A Righteous Kill (15 page)

Hero lifted her brows as she unlocked the Juke and slid into the driver’s seat. Her heart turned that little tap dance into a full length
Stomp
performance. Trash can lids and everything. Making sure not to peel out in reverse, she tried to keep her speed somewhere between mach and warp as she fled.

Could FBI agents write traffic tickets?

“What’s going on?” she asked when Luca hung up.

He brandished the folded wire hanger. “Where did you learn to break into a locked vehicle?”

Hero shrugged. “My brother, Demetri.”

“The one with all the black leather?”

She nodded.

“Figures.” He cursed. “Why the hell didn’t you ever mention Professor Pansy Ass back there? Did it ever enter your mind that he might be at the top of the fucking suspect list?”

“No,” Hero answered honestly. “He may be a self-important pervert, but he’s no serial killer.” She sounded more sure than she felt.

Luca’s eyes glittered with black fire and something a little more wild. “Then why break into his van?”

Hero gripped the steering wheel. The trees whizzed past, blending into one green corridor. “Just because,” she evaded. “And for your information, the inside of the van didn’t match at all. The carpet was totally different and there were seats in the back. The van I was in didn’t have seats.”

Luca snorted. “Any criminal worthy of the name would have had that van reupholstered, and seats can usually be removed.”

“Yeah, but, Alec’s van just didn’t—
feel
like the one,” Hero insisted. “It didn’t have the same evil energy.”

Hero didn’t have to glance over at him. She
felt
his eye roll.

Which proved her point.

“Well sure, that’ll hold up in court,” Luca snarked, adopting a mocking fake girl voice. “I’m sorry, Your Honor, I have no evidence against this suspect, but his vibe is like, totally creepy and my spirit guides confirmed that he’s guilty.”

Hero ran a stop sign on a hard right turn, just to irritate him.

“Jesus Christ, woman, who taught you how to drive?” Luca lost his grip on his cell and Hero took a smug amount of pleasure in how ridiculous he looked trying to keep his eyes on the road and search for the lost phone at the same time.

“Connor, actually, and he used to drive tanks and shit.”

“Well, this is no tank. It barely qualifies as a car.” Luca threw his disapproving glare around the eclectic interior, his eyes finally landing on her ceramic moon dangly she’d hung from the rear view mirror.

“You don’t have to be such an asshole.”

“And you don’t have to be so oblivious.”

“Ob-liv-i-ous
?
” Hero annunciated every syllable. “
Oblivious?
” Damn him for bringing out her high-pitched voice.

“
You
don’t want John the Baptist to be someone you know, especially Professor Cradle Robber back there,” he accused.

“Wow, those detecting skills they taught you at Quantico really paid off.” Okay, now she was just being a bitch, but at least she could fortify the moral high ground by avoiding being childish.

Because
he
started it.

“They’re a damn sight better than your ‘energy’ verdicts.” He used finger rabbit ears, which, again, totally pissed her off. “You’ll be grateful for my instincts when they’re keeping you alive.”

Hero skidded around a chipmunk in the road and narrowly missed an oncoming semi. “
Instincts?
Really? How do those differ from energy? It’s the same fucking thing, you’re just arguing semantics.”

“Wrong,” Luca maintained a death grip on the
oh shit
handle above her window and braced his long legs against the glove box. “Instincts are based on sound reasoning skills and common sense in the face of missing evidence. Both of which you’re sadly lacking.”

“Oh yeah?” Hero sped up to a good fifteen miles over the posted speed limit, hugging the twists of the tree-lined, one-lane highway with reckless miscalculations.

“Tell me you’ve never seen the Roman spear in the Professor Twat Waffle’s study, or did you just
divine
that it wasn’t the one that nearly spilled your insides into the Willamette?”

Hero’s hand flew to her side, pressing against the healed wound as though to keep her internal organs where they were supposed to be. “His name is
Alec.
” She sailed through an orange light. Okay it was red by the time she reached it, but close enough.

“Pull over!” Luca ordered.

“Screw you!”

“Pull the fuck
over.
” Luca seized the steering wheel, forcing Hero to stomp on her breaks if she wanted to avoid kissing a tree with her face as she sailed through the windshield.

They stopped on a soft shoulder she hadn’t seen coming but he must have noticed.

Fucking instincts.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Hero screeched.

“With
me
?” Before she could stop him, Luca grabbed her keys from the ignition and wrenched his door open, a terse string of Spanish words spewing from his mouth like the lyrics of a familiar song.

Loca
. She recognized that one.

Getting out and stomping around the car, she found him with both hands braced on the trunk. “I am
not
crazy. And, it’s not polite to swear at someone in another language. I at
least
have to know what you’re calling me, or it’s not fair.”

Luca blinked at her for a moment. “I’m not—polite?” he said through gritted teeth. “Well neither is vehicular manslaughter.”

“Oh, don’t get you’re handcuffs in a wad, you’re fine.”

“You’re damn right I am, because
I’m
driving.” Luca headed for the driver’s side. “Now, get in the car.”

“The hell you are.” Hero reached for her keys, but he quickly held them above him where she’d have to throw her body against his in order to get them.

Oh why did she have to get her height from her father?

“I said, get. In. The. Car,” he repeated, a dangerous warning flashing in his eyes.

“You’re being unreasonable,” she accused. “And don’t tell me what to do. It’s
my
car.”

“I’m the fucking FBI, I’m appropriating it for official reasons. That’s perfectly
reasonable
considering I just watched you commit a felony and four serious traffic violations.” He jerked open the driver’s side door then turned to jab a finger at her. “You sped past unreasonable to delusional about five miles ago and that terrifies me because it’s going to get you
killed
!”

“It
wasn’t
Alec,” she shrilled, advancing on him and jumping for the keys, which he deftly kept out of her reach. “I would have
known
if he stabbed me!”

“Why?” Luca sneered. “Because you’d willingly let him do it so many times before?”

That was
it
. Before she could think the better of it, Hero balled her fist and wound up for maximum damage, aiming right for his solar plexus.

Luca caught it easily, his long fingers wrapping around her entire fist.

“You are
such
a douche,” she snarled, trying unsuccessfully to wrench her hand back into her possession. “You think you have it all figured out. You don’t trust anyone, not even
yourself
, and all you do is wait for the next monster to jump out of the shadows. Well you’re not
that
smart, Agent Ramirez. If you suspect everyone of being a criminal, then you’re bound to be right, on occasion. But this is my
life
, and if you think I’ll allow you to turn everybody I know and love into a villain, then you don’t know anything about me.”

Luca stared at her with demon-black eyes for ten full seconds. She counted. And had a feeling that he did the same.

“I know enough,” he growled. In a lightning-quick move, she found herself pinned against him and a car for the second time that hour. His dark head dipped low as he crushed his mouth to hers.

Her hands were both imprisoned by his. Her body seemed so small and insignificant against his unyielding bulk. Hero didn’t dare move, didn’t want to, because Agent Luca Ramirez kissed like he did everything else.

With his entire being.

His tongue tangled with hers, exploring, claiming, leaving no place untouched. But the kiss didn’t stop there. His chest rubbed against hers and the heat of their skin melded between the thin cotton of their clothing. Her nipples beaded from the intense friction. The hard length of his erection dug against her belly, and Hero had to stop herself from climbing him like a pole to press against where it belonged.

Every sense not dominated by him melted away. A car flew past on the road, birds and insects made noises in the trees, but her ears were full of her own heartbeat and the sounds of their desperate breaths. They didn’t need to come up for air, they shared it. She filled her nostrils and lungs with him, with chocolate and coffee and the subtle masculine spice of his aftershave. The cold, damp of the light sprinkle didn’t register, but the pleasurable rasp of his invisible stubble drove her to the edge. She wanted to feel it everywhere. On her neck, on her breasts, on the inside of her thighs.

A sound, wild and throaty, broke through their fused lips but she couldn’t be certain who initiated it.

Fuck it.

She surged against him, trying to force them closer. Her arms struggled against his hold as she lifted one leg around him, forcing her skirt up her thigh. To her shock, he read her mind and released her wrists to mold his large hands to her ass. Lifting her, he ground his pelvis against hers, pressing the hot flesh behind his zipper
right
where she wanted it. He kept her in place with one hand, the other reaching to the exposed skin of her smooth thigh and pushing her skirt higher. One more inch and his pants and whatever he wore beneath would be pretty much the only thing separating them. What she had on didn’t really qualify as panties.

Hero clutched fistfuls of his shirt, then his hair, and everywhere she could possibly touch while nipping at his mouth and reveling in the building sexual frenzy she could feel beneath his skin.

Now Hero understood why Luca kept such strict control over his every move. Beneath the suit-coat and rigid restrictions was a demon, a beast of such insatiable appetites that it would devour anything it wanted.

Much like he devoured her now.

It awed and terrified her, how much she wanted to be the one to unleash that and see what happened. That streak of self-destructive thrill had been with her since she was a child, and for the first time, Hero could see it consuming her and leaving her a quivering casualty of this dangerous heat.

Chapter Eleven

“A thousand kisses buys my heart from me;

And pay them at thy leisure one by one.”

~William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis

It was a car that broke the moment. Or, more accurately, the teenagers inside who honked and yelled “Wooooooooooooo!” as they passed, probably saving them from going at it right there on the highway.

Luca acted like a man who’d just put his hand on a hot stove, jumping away from her as though she’d singed him.

Licking his taste from her lips, Hero remained against the car, watching the intermittent raindrops all but evaporate once they hit her skin. Lord, but that was the most erotic experience of her life. How could one kiss get her so aroused? She couldn’t
wait
for that to happen again.

“That can’t
ever
happen again.” Luca gripped the open driver’s door until his knuckles cracked. “Just chalk it up to an inappropriate reaction to a tense situation, and we’ll move on.”

We’ll see.
“Whatever you say,” she lied. “But bet your tight ass that you can’t just use distraction techniques like that every time you’re losing an argument.” Not that she minded him trying, it just wouldn’t work. She was still mad as hell, maybe angrier now that he lit a fire he obviously wasn’t planning on putting out.

In her panties.

“You just don’t know when to give up, do you?” He turned and pinned her with an accusing stare. The fire hadn’t left his eyes, but had banked into something less volcanic and more slow burn. How did anyone keep their legs closed around him?

Two could play at that game. She thrust her hip into her hand and held up the car keys dangling from her finger. He wasn’t the only one with skills. “Giving up isn’t really in the Katrova-Connor vocabulary. A fight is over when blood is spilt or someone’s on their knees.” She gestured to the ground in front of her with her chin.

To her utter shock, Luca’s moist lips threatened a smile that melted her ire like butter on a hot skillet. That fucking dimple. No fair.

“Noted.” With an exhausted sigh he opened the driver’s door wider, putting it in between his body and hers. “Just promise not to kill us.”

“Seriously?” She stood there like a disbelieving idiot for a second before jumping into the driver’s seat. He could have easily taken the keys away from her again. But the slight tremor in his hand caused her to suspect he was avoiding skin to skin contact.

“I don’t think I’m capable of driving at the moment,” he muttered before slamming the door.

Hero watched him all but limp around the car. It surprised her he could walk at all with what he was packing between his legs.

He folded himself into the passenger seat and made a show of putting on his seatbelt. “Just do me a favor and obey traffic laws, will ya? You’re already at three strikes.”

“Three strikes?” Hero fastened her own seatbelt and checked behind her on the highway before pulling onto it. “There’s
unlocking
a car door and lewd behavior.” She held up two fingers. “Traffic violations don’t count as they’re only misdemeanors at best.”

She’d been through enough traffic court to know.

Luca added his thumb to his first two fingers. “Strike three, attempted assault on an officer of the law.”