Ripper Read online

  “I’m going to shave you,” he promised, rubbing his fingers across the curls on my pussy. “You’ll be gorgeous bare and I’ll be able lick every inch of you. I want you to think about that for a minute. I want you to think about how good it will feel when my tongue dives deep inside. I can fuck you with my tongue. I can worship you, licking every sweet inch of this pussy.”

  His tongue flicked out and barely touched my clit. He stopped and then gave it a single long lick.

  “Oh, god.” I was on the verge of something. Something good.

  He hovered there, letting the heat of his breath wash over me, teasing and tantalizing me until I was taut and strung, like a harp waiting to be plucked. “Oh, I think I spent my whole two minutes talking about eating your pussy instead of actually doing it. Does that make you happy, baby?”

  He was such a bastard. He was going to make me say it. He wasn’t going to let me take the easy way out. He gave me a choice. Keep my mouth shut and he would stop and then I might save face, but I wouldn’t know where all this led to. Or I could give him what he wanted.

  “Don’t stop, Gray.”

  “What do you want, sweetheart?” Gray asked with a satisfied look in his eyes. “Would you like me to do that again?”

  “Yes.” I wasn’t going to hold out on him. God, if he would do that again I might come, really come, like the books described or they talked about in the movies but people like me thought was all bullshit. If he sucked me there I thought I would be able to fly.

  His head came up, a curious and mischievous look in those gorgeous eyes. “I’m surprised because I thought you didn’t like it.”

  I kicked at him as much as I could with him between my legs. “Jerk, you started this.”

  The lines of his face tightened, his eyes darkening to that deep violet I’d come to know meant he was emotional. “Give me what I want.”

  Somehow I knew. He didn’t want me to beg. He wanted the truth—our truth. “It’s better because it’s you. I want it because it’s you.”

  “And it only works this way because it’s you, baby.” He settled between my legs again. “And I didn’t start this, but I do promise I will finish it. I will never leave you unsatisfied.”

  Two fingers began to move inside me, filling up my pussy. I was wet, wetter than I’d imagined I could be, and Gray reveled in it. He seemed to love it, groaning as I pushed onto his tongue, practically begging him for more. He set a staccato rhythm with his fingers and when he sucked my clit between his teeth, I cried out and shook as everything below my waist came apart. It was strong and powerful and I sobbed, unable to stop the emotion that flowed as righteously as the pleasure.

  Tears flowed freely down my face when Gray covered my body with his and he used the little key to release my hands.

  “I think I want your arms around me, too,” he whispered as he tossed the cuffs and panties aside.

  His eyes met mine, holding them as if he knew this was an important moment and not time to play games. I felt the broad head of his cock at the juncture of my body, but he hesitated.

  Finally I could touch him and I let my hands find the silk of his hair. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Everything’s perfect. You’re mine, Kelsey. I won’t let anything come between us. Not ever again. Trust me. Trust me to take care of you.”

  At the time I thought he was talking about sex. I thought he was talking about love and opening my heart to him. I couldn’t have known how much darkness was ahead for us. I couldn’t have known how quickly that promise would be broken. By him. By me. I only knew that lying there with my first real orgasm strumming through my body, I would give him anything.

  When that big cock thrust inside me, I realized what I’d been missing. I’d been missing my other half. He filled me. My whole world seemed to focus, to become smaller and larger in the same moment.

  Smaller because there was absolutely nothing outside the circle of his arms. He surrounded me utterly. He was all around and inside me. He filled my every sense and I didn’t need anything but him.

  Larger because I’d been alone and now I wasn’t. I wasn’t just Kelsey. I was a part of Kelsey and Gray.

  I sighed and put my arms around his broad shoulders. He started to thrust, not trying to keep his weight off me. I loved the feel of his weight pressing me into the mattress.

  His cheek rubbed against mine. “You feel so good, baby. It feels so right.”

  I wrapped my legs around him as he finally managed to work himself in to the base of his cock. I sighed as I felt his balls gently rub against my ass as he pulled out again and thrust home.

  “I can’t wait, Kelsey,” he said almost apologetically as he pushed up to his elbows.

  He shoved hard into me, slamming his full length in, and I looked up in wonder at the expression on his face. His eyes were closed as he concentrated on hitting my clitoris with his pelvis. I gasped as it started to build all over again. My hands found his tight backside and I squeezed to hold him there, not wanting him to come out of me even an inch.

  Gray groaned and picked up the pace, and with a little twist of his hips sent me careening over the edge for the second time that night. As I bucked against him, wanting to prolong that amazing feeling, Gray stiffened above me and I felt him jerk as he came. He said my name over and over as he flooded me with his orgasm. He fell forward, his head next to mine, my body pinned deliciously under his.

  “I love you, Kelsey mine,” he said.

  I wrapped my arms tightly around him and held on even as I started to fall asleep. As my heartbeat slowed and a pleasant languor invaded my entire body, I wasn’t afraid of dreams. I wouldn’t dream about that again because I was in Gray’s arms and they would keep me safe.

  Chapter Eleven

  I stared at the pictures on the wall, my fingers idly playing with the coffee mug on the desk. It was easier to view the pictures as pieces of a puzzle rather than actual acts against human beings. In the end, to solve a murder you have to shove your emotions aside and look at the evidence dispassionately. There was time enough for righteous anger later when I knew who to direct it toward.

  The Sunday morning light streamed in through the open window and I knew it was a glorious fall day outside. By afternoon it would be warm enough to not need a jacket, but I grew chilled knowing what I had to do.

  I had to tell Helen Taylor that her daughter was dead.

  “Mistress,” a soft voice said and I turned to see Syl standing in the doorway. His voice hissed around his fangs. “Is the coffee not to your liking? I could make some tea.”

  I gave the red-skinned demon a slight smile. I found a night of really exhaustingly awesome sex made me awfully polite. “It’s fine, thank you, Syl.”

  I took a long drink of the coffee. It was hot and had that little bit of peppermint in it. It was delicious, even better than the coffee I’d had when Gray had brought me breakfast in bed.

  I have a boyfriend. The thought kept going through my head and I found it warmed me on a day when I should have been cold.

  But Syl still made the better coffee.

  “I am glad my mistress enjoys it,” the demon said, looking inordinately pleased with himself. “How else may I serve you?”

  I turned to look at him. He hadn’t bothered with his usual glamour. “I have a small problem.” I’d woken up with a real issue, but the solution was right in front of my face. I knew Gray didn’t want me to have a lot to do with the demon, so sending him out of the house for most of the day would solve two problems. “I only have the clothes I wore on Friday and the dress Liv loaned me. Gray won’t let me go home. Is there…”

  The demon’s eyes lit up. “I would be honored to acquire new garments for you. I enjoy shopping very much and have a decent eye. I will ensure that my mistress has the loveliest clothing.”

  “Let me get you some cash.” I would have to go to an ATM, but I knew there was a convenience store a block away. Surely Gray wouldn’t mind me p
opping down the road. It wasn’t far.

  The demon waved off the thought with a shake of his horned head. “The master would never hear of it. I have a card with which to purchase household items. I will use it. The master has more money than he could possibly use and he would definitely want his intended to be taken care of. After last night, I consider myself your servant as well as his, my mistress.”

  “Why? What’d I do last night?” I’d seen Syl the night before, but we hadn’t spoken. He’d left a bottle of wine, a pot of tea, and a tray of cookies on the bar before he’d slipped out. It was kind of nice to have someone who always supplied me with food.

  “You mated properly with my master,” Syl said with great satisfaction. “I know you humans have formalities, but the master knows you are his true mate, so I consider myself at your service.”

  I tried really hard not to flush. “Okay. Good to know.” I thought briefly about refusing and arguing, but I was close to figuring out what was bugging me about the pictures on the wall. I could always pay Gray back later, after I had Dev Quinn’s insanely large check tucked away in my bank account. “Go, then. I’m a size six. I need something professional for this afternoon and something dressy for tonight. I like black.”

  The demon bowed deeply and was off in his pursuit of “garments.”

  Gray was still running somewhere in the neighborhood. He’d kissed me good-bye thirty minutes before and I’d wondered why he felt the need to run after all the energy we’d burned off in bed. He’d awakened me three times to have sex.

  Make love. I had to mentally correct myself. Gray and I made love. It was raucous and dirty and Gray was seriously kinky, but it was love. It was also tiring and I could use a nap. Not so the inexhaustible Grayson Sloane. He’d put on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt and taken off at a brisk pace. He’d had energy to burn, like his body couldn’t shut down.

  My brain was doing the same thing. There was something off about the pictures. It had been bugging me ever since I first saw the horrible “works of art” the Ripper had sent to Gray. One of the photos poked at me—the one of Joanne. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I kept coming back to it again and again.

  I studied it carefully that morning. There were three photos of her, just like all the others, but one in particular kept my interest. At first I thought it was because I felt as though I’d known the girl. I’d become emotionally invested and it was messing with my head. But as I continued to look at it, I had a feeling deep in my gut that it was important. I knew there was something there.

  I stared for a long moment, the heat from the coffee blowing up through the air. What was it about this one picture that bugged me? On the surface it was no different than the others. Joanne lay on her back, unseeing eyes staring at the camera. Her body was wrapped in silver chains, her hands over her head. I shivered at the thought that I’d probably looked that way last night when Gray had tied me up.

  I wasn’t going to even think about that. It was completely different. I concentrated on the photo. Her torso was sliced open with a neat, surgical precision, but it seemed to me like Joanne had less blood in her pictures than the rest of them. Joanne was the only shifter in the group. The unknown girl was a wolf. There was something about her that screamed wolf to me. I bet she came from a different pack than the Dallas wolves or they would be looking for her.

  Did shifters bleed less than wolves? I seriously doubted it.

  Time ticked by. I finished my coffee and I stared.

  Gray returned. He yelled hello to me and that he was taking a shower if I thought I needed one, too. I heard that, but only vaguely in the back of my mind. I waved him off and he seemed to sense I needed space.

  Why Joanne? If this person was going after wolves, it seemed to me he loved the thrill of the hunt and wresting life from a strong, proud creature. Joanne was a doe. While she might be a little stronger than a human, she had nothing on a wolf.

  Which one of these is not like the others? Which one of these doesn’t belong?

  I groaned in frustration because it didn’t make sense. I turned to the computer on Gray’s desk and decided to change tactics. I googled Jack the Ripper. Thirty minutes later I knew more about the asshole than I ever wanted to. As I would be interviewing him tonight, I should have done it first thing. He’d killed at least five prostitutes in the White Chapel section of London. He’d mysteriously stopped and some people posited that he’d been caught and either killed or placed in a mental ward. I knew for a fact he was happily walking the Earth plane.

  White Chapel.

  Something stuck in my head about the name. It was a low-rent district in London during Victorian times, so why did the name ring a bell? I quickly typed in the words White Chapel and Dallas into the browser and got absolutely nothing. I sat back and then decided to try again. He’d killed wolves from both Dallas and Fort Worth packs. I tried Fort Worth. Nothing. If the computer had a neck, my hands would have been around it. Frustration welled. I knew something was there, but I couldn’t find it…

  White Chapel + DFW

  “Whites Chapel Cemetery.” The website came right up. I breathed with an expectant air of triumph. It was in Southlake, not far from my own little house in Hurst. The entire Metroplex was dotted with small suburban cities, each with their own histories. Whites Chapel Cemetery was old enough to have a historical marker.

  I jumped up and dashed for the bedroom.

  Twenty minutes later, Gray slid me a frustrated look from the driver’s side of his truck. “I don’t see why it had to be this second. I didn’t even get to dry my hair.”

  I was watching the GPS. It said we had another five minutes until we got there. Gray had been cranky ever since I forced him into the truck. “I thought you wanted to solve this case.”

  “Kelsey, I do,” he said with only the slightest bit of condescension. I forgave him because he was a big bad Texas Ranger and I was a twenty-six-year-old PI who’d had her license for less than eight months. “But I don’t see how going to a cemetery is going to help. I seriously doubt he’s burying these girls. He probably puts the bodies somewhere and waits for them to decay.”

  “Joanne’s only been dead for a week,” I pointed out. “It’s entirely possible she isn’t gone yet.”

  He sighed and turned where the bossy GPS voice told him to. “Possible, but not likely. I think you’re trying to put off the inevitable. I told you I would handle Helen Taylor.”

  Now I wasn’t so forgiving. “She’s my client. I’ll handle her. If you think this is such a wild goose chase then take me a few miles back and I’ll get my car and do it on my own.”

  I needed to pick it up anyway, but I’d put it off since I was going to the vampire club that night.

  His hands tightened around the steering wheel. “That’s not going to happen, Kelsey. Look, your part of the case is over, sweetheart. You were hired to find out what happened to Joanne Taylor and you did. Case closed. There’s absolutely no reason for you to do this.”

  My heart clenched a little. Why was he pushing me aside?

  Last night and the night before, he’d been all about us solving the case together. He’d told me how much he needed me. He’d said he couldn’t solve the case without me.

  Today, I was supposed to go my merry way? I thought briefly about how casual he’d been at breakfast, like a man completely satisfied with the outcome of the night before. I’d thought he’d been happy because he had me right where he wanted me, madly in love with him.

  Maybe, I allowed for the first time, he’d just been satisfied he’d seduced me and could move on. It wouldn’t be the first time a man had lied to a woman to get into her pants. It might be the most elaborate lie, but not the first.

  “I thought you needed my help.” My voice sounded even. That was good because I kind of wanted to go straight to screaming harpy.

  He sighed. “You did a good job. You got me new info. Now I need to handle the case on my own. I’m trained to do this, Kelsey. I ha
ve all the resources I need to get the job done.”

  “You can’t get into the vampire club.”

  “I’ll deal with that problem when I have to.”

  What kind of plan was that? “And I’m supposed to do what? Go back home and forget this ever happened? Go back to pulling police reports for lazy liability adjusters?”

  He turned his deep blue eyes to me. His mouth firmed and he was ready for a fight. “Yes, that’s what you get paid to do. If you don’t get back to it, you’re going to lose your business and then what will you do? You worked hard for it.”

  Then what would I do? This was coming from a man who told me he was marrying me and would treat me like a princess. He had more money than god, but I needed to worry about my business?

  And he was wrong. I hadn’t worked hard. I’d spent most of the time playing solitaire or napping or chatting in the weird little café across the parking lot. Now that I was on a case that meant something, I realized how hollow my job had been before. I’d been drifting like I always had. Now I saw something I could be really good at. I could make a difference. Marcus had said last night that my work was important. I liked the sound of that.

  “Look, sweetheart. There’s no reason for us to fight.” Gray’s voice went all kinds of smooth. He reached out to play with my knee as he took the last turn. “I have a lot of work to do on this case and you need to get back to your work. I talked to Jamie this morning. He’s going to stay with you for a while so you can get back to your office. I’ll see you on the weekends, okay? Once this case is finished, we can sit down and really talk about the future.”

  He was dumping me on my brother. My entire body went cold. I hadn’t seen it coming. All my instincts went haywire around this man. It shouldn’t be so shocking that he was the one who ripped me apart.