Kat checked in on Dillon but since it was so late and he was sleeping, she agreed to go home with David and get something to eat and a good night’s rest. She was scheduled for more tests in the morning and she didn’t want to end up passed out on the floor because she was too exhausted or hungry again. On the drive to his apartment, David tried asking her more questions about her trip to California. Kat could have made up a story about work or her apartment or her roommate…but, despite what most people thought of her, she hated to lie. Instead she’d just told him it was “personal” and none of his business and he finally let it go.

As soon as they walked through the door of his apartment, his phone rang. It was late and Kat found herself wondering if it was a woman. The look on his face when he looked at the caller I.D. wasn’t a happy one. “There’s take-out chicken on the kitchen counter. You can heat it in the microwave. I’m sorry, I have to take this, it’s work,” he said.

“Sure.” Kat went into the kitchen, but she could still hear him on the phone in the other room of the small apartment.

“Hey, Sarge, this is Brady. You know I’m on a few days’ leave, right?” He paused to listen to what was being said on the other end and then he said, “Munroe? I don’t think I’ve ever talked to him. Did he say why he’s calling so late?” He listened again and Kat kept her body pressed into the wall near the door, listening as well. “He’s in Boston? Okay, give me his number and I’ll call him. Thanks.” He was quiet for a few seconds. Kat was putting the chicken and side dishes on two paper plates that she’d found on top of his refrigerator. She carried them over to the microwave and that was when she heard him say, “Detective Munroe, this is David Brady.” He was quiet then for a long time. She heated up the food and carried it out to the living room. David still had the phone pressed to his ear and he looked very interested in what whoever was on the other end was staying. Kat set his food on the coffee table in front of him and sat down with hers in his recliner. She was more interested in his conversation suddenly than she was in the food. David listened for a long time to whoever was on the other end and then finally said, “There’s a Starbucks next to City Hall, I’ll meet you there at eight.” As soon as he ended the call she said:

“Was that about my mother?”

“Maybe. That was a detective from New Orleans. He’s in Boston and he wants to talk to me. He said that he got my name and number from Detective Botts.” Botts was the detective that had handled her mother’s case. He had since retired, but Kat knew David had been in touch with him over the years. The old detective hadn’t been happy when the case went cold, and he had told David once that it almost killed him to retire and leave it open.

“Have they found something new?”

“I don’t know. He’s a cold case detective, so he might just be following up on loose ends.”

“Then why would he be calling you instead of Dillon, or me?”

“I don’t know,” he said again, offering her a small smile. “But after I talk to him I promise I’ll let you know exactly what he says, okay?” She nodded. If not for her appointment with the transplant surgeon at nine the next morning, she’d go with him. Her mental wheels were already turning as she tried to figure out if she could reschedule it. “Hey,” David said, drawing her back in. “Try to eat something and don’t worry about it tonight, okay?”

She nodded again, but it was easier said than done. Her appetite was all but gone and once she was in the shower, her mind was transported back in time. She was too young to completely understand what happened to her mother when it first happened, but she knew it was bad. She knew the police were accusing her father of doing something, but at seven, eight, even nine years old, when they were still knocking on the door and asking old questions, she refused to believe Dillon would ever hurt her mother. She was about eleven when she watched a show on television that set a lot of things into motion. It was one of those true crime stories about a woman that ended up dead and the man who supposedly loved her being arrested for her murder. As Kat watched the program, questions began to emerge in her young mind about her mother and father. She’d asked most of them at one time or another but Dillon never seemed to give her a straight answer. Something about that program prompted her decision to do her own research. She pulled out Dillon’s laptop that night while he was at work and Googled her mother’s name. She got hundreds of hits, mostly news reports about the murder. She realized as she read through them that Dillon had never told her exactly how her mother had died. The news reports said she was strangled and the trachea was crushed. Kat’s stomach was sick over that and she had to stop reading after a while. The next day she was back to it, though, reading up on the “evidence” that led the detectives back to Dillon. The staff at the hotel where her mother worked reported that she went there that night, arriving around three a.m. and seeming upset. The article said that her mother “kept” a room there. Why would she do that? As she read on, Kat realized that the articles were insinuating that her mother was having an affair. The cops’ theory was that Dillon found out about it, followed her there that night, and strangled her.

That night Kat asked Dillon about that. At first, he wanted to talk about how she was too young to be reading all of that, but finally he told her, “Your mother kept that room because we fought, a lot. She’d go there to calm down and when she came home in the mornings, we’d make up. She wasn’t having an affair…and I did not kill her.”

“I read that they saw you there that night. What were you doing there?” The police had security footage of Dillon going into the hotel around three-thirty a.m. and leaving just after four. Kat would have been asleep at that time. He left her alone to…do what? Murder his wife?

“Our fight was bad that night, Kitty-Kat,” Dillon had told her. “I just wanted to talk to her. But she wouldn’t answer the door. She wouldn’t let me in, so I left. It was a couple of hours later when housekeeping found her body. I didn’t kill your mother. I loved her more than my own life.”

Kat wasn’t sure she bought that story, but she didn’t outright accuse Dillon at that point. For the next two years, however, as she read every article she could get her hands on and she started spending more and more time on the streets, running with a bad crowd…her thoughts began to turn dark. She had dreams about him strangling her mother and smiling while he did it. She had nightmares of him coming after her next. Kat was twelve years old when Dillon came home early and found her with an older boy. She was drunk and about to do something she’d regret for the rest of her life, at least once she sobered up. Dillon beat the nineteen-year-old up pretty badly. Kat remembered being both surprised and impressed. She had no idea Dillon could fight, in spite of the fact that he was constantly running his mouth and pissing someone off.

The next day Dillon had packed them up and they’d moved to Massachusetts, just like that. Kat was too young then to know Dillon had to be planning it for a while. Either way, she was pissed. Massachusetts was his home, not hers and the move was just another crack in the already shaky foundation of their relationship. Kat and Dillon did nothing but fight and if she hadn’t met Dax when she was thirteen, her life could have gone in a very different direction. Dax went a long way in convincing her that Dillon had only done what he thought was best for her. Kat supposed she never gave him enough credit. But she also never completely convinced herself that he was innocent either. Sometimes, mostly late at night, it still gnawed at her. If this detective had other ideas, she couldn’t wait to hear them.

A knock on the bathroom door brought her out of her thoughts. “Hey, you’ve been in there a long time. Just checking to make sure you’re okay?”

It took Kat about three seconds to decide she didn’t want to think about Dillon or her mother any more that night. “I’m okay,” she said, “But I could use some company.” The door was pushed open immediately and David was already stripping off his clothes as he walked in. He deposited them on the floor and pulled open the shower door and stepped in with her. He wrapped his arms around her and she could feel that his cock was already hardening as it brushed up against her thigh. He put his mouth on her neck and kissed across her throat. Kat threw her head back and let the water flow over her hair while he suckled at her neck and slid his hands up her wet body to grab onto her breasts. She reached down and took hold of his cock, wrapping her hand firmly around it and feeling it throb against her palm. David slid his mouth from her neck across to her shoulders and kissed his way down to her breasts. Still holding one in his hand, he stuck his tongue out and curled it around her hard nipple. Kat’s body was shaking all over and David wrapped his other arm around her waist to hold her upright. She stroked him while he pleasured her breasts, and her pussy was so wet that she could feel the thick secretions running down along the insides of her thighs.

David’s mouth eventually left her breasts and traveled slowly down her stomach. He sucked and kissed at her smooth skin, leaving little bite marks in his wake as he lowered himself down to his knees on the tile floor. The warm water cascaded down over the two, and he put his arms around her butt and pulled her hips into his face. Kat opened her thighs and David began to lick along the insides of them, just around the outside of her hot, aching pussy. Kat grabbed his head and tried to push it where she wanted it, but he was in the mood to tease and he was a hell of a lot stronger than her. His tongue barely touched her lips, just along the outside, before he shifted her so that he could lick the other side. She was moaning and whimpering when he finally licked along her slit, opening her slightly with his tongue. He pressed his face into her clit at last and let his tongue slide up inside of her. She held onto the back of his head, and he let his tongue move in and out of her before sliding it out again and licking, sucking, and even nibbling at her lips and clit. She was panting hard and her body was rigid as he sucked her clit into his mouth and flicked it hard and fast with his tongue. At last the volcano deep in Kat’s core erupted and the orgasm hit her like a ton of bricks.

“Fuck,” she panted out as David slid up her body and got back up to his feet. He grinned down at her and she said it again.

“Is that an expletive, expression, or a request?”

Kat turned off the water and said, “It’s a fucking demand. Fuck me, David. Now.”

David put his hands on her hips and crouching down slightly, he let his hard cock slide in between her smooth thighs. She expected him to enter her, but instead he held onto her thighs and pressed them inward while he slid his cock back and forth, fucking the space between her thighs and rubbing against her overstimulated clit with every stroke. Kat leaned back into the wall, and David bent forward and covered her mouth with his while he tantalized and teased. His big hands slid around to her ass and he squeezed her cheeks while rocking into her. His breaths were becoming more ragged with each stroke and for a second Kat thought he might come just like that. But David had other plans. He used his hold on her butt to lift her up off the floor. Kat put her legs around him and David pushed her back into the cold tile. She reached down between them and lined his cock up with her opening, and they both groaned in ecstasy as she slid down his shaft.

David held her there for several seconds and then, with the muscles bulging in his arms, he started moving her up and down. Kat rocked back and forth, using the wall behind her to push against with her back. She found his lips with her own then and began to lick, bite, and suck at them as the feelings of ecstasy consumed her. David was groaning and panting, and just before Kat was ready for another orgasm, David suddenly lifted her up off his cock and lowered her to the floor. She had to grab onto the wall to keep from falling while David opened the shower door and stepped out. He took her by the hand and led her to the bed, leaving a trail of water in their wake. Neither of them noticed it, or the fact that they were soaking the bed as they fell on top of that. David kissed her again, all over her face and neck and shoulders, and then he rolled her over and entered her pussy from behind.

Kat gripped onto the comforter to steady herself. David was drilling into her with such force that she was pushed forward each time and she had to hold on to keep from slamming into the headboard. He was like a man possessed and once again he was using her body to get the satisfaction he needed, and she loved it. He fucked her for a long time, so long that she knew she’d be sore in the morning. But Kat wasn’t complaining. It felt so good that she would have been willing to go all night long. The harder her pounded into her, the wetter her pussy got until he was slipping and sliding in her juices. She felt his hands clamp down tightly on her hips and his body surge forward against her back and the rumble as he groaned into her skin just before he came. He whispered her name repeatedly as he gently rocked into her, straightening her up and pulling her into his lap and up against his chest. He kissed her neck and all the way up to her ear and then he whispered, “I love you, Kat.” She kissed him back and wiggled out of his lap to pull him down on the bed next to her. David pulled the comforter over their still damp bodies and she snuggled into him. She didn’t say it back…again…but this time she at least admitted to herself that she was feeling it.