The entries grew more random after that. Instead of daily, one day might be recorded, and then the next entry would be weeks later. Until August of that year, where a full month’s worth of entries were entered.
“They left the area under the direction of the new leader,” she murmured, peering harder at the writing. “Pages and pages indicating the area was getting increasingly intolerant—said the pot to the kettle—and they were going west to find a more moral place to settle.”
“And then nothin’ after that.” Dev closed the book slowly. “Apparently the new leader wasn’t interested in keepin’ records.”
“Or if he was, those new records stayed with them. Rufus Ashton’s history remained here in the town he started.”
She insisted on finishing the other books since they hadn’t looked at them chronologically, but very little new information came to light. Ramsey was on the last of them when a word seemed to jump off the page at her. Turmeric.
Slowing, she began to read more carefully. Finally she said, “The author of this record seems like one of those unbearably smug people, you know? The kind that thinks she works harder than anyone else. Does more than her share.”
“A martyr,” Dev offered. He had his glasses off and was rubbing his eyes.
Checking the clock, Ramsey saw it was near midnight. “Yeah, I guess. But she also goes into even greater detail about her days, to prove just how busy she kept. Listen.” Ramsey began to read from the journal. “ ‘My service today was to prepare the basket for the casting out ceremony. I carefully cut away the root of the turmeric and laid it among the most perfect pinecones I could gather.’ ” She looked up at Dev. “Casting out ceremony. She’s mentioned it several times in here but doesn’t define it.”
“Maybe when they threw the undesirable males out of their place,” suggested Dev. “Cast them out because they were too much competition for female attention, or they didn’t make the religious cut in some way.”
Funny how her impression was always several shades darker than his. Or, perhaps, not so odd, given her occupation. “What else do you cast out in religion? Demons, sin.”
“Evil.”
“And if you’re casting out evil, what do you hope to replace it with? Purity, right?”
There was a slight smile on his face as he watched her work through it, but his nod was immediate. “Goes to figure.”
“Turmeric to symbolize purification. Pinecones to symbolize immortality.” And the only people in need of immortality, she thought, were the dead or the dying. “This is it,” Ramsey said surely. “Or at least as close as we’re going to get to verification about the plant on the church window.”
“Is it enough?”
“It’s enough for me.”
“Good.” He shoved the books in front of him away to stretch. “ ’Cuz I have to have these records back in a little over four hours, and there’s the little matter of some sleep ’tween now and then.”
She considered him. He didn’t look all that tired to her. Her lips curved slowly. “I can see you’re exhausted. So I’ll just stick around long enough to get you tucked in bed before I go back to the motel.”
There was a gleam in his eye that no woman in her right mind would trust. “Would you?” His chair scraped the floor as he pushed back from the table and rose. “I am feelin’ a bit weak in the legs. Probably goin’ to need some help just gettin’ back to my bedroom.”
“You are in sorry shape.” She rose, slid an arm around his waist, and was rewarded with a quick squeeze as he hugged her to his side. “I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t offer every bit of assistance I could.”
“You’re a givin’ sort of woman, Ramsey.” The words were rife with amusement. Slowly, arms wrapped around each other, they moved down the hallway. “I’ve always recognized it.”
It would serve him right, she thought with a flash of humor, to do exactly as she’d stated. Get him all primed and ready in bed and then kiss him on the forehead and go for the door. Just to hear what he’d come up with next.
He nudged her to the left, and they entered a shadowy bedroom. He bent to turn on a lamp on the bedside table. Its soft glow pushed gently at the darkness, relegating it to the corners of the bed where they hovered like inky curtains.
There’d been no lamp on the last time they’d ended up in Dev’s bed, she recalled. She had a fleeting impression of a high school boy’s room, with posters on the wall of muscle cars and pinup girls. Trophies lining the shelves. Knew the room had been kept as it had been when Dev had occupied it full time.
There was a temptation to explore that further. To take a look at the boy he’d been in order to get a better handle on the man he’d become.
But the strength of that temptation couldn’t begin to compete with the urge she felt when she looked in Dev’s eyes. When he lowered his head and brushed his lips down the curve of her jaw. Whisper soft. Too light a gesture to be responsible for her pulse revving to instant life.
Her immediate response was troubling on one level. Because no man had been allowed that power over her. Sex was a mutual give and take, but she was always careful about what she gave. She didn’t look back. Not ever. But she knew he wouldn’t be so easily forgotten. He was dangerous for that fact alone.
His mouth cruised along her chin, down her throat to linger at the hollow at the base of her neck. And she knew, even as her head lolled back to provide him greater access, that if she didn’t take control of this interlude, his tenderness would be her undoing.
She placed her hands on his chest and exerted enough pressure to have them both tumbling on the bed. The springs of the mattress creaked as they landed on the bed, then rolled, limbs entwined.
“Pushy.” Dev’s lips curved. “I kinda like it.”
“You’ve incredibly high standards.” With swift movements, she divested him of his shirt and went to work on his belt. “I’ll try to live up to them.”
Her sudden urgency fed his, and he tugged at her clothing until their hands were engaged in a battle as they fought to divest each other of their garments. And that first sweet feel of flesh against flesh had Ramsey sighing in satisfaction.
Her hands streaked over him, testing, exploring. Rediscovering the surprisingly solid muscle roped along his arms. Layered beneath his chest and stomach. And recalled again the pleasure to be had from his body.
They rolled until she was above him and he used the position to nuzzle her breast, taking the nipple into his mouth and sucking, scraping it lightly with his teeth.
Colors kaleidoscoped behind her closed eyelids. This was what she wanted. Sensation rearing up, rollicking through her system, making it easy only to feel. Battening back all thought, all logic, until it was only the act itself that mattered.
He switched his attention to her other breast, and she went on her knees above him, pressing closer. His hand wandered over the curve of her hip and slipped between her legs, rubbing softly at the dampness there, his touch eliciting even more heat.
Last time he’d reduced her to a shuddering mass. This time she was determined to return the favor. But first she had to evade those clever stroking hands. That knowing, seeking mouth.
When she pulled away from him, he made a move to stop her. But his movements halted when she embarked on a sensual journey of discovery.
There were intriguing hollows on his chest, where sinew met bone, and she used her lips to trace each one. Moving lower, she swirled her tongue in the slight indentation of his navel. Used her finger to follow the trail of hair, a couple shades darker than that on his head, to where it arrowed toward his sex.
The muscles in his belly clenched and jumped beneath her touch, the evidence of his reaction firing little pinwheels of desire through her system. His penis was engorged, quivering. And when she took him in her mouth, his hips jerked helplessly.
She wrapped her fingers around his shaft to stroke as she used her tongue to lash at the sensitive tip. And let the dark flavor of him work through her, until it joined the fever in her blood.
It was less about control now. The thought formed, fragmented. It was more about wanting to return the pleasure in kind. To bring him to the brink of trembling need. To hone his desire to the same painfully keen edge as her own.
He withstood the sensual torment for long moments. But when her intent changed, when the soft suction grew stronger, his fingers tightened on her shoulders. Urged her higher.
“Not without you, sugar,” he murmured against her lips.
It pleased her that his voice was thick. Ragged. “That can be easily arranged.”
He guessed her intention when she straddled him, and he sat up, one arm around her waist to keep her steady while he sent a hand in search of the other bedside table. She heard a drawer open. The crinkle of a foil wrapper.
She took it from him and opened it. Made the act of rolling the latex over his thick sex an act of excruciating promise.
The desire steadied. Was no less fierce for being tamped down, but it was no longer in danger of slipping its leash. That was important, wasn’t it? That she retain something of herself even as she drove them both crazy. So she wouldn’t be searching for splinters of herself to re-form once the act was over.
But when she paused in position over him, took him in, she made the mistake of looking into Dev’s eyes. Found them narrowed and glittering. And realized with a start that he knew exactly what she was about.
To distract them both, she started moving, her eyelids sliding shut in pleasure at the delicious friction. She slid from slow and easy to a mad frenetic pace that had them both gasping. Flesh slapping against flesh in a frantic speed that promised to hurtle them both to completion in record time.
Until he slowed beneath her. His movements halted completely, even as his body quivered against hers like a tiger ready to spring. “Ramsey.” The word was drenched in emotion. “Look at me.”
His plea punched through the fog of desire and she dragged open her eyes, her body still attuned to the feel of him pulsing and throbbing inside her. It took a moment to focus. Another to comprehend the very different sort of need in his gaze.
“Look at us.
See
us.” His palms left her hips. Found her hands. Threaded his fingers with hers against the mattress.
She shook her head, a ribbon of panic unfurling down her spine. He was asking for more than she could give. More than she
wanted
to give.
But then his hips began to thrust, establishing a languid rhythm that had the need streaking through her again, so sharp, so ripe, that it burned. She met him glide for glide, the pace slower but no less intense.
His deep blue eyes were blurred with passion. She wanted to deny the request she saw there. Wanted to pretend she’d never noticed it at all.
But she was caught. Helplessly mesmerized by the promise and plea she’d identified. Terrified her expression would give away just how very much she wanted to give him the answer he sought.
Their pace quickened. Breathing thickened. And still her eyes remained fixed on his. When he’d swim out of focus, she fought to clear her vision, wanting to watch him as the pleasure took him. Watch him watching her.
The world shifted, narrowing crazily, until it pinpointed this moment. Only the two of them engaged in a race to be first to drive the other over the edge. And if there was more here, more that threatened to ensnare and entangle, Ramsey was certain she could avoid it. Shake free of it.
Dev smiled then, and her heart stuttered. But before her reaction could summon panic, he lunged beneath her, driving home with hard rapid thrusts.
She shattered, riding the release in a long endless rainbow of unspeakable pleasure. His climax followed seconds later as their bodies shuddered together.
And through it all, her gaze never left his.
Chapter 22
Collapsed on top of Dev, Ramsey felt no particular compulsion to move. Given the lazy stroke of his hands over her still-trembling flesh, he was in no hurry for her to do so.
The jangle of her cell brought a snarl to her lips. An epithet tumbling off her tongue.
“Is that yours?”
“Of course.” Reluctantly, she disengaged from him. Sitting up in bed without him entwined around her was strangely disorienting.
The cell went silent as the call switched to voice mail. Then it immediately began to ring again. It took a moment for her to fumble though the pile of their clothes. Another to retrieve it from the pocket of her suit jacket. By the time she squinted at the screen, it had gone silent again. Two missed calls.
It took only a second to ascertain that they both came from Cripolo.
“Gonna deal with that tonight?”
She turned her head to find Dev close enough to read the cell screen. There was no judgment in his expression. No sign of his opinion of a woman who’d rather chase down a murder suspect than deal with her own family.
But he had a little experience in that area, too, she recalled. He’d be the last to offer empty platitudes.