For All to See (Bureau Series Book 1) (16 page)

The ties at her back and neck gave way. Nathan fisted the triangles and tossed them to the side. His knees pushed beneath her thighs and his hands moved to her back just below her shoulder blades. He held her up as if in offering and feasted on the descended red nubs.

Helpless to fight the pleasure he poured on in tidal waves, she relaxed into the praise of his mouth. Arms spread wide, she gripped the sand in one and the blanket in the other and rode straight down the barrel.

“What was that? Did you have an argument to make?”

She wanted to launch a snappy comeback, but her brain was busy following the progress of his hands. They molded down her abdomen, over her hips, and then braced on either of her spread legs, inches from her exposed intimates.

“Hmmm.” The muscles in his jaw contracted. He shifted his hips back and leaned so close to her pointed clit she braced for his electric touch. But he hovered there, exploring her with his hot eyes. “I knew you were beautiful, but this is a little too close to perfection.”

“It’s just a pussy, Nathan.”

“It’s not just your pretty cunt, Madelyn. It’s you. Look at you, spread wide, on display, not a shy bone in your body. You’re here with me every step, ready, and willing to give yourself to me. And not because I’ll make a good prop for your Christmas cards. But because you see me and you let me see you.”

He started with maddening tenderness, placing not-so-innocent kisses on the lips of her sex. When her hips shifted restlessly his hold on her thighs pinned her to the ground. His mouth eased lower. Her belly convulsed. The anticipation ratcheting higher and higher. His lips pressed against her entrance, and then sealed there.

He schooled her in the most intimate art of French kissing. His tongue pierced her vagina with rhythmic thrusts and deviant twists. If his hands didn’t hold her in place, she’d rocket into space. His near-onyx hair bobbed between her legs. Veins and muscles coursed his steady arms.

Madelyn cupped her breasts and moaned against the maddening sensation. She wanted to buck and grind into his touch.

“Fuck me,” he mumbled onto her flesh.

“Yes. Yes.”

Nathan’s eyes sparkled. He leaned in and bracketed her pulsating clit with his mouth. While she watched, transfixed, he jacked her erect bundle of skin and nerves. He used firm lips and a forceful suction that curled her off the blanket. Madelyn braced both hands behind her back and panted. Her incoherent noises caught on the breeze and scattered over the water.

Her toes curled. Her fingers sank into the sand. The pad of his tongue flattened and swirled around her clit. Every nerve ending in her body celebrated his expertise by exploding. The force rippled through her, incinerating everything in its path. Her ability to speak included. She collapsed half on and half off the beach blanket and worked harder than normal to breathe.

Nathan lapped up the last of her orgasm, and then closed her legs so that she curled onto her side. The unusual sensation of her swollen sex pressed between her thighs reinvigorated her spent libido. He placed a kiss on the round of her hip and stood.

A massive erection ballooned the front of his pants. Madelyn swallowed the saliva that pooled at the sight. Nathan’s hands laced behind his nape, causing every muscle in his torso to flex. His gaze drank her in. His chest rose and fell in measured breaths.

“Nathan, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He licked his lips and his eyes clamped shut as though in ecstasy or misery.

“Then come here.”

“We should get back.” Nathan scrubbed a hand over his face and took another step away.

“You’re not getting off this island without getting off.”

His eyes opened, appearing like tiny coal-burning furnaces, but his head shook back and forth. “I don’t have a condom.”

“And you think intercourse is the only way to do that?” She eased onto her knees, and then stood on noodle legs. With a sweep of her lower back and brush of her hands the sand cascaded to the beach. She took a step forward.

“I know it’s not. But with what happened…”

“The thought of a woman on her knees with your hot cock in her mouth doesn’t turn you on,” she supplied.

“Fuck.” His hands balled into fists at his sides. “I wish it wouldn’t.” His head lulled. “I just won’t ask a woman to subjugate herself for my pleasure.”

“How have you kept them from throwing themselves at your feet? Do you go for the snub-nosed conservative type?”

“They go for me. I don’t pursue women.”

“So you call all your sly comments and devilish tongue not pursuing a woman?”

“You’re different.”

More than she should, Madelyn hoped his whisper was true. “Most women would go for a door opening, cooking, cleaning, employed, good-ole boy who won’t make them suck cock.” She nodded and took another step. “I can see it. Plus you look like a fucking great Southern edition of GQ. But let me tell you something you and all those other women don’t know.”

Madelyn collapsed on her knees in front of him and ran her hands over his tight thighs to his fly. The button slipped between the fabric. His fly screamed open. She pulled down his shorts and boxers in one easy motion, and then looked him in the eyes. “This is the most erotic and most powerful position for the fairer sex.”

Her gaze dropped to clear pre-cum smeared over a narrow head. She licked her lips and canted her head to better see the wide shaft that bulged his dusky skin.

“So you’ve never had a blow-job?”

“Fuck. No. And if you don’t quit looking at my junk like that, I think I’m going to come before you touch me.”

A grin the size of the Big Bad Wolf’s spread her lips. “This is going to be so fun.”

“For you?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“It’s going to be torture for me. I don't want to hurt you. It’s not like my dick is a good fit for your sweet mouth.”

“Sweet, huh?” Madelyn latched onto his lean hips, wet her lips, and then pressed them against the head of his cock. She used the slick tang of his lust to lubricate his thick column. Ballooned veins ribbed his length. A sigh of ecstasy rumbled in her throat as she pressed him deeper.

His tip brushed her tonsils and he groaned. The heady sensation of authority over this virile and heartbreakingly sweet man’s pleasure made her nipples stiff. He was always eager to prove a point, but now it was her turn. She slid to his curved head, and then slowly sank back to mid-shaft. Her jaw relaxed. Her gaze reached for his, desperate to see his reaction.

Madelyn swallowed him inch by delectable inch, but had to stop short from his base. The man didn’t joke about the fit. She pulled back before her eyes watered and he called the whole thing off. Though—judging by the flare of his pelvic muscles, the clench of his fists, and the look of cannibalism in his eyes—he might be too far gone to care. Satisfaction prodded her to the edge. She pumped him deep for long enough that Nathan’s fingers plunged into her hair and he muffled a string of obscenities.

Her skin prickled. Nothing existed but their need. His need for release. Her need to give it to him.

She backed off, firmed her lips, hollowed her cheek, and sucked. The lips of her sex dampened. Nathan’s control broke. His hips rocked in time with her working mouth.

“Good fuc—”

Her increased pace stopped his exclamation, but she figured the two words fit perfectly. A warning shot warmed her mouth. Greedily, she took it all and got more. After she sucked him dry, she stood, wanton, and wildly willing to forgo protection to get him inside her. “Just a kiss, right?”

Nathan used his grip on her hair and pulled her in for a ferocious kiss. Their sweat and scents mingled in an erotic cologne that did little for her intellect and everything for her libido.

He pushed her back to arm’s length. “Get in the water before I wrap your legs around me and bury my dick inside you.”

“That’s not really incentive to go.”

The line of his brow smoothed. “Are you on the pill?”

Well that took the wind right out of her sails. “No. I haven't had to be.”

“Ever?”

She shrugged.

“Are you a virgin?”

“No, but my most major sexual relationship has been with myself.”

“Really?” He wiggled a brow.

“I’ve had sex with men. A couple. To make sure I wasn’t…broken.”

“There’s nothing broken about you, Madelyn. Stubborn? Yes. Cautious? Yes. But those aren’t bad traits. Well…” His lips pursed and waggled.

“Hey!” She protested with a step in his direction.

His hands shot out as though she bore the plague. “I’m usually a self-controlled guy, but with you…” His gaze honed on hers. “Unless you’re ready to welcome a strapping baby boy in nine months and marry me months before that, get your ass to the boat.”

She stumbled back, but his words took her much further aback. Like Canada back. A wedding and a family had never been on her horizon. Were they on his? And if they were, how did she feel about that? This? Them? Was there even a them to think about?

A wave brushed her calves, and then her thighs.

“The faster we get back, the faster I can get inside you. You get the boat ready. I’ll wrangle Deacon and grab our stuff.”

Madelyn dove into the sea and let the current play with her until her lungs burned. Heaven knew the tumult of it couldn’t compare to the emotions Nathan wrought inside her. Joy. Surprise. Peace. Ecstasy. Fear. Love.

N
athan downshifted in the turn
, and nearly snapped the ball right off of the shifter. He wanted to blow past the junker of a car that had gotten in front of them a mile back. Madelyn’s giggled filled the open topped car.

“What happened to not rushing this?”

“We’re not in the middle of the ocean and about as far away from condoms as a man can get. Plus…” He dared a glance at her long legs sticking out of the bottom of her thin cover-up. “Damnit, woman. I know you’re naked under there and exactly what all that real estate looks like. And tastes like.”

Her legs shifted and shuffled in the seat.

What the hell was he doing almost literally screwing with a case? At the very least he could get lumped into the same category as Dick. At the worst his straying focus could get Madelyn hurt. Try as he might, he couldn’t think of her as a case, as a potential victim.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she whispered. “Not as long as I can help it.”

“You’re not going anywhere.” The thought of losing her at all clawed at his guts. The thought of losing her to the Field-Dresser turned his blood to ice.

Nathan wheeled the Jeep onto her foliage crowded driveway, rolled slowly along, and scanned the density for anything out of the ordinary. He stopped the car short of its destination.

In the back seat Deacon stood and yipped.

“What’s wrong?” Madelyn straightened in the seat.

“Amadi’s here.”

“Where?”

“Edge of the woods. Left of where you park.”

“I don’t see him.”

“Neither does my team. The sneaky bastard.” He reached into the console and handed Madelyn the gun he’d given her the other night. “Stay here. No matter what, don’t get out. Do you understand?”

Her gaze bounced back and forth between him and the wood line. She drew a shaky breath and nodded.

This guy had size and years of lethal fighting skill on his side. Nathan had a gun. He wouldn’t hesitate to use it to protect Madelyn. He exited the Jeep and squared his shoulders.

The shadow in the tree line shifted. Amadi Chiduben emerged from the foliage with both palms up. Though the guy was all right for the profile, from another angle he was all wrong. The fact that his skin was blacker than night and that most serial killers were Caucasian didn’t play into it. His eyes did. A psychopath’s face could change, show expressions of joy and sadness, but true emotions never hit their eyes.

Even from half a football field away clear anguish pulled at the man’s face and clouded his amber gaze. Nathan stopped two yards from him—a distance the giant could cover in a blink—and settled his palm over his Glock.

“What do you want?”

“I am sorry for unsettling you yesterday. When Madelyn didn’t show up to the gym I needed to know she was okay.”

“Why not call?”

“She doesn’t have a phone.”

He didn’t know she had a phone, because up until a few days ago she hadn’t. “Why snoop around the woods like a suspect?”

“I grew up in these woods. I heard the killer had stalked Deacon in the brush and I thought…I don’t know. Maybe I could find a clue.”

“A clue?” He’d heard a lot of lame excuses in his day and this one took the cake, which meant it was probably close to the truth. People lied better than that. Especially when given time to fabricate it. “What aren’t you telling me?”

The man’s huge chest inflated slowly and he huffed a breath. “It’s a long story, but I think it will help you figure out who’s killing these women.”

Nathan cocked his head. “I’m all ears.”

“It will make me look more guilty than I already do.”

“Must be one hell of a story.”

“Nathan,” Madelyn called from the Jeep.

“I want to hear this story of yours. So, don’t go away. And…you can put your hands down.”

“You’re not going to shoot me?”

“Not unless you pull a weapon, run away, or run at me.”

He returned to the car, keeping Amadi in his line of sight until he chanced a glance at Madelyn.

She thrust a phone into his hands. “I grabbed your phone from the bag to call for help, if we needed it, and saw you have about four missed calls.”

“Where’s your phone?”

She shrugged. “Inside, maybe.”

“If you don't have it on you, it does you no good.”

“Says the man who left his phone in the car.”

“You distracted me…too much.”

The device vibrated against Nathan’s palm. Dick’s number flashed on the readout. He answered the call and put it to his ear.

“Don’t shoot him,” Dick said.

“Why not?”

“When Trisha Sutherland was killed he was in a tournament in Shanghai. Won the whole damn thing. Then went to the Henan province to live with Shaolin Monks.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Nope. You might want to stand a little farther back. I think this guy could kill you with a hard stare.”

“What about the other murders?”

“Teaching until eight-forty-five the night Starks went missing, which makes it pretty unlikely he island hopped, took her, tortured her, and then hung her in time to get back for a god-awfully early morning class.”

“Which he taught?”

“Yep. And none of the people I interviewed thought anything was out of the ordinary those days.”

“Not that they could remember, at least.”

“His girlfriend at the time of Starks and Young’s murders said they had a very romantic night on the beach and back at his place when Young went missing. And everything else checks out clean. The cousin does too, only opposite. He paid for the kid to go to the Shanghai tournament the following year. He got creamed. He taught while Amadi was gone, and there were a bunch more women on his alibi roster.”

“The bartender is looking pretty sketchy. Lots of odd jobs and small time crimes.”

“I want you to look into Adrian Tau’s wife. See if you can find her.”

“How about we trade places and you look into it?”

Nathan disconnected the phone.

“What’d he say?” Madelyn asked, her face scrunched with concern.

“Amadi’s not our guy.” When the smile grew too big for her face, he added, “But that doesn’t mean I trust him.”

“So, now what?”

“We go listen to his story.”

“What story?”

“I have no idea.”