Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Declan Flynn was kissing her.
She was kissing him.
Her mouth had opened wide beneath his plundering lips, and she was greedily kissing him back with wild abandon. Her hands had moved to grab his shoulders and hold on tightly. A moan built in her throat. Need and hot desire spiraled through her. She had never, ever reacted this way to a simple kiss before. Not gone from anger to—to…
Some seriously intense, raging desire. The kind of desire that made her want to jump on his lap, straddle him, and hold on for what promised to be one incredible ride. Quite possibly, the best ride of her life.
What is wrong with you, woman? Get your senses back! One did not lose all control and propriety just from a kiss. Or at least, one didn’t normally.
Yet she was.
Her nails sank into his shoulders. Her tongue licked against his.
He—
Lifted his head. “Thanks for saving my life.” Deep. Rumbly. Dead sexy.
She blinked. And her cheeks burned even hotter than they had before. “Did you just give me a thank you kiss?” They were practically eye-to-eye.
The skin near his eyes crinkled with his smile. “No, I just gave you an I-want-to-fuck-you kiss. But if you’re confused, I can certainly do it again.”
Yes, yes, do it again. And again.
But…propriety. He was hiring her. Offering her lots and lots of money for her first big case. A case that could prove to everyone just how serious she was about pursuing a PI career. One did not jump clients.
Even if the client can kiss helluva well.
“You want me. I want you.” Again, he spoke in that deep, rumbly voice that seemed to sink right through her. “Good to know we’re clear on that point.”
Wait. Hold on. Marley scrambled away from him. “Just because I kissed you, it doesn’t mean that I intend to—that I plan to—that I want to?—”
“Fuck me until we’re both too tired to move?”
Marley sucked in a deep breath.
“Just know the offer is on the table.” He made a show of adjusting the sleeve of his fancy suit coat. The guy at the hospital—James something—had brought the change of clothing to his boss. Declan had ditched the paper-thin hospital gown for a crisp, white shirt, a gray suit coat, and matching pants. His black shoes had gleamed as they tapped over the tiled floor at the hospital. In record time, he’d transformed and appeared as if he was ready to pose on some business magazine cover.
Meanwhile she looked…
Oh, no. Her eyes widened. Her hands flew up to try and smooth what had to be some seriously out-of-control hair. She’d splashed water on her face in the hospital. Gotten a toothbrush and toothpaste from a kind nurse but otherwise, she was still in the ever-so-rumpled clothing from last night and probably looking like the final girl from a horror movie.
“Why did your eyes go wide again?” His head cocked. “What’s wrong?”
“I look like death, and you just made out with me.”
A sudden bark of laughter came from Declan. No, not a bark. A full-on, wild roar of laughter. She frowned at him because his laughter was just rude. He could have at least said she didn’t look that bad. Instead, he had lost it.
The driver opened the limo’s side door. He poked his head in, and his stunned expression locked on Declan. “Boss?”
More laughter, but at least it was starting to sound a bit subdued. “Give us…give us a moment, will you, Andy?”
A quick nod. The door immediately shut.
Marley crossed her arms over her chest. “I am so happy to amuse you.”
“Most things don’t amuse me. Most things piss me off or bore me.” His laughter faded as he studied her. “You’re different.”
He needs to work hard on the charm. Very, very hard. “Yeah, because I’m not a thing. I’m a person.” A person with feelings that he’d just hurt.
He studied her. “You understand…you couldn’t look like death if you tried?”
He obviously did not know her well. “Is that your way of complimenting me?”
“Do you need compliments?”
“No.” She didn’t.
“Because if you do, just know that I want you more than I can ever remember wanting anyone. I want you so much that I’d love to fuck you here and now.”
She slanted a glance his way. “That could be due to the drugging. Maybe you’re just not yourself at the moment.”
“I’m definitely not myself with you.” Softer. “And it’s not due to the drugs. The drugs have nothing to do with how big my dick is.”
“Jeez! Don’t say things like that!”
He shrugged. “You kissed me back just as fiercely as I kissed you…and you haven’t been drugged. What excuse are you going to use?”
“Excuse?”
“Um. Yes. For the attraction we feel for each other. Off-the-charts, isn’t it? Or do you normally respond that way to a first kiss with a man?”
It hadn’t been their first kiss. It had been their second. Not that she was counting. “Your driver is waiting outside.” She peeked toward the window. They were in front of her small rental house. “We should get moving.”
“It’s okay. Andy is paid a ridiculous amount of money to wait.” His fingers tapped along his thigh. “Answer my question.”
“Which one?” A quick reply. “You’ve asked several.”
“Do you normally respond that way when you’re kissed?”
Respond that way? Did he mean…did her nipples normally get so tight and sensitive, did her panties get damp, and did she want to crawl all over the man kissing her? “No. I, ah, can’t say that my response is typically so strong.” Understatement of the century. Marley hoped that she sounded suitably cool and nonchalant.
His eyelids flickered. “Good to know. Because I don’t normally go from zero to fuck-her-now quite so quickly, either.”
She had to try twice in order to swallow the lump that rose in her throat. “Good, ah, to know.”
“The other question you didn’t answer…what excuse are you going to use?”
“Adrenaline.” It was the first thing that popped into her mind.
His lips began to curl.
Do not dare laugh again, Declan Flynn. “It’s been a very stressful night. You slept for hours, but I’m still riding the adrenaline wave.” And an exhaustion wave because she’d been afraid to sleep at the hospital. Afraid that if she closed her eyes, something would happen to him.
“You kissed me like your life depended on it…because of adrenaline?”
She’d never been a fan of lies. Her shoulders slumped. “I kissed you that way because…I don’t know why. My body responds to you. I want you.” There. Stark. Bold. “I am coming off an adrenaline surge, but I also had about twenty minutes of sleep last night. I’m not thinking clearly so my control isn’t what it probably should be.” Wait. Does this make it sound like I can’t handle the job? Marley immediately straightened the shoulders she’d slumped. “You can trust me to find the people who took you. I’ll sleep and be back to one hundred percent, I promise.”
His face had become an unreadable mask. “And what are your promises worth?”
“Everything.” A whisper. “Sometimes, all you have is your word. I like to think that when I make a promise to a client, it’s as binding as a contract.”
A slow nod from Declan. Then he extended his hand toward her. “Then let’s shake on that contract.”
It’s happening. Declan Flynn is hiring me. But she hesitated. “The attraction—it has nothing to do with my work as your PI.”
“Sex is separate. If it happens, it’s because you can’t go another moment without having me inside you.” His hand remained extended.
She tried to close her mouth. “You say outrageous things.”
“I’m trying to be clear with you.” His hand never lowered. “I want you. I want to fuck you. But that is separate from my case. I want you as my PI. I want you staying close to me. At all times.”
Her hand lifted, but didn’t touch his. Not yet. “I have a few stipulations.” Though she needed to hurry with them because she didn’t like the idea of poor Andy just standing by the car. “First, we are not telling the world that we’re engaged.”
“And why not?”
Because her brothers would lose their minds. “We can say that we’re involved. But I’m not sporting a ring, so I don’t think we need to go with the full-on engagement story. I can just be your current girlfriend. The fling of the moment.”
His jaw tensed. “What other stipulations do you have?”
“Honesty.” There. Done. “It’s very important. You’re holding back info from the cops.” Something that was very dangerous considering what had happened last night. “Don’t hold back from me. Tell me everything.”
“Any other stipulations?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Um.” He wiggled his fingers. Long, strong fingers. “Are you planning to ever shake my hand?”
Her fingers pressed to his. Declan’s hand immediately closed around hers. Warm. Slightly rough with calluses. Utterly dwarfing her own hand.
And she realized that, though they had shaken on the deal, he had not actually agreed on her terms. Not with his words. “Uh, Declan?—”
He let her go. Turned for the door. “We need to grab a bag for you and then get back to my suite. I sent James to keep an eye on our asshole bartender so that the jerk wouldn’t leave town. But you need rest before we interrogate him.”
You sent James…and you’re telling me this, now? As for interrogations, maybe that should be the business best handled by the cops. “About the interrogation…”
Declan had already climbed from the limo. She scrambled to follow him. When she got out of the limo, Marley couldn’t help but wince. The limo was hugely out of place on the quiet street. It blocked two driveways. And her neighbors were out and gaping as they unpacked groceries.
Marley sent them a quick wave, and then she grabbed Declan’s hand and began towing him toward her slightly sloping front porch. The cold had long since withered her flowers. “Be out as fast as possible, Andy,” she promised.
At the door, she paused to free Declan and to fumble with her keys only…
The front door was slightly ajar. Ajar as in—the lock had been smashed. “Oh, no.”
“ What?” From Declan.
But he didn’t give her a chance to explain. Instead, his hands closed around her waist. He lifted her up and placed her behind him.
“Fuck,” Declan swore as he glared at the lock. Then, “Get back to the limo. Get inside it.”
She tapped him on the shoulder. His head jerked back toward her.
“My house,” Marley informed him. “And I’m the PI. You’re the one who should go back to the limo.”
His look questioned her sanity.
Why? She was being incredibly sane. “Declan, it’s my house.”
“Some bastard broke inside!”
Yes. “And that bastard could still be inside.”
“Get in the limo.”
Their business relationship was clearly not off to a good start. “ Get out of the way. ”
He didn’t. He did push open the front door and head straight inside her home. Like he was some fierce cop and not say, oh, a tech billionaire who had no business storming any place. But, storm, he did. She hurried right on his heels. As soon as they were inside…
A shocked gasp tore from her as Marley stared around in horror. This wasn’t some robbery—what she’d feared when she saw the broken lock. This was—this was…
Destruction.
Chaos.
Rage.
Her home hadn’t just been ransacked. Her home had been utterly destroyed. Picture frames smashed. Her TV obliterated into hundreds of pieces. Her couch cushions slashed to bits of stuffing. The floor was littered with wreckage, and as she stared at the remnants of her life, pain knifed straight into Marley’s chest.
This wasn’t a break-in.
This was a message. This was hate.
She took a step forward, only to have Declan’s arm immediately wrap around her waist. He hauled her back against his body. “You go nowhere without me.” A savage growl.
He was really missing the PI part of the equation, but she was too busy burning with rage and a strange grief to discuss the point with him. They needed to search the house to make sure the perpetrator wasn’t still inside. Her gut said the jerk was long gone. That he must have come under the cover of darkness to wreak his destruction or else her nosey neighbors would have seen him entering her place and obliterating her lock.
“Tell me that you have a weapon on you,” Declan rasped. His breath trickled lightly over her ear.
She shook her head. Weapons weren’t allowed in the hospital, and she’d had to stay there all night. There were weapons stashed in her car, but since she’d ridden in the ambulance with him and abandoned her car on the side of the road—well, she wasn’t too sure where her ride was. Maybe police impound? She’d have to ask Parker. When she was done with her current emergency.
“Good thing I have one,” Declan murmured. And the man pulled out a gun.
“Where did you get that?” And when?
“James brought it to me.”
In the hospital? Where guns weren’t allowed? “That’s against the rules.”
He stared at her. Just stared. Then said, “I have the gun. That means I lead the search. You stay behind me.”
“You give way too many orders for a client.” And… “You could always give me the gun.”
He wasn’t. He was heading through her house. Since someone had to watch his arrogant back, she took care of his six. With every step, rage blossomed more and more inside of her. They slipped into her kitchen.
Every plate was smashed. Every bowl shattered.
Her hand reached out and curled around a knife that had fallen to the floor. As a rule, she hated knives. They reminded her of a time she’d like to forget, but she needed some sort of weapon. A knife was better than nothing.
Her fingers only trembled a little as she gripped the handle of the knife.
They left the kitchen. Trekked soundlessly down the small hallway. The door to her bedroom was ajar. She braced herself before they entered, so she wasn’t overly surprised to find the same chaos waiting in the room that had previously been her safe haven.
Bedding slashed. Mattress stabbed open. Every drawer in my dresser and chest pulled out. The contents littered the floor. Her underwear had been slashed just like the bedding. All her clothes—slashed. “This took a lot of time,” she whispered.
“And a lot of rage.”
Her pictures were broken, too. When she stepped forward, her foot crunched one of the pieces of glass that had been in a picture frame.
“Fucking bastard.” A low snarl from Declan.
Her head whipped to the right.
A photo was on her wall. A photo that had previously been in one of the silver frames that she kept on her nightstand. It was a picture of her standing between her two brothers. They were all smiling. Or at least, they had been smiling. It was impossible to see her expression in the photo now because a knife stabbed into her face. The blade sank into the wall behind the photo, pinning the image in place.
Her body tensed. She knew a message when she saw one. She’d gotten the message the instant she stepped into her home and seen the wreckage. Someone was very, very angry with her.
Someone wanted her dead.
Declan reached for the knife that sliced into her photo.
“Don’t!”
He looked back at her protest.
“There could be prints on it.” The person—or people—who’d left the deadly message were long gone, but perhaps some evidence had been left behind. “And I’m not a one-woman crime-scene unit, so we need to call the cops.” Parker had to be informed. No way was this a coincidence. She saved Declan and the same night her home was destroyed? You didn’t have to be a genius to connect these dots. “The men who took you know that I got you free. Clearly, they are not happy with the turn of events.” Or with me. Her gaze darted around her bedroom. Everything was destroyed. “There isn’t going to be anything here for me to take.”
“I’ll buy you anything you need.” He’d turned away from the knife. Declan still gripped the gun in his right hand. “And I will make them pay for what they did. I promise you, I will.”
That was dangerous talk. “Declan…”
He paused right in front of her. His eyes glittered down at her. “And when I make you a promise,” Declan continued, voice low, lethal, and terror provoking, “you can believe that it means everything. As far as I’m concerned, those SOBs are dead. They just don’t know it yet.”