“It is.” She had been there. Oh, she hadn’t traveled the full seven hundred miles of the amazing natural asset, but she had gone diving at the northern tip of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and explored several miles of the massive structure. “Why haven’t you done it?”
“I’ve been too focused on my work at the aquarium. I’ve been trying to convince Paul to take on some other projects, things that would have brought more endangered marine life into the aquarium, helping to preserve them for people to see. You know, for people who can’t dive off a boat in the open ocean like we can.”
“Like your sister.” How could she have forgotten? Drake’s highest motivation in the work he did at the aquarium came from his disabled younger sister. Confined to a wheelchair from a disease Megan didn’t understand, the girl couldn’t explore the open ocean, couldn’t experience the wonders of the sea the way she desperately longed to do.
Drake nodded. “Like my sister. I’ll do it someday. Just not right now.” He leaned over, pulled his wallet from his back pocket, and bumped the remote again. “Let’s get out of here.”
Megan closed her eyes, waited for the latest jolt to simmer down, and glared at him. “Yes, let’s do. I would hate to strangle you with all these people watching.”
He laughed and paid the tab.
“Where are we going?”
Your place or mine?
Her apartment was closer. She knew he lived off the beaten path somewhere in the neighboring city of Gulfport.
“To take a walk on the beach.” He held out his hand as he slid off his barstool. “We’ll leave our cars here and come back to get them later.”
Megan put her hand in his, loving the way his long fingers instantly laced with hers. Another jolt in her pussy had her step faltering and her grip on his hand tightening as sensations blasted through her. “Would you stop that?”
He chuckled. “Nope.”
She stopped. “I need to go the restroom before we leave.”
“You’re not taking it out.”
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
He whirled her around, yanking her hard against his solid wall of his chest. The predatory heat in his eyes when he looked down at her burned through her soul. “It’s my toy. I get to take it out when I’m ready.”
Megan gulped, the idea of his fingers inside her pussy, searching for the bullet sent her right back to teetering on the orgasmic edge. “Then I hope you’re ready soon.”
Chapter Five
Drake had been ready to take the sex toy from her pussy the moment she walked out of the ladies room and sat down on the stool next to him. Sweet Jesus, didn’t she know he had been punishing himself more than her all night? He had lied when he had told her he couldn’t hear the bullet’s motor. He had been sitting close enough to her to hear the low hum every time he had switched it on. And damned if hearing it, knowing the pleasure she was getting from it, imagining how her slick pussy looked rocking from the pulsations of the bullet, hadn’t had the same effect as hooking electrically charged clamps to his balls.
His dick was so hard he could barely walk as he led her across the street to one of the few areas of the beach left untouched by the casinos. Neon lights from the businesses along the strip painted a colorful glow on the sand. He tipped his head back, enjoying the cool breeze that blew off the Gulf of Mexico, turning an otherwise late summer night into a pleasant time for a walk on the beach.
Among other things.
His gaze landed on the pier up ahead, on the darkened places beneath it the neon lights didn’t reach. It was perfect for what he had in mind.
“Why did you come to my apartment last night?”
Her question surprised him. He glanced at her and felt an unfamiliar stir in his chest at the way the moonlight played on her blonde hair. He had never thought she was beautiful in any conventional, truly arresting sort of way. Yet, the more time he spent with her lately, the more gorgeous she seemed to be.
“We’ve known each other for years,” she continued when he didn’t answer. “We’ve hung out some, but you’ve never called and definitely never come to see me.”
“Are you saying you wished I had come sooner?” He didn’t quite know how to answer her, so he asked a question of his own. In truth, he had needed to see her. He had figured that much out last night. After seeing her at the aquarium yesterday afternoon, being assaulted by the hunger for her that had never gone away, he had known he couldn’t keep his distance from her any longer. He had spent the afternoon toying with the idea, but never came to a definite decision until he found himself on her doorstep.
She seemed to think about her answer for a moment, then shrugged. “Yeah.”
“You weren’t ready.” He had figured that out, too. He had sensed what she wanted, read the dark cravings in her eyes plenty of times in the past, but he had known she wasn’t yet ready to face those longings, to give in to the carnal pleasures of submission and domination.
“And what made you think I was last night?”
“I didn’t come to your place simply because of that last night.” He had gone there because of Paul, because they shared a mutual bond to an old friend that had been taken from their lives.
“I know, but pushing that aside…”
“I just knew you were.” He looked at her. “I
know
you are.”
She laughed. God, he loved making her laugh. The musical sound drifted over him on the mild breeze of the night, seeping into his skin and flirting with his very soul. And her smile, she really did have an amazing smile. He saw it every time he closed his eyes, watched it turn sultry and tantalizing when she submitted to him in his dreams.
“It amazes me how well you think you know me.” She drew her brows together. “Am I really that transparent?”
“Sometimes. You’re not a woman who can be satisfied with the mundane, with the vanilla you’ve been given.”
“With the sex I’ve had, you mean.”
“For starters. There’s a demon in you right here.” He reached across his body to touch her temple. “And right here.” He dropped his hand to her chest, putting a finger between her breasts. “And definitely right here.” He turned slightly to slip his hands between her legs and cupped her pussy, felt the warmth and wetness seep into his palm. “That wants to know what the other side is like.” He pulled his hand back and shrugged. “I’ve just been waiting for you to decide to let that demon free.”
“I do like living life on the edge.”
He grinned at her. “I know. What are your plans for tomorrow?”
She sighed. “If I answer that I’ll have to let the detective out of my apartment.”
“You can lock her up again in a minute.”
“Okay.” She didn’t look at him, her attention seemingly transfixed on the sand beneath her feet.
He knew her mind was elsewhere, though, taking a speedboat back to the case, likely wondering if she was walking along, holding hands with a killer.
“I plan to continue the investigation. I haven’t really interrogated Brandon yet. Aside from you and Debbie, he was the last person to see Paul alive, the last that we know of to leave the aquarium before the attack.” She took a deep breath and let it out slow. “I need to talk to Marie, too, along with Walter Samuels, Joan Baxter… Hell, every employee Paul had. At this point, everyone is a potential suspect.”
She stopped walking and turned to face him. “I want you to go to the aquarium with me, too. I want you to walk me through that night, everything you did, everything you saw.” She shook her head and lifted a shoulder. “Maybe doing it will jar something in your memory that you don’t realize is there.”
“Maybe. Are you telling me you believe I didn’t kill Paul?”
“I’m telling you that I’m covering all the bases.” She sighed again and cupped the side of his face. “I don’t think you’re a killer, Drake. If I did, I certainly wouldn’t be out here alone with you right now.”
The knots loosened in his gut. He hadn’t realized how desperately he needed her to believe him until that moment, how much it would really mean to him. Not just because she was in a position to help him. Without her, he didn’t doubt that Cusack would have already locked his ass behind bars. But he had needed her to believe him for a much deeper reason, had needed her to trust him.
Because you’re falling for her.
The thought came from so far out of left field it hit him like a physical blow. He jerked, averting his gaze as a double-edged sword sliced through him, one side sharpened by the realization he was indeed falling for her and the other side honed with a fear he had never known.
“What’s wrong?” Her hand fell to his bicep. Her other one, still laced with his, tightened its grip.
Bang-up job at hiding that one, dumbass.
He reached in his pocket as he looked back at her, found the remote, and thumbed the switch. Her eyes immediately grew heavy lidded, filling with pleasure as the low hum of the vibrator danced in the night air.
“Time to send the detective back home,” he told her, his voice low and husky even to his own ears. The sound of the bullet moved over him, taunting him with the knowledge that it was giving her pleasure right now instead of his massively aching cock.
Jesus, he needed to be inside her. His shaft tingled, his balls tightening to the point of sheer pain. His fingers felt dry, longing to go in search of the wetness he knew he would find in her pussy.
“Time to stop punishing me, don’t you think?” she countered, her words quivering with her arousal.
“Almost.” Drake started walking again, his focus returning to the pier, to the spot he had already picked out beneath it. He led her there, the sound of the vibrator and her ragged breaths fueling his every step.
“Our cars are back that way.”
He had to hand it to her. She was a pro at keeping her composure, even with a sex toy lodged in her pussy, caressing her insides and keeping her right there on the edge. It had been his plan all night. He had watched her, turned on the bullet just long enough to put her within a hairsbreadth of coming before he wrenched the pleasure away.
“We won’t make it to the car, and we certainly won’t make it to your place or mine.” He stopped beneath the pier in a darkened spot that provided just enough moonlight for him to see her face. “Right here will do.”
He spun her around, released her hand, and unfastened his shorts. “Suck me off, Megan. I want to feel your lips wrapped around my cock.”
Wicked excitement danced in her eyes as she glanced around before meeting his gaze. “You know I could lose my badge for this? At the very least, I’d be in a world of shit if we get caught.”
Drake lifted a brow. “I thought you liked living on the edge of danger.”
Her lips unfolded in a grin of pure vixen intention and promised satisfaction. “I do.” She reached inside his shorts and briefs, curled her slender fingers around his shaft, and pulled his cock free as she sank to her knees.
Drake sucked a breath through clenched teeth as she started to stroke his cock, slow movements of her satiny hand up and down his shaft, working his length until he felt beads of pre-cum form on his cockhead. Her sinful lips closed around his foreskin, and she licked the pre-cum with a swipe of her tongue that had his knees threatening to buckle.
“Ah, God.” The words left him on a gasp as he closed his eyes, his head falling back to hit the stilt of the pier behind him. Her lips were like bands of silk tightening on the mushroomed head of his dick. She dipped her tongue through the slit in the tip, moaning low as she tasted his pre-cum treat, then tongued the head to the roof of her mouth as she explored the sensitized vein that ran along the underside of his cock.
Drake knew he had been blessed with a larger-than-average cock. Few sex partners had ever been able to take all of him. Megan did it, though. She swallowed his full length with such slow finesse that his hands buried in her hair, fisting the strands tightly as her lips met with the flesh of his body.
His balls quaked from the shock, his anus puckering as a riot of rapturous sensations sizzled through his body at the realization that she had swallowed him completely down her throat. She worked his cock with her lips, her throat, and her teeth until it was all he could do to hold back the begging pants that collected on his tongue.
“Fuck, baby, you have a wicked mouth.”
She moaned again, and the vibrations of the sound tormented him to the edge. Her hand slipped between his legs, found his sac, and rolled his nuts in her palm. His shaft tightened, release one more lick and suck away. He let go of her hair, gripped her upper arms, and pulled her back.
Her mouth made an audible pop as his cock slid free and she looked up at him from beneath her long lashes, laughter twisting with the heat in her eyes. “I wasn’t done.”
He yanked her up, spun them both around to lean her against the stilt, and went to work on the button of her shorts. “Fuck yeah, you are. I’m not waiting another minute to be inside you.” He jerked her shorts and panties down, delved a hand between her legs, and sank two fingers into her pussy.
“Ah, God,” she moaned, her hips pumping against his questing fingers as he groped inside her for the still-vibrating bullet. “It would be easier if you turned it off first.”