A Righteous Kill (39 page)

Eat your heart out, Talia Malone.

Luca had been modest when he’d said he could do some damage on the dance floor. He didn’t wreak any destruction either. No, neither of those words applied.

He dominated it.

More appropriately, he dominated
her
. Pushing her away from him, he caught her arm and pulled her around to face him in a move that made her feel like a freaking pro. His eyes were two impossibly dark flames as his thigh wedged its way between her legs.

Hero all but rode his leg as the crowd swallowed them. They weren’t the only ones in this very same pose on the dance floor, but Hero was pretty sure she was the only one this close to orgasm. Every word they’d been avoiding slid between their interwoven gazes and his grip became bruising on her hips, pulling her higher so he could grind something
else
against her. Something just as hard and plenty thick.

Their sex would be just like this, she thought. Luca would drive. He would dominate. He would ride her hard until she was so crazy out of her mind with lust she’d do anything, anywhere just for a taste of the pleasure he could give her. Pleasure that powerful was almost like a punishment. What if he gave it to her, then took it away?

Fuck that
, her Irish blood whispered to her. She wouldn’t be the only one begging on her knees before they were through with each other. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the fact that she could die tomorrow, or that one dance with Luca was probably better than any sex she’d had in her entire life.

Surging impossibly closer, Hero drove her lips against his. As she’d expected, she didn’t have control of the kiss for very long. He thrust his tongue right into her mouth, simulating the rhythm of his gyrating hips. It was hot and wet and all she could think of was how she wanted any willing part of his body inside her, his fingers, his tongue, his cock.

Right now.

“Take me somewhere,” she demanded against his mouth.

He pulled back to look at her and his dimples appeared. “I didn’t drive us here, remember?” The matching breathlessness in his voice comforted her.

She scowled at him then bit his lip, reveling in his sharp intake of breath and the insistent thrust of the ridge of his desire against her. “Think of something,” she challenged.

He buried his face in her neck and let out a laugh mixed with desperation and aggravation. Hero smiled victoriously, knowing he was hers for the taking. She twined her fingers through the short hairs at the nape of his neck. “I need…”

He thrust his thigh higher against her, grinding against the place where she throbbed for release. “You need what?”

Well, shit. He’d taken back the control, hadn’t he? He knew damn well what she needed. He was going to make her say it?

“You,” she gasped.

“Not good enough.”

She hated him. No, she loved him.
No
, she
wanted
him. Needed him to—

“Make me come,” she said, then nibbled on his ear, just because he deserved it.

Luca’s head snapped back and the look he gave her damn near scorched her panties off. His eyes flicked to their surroundings. The crowd on the dark floor crushed ever closer as more late-night revelers flocked to the club. The dancing all around them had become hedonistic. Vince, Chloe and Stef were God-knew-where. No one was paying them any mind. Or everyone was. In either case, Hero didn’t care. She was nothing but a flaming ball of wet need and reckless desire.

Luca’s took her mouth with his. His hands were suddenly everywhere. Her shoulders, her ribcage, her waist, her ass.

Then he did the unthinkable. The impossible. Something Hero had never before imagined herself doing. He braced her hips with one strong arm against his thigh and angled it right where she throbbed for him. He whispered something in Spanish against her ear. She didn’t catch the words over the music, just a rush of rolled
R
s and lavish sounds. They drove her higher as movements intensified.

Luca was so skilled, so perfectly discreet. He didn’t pull up her dress. He barely even touched her. Just rolled his sinewy leg against her again and again, taking her dress and panties with it, and pressed it against her clit.

It only took two more rolling motions of their connected bodies to break her, she was already that far gone. Hero twined her arms around his neck and held on as the orgasm rocked her. Her thigh muscles clenched and trembled, spasms of aching pleasure slowly rode her major muscle groups before singing along her connective tissues. The pulses of ecstasy melded with the thrum of the music until Hero felt as though she would continue to climax through the vibrations of the floor.

Just as she became afraid her body would collapse, he pulled back and made sure her dress was straight before wrapping his arm around her back and pulling her close in a more tender position.

“Fuck,” he breathed.

“Yeah,” she agreed.

His erection twitched and pressed against her, pulsing insistently against the zipper of his jeans. “You’re going to kill me,” he groaned.

Hero thought that the orgasm would release the pent up tension and desire driving her damn-near crazy, but it didn’t. It made everything worse, if possible. Now she was incredibly slick and ready to take that hot length throbbing between them inside her body.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said into his ear, speaking loud enough to be heard over the music. “We can take a cab.”

“Hero.” Luca groaned her name like a damned man begging at the pearly gates. “I
can’t
. Not when you’re drunk. It’s not right.”

“Fuck what’s right.” She scored his back with her nails. “I’m not too drunk to consent to this. Hell, I’ll sign something.”

He hissed a breath out through clenched teeth and ten seconds ticked by. “Ask me tomorrow, when you can stand without stumbling,” he said tightly. “I don’t want you to hate me after.”

It became increasingly apparent that the two double shots of bourbon she’d downed before dancing just started to compete with all the Irish alcohol she’d had before. Standing on her own did seem like a dangerous undertaking at the moment.

“But I
won’t
ask you tomorrow,” she said plaintively. She was enough out of her right mind to know what it would do once it returned.

“Why not?” he demanded.

“Because you’re a Pitt Bull.”

“What?”

“You’re going to bite me. Rown thinks so, too.” Her head began swimming in earnest, the lights suddenly becoming overwhelming to her senses. “I can’t let you do that, Luca. I can’t… Not now that I feel all this—”

“Hero, you’re not making any sense. I can barely hear you.”

“I know.” She held a hand against her temples, wishing the moment hadn’t turned this fast. “Nothing makes sense anymore, does it?”

The music faded and the DJ, a fast-talking, handsome Polynesian asked everyone to make some noise.

The crowd erupted in ecstatic cheers.

“This is a very special night for someone!” the DJ continued. “I don’t usually do this, but this next song is tight.”

Dancers went wild again, even though no one could have any idea what
this
referred to.

“I’m throwing on the band
Broken Social Scene
. This goes out to a Hero, from your boy J to the B.”

“Luca!” Hero clutched his hand, all pleasure, emotion, and blood draining from her and replaced with pure adrenaline. “He’s
here
.”

The dancing started again as the pulsing beat of a remix reached the floor.

Then the lyrics began.

Thought you were the sweetest kill… Did you even know?

“
Puta Madre
!” Luca barked, his eyes bouncing from the DJ box to the entrances, and frantically scanning the blissed-out faces of the crowd. “Follow me,” he ordered, but then tucked her into the safety of his body.

People melted before Luca as his wide shoulders pushed through the press of partiers, towing her in his wake. He made it through in miraculous time and Vince was already at the edge of the crowd waiting to meet him, his eyes anxious and a red cocktail glass in a latex-gloved hand.

“This came to the table the moment the song started,” Vince informed them.

Hero stared at the brightly mixed drink uncomprehendingly as Luca’s arm rested around her shoulders and pulled her in to the protective arc of his body just as the second verse began.

Clenching her hands together, she hid the deep marks on her hands. “What is it?” she asked in a trembling voice.

Vince looked uncomfortable.

“The drink, what’s it called?”

“I asked the waiter…” He paused as they were joined by Stef, Chloe, and a few others who closed around Hero in a protective circle. “It’s like a Bloody Mary but with beef bullion.”

“What.
Is.
It?”

Vince let out a breath. “It’s called a
Bloody Bull.
”

“
Christ
.” Luca grit out, then pulled out his phone. “Get a team down here, Di Petro,” he ordered. “We need to sweep this place, subpoena the security cameras, and question everyone.” He turned on Hero. “I’m getting you out of here,” he snarled. “Even better, I’m locking you the fuck away until this bastard is caught!”

“I called a team the moment this song started,” Vince said.

Hero shook her head, her stare stuck on the thick red liquid in the skinny, tidy cocktail glass.

Thought you were the sweetest kill…

“No,” she murmured, her voice whisked away by the music.

“The hell you say?”

“This is what we wanted, isn’t it?” She found her voice, lent nerve by a probably still climbing blood-alcohol level. “We wanted to draw him out. I agreed to be the bait. This is
supposed
to be happening.” She didn’t mean it like that. None of this was
supposed
to be happening, but as long as she was the focus of this nutcase, no one else had died. That fact helped her sleep at night. If you didn’t count the goat and the bull… may they rest in peace.

Vince put a hand on Luca’s shoulders. “She’s got a point, man. He’s getting more reckless. He’s closing in on her.”

Luca said some things that even made Stef’s eyes bulge out of his head. Then he went to work.

“Get security to cover the exits. No one leaves until I say. Shut off that
fucking
music and put the DJ in a room by himself. Also, isolate the club manager and the bartenders.”

Hero looked up at Vince, who didn’t seem to like where this was going. “Chances of him still being here are wicked slim, Ramirez.”

“Do I look like I care?”

Though he addressed Vince, the entire group shook their heads in the negative.

“I’m saying we should wait for the team to show,” Vince argued. “We can’t shut a place this size down by ourselves.”

Hero flinched away from the murder gleaming in Luca’s eyes.

“Watch me.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

“And oft, my jealousy shapes faults that are not.”

~William Shakespeare, Othello

Luca grabbed his duffel from the trunk and trudged up the walk to Hero’s house on the brink of collapse. He’d left the club with only enough time to eat, shower, change, and show for his evening shift.

In the last fifteen hours, with the help of the local PD, they’d collected two hundred statements from club goers, bouncers, bartenders, and one very irate night manager. The lab processed the note on an emergency priority bases, and Luca finished the day with fruitless scans of shoddy club security footage that covered three out of four possible entrances to the building because
Who needed to watch the kitchen dock?
The manager wanted to know.

Dumb ass.

All this was done with half an erection and a full-on bad attitude.

Vince had stayed through the interview with the DJ, and then was instructed to take Hero home. According to Mr. “Slamsquach,” a note with the song request had been handed to him by a “red-haired skank” along with a hundred dollar bill. Interestingly enough, the waiter who’d delivered the Bloody Bull gave a matching story.

Luca did his best to get pictures taken of club goers before they left, but after so long, it was impossible to hold a group that large for questioning. In the end, the only patrons they could keep around were the ones who agreed to stay, and those people ended up more voyeurs to the case than witnesses to anything helpful.

The waiter, the DJ, and the security staff were shown what pictures they could get of the club goers, but no one recognized anybody from the photos as the mysterious red-haired woman.

Trojanowski told Luca to go home hours ago, but he refused to comply until every spare inch of the club had been searched, every last person interviewed, and every other direction considered.

Frustrated, exhausted, and sick to death of dead ends, Luca felt like he could sleep anywhere right about now. Even Hero’s couch.

Unlocking the door, he stepped in and punched the security code. The sounds of Hero’s laughter and the beat of provocative music drifted from her bedroom. Vince’s low words were lost between the walls separating them, but Hero’s delight could be heard loud and clear.

Bedsprings.
That
sound was un-
fucking
-mistakable. Luca froze. His heart became a battering ram against its chamber. His hand actually went to his chest as though to contain it.

Not Vince. Not his
partner
.

Can I have a pass at her then?

The words toyed with his sanity. Luca braced himself with one hand against the wall separating the entry from the room. Could this be the reason for Hero’s distance that week? Had something bloomed between her and Vince during their long days together? Had she finally tired of Luca’s scruples and decided to move on to an easier conquest?

His goddamned
partner.

His hands shook as a familiar patina of red laced through his vision. As the rage spilled over him and settled somewhere low in his gut, Luca knew no amount of counting would fix this. There wasn’t a visualization he could muster that wouldn’t involve his partner jack-hammering the women he— Luca reached for the door. He should leave.
Now
. He should turn around and get in his car and drive as far away from the house as possible until he calmed the fuck down. He should take off his shoulder-holster and leave his weapon.