Intimate Knowledge Book 1 Part 2 (Detectives & Desires) Read online

  Intimate Knowledge Book 1 Part 2

  by

  Helen Karol

  Copyright 2013 Helen Karol

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  http://www.twitter.com/HelenKarolwrite

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Intimate Knowledge-End of Part 2

  Detective & Desires Series

  Intimate Knowledge

  Her Keeper

  Haunted Spaces

  Choices Series

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank my beta readers for their amazing help. Jennifer and Joanna have been uncanny about dropping in with an email pep talk just when I am struggling to write. Always enthusiastic about my writing their comments have really helped shape the events of the book. Anita you are relentless and do not pull your punches ever, but I know you demand better writing of me. Jess made me look at Raisa again and develop her in a more sympathetic light. Mary you always love the juicy parts. Santy and Leta your support is unfailing. Thanks guys!

  Chapter Four

  I recreate the corner patio on the tablet almost on autopilot. The drawings appear but they seem like a blur on the screen. I can hardly control the elation coursing through me.

  She has the look.

  She isn’t even trying to hide it. She’s deliberate about it, almost savoring it. It’s so intense it feels like something physical. I don’t look at her. She is blatant in her gaze but only because she believes she’s unobserved. I don’t want to break her concentration, but the craving to meet her eyes grabs at me, fiercely. I stop fighting it and look at her full on. She sees the mirror of her own possessiveness in my stare. The force of it hits her, and I see the clear flash of sudden terror just before she looks away.

  Fuck. The moment of vision she allowed herself is gone and now she is afraid of the heat between us. I am going to have to tread carefully or I might spook her. I watch fascinated as she manages her emotions, concentrating on keeping them from showing in her features and body language. A vague feeling of déjà vu hits me and I wonder why. Then it dawns on me. She has the same faraway expression she had in the kitchen when she refused my help. My eyes narrow as I watch her, realizing she is using a hidden, but familiar-to-her, method to disconnect.

  Interesting. She hardly seems old enough to have developed such a mature technique. A technique she has mastered so well that she fooled me back in the kitchen. She created enough of a barrier that I thought she was indifferent and resented my interest. Now, here on the balcony, whether because of the fright from her almost fall or other reasons known to her, she dropped her guard and engaged.

  For now, I follow her lead and dial back the heat in my stare and approach. Smiling slow and easy, I show her the drawings on the tablet. “You can use these to design your ideas and then finalize the real thing on Saturday.”

  She looks at me in confusion as if she doesn’t know what I am talking about and then her thoughts come back from where she has gone in her head to our earlier conversation. “Right, sure, of course. That’s a great idea, thanks.”

  She continues to look confused and I prompt her. “Why don’t you spend some time on the design now and after lunch I’ll take you to the exhibit.”

  Her confused expression intensifies. Fascinatingly, the emotion causes her navy eyes to darken and blur until they resemble crushed pansies. Her lips part and plump up as she runs her tongue and teeth across them and I want to take hold of her hard and kiss her deeply to confuse her even more. It takes all my self-control to resist the urge. I imagine taking a unreasonably long time over it, pulling her into my arms, my hands moving over her, slow and soft, using my wet tongue and teeth to meticulously cover every inch of her curvy mouth, leaving her lips fleshy, soaked and swollen, her mind dazed, her body throbbing.

  “You said you would need to see the exhibit again.” I remind her quietly, my tone even. I am amazed at how composed I manage to sound.

  Suddenly, she seems to clue in. “Right. Yeah. Right.” Her words come out in a breathy gasp, her cheeks flushed, her body trembling. I smile; she is clearly affected by the sexual tension jolting between us.

  “I’d take you to lunch, but my grandmother has a pledge meal planned and I think I’ve already taken you away from the group long enough to piss her off.” I drop my voice to an amused, conspiratorial whisper and capture her exquisite eyes with a hot, teasing look. “My Nonna Rosa pissed off is a thing to be avoided whenever possible, believe me.”

  She meets my eyes and a sweet laugh escapes her in a reckless burst of amusement. I swear to God, the whole room, maybe the whole city, lights up. “I’m with you there.” She agrees revealing a clear familiarity with my grandmother’s legendary moods and dominant personality.

  I am very fond of my Nonna Rosa, but I have no illusions about her ability to bully her pledges or anyone for that matter. She tries to bully me and I let her think she is succeeding most of the time. It keeps her happy and my life simpler.

  I am still reeling from the surprising vitality of Raisa’s laughter and it takes me a few moments to reassert my control. Her laughter has energized her and she radiates it. Pushing her hair back behind her ear, she places her beer bottle decisively on the table. Taking the tablet, she heads out towards the patio.

  “I’d better get back out there, then.”

  Just as she reaches the walkway, she turns back and floors me with a smile that has a slow burn warmth even more powerful than her burst of laughter. “Thanks for this,” she holds up the tablet and drops her voice to a low, husky tone, “and I would like to go back to the exhibit with you, later.” She manages to make it sound like an illicit proposal. Her eyes sear me just before she cloaks them with her thick, dark lashes.

  She makes her way slowly down the walkway and I can’t take my eyes off her gorgeous ass. She looked like she had a real nice ass in her tight skirt at the gallery and any of the photos I’d seen her in since, but in those jeans and heels, sashaying down my walkway, she has the most drop dead gorgeous ass, ever. I wonder about her panties under those jeans, are they a lacy or silky fabric, a dark or hot color? Are they wet for me?

  I groan audibly.

  I want nothing more than to go after her, palm her ass to turn her, thrust my hands down the back of those jeans and grab and massage her beautiful buttocks, using them to mold her hot little mound against my painful erection.

  “Get a grip.” I growl under my breath. Settling down to try and get some work done, I try to ignore the throb in my pants and to stop re-playing that smile and the sight of her gorgeous ass swaying invitingly down my walkway. It is going to be a very, very, long morning.

  Chapter Five

  I deviously torment him with the parting sight of my curvy, tight ass, a satisfied smirk on my face. The smirk increases when I hear his tortured groan and a laugh bubbles out when I hear him growl a self-serve, mental kick in the groin under his breath. I know too damn well the effect my calculated, megawatt smile, not to mention my ass, especially in these jeans and heels, has on a guy. Any guy, never mind one who has spent the past two weeks rock hard for me and prissily imagines himself halfway
in love.

  I know I strayed from police protocol earlier by not engaging my disconnecting mechanism sooner, but I convince myself no harm is done.

  Phase I is now accomplished. He is hooked and I am in.

  Now, the challenge is going to be me staying in, but him staying the fuck out of me. Crude but true. It isn’t going to be easy. He is shaping up to be close to irresistible, sexually and emotionally. I hope to God I find some shit on him soon to counteract his gorgeousness, especially as so far he seems to have a solid nature that is as kickass as he looks. If he doesn’t prove dirty soon then there is no way I am not quite literally going to be screwed!

  Absolutely, numerous times, in numerous ways, places and positions. I close my eyes and feel a lot less smug. I need so NOT to think about that. Now it is my turn to groan as I go find my cell. Leo Gold totally unbalances me and I need to book me some Terri time to get centered.

  I reach Terri on her cell and we arrange to meet later that night. Taking a deep breath, I force myself over to the group of pledges. I am met with some resentful looks and I realize my time with Leo has not gone unnoticed. As well as seriously hot, he is part of the Boston elite, meant for a debutante, not the likes of me - the token scholarship pledge. I try to look suitably ashamed, subdued, humble…whatever. No point in alienating the group and definitely not Rosa Gold, who is looking at me with clear disapproval.

  Just before I reach them, I decide to go with the tried and true undercover strategy of using the truth wherever possible. Adjusting my features to look shaken, I give them an account of my almost fall. It works, as the girls are thrilled to have something to dramatize. Rosa is not so easily appeased.

  “What were you doing over there, Raisa?” She asks me suspiciously and looks at me with a fixed stare and smoky eyes that are reminiscent of her grandson, minus the gold flecks. Their family resemblance unnerves me even though it is not overly marked. Their eyes and expressions are the closest likeness, but Rosa has the dark coloring of her Irish heritage (even if her color is now from a bottle), unlike Leo who has the blond beauty of Northern Italy where everyone looks like they just stepped out of a Renaissance painting.

  Leo outstandingly so. His strong features and chiseled physique are uncannily close to the beautiful masculinity of a Caravaggio or Michelangelo creation. Flushing hotly, my fists clench as I try not to imagine what those classically cut features and defined muscles might feel like under my trailing fingers.

  I adopt an earnest tone with Rosa. “I was thinking about the pledge challenge for the unveiling and I got this idea around the steel structures over there.” I tell her about my ideas and she visibly softens.

  Rosa Gold is a driven woman, consumed by a lifetime of Catholic guilt. She lost a husband and a son to a male realm she does not understand – one she married into. She has spent the past twenty years trying to purchase redemption for her family and the souls of her husband and son. My idea fits with that angst. I realize with some silly sense of guilt that I have unwittingly found a way to be in with her too.

  I show her the tablet and she encourages me to start planning, assigning me three of the other pledges to help. This does not please me, as it will be hard to get rid of them when I go to the gallery with Leo. I was hoping to get some more alone time with him. Two of them are clearly not happy with being saddled with the project but the third, Bernadette Rafferty, turns out to be a gem. At twenty-three, she is five years younger than my cover identity. She is also an unexpected source of information about Leo. Her brother, older than her by nine years, is Leo’s best friend. Nick Rafferty was a scholarship boy at Leo’s elite middle school. A year ahead, he took Leo under his wing, and the relationship remains the same today.

  Bernadette hero-worships her big brother and she favors me with tales of his illustrious career as a SEAL and now his own security firm. I resentfully wonder if he is responsible for those intrusive photos of me. I take satisfaction in the fact that I will soon be invading his privacy to establish his connection with Leo and the Gold operations. I am surprised Leo’s file fails to include the relationship. Somebody screwed up there. Bernadette asks me about my time with Leo in his study and then rambles on about him without bothering to hear an answer.

  “Leo is so hot. All the women drool over him. Until a couple of months ago, it was pointless because he always has a girlfriend and he is always super loyal, but he just broke up with the last one; thank God. She was a total B.I.T.C.H. Never knew what Leo saw in her, his other girlfriends were nicer. I had a huge crush on him as a teenager until I met Steve.” She twists a large engagement ring around her finger and I realize Steve must be her fiancé.

  Continuing on in her stream of ingenuous confidences, I make a mental note that she will serve as an excellent disseminator of misinformation should I need that as she clearly cannot keep anything to herself, but she is so guileless it is adorable rather than offensive. She volunteers the information that she is the second youngest of a large Catholic middle-class clan of older siblings and cousins, predominantly male. This is why Bernadette is more innocent and sheltered than the usual young women of her age. She has a wholesome appeal that probably irritates many, but I find her refreshing and she paradoxically lightens my skeptical soul.

  “Still pointless mind you, Nick says he’s fallen for someone. Once Leo likes someone that’s it, he doesn’t look at anyone else. It’s kinda sweet, really. Nick says he has got it really bad, this time. Says he’s never seen him this smitten. Lucky woman.” She sighs with a fond and faint longing, revealing that, despite her engagement, a remnant of the teenage crush remains.

  As the ‘lucky woman’ in question, I wonder if his feelings for me will be apparent to her. I wonder how well I will be able to hide my own emotions. Bernadette continues her chatter throughout lunch, relating some of Leo and Nick’s youthful, endearing escapades and her confidences push my equilibrium to breaking point. How long am I likely to be able to resist this guy? Will the outrageous, electric, sexual energy that sparks between us and threatens to overwhelm me be apparent to others? His best friend says he’s got it bad. Is he as consumed as me or is it simply the desire to possess that drives him and the electric energy a by-product of that conquering lust?

  A foolish part of me unfurls. The same part that allowed me that moment of straying from police protocol. I don’t believe in happy ever after and certainly not in crooked crime lord’s being capable of deep, gentle emotions, no matter how hypnotic their voice and soulful their eyes. Only that foolish part of me challenges that belief. This is why my response to Leo Gold is so unnerving. Somehow, a vestige, a small, secret part has skulked inside me and still longs for the fairytale and he is insidiously tapping into that lurking longing.

  Bernadette lights up as she looks over my shoulder and the electric tingles throbbing in my womb let me know that she must be looking at Leo approaching. I try not to show my reaction, but my body starts to hum and I wonder how much Bernadette will notice. I can feel his approach now and my palms curl as the heat of his body radiates behind me.

  “Hey, Leo.” Bernadette greets him, looking up with a fond, familiar smile.

  “Ciao, Chiacchere.” He answers in a teasing voice and bends to buss her cheek. Bernadette has not exaggerated their relationship as he greets her like an indulgent older brother.

  Chiacchere. I scour my relatively advanced, but rusty knowledge of Italian. I have been brushing up on it for this assignment and the endearment is faintly familiar. When I remember it, I smile at its aptness. Chatterbox.

  Bernadette blushes. “Leo. I’m too old for that nickname.”

  He speaks to her but turns his smoky, gold-flecked eyes on me, melting me with the heat of his gaze. “Not from where I was sitting. I cringe to think how many of my deep, dark secrets you have divulged to Raisa. Or even worse my embarrassing moments.” His voice sounds molten and I know I must be visibly softening under his gaze and nearness.

  Bernadette notices the look and heat be
tween us and her eyes widen, but she rebukes him fondly. “Conceited much, Leo? What makes you think we were talking about you?”

  He doesn’t answer her, keeping his gaze fixed on me. “Are you ready to go, cara?” He asks softly.

  I am nowhere near ready to go anywhere with this dangerously, beautiful man.

  “Sure.” I lie. “Just let me get my things.”

  Bernadette looks at me and then back at Leo, enlightenment clear on her face. She is quick to adjust to the situation. “You won’t need the rest of us, will you, Raisa? You and Leo can get what you need without us, right?”

  She looks up at Leo with a teasing smile and fondness and he returns her smile with a faint blush. His golden complexion turns just slightly darker and his smile is a little rueful, like he knows his emotions are on display more than he would like. A sweet heat creeps inside me, an unexpected tenderness stealing through me at the evidence of his vulnerability. It reminds me that he is considerably younger than I am, a fact his urbane, European sophistication has so far obscured. Is this guy ever going to stop slipping under my defenses? I take a deep breath and fall back on my distancing strategy. I am going to need it incessantly the way things are shaping up.

  The other two girls are not as convinced by Bernadette’s assertion. Originally, they wanted out of the project, but now they realize Leo is involved they are annoyed at being dismissed. I go off to get my things, leaving them to sort it out between them. When I return they are looking petulant. Judging by the angry glances they fire at me, Leo has obviously made it clear he wants me to himself. Both tall, willowy blondes with the confidence only money and breeding can bestow, they don’t get why Leo wants me over them.

  I am with them. I don’t get it either, but when he takes my arm and looks down at me, the electrical jolt from his touch and the searing heat of his gaze leaves no doubt as to where his passion resides. The swirling of the electrical, sexual surge is instantly followed by the hardening of my nipples and clit. This matches his hardness, which I feel as he moves close to me to guide me out through the penthouse.