Justice for Francesca (Six Paths to Justice #1)

19. The Bonds That Bind and the Ties That Tear

19

THE BONDS THAT BIND AND THE TIES THAT TEAR

Tripoli

S he mock frowned, making an exaggerated show of looking over their position. “I’m sensing a theme here, Mr. Evans. I keep ending up in this position.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “You would prefer another position? I’m full of options.”

“You’re full of it all right,” she teased. Pretending to think about it, she narrowed her eyes at him. “I guess it depends. What did you have in mind?”

“Turn around,” he whispered, “and lie on your stomach.”

Without hesitation, she swung her body one hundred eighty degrees and lay down. “I’m getting yet another sense of déjà vu.”

“Trust me.” As she moved, Tripoli rose on his knees, then covered her body with his by pressing a string of kisses up the back of her thigh, her ass cheek, the small of her back, and each of her vertebrae until he reached the nape of her neck. Brushing her hair out of the way, the kiss he placed there lingered. He reached for the bedside table drawer.

Picking up her head, Francesca looked over her shoulder at him. “What are you doing?”

“Just grabbing a condom.”

“I think that horse is already out of the barn, as the saying goes. Besides, I know you’d never put me at risk. I’m not sure of a lot of things in this world, but I am one hundred percent sure of that. Besides, I want to feel you inside me. No barriers, Ethan.”

And there it was. She was letting him inside more than just her body. She was letting him into her mind. Her heart. Her soul. “I love you, Francesca,” he whispered. “Thank you. I’ll never let you down.”

“I know.”

Trying to take some of his weight off her, he propped his upper half on his forearms on either side of her shoulders. Another kiss to the back of her neck. A press of his lips, combined with a flick of his tongue, and then gentle suction where her neck met her shoulder. He leaned farther forward to catch her lips with his, their tongues chasing back and forth within each other’s mouths.

It felt like his cock grew impossibly harder against her, his hips naturally rocking against the valley between her cheeks. He threaded his fingers with hers on either side of her head. Each time the root of his shaft topped out at the small of her back, their hands naturally squeezed together. He heard her issue a breathy moan every time he retreated, her hips rising off the mattress as if to chase his.

“Spread your legs for me, Francesca.”

Without question, she shifted, and he nestled lower, the tip of his cock at her entrance. He was so hard he was able to push in without guiding himself. When he was buried as deep as he could go, he whispered in her ear, “Tilt your hips just a bit, sweetheart.”

Francesca complied, gaining him another half inch or so inside her slick channel. Her body was vibrating beneath him, but he refused to move. “Feel me, Francesca. This is us. Just us. This is what matters. This means everything.”

“Just us,” she agreed.

With her admission, he began to move. Slow, deliberate strokes stoked the fire between them, but he never sped up.

“Ethan, more, please,” she begged.

“Always more, sweetheart.” Without breaking contact, he brought her hands down to her hips, then slid their joined hands underneath her for leverage so that he could kneel on the bed, bringing her up with him. Legs astride his thighs, hands still joined, his arms wrapped around her waist, and his mouth to her ear, he urged her on. “Move on me, Francesca. Match me. Savor it. I’ve got you.”

Despite giving her the control, he was determined to bring her to orgasm at his own pace. He used the strength in his arms to keep her from speeding up. When she lowered against him, his hips pushed up and forward. When she rose up, he settled his weight back on his heels. Over and over, they moved together.

“So hot.” He rubbed his nose against the side of her head. “You were never an ice queen. You were always fire trapped in ice. Knew you would be like this. You lit up all the dark corners the day we met and warmed me every time we were together. When you left me, you took all your light and fire with you. So glad you brought it back into my life, no matter why it happened. Love you.”

With a final stroke up, Tripoli felt his body let go inside of hers, triggering her walls to squeeze him and causing her to shiver with tremors.

“Ethan!”

“That’s it,” he groaned against her shoulder. “Let go. Feel how we burn together. So fucking hot.”

She cried out as he continued to stroke her channel through the aftershocks. “Love you, Ethan.”

He worked to keep the sigh of relief from being audible, but it didn’t matter. She felt it anyway. Her hands squeezed his where they were still wrapped around her waist. “Were you really that worried?”

“No. Not really. Just glad to hear you say it.”

She fell asleep for a few more hours, one leg hitched over his hip, her hands splayed against his chest, her face buried in the crook of his neck. Tripoli lay awake, one hand absently stroking her hair, his other hand brushing gently along the small of her back. He had no doubts this was where she belonged.

He watched the sunrise, his brain working through their conversation earlier regarding her questioning her job. He’d talked about her remaining with the FBI, but now he wondered if she hadn’t been hinting at a much more drastic change in employment and leaving the bureau altogether.

Exhausted from her wound still, the long day of investigation into Tilly’s murder scene, and the emotional reveals during their time together and into this morning, even the soft chirp of Tripoli’s phone didn’t wake her. Careful not to disturb her as best he could, he rolled one shoulder to reach for his phone. He’d forgotten to remove it from his pocket earlier, and he had to completely exit the bed and go to the bathroom to retrieve it. She merely rolled onto her other side in her sleep.

The number wasn’t one he recognized, but something told him he needed to answer it anyway. He spoke softly into the phone. “Yeah?” He crawled back into the bed and made sure to snuggle up to her body, this time her back to his front. He loved her like this. Warm. Relaxed.

“Tripoli.”

“Michael?” he hissed. “Where the fuck are you?”

“I… that’s a really tough question to answer right now.”

“You need to come back. There was another murder yesterday. You being gone is making you suspect number one.”

“Shit. Who?”

Tripoli swallowed. “It was Tilly.”

The silence on the other end of the phone was total, like the void of space. When Michael finally spoke, it was tortured. “Oh god, no.”

Tripoli struggled around the lump in his throat. “Yeah. It wasn’t pretty. Cosmos found her. The guy… Michael, he shoved her into the magic box. Stuck it full of real swords.”

“What the fucking fuck?!”

Waking up at the sound of his voice, Francesca rolled over to face Tripoli, her gaze sad. “Let me talk to him.” She held her hand up for the phone.

He didn’t move at first, not sure he’d heard her correctly. He swallowed again. “Francesca wants to talk to you.”

There was a twinge of hardness to Michael’s voice. “She’s with you? It’s six a.m.”

Tripoli met him with equal force, his eyes still locked with Francesca’s. “We gonna do the protective brother speech right now? Really?”

To her credit, she didn’t roll her eyes or push him to hand over the phone. In the end, that was why he handed it over, although he put it on speaker.

“Michael? Please. Come back. We need to eliminate you as a suspect.”

“Frankie… I can’t. One second.” Michael must have put the phone up against his clothing because there was a murmur of voices quietly in the background. When he returned, he said, “Even if I did, I don’t think that’s going to happen. Clearing my name, that is.” Tripoli heard resignation in Michael’s voice, and he registered that Francesca heard it as well.

“Michael?”

“Fuck. This is a mess. I’m guessing I was the last person to see her. She had a disagreement with Triumph. She called me, and I met her at my apartment. There will be all kinds of video of me arriving at my apartment and me leaving shortly after.” There was another murmur in the background. “Frankie, you’re going to see something pretty incriminating on the video they pull from the apartment. Jesus… I swear, Frankie. I absolutely swear I didn’t do it, but it’s going to look like I did. I know you don’t believe me. You never did when I was accused years ago, but I fucking swear, I didn’t sell those drugs. I sure as hell didn’t kill Mila.” His voice wavered. “And I didn’t kill my friends. I couldn’t do it, Frankie, no more than I could hurt you.”

Tripoli heard panic creeping into her voice. “Michael,” she whispered. “What am I going to see?”

Silence as a car started.

“Michael?” She pushed at him with more urgency.

“I left my building with a flatbed cart. And a crate.”

“Where did you take the crate?”

“The club. It will be on video. I took it in through the delivery entrance. I left without it about thirty minutes later. Unless there’s footage of Tilly leaving my apartment after me, I’m going to be arrested eventually.”

“What was in the crate, Michael?”

“I can’t tell you. It’s… it’s complicated.”

“It always is, isn’t it?” she intoned. “You ask me to trust you, but you give me nothing to make that possible. You say nothing. You have no explanations, only facts that make things worse. What else am I supposed to think except that you’re guilty?”

“Frankie, I promise. I’d tell you if I could, but I really, really can’t. I need you to trust me like you did when we were kids. Please.”

Francesca spoke with new conviction, although Tripoli saw the struggle in her face. “I want to believe you, Michael, I do.” She closed her eyes, took in a huge breath, and then let it out while opening her eyes to look straight into Tripoli’s gaze. “I’ll do what I can to help you. I don’t know how much that will be because I won’t be on the case anymore. But I’ll try.”

He smiled and nodded. It was hard for her, but she was doing the right thing, no matter how much her training was pushing her in the other direction.

“I need to… I need to think,” he stuttered. “I’ll be in touch.”

Michael disconnected the call, and Francesca returned the phone to Tripoli. “What do I do?” she asked.

“You need to tell Livingston. He’s right. It reads that he’s guilty. He may be telling the truth, and trust me, I want that as much as you do, but if you don’t report the call and it comes out later, it’ll look worse for you. Maybe even that you helped him cover things up.”

She smiled at him. Placing a hand alongside his face, she caressed his cheek with her thumb. “I don’t deserve you, Ethan Ezekiel Evans.”

“You deserve everything, Francesca.” He turned his head to kiss her palm. “Call Livingston. Let’s get this over with.”

A gentle touch of her lips to his. “I love you.”

“Love you too.”