I suck in a breath and smack Shep on the arm. “We forgot something!” I scurry around the tiny shop until I find my own golden treasure and haul it back to the counter with me.
“Honey?” Shep inspects it a moment before handing it to the clerk.
“What better time for a little hot honey renaissance?”
“Good call.”
“Honey,” the clerk elongates the word as if he’s selling peanuts during the seventh inning stretch. “I’m starting to think this is a private party.” He offers up a devious wink.
“That’s right.” I thread my arm through Shep’s. “Professor Collins asked if I was up for some extra credit. And, seeing that he’s threatened to fail me unless I lick his bits and pieces, I figured I might as well sweeten the pot for myself. Who knows what else he’ll have me doing once he’s liquored me up? I’ve been keeping myself limber all week just the way he suggested.”
Poor George’s mouth falls open as he takes Shep’s credit card and closes out the transaction. “I’d say have fun, but I suspect at least one of you will.”
Shep snatches the bag off the counter, and we take off as if we just robbed the place.
“Good going, kid. The cops will be at my door in an hour, and you can forget about seeing me around Briggs in the fall. I’m sure they’ll revoke my campus privileges by midnight.”
“Relax. You’re not a real professor. You’re an impostor.”
He shakes his head, shooting that signature cocky grin my way. “And you’re a pistol.”
We pick up Chinese takeout just the way I predicted—fine, I might have insisted, but only because the alternative was a grease pit of a drive-through. And soon enough, we’re seated on his navy sofa, comfortable as a cloud in heaven, quasi-snuggling up while watching that wall-to-wall screen that hardly qualifies as a mere television.
“So, what comes first—the chicken or the egg?” I say, putting down a carton of Kung Pao Shrimp.
He chews his barbeque pork bun in haste and washes it down with a bottle of water. “Depends. Which one am I?”
“Funny. I mean the murder investigation or the liquor. Do you want to do a quick info exchange, or are you up for trying to perfect my hot honey recipe for the bar?”
“Hot honey?” He shovels in another forkful of fried rice.
“Yeah, you know, the drink those toasted brides were clamoring for. Or at least one of them.” And that one would be Belinda’s sister. Belinda is the yoga instructor down at the gym, but I’m not up for revealing that tidbit of info just yet.
“Ah yes, the bitter brides.” His brows dip into a hard V, and he looks that much more scrumptious. Damn Shep for being himself. “So that’s what the honey is for. And here I thought you were going to lick my bits.”
I swat him on the arm reflexively. “Shut up and take me to the liquor, Professor Collins.”
Shep leads the way to his state-of-the-art stainless wonder of a kitchen. He’s already determined the fact this place isn’t technically his. As soon as he put the key into the lock, instead of saying something warm and inviting like welcome to my abode, he grunted—Don’t stain the carpet. It’s a rental. He’s gracious that way.
He takes each bottle out of the bag with care and lays them out in a line. Without waiting for an invite, I rummage through his cabinets until I stumble upon a sea of wineglasses. I yank out six and land them gently onto the pale granite next to Shep’s new hard liquor collection.
“Those are wineglasses,” he says, laboring momentarily to open the scotch. “We’re not having wine.”
“I don’t care. They’re pretty, and I want to drink out of them. Don’t be such a wineglass snob.”
“Fine. There’s O.J. in the fridge. Knock yourself out.” He lands a finger’s length of the brown fluid into a glass and takes a sniff. “Heaven.”
“I’ve got news for you, Shep-who’s-about-to-put-a-pep-in-his-step—I’m forgoing all citrus-based liquids this fine evening.” I pull the honey out of the bag and quickly work it open. “I bet it’ll taste better with this.” I pour an inch into my glass and help myself to the scotch and do the same. Just as I’m about to lift the glass to my mouth, Shep is quick to swipe it and take a sip for himself.
His lips redefine themselves in every adorable shape, and my own mouth is instantly drawn to his. “Needs to be stirred.”
“Fine,” I grunt as I scrounge around and come up with a couple of spoons. “You can have that one. I’m trying this.” I pull forward some pear liqueur that looks candy sweet and ready to eat all on its own. Before you know it, I’ve concocted six different recipes—each with the same measure of honey. Two with mixed drinks, whiskey and rum, and rum and pear liquor in addition to the unadulterated samples. I’m careful to stir each one like a seasoned mixologist, and Shep comes along behind me sneaking a sip, smacking his lips as if he were a cocktail connoisseur. And once I’m through, I totally do the same.
“Whoa,” he moans, annoyed. “You’re not allowed to get wasted.”
“Why?” I bat my lashes over the rim of my glass and dip my tongue seductively into the liquor. “You afraid I’m going to lick your bits?”
His features darken, his lids weigh heavy, and if I were a betting girl, I’d wager he was looking forward to just that.
“I’m afraid you’re going to get sloshed and try to lick your own bits. There’s no way I’m taking you back to Briggs three sheets to the wind.”
“First—lucky for you, there’s no human way for me to reach my bits in the disgusting manner you just insinuated. And second—I’m pretty sure I can hold my liquor.” I take a giant gulp and gag and sputter my way through it. Confession: I can in no way hold my liquor, but there’s hardly anything in these glasses. I’m sure I’ll be just fine.
“Easy, girl.” He pats my back, and his thick cologne suddenly offers up my senses a warm hug. “I think you proved your point.” He gingerly extracts the glass from my grasp, and I happily snap up the next.
I take a quick sip and shudder my way through it. “Bleh!” I gag as the word expels from me. “Definitely not that one. What makes it taste like nail polish remover?”
“That would be the liquor, sweetie.”
“Oh.” I grimace as I glare down at my next brown solvent victim. “I’m sure I’ll like this one better.” It’s the pear liquor, and I made sure to put extra honey in this one. I take a sip and retch at the top of my lungs.
“Hey.” He lifts the glass right out of my hands and jumps out of the way as if I’m about to unload my dinner on him, and the way my stomach is boiling with anger, it’s not off the table.
“Nice save.” I wave my hand in front of me.
“You realize you don’t have to swallow. You could spit it out in the sink if you want. In fact, I recommend it. That is definitely safer.”
“Are you kidding? Everyone knows that spitters are quitters.” I take a moment to sneer at him, and his mouth falls open at the double entendre.
And being the wily girl I am, I take advantage of his momentary paralysis and start chugging glass after glass.
“GAH!” I wrap my hand around my throat and point to the third from the last. “I think I’m going to die now,” I whisper as the room gives a gentle spin, and I lean against the counter and go with the motion.
Shep downs the rest of the glasses, getting all the good honey that’s settled to the bottom for himself. “Whiskey for the win.” He pours another few inches into his glass and knocks it back as if it was water before hissing through his teeth, “That’s the one.”
“Does that mean I’m gettin’ an A?” My words slur slightly, and it feels as if my mouth is filled with whiskey-soaked cotton. I try my best to straighten and end up with my hands flat against his chest in an effort to remain upright.
A low growl comes from him. “All right, party’s over. You’re toasted.”
“Nope.” I latch my hands up over his shoulders as the floor bounces beneath my feet. “Not drunk. I’m totally t
otes, tacos, and toast.” I wrinkle my nose a moment. “Wait, that didn’t come out right.”
He shakes his head in agreement as those adorable dimples dig in. That shadowed stubble over his cheeks calls for me to touch it so I do.
“I think you better kiss me.”
Shep winces as if I threatened to slap him. “I’m not kissing you, Serena. I’m getting you to bed.”
“Bed!” I hike an arm in the air as if toasting the occasion. There’s that word again. I’m sensing a theme. “You move fast, Professor Collins.” I run my finger along his jawline and feel the burn right down to my stomach. “But you forgot the honey,” I say, trying to navigate us back, but Shep steers me steady over toward the door.
“No honey for you tonight,” he rumbles right over my ear, his hot breath searing the side of my face, and I die a thousand orgasmic deaths on the inside.
“Oh my God.” I quiver through it, right there in his arms, and dig my heels in as he gets close to giving me the boot. “No way, no how! We has to case the discuss!”
Shep pulls back and frowns, taking a moment to brush the hair off my forehead. “All right, Peacock Princess. You win.” He lands me on the sofa, and I dig my nails in and pull him down on top of me. “Whoa.” His chest rumbles with a laugh, and my entire body vibrates along with it.
My eyes seal shut, and it feels like heaven. “Come here.” I scoop his head up like a bowling ball and do my best to crash his mouth over mine. For a brief moment, his lips touch down against my own, and it’s as if the world exhales for the first time since the last time we did exactly this.
A hard groan comes from me. “Yes, yes, yes,” I chant as he struggles to get away. “Would you just behave for a minute and kiss me already?”
“No, no, no.” He chuckles as if it were hilarious. “You reek of booze and desperation. Never a good combo.”
“I’m boozy.” A fountain of giggles stream from me. “That’s right. You don’t want to kiss me. You think I’m—” An entire jumble of words tumble from my lips as I drift off to sweet, glorious sleep.
All night I dream of Jarhead McDean chasing me around Hollow Brook with a hatchet.
So much for our hot honey renaissance.
Shepherd
A dull moan comes from the sofa just as I land a tray full of pancakes, black coffee, and a glass of fresh squeezed O.J. down onto the coffee table.
Serena stretches to life with that wild hair of hers cascading over the edge of the couch like a crimson waterfall. I would’ve let her have the bed, but it felt wrong on an intrinsic level. Hell, all of this feels wrong on an intrinsic level. What the heck was I thinking bringing her back to my place? Taking her to a liquor store and buying the place out? It’s clear I’ve lost my mind. Good thing I don’t plan on heading back to Briggs in the fall. I’m sure they’ve already put a scholastic APB out on me.
Her lashes flutter, and I marvel at how long they are. Llama lashes. Beautiful—beautiful, thick, dark lashes. Serena has always held a unique stamp of beauty all her own. There’s something larger than life about her—that hair, that face, that body—and let’s not forget the fact she’s mouthy. She’s a real-life Jessica Rabbit with an attitude of a perennially pissed off thirteen-year-old.
Her lids crack my way. “Oh,” she moans, and something about that drugged look on her face, the way her voice hit that perfect octave sends my boxers twitching. Crap. I take a seat near her feet as she comes to and wait for the onslaught. “Oh God.” She struggles to sit up and quickly takes the place in. “I’m here! I’m here?” She picks up the pillow I set underneath her head last night and attempts to smother herself with it. A series of moans and garbled expletives emit from her.
“Hey.” I give her knee a quick jostle. “It’s okay. I texted your roommate and let her know you were safe.”
She pulls the pillow down to her chest, rumpling her hair in the process, and there’s something decidedly adorable about her. “You did?”
“Yup. Your phone kept going off, and I tried to get you to tell her you were still breathing, but you asked me to text her and pretend I was you.”
Her mouth rounds out in horror. “I bet you did.”
A dark laugh strums deep in my chest, but I don’t dare give it. “I sure did, Peacock Princess. And do you want to know what I said?”
Serena sucks in a breath and snatches her phone off the coffee table. Her fingers fumble with it until she sees it, and she lets out a cry that mimics the mewl of a kitten.
“You are a dark and twisted bastard, you know that?” She swats me hard on the arm, and I can’t help but laugh this time.
“What? You didn’t like my response?”
She glances down at her phone. “My dearest Harley, I am spending the night on the couch as Shep did not take to my advances and has locked himself in his bedroom to secure his safety.” She takes a moment to glare at me. “To which she kindly offered to give you—me—a ride home, and then you replied—Absolutely not. As a proficient stalker, I refuse to leave the premises. I’m off to sniff his dirty laundry and lick his toothbrush. They don’t make them like Shep anymore. When they made Shep, they broke the mold.” She swats me three times fast on my arm and I laugh, trying to deflect her halfhearted blows.
“Shep! You made me sound like a freaking lunatic! You’re darn right they broke the mold. I hear just about everything shatters from the heat in hell.” She jumps to a sitting position, her eyes blotched red like tomatoes. “Oh my head,” she moans while clutching her temples.
“Here.” I pull the tray to her lap, and she reluctantly takes a sip of the coffee.
“Oh, that’s bitter.” She offers a smirk my way. “I bet that’s what your soul tastes like.”
“It takes a bitter soul to know one. Try the O.J. I squeezed it myself this morning.”
“Really?” She cocks her head as she toasts me with it. Serena takes a careful sip as if there was the off-chance I poisoned it. “Wow, that’s really good.” She chugs half of it down in a few quick gulps. “You sure you had a hand in this?”
“Yes—fresh squeezed. It’s not often I have guests, and I happened to have an entire bag of organic oranges that my mother dropped off last week.”
A demented laugh percolates from within her. “Aww, I don’t know what I think is more adorable—the fact you think I’m an actual guest and less of a captive, or the fact you’re a mama’s boy.” She gives a hard wink.
“All right, let’s find something to put in that mouth of yours that might actually keep you from flapping those lips.” I spike her fork through the pancakes smothered in butter and syrup and feed it to her.
Serena’s head falls back in ecstasy as she lets out an exaggeratingly loud groan.
“You get any louder and my neighbors might think I’m having a good time.”
She kicks me on the leg, and I catch her foot and tickle it until she pulls it away.
“You are having a good time,” she says with half a mouthful. “I’m a ball to be around, remember?” She takes another bite and moans right through it. “I could live off these, you know. I’d eat them for every meal, but then I’d probably be absurdly squishy.”
I glance down at her pillow-like chest blooming from her T-shirt.
“My eyes are up here, honey.” She offers another kick, this time to my ribs, and I let her get away with it partly because I deserved it. “So, what exactly happened last night? The last thing I remember, you were trying to get me to dance with you and I fell onto the couch.”
A bark of a laugh comes from me. “You wish. You were trying to make—” I pause short of revealing the fact she was begging for a make-out session. “Let’s just say you were in an altered paranoid state. You accused me of trying to send you to Death Alley where Dirty Boy’s killer was waiting to hunt you down.”
She closes her eyes a moment between bites and shakes her head at the thought. “Nice. I guess I escaped one madman’s clutches only to meet up with another’s.” She blinks a s
mile my way. “So, what was it you were trying to tell me yesterday? What’s the big reveal? Who do you think killed Barry?”
“I don’t know for certain, but I went down to the plant where he worked and had an interesting conversation with his sister, Shelby Trainee. Guess what deep, dark secret I found out about her?”
“She prefers you with the mask on and coming at her from behind?” She blinks a wry smile.
“Very funny. She’s set to inherit one point three million dollars from her father’s estate. And now that her only living sibling is out of the way, she doesn’t have to share it with anyone.”
Her rosy lips fall open, and I catch a glimpse of that pink little tongue that teased me so well at the club. “What makes you think she didn’t want to share it?”
“Because legal documents were filed on her behalf trying to evict her brother from the will. Shelby had a lot of reasons to want her brother dead.”
“One point three million,” she marvels as she leans in. “Wow, that’s intense.” She shakes her head as if trying to get a grip on reality. “I guess that outdoes my secret. Remember that gaggle of brides that stormed the Black Bear? I ran into the head bride’s sister at Hollowed Grounds the other day. She pretended she didn’t know Barry at first, but by the time we were done with the conversation, she made it sound as if he got what he deserved.”
I inch back at the revelation before swiping my laptop off the coffee table. “What did you say her name was?” I open it up and my fingers begin flying across the keyboard.
“I didn’t say, but since you asked in a sneaky lawyer-ish way, it’s Belinda Johnson. And I already know where she works. She’s a—”
“Yoga instructor down at the gym.” I inspect the picture of her smiling face. “Wish I could say I recognized her from that night, but she doesn’t even look vaguely familiar. Did she say anything personal about him?”
“Nothing really. Maybe she dated him?”
“I don’t know. According to court docs made public, she’s recently divorced within the last month. I’d say probably not. How about her sister? What’s her name?”