A STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL WOMAN who was a self-proclaimed sexual powder keg wanted a no-strings relationship with him?
Warren had to check his horoscope to see if all kinds of planets were aligned because this kind of thing did not happen to him. His world was a brutal place, not some red-hot fairy tale with a curvy siren in a starring role.
He studied Tabitha in the crimson glow of the lamp. Was it just the light that suffused her cheeks with color as he leaned closer to align their bodies without touching?
Her eyelids fluttered once, twice, then closed as she tilted her chin to meet his mouth. The need to feel her skin, to hold her steady while he kissed her, rode him hard. He remembered the silky warmth of her when he’d stroked up her neck earlier, and he wanted to indulge the feel of her again. But a good man follows a woman’s rules, right? Even while he did his damnedest to ensure she wouldn’t want to follow them for long.
He just needed to make her touch him, and then all bets were off for the kind of restraint he needed to show today. Lips grazing hers, he sampled the vanilla-tinged flavor of her mouth more deeply, lingering in the places that made her squirm in her seat.
A blessedly easy task.
She sighed in the back of her throat, her hips tilting ever so slightly closer. He could tell because her body radiated heat as surely as she radiated sex appeal and every millimeter closer she got spiked the temperature in the room.
He really shouldn’t take this too far tonight since their conversation had been tinged with the attraction they’d both been feeling. Didn’t he owe her a sort of cooling-off period to make sure this was what she wanted? Not that he could necessarily walk away from her anyhow, but his sense of fair play suggested he should. But next time…he’d take her up on that dessert offer, by God. His blood was slamming through his arteries with excessive force. He couldn’t tell if he was burning from the inside out or the outside in anymore. His swim training didn’t do half the number on him that her kisses could.
Just when he figured he’d have to call uncle and admit defeat, Tabitha busted the “no touch” rule in spectacular fashion by wrapping her arms around him and drawing him down on top of her. Her breasts were suddenly pressed against his chest, the soft swells straining the buttons on her sweater as much as they strained his crumbling reserve. They’d been sitting on the couch, but now they listed to one side in an effort to connect as many square inches of their bodies as possible.
It had been too long for him. He’d hardly dated since a divorce that was a hell of a lot older than hers. Three years. A few women. None of them like Tabitha.
She guided his hand to her cashmere-covered breast and that cooling-off period started to sound like a load of crap. She wanted him as badly as he wanted her, and that blew his mind. Her full breasts pressed against her clothes and toward his touch. Everything about her was soft and warm and he needed to lose himself inside her, surround himself with that kind of warmth. He popped two buttons free on her sweater before diving beneath the fabric for a handful of fragrant feminine flesh.
And she was fragrant. He’d been curious about the scent of her since he’d caught the hint of clean soapiness about her skin on the set. But the hollow between her breasts held another kind of perfume, sweetly exotic and all the more intoxicating because the knowledge seemed secret somehow. He breathed deep, losing his mind to anything but sexual thoughts.
Sprawling on top of her on the couch, he left one leg dragging on the floor, his hips in tight proximity to hers as his hands molded to the shape of her breasts through the feather-thin fabric of her bra. Her fingers raked through his hair and trailed down his back, scoring his shoulders right through the fabric of his shirt. He used his knee to find leverage between her legs, spreading her open to the touches he’d been holding back.
He abandoned her breast to reach under her skirt, stroking up one silken leg. If she had a sensitive trigger, how fair was it to make her wait? The justification made perfect sense and gave him permission to do everything he wanted to do with this woman.
Her taut calf gave way to her knee and the delicate place behind it that made her convulse just a little when he circled the soft skin. Leaving that tender spot for her thigh, he spread his hand wide to cover as much of her skin as possible, savoring the way her flesh felt hotter the nearer he came to the juncture of her legs.
His cell phone blared into his consciousness, shattering the hottest foreplay of his life with some obnoxious mechanical-sounding ring tone one of the guys at the precinct must have programmed for him.
“Damn it.” He said worse things in his mind, but he didn’t want to scare off Tabitha, who looked fairly dazed.
If he could dispatch this call in thirty seconds or less, maybe they could pick right up where they left off.
He reached into his jacket pocket on the second ring and hit the button to answer the call that he could see emanated from the precinct.
Not a good sign for handling this in a hurry.
“Vitalis here.”
He tried to blink through the raw lust for Tabitha enough to concentrate on the phone call from another detective—a woman new to the detective squad who’d made her first big arrest last month. Donata Casale had raised a lot of eyebrows in the department when she came on board since she’d been a gangster’s girlfriend at one time, but she’d clawed her way through police ranks with hardcore determination to change her life.
Warren respected the hell out of her, even if he didn’t appreciate this particular interruption.
“Got a bullet embedded in brick. The guys say they can take it out with little peripheral damage, but I wanted to check with you first to see what you thought. I’ve got a homicide in the VIP room of a club downtown and the embedded bullet is at an odd angle. The victim is apparently a well-known porn star, John de Milo.”
Warren knew Donata’s partner—a seasoned vet—was out of town this week. Detectives with more experience might be apt to just remove the bullet and let Warren work through the ballistics issues in the office, but he could see the benefit to observing the bullet in play if the angle was a concern. A good extraction could be key in a case that had a lot riding on identifying a weapon. Any schmo could figure out what caliber a bullet was, but Warren’s specialty was for matching particular bullets or shell casings with those at other scenes, or even tying them to evidence in cold cases. Knowing that the same firearm had discharged bullets in separate incidents had been critical evidence in plenty of investigations during his tenure with the NYPD.
Besides, Warren had personal reasons for making ballistics his life and they applied whether or not he was on the verge of the best sex of his life.
Not that he didn’t regret it.
“Would you rather I just have the guys remove the bullet?” Donata asked, tipping him off that he’d been thinking too long.
And wishing he didn’t have to walk out of Tabitha’s apartment tonight.
“No. I can be downtown in fifteen minutes. What’s the address?” He wrote the street number on a corner of newspaper on the coffee table and disconnected the call, only to realize Tabitha was already inching her way out from underneath him.
He regretted the need to leave her when she looked so deliciously disheveled with her bra strap falling off one shoulder and her sweater half undone. His heart still slammed hard, his body not quite getting the message that he wouldn’t be able to have dessert tonight.
“Sorry.” He straightened, pulling her up to a sitting position on the couch beside him. “I wouldn’t leave if it wasn’t urgent. There’s a homicide scene I need to check out. I don’t know if I told you before, but I spend most of my time at the precinct as a ballistics analyst.”
Her fingers moved over the buttons on her sweater, closing the gaping fabric. She nodded quickly and he half wondered if she was more relieved than disappointed since things had escalated fast tonight.
“You’re going to a murder scene. Now?” She rubbed her hands along her arms and he suspected his job creeped her out.
To his way of thinking there were two kinds of women—cop groupies and the ones who freaked out over the job. There were few and far between who could actually handle the way of life. Why did it bother him that she couldn’t be one of the few? Hell, he hardly knew the woman beyond a few conversations.
And a peel-the-paint-off-the-walls kiss.
“There’s ballistics evidence lodged in brick. The lead detective was hoping I could oversee the extraction to minimize any damage.” The news would be in the papers by morning so he wasn’t giving away state secrets.
“So the victim was shot.” Her eyes flitted over to her newly replaced living room window and Warren realized why the murder scene visit had her spooked.
Guilt pinched him for wishing she was the kind of woman who wouldn’t freak out over his work. Of course she would be uneasy when she’d had a bullet through her window. No doubt his life had hardened him to normal fears.
“This sounds like something more personal than what happened here. The victim was a porn star who met his end in a nightclub.”
Instead of easing her mind, his words made her spine straighten.
“A porn star?”
He didn’t know why it mattered, then remembered her ex-husband was a producer who’d gotten his start in low budget film that gave a few porn stars a legitimate vehicle. Would Tabitha have come in contact with anyone in adult film?
It seemed worth spilling a little more detail to find out if Tabitha knew anything that could be useful to Donata’s case.
“Yeah. John de Milo.” Warren didn’t admit that he knew who the guy was. Warren hadn’t personally checked out much in the way of X-rated films, but the names of the industry’s stars seemed to come up in men’s magazines.
Besides, he’d been reading an unsolved case file on an adult “reality” filmmaker allegedly based in Manhattan and de Milo’s name had been mentioned in the report as an easygoing guy with wide-ranging industry connections.
“John?”
Her familiarity of the dead guy’s given name disconcerted him.
“You know him?” He needed to leave, to get down to the crime scene. But this could be important to the investigation.
And it was damn well important to him.
“Yes. We moved in the same circles at different points in our careers. He always wanted to be a legitimate actor so we ended up at some of the same casting calls back when I was going that route.” She stood, her long skirt sweeping around her legs with the sudden movement. “And I saw him just a few days ago on the set of a late-night, soft-core movie in the preproduction stages.”
She bent to scratch Buster’s head, waking the dog from a snooze. Immediately alert, the animal lifted himself to a sitting position, his tail swishing back and forth across the hardwood floor.
“What were you doing there? This was a film he was making?” He didn’t know if he asked as a cop or as the man who’d just kissed her and wanted more.
Maybe a little of both.
“I assumed John was on site for the same reason I was. To scope out the body double work. Then again, he might have just been friends with one of the actors. He was there with about ten other people, making a lot of noise while the production crew was framing the shots.”
Warren didn’t know what blew his mind more. That she knew a porn star or that she’d been considering taking soft-core work herself.
“You do work like this…often?” He wasn’t about to make judgments. He’d grown up in a house full of people who’d made some seriously messed-up choices, so he wasn’t the kind of guy to cast stones.
But he was curious.
“Never. I was called to the set under false pretenses because my contact sheet makes it very clear that I don’t do that kind of work. Someone’s idea of a joke maybe, but I was very uncomfortable. I wouldn’t have stayed at all except that I didn’t want to offend the director, who shoots a lot of high-paying commercial work.”
That made more sense with what he knew about Tabitha. He remembered the way she’d clutched her robe around her neck when he’d arrived on her shoot earlier. She was obviously confident about her body and took pride in her work, but there was a sweetness about her he couldn’t reconcile with openly sexual films. He didn’t know where things were headed between them, but he was surprised to realize he wanted to know a hell of a lot more about her.
“We need to talk.” Standing, he stalked across her small living room floor to stand eye-to-eye with her. “You want to keep Buster for me while I run downtown and I’ll come by for him later?”
“That would be nice.” She smiled and her eyes lit from within. If he stood there much longer, he’d catch fire, too.
And just like that, he wanted her all over again.
“Keep the dog. I’ll be back in an hour. Two at the most.” He couldn’t keep his hands off her, his fingers grazing her hips with a possessiveness no man should feel toward a woman he’d only just met. But that kiss had him revved and ready for so much more.
He kissed her hard, savoring the taste of her until he had to tear himself away.
Her hair clung to his shoulder as he pulled back and he remembered he had taken it down while they’d been making out earlier. The mass of unruly red waves tumbled around her shoulders, taking her from delicately pretty to outrageously sexy.
“Okay.” She nodded, smiled.
He kissed her again and forced himself to walk out. He hadn’t been this gone on a woman since he’d been hell-bent determined to convince Melinda Cartwright to marry him. A colossal mistake despite his success in that particular quest.
The memory told him to proceed with caution, reminding him it probably wasn’t wise of him to go back to Tabitha’s place in the middle of the night. Especially now that she knew a murder victim.
As a good cop, he should question her further about that and maintain a certain professional distance. When the gunshot at her apartment looked like a stray bullet in a drive-by or the by-product of some street-related crime, Warren had figured there would be no ethical conflict about seeing her on a personal level.
John de Milo’s murder might make that more complicated. But unwise or not, Warren was already counting the ways he could undress Tabitha Everhart.
* * *
SEX WITH WARREN.
Should she plead temporary insanity and renege on the whole deal?
Tabitha quit pacing her living room to weigh the thought. A good thing since all her nervous ambling was making Buster agitated. She’d taken him out for a walk an hour ago, but the dog was still as restless as her in Warren’s absence. But maybe she could relax now that she’d come up with a way to back out of her bargain with Warren when he returned.
She could certainly prove the insanity defense. All she had to do was produce a few tabloid clippings from the year of her divorce and Warren would understand that she was unstable when it came to men. All the papers said so. Her jealous rages were legendary. No matter that there was only one public spat between her and Manny. Manny had a publicist, while she did not, so his spin on things got printed. No man in his right man would want to tangle with a woman like the press had made her out to be.
She could send the most intriguing man she’d ever met on his way without even having to bare a fraction of her real self. How neat and convenient for her.
Except that—in reality—she didn’t want to send Warren anywhere. Was it so wrong to hook up with a man for dessert only? Other women did it. She just had a hard time picturing how she could manage it since she’d never approached men or sex that way before. Sex had never been her strong suit anyhow, with her tendency to hit her peak too soon. Or at least, it had disconcerted her early boyfriends and pissed off Manny.
That was her first fear. But even if she and Warren got around that without too much embarrassment or frustration, then she had another worry. What if she got attached to him in spite of her best intentions? She ran the risk of getting her heart pummeled in this relationship, that wasn’t a relationship anyhow.
Sinking down into the kitchen chair on the side of the small table she’d deemed her office space, Tabitha hoped if she sat still for two straight minutes maybe the dog would, too. Opening up her e-mail folder, she scratched the dog’s head and waited for her messages to load while she wondered if she’d ever be brave enough to get involved with a man again.
Of course she would. Just not now, when her divorce was barely a year old. She hadn’t simply weathered your average marital split. Hers had been a media explosion complete with passion, jealousy and betrayal. Was it any surprise she felt unsure of herself?
Her next relationship had to add up on paper and not just in her dreamy head. Manny had swept her off her feet with roses and dinners out, his extravagant lifestyle feeding her every stupid Cinderella fantasy. And surprise, surprise, she woke up three years down the road to discover his rampant adultery that no amount of marriage counseling could fix.
She’d breathed a huge sigh of relief when her doctor assured her she hadn’t picked up any diseases from his infidelities. No way would she tread down the hasty fairy-tale path again with Warren just because he possessed enough sexual chemistry to turn her into a grinning idiot. On the other hand, she couldn’t turn celibate just because she’d had a bad experience. Maybe as long as she stuck to the “no relationship” dictate she’d be okay.
Eyes scanning the short list of new messages that had landed in her inbox, Tabitha hoped to see good news from her agent and found only a handful of casting calls for the next day. No callbacks.
How would she pay this month’s rent with no new jobs? She knew she could get enough temp jobs if push came to shove, but her pride resisted that avenue with all her education. She’d attended NYU’s film school. She had classmates in Hollywood and working on Broadway. How could she suck so badly that she couldn’t secure anything but body double work and the occasional foot modeling job? Thank God for her straight toes or she’d never pay the bills.
A mental black cloud threatened overhead but she refused to get sucked in. Her dream of directing had gotten offtrack during her marriage, but with persistence, the film industry would let her back in. Hanging around the scenes as a body double helped keep her ear to the ground until she pulled together the resources she needed to get back to her first professional love.
Working behind the camera.
Turning her attention to the rest of her e-mail, Tabitha clicked open a note from an unfamiliar address with the words first take in the screen name.
The note was short—just a couple of lines.
What’s it like being in that apartment all alone without your new boyfriend to keep you safe?
Yours, Red.
She stopped breathing for one suspended moment. Told herself the note was some stupid new verbiage thrown on a million spam letters in the fashion of “why haven’t you called me?” or a dozen other lines companies tossed into their subject headers these days to attract attention. The timing of this particular note just happened to coincide with her life.
Don’t panic.
Tabitha checked the time the e-mail was sent, hoping it came over yesterday and she’d only just read it now. But the time said 9:20 p.m. Just fifteen minutes ago.
Who the hell was Red? She’d never met anyone that went by that name in her life.
She grabbed her cell phone off the kitchen counter while she clicked on the properties key for first take. No clues there. Just a run-of-the-mill private Hotmail account. No corporate name. Could first take refer to someone in the film industry?
Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
Buster barked, sensing her panic despite her best efforts. Thank God he was here.
Turning on her phone, she called a cab to meet her downstairs and then dialed Warren’s precinct number, which he’d given her the night before. She didn’t know if she’d be able to reach him in the field, but she’d far rather be with him at someone else’s murder scene than stick around here alone and worry that she’d be next.