When my hot, irritated, inflamed skin had calmed down, I started the minivan, turned on the AC, and headed out to my kids' school.
Chapter Nine
My kids were being pills.
Anthony had gotten into a fight...with a girl, no less. The girl, apparently, had seriously kicked his ass (and is it wrong that I secretly found this funny?), and as we drove to Burger King, his older sister, Tammy, wouldn't let him forget it. It took the threat of a week's grounding to finally get her to ease up.
I think my boxing trainer, Jacky, might be getting a new client this summer. Someone needed to teach the boy how to fight, and obviously it wasn't going to be his worthless dad. Granted, I wasn't advocating fighting, especially fighting girls, but who wants to hear about their boy getting their ass kicked at school?
"But Mom," said Tammy. "She sat on him."
I stifled a giggle behind my hand. Anthony, who was sitting next to me and sporting a swollen lip, looked at me sideways. When I gained some semblance of control over myself, I said, "Then maybe you should protect your little brother and not let girls sit on him."
"Who do you think pulled her off him, Mom?" said Tammy. "I wasn't going to let that cow sit on my brother. Well, not for very long, anyway."
She giggled again, and I did my damndest not to join her.
We pulled up to Burger King and I put in our orders. I repeated Anthony's plain hamburger order twice, knowing he wouldn't touch anything with ketchup or mustard or anything else on it. With our food bagged, we headed home, and while the kids ate and did their homework, I took a hot shower. The shower was intended to clean off the copious amounts of sunscreen, but it also served another purpose.
I craved heat. My body had no natural warmth. I lived with an eternal chill, and so I craved blessed warmth. Showers were certainly nice, but, admittedly, nothing beat the warmth of a man lying next to me, a warmth I rarely felt since my own ex-husband had basically shunned me.
Of course, I had recently experienced such warmth. In fact, just over a week ago, in the arms of another man. A former client of mine. A man with his own dark secrets and a body that radiated heat unlike anything I had ever experienced.
A shiver went through me. A very pleasurable shiver, especially as I recalled Kingsley's skillet-sized hands on my body. His touch, his expert touch, had sent shockwaves through me in more ways than one.
But as I stood there in the shower, as the water did its damned best to penetrate my eternal cold, I thought of another man.
Aaron Parker. Aka Fang.
The heat had worked deep into my skin, and as I stood there under the powerful spray, I reached behind me and turned the temperature even higher. Anyone else would have yelped. Anyone else would have leaped from the shower as surely as if being dropped into a boiling cauldron.
But I only moaned with pleasure.
After having drinks with Aaron, he had walked me back to my van where we had stood together awkwardly. He wanted to kiss me. He wanted to do a lot more to me, too. His thoughts were as clear as a bell, although anyone with a half a brain could have read his body language. I reminded him that I had a lot to digest. I reminded him that he had been aware of me for a lot longer than I had been aware of him. This needed to sink in. I had to sort through my feelings and emotions....
And that's when he kissed me.
He kissed me long and hard and although I had nearly pushed him back - hell, he was lucky he didn't go flying into the trunk of a nearby tree - I decided I liked his kiss. There had been a crazy hunger to him.
Or maybe he was just crazy.
His lips covered mine and I knew he wanted to bite me, or at least use his teeth. To nibble, to bite. To draw blood. When he got too aggressive, I pulled back. He apologized, and then went back to chewing on my lower face.
Never had I been kissed like that before.
Never. And never did I expect to be kissed like that again.
The shower spray felt so damn good. Too good. I could stand there all night. I could probably do other things in there all night, too. After all, I had recently discovered that I could experience something very pleasurable. Something I had thought was lost to me.
That thought alone sent a shiver through me.
I pushed it away and turned off the shower. There was work to be done. There was a little girl scared and alone and living with a monster.
And with images of Fang whispering goodbye in my ear, I got dressed and headed for my office at the back of the house.
Chapter Ten
I was scouring over internet leads, scanning heartbreaking article after heartbreaking article, when my cell phone rang. It was Chad.
"Hey, Sunshine," he said.
"It never gets old, does it?"
Chad was, of course, poking fun of my "condition". A condition called xeroderma pigmentosum, which was what most of the world thought I had. Believe it or not, I didn't run around telling people I was a vampire.
"Probably not ever," he said. "Besides, I'm your ex-partner. I can get away with goofing on you. Kind of like an older brother."
"A stupid-face older brother."
"Clever Sam. Anyway, I have news on Maddie."
I sat up. "Talk to me."
"Three months ago a mother and daughter went missing. Lauren and Madison Monk."
I exhaled and squeezed the phone tighter. "Go on."
"The mother was a known user and prostitute and probably not a very good mother, either. The daughter was born into a mess. The mother would often disappear with boyfriends and drug dealers, bringing her daughter along with her. Some seedy shit going on here, Sam. No one reported them missing for many weeks, and she spent so much time with so many different shady characters, that it's nearly impossible to pinpoint where she was staying or who had seen her last."
"Someone knows," I said.
"Sure, but we're talking about the lowest of the lowlifes, Sam. Folks who break laws every hour on the hour. No one is talking."
"Who's working the case?"
"Fullerton P.D. Missing Person Division."
"The name of the officer?"
He told me and I wrote it down. When finished, I said, "I think the missing person has turned into a murder and kidnapping."
"You'll hear no argument from me, Sam."
"Thank you, Chad."
"We're working on something big over here, but I'll help you when I can."
"I know; thank you. How's Cynthia?" I asked, referring to my client of just a few weeks ago. Chad, who had taken over partial bodyguard duties for me, had been smitten by her instantly.
"Beautiful as ever; I love her."