Already as she walked through the house where Chris Perkins’s roommates found her dead when they came home from the bars, she looked at something imagined and, more than once, how Chase would view it. The entire time she was there she made mental notes of what she’d tell him. This had to stop. Two days. She’d known him for two days, had fucked him, and he was in her thoughts nonstop. A good, healthy case of lust had turned quickly into serious infatuation. Ashley stared at her phone, the numbers blurring while she struggled to keep the events of her evening in order in her mind.
“Just go home and go to sleep,” she ordered herself.
Her phone r
ang in her hand and her heart slammed into her throat, the damn thing scaring the crap out of her. Since he’d entered his number into her phone before heading out, she stared at his name on the phone’s screen.
“Crap,” she hissed, forcing her heart to quit beating a mile a minute and yelling at herself for being so jumpy. She’d just endured a couple hours of grueling interviews with semi-sober roommates, and focused on a murder scene, yet the phone ringing in her hand sent her heart pounding and made her palms damp.
“I was just going to call you,” she said as she answered, feeling disoriented and fighting to remain grounded.
“Are you done?” His deep baritone in her ear created a warmth inside her that made her pussy throb. The hell with going home. She’d go to his house and fuck him again.
“Yes, for now,” she admitted, squeezing her eyes closed and willing the burn to go away. No matter how much she tried it was impossible to focus. Hell, she shouldn’t be driving anywhere.
“Come on over. I’ll make coffee. I want to hear about it while it’s fresh in your head.”
She was too tired to argue. And as she cruised down the quiet road a minute later, she didn’t remember hanging up the phone with Chase. It amazed her she found his house, although she knew Wichita pretty well and he was in a fairly established community. Another time Ashley would take in his home, study his yard and the layout of the place, but when she parked in his gravel driveway and turned off her engine, she swore darkness engulfed her. It was too hard to move, let alone keep her eyes open. Apparently she wasn’t as young as she used to be. And if she weren’t so damned tired she might try counting how many all-nighters she’d pulled just this year working one case or another.
Ashley barely acknowledged her car door opening. Had she forgotten to lock yet another door? But when strong hands reached for her, and Chase’s familiar smell wrapped around her, Ashley cuddled against his strong, muscular body. Immediately her insides swelled, smoldered, need ransacking her so hard it made it damn hard to breathe.
“Fuck me,” she murmured, hearing the words leave her mouth although it didn’t sound like her. It sounded like she was drunk. Ashley didn’t remember the last time she’d been this out of it. Obviously she needed more sex. If fucking Chase once wiped her out this much, it was imperative she build up her stamina. Which could only be accomplished by fucking him again, right now. “Now,” she uttered, barely able to get the word out.
Chase’s chuckle sounded so far away. Even so, his rich, deep baritone created a fever inside her. She wanted to touch him, demand he take the incredible urge that suddenly attacked her away. But as she felt herself lifted, held securely in his strong arms, everything around her went black.
“ASHLEY?” SOMEONE asked. “She’s coming around now.”
Ashley blinked, her head pounding so hard and bright lights attacking her making it worse. She raised her hand, feeling something stuck to her, and covered her eyes, her brain refusing to cooperate. The sheet over her was crisp and cold, which made no sense. Where was her warm blanket? Had Chase fucked her so well that she’d passed out?
“You should let me run the show next time,” she grumbled, knowing if she fucked Chase the way she’d wanted, she would have paced herself better and not be so out of it now. “You don’t listen very well.”
“Ashley?” the voice asked again.
She frowned, her mouth like sandpaper. “I need something to drink. Oh, not that water. It was nasty.”
Wait a minute. She’d already gotten out of bed, and there had been a phone call. Ashley blinked again, enduring the painful bright light to take in her surroundings.
“What the hell?” she gasped, sitting up quickly and feeling the room spin around her.
“Easy, girl,” Chase whispered. He ran his rough hand over her forehead, the touch enough to send her back to her pillows. “Try some ice chips.”
“Give them to her slowly. Her stomach is still going to be very weak.” It was another woman.
Why the hell was another woman with them?
“I don’t understand,” she murmured, enjoying the way Chase stroked her forehead.
“Is she awake?” Her captain, John Sullivan, appeared at the end of her bed. He stared at her with dark, warm eyes that looked almost compassionate. “How are you doing, Ash?”
“Confused.” She looked around her and realized she was in the ER. Curtains enclosed her bed, and Chase stood on one side of her, the woman on the other, and now her captain at the end of her bed. “What am I doing here?” she asked, studying the IV tube entering the vein in the back of her hand. Her head started pounding again when she looked up at the bag hanging on the IV pole. “What are you pumping into me?”
“We’re just rehydrating you right now.” The nurse next to her glanced at the panel showing Ashley’s vitals. “You seem to be coming around nicely though. I’ll go get the doctor.”
She took the cup of ice chips from Chase and dumped a fair bit of them into her mouth. Then looking from Chase to Captain Sullivan, she frowned further. Did they know each other?
“Someone mind filling me in?” she asked, glancing down at herself and then tugging the hospital gown, making sure she was covered. “I don’t have a clue why I’m here.”
“Your friend brought you in,” Captain Sullivan told her, wrapping his large hand around the bar at the end of her bed. “Apparently he couldn’t wake you up.”