The Girls in the Snow (Nikki Hunt #1) - Stacy Green Page 0,102
she replied. Sleet dripped off her face. “I have to ask you something.”
“It couldn’t wait? Or did you just really want to see me?”
Her face burned. “It couldn’t wait.”
He smiled and opened the door.
Nikki’s heart pounded as he shut the door, his back muscles flexing. And even then, she couldn’t help but wonder about his cologne. God, she was tired.
“What did you want to ask me?”
She’d come to ask if he was capable of killing two teenaged girls and an innocent young woman because she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Liam’s theory. But now she was at his house in the middle of the night, and facing him, she couldn’t even bring herself to say it.
“Nicole?” Concern laced Rory’s husky voice, and Nikki wasn’t sure what she should do.
“Rory, I need to ask you about Madison Banks,” she said.
“That’s pretty much the last thing I expected you to ask.” He gently touched her shoulders. “What about her?”
She was sure he could hear her heart pounding. “Did you ever meet her?”
His big hands slipped around her back and pulled her to his bare chest, his chin resting on the top of her head. “No, I don’t think so. Why are you asking?”
Nikki exhaled, her head dropping to his shoulder. Nikki flushed as she told him about John taking Bailey and Liam’s theory. Now that she was here in Rory’s arms, the entire thing sounded ridiculous. “I don’t think you did anything, but I had to admit to myself that if the situation were any different, I would have at least questioned you.”
“What situation?”
Her entire body burned with embarrassment. “This situation.”
Rory brushed the hair out of her face.
“Everything’s just unraveling. So many things happened right under my nose and I still didn’t see it. Not just in the past but with this case, too. I can’t trust my own judgment anymore.”
“Even now?”
She wrapped her arms around Rory’s slim waist and buried her face into the warm nook of his collarbone. His arms tightened around her, evidence of the effect she had on him flush against her stomach. “I honestly have no idea.”
Rory’s lips brushed the top of her head and then moved to the shell of her ear. “Well, I trust your judgment.”
Butterflies tore through Nikki. She raised her head and skimmed her lips along his sharp jawline. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she felt the heat of his stare before his lips touched her forehead, and then her nose.
“Rory.”
His lips found hers, and she sighed into his mouth, melting against his strong chest. He traced the lines of her back before lifting her into his arms. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and the emotional defenses she’d spent a lifetime creating shattered.
Rory’s mouth moved to her neck and found the spot beneath her ear. Nikki gasped and threaded her hands through his silky hair. He moaned softly, and she tilted his head back for another kiss. She clutched his face, desperate for him to make her forget all of the bad things she’d endured and the mistakes she’d made.
He was gentler than she deserved, slowly stripping off her clothes and touching every part of her with his lips and his mouth until she was completely at his mercy.
Nikki’s hands tangled in his hair, her back arched as he carried her upstairs and into his bed and her mouth opened in a silent cry.
She gave herself to him completely, her fingernails digging into his shoulders, his name louder and louder on her lips. Had she ever felt this content? She couldn’t even remember the last time she and Tyler had been together, and after the divorce, she convinced herself she was too busy with work and Lacey to care about anything else.
Forty-Six
Nikki’s hair was still damp when she finally made it to the hospital the next day. Thankfully she kept a change of clothes and necessary toiletries in the jeep for the all-nighters that usually cropped up during a major investigation. She could still feel Rory’s body entwined with hers, and she’d hated to leave so early in the morning, but she needed to get back to work. A BOLO had gone out for John as soon as he took Bailey, and every law enforcement agency in the tri-state area was looking for him. Miller had set up various checkpoints around Stillwater, and the state police had been called in to handle searching the vast north woods area. Lake Mille Lacs was part of the Mille Lacs Band