters, who ignored the light rain in favor of getting comments from anyone who would talk to them. Bonness was there, Trammell was there, Freddie and Worley were there—hell, it looked as if every detective on the squad was there—and the chief was reportedly on the way. The fingerprint guys were dusting their black powder over everything, the forensic evidence people were vacuuming—it was a zoo.
“Felicia Alden,” Freddie said. “Her husband, Gene, found her. He’s a sales rep for a pharmaceutical firm and had been away on business.”
“And he just happened to come home right after his wife was murdered,” Dane said wearily. They all looked at one another. They had seen the other scenes, and this was nothing like them, except for the fact that a woman had died from knife wounds. For one thing, the victim was still clothed, and she was lying on the bed as if she had been arranged there. There was no indication of sexual attack.