A Righteous Kill (43 page)

Luca’s next words speared her with equal parts fear and pride. “There will
be
no repentance for you. In the bible, the Lord claims both vengeance and mercy for himself, but before you meet your God, vengeance will first be claimed by me, the innocent victims whose lives you destroyed, and by the people of Portland. And I assure you, I will show
no
mercy.”

Hero heard applause, and the gathered reporters began to vie for statements and answers to questions, to which he gave neither. Eventually, the female newscaster’s voice took over, her voice a few husky octaves lower than before. That brought a tremulous smile to Hero’s lips. Luca could have that effect on any woman.

“Oh man, he just fucked himself,” her brother groaned.

“Sounds like he’s beyond caring.” She could relate. It was time this madness ended before anyone else was hurt. Before more dead bodies were fished out of the river. One way or another, they needed to finish this.

“Yeah, but you just don’t make promises like that in public. Not if you aren’t damn sure you can keep them.” Rown frowned at her. “Why do you think he would lie to the press and tell them that Josiah Winthrop is dead? We know that’s not true.”

Hero was certain that Luca had every intention of keeping those promises. As to lying about Josiah Winthrop’s death? She didn’t have a clue why he would do that, but he probably had a plan.

Twenty minutes later, a key slid into the door and Rown stood, instinctively palming the butt of his weapon.

Hero found it amazing that she knew Luca by the sound of his distinctive, predatory walk in those costly shoes. The security system beeped as it was reset and then all was quiet.

Hero didn’t have the strength to move, so she lay where she was curled facing Rown but away from Luca.

“That was ballsy, Ramirez, I’ll give you that.” Rown gathered his things, hanging his suit coat over his forearm. “But I don’t want to be you when Trojanowski gets wind of it.”

“Vince is meeting him at the ME’s office,” Luca said quietly. “He’ll run damage control.”

“Let’s hope he’s as good as his reputation,” Rown’s wary smile didn’t reach his eyes. “You think it’ll work, calling him out like that?”

“I hope so. I feel like I’ve been trying to have a fist fight with a shadow.”

Her brother reached down to squeeze her shoulder before stepping around the bed and out of sight. “I hope you know what you’re doing. Not just for your sake.”

“I’m ending this.”

Hero didn’t turn to see whatever silent communication happened between them before Rown left, and she didn’t really want to. Once the door closed and she was alone with Luca, the tears started flowing again as she listened to him come closer.

“Did you see her body?” she asked, trying to keep the tears from her voice. She could feel him looming on the other side of the mattress, silent, dark, and angry.

“No. Vince is attending the autopsy.”

Hero pushed up onto her elbow so she could look over her shoulder at him. “Why didn’t you go with him?”

He looked haggard, stark, and dangerous, looming above her bed. “After talking to Winthrop I needed—” His jaw flexed a few times as he tracked the trail of a tear down the curve of her jaw. “I needed to check on you.”

Touched, Hero rolled over and rose to her knees, bringing them face to face. She wiped at her wet cheeks with shaking hands, but it seemed the dam had finally broken, and fresh ones rolled into the space.

His dark eyes softened as he reached up and took both of her hands into his. He didn’t offer any worthless platitudes. He didn’t tell her not to cry or that everything would be all right. He just turned her hands until they were both palm up in his larger ones. Her skin looked very pale, almost translucent next to his. The fine blue veins in her wrists pulsed softly beneath his grip. A shudder of sensation rippled up her arm as he softly caressed the skin next to her puncture scars, as though he understood that touching them was unpleasant.

She’d been so hesitant to let anyone else inspect her healed wounds. To touch them. It was too personal. Too intimate. But she sat passively as Luca lifted her left palm, then her right, and pressed his warm lips to the raised skin in a reverent kiss. It felt like a ritual. Like worship. And Hero’s tears flowed for a completely different reason by the time he lifted his head.

“She died before any of this happened,” he murmured. “She didn’t suffer this pain.”

She searched his eyes for an eternity, probing for a gentle lie. His gaze was steady, unblinking. A ragged sob ripped from somewhere so deep, Hero hadn’t realized that place existed. It was a fear born of memory. A helpless dread that a loved one had been tortured and terrorized in the same way she had.

“Thank God,” she gasped, crumpling into his arms as little explosions of gratitude and anguish burst from her soul. A cyclone of loss and anger and grief tried to rip her away from herself, and it seemed the only things holding her together were Luca’s solid arms. His chin rested on her head as he let her cry out her misery. Her pain. Her confusion and fear and all the other emotions she hadn’t allowed herself to examine during the past few months. She’d tried so hard to not let this horrific experience change her, or make her bright world darker. But with each day that passed she could feel a little bit more of the constant threat turning her hopes in to fear. Her faith into doubt. And her open heart into something broken and unrecognizable.

After a long time, the storm mellowed to a light, sniffling trickle. “What if he wins?” Hero whispered against his chest. “What if he breaks me?”

Luca’s finger reached beneath her chin and lifted her face away from his soggy shirt. His black eyes were uncharacteristically tender as he leaned down and brushed his lips against her wet cheeks, her eye-lids, her forehead, and chin.

“I won’t let him.” His vow was no less powerful for its lack of volume, and Hero instantly felt the constant flow of now-familiar electricity crackle through innumerable atoms vibrating out of control in the air between them.

His muscles hardened against her body, and he paused for a desperate moment, his lips hovering above hers in silent question.

Hero closed the gap. He tasted of her salty tears and cautious desire. They’d never kissed like this, not once. Instead of frantic, unspent passion, and wet, penetrating thrusts, the kiss was full of comfort and tender regard.

Luca moaned and cupped her face in his hands, his thumbs brushing her tears away with heart-melting care. His full lips swept against hers like the caresses of butterfly wings, lighting the nerves of her mouth on fire with a gentle drag and release.

Their passion was a whisper where before it had been a roar. It snaked through the room as tangible and indefinable as the wind, blowing away errant pangs of hurt and sorrow until they were suffused with warmth and ardor.

Hero’s body released a wet rush of desire in answer to the hard length he pressed against her hip. As Luca fused their mouths together, she reached for his jacket and pushed it from his shoulders. He worked at his holster and simultaneously stepped out of his shoes as she undid his shirt buttons.

Their breaths came faster now, feeding the flame between them, giving each other sustenance as neither of them was willing to separate for long enough to breath. Her shirt was a stretchy halter-top that Luca pushed down instead of up, taking her leggings and thong along with it. His tongue swept into her mouth with a hot caress as he undid his belt and slacks, letting them fall off his lean hips and puddle at his feet.

He laid her down, his arms cradling her as he followed, settling in-between her legs. The inferno built between them as their bare skin contacted and then merged, fitting together now as though they belonged. As though they’d been doing this for lifetimes upon lifetimes.

Hero sighed in relief as he filled her sense of loss and emptiness with hot flesh and pleasure. His tongue and hands continued to stroke and caress her as he rocked his hips against her, entering her body and retreating with long, slow, exquisite strokes. Their mouths swallowed each other’s moans, taking them just as deep. The friction of their warm skin sparked and crackled until Hero was certain she could feel the essence of him inside every part of her, from where they joined, to the tips of the finest hair follicle.

For a man so constantly on the edge, he exercised unnatural control and precision in bed. Once he found what made her gasp, he never altered, just pressed his hot sex against her sensitized inner flesh until she jerked and dug her heels into the mattress, her nerves pulsing with an aching, relentless climax.

To her surprise, Luca pulled out of her, bending his knees and trailing his mouth from her lips to her chin, and down the vulnerable skin of her throat to her breasts. He paused there, licking and tugging the small pink nipples into jutting peaks, moaning at her soft sighs of pleasure before moving on.

Hero bent her neck to watch him drift lazily down the flat plane of her stomach, the pale skin unmarred but for the healed jagged gash in her side. Luca didn’t ignore it, and the muscles in her stomach quivered as his raw growl rolled over her.

He didn’t speak, and neither did she. Somehow it seemed that words would cheapen the moment, would profane the sensations and emotions flowing between them that language was not meant to contain. That Shakespeare, himself, could not properly describe.

Black lashes drifting over his sharp ochre cheekbones, Luca hid his expression from her as he pressed kisses to each of her hips, nudging her pale thighs wide enough to accommodate the broad expanse of his shoulders.

The air felt chilly against her warm, wet sex as she exposed it to his hungry gaze. He lost no time, his head dropping, his pink tongue reaching out from behind those wicked lips to split her with a long, sinuous lick.

She moaned so loudly it echoed back at her from the walls of her spacious loft.

As with his kisses, the feel of his mouth against her core was intensified because he barely touched her. He hovered above her clit, his hot breath creating both sensation and aggravation. For just a moment, his eyes speared her over the expanse of her trembling body, a brilliance of emotion shining from the darkness she always saw there.

She mouthed his name, her tight throat unable to produce a sound, even a desperate one.

His arms plunged beneath her thighs and locked them open, one hand spreading across her torso, the other settling on her mound as he parted her and opened his lips over her sex, pulling her flesh gently into his mouth.

Hero’s entire body clenched and strained at the incredible sensation. His hands held her lower body prisoner as he rolled the flat of his masterful tongue over her, sucking on her with subdued strength.

She couldn’t breathe, and then she was screaming his name as fireworks went off behind her eyelids. She was aware of the bunch of his biceps against her as he battled with her straining, trembling thighs as wave after wave of crippling pleasure called for her to curl into herself before it killed her. He didn’t allow it. He stuck with her until the pulses became painful and over-stimulating, pulling away at just the right moment.

Hero panted and shook, but he still wasn’t finished. Releasing one of her thighs, he traced his middle finger down the slit of her body, found the entrance where she wept both desire and release and invaded with a twisting thrust.

Hero enjoyed this with the lazy, disconnected amusement one felt after two mind-blowing orgasms. She liked the contrast of his thick, masculine arm made darker and more exotic by the paleness of her stomach and inner thighs. Biting his full lip, glossy from her pleasure, he joined his middle finger with another, and then another, stretching her replete muscles as his tongue snaked out to softly tease at the engorged nub of her clit.

She came again. Hard, unexpectedly fast, drenching his hand and riding his fingers to a burning conclusion. He turned his head and nipped at sensitive flesh of her inner thigh, leaving a slick path there.

Luca crawled up her body, a new rigid intensity vibrating through his big frame. He’d given. And now he was about to take.

He found the opening to her body without a hitch and lingering pulses of her orgasm pulled him deep inside. His gentle eyes had hardened. All thoughts of comfort and languor evaporated as he looped his arm beneath her bent knee and stretched her high and wide, enough to press their hipbones together.

He cursed. She arched. And then they were pounding against each other, the connection going deeper than their thrusting flesh, deeper than their grinding bones, speeding through the very fibers of their DNA, their smallest molecules, until it reached that part of their being that everyone knew was there, but no one agreed on exactly what to call it. Their spirits. Their souls. The part of the construct that is built and unraveled by forces unseen. As he drove her to a peak she’d never thought possible, Hero lost track of how many times she said “yes.” Only that she chanted it like a prayer, hoping he heard it as the answer to any question he’d ever dare ask her.

He followed her to that place, his bliss seeming to last for an eternity as he clutched her to his straining body, and grit his teeth as though afraid he’d say something he couldn’t take back.

****

Hero dozed in the comfort and warmth of Luca’s arms, her mind working too much to let her drift off into sleep. Guilt and loss didn’t belong in the aftermath of their lovemaking. There would be a time and place for grief, but not here. Instead of dwelling on Angora’s death, she did her best to think about other things. Upcoming holidays instead of funerals. The safety of her family instead of the cruelty of the world. Falling in love with Luca instead of the hatred of a madman.

Luca’s fingers lazily drifted from her elbow to her shoulder and back again in a soft caress. A lover’s caress. Hero’s own hand explored the enticing ripples of his strong abs, finding places that made him purr and others that were sensitive and caused his skin to twitch.

His jaw cracked on a yawn and he pulled her in closer. As she listened to the breath fill and cycle through his lungs, she rejoiced in what they’d found in each other. He’d pleasured her beyond comprehension. Expressed his feelings with his mouth in ways that words would never begin to touch. It would likely always be that way between them. Luca wouldn’t bare his soul or expose his needs and feelings to her with words. He was too proud for that. Too damaged, maybe. But he was a master at expressing these things with his body. His care showed in the way he protected her. The way he controlled his strength when handling her. Putting her needs, her safety, her comfort, and her pleasure before his own.