Rather than answering, he shifted one hand, gripping the back of my neck to hold me still as his lips claimed mine again. The kiss became a long, slow dance of exploration and pleasure. Neither of us was breathing very steadily by the time he broke away.
“It’s your fault.”
I ran a fingertip down his abs. “What is?”
The question was absently said. Right now, I wasn’t really caring about anything more than the tension that lay between us. I slid back on his lap to expose his erection, then played my fingertips across it. His cock leapt with every light caress, as if begging for more.
“Me being down here instead of in bed.” His voice, little more than a low growl, made my senses hum. “You suggested Wilson’s wife would have had some sense of him being in trouble—even if she didn’t want to confront or admit the situation.”
“So?”
“So,” he murmured, his concentration seemingly more on caressing my breasts than what he was saying. “It just got me wondering whether Mrs. Wilson was as clueless as I’d thought, so I came down here to do a little investigating.”
I slid my fingers down the length of his shaft, then gently cupped his balls. His breath hitched again. I smiled impishly and began massaging him, the rhythm of my movements echoing his. “And what did you discover?”
“That she is not as clueless as she appears.”
“Surprise, surprise.” I removed my fingers, then slid myself over his shaft, letting my wetness coat him as I slowly moved up and down the length of him.
“Yeah,” he said, voice a little strained. “Seems she and Wilson hadn’t known each other very long before they were married.”
He ducked his head and caught one nipple in his teeth, teasing it lightly. Shivers of delight skittered through me. He released me abruptly, then swirled his tongue around the puckered, aching nipple, his touch light and erotic. I closed my eyes and simply enjoyed. But as my movements against his shaft got ever stronger, he groaned, gripped my hips, then thrust inside me.
For several moments, I didn’t speak, didn’t move, didn’t do anything more than simply enjoy the sensation of him being so very deeply inside. “How did you discover that?”
“Our Mrs. Wilson has a Facebook page. She announced she’d met the man of her dreams in May of last year, then declared they were getting married a month later.”
“Wow. One of them is a fast worker.”
“Hmm,” he agreed; then his lips caught mine again, and there was no discussion about Mrs. Wilson or her Facebook page for many, many minutes—just a whole lot of passion and heat. Heat that ran through me, fed me, even as I fought the urge to take all that I needed and leave him depleted. We came as one, our groans echoing through the large room as our bodies shook and shuddered. He made one final thrust, then briefly rested his forehead against mine, his breath warm against my lips.
“That,” he said eventually, “is a fine way to start the morning.”
“Except,” I noted, brushing the sweaty strands of his hair from his cheek with my fingertips. “It is no longer morning.”
“Let’s not quibble over minor differences.” He dropped a kiss on my lips, then said, “So, Mrs. Wilson. Not only did our loving couple have an extremely fast courtship, but they were married the same month as Wilson began his red plague research.”
“What a coincidence,” I said dryly. I was still sitting astride him, and I couldn’t help but notice that while he might have only just come, he was more than half-ready to go a second round. Fae, it seemed, were insatiable.
“I’m gathering this led you to dig deeper into our Mrs. Wilson’s past.”
“It did indeed.” He slid his hands down to my butt and then lifted me up and deposited me feetfirst onto the floor. To say I was surprised was an understatement. He grinned. “You need to turn around and look at the computer.”
I did so. On the screen was an image of a pretty blonde with pale blue eyes and a cherub’s face. “Easy to see why Wilson might have fallen hard for her, although a pretty face doesn’t mean she was up to no good. And if Sam suspected that she was, he would have already investigated her.”
“Indeed,” Jackson agreed. He reached around me and clicked open another screen. “Especially since dear Amanda has been married a number of times before.”
I raised my eyebrows. “And did those unions all end in a bloodthirsty manner?”
“If you’re asking if she killed them, then no, apparently not. One husband died in a car crash, two were divorced, and I haven’t been able to track down the other, simply because she married him overseas and it apparently didn’t last past the honeymoon.”
“Four—five—husbands?” I blinked and studied the blonde. “She doesn’t look old enough to have had that many already!”
“She doesn’t keep them very long. She’s been married to Wilson the longest.”
I studied the blonde in the picture for a moment, knowing there had to be something else here. I could feel the excitement thrumming through Jackson, and while part of that was undoubtedly sexual, there was definitely more to it than that.
“So,” I said slowly, “it begs the question, what was she after? Money, or something more?”
His lips brushed my neck. “I do so love the way your mind works.” He reached past me and opened another screen. Information scrolled up. “Husband one was a biochemist, hubby two a bioengineer, three worked in the weapons department for the military, and four is a black-market fence, from what I can gather.”
“So, aside from that one blip, it seems she has a thing for researchers.”
“Or a thing for the information or items she could get from them.”
Which we wouldn’t know until we uncovered more about her. Even so, she was looking less like a clueless blonde and more like a schemer. I swung around and faced him. “So what happened to the husbands after she left or divorced them?”
“Ah, that’s where it gets really interesting. Husband one was sacked two days before his accident. Husbands two and three also lost their jobs and were found dead a few days later. Suicide was the coroner’s official verdict. As I said, I’m still trying to uncover what happened to four.”
“Meaning our Mrs. Wilson is something of a latent black widow?”
“Possibly.”
More than possibly, I suspected. “Why did the first three lose their jobs?”
“It seems there were . . . discrepancies . . . in their departments.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Discrepancies?”
“Labs being broken into, research going missing, that sort of stuff.”
“And the husbands were blamed?”
“They took the fall because they were in charge.”
Uh-huh. “We really need to talk to her.”
“We do.” He dropped a kiss on my nose, then caught my hand and tugged me toward the stairs. “But not before I’ve ravished you senseless.”
“I really think talking to Mrs. Black Widow could be a little more important than sex.”
“Well, yeah, but Mrs. Black Widow is currently at the hairdresser, and that usually takes at least an hour, doesn’t it?”
I followed him up the stairs. “How do you know this? Facebook?”
“Nope. I read her calendar when I was interviewing her.”
“How do you know she’s not just getting a quick trim?”
He gave me a long look over his shoulder. “Anyone would think you were looking for an escape clause. All you have to do is say no, you know.”
I grinned. “I’m just worried that Sam will get there before we do and that he’ll somehow ensure we lose any clues we might otherwise have gained.”
“If he were investigating the wife, he would have done so by now.”
We reached the top of the landing but continued toward the shower rather than the bed. He was obviously intending to combine two necessities. “Now, how about we quit the questions and just concentrate on the business at hand?”