CHAPTER SIX

The elevator was too loud, too bright, too full of people.

As the couple in the far corner waxed on about their dinner of small plates and the fratty guys by the number pad debated how many more shots they could plow through, Annalise asked herself how long she could wait.

She’d been on ice, cryogenically frozen in a state of suspended animation for two years. Her body was still working, going through the motions. One foot in front of the other.

But inside? Beneath her skin?

All those parts had been dormant.

Turned off.

Now, she was turned all the way on. She was like one of those blow-up balloons in an old cartoon, shooting through the air, ready to pop. She was sure everyone in the elevator saw the desire written all over her skin. But as the car shot up past the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth floors, they continued in their own worlds.

She wanted her own world now. She wanted to live in the bubble of lust.

The elevator stopped on the fourteenth floor, and the couple exited. The trio of guys remained, and the tall one in the crew once again stabbed the silver button for the penthouse. “They’ll be here soon. C’mon.”

Hookers?

She almost breathed it aloud.

Instead, she covered her mouth with her hand, her fingers touching her greedy lips. But that was stupid. Because that only made her want to touch herself more. She couldn’t help it. She dragged her index finger once across her top lip.

Like a match to a flame, it reignited her. My God, those kisses. Her lips were bruised with Michael’s mouth. He’d imprinted himself on her, and she felt him everywhere—on her skin, inside her organs, and deep in the dark, protected corners of her heart.

And yes, most exquisitely, between her legs.

“Vite, vite,” she muttered to herself.

If she’d stayed a moment longer at the club, she’d have grabbed his hand and dragged him to the restroom. Even the return to her hotel had felt terribly long, a new and cruel sort of torture as she’d walked with a wet, needy ache between her thighs.

For so long, she hadn’t let herself feel a thing. Now, she was nothing but nerve endings rubbed raw, cells crying out for relief.

The elevator dinged at the seventeenth floor. She practically vaulted out the open doors and quickstepped down the hall in a mad dash for her room. She reached it, fumbled for her key card from the back pocket of her jeans, slid open the door, and stepped inside.

Her room was dark, cool, and the lights from the Strip winked through the windows. The door shut with a heavy groan.

Her breath was hot and fast, her hands even faster. She dropped her purse to the floor, unbuttoned her jeans, and dipped her hand into her panties.

“Oh God,” she groaned, fingertips slipping through her wetness, hot, fevered, and so fucking delirious.

This was what happened when you banished sex, what happened when you extradited it from your life, your heart, your bed. When you told yourself you weren’t ready. You’re better off without it. She hadn’t wanted anyone to touch her, and she hadn’t even touched herself in a long time, as if the mere act of masturbation would have sullied the memories of her husband and said something to the universe about her not loving him enough. Everything had conflated in the last two grief-filled years—sex, and love, and moving on, and hope, and even touching herself.

She couldn’t stop now. She was a rocket, flying to the atmosphere, hell-bent on a jet-fueled trip to the stars. The floodgates were unleashed, and she stroked herself, riding her own hand urgently as a flash of images sparked before her closed eyes. Michael’s kisses. Michael’s lips. His voice in her ear. His teeth. He hadn’t kissed like that before. Like he wanted to consume her. Bite her. Fuck her hard.

“Michael.”

She moaned his name, feeling its familiarity yet utter newness on her tongue as her fingers flew faster between her legs. There, standing against her hotel room door, shoulders rising and falling, breath tumbling rapidly from her lungs, sex on her brain, Annalise made herself come for the first time in two years.

Her orgasm slammed into her, fast and sharp as a hot knife. Seizing her body. Lighting her up. Racing across every inch of her skin. It was everywhere, rapid and furious, pulsing, and over far too soon. She was left panting, and not nearly sated enough.

His name fell from her lips once more.

She didn’t feel cold tonight.

She was burning up.

Her body was alive again, and she feared she would become addicted to this feeling before her heart was ready.

* * *

The dog’s legs flew, like a flip-book at high speed, as Michael cruised down the trail.

No one ever beat the dog. Not even Colin, and he’d recently finished the Badass Triathlon. But today Michael was a few footfalls behind Johnny Cash, and his brothers Colin and Ryan, were eating his dust.

Pent-up lust could do that to a man. Desire could drive him to finish faster, push harder, focus more intensely.

With sweat slicking down his chest and his heart pounding, Michael ran as the sun peeked over the hills at Red Rock Canyon. His thoughts cycled between the bare-bones one-foot-in-front-of-the-other adrenaline and sheer, unrepentant want.

Last night was intense, sure. But it was only physical. It had to be that way. His ex-girlfriends had simply been wrong. As he whipped around a switchback, the black and white border collie in his crosshairs, Michael felt more confident than ever that his past relationship woes were never about Annalise. He wasn’t a player. He didn’t have a string of three-and-out dates trailing behind him. He’d had plenty of serious girlfriends over the years. He hadn’t settled down with any of them because he simply hadn’t met the right woman.

Not because he was hung up on her.

That was so not the case.

As the dust churned up beneath his sneakers, his mind flashed back to his ex-girlfriend Katrina’s comments from a year ago. He’d been with her for ten solid months—so long Colin had placed bets on him getting down on one knee. Funny that the proposal possibility had crossed Colin’s mind but never Michael’s. Katrina was a massage therapist, and he’d met her working out at his gym, his home away from home. They’d had a good time together. At least, it had felt that way to him.

They’d done dinners and movies, and had fun trading gym playlists. Their favorite activity after a late-night gym visit was getting sweaty in another way. They’d fucked well, and often. But apparently that hadn’t been enough for Katrina.

When she’d ended it, she simply shook her head in frustration and said, “You’re in love with the past.”

He’d scoffed, doubtful. “What does that mean?”

“Ask yourself. I’m done trying to figure you out.”

“There’s nothing to figure out. What you see is what you get.”

“Well, what I’m getting isn’t enough. You’re stuck someplace else, Michael.”

His quads burned from the fast pace on the dusty trail. Stuck. Ha. He was fine. Work and family were all he needed. Besides, he had too much going on. Business was booming, and the investigation into his father’s death had gotten its first big break in ages last month when the police had arrested the getaway driver.

Michael was stuck on absolutely nothing.

Seeing Annalise had proved that, hadn’t it? He wanted her, but he wasn’t caught up in her. He’d be a stone-cold idiot to be hung up on someone who’d moved on more than a decade ago.

That kiss had proved it, he reasoned, as he neared the trailhead.

That was enough to get her out of his system.

Except he couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss.

That intoxicating kiss.

That fucking kiss, which had ignited all his fantasies last night. She’d felt like fire in his arms, and just as hard to contain. But he’d craved the danger, the risk of touching her. Of what it might do to him to have her.

It would either free him or wreck him.

Those thoughts powered him the final feet to the end of the trail, where he caught up quickly to Ryan’s four-legged best friend. Johnny Cash panted hard, tongue lolling from his snout. Michael’s heart beat furiously as he pressed the spigot on the water fountain. “Here boy,” he called, giving the dog first dibs on the water as Colin’s relentless pace boomed closer.

“You bastard. You on the juice now?” he shouted as he caught up.

“No. Ryan is. That’s the only way he can manage to finish within a minute of us,” Michael said, panting.

Colin laughed as Michael took a drink of the water, then stepped away from the fountain for Colin to get his shot. When Ryan arrived, wiping his palm across his brow, Michael adopted a look of feigned disgust. “I see your almost-married life is slowing you down,” he said, teasing his brother, who’d recently gotten engaged.

“Nothing slows me down. Not ever,” Ryan said. “I let you win.”

“You wish.”

Michael wandered over to the wooden fence that edged the lot, parking his foot on a post to stretch. Colin and Ryan joined him, and Johnny Cash trotted behind, slumping in a furry black-and-white heap at Ryan’s feet.

“Listen. We’ve got some things to figure out,” Michael said, diving into a conversation he’d told his brothers they needed to have on their run today. “I was thinking we need to take care of Marcus when shit starts going down. Probably even sooner.”

Colin nodded, shoving a hand through his dark hair. “Definitely. I’ve been talking to him about what to expect.”

“What does he say? What does John say?” Ryan asked, his blue eyes shifting from Colin to Michael. Ryan was engaged to Detective John Winston’s sister Sophie, but John kept most of the details of the reopened investigation into their father’s murder two decades ago close to the vest, understandably. However, with their half-brother Marcus spending more time at Colin’s home, and acting as an informant in some ways for the detective, the three of them had a sense that matters might heat up soon.

One of the accomplices in the murder had been arrested several weeks ago. Kenny Nelson, the getaway driver, was behind bars for several smaller crimes, and was likely going to be tried for accessory to murder, too. With the revelation that by night Marcus’s father was the leader of the notorious street gang the Royal Sinners, John and his colleagues were even busier. Presumably, the cops were working to devise the best way to dismantle the gang and connect Luke to the murder. Michael reasoned that any sort of sting operation to take down the group’s head, who’d successfully operated as the clandestine leader for more than two decades, would put Luke’s son Marcus square in the face of danger.

“He’s already working on transferring to another college out of state,” Colin said, breathing hard as he stretched his quads after their five-mile run. “That way he has a real reason to get out of town without his dad knowing he’s been giving key details to the detectives. He’s looking to go to school in Florida.”

“Smart kid. And that’s where we come in,” Michael said. “We need to pay for his school, his new home, and make sure he’s got round-the-clock security for a while, even if he’s clear on the other side of the country.”

“Absolutely,” Ryan quickly agreed.

“No question about it.” Colin nodded.

Michael pointed at Colin. “You see him the most. You let him know we got his back on this, all right? He’s our brother, and we’ll take care of him. Without him, we might not have a chance at taking down the other men who killed our father. I want them all behind bars. Every last one of them.”

One man—the gunman—was already in prison and had been for eighteen years. So was their mother, who’d plotted the murder. Now, Kenny Nelson was likely on his way to the big house, but Michael wouldn’t rest until T.J. Nelson, the alleged mastermind of the gunman’s hits, joined him there, along with the head of the gang. Michael had a hunch that Luke had been pulling the strings all along, hiding behind his harmless piano-teacher persona as he operated a gang of thieves, thugs, and murderers. The brothers were sure he was part of it, and that was why Michael had hired the private detective, with Mindy’s help, to conduct his own recon, do his part to push things along.

“I’ve got to hit the road. Lots to do in the office,” Michael said, then turned to Ryan. “I’m taking the afternoon off.”

Ryan stopped in his tracks. “Whoa. You never take off. You prepping for your New York trip?”

Michael was slated to meet with some clients in Manhattan at the end of the week. “Nope. Just a meeting locally.”

“With who?” Ryan asked, and the question was perfectly reasonable because he and Ryan ran Sloan Protection Resources together.

Michael didn’t answer. He didn’t like lying, but he didn’t want to get into the details. He reached for his door handle, trying to ignore the question.

“Wait.” Colin’s hand came down on his shoulder. “You’re seeing her.”

He spun around. “What?”

Colin wagged his finger and grinned like he’d caught Michael red-handed. “Yep. I knew it. You told me she wrote to you, and I fucking knew you were going to see her.”

Michael shrugged, trying to make light of it. “Big deal. So I saw her.”

“And now you’re playing hooky to see her again,” Ryan teased, wiggling his eyebrows.

Michael waved him off. “Not playing hooky. I’ll be working late tonight.”

“Or working late on Annalise,” Ryan called out as Michael shut the door.

Michael flipped him the bird, and his brothers laughed. There wasn’t much that got past them. They knew how over the moon he’d been for Annalise back in high school. Hell, they knew her. Everyone knew her—his grandma, his sister, even his father.

His father had thought she was perfect for him.

Michael flashed back to the note in his wallet. The one he kept with him at all times. His father’s last written words to him were about Annalise. As he peeled away from the hills and drove back to his home on the Strip, he replayed the thirty-six hours before his father had been killed. The breakfast with his father the day before was a blur; the next morning with Annalise at the airport as he said good-bye was a smudge in his memory, too.

The one starkly clear event had happened after midnight.

A snapshot blazed before his eyes. He swallowed hard, jammed the brakes, and pulled over to the side of the road.

The image was too powerful to drive through.

He’d been in his bed, trying to sleep. He’d bolted upright, remembering he’d left something in the car that day. He’d barely been sleeping anyway. He got out of bed, padded to the front door, and unlocked it. His father’s car was in the driveway. He’d been driving the limo that night, taking some teens to the prom, and after returning the limo to work, he drove his own car home.

Michael headed for the car door then nearly tripped.

On his father.

His veins ran cold with fear, then denial, then a soul-ripping agony as he fell to his knees, grabbing, holding, clutching the lifeless body in the driveway. Soaked in blood. Heart no longer beating. Wallet open, ID and photos spilled everywhere along with, he’d learn later, a note his father had likely written to him earlier that day.

The black of night cloaked Michael as he held his father, and he began to know the true meaning of the word horror.

Pressing two fingers against the bridge of his nose, he let the memory recede, like a wave rolling out to sea. It would crash into him again, but for now that image sent him back to the investigation. To the role his mother’s lover had played in the murder.

The question remained—did Luke want Thomas Paige dead because he was in love with Thomas’s wife? Or was there some other motive at stake?