He let her slide down his body. She hit the dirty floor, her gown pooling around her. He bent and wiped his knife on that gown, then he pressed a quick kiss to her lips. She tasted sweet, even in death.
The music and laughter kept coming from outside, calling to him. He put the knife back in its sheath and slipped outside. He made sure to secure the back door—it wouldn’t do for someone to stumble onto his prize—then he hurried around the side of the building, following the cop and the interesting new lady. His gaze slid to the lady in the blue mask. She was yanking against the cop’s hold and demanding that he launch a search of the area.
She was interesting. He’d like to see her without that mask.
His hand lifted and he touched his own mask.
Would you like to see me?
The cop moved faster, the crowd clearing for him. The crowd…they were clueless. You could do so much right in front of them, and they never knew.
He kept to the shadows and he followed that cop and that very interesting new prey.
He hadn’t planned to hunt again, not so soon, but this one…this woman was going to be special.
He could feel it, and now, he understood so very much.
I might just let you see me…all of me.
Chapter One
“Causing trouble again?”
Ivy froze at that deep, rumbling voice. A voice that she usually only heard in her dreams—those really hot ones that came late at night.
“Drunk and disorderly conduct,” that sexy voice continued and she could feel tension gathering between her shoulder blades. “And did you seriously jump off a float in the middle of a parade? Don’t they teach you not to do things like that in manners’ school?”
She turned away from the uniformed cop—the jerk who was seriously trying to get her into the back of a patrol car—and faced this new threat. Because, yes, that was how she always thought of Detective Bennett Morgan. Threat. Danger. But in this instance, he could be her way out. Because if the fresh-faced uniform succeeded in his dumb plan to send her down to the drunk tank, her night was screwed.
“I’m not drunk,” Ivy said. There was no way she could keep the heat from her voice. Fury rode her too hard. A woman was attacked! No one is doing anything! “I’ve said the alphabet backwards twice now, I’ve touched my nose with my fingers a dozen times, and I’ve walked in the straightest line in the world.” Her voice shook with fury. “I saw a woman being attacked. I tried to help,” she emphasized heavily. “My only crime was being a good Samaritan.” And for that, the young cop wanted to toss her in jail. Not cool.
Bennett stalked toward her. A streetlight fell on him, revealing the hard planes of his face. Bennett wasn’t traditionally handsome. No, he was far too rough for that. Rough and wild with his thick, slightly long, blond hair and those deep, brooding eyes of his. She couldn’t see the emerald green shade of his gaze at that moment, but she’d never been able to forget that color. Bennett’s jaw was square, a faint cleft marked the center of his chin, and his high cheekbones gave the guy a wild edge.
An edge that she would not be exploring. At least, not right then.
She’d had a rather unhealthy attraction to Bennett since she was eighteen years old. Their time apart—all of those years—should have dimmed that attraction. It hadn’t. She looked at him, and that same sensual awareness flared within her.
Don’t let him see it. Don’t.
She lifted her cuffed hands and she moved closer to him. Bennett might be many things, not all of them good, but he was the Mobile Police Department’s golden boy of the moment. The big, bad, new hotshot detective who’d come to town a month ago. So maybe the hotshot could assist her. “Bennett, please, talk to the guy. Help me.”
His hand brushed down her arm. She hated that his touch seemed to scorch right to her soul. He shouldn’t still affect her that way. But he did.
Damn him.
Bennett’s gaze raked over her. “Officer Chambliss,” he said, referring to the cop who was all too eager to toss her into a drunk tank some place and forget about her. “You know who this woman is, right? Senator DuLane’s daughter?”
Her eyes squeezed closed. Was Bennett really trying to ruin her night or what? Now she’d be in jail and on the scandal page of the local paper. Mentioning her father wasn’t going to help anything. The guy was dead and buried, and before he’d been put in the ground, he’d wrecked more than his share of lives.
Maybe that was why Bennett mentioned him. To remind me that he hasn’t forgotten.
Or forgiven.
“Did you give her a breathalyzer?” Bennett asked as he tilted his head to the side.
“Y-yes, of course!” The redheaded cop said quickly.
“Is she drunk?”
“Not legally,” Officer Chambliss was forced to admit, “but…you should have seen her dive off that float!”
“I wish I had,” Bennett muttered.
Ivy glared at him.