Chapter Thirteen
Ash
The entire Red Snake team, Sheriff Humbly, plus a few of his officers were all in the dining room, standing around Angel’s antique table. There was a vase full of daisies in the center, and for some reason, they scared the shit out of me.
“Okay,” Humbly began with a heavy sigh. “The victim is Felix Kolby. Thirty-six years old. Unmarried. No children. He was the sous chef at Margie’s Place. Worked there for years.”
“Has Marg been informed?” Grayson asked, uncrossing his arms.
Humbly shook his head. “Told my people I wanted to do it. I’ve known her since I was a kid, and this is going to tear her apart.”
“Do you suspect foul play?” Dominic asked from his place in the corner.
Everyone looked at him.
“I don’t know,” Humbly answered. “There are lacerations all over the body, but these waters are rough, full of rocks.”
I ran my hand over my mouth. “Possible suicide, then?”
The sheriff’s eyes met mine. “Possible.”
“Where’s Angel?” This came from Jake as he looked up from his laptop.
“Told her to go wash off the day.”
Grayson grunted. “Was she the one who found him?”
“No,” Humbly answered, sighing. “A couple walking their dog did. They rented a beach house for the week.”
Just then, I heard the water upstairs cut off.
I lifted my chin to my team, my gaze locking with Hayes. “Be back in a few,” I muttered.
As I headed back into the foyer, the floorboards creaked.
It was still raining outside, and there was another round of thunderstorms on the way, set to last through the night.
At the base of the stairs, I made the decision to sleep on her couch tonight.
Angel would be too stubborn to let any of the girls come over, but she wouldn’t deny me.
Not after what happened on the beach. I looked up to the top step, staring at the black and white photo of the cliffside, the water crashing against the rocks.
The soft padding of her footsteps filled my ears, and I climbed the stairs, needing a quiet second with her before I sent her to talk to the police.
The last thing I wanted was for her to be overwhelmed.
At the top of the stairs, I looked left and found three doors. To the right, there was a long hallway. Halfway down, I found a small bathroom. White. Crisp. Clean. Everything was perfect. Something stirred inside me, but I shoved it down quickly, ignoring the anxiety prickling the back of my neck.
I don’t need to worry about me right now.
I moved farther down, stopping outside the light blue door that stood ajar at the end of the hall. “Angel?” I called, lightly tapping on the door.
Nothing. Not even a whimper.
Fuck.
“Angel, I’m just checking on you,” I reassured, silently cursing myself for coming upstairs uninvited. “You all right?”
I got an answer. Soft, weak, and dripping with exhaustion. “Come in.”
With my hand on the door, I pushed it open to find her in nothing but a towel, her hair—sopping wet—still in a hair tie, sitting on the edge of her four-poster bed.
She had sheer cream curtains draped across the top, creating a canopy of sorts.
There wasn’t a single pillow out of the place, the quilt and sheets pulled tight, aside from the dip at the end of the mattress where she was sitting.
I watched with a tight jaw as water droplets trickled down the side of her delicate neck, her skin red and steaming.
She didn’t look at me. Instead, she was staring straight ahead at her bookcases, zoned out.
Fucking shit.
I moved, crouching in front of her, putting my hand beside hers on the bed. “Hey, beautiful,” I whispered. “Look at me.” Her honey eyes flicked down to me, and my mouth went dry, my body recognizing how close I was to her, how good she smelled…fucking Christ. “How are you doing?”
“Not good.”
My hand covered hers. “I’m sorry,” I said roughly. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
She flinched. “He was my friend.”
I clamped my jaw shut, feeling it jump under my skin. I hated seeing her like this. She was happy. Finally happy. “Tell me what I can do,” I softly begged, lacing her fingers through mine. “What can I do to help you right now? What do you need?”
“I have to get this ponytail out of my hair,” she sighed, starting to rise.
I rose up. “Let me,” I offered, my hands going to her hair.
She let out a sound somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. Soft. Half-hearted. “Do you know anything about hair ties?”
As I began working the band, careful not to yank on her hair too hard, I said, “I grew up with a lot of girl cousins. I was the only boy in the family. They would dress me up, paint my toenails, and force me to wear glitter Barbie lipstick when all I really wanted to do was go outside and play basketball.” I pulled the little band away as her heavy hair fell.
Her eyes bounced back and forth between me and the hair tie. “I’m impressed.”
My lips twitched. “You can thank my cousin Mandy for that. If you ever need your hair braided, I’m your man.”
Those beautiful lips turned up and stretched across her face, spreading into a breathtaking smile. After this morning, I thought I’d never see it again. “Ash, my big, strong hero, braiding my hair,” she laughed. “What a picture.”
I swallowed as other mental pictures of us that I had stored away tried to pop up. She was staring up at me with her gorgeous eyes, wild wet hair, her face just inches from my belt…
Snap out of it, Doss.
Clearing my throat, I stepped back and ran a hand through my damp hair. “I’ll let you get dressed. I just wanted to check on you.” I turned and started making my way to the door.
“Wait.”
I closed my eyes for a second before looking at her over my shoulder. “What is it?”
Angel stood, holding her towel together at her breasts. “You told me downstairs that you would do anything for me.”
My brow furrowed as I faced her again, folding my arms over my chest. “Yes.”
“Did you mean it?” she asked softly.
“Of course I did,” I said firmly.
“Why?”
My head ticked to the side. “Why what, Angel?”
“Why would you do anything for me? I’m just some woman you rescued during one of your jobs,” she pushed out, her voice starting to crack again. Her smile was nothing but a memory. “You must save countless women—people—in your line of work. So why am I different?”
“We can’t do this right now,” I murmured, shaking my head. “Not while my team and the police are downstairs. Not after the morning you had, baby.”
She took a step toward me. “You call me ‘baby.’”
A tightness bloomed in my chest, burning and damning me all at once. “Yes.”
“Do you call anyone else that?” she whispered, right in front of me now. She lifted her hand to touch me, but I caught her wrist. She sucked in a sharp gasp, her pupils pulsing.
“Told you we can’t do this right now,” I warned her.
Her voice changed, now breathless and heated. “Why?”
I searched her eyes, wishing I could read her mind. “What do you want?”
She pressed her lips together, looking at mine. “I’m feeling so many things right now. I don’t know what to do, and my mind is racing, Ash. It’s too much. I can’t bear it,” she confessed.
“Yes, I know,” I told her gently, taking her chin in my free hand. “But what you’re searching for right now is something I can’t give you. That’s a conversation for another day, a brighter and happier day.”
“I just…” She cut herself off, letting a stray tear fall. “I just want to feel something other than the dread I’ve been feeling for the last week.”
Dread?
My hand shifted, closing around the front of her throat, my thumb hooking under her jaw. “Did something else happen while I was away?”
The most beautiful shade of red flooded her cheeks and chest, her lips parting as she began to pant. “I-I’ve just been having a hard week, is all.”
I bit down again, grinding my teeth for a moment. “Tell me what you want.”
She tried to hide her face by dropping her head, but my thumb and index finger pressed underneath her jaw, forcing her to look back up. “Don’t fucking hide from me,” I warned, my voice gruff. “Look me in the eye, tell me what you want, what you need, and I’ll give it to you.”
“Anything?” she breathed.
“Fuck, Starlight, anything. Just tell me how I can ease your pain.”
A beat of silence followed, and then she softly asked, “Could you fuck me, then?”
I released her, staggering back to the doorway. My chest heaved, my heart pounding in the cage of my chest as my cock twitched in my jeans. No. No, we couldn’t do this. Not here. Not now. I wasn’t that kind of man. She’d been through too much. “Angel—”
“Please,” she rasped, letting the towel fall.
My eyes averted before I could see anything. “Jesus, beautiful. Please put that back on,” I pushed out, trying to get a lock on my control.
“I want to feel something other than sorrow and pain, Ash. And I want to feel it with you,” she murmured.
I tipped my head back, glaring at the ceiling. “I can’t. Not like this.”
The sting of rejection in her voice hit me in the gut. “What? Why?”
So many fucking reasons, and if I were less of a man, I would ignore all of them.
“You’ve been through so much; you just lost your friend.
We need to have a conversation, or a few, before we get to that point.
” I paused, swallowing. “This pull between us, Angel, it’s not something I’m willing to lose.
Not to mention that when you give me your consent, I want to take my damn time with you, and I can’t do that today. ”
“So you feel it too?”
I closed my eyes, my body vibrating with need. “Baby—”
“Yo! You okay?” Jake yelled from downstairs.
My mouth snapped shut. In a flash, I was out of the room, closing the door behind me.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, knowing that by the end of this calendar year, I would be beating his fucking ass.
“We’re fine,” I told him at the top of the staircase. “She’s just a little shaken up.”
Jake nodded. “Understandable. Humbly’s getting a little stir crazy in here.”
“Humbly can choke on a dick,” I shot back. “If he is in such a hurry, he can come back when she is ready to talk.”