High-Heeler Wonder (Killer Style 1)

Okay, maybe not so slow. Sinking his fingers into her round hips, he relished the moan that reverberated. “You feel so perfect.”

She lowered the condom onto his throbbing dick, lifted up, and fitted him to her. Then, inch by inch, he slid into her tight grip and the universe revealed its secrets. There was no before. No after. Only now. Only Sylvie.

She settled all the way down. “Now, that’s perfect.”

For once, he couldn’t argue with her.

She rode him, slow and hard, putting her tits at the perfect level for sucking. It was an invitation he couldn’t decline. He lavished her nipples and the tender undersides of her breasts, appreciating them for the works of art they were. Her back muscles undulated under his fingers as he touched her above her pert ass while she rose and fell. It was all so right.

She ground down onto him, rubbing against him, twisting against him. The nerves in his lower back started to buzz, to pulse. He wouldn’t last much longer. He slid one hand around to the front and slipped it between their joined bodies. She rewarded his first stroke against her clit with a cross between a sigh and a plea for mercy, then increased her pace. Her nails dug into his shoulders and she threw her head back, her long hair swinging wild.

She exploded around him, her muscles clenching around his cock. It was all he needed to push him over the edge, into oblivion.

Slowly, his breath returned to normal, but his heart continued to pound a fast beat in his chest. He didn’t want to lose her. He couldn’t.

Wrapping his arms tighter around her narrow shoulders, he drew her against him. Her eyelashes fluttered against his chest. She was everything he’d ever needed. Smart. Fun. Ambitious. Loyal. Beautiful. Dangerous as hell. His father had been right. He’d lost the war before he’d even realized he was fighting one.

Floating on a haze of satisfied calm, he nuzzled her hair. “God, I wish I’d known you before.” Drunk on love and lust, the ill-fated words had slipped out of his mouth before he knew what he was saying.

“Before what?” She whispered the question against his fast-beating heart.

He hesitated. Damocles’s sword wavered over his head. To lie or confess? Damn his weak heart, he wanted to evade rather than risk her well-deserved wrath. But when it came down to it, he wasn’t that man. He ached to be honest with her.

Girding himself for the hell that would surely follow, he took a deep breath. “Before…before I sent that first e-mail to the High-Heeled Wonder.”

She startled. “Wait. What?” She stared at him, then suddenly scrambled backward, not stopping until her butt hit the couch’s arm. “You?”

“Sylv—”

“All the threats? The demands to shut down my site? That was you?” Sylvie blanched. “And the picture of the rat?” She practically screeched out the words.

“I’d never send you a picture of a dead rat.”

She sprang to her feet, grabbed her robe off the floor, and shoved her arms into the sleeves. “But the others?”

He stifled the urge to grab her and make her listen. “No. Not all of them.”

She nailed him with a look of disgust that pierced him right through the kidneys. “Tell me the truth. Why? Who are you, that you would do such a thing?” Her fingers trembled as she gathered the cotton material, clutching it at her throat.

“I’m the man who was so desperate to find his partner’s killer that he found a way to get as close as possible to the men he thought were the murderers.” Regret ate at him. He had to make her understand, to forgive him. “I needed my prime suspects—your dads—to trust me enough to let me into their world. So they’d slip up and I could nail them.”

He reached out to touch her hand and she recoiled. It hit him like a punch in the stomach. She was shutting him out, just as he’d feared. But he couldn’t give up. Not while there was still a sliver of hope. He pushed on, desperation making the story fly out of his mouth.

“Six months ago, I put a plan into action to do just that. I finagled my way onto guest lists at events I knew your dads would be attending. It wasn’t hard. A third of the hostesses in this town are my clients. At the events, I’d run into your dads, hand them my card, and give them the Maltese Security pitch. I made sure I’d be the first person they thought of if they ever needed a security expert.” Bile rose high in his throat. “Then I made sure they had a good reason to call me.”

So obsessed with finding justice, he hadn’t thought about how his deceitful actions had perverted his high-minded intentions. At the time, Sylvie hadn’t been a real person to him. Just a convenient means to an end.

“I sent three e-mails months ago, warning that I was watching you, and that you needed to shut down your site. I figured you’d run to your dads right away. Obviously, I didn’t know you then.” He offered up a slight, hopeful smile. It shriveled under Sylvie’s harsh glare. “When the e-mails didn’t get the desired result, I decided I needed to try another tack. I hadn’t actually come up with a suitable option yet when your dads called me about the worsening threats being made against you.”

While nerves twitched in agony across his skin, Sylvie had stopped responding to his words. Her jaw was locked shut and she was staring at a spot above his left shoulder. Something hot and painful ripped through his lungs, shredding them with the efficiency of a cop-killer bullet at point-blank range.

He jumped to his feet, but stumbled forward and his legs tangled in the jeans around his ankles. Catching himself before he fell at her feet, he fumbled for the right words. “Sylvie, I— I—”

“Am a sorry sack of shit?” she completed for him. The usual warmth in her voice had frozen as she finished his sentence. “Get. Out.”

Getting his knee mangled had been a hangnail compared to this. “Please. I love you.”

She flinched as if he’d punched her. Then, with infinite care, she turned to face him. And he knew then, it was too late. He’d lost her.