‘Come for me,’ I whispered, which seemed to be her final undoing. I felt her shudder against me, and to make sure I dragged it out fully, Ilowered my head and pulled one of her nipples gently into my mouth.She let out another moan as I did, lengthening her orgasm.
When I finally did slide into her, it was slow. I was careful. I held her face in my hands and kissed her like she mattered. Kissed her like I was sorry we had wasted so much time. Kissed her like I loved her, because I did.
Her eyes were glassy when she looked at me, lips parted, breath catching in her throat. And for once, I didn’t tease. I didn’t joke. I didn’t provoke her for a reaction. And neither did she. We just were. Like we had been that morning so many years ago.
She moved her hips gently, matching my rhythm and speed. Her hands slid down my chest, then back up to my shoulders. I could feel her heartbeat in her fingertips.
‘I’ve got you,’ I whispered. ‘I’ve always had you.’
Her breath came out in short, sharp bursts and she buried her face in my neck as she started to come apart. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t wild. It was quiet and raw, and she stunned me with the most vulnerability I’d ever seen in her. She looked me in the eyes before her entire body tightenedaround me, then she lowered her head and I held on to her. And then I feltmyself start to fall apart too. I grabbed her waist and brought us together as hard as I could. Pushing myself deeper into her as she came around me and I came too.
I pressed my face into her shoulder and wrapped my arms around her like I didn’t want to let her go.
Because I didn’t.
We stayed like that for the longest time. Wrapped up together until the water around us started to cool. Neither of us spoke. We didn’t need to.
Because there were no words in the world sufficient to describe what we were feeling right now.
CHAPTER 44
It was the quiet that woke me. It was eerie, unnatural. The kind of quiet that made your skin prickle and your instincts tell you towake the fuck up.
I blinked. My eyes were sticky from lack of sleep. I rubbed them and caught sight of the bruises on my wrist. I smiled to myself. After the shower and what had happened there, slow and soft, we’d come back into the bedroom and fucked each other. Really fucked.
I turned. Cam’s arm was thrown over his head and his left leg was still tangled up in mine. I watched him sleep for a moment, noting the red marks on his neck from my teeth. But then . . .that strange feeling.
An icy feeling clawing over me, something dangerous and sharp. Something was wrong, something was waiting. And then instinctually, as if a part of me already knew, I sat up and looked across to the other side of the room.
Blue eyes. Dark hair. A knife on his lap. He sat in the armchair like he owned it, like it belonged to him. But a man like this belonged wherever and anywhere he chose to belong. And clearly the Blade had chosen to belong right here. I reached over and slapped Cam on the arm. He reacted immediately.
‘What?’ He turned to look at me. I gestured to the other side of the room with my eyes, and the look on my face must have told him to get the hell up too, because I’d never seen anyone sit up so fast.
The Blade smiled. A slow smile, the kind a crocodile might give you just before it pulled you into a watery death roll.
‘I started thinking to myself,’ he said, casually picking the knife up and tossing it from one hand to the other, ‘what would a private investigator and a policeman be doing on a little island like this?’
Cam tensed behind me. I could feel his muscles tighten under the sheets. But neither of us moved.
The Blade tapped the knife against his forehead. It had clearly just been polished, because it sent shafts of light shooting across the room. ‘Then I started thinking that maybe they weren’t just here for the beautiful sunsets and the birdwatching. Maybe they were here watching something else, someone.’ He smiled again, wider this time. ‘Maybe someone like Victor. Who just happened to be the same personIwas watching.’
He looked at us and raised his brows, as if wanting confirmation. It was of course totally unnecessary, because this was perhaps the most redundant question that had ever been posed to anyone before. We all knew the answer to it.
‘So then I started thinking . . . why would a cop and aPIboth be watching Victor? So many people for one fat little red man.’ He tilted his head in mock curiosity. ‘Did he forget to pay a speeding fine? Did he jaywalk?’ He chuckled softly to himself, spinning the knife lazily through his fingers, a skill I was sure he’d spent many, many hours perfecting. ‘But then it hit me. Maybe you’re not here just for Victor. Maybe you’re here because of who he’s meeting. Maybe you were actually hired by someone who lives a little further north. Someone with a vested interest in,’ he shrugged dramatically, ‘oh, I don’t know, maybe diamonds?’
He raised his brows again, giving us a moment to confirm or deny this. We did nothing. He tapped his head with his knife again. ‘All that thinking really hurts my brain, you know,’ he said, wincing dramatically. ‘All that thinking and I still couldn’t quite work it out. But I did work out one thing. Want to know what it is?’ It was clear he was enjoying this little moment with his victims, and I got the feeling it was all part of his ritual, something he did often. When we still didn’t respond, he carried on. ‘I worked out that it doesn’t matterwho sent you, it only matters that you’re here. Because I’m here.’ His smile dropped. ‘And that’s a big problem.’
There was a beat of silence, and then Cam cleared his throat. ‘Well, we’reterriblysorry to hear what a problem we’ve been, isn’t that right, Lizzy?’
I nodded. ‘We hate causing problems, keeps us up at night. And we’d hate to think we gave you a headache. I do have some aspirin by the sink if you need it?’
The Blade burst out laughing. It was a disturbing sound. ‘I like you guys, I really, really do, especially you, Lizzy, but . . .’ He stood up slowly and walked towards the bed, his knife dangling from his hand like he’d done this a million times before. No doubt he had. ‘You’ve caused me to do a lot of thinking. Too much thinking, because then I had to ask myself what I should do about this problem. I know what I’d normally do about a problem that stands in my way.’ He paused and looked us both up and down. ‘But killing a cop and a renowned private investigator, that would be messy. And my bosses hate mess. They like it when things are clean and neat, as if they never happened at all, you know what I mean?’ He didn’t wait for us to reply. ‘Me, on the other hand, I’ve never been a neat man. My mom always used to shout, “Enzo, Enzo, clean your room, put your plates in the sink, pick up your toy knives.”’ He sighed and looked off into the corner of the room reverently. ‘God rest her soul.’
‘Amen,’ Cam said from next to me.
‘Amen,’ repeated the Blade on another large sigh. Then he threw his free hand in the air dramatically. ‘So now I have to try and be neat because I like my job, especially in this economy, you know.’
‘Of course,’ Cam said. ‘We wouldn’t want you to lose your job over us.’
