Chapter 5

 

The soft beeps of her cell phone were the ones to softly rouse Keisha out of her slumber. Her unfocused eyes blinked at the softly fluttering curtains of the far wall as she came to full consciousness.

Lying under the thick softness of her comforter Keisha clenched her top leg around the pillow that was between them. Last night had crippled her senses. The small press of Hunter’s thigh against her sex had sent her nerves into a frenzy. Wild sensations had run through her like a fire, scorching up and down her neural pathways only to reroute and stun her again.

At home a deep ache had settled between her legs and it had taken all her mental strength to make it fade. But that hadn't stopped her from going to bed with one of her king-sized pillows firmly lodged between her legs.

The very act of going to sleep had been laced with trepidation. She had feared that her dreams would be haunted with green eyes but the only thing she experienced was the same sensation the day before. There was something that she was overlooking, something important but for all the searching her mind still didn’t supply what that was.

The beeps came again and she reached out to take the slim device off the table and sleepily mumble, “’Llo?”

“Keisha,” a now concerned voice came through the line, the voice of her friend Lea, “Are you sick?”

“No,” Keisha yawned, “Just sleepy, why?”

“Because the Keisha I know doesn’t sleep past dawn, it’s to eight now.” Lea replied, “I tried calling you about five times already.”

Pulling the phone away Keisha saw the blinking icon of missed calls and then saw the time, it really was seven-fifty on Saturday morning. “Ah, so you have. But what’s up?”

“What’s up is the fact that we haven’t had brunch in over three weeks, that’s what’s up.” Lea replied with what sounded like a regretful tone, “It’s been too long for us to not meet.”

Sitting up Keisha rested against the headboard and bunched the blankets around her waist, “That’s true but your job takes you all over the place and you know that Danielle’s production of that new movie is taking up her time.”

“True,” Lea replied with a sing-song tone, “But I finally got through to her, she’s free today. If we don’t meet today we might not get this chance for another decade.”

Keisha laughed softly and swung her legs out of the warm blanket, “You know for an architect you do have a pension for exaggeration. Shouldn’t you have become a writer of something?”

“Oh, just shut up and get down at The Ruins at two.” Lea playfully snapped, “We have a lot to talk about.”

Tugging her robe over her body one-handed Keisha grinned, "You mean that Italian boy-toy you're failing to keep a secret from us."

There was a pronounced silence on the line, “… I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Snapping the light on in the bathroom Keisha laughed, “Keep telling yourself that, later then.”

“Huh hmm, you’d better show up,” Lea snorted.

Resting the phone on the vanity’s counter Keisha braced her arms on the face basin and looked with slightly tired eyes at her reflection in the medicine cabinet’s mirror.

Blankly, she stared at her face, her skin tone was even enough even though there were small dark circles under her eyes. She traced her fingers over her nose and down to her lips where she felt deep regret that Hunter hadn’t tasted.

"I’m holding back because I want you to want me to the point where you won't say no…. You were brave tonight, I’ll give you that but I want you to burn, Keisha. I want all that cool control of yours gone and the real aching need behind it to beg me to take you…. To make you scream for me…over and over again… I'll see you soon, Keisha."

 

The words he had husked into her ear while being braced between the cold metal of her car and the warm heat of Hunter’s body were just as strong now as they were last night.

Her head fell over the sink and she saw the small twitches of her fingers that were aching to bury themselves in his hair while his hot mouth roamed her body.

“Get it together Keisha,” she murmured to herself. “You’re stronger than this.”

After a rhythm of calming breaths, the small trembles subsided and she took up her toothbrush.

She had errands to run and then meet her girlfriends at two, she couldn’t afford to waste time daydreaming about what might happen.

 

*****

 

This was slowly turning into his nightmare; Hunter Blake was a hundred percent sure that some malevolent force was laughing at him.

The raid yesterday had turned up to be a bust. The place Jackson had directed them to was nothing more than a shoebox apartment with a ratty couch and a desktop. It had all the makings of a crash-pad. Just like the temp places cops used in undercover assignments it was made for one reason- a distraction. That meant the damn mastermind was somewhere else.

Needless to say, Hunter was more than pissed.

He had watched with lowered and blank eyes as the desktop were carted off to the cyber-crimes department for analysis. The backup officers who had accompanied the ‘raid' knew better than to say a word to him as they went back to the office.

Hunter had stonily finished his day with reports while trying hard to shove the fact that he had ran into another dead-end. He’d skipped dinner in preference of finishing some more paperwork and then had headed out to the shooting range. He had some anger to get off his chest.

After shredding more than four targets he had picked up on the sound of another person shooting their way through frustration. To a trained person like him the distinction between normal shooting and frustrated shooting was easy to detect; with frustration, the shots were always released quicker.

He’d finished his last round and walked out of his cubicle to spot Keisha standing like a monolith in all black and decimating the target before her with that forceful look on her face.

She shot without hesitation, canceling the kickback by shooting through it. Not many knew that trick and Hunter realized she really knew her way around a gun- and that in itself was so arousing.

Somehow, they had ended up at the Mexican place and with every moment that passed the detective debated on carrying her back to his place. He knew she wanted it and it was clear he felt it too, but it was too soon. Over and over again he spotted the hesitation in her eyes and he knew that though she was enticed she wasn’t going to fully give in until all that caution was gone.

Pressed against her on the car Hunter had felt her pebbled nipples on his chest and the tempting opening of her lips but he had pulled away. He wanted her to burn, just like he was starting to.

Walking away was one of the hardest things he had done but it was done for a greater cause. There would be no holding back when she was ready for him.

Even though it was his day off Hunter had turned up at the PD to go over the files- again. He was sure there was something he was missing. Keisha’s business hadn’t really got on the map until four years ago and the account had opened almost a year before that.

That automatically struck out people in her business who would want to harm her so the obvious conclusion was it was someone she knew before that.

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains however improbable must be the truth- Sherlock Holmes.” Hunter quoted knowing that he had to do some real digging into Keisha’s past.

Strolling into the cybercrimes unit he approached Jackson who shot him an apprehensive look from over his Starbucks cup of coffee. “Detective, how can I help you?”

“Jackson,” Hunter said, “I need you to do something that, well, isn’t exactly legal.”

 

*****

 

“Aw damn it,” Keisha swore softly while looking at the heavily packed parking lot of the Mediterranean restaurant, “Just my luck.”

Checking her rear-view mirror Keisha frowned slightly, a small grey and heavily tinted Jeep was behind her. It had pulled out from just below her house and had been behind her for the whole trip to the restaurant. It wasn’t that close to tailgating but it was a little unnerving.

She wanted to test if she was really being followed and stalled at the intersection to turn into the parking lot and waited.

After a moment the car behind her honked and then overtook her and sped off. Breathing out some relief Keisha turned inside and slowly cruised to find any available spot.

Thankfully, a car was pulling out and she waited to take its spot. Reaching over she took up her clutch filled with her cell and wallet and left the car into the calm afternoon light.

Today she opted for a simple fit-and-flare A-line white dress with a tan jacket over and tan block heels. Her matching shades were on and she strode into the cool white furnished restaurant and instantly spotted Lea and Danielle.

The two had an open bottle before them and were sipping the deep red liquid from bellied glassed. Danielle glanced up, spotted her and nudged Lea. Both women stood up as she arrived and took turns to hug her.

"Rocking the shades huh," Lea teased while holding out her arms, "Something's up. I've missed you, Keisha,"

“Me too Lea,” Keisha admitted with a sigh and smiled at her Dominican born friend who was resplendent in a soft red outfit, “And I’d say the same for you; rocking the golden hair huh? You look good though. And Dani, how’s work.”

"A pain in my butt," Danielle snorted while reaching for the wine. The muted gold of her watch was a beautiful contrast to her dark mocha skin. "Do you know how spoiled these stars are? One moment they want red M&Ms and the next they're dumping them down the toilet. I swear I'm an adult babysitter."

“Well,” Keisha grinned, “Wasn’t that what you signed up for when choosing film production?”

Danielle narrowed her dark brown eyes, “No, I signed up because I wanted to meet Denzel Washington and Idris Elba, not some washed up Robert Pattinson lookalike.”

"Aw hush," Lea mockingly sympathized as she reached out to pat her hand, "At least you have the lookalike."

A strange look crossed Danielle’s face then slipped to sickly sweet, “You’re right, he’s much better than the Robert DeNiro lookalike you have.”

Admirably Lea brushed it off and sipped her wine, “I have no idea what you’re talking about and even if I did, um, Keisha, don’t look but there’s this guy that just at the check-out counter and he’s looking over at you.”

Premonition like never before settled into Keisha’s gut, “Let me guess, he’s tall, dark haired, green eyes, has a scowl on his face but is drop dead gorgeous?”

Lea’s eye shifted from over Keisha’s shoulder to the woman sitting who was calmly sipping her wine beside her, “Um, yeah, how the hell do you know that?”

Hunter. In hindsight, she really should have expected Hunter to know her car anywhere it was, in fact, the man had probably memorized her license plate; in both military codes and probably binary.

“Because I know him,” Keisha said simply and then turned to look at him.

Hunter was turned away but her hazel eyes mapped his corded body, now clad in sleek Riders’ jeans and a leather jacket over it. His hair looked more ruffled and he had thick boots on.

When he turned she glimpsed a pair of silver dog-tags resting on his chest dark clad chest. And when his eyes met hers she slowly lifted her glass to him and he returned her gesture with a smirk and a two-fingered salute then took his plastic bag with his take-out containers and left.

Keisha was extremely hesitant to face her friends because she knew she was going to face a barrage of questions, but it was inevitable so she did. Lea and Danielle’s eyes were afire with questions and in the split second before Lea said something Keisha cut her off.

“No.”

A look was shared between the two and almost in unison asked, “No what?”

“No, I am not telling either of you who he is, how I know him, where I know him from or what he is to me. I’m not telling you anything, so just forget it; case closed.” Keisha said evenly.

"No fair," Lea grumbled while refilling her glass, "A heart-stopping hottie like that staring at you and you're holding out on us? Did we kill your cat or something?"

“Oh, stop being a child,” Keisha rolled her eyes, “He’s a guy I know and he called to me; move on. Don’t we have other things to talk about?”

“We did,” Danielle retorted leaning back and swirling her wine. Her dark eyes under her thick fringe were stuck on Keisha, “Until that smoking hot incarnation of Adonis just presented himself.”

“Still not happening,” Keisha returned coolly and gestured for a waitress to come over, “I’m going to order. What about you?”

Lea sighed like she was giving up the ghost, “We’d better skip it Danny; we aren’t going to get anything from Keisha this way.”

“You might,” Danielle returned mysteriously, “I, on the other hand, have my ways.”

Keisha levelled a searching look at her friend but even her narrow look was brushed off by Danielle's unperturbed look which never shifted. "So, are we ordering or not?"

Over the next forty-five minutes that passed the topic moved from Keisha’s ‘mystery-man’ to a meandering conversation about their lives. Danielle was telling them about the various problems on the set of the movie and how they were slated to move to Maine to shoot a part of it.

Lea was told them all about a big construction project coming up where she was the lead architect and Keisha just put in the daily struggles of keeping her colleagues from considering homicide when the clients were in a rage.

Eventually, the outing came to a close and they parted ways even with the unsaid subject of Hunter still hanging in the air.

Keisha drove home with some sense that the world wasn’t as bad as it seemed until she picked up on a silver sedan, three cars behind her that didn’t fail to follow her wherever she turned.

It defiantly wasn’t the same Jeep from before but she was still careful and took a long and roundabout way to go to her house. She even pulled into a supermarket parking lot to watch the car.

It had slowed down and after inching forward for a minute or two, pulled out and drove off. Keisha wondered if she was being watched or if the words Hunter had said to her had evoked some kind of psychosomatic worry about stalkers.

Maybe this was a one-off but she was going to watch it and be on her guard everywhere she went. And that meant carrying her gun at all times.

“Delilah,” she whispered picturing her gun while pulling out of the wide lot, “You’re going to have a new home, baby.

Never had she been that much overly cautious in her life as she was when she pulled into the condominium’s parking lot. A random memory came to her when her Leighton had advised her to live in a gated community for safety based on her net worth but she had refused. She knew she could hold her own and had told him so. And besides, the height of the condo was a security measure in itself.

What kind of maniac would even try and accost her fifteen stories above ground?

Getting out of the car she entered flashed her access card, entered the building and took the elevator up.

Inside her home, she closed the door behind her and went to a window that looked over the parking lot. She stood there, watching carefully for either of the two vehicles that she had seen earlier.

After ten minutes she was sure that neither one was there and with a sigh of relief went to take a shower.

While disrobing she made a mental note to attend church and call her parents on the morrow. It had been a while since she had stepped into the hallowed ground and seeing as it was a staple of her childhood Keisha felt a bit ashamed that she had let it slip.

The warm and soothing water cascaded over her body and she relaxed under the spray. All too soon the heat permeated her skin and she had to shut it off before her fingers started to wrinkle.

After dressed in a t-shirt and shorts pajama set she liberated a bucket of pistachio ice-cream from the freezer and turned on the TV to some trite Rom-Com. If she wasn’t in any kind of fulfilling relationship, at least she could live vicariously through one.

“Ah, Melissa,” Keisha sighed staring at a rerun of “Drive Me Crazy”. “Nothing’s easy is it?”

It was when she realized she was drifting and the tub was half gone Keisha sighed, turned off the TV and then padded to the kitchen to put the carton in the freezer.

She turned on the night light and with an unreasonably heavy body sunk into her bed. As her eyes flitted closed her mind was still picturing Hunter's glimmering emerald orbs. And when she slipped off to dreamland, those eyes and the body that housed them followed her.

She was lying on his bare chest with her head over his heart and felt the soft rhythmic beats of the life-giving organ underneath. His callused hand was settled on the small of her back with his thumb making small circles on her skin.

Keisha had never felt so much at peace as she did then with the eyes closed and mentally counting his breaths while her hand was slowly sliding down his stomach.

“Baby,” a soft deep voice murmured in her ear, “If you keep doing that, we won’t get out of bed till nightfall.”

“So?” Keisha asked while nuzzling her head further into his chest, “I’m sure there’s nothing out there that’s more important.”

“Probably,” Hunter mused before nudging her head up to him.

Keisha was met with hooded gemstone eyes that seemed to house a marsh-fire behind it. Her breath caught for a moment before Hunter’s lips descended on hers. The kiss was nothing short of soul-stealing. Hunter seemed to devour her, using his tongue to discover every part of her mouth.

With his hand under the back of her head and bracing her, the tip of Hunter’s tongue ran over her soft palate which made shivers erupt all over her body.

Her hand gripped his hair as she pushed back, matching his intensity with her own. When she pulled back the smoldering fire in his eyes had tripled and he captured her bottom lip between his teeth to pull it towards him.

When he pulled away his lips went to her throat and latched on to her pulse point and sucked hard before his teeth sank into her skin like a ravenous vampire. Fiery lust exploded under her skin.

“Ah!” Keisha gasped shooting up in her bed, feeling her racing heartbeat that was nearly triple the normal rate.

With a trembling hand, she pressed her palm against her eyes and breathed deeply trying to control the riot that was in the middle of her gut.

When she finally achieved a semblance of control she laid back down and laughed quietly to herself. Hunter did want her to only burn, but right now she felt like there was a furnace under her skin.

“Point to you Hunter,” she murmured almost silently.