Chase focused on the swell of her breasts as he dipped inside her. They were perfectly round and her nipples hard beacons. He loved large nipples and Ashley’s were pretty good sized. But then her breasts were more than a handful and couldn’t be more perfect if she’d had them specifically designed for her body.
Her ribs were barely noticeable unless she sucked in a deep breath. Her tummy was smooth and flat, but not concave. Ashley wasn’t skinny, but perfectly thin. Hell, everything about her was just the way he liked a woman, including her feisty nature. He’d caught a glimpse of her temper when she dealt with her ex earlier, and if he’d voiced his opinion, he would say her ex was up to no good. Since he planned on hanging around for a while, he would learn what the bastard was about, and make it damn clear messing with Ashley meant messing with him.
She might believe she could make it on her own, and Chase was sure she could. But there wasn’t any harm in making his presence known, marking his territory so to speak. It wouldn’t surprise him if her ex did a drive-by or two while he was here. Chase’s SUV was parked in front of her house. He was off to a perfect start in making it clear he was laying claim on this hot, sexy lady.
And it wasn’t just because she was easily the most enticing woman he’d ever met. Chase refused to think damned good sex was all it would take to make him want to keep her by his side. Hell, he hadn’t actually fucked her yet, although if he didn’t really soon, he was going to explode. There was a chemistry about Ashley, from the way she investigated a crime scene to how she argued with him over the facts of a case. He’d never been one to share his work with a girlfriend. Hell, whenever he’d had a girlfriend in the past, the term applied weakly at best; more accurately she’d have been called a fuck buddy. Getting close to a woman inevitably meant heartache, and headaches. Especially when they tried digging their claws in.
Chase impaled her pussy, feeling her soaked muscles quiver around his tongue. Ashley dragged her nails over his shoulders, purring delightfully as she moaned and mumbled words he barely understood. Her long lashes draped over her eyes, fluttering when she tried focusing on him. When she lifted her head, staring down at him, her cheeks were flushed and her dark green eyes glazed over with need that matched his own.
“Don’t ever stop,” she groaned, her order sounding more as if she begged.
Chase chuckled against her wet flesh and moved his attention to her swollen clit. The moment he sucked it between his lips, Ashley came off the bed, howling and digging her nails in deep enough it stung. Meeting a lady he’d be happy to see dig her claws in and fight to hold on should terrify the hell out of him. He teased her clit, batting at it with his tongue before closing his lips around it again.
“Chase! Goddamn,” she yelled, every inch of her stiffening as fresh cream soaked his face. She came hard, crying and moaning and probably leaving serious scratch marks over his shoulders. “Oh crap,” she wailed. “I can’t . . .”
“Yes you can,” he growled, his voice thick with his craving for her. His cock throbbed so hard between his legs he wasn’t sure he’d be able to lift himself over her, or move at all, without exploding.
He held out until her breathing slowed. A moist sheen of perspiration made her glow. But it was the slow smile, when she opened her eyes and gazed up at him, that about undid him.
“That was so good,” she moaned, and raised a hand lazily, reaching for him. “Come here,” she told him. “I need you to fuck me now.”
Chase didn’t mind following that order. Climbing on to the bed, he gripped his cock, feeling the incredible weight of it. He was swollen and harder than steel, and her heat beckoned him. As much as he wanted to take his time, fuck her in every position possible, he doubted his ability to hold out much longer.
Ashley raised her legs, stretching them and giving him a view to die for. “Hard and fast, sweetheart,” she instructed, trying to grab his cock and bring it to her. “I want it hard and fast.”
“We’ll see what you can handle.” And what he could handle.
She made a face at him, but didn’t argue when he positioned himself and then glided into her heat. Her mouth formed a perfect circle as she raised her hands, reaching for him but only managing to brush her fingertips across his chest before he impaled her. Chase wanted to take his time filling her, experience all those hot, tight muscles wrap around him. But she was like a magnet, dragging him in deeper and deeper, until he couldn’t fight it any longer and gave her exactly what she wanted.
CHAPTER 7
ASHLEY COULDN’T let Chase spend the night. As worn out as she was, her body sated and sleep calling to her, she rolled out of the bed, almost falling to the ground. Opting for her bathrobe instead of her clothes, she didn’t want to glance back at the perfect body sprawled out on her bed. And she wouldn’t dwell on the fact that there wasn’t a thing she could think of to complain about.
Chase was too good to be true. It should bother her that he was so aggressive, dominating, and controlling. But she really loved those characteristics in him. Even when he was concerned about protecting her home, and the way he reacted to Danny’s breaking in, appealed to her. And it shouldn’t. She needed to send him home, bask in incredibly wonderful sex, and leave it at that.
Traipsing barefoot into her kitchen, she opened her refrigerator, surprised to find an unopened bottle of water. She was positive she’d run out a few days ago but gave thanks for small miracles and pulled the chilled bottle out of the refrigerator. Twisting off the top, she scowled when she heard her phone ring.
Ashley drank some of the water and almost gagged. “Shit,” she hissed, spitting the water into her kitchen sink. It tasted putrid.
“What time is it?” She squinted at the digital clock on her micro wave, trying to focus, gave up and hurried to her phone. If someone was calling in the middle of the night, it wasn’t good news. Rubbing the back of her hand over her lips, she fought to get the sour taste of the water out of her mouth.
Chase stood naked in the doorway to the living room, his brooding expression as captivating as the rest of him. She found her purse on the couch and pulled out her phone.
“Shit. It’s dispatch,” she offered, a sinking feeling twisting in her gut as she flipped open her phone. “Hello,” she said, flinching at how raspy her voice sounded, as if she’d been yelling the past few hours. A warm flush heated her cheeks when she realized how much she probably had yelled.
“Detective Jones, a call came through less than an hour ago, possible suicide. But when the officers arrived on scene they asked me to call you. Sounds like another lady got hit by ISIS, and she is wearing one of those rope bracelets.”
“Ten four,” she groaned. “I’ll be right there. What’s the address?”
THE SUN WAS coming up when Ashley almost fell into her car. Chase made her promise she’d call him the moment she finished going over the scene. She almost considered not doing so, knowing he’d probably fallen asleep and hating to wake him. There was no reason both of them should have to go the entire night without any sleep. Not to mention, a scary feeling, mixed with something that excited her, created a knot in her tummy when she thought about him. Chase was too good to be true and she wasn’t exactly the most experienced lady when it came to dating. Her life was her work. Divorcing Danny had wiped her out, and made men, or getting close to them, a taboo thought.
Already as she walked through the house where Chris Perkins’s roommates found her dead when they came home from the bars, she looked at something imagined and, more than once, how Chase would view it. The entire time she was there she made mental notes of what she’d tell him. This had to stop. Two days. She’d known him for two days, had fucked him, and he was in her thoughts nonstop. A good, healthy case of lust had turned quickly into serious infatuation. Ashley stared at her phone, the numbers blurring while she struggled to keep the events of her evening in order in her mind.
“Just go home and go to sleep,” she ordered herself.
Her phone r
ang in her hand and her heart slammed into her throat, the damn thing scaring the crap out of her. Since he’d entered his number into her phone before heading out, she stared at his name on the phone’s screen.
“Crap,” she hissed, forcing her heart to quit beating a mile a minute and yelling at herself for being so jumpy. She’d just endured a couple hours of grueling interviews with semi-sober roommates, and focused on a murder scene, yet the phone ringing in her hand sent her heart pounding and made her palms damp.
“I was just going to call you,” she said as she answered, feeling disoriented and fighting to remain grounded.
“Are you done?” His deep baritone in her ear created a warmth inside her that made her pussy throb. The hell with going home. She’d go to his house and fuck him again.
“Yes, for now,” she admitted, squeezing her eyes closed and willing the burn to go away. No matter how much she tried it was impossible to focus. Hell, she shouldn’t be driving anywhere.
“Come on over. I’ll make coffee. I want to hear about it while it’s fresh in your head.”
She was too tired to argue. And as she cruised down the quiet road a minute later, she didn’t remember hanging up the phone with Chase. It amazed her she found his house, although she knew Wichita pretty well and he was in a fairly established community. Another time Ashley would take in his home, study his yard and the layout of the place, but when she parked in his gravel driveway and turned off her engine, she swore darkness engulfed her. It was too hard to move, let alone keep her eyes open. Apparently she wasn’t as young as she used to be. And if she weren’t so damned tired she might try counting how many all-nighters she’d pulled just this year working one case or another.
Ashley barely acknowledged her car door opening. Had she forgotten to lock yet another door? But when strong hands reached for her, and Chase’s familiar smell wrapped around her, Ashley cuddled against his strong, muscular body. Immediately her insides swelled, smoldered, need ransacking her so hard it made it damn hard to breathe.
“Fuck me,” she murmured, hearing the words leave her mouth although it didn’t sound like her. It sounded like she was drunk. Ashley didn’t remember the last time she’d been this out of it. Obviously she needed more sex. If fucking Chase once wiped her out this much, it was imperative she build up her stamina. Which could only be accomplished by fucking him again, right now. “Now,” she uttered, barely able to get the word out.
Chase’s chuckle sounded so far away. Even so, his rich, deep baritone created a fever inside her. She wanted to touch him, demand he take the incredible urge that suddenly attacked her away. But as she felt herself lifted, held securely in his strong arms, everything around her went black.
“ASHLEY?” SOMEONE asked. “She’s coming around now.”
Ashley blinked, her head pounding so hard and bright lights attacking her making it worse. She raised her hand, feeling something stuck to her, and covered her eyes, her brain refusing to cooperate. The sheet over her was crisp and cold, which made no sense. Where was her warm blanket? Had Chase fucked her so well that she’d passed out?
“You should let me run the show next time,” she grumbled, knowing if she fucked Chase the way she’d wanted, she would have paced herself better and not be so out of it now. “You don’t listen very well.”
“Ashley?” the voice asked again.
She frowned, her mouth like sandpaper. “I need something to drink. Oh, not that water. It was nasty.”
Wait a minute. She’d already gotten out of bed, and there had been a phone call. Ashley blinked again, enduring the painful bright light to take in her surroundings.
“What the hell?” she gasped, sitting up quickly and feeling the room spin around her.
“Easy, girl,” Chase whispered. He ran his rough hand over her forehead, the touch enough to send her back to her pillows. “Try some ice chips.”
“Give them to her slowly. Her stomach is still going to be very weak.” It was another woman.
Why the hell was another woman with them?
“I don’t understand,” she murmured, enjoying the way Chase stroked her forehead.
“Is she awake?” Her captain, John Sullivan, appeared at the end of her bed. He stared at her with dark, warm eyes that looked almost compassionate. “How are you doing, Ash?”
“Confused.” She looked around her and realized she was in the ER. Curtains enclosed her bed, and Chase stood on one side of her, the woman on the other, and now her captain at the end of her bed. “What am I doing here?” she asked, studying the IV tube entering the vein in the back of her hand. Her head started pounding again when she looked up at the bag hanging on the IV pole. “What are you pumping into me?”
“We’re just rehydrating you right now.” The nurse next to her glanced at the panel showing Ashley’s vitals. “You seem to be coming around nicely though. I’ll go get the doctor.”
She took the cup of ice chips from Chase and dumped a fair bit of them into her mouth. Then looking from Chase to Captain Sullivan, she frowned further. Did they know each other?
“Someone mind filling me in?” she asked, glancing down at herself and then tugging the hospital gown, making sure she was covered. “I don’t have a clue why I’m here.”
“Your friend brought you in,” Captain Sullivan told her, wrapping his large hand around the bar at the end of her bed. “Apparently he couldn’t wake you up.”
Captain Sullivan gave Chase a hard look. By the way he said “your friend” it appeared he didn’t know Chase. His expression was hard, almost cold, the compassion she swore she saw when she first woke up definitely gone.
“You mind if I speak with Ashley alone?” Captain Sullivan growled.
Chase took his hand from her forehead, his expression tight and unreadable as he backed away from her bed. She searched his face, wishing she remembered something, anything. When he disappeared around the curtain, leaving her alone with her captain, he came up alongside the bed, moving a stool she hadn’t noticed and then sitting next to her.
“What do you remember before coming here?” he asked.
“Everything is foggy.” Flashes appeared in her mind, making love to Chase, him fucking her so hard she was barely able to make it to her kitchen for water. That wasn’t something she was going to share with her captain.
“You worked the crime scene for Chris Perkins,” he prompted.
Ashley searched his dark features. In the ten years on the force, John Sullivan had never aged. He had to have one of the highest-stress jobs in the city, yet his smooth black skin didn’t wrinkle, and his brooding stare once again appeared concerned, and not stressed.
“Chris Perkins,” she whispered, the flashes in her mind piecing together. “I remember.” She nodded, once again trying to sit up in her bed. There was something weird about lying against pillows while talking to her captain. “It appears we’ve lost another lady to ISIS.”
Captain Sullivan nodded. “Where did you go when you left the crime scene?”
She squinted, frowning. The fog was lifting from her brain, leaving a dull, thudding headache in its wake. “I headed over to . . .” She hesitated. Captain Sullivan hadn’t acted as if he knew Chase.
“You went over to the guy’s house who brought you in here?” He asked the question but looked at her as if he were reminding her that was what she did.
Ashley nodded. “I really don’t remember anything after that.” She couldn’t even picture his house in her mind. “How did I get here?”
“He brought you here. What’s his name? Is he a close friend?”
Close enough that she fucked the shit out of him. Ashley wondered how thorough an exam they did on her when she arrived. Losing a piece of her life seriously sucked. She couldn’t account for anything after leaving the crime scene.
“Yes, he’s a close friend,” she conceded. “I guess I was more exhausted than I realized. I don’t ever remember passing out this hard.” She hoped her smile appeared sincere. The so
oner she could get out of this hospital the better.
“You didn’t pass out, Ash. You were drugged. They found small traces of ISIS in your system.” Captain Sullivan’s dark features turned dangerous, the white around his black eyes suddenly glowing as he stared at her. “I want to know everything about the guy who brought you in here. How long have you known him?”
ASHLEY STOOD in her living room, staring at her familiar surroundings but not seeing them. Chase had taken off after leaving the side of her bed, which made him even more of a suspect in everyone’s eyes. But her gut told her he wasn’t the ISIS killer, that he couldn’t have been because he’d been with her when Chris Perkins died. Her reaction to the lethal drug was proof, though, that a person could ingest and not die for a few hours.
“Have you had company recently?” Captain Sullivan, who’d brought her home, walked through her living room and into her bedroom, switching on the light.
In spite of having slept almost all day, Ashley still felt exhausted. They’d almost pumped her stomach at the hospital in an effort to get the ISIS out of her system. When test results showed she’d only ingested a minuscule amount, and her reaction was more an aftereffect than being drugged, they’d let her sleep it off, monitoring her until she woke up.
Ashley walked past her captain, knowing what her room probably looked like, and headed to her kitchen instead.
“Who’s been over here, Ash? Was it that guy who brought you in? What did you say his name was, Chase?”
She’d done her best to avoid giving too much information about him, although the more vaguely she was answering him, the more guilty she made him look. Ashley knew he wasn’t her killer.
“Yes, Captain, his name is Chase. He’s not your man, though.”
“He’s a suspect. You’ve been poisoned. Who else have you been with?”
“No one,” she said quickly, spinning around but then realizing she wasn’t helping Chase’s case. “You’re going to have to trust me on this one, John,” she offered softly. “There is no way he killed any of those women, or drugged me. What I need to figure out is how, and when, I would have ingested ISIS.”