Colton's Deadly Disguise (The Coltons 0f Mustang Valley Book 7) Read online

  “That’s positively delightful,” she murmured as he moved his hands over her, down her back, making circles in the two indentations he found at the base of her spine.

  “You’re the delight, babe.” He wanted so much from her, wanted to drink from her lips and the hot spot between her legs.

  “Mmm.” She leaned up and gave him a playful bite on his neck, and when her tongue flicked out his erection became painful.

  “I’m not going to last very long if you keep doing that.” He captured her lips again and moved his tongue against hers until she whimpered her pleasure. Her nipples were visible under her bra and shirt, and it turned him on that he’d done this to her.

  “I need to touch you, Bella.” His voice shook with need and for the first time since he’d met her he didn’t care what she thought, how he appeared. All he wanted was this moment, with Bella.

  “Touch away.” She trailed more kisses across his jawline.

  Tracing the edge of her yoga tights he worked his fingers, then his hand, under her clothing. His pulse pounded in his ears as he felt the soft tufted hair, the heat under his fingers.

  “Look at me, babe.”

  She opened her eyes and he thrust one, two fingers into her heat.

  “Oh. My. Gosh. Holden!” She said his name with such intent he almost lost his control. Instead he focused on her pleasure, moving his fingers, exploring the newness of Bella.

  Her gasps and moans led him to her pleasure points, to the rhythm that satisfied her.

  “Let go, Bella. Take it.”

  She responded with a wiggle of her hips, a cry of passion. Holden had never held a sexier woman in his arms.

  * * *

  Bella gasped for breath, unable to do anything but rely on Holden’s strength as he held her against the counter. The orgasm had rocked her, and he’d only used his fingers.

  What was it going to be like when they were joined?

  “Your room?” He kissed the base of her neck next to her shoulder and she melted against his erection.

  “Yes.”

  “Condoms?”

  “Yes.”

  They continued kissing as he slowly walked her across the kitchen and down the short hall to her bedroom. She slid down his body as her legs lowered to the floor, hanging on to his neck while his arms supported her, kept her from crashing.

  With little fanfare they both disrobed until they stood in front of each other completely naked. Her gaze soaked in his muscular edges, the scars on his ribcage, the patch of hair over his sex. He’d driven her to an erotic point she’d never been before. There was nothing but this moment with Holden.

  “I’ll get, get the—”

  “Wait. Let me look at you.” He was breathing heavily, but stilled long enough to grasp her hands, to drink her in. His gaze trailed heat along her face, down her throat, across her breasts. As it lowered, her desire rose, and she didn’t think it could become more insistent. “You’re beautiful.”

  “You, too.” Her voice was as hoarse as his, and they hadn’t done a whole lot more than kiss yet. Her body shook with need, and she was glad the wanting was stronger than what lay under her passion.

  Fear. Fear of the ferocity of their connection. No lovemaking had ever affected her like this before.

  “Where are the condoms?” He was moving toward her nightstand, and at her nod he opened the drawer and took out her box of condoms, the box she’d only opened last night.

  “Lie on the bed, Bella.” He donned the condom with ease and waited for her to lie down, which she did with relief. Her trembling knees weren’t going to support her much longer.

  Holden knelt over her, his knees coming to rest between her legs, and his forearms supported him on either side of her head. She tried to think of something funny to say to break the moment but words failed her. She, the writer, blogger, investigative reporter, was at a loss for words as she was about to make love to a man she’d only met two days ago, yet didn’t know how she’d lived without him until now.

  When he continued to look at her, she smiled and reached her arms around his neck. “I can’t take it anymore, Holden. Please, please take me.” She tugged on his neck and she watched him lower his head, watched until his lids covered his eyes and she, too, closed her eyes.

  It was all feeling now. Lips against lips, tongues wrapping and touching, skin against skin. The rough calluses on his palms ran paths down the outside of her thighs as he lowered his erection onto her, and then with one last deep kiss, plunged into her.

  “Oh!” The intimate contact knocked the air from her lungs, sent tingling sensations across her skin down to her toes. It was so very, very good with Holden. Delicious.

  “Hang on, babe.” Holden began to move, first filling her fully and then pulling back no farther than he had to, to her great gratitude. She needed him inside her, to never leave, to keep the rolling wave crashing against the sands of her heart.

  “Holden!” She couldn’t stop the climax that hit her, but it wasn’t enough for him. He kept moving, then reached his hand between them to touch her in the most perfect spot until she experienced an orgasm unlike any other.

  “Bella.” Holden cried out her name, joining her in the exquisite pleasure.

  Bella wanted to hear him say her name again and again.

  Chapter 15

  Bella left Holden as he dozed atop her sheets and dove into the bathroom for a quick shower. It was enough time, though, to collect what was left of her thoughts. The sex with Holden had been so much more than she’d imagined, and definitely more than she’d bargained for. Electric, elemental, primal.

  Life altering.

  Do not go there.

  She couldn’t. There was the pageant, Gio’s honor and a killer that Holden was after. Probably another criminal, too, if some of the attacks turned out to be those of a lesser villain. Maybe everyone who made it to be a contestant was put under surveillance. She’d have to ask Spencer about it later. He might not be able to reveal anything about an ongoing investigation but he could let her know what petty crimes had occurred during Ms. Mustang Valley in years past, couldn’t he?

  She opened the bathroom door and found Holden still stretched out on the bed in all of his sexiness. Her body immediately reacted and she forcefully focused on the exit.

  “I’ll be in my office.” She gave Holden a quick smile before she left and went into the other bedroom that she’d converted into her writing space when she purchased the place over five years ago. She had to get out of her bedroom, away from Holden’s naked bod, or she’d never check in to the videoconference session.

  Would that disqualify her from the pageant?

  “Give me a sec before you go.” He deftly dressed, as if taking a woman to bed first thing was a daily occurrence. With a pang she realized it might be. How much did she know about Holden, really?

  Enough to know that her brother wouldn’t have become friends with him during his service, much less maintained the bond years later. And she’d watched Holden in action all day yesterday. He was a professional who put justice and safety of all civilians first. Otherwise he would have left her, Marcie and Delilah to get out of the building on their own while he tracked down the culprit.

  “Hey.” He was dressed in his white T-shirt and jeans again, and standing next to her. “Where did you go?” So he’d seen her drift off.

  “I was thinking about how great you were yesterday. You made sure we were all safe. Don’t you regret not going after the bad guy?”

  He frowned, tilted his head. “I didn’t have a bad guy to go after. At least, not in my face. It wouldn’t have mattered though, because whoever it was had already made their way backstage and taken Becky. I want to point out that it’s a good reason to eliminate Becky as the killer, but Selina and Ben might still be involved. I’m sorry Becky got hurt, but all three of you could hav
e been gravely hurt or worse, if there’d been a connected fire. Then we’d have had four casualties instead of one.”

  “Said like only an FBI agent can.” She tried to grin but her lips trembled and tears filled her vision. What the heck?

  “Hey, come here.” He pulled her to him, crushed her against the broad piece of wall that was his chest. “You’ve been through so much. You’re a trooper—you haven’t so much as complained. Let it out.”

  She wasn’t one for spilling tears on a guy’s shoulder, but it was Holden’s shoulder and he was wearing a nice soft cotton T-shirt that felt so comforting under her cheek. “Sorry.” She sniffed.

  “Nothing to apologize for. The stress has to come out one way or another.”

  The meaning in his words took a heartbeat or two to reach her brain. She pulled back and looked up at him. This close she had to crane her neck back, he was so tall.

  “Are you saying that, that—” she pointed at her bed “—was like a stress-relieving ball? I’m not sure how I feel about being compared to a squishy heart-shaped toy.”

  His eyes smoldered with a sliver of what she’d witnessed only minutes earlier.

  “For the record, I don’t hook up with women I work with, agent or civilian. And if I had any smarts I wouldn’t get involved with my friend’s sister.”

  “But?” She realized that it already had become second nature to coax details out of him that she was certain he’d rather keep close, private.

  He looked away, and she saw the pulse ticking on the side of his jaw. Its visible, rapid staccato was incongruous to the air of total control and order he projected. When he turned back she saw the emotions that matched in the depths of his dark, dark eyes. Wonder. Passion. Regret?

  “What happened did because we’re both attracted to one another and have been through a heck of a lot of dangerous scenarios in the past forty-eight hours. But don’t mistake me, Bella. I’d want you just the same, just as much, if we’d met on a tour bus to Smithsville.” His mention of one of the oldest and most worn-out tourist attractions near Mustang Valley made her giggle. Smithsville was as corny as it got, with a fake Wild West ghost town and cheap souvenirs. Old-fashioned carnival games and rides completed the ridiculous ambiance.

  “Smithsville? I haven’t been there since second grade, on a terrible field trip with a teacher who told us she wanted to be a zoo keeper but couldn’t get into vet school.”

  “How do you remember those details?” The lines on his forehead deepened with what she’d come to understand as his Get out! expression, when he found whatever she said incredible. Or maybe unbelievable was more like it.

  She shrugged. “I’ve no idea. Spencer has the same talent, ever since we were little. He memorized all the commercial jingles and cartoon skits from our favorite shows.”

  “You’re correct. Spencer was the best navigator to have in a platoon as he never forgot a landmark. We didn’t need satnav during training when we had Spencer with us.”

  “Yup, that’s my brother.” She hoped her light banter hid how much she was moved by his reminder that he’d served the same time as Spencer. She’d always hated Spencer could have faced combat during his military stint. To know Holden, too, had served and risked the same chance of being sent to a war zone froze her insides.

  She’d have never met him. And now that she had, she wasn’t thrilled that his job was so dangerous, just like Spencer’s.

  Gio, girlfriend. Don’t forget Gio.

  “Is Jarvis like that, too?”

  “In a lot of ways, yes.” She missed Jarvis, even though he lived in Mustang Valley, too, but on a ranch in the crew quarters. His long days, every day, made him busier than even Spencer. She had a full schedule, too, but at least she had the option of working from home as needed. “Look, I’ve got to get in on the meeting that starts in five minutes or I could be kicked out of the pageant.”

  His gaze immediately shuttered and he looked like the security guard she’d met when she checked in. “Keep the door open so that I can have a bead on you at all times.”

  “Aye-aye, sir. Or is it roger?”

  He didn’t respond but for a growl in the back of his throat. It reminded her of how his voice had gotten deep and rumbly while they made love.

  Yeah, she needed to make the video meeting.

  * * *

  Holden circled the entire inside perimeter of the house for the umpteenth time in an hour, waiting for Bella to be done with the pageant training session. He heard Selina’s voice ring out from the laptop speakers, counting as he imagined Bella doing the coordinated dance moves. Holden wasn’t a dancer or into performance art but he imagined it wasn’t much different from orchestrating a takedown operation. Everyone in their place at the right time, knowing exactly how and why they would execute their moves. Plus have a backup plan.

  He didn’t look in on Bella because he didn’t trust himself. After the best sex of his life how could he?

  It’s more than sex now.

  Indeed. He looked through the living room window, saw the cruiser parked beyond a grove of cacti. Two MVPD officers patrolled the property, and he saw one or the other as he made his interior rounds, through windows. It couldn’t last very long, the response from MVPD. They were overworked as it was, with recent events in town now including looters who’d taken advantage of homes damaged in the recent earthquake, investigating the attempted murder of Payne Colton and keeping tabs on the Affirmation Alliance Group. He knew from his background checks on each contestant that Leigh, the woman going out of her way to speak to Bella during the pageant practice, was a part of the mysterious group.

  He had to find who was sabotaging the pageant before MVPD called the protection off Bella. Before the killer got to her, or any other contestant.

  “Bella, your posture is totally off.” Selina’s voice blared out from Bella’s office and he wanted to tell Selina just how incredible Bella’s posture had served them both earlier. Making sure she was safe inside the house, he went outside to do a perimeter check. He knew that MVPD was patrolling the outer edges of her property, but Holden needed to see the house entry and exit points, make sure they were secure.

  In case you want to make love to Bella again?

  “Keep it in your pants, St. Clair,” he muttered to himself as he again checked the bathroom’s window locks. It bugged him that there was a high clear window in Bella’s bathroom. He texted Spencer and asked him to bring either sticky opaque peel-on covering or curtains. He didn’t care which, but he wanted to know that no one could see inside the house.

  Be there in five.

  His reaction to Spencer’s immediate reply surprised him. Shouldn’t he be grateful for the break from his position of constant vigilance? He could talk to Spencer while Bella continued her modified pageant practice, knowing that there was an additional LEA on-site in case the killer came back.

  Instead he had a serious case of guilt. He and Bella were adults, and his decision to break his professional protocol to be with her was solely his. And Bella’s decisions were her own, too. But—and it was a big but—Bella was his buddy’s sister. No escaping that. And if Spencer caught a hint of what had gone down this morning, he’d be up in Holden’s grill.

  Which he totally deserved, but didn’t want to have to deal with.

  His phone vibrated and he answered his supervisor’s call. “Holden.”

  “We’ve got DNA confirmation that it was the same killer in both previous pageants.” His boss wasn’t one to waste time on preliminaries, which Holden usually appreciated but this case had more meaning to him.

  Bella.

  It was as if his boss had punched him in the gut. He sucked in a deep breath, fighting his nerves. Fighting the fear.

  “Copy that. Any clues as to his identity?”

  “We don’t know if it’s male or female, but the pattern seems to fit a mal
e killer as he’s always picking female victims who bear a resemblance to one another.”

  “He’s making up for a lost love.”

  “Or nurturing pain from a loss that was never processed. Like a mother, or former girlfriend or wife. Both victims had red hair and green eyes, so we’re looking at a mother figure with the same.”

  “Did anyone else get hurt at those pageants, contestants who survived?” Holden had to ask, even though it showed a hole he’d missed in his own research and investigation.

  “Yes. In each case, anyone who had a visible problem with the victim was either assaulted or had other criminal activity that appeared aimed at them. One had a car stolen, abandoning her at a diner in the middle of nowhere. Another incident involved the death of a contestant’s dog.”

  “What had the contestant done to warrant their pet being killed?”

  “They criticized the victim. Apparently our killer is very defensive of his targets.”

  Holden breathed in and out in a steady rhythm as he’d learned to do to keep his anxiety at bay. The thought of Becky being shoved down the stairs on the same day she’d verbally sparred with Bella made him nauseous. “It sounds like positive confirmation that it’s the same guy, then.” He told him what had happened with Becky, how Becky had given Bella a hard time two days ago.

  “We’re close, Holden. Don’t let up, and we’ll have the killer before the end of this pageant.”

  “Yes, sir.” After they disconnected, Holden took a minute to look at the blue sky, the small yard that backed up to pure desert beauty. No wonder Bella enjoyed living a little farther out from town. This spot had a quiet peacefulness he missed while living in Phoenix.

  A treasured quiet shattered by a monster.