CHAPTER SIX #3
At the deep, arrogant rasp of Kane’s voice, his words laced with a sexual undertone, I stiffen. “Kane,” I say coldly, and I do feel cold. Mostly cold.
“Lilah,” he answers, my name spoken with the tiniest bit of Latin accent that is both sandpaper and silk on his tongue.
A hot spot forms in my chest, and I bite out, “How did you get this number?”
“I’m resourceful. You know that.”
All too well, I think. “Why are you calling me now?”
“I wanted to call you many times.”
But he didn’t. He never called. Not once. “What is this about?”
“Are you at the beach house?”
There is a hint of concern in his voice I both welcome and reject. “Why is that your business?”
“You are always my business.”
“I was never—”
“Are you at the beach house?” he presses.
“Why wouldn’t I be? It’s my—” I stop myself before I say home and amend to, “I’m here.”
“It’s your home,” he supplies. “Are you still having nightmares?”
“Stop trying to get into my head, Kane.”
“That’s a yes. Lilah—”
“Stop saying my name.”
“I don’t like you being there alone.”
“I was here and alone for months before I left.”
“You were rarely alone and we both know it. And I wanted you here. Come here now.”
I laugh. “Just like that? ‘Come here now,’ and you expect me to come. You are a piece of arrogant work, Kane Mendez.”
“With me is where you belong. Come here.”
“No.”
“I’ll come there.”
“You would make a pretty lawn ornament, but it’s dark, and you would be a wasted decoration. Whatever you think is going to happen, isn’t going to happen.”
“We both know that’s not true.”
“If we meet again, and I do mean if, I will look into your eyes and ask questions about your dead employee.”
“Are you saying that you think I killed that woman?”
I do not miss the way he calls her “that woman” without a bleep of silence. It tells me he feels no sense of familiarity to her. Then again, he’s a damn good manipulator. “I didn’t say you killed her, but you are a person of interest.”
“A person of interest,” he repeats. “All right then. Let me be clear, Agent Love. I did not kill that woman, nor did I order anyone to kill her. Nor do I know anything about how or why she died. You’re simply avoiding me.”
“What part of ‘you’re a person of interest in a case I’m investigating’ do you not understand?”
“Let’s remove the barrier. How exactly do I get off the person-of-interest list?”
I’m reluctant to remove this barrier, and yet, I find myself answering him a bit too quickly. “I’ll need a firm alibi. Who were you with? Where were you?”
“An alibi. Of course. That’s logical.”
“Do you have one?”
“Yes. I do.” There are two seconds of hesitation that follow, indicating calculation before he announces, “I was with Samantha. She’ll corroborate my story.”
The woman he was fucking before he was fucking me. I swear if he were here, I’d punch him, and that pisses me off. This shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. “I’ll talk to her.”
“I’m a man, Lilah. You weren’t fucking me and she—”
“I don’t want to hear this.”
“She’s a fuck. Nothing more.”
“I’ll talk to her,” I repeat tightly.
“I’m coming over. We need to talk about this in person.”
“Yes, well, since I’d like to get fired from this case and go home, please come over. Then I can get on a flight tomorrow morning.”
“Lilah,” he says, his voice back to that mix of sandpaper and silk.
“Fuck you, Kane.”
He laughs, low and sexy, but there is this hint of darkness, this edge, that slides in between the softness and down my spine, a moment before he says, “That sounds like an invitation.” I open my mouth to dispute this idea, but he’s already moved on.
“If the nightmares get to be too much,” he says, “you know how to reach me.” The line goes dead.
I suck in air and press the phone to my forehead.
Yes. I know how to reach him all too well.
Just like I know how his bed feels and how he smells and that he tastes like no one ever has tasted before or after him.
Like spiced, dark chocolate that is addictive to the point of being sinister.
He is the devil, but then, I am no angel.
He made sure of that. He touched my life forever, and I can never undo the way he changed me.
And in some of those nightmares he talks about, I imagine what I would become if I ever tasted his version of temptation again.
They were—are—the bloodiest of them all.
I set my phone down and grab a note card and pen.
I write SAMANTHA YOUNG in huge letters across the card, climb up the steps, and pin the card in the center of the board.
I back down the steps, hands on my hips as I stare at the name.
She hates me. She’s also rich, devious, insecure, and arrogant.
She’s Harvard-educated. She fits the profile I’ve started.
And it’s not beyond belief she would have been trying to spy on me with Kane that night.
It’s her. She wants me gone. And yet . . . that feels too obvious.
I sit down, my fingers tapping on the desk, when the doorbell rings. Instinctively, I pick up Cujo.