“I’ve wanted you for what feels like so long,” he said as he added first one and then two fingers, using them gently even though they plunged in and out of her fluidly. Unable to bank the rising ache inside her, she thrust her hips, urging him on. When he latched his mouth onto her, sucking gently, her world exploded, and her back arched off the bed.
Lola cried out as the orgasm tore through her, gripped his shoulders to anchor herself as she pulsed around his fingers—fingers that he gently used to bring her throbbing body back down. She lay there for a moment, enjoying the languid feeling of her body coming back into focus, slowly relaxing. Angling her head to look at him, she watched him unwrap a condom and sheath himself, felt a thousand little nerves in her stomach and thighs quiver with excitement.
When he walked back over to the bed, moved over her, she wrapped her arms around his neck, opened her thighs wider. Funny, she thought, that there was no nervous dread, no first-time-awkwardness.
She could feel him, knew by the way that he held his body over her that he was trying to be careful with her, but just then, she didn’t want him to be thinking, worrying about her, about whether or not he’d hurt her. And when he gently inched inside her, she pressed her feet flat on the bed, bucked her hips to take him fully.
His breath caught audibly, and he stilled.
Lola did not. She raked her hands over his back, enjoying the play of his muscles under her fingers. Finally, as if sensing her urgency, he started to move inside her, each stroke coiling her tighter and tighter, a wound clock begging for release.
Propping his body up on one elbow, he used his free palm to cup her ass as he thrust, and Lola roped her legs around him, urging him on as he changed the angle. She could already feel her body racing towards that second rise, and knew that he was racing to it alongside her.
Only with him.
The thought didn’t scare her, didn’t make her feel anything less, and when his mouth sought hers, she returned the kiss, pouring everything she felt into it. When she groaned, on the edge of falling, she gripped her hands in his hair, her breath coming in quick, fast gasps. She was going to break. That’s all there was to it, she thought, as she fell from the second height with a cry that was only muffled by Jacob’s mouth on hers.
He quickened his pace and, with one final groan, followed her over the edge.
Jacob lay on Lola’s big, wrought iron bed, staring at the white ceiling. She was draped over him, half-on-half-off, in the exact same position that she’d passed out in. Her body rose and fell in deep, even breaths that told him how deeply she slept, and, unable to resist, he stroked his palm down her bare back, taking his time to learn every curve under her soft skin.
He thought back to the way that she’d come, the way her eyes had rolled in her head, the way she’d gripped the sheets and then his hair. Fucking hell. He had thought that being with her, having her, would ease the ache, would somehow make the longing bearable.
He’d been wrong.
He shook his head, his hand still trailing lazily over her body. Why was it, he wondered, that he couldn’t think rationally around her? He hadn’t even felt like this with his ex-wife, and he’d been married to her for eight years, had known her for twelve.
Because you’re in love with her. The thought did not surprise him, did not make him feel shocked or scared. He’d known that he’d been falling, had felt his heart give an extra inch every time that he’d looked at her over the last few days. And so what was the use in denying it?
A week ago, the knowledge would have petrified him, would have had him walking out the door and assigning somebody else the case, but…looking down at her while she slept, he noticed the way her long, dark eyelashes cast shadows on pale cheeks, the way her full lips curved even in her sleep, and his entire body froze, even as his heart began thumping wildly in his chest. Now, the idea of ever losing her, of ever not waking up beside her, made him want to lock her inside her apartment with a twenty-four-hour guard until he’d killed the son of a bitch himself.
The tense set of his body had her shifting in her sleep, and Jacob consciously forced himself to relax underneath her so that he didn’t wake her up. He knew that she was exhausted because he had seen her struggle through all the emotional shit in the last nine days. He also knew that sleep was the best remedy for trauma and stress.
Glancing around her apartment, he saw his duffel near the bed where he’d left it. Slipping one arm around her, he gently pulled her off his chest before placing a single kiss on her lips and getting quietly out of the bed. He could access the LAPD’s VPN network from home, log into his work desktop, and keep punching away at the case.
Other than the women’s coffee group on Saturday, a whole five days away, they didn’t have much to go on yet. But there were still things he could do online, like research anonymity groups for abused women who met in the neighborhood and research the HAK character that Meghan, Veronica Tally’s friend, had told him about.
With those two things specifically in his mind, Jacob booted up his computer on the sofa at the foot of Lola’s bed and began quietly clacking away. He couldn’t waste time any longer. He couldn’t sit still, couldn’t let himself relax until Lola was safe.
As he typed into his Google browser, he started a OneNote of questions that he had to ask Lola. He already knew that she had been spotted with the girls at the diner and that the killer had made a gross assumption in thinking that she was involved in whatever the girls had been doing. Which still left the biggest question of all: What had three normal, everyday women become involved in that would have been worth killing them over?
He knew that he could make several reasonable assumptions with the information that he had collected already. One, whatever the girls had met over was likely connected to the anonymity group—that was, after all, the only connection between them.
Two, considering that the girls had all been single, he could assume that they were possibly trying to help a fourth woman from the group in some way. He didn’t know about Veronica Tally and Deborah Duran, but Selma Holt would not risk endangering her child unless she thought that someone could be hurt, or worse, killed if she didn’t intervene.
Three, if they had been trying to help a fourth woman from the group, they were likely up against an abusive partner—it was an anonymity group for battered women after all.
Those assumptions, combined with what Meghan had told him about HAK, left little doubt in Jacob’s mind that they were looking for one man. One man who had probably beat the shit out of his wife, and who had a lot to lose with three women rallying against him to help her.
Instead of feeling heartened by the fact that he finally had a solid, logical theory, Jacob felt defeated. They were looking for one faceless, nameless, blond man in a city of four million people, and their only lead was an anonymity group of abused women who met every Saturday at Bruno’s Bagels.
The way that Jacob saw it, he had five days until he could talk to the women at the anonymity group. Five days to keep Lola safe. Five days to try and narrow his line of reasoning down, and hopefully, find some facts embedded in his theoretical paper chain. Five days to try and find a man who had murdered three, innocent women for trying to help their friend.
Chapter 16