Allison Brennan - Cutting Edge

She took a cloth napkin from their lunch basket and used it as a glove of sorts, wrapping her hand in it while she crushed the water hemlock leaves, breaking the membranes and releasing the poison. She didn’t want any to be absorbed through her skin. It would take a lot of leaves because the poison didn’t mix well with cold water. She stuffed the leaves into an empty water bottle, then poured lemonade into it and shook it well. She let it sit for a minute, watching the leaves. She pretended she could actually see the poison leaching from the leaves into the pale yellow liquid. It was turning a darker color. That she wasn’t imagining. It was working .

“Maggie! We only got thirty minutes before curfew,” Clay called from beyond the grove of trees .

His mother’s curfew. Six p.m. on Sundays. So they could have a family dinner. One they never invited Maggie to. She’d bet they’d invite Cindy Tomlinson .

She strained the lemonade into another water bottle. It didn’t quite look right. Would he notice? Maybe. She put everything back in the cooler, then re-packed the basket and cooler and brought everything over to the oak tree. The wet hemlock leaves were stuck in the bottle-she’d have to dispose of it later .

Clay lay on his back, watching her .

She put everything down and pretended to drink the lemonade. “Still cold, but a little tart. Want some?”

“My mother never puts in enough sugar.”

He took the water bottle and chugged half the poisoned lemonade, then grimaced. “Yeah, I think it was in the sun too long.”

He screwed on the cap and tossed it on the blanket. He patted the spot next to him, and she sat down .

“Don’t worry about tomorrow,” he told her. “Just here and now. Today, everything’s fine, right?”

Maggie smiled. “Everything’s perfect.”

With the background reports spread out on Nora’s dining room table, a glass of buttery chardonnay in front of her-her one and only for the evening-she finally hung up her phone.

In the two hours she’d been home, she’d been productive. She’d heard back from Sara Ralston that Anya Ballard was not the woman with Russ Larkin on Sunday in Starbucks, even if she had dark hair, according to Summer, the coffeehouse employee who had seen her. Then she’d talked to Rachel about running a background check on Maggie O’Dell, including all variations of the name “Maggie.”

“Make sure you get a photo from the DMV and Rose College. Get her transcripts as well-if they squawk, let me know. We’ll get a warrant. We have more than enough cause.”

She was satisfied that Rachel would hop on the assignment first thing in the morning, and they’d debrief at nine with the rest of the team, after Nora observed the autopsies of the three students. Coffey would send her the information, but she’d rather stop by and get it faster. It wasn’t too far out of her way to head up to Placer County before going to headquarters.

She made notes on Anya, Scott, and Chris. While they shared their major and college, they were born in different towns, went to different high schools, and didn’t seem to have had any contact prior to attendance at Rose College.

She went through the Butcher-Payne employees yet again, to see if she missed something. When Nora’s doorbell rang, she jumped.

Embarrassed even though no one saw her reaction, she walked cautiously to the door and glanced through the peephole.

Duke.

Nora opened the door. Before she could say anything, Duke said, “You disappeared.”

She tilted her head. “Hardly.”

He stepped across her threshold without an invitation. She stepped back. She’d had to, to avoid touching him.

“You didn’t tell me you were leaving headquarters,” he said.

“I didn’t know I was supposed to.” It took all her willpower to look him straight in the eye and not remember the kiss. “I told Jason,” she said.

The kiss . Hardly something she could forget. Anticipation fluttered in her stomach and she told herself it was hunger.

Right, hunger. Go ahead and try to convince yourself you want a can of soup more than you want Duke Rogan .

She stepped back again, though he hadn’t moved. He smiled, a Cheshire cat grin, as if he knew something she didn’t.

He stepped all the way in and shut the door.

She turned away from him and walked down the hall toward the dining room where she had her work spread out in front of her. “I’m working,” she said over her shoulder, hoping distance might extinguish the growing heat between them.

“You’re always working.” He was right behind her, and his long legs cut the space between them quickly.

She hardly thought he was one to judge, and she spun around to tell him just that.

Duke was mere inches behind her. His right hand wrapped around her neck and pulled her mouth to his without hesitation, without asking permission, without a doubt in his mind that she would resist.

She didn’t.

Her mouth opened, her body pressed against his and Duke pulled her closer, his left hand around her back, under her shirt, molding her back, holding her tight against him.

Everything fell away, the pressure of her job, the memories of the past, worry for her team and her sister and the victims. Everything disappeared, and it was only the two of them, her and Duke, as if nothing else mattered, nothing else was important but for the first time in her life giving in to what she wanted.

Duke had been right when he said she’d never factored in her dreams in any decision she made.

She made a decision for herself right now. She wanted Duke Rogan, and she was going to take exactly what she wanted.

Nora pulled his T-shirt from his jeans, ran her hands up his hard, broad chest. Her thumbs circled his nipples and Duke’s hand fisted in her hair as he tightened his grip, his tongue shooting into her mouth, mimicking sex. She shivered, a moan trapped between their lips, and wrapped her arms around him to keep from falling to her knees.

His free hand grabbed her ass and held her up, his fingers massaging her, squeezing, teasing. Between them, the temperature rose and Nora burned. She grabbed the ends of Duke’s T-shirt and pulled it up; he grabbed it with one hand and pulled it over his head. She stared at his sculpted body, wasted when hidden by clothes. She swallowed, but her mouth was dry, and then he was kissing her again, a kiss that promised her everything she’d wanted but denied herself. A kiss that told her he wasn’t going away, a kiss that told her he knew her better than she knew herself, and that from the beginning she’d wanted him.

He was right.

His hands came between them, flicking her blouse open with confident fingers, exposing her flesh and lacy white bra. Her head dipped back as his firm lips moved from her mouth to her jaw, his tongue tracing a line that sent hot chills racing along her nerves, down to her neck where he lightly bit her, then drew her skin into his mouth, leaving her breathless.

He fell to his knees, his face against her chest. He unhooked her bra with one hand, tossed it away without thought, his mouth drawing in her breast without hesitating, then switching sides, back and forth, his hands moving as if they knew exactly where she wanted to be touched. Nora’s breath caught in her throat when his hands pulled down her slacks with an impatient jerk, and then squeezed her ass, his mouth moving down her stomach, past her waist, until his tongue flicked out and tasted her through her panties. She gasped, a high-pitched yelp that sounded nothing like her, caught between foreplay and sex. Her knees buckled, her legs spread, and she began to sink to the floor, but Duke held her up, one hand supporting her back, the other pushing her most intimate place closer to him, where his mouth suckled as if he were dying of thirst.