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There were countless reasons she really shouldn’t be—not the least of which was the career she’d put so much work into and was no longer sure she wanted—but all of them faded into nothingness when he set his other hand on her thigh.
“Maybe a little bit late.”
There was no time to linger, and he didn’t try. Within seconds she found herself tossed onto the tabletop with his hands under her shirt and his lips on her neck. She was working the button on his jeans, and he was already hard and ready for her.
“Don’t you ever get tired of this?” She lifted her hips so he could slide her pants off and toss aside her underwear. “I swear you’re hard all the time.”
“Do you?” He pressed a hand between her legs and came up with two shining fingers. “You’re always wet.”
She grinned at him, shameless in her greed. “I guess not.”
“You’re incredible.” He went back to kissing her neck, whispering praise between each press of his lips. “Beautiful. I can’t keep my fucking hands off you. You’re the first thing I think about in the morning … and the last thing I think about at night.”
“Hurry.” She was amazed at her ability to catch fire from a single look or caress, but everywhere his body was touching hers was immediately electrified with want. “Now, please, now.”
He pushed into her with a grunt of satisfaction. “Perfect,” he said, breathing the word out between clenched teeth. “You’re fucking perfect.”
His dishes shook and his table rattled, but she was beyond worrying about it. If they broke it, she would buy him a new one. As many as they needed. She couldn’t imagine a better thing to do than fuck their way through a furniture store full of tables.
They were wrapped around each other, as close as they could get with their mouths and their tongues and their bodies. Pleasure set every nerve ending alight, but she was thrumming with warmth and something that felt like joy.
She’d never known intimacy that reached all the way into her heart, but she suspected that was what she was experiencing now. It was more than just the general pleasure of having an attentive lover. She felt safe, protected, cared for.
And if the way he was looking at her was any indication, he was having the same conflicting thoughts.
It was too much for her—too soon and too overwhelming and too far into a place she’d promised herself she would not go—and it rocked her to her core because she realized she enjoyed those feelings, and she didn’t necessarily want to go back to living without them.
She buried her face in his neck and let her body override her thoughts. She couldn’t think about that now, so she did the safe thing and shoved it to the back of her mind.
* * *
A long day at the office, four more hours of searching, and an entire pizza later, Eloise was convinced that whatever the killer was trying to hide wasn’t in the files she’d managed to download from Kim’s office. Her table was littered with scraps of paper and crumbs from the cake Ethan had brought in with the pizza, but they were no closer to answers than they had been the day before.
There were no suspicious entries in Kim’s appointment book, no signs of a secret boyfriend or unusual meetings with her coworkers. All of the files Eloise had smuggled out of the office seemed to be in perfect order. The accounts showed regular activity and the only errors they had found were small ones with notes from Kim about the source and the company’s follow-up.
There was nothing that could possibly justify a murder.
“We spent all this time for nothing, didn’t we?” She buried her face in her arms and sniffed against the urge to cry in frustration. “I can’t believe I risked my job for this and we’re no closer than where we started.”
“Maybe we were wrong, and it was something about her personal life that she was trying to hide. You were her friend outside the office and so were Sarah and Chloe. Maybe whatever has all of you as a target is something that has nothing to do with work.”
“Maybe she was hiding a secret life as some senator’s dominatrix, and he was afraid she’d spill the news to the press.”
It took him a moment, staring at her wide eyed, before the deadpan tone of her comment registered. “Hmm, that seems a bit tame for a senator.”
She laughed softly and closed her eyes, the ridiculousness of it all just a little too much for her handle.
“Why don’t you go up and take a shower?” Ethan ran a hand over her back and pressed a soothing kiss to her temple. “We’ve been working on this for hours and I know you’re tired after sleeping on a table all night last night.”
It was hard for her to admit defeat on anything, but nothing sounded quite as good as cleaning the day off her skin and getting some decent rest. “Maybe that’s a good idea. I always have my best ideas in the shower. Maybe the answer will come to me while I’m washing my hair or something.”
It didn’t, but her mind was blissfully empty by the time she was clean and wrapped in a warm towel. After days of worry and grief, it was a relief to have even a few stolen moments when exhaustion and lavender body wash stripped them away and left her with nothing but the desire to close her eyes and slide into dreamless sleep.
The pleasant emptiness was ripped away when she opened her bathroom drawer and her searching fingers brushed against the cigarette pack she had shoved at the back instead of the hairbrush she was trying to find. It had been foolishly sentimental of her to keep it, she’d known that when she’d done it, but she hadn’t expected it to serve as such a potent reminder of her pain. She caressed the pack with her thumb, tracing the edge of the black matchbook inside the clear plastic packaging for a moment before she tossed it into the trashcan beneath the sink.
She’d done her best by Kim and would continue to do so until her killer was found, but she didn’t want hidden reminders waiting to pop up and rip her heart out again.
“Feeling better?” Ethan was leaning against the door frame, watching her with a puzzled expression on his face.
