Клео Коул - Murder by Mocha

I stopped talking when I saw Madame was no longer paying attention to me. “What are you looking at?”

Lifting her chin, she smiled. “Good evening, Detective Quinn.”

“Good evening, Madame Dubois. Mind if I borrow your manager?”

Her violet eyes sparkled. “I think she’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

A moment later, Mike’s breath was hot at my ear. “Somewhere private where we can talk?”

I swallowed, surprised at the voltage just one of Mike’s whispers could send through my system.

“Follow me,” I said, taking his hand.

The kitchen was dimly lit and empty, the constant whir of large refrigerators the only sound. As I turned to face him, he deftly slid an arm around my waist and yanked me close.

“Whoa, slow down!” I said, flattening my palms against his chest. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Five shots of that Mocha Magic stuff . . . Or maybe it was six.”

“Six shots!”

“Esther fixed me up.” Mike’s hands slipped up and down my back, then over my backside.

“Seems to me, she fixed me up!”

“Not her fault,” Mike said. “I told her I needed a major caffeine hit, and she said there were more than enough samples to go around.”

“Believe me, Esther loves to play imp.”

“You wanted us to test this stuff, didn’t you?” Mike’s reply was somewhat garbled. His lips were too busy tasting my neck, my jaw, my earlobe.

“Hey, I’ve been worrying about you for hours,” I said, squirming in his grip. “I want to know what happened today. You seem pretty darn happy for a guy who just resigned from a job he lives for.”

“I didn’t resign.”

“You reconsidered?”

“I reassessed.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means my paranoid assumptions were flat-out wrong. The first deputy commissioner wasn’t hunting for a head. He knew about our case coming apart with that poor kid’s suicide, but he said he understood. He’d had his own share of jobs gone wrong. He seems like a good guy—Larry Hawke is his name.”

“Hawke?”

“He’s a real old-timer. Hero cop, decorated while still in uniform . . .” Mike smiled down at me. “See? No more worries.”

“But—”

My reply melted away in a kiss so electric it could have been licensed as a stun gun. Fighting to keep my head, I broke off, pulled away . . .

“Take it easy, okay? Anyone could come through that kitchen door at anytime.” I exhaled. “Alicia claimed this stuff was potent. It looks like she was right.”

Mike laughed. “I haven’t enjoyed herbs and spices this much since I was in uniform, splitting a bucket at KFC. I ever tell you that?”

“No.”

“My partner liked the wings. I was a breast and leg man.”

I removed his roving hand from my thigh. “What were you and Joy laughing about, by the way?”

“You don’t know?” Mike said in a tone that implied I should.

“No. I don’t know. What?”

“I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Well, I hope you weren’t telling her what happened with me this morning. I take it you heard about the Topaz bagman by now? Cop gossip. Or maybe the Fish Squad filled you in—”

“Oh, I heard. You’re the talk of the PD today, Cosi. Let’s just say I got a lot of pats on the back, along with plenty of ribbing, mostly guys asking why my girlfriend didn’t phone me for the collar.”

“It wasn’t your jurisdiction.”

“My jurisdiction? I see. Well, how about we find my jurisdiction . . .”

Mike grabbed my wrist and tugged.

“Hey! Where are we going?”

He didn’t reply. Like a caveman in a mating frenzy, the man simply pulled me toward the kitchen’s glass double doors, a service exit that allowed the catering staff to reach the Garden.

Against my better judgment (although not my hormones) I willingly followed. The rain was still coming down, but an awning extending out from the doorway kept us relatively dry.

This part of the roof had the feel of a balcony or (given the downpour) a narrow section of Noah’s deck. A corner of the building cut us off from the bulk of the event area. Far to my right, I could barely make out a sliver of the lighted Garden—like catching part of an ark’s bow from the vessel’s port side. Yet in front of us we had the same billion dollar view, a virtual sea of city lights.

At only seven stories north of Fifth, we floated just above the Midtown streets. Glistening towers of glass and stone rose up around us like dramatically lit stalagmites. Across the avenue, the Gothic steeples of St. Patrick’s Cathedral loomed whitely in the night like twin spires of a delicately carved ice palace.

Mike kept us under the overhang, just a few steps away from the kitchen doors still veiled by shadows. He swung me around and pressed my back to the wall. The surface was cold, but his caressing hands felt warm against my chilled skin.

“I still don’t understand,” I whispered as his lips began to nibble. “Why did this deputy commissioner Hawke make such a big deal about calling you in?”

“He wanted all the paperwork on the Brooklyn suicide and the Jersey drug dealer the kid had been buying from. He’s turning everything over to the Feds. In the meantime, he had another case for me. An important one.”

“What case?”

“A cold case. He said I was in a unique position to handle it.”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you about it—later.”

“You’re putting me off?”

“Only for a little while. The truth is, I’m going to need you.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. This cold case puts you in a prime position to help me. And speaking of prime positions . . .”

Mike’s body pressed into me.

“We shouldn’t be doing this—” I lamely rasped, until his kiss convinced me otherwise.

For a time we were content, wrapped in a cocoon of bliss, our mouths sealed, the magical lights of Rockefeller Plaza shimmering through the soft rain. Then something far less ethereal kicked in.

My skin began to tingle and my heart rate picked up. A rush of adrenaline seemed to heighten every touch, every kiss. Was Mocha Magic really this potent? I’d only sampled a little yet I felt genuinely breathless, slightly dizzy. Clearly, Mike did, too. When his big hands began roughly tugging up my skirt, I knew he’d lost his head.

“Mike, no!” I pushed hard at his chest, smoothed my skirt back down. “Not here.”

“Where, then,” he whispered, breath searing my ear. “Your place? Later?”

“Actually, no.”

He tensed.

“Joy’s come home unexpectedly. She’ll be staying with me.”

“How about after Joy goes to sleep?”

I shook my head.

“Come to my place, then.”

“I’ll try.”

“Better do more than try, Cosi . . .”

Mike’s primal need for fleshly delights reasserted itself. Once again, I felt his hands shortening my hemline. This time I didn’t stop him. My own unbearable need for release had finally short-circuited every synapse of my better judgment.

Thank heaven for the urgent ringtone of his cell, which put the brakes on his out-of-control libido (and mine). Mike cursed softly as he answered the cell call with one hand, kept tight hold of me with the other.

“Yeah, Sully.”

Mike listened, his face growing impatient. “And this has to be done now and not later?”

Within a minute, the conversation was over. As he put away his phone, I readjusted (and rebuttoned), which took a good minute.

“It seems a certain member of the NYPD requires my attention,” he said, clearly annoyed. (Those little veins at his temples were more accurate readers of his mood than a standard polygraph test.)