Chapter 5
“Are you insane?”
Kim looked at her best friend and shrugged. “Maybe a little.”
“Your dad is a cop,” Delia reminded, twisting her martini glass back and forth. “Your brother is a cop. You know better than to go home with strange men you pick up in a bar. He could be a serial killer or a sexual sadist or…anything!”
“It’s because I’ve grown up with cops that I know what I’m doing with him.
” She’d watched the way he walked into the bar.
The confident stride, the coolly observant eyes that took in everything, the way he carried his powerful body with limber agility.
A hunter. She’d bet money he was undercover vice.
Just as she’d bet that something about his job was eating at him now, and he wanted to put it away for a night, take some solace from someone who wouldn’t be around long enough to remind him he’d lost his edge for a few brief hours.
Looking back over her shoulder, she remembered watching Raze take a seat at the bar and how he’d looked into his glass as if the answer he was looking for could be found in it.
Wasn’t she here for the same reason? To seek oblivion in the company of others.
So they’d narrow it down to the two of them and toss in orgasms and physical exhaustion.
There were worse ways to spend the night—like lying in bed alone, drenched in clammy sweat and shaking with fear.
Delia frowned, her dark eyes filled with worry behind her chic, electric-blue eyeglass frames. “This sort of reckless behavior isn’t like you. You don’t want to admit it, but you’re still reeling from what happened to Janelle. You’re not in the right frame of mind.”
Janelle. God. Kim polished off the last of the shiraz.
Even though she’d moved into a different apartment in a different part of town, she couldn’t get the memory of coming home to her roommate’s murder out of her head.
Janelle had been running from her crazy ex for years, but he’d finally tracked her down and taken her life before turning the gun on himself.
Kim couldn’t close her eyes without seeing it all over again—blood everywhere, splattered over everything, pooling on the floor in a viscous crimson lake.
The sharp metallic smell of fresh death had seared her nostrils, indelibly etching a nightmare in her mind.
“I have to go.” She dug her business card out of her purse and wrote Raze’s name and room number on the back. “If I turn up missing, here’s the last place I was.”
“Ha! That’s not funny, Kim.” Delia looked at the others. “Tell her she’s out of her mind. Stop her.”
Justin looked up as she stood. He shook his head. “Sorry, Dee. She’s not changing her mind. She’s got the devil in her eye.”
“Leave off, Delia,” Rosalind said, fanning herself. “That guy was seriously hot. I’m rooting for her. Go, Kim, go. Rock his world. Make him beg.”
Delia groaned. “Oh my God, you’re all whacked. I’m calling your brother, Kim.”
“If it makes you feel better,” Kim said dryly, bending down to kiss her friend’s cheek. “Go for it. See you guys Monday.”
“If you’re still alive then!” Delia yelled after her. “You sex-crazy maniac.”
Kim was smiling all the way to her car, but her humor was gone when she slid behind the wheel—replaced by a hotter, more pressing emotion.
A gorgeous, dangerously seductive man was waiting in a hotel room for her.
A man who was aching and lonely, just like she was.
For tonight, at least, she wouldn’t have to take a damn pill to fall asleep.