Christ, I was hard at just the thought.
And yet, despite our frenzy on the street, despite the way Nina was watching the progress of the rose like it was a piece of kindling that might literally burst into flames…I stayed where I was, drifting the soft petals up and down her equally soft skin while I studied her reactions. The way her breath hitched slightly when I found a particularly sensitive spot. The way her lean curves tightened in anticipation of something I wasn’t quite ready to give.
“What do you want, beautiful?” I murmured. “What can I do for you?”
Nina’s eyes brightened as I drew the rose back up her chest. I played it over the line of her bra, feathering it over her breasts. She wasn’t a Coke-bottle pinup, far too slender for that. But I knew without checking that each breast would fit perfectly in the palm of my hand.
“I don’t know if anyone has ever asked me that before.”
I dragged the flower over one nipple, causing it to perk through the silk. Nina squirmed and bit her lip. All right, then. Clearly that was something I needed to do more of.
I leaned over her, enjoying the way she arched slightly in anticipation. The rosebud traveling over her other nipple. She moaned. Just barely.
“I’m asking now,” I said, hovering my lips over hers. I wanted to kiss her. God, I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to feel that give of her body against mine again, see what happened when the fire there was allowed to burn unfettered.
But.
Not yet. Not. Quite. Yet.
“Tell me, sweetheart,” I said, as I placed a soft kiss on her jaw. Then another on the other side. “What do you like?”
Last night it had continued until I’d shouted loud enough that my sister Frankie had come running from her bedroom across the hall. Embarrassed, I’d snapped at her to get the hell out, then tossed and turned until I finally resigned myself to watching the sunrise glimmer over the roofs of Red Hook rowhouses like mine.
I did whatever I could to escape what haunted me. Trudged over to one of the bars in Gowanus, or even to Jamie’s joint in Manhattan. Had a few too many drinks. Gone home with one chick or another. Women who were usually blonde. Thin. Eager. And, because I was predictable as fuck, usually taken.
Even so, I often ended up here.
Because just like all the others, the dream ended the same way. Nina holding the bouquet of roses I’d given her. Looking up to where I stood in our hotel window. Raising a delicate hand before disappearing into a big black car. Into the city for good.
And I was left with a gut-twisting feeling I was truly coming to hate for its stubborn fuckin’ tenacity. That I needed to find Nina Astor. That she needed me to find her too.
But she was nowhere to be found.
The problem was that I had so little to go on. I knew she was rich. I knew she was more or less local. But other than that? Not a whole lot.
The name, for instance, had to be a fake. I’d combed through New York city and state records until I was blue in the face. Marriage. Divorce. Even, with a heavy heart, death. According to public databases, the only Nina Astors in the general tristate area died during the Depression. So I’d gone to ground. Interrogated the front desk of the hotel for over an hour before I finally left. Interviewed people on the damn street trying to get the plates off the car she left in.
But like a buster, I always ended up on streets like this, hoping to run into her. I couldn’t have told you why I thought Nina was from the Upper East Side, but the prim, polished neighborhood seemed to fit. She was as classic as the nineteenth-century buildings and stately brownstones, as clean as their sleek facades, so different from the stained gray stonework of the Bronx neighborhood where I grew up or the pile of red bricks I now called home.
The funny thing, when this neighborhood was first built, it was as middle class then as Belmont or Red Hook were to me now. Buildings full of French flats—single-family housing where the upper-level working class of New York’s gilded age lived before they were usurped by the city’s bourgeoisie.
Nina had told me her family was wealthy, but she didn’t say who they were. Astor, though. Everyone in New York knew that name. Streets, buildings, subway stops. It was everywhere.
Unless, of course, that’s where she got it. Grasping for a fake name to offer, she’d taken one in plain sight.
It was a hard pill to swallow, thinking the woman who had stripped me bare might have lied to my face.
I stared up at a particularly fancy building on a tree-lined street off Madison. It was complete with gargoyles scowling at the corners and a green-tinted roof curling at the top.
I scowled back. Was this where she was hiding?
Or was I kidding myself? Nina probably wasn’t even in New York anymore. She probably never would be again.
Before I could keep walking, my phone rang with my assistant’s ring tone. I flipped on my Bluetooth and answered.
“Zola.”
“I know who it is. I called you.”
I rolled my eyes. Tiana was the best assistant I’d ever had. She didn’t put up with my shit, which was a very good thing. But she also came with a truckload of attitude.
“Ti, what’s up?”
“I just sent a file via the secure server. I would have waited, but it was straight from Ramirez. He said given all the work you’ve been doing on”—she paused before speaking the next word in hushed tones—“Carson…this was a natural extension.”
I frowned and pulled out my phone to look at the file. Since Derek and I had met with Eric downtown, I’d made hardly any progress on the Carson case. I had a few friends in high places, but it was clearer that any help I could offer those two would come from me and me alone. But that would require a break I hadn’t found yet.
“This is a file on a prostitution ring. Why wasn’t it sent to Human Trafficking?” I flipped through a few more pages. “Jesus, they don’t even have charges filed? What the hell does this have to do with John Carson?”
“Do you really think I know the answer to that?”
I groaned. I didn’t have time for this. I had a case heading to trial next week and another ready to go before a grand jury. Like just about every other government employee, I was overworked and overtired. I didn’t need this goose chase on top of everything else.
“Before you dig into it, though, I have a Caitlyn Calvert for you.”
I made a face. “Ah, no. Tell her I’m out.”
Unfortunately, no such luck. “That didn’t work this morning either, Zola.”
My scowl turned into a full-on death glare. I’d met Caitlyn Calvert during one of my late-night runs into the city. With her honey-brown hair and diamond earrings, she dripped polish and wealth. So close to the other perfectly bred creature I had been seeking. And after a bottle of wine, it was close enough.
We had gone to a hotel in Chelsea to get what I thought we both needed. For her, it was an escape from her humdrum life of committee meetings and planning a wedding she apparently didn’t even want. For me, she was just close enough to the woman I actually wanted to pretend for a few hours that I’d found her. One night was enough for me, though—I was never into fakes.
Ms. Calvert, however, had other ideas. I’d given in the last two. But today, I was in no mood.
I scowled. “Come on, Tiana…”