Allison Brennan - If I Should Die

His hands moved under her long T-shirt, skirted over her hips, up the soft curves of her athletic body. He loved how she was both soft and hard, her muscles tight and strong but her skin smooth and delicate. His thumbs reached for her nipples, pushing in gently but firmly until he heard that pleasurable gasp he loved, emanating from deep in Lucy’s chest.

Sean watched Lucy pull off her shirt, revealing her body. The scars that cut across her breasts still made him angry, but he never showed it. She’d close up, cut him off, worry … Right now, all he wanted was to show Lucy she was perfect.

He brought her breasts to his face and kissed them, savoring the weight of them first in his hands, then in his mouth. She leaned into him and he almost didn’t realize she was pulling down his boxers with her toes until they were tangled around his ankles. Her full body pressed against his, and he wrapped his arms tight around her, but she shrugged them off as she sat back up.

She touched his penis and he groaned. “Luce-”

His voice was scratchy. He wanted to tell her to wait, slow down, let him relish her, but it was too late. She rotated her hips until he started to penetrate, then all at once she pushed down.

Sean grabbed her ass and held her tight against him as he attempted to regain control. But that was a fruitless endeavor because Lucy didn’t sit still. Slowly, she moved her hips in circles, giving and taking pleasure. She reached for his hands and clasped them, pushing their joined fists into the bed for leverage. She adjusted her knees on either side of his body and picked up the pace of her lovemaking. Her back arched, and he watched her, amazed at how beautiful and sexy and innocent and wanton she looked, all at once. Her head tilted back, her long, elegant neck begging to be kissed, but he couldn’t lean up without breaking the intense moment. Her eyes were closed, her skin flushed and slick, her mouth parted. She licked her lips, not intending to arouse him further, but because she didn’t know what a turn-on it was, it made him all that much more greedy for her body.

Lucy had made her mind a blank. No thoughts, just the physical sensations that drenched her body, drowning her inner voice, burying her fears. Sean was inside her, his hands clutching hers, his muscles clenching and relaxing, then contracting even tighter as he came closer to the edge she was about to go over. Fast, little foreplay, but she didn’t need it or want it. She was learning more about her body and Sean’s body and ways to set them both off. The explosion was becoming seductive, a drug she craved more now than ever before.

“Kiss me,” Sean said, his voice gruff.

She leaned down, shifting her pelvis, and he groaned beneath her. He let go of one of her hands and grabbed her head, bringing her mouth to his, devouring her lips, his tongue mimicking his penis. He wasn’t moving in and out, he was moving in and deeper, and her body shuddered all on its own, shaking as his orgasm ignited hers. Sean swallowed her cry as he held her body tight against him, his muscles rigid.

“God, Lucy,” he muttered as she felt his final release.

Sweaty, she collapsed on top of him, all liquid and hot and satisfied. She sighed, her mind still empty as her body came down from overdrive. Sean’s rapidly beating heart soothed her. She could stay like this forever.

Sean felt Lucy drifting off to sleep. He shifted her to his side, and she murmured into his chest, “That was nice.”

“Only nice?” he whispered, trying to pull a blanket around Lucy even though she wasn’t budging. He maneuvered the comforter back onto the bed and put it over them. Too hot for him, but Lucy would get cold.

“Very nice?” Her eyes were closed but she had a half-smile on her lips. He kissed her. “Perfect?”

“Honey, that was too fast to be perfect.”

“That’s okay.”

“Why?”

“No time to think.”

Long after Lucy fell asleep, Sean thought about her comment and wondered what she meant-or if she even realized what she’d said.

Lucy didn’t know what she’d been expecting to find in the mine when she and Sean ventured into the cavern on Friday morning, but nothing jumped out at her as odd. In the storage room, she stared at the spot where the dead woman had been lying two days ago and saw nothing but rock and dirt.

“What do you want me to do?” Sean asked.

She hadn’t wanted Sean to come down with her. He still wasn’t one hundred percent after his fall, and though he tried to hide the pain she knew his leg hurt. However, now she was relieved she wasn’t alone in the dark, frigid space. It seemed ridiculous to be scared of something that wasn’t even here. It was like being in a haunted house. Purely fiction, the imagination creating all sorts of implausible outcomes because of fear.

She gestured to the alcove. “She was right there.”

Their breath was visible. Though nearing fifty degrees topside, it was still below thirty here underground.

Why would someone keep the body in the mine ?

To store it .

Down here it was as cold or colder than the crypt at the morgue. A body would decompose slowly or, if frozen, not at all.

Sean took her hand. “Do what you need to do,” he said.

She closed her eyes. She wanted to see the woman as she had been, the unique and musty scents of the cave triggering Lucy’s memory.

Her hair had been limp and darker than true blond, but that could have been because of the moisture. The skin had been only slightly molted, very pale, showing no obvious physical decomposition. But in these cold environs, the body could have been there a week or for months.

“She was laid out straight, flat on her back,” Lucy said, glancing at Sean. “Her arms were crossed over her chest. She wore dark slacks-not jeans-and a very dirty white blouse. No jacket or sweater.”

“Odd for this climate.”

Lucy nodded. “Her skin tone was almost identical to the corpses in the cold storage room at the morgue, but given her clothes, it stands to reason she was killed in a warm place, or at least not outdoors. I can’t see why the killer would have removed her coat, but not her other clothes, unless there was something on it that would identify him.”

“What about her shoes?”

Lucy sighed. “I didn’t look.”

“You saw them-you just don’t remember. Close your eyes again.”

She did, but didn’t know how this would help. She hadn’t made a conscious observation about the dead woman’s shoes, and she didn’t want her imagination conjuring something.

But as she mentally assessed the body as she’d seen it, she realized she had seen something. “Dark. Flat. No shoelaces. Loafers maybe, some sort of slip-on.”

“Good,” Sean said.

She smiled, pleased that she’d remembered the detail.

“Last night you said something bothered you about her hands. What?” Sean asked.

Her arms had been crossed … but something else was there, something had caught Lucy’s attention.

It hit her.

A flower .

Lucy opened her eyes. “I didn’t really register it before, but there was a flower on her chest, between her hands. Not in her hands, but laid on her chest, the stem tucked under her wrist. It wasn’t big, and it was shriveled and brown, but I was too distracted to notice more.”

“Distracted how?”

A chill went down her spine. “The maggots. In her mouth.”

Sean ran his hand up and down her back. “You didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t want to think about it.”

“What kind of flower?”

“It looked more like a weed, all dried out like that. But it’s clear-someone intentionally placed it on her chest.”