Chapter Text
That man is tall, mad, mean, and good-looking
And he’s got me in his eyes
When he looks at me
I go weak at the knees
Got me goin’ like no other guy
‘Cause he’s my big, bad handsome man, yeah
He’s got me in the palm of his hand
He’s a devil divine
I’m so glad that he’s mine
‘Cause he’s my big, bad handsome man!
-“Big Bad Handsome Man” by Imelda May
“What’ve we got?”
My question was always the same as a homicide detective. It was cliché, of course, but being curt and direct is what had landed me here as lieutenant of Chicago’s Special Investigations unit in the first place. I didn’t mince words and I didn’t fuck around to earn a paycheck. I did my job and I did it well. It was just that I did it so well that I didn’t play favorites or office politics, so I’d be relegated to one of the worst jobs with the lowest success rate in the entire police department. But I still I rise.
The call I’d gotten made me ask them to repeat the homicide twice due to the extremely unusual nature of it. I still didn’t fully believe my ears even as I drove towards the Golden Coast, reeling from the very idea of who I was about to see for an arrest with a murder charge. It still didn’t really hit me until I saw the body and asked my usual question to the examiner.
The woman lay facedown on a Tempur-pedic mattress that was so huge I was surprised it wasn’t sold by Chrysler. The burgundy sheets had an insanely high thread count, from what I could tell, another mark of the absurdly huge, spacious, not to mention ostentatious, four bedroom home. Her blue eyes stared at nothing in the corner, her blonde curls cascading over part of her lovely face. She was wrapped in a bedsheet like a toga, but her bare legs stuck out over the other side of the bed. There was an empty glass of whiskey on the nightstand to the left of the enormous bed. They’d already done most of the photographs, so I’d come in after to make sure the examiner had time to brief me.
“No obvious cause of death,” the examiner said, pushing the glasses up on his nose. He was kneeling beside the corpse with his gloves and mask on, gesturing. “I’ve checked everything I can think of, so it wasn’t an external blow of any sort nor was it suffocation. We’re testing the whiskey and the glass at the moment, but you know how these things go.”
I nodded. “Most poisonings are women, I know, so it’s less likely, but possible. What’s the time of death?”
He checked his watch. “I’d say between midnight and 2am. The pretty boy claims he walked in the door about one o’clock this morning, showered, undressed, and then was about to get in bed when he ‘found’ her this way.”
I almost snorted. His dismissive attitude was warranted; plenty of murders were open and shut cases, but my life was never this damn easy. “Gotcha. Any chance he’s got an alibi?”
The examiner shook his head. “He was alone, but we’ve got someone out at the bar he said he left before he came home asking the bartender for his departure time and they’re reviewing the security cam footage to make sure he’s telling the truth about when he got home.”
“Got it. I’ll catch up with you this afternoon to see if you’ve got my COD. Better get in there.”
The examiner grinned widely. “May I join you?”
I arched an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Oh, trust me, lieutenant. You’re gonna love this guy.”
I rolled my eyes, which just made him chuckle, and turned on my heel to head for the kitchen. My uniformed cops were doing the usual breakdown and examination of the possible murderer’s place, which basically meant ripping the joint apart to make sure no murder weapon or witness was hiding anywhere. I walked down the hallway and heard them rattling around for things and snapping photos. When I reached the kitchen, I finally saw the man himself.
Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden sat in a nice, tall chair in the middle of his absurdly huge—I’m talking Gordon Ramsay huge—kitchen, his long arms handcuffed behind him, his chest bare since his smoking jacket had fallen open, a pair of black boxer-briefs peeking out from the gap in the bottom half. No one had been nice enough to let the guy get dressed before arresting him, so he looked tired, but not angry yet. He was the tallest man I’d ever met in person by far, a whopping six-foot-nine, and that had been one of the many things that made him stand out in his industry. He also sported a rather nice square chin, soft lips, brown eyes and hair, and he was lithe without being skinny or bony. He watched impassively as the officers raked through the kitchen drawers and accounted for things in the fridge, until I was visible in his eyeline. When he saw me, he sat up to his full height and did that thing some men could do with their eyes that I hated to admit made me want to swoon—the slow survey from head to toe, complete with a little smile after our eyes met.
“Good morning, madam,” Harry Dresden, Chicago’s most famous porn star, said with that luscious, dark chocolate voice when I was within earshot. “And who do I have the pleasure of addressing this morning?”
“Lieutenant Karrin Murphy, Special Investigations unit,” I said, flashing the badge clipped to my hip. It was early as hell, so I had just thrown on what was nearby: my Cubs jacket, a white dress shirt, khakis, and loafers. I eyed him, then my men. “How long have you been sitting there?”
He shrugged. “Oh, I’d imagine three hours.”
I glared at my men. “Guys, come on.”
“What did you want us to do?” one of them complained. “He’s the size of a tree. If he got it in his mind to run or fight, it’d be a helluva problem, so we just—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” I snapped. “You know better.”
They grumbled a collective apology while I shook my head and returned my eyes to the suspect. “I’m sorry about them; this isn’t procedure and they know it.”
“No problem, lieutenant,” he said, smiling. “It’s not like it’s something I’m not used to.”
I almost snorted as I reached for my keys. “Point taken. Here, lean forward and I’ll get you out of them.”
“Ah, no need.” His arms shifted and then like magic, he brought his hands from around his back, one cuff undone. The guys all jumped in surprise and stared in disbelief. He just lifted an eyebrow as he stood up.
“Guys, what part of porn star are you not getting?”
I suppressed a chuckle. It was rare that any suspect made me laugh, but that nearly did it. I undid the single cuff hanging from his wrist and set the cuffs on the counter. “Now then, Mr. Dresden, would you mind recounting your night for me?”
“Yes ma’am,” he said as he tucked his hands into the pockets of his smoking jacket, which he notably didn’t close. It made it extremely hard to focus on his face; he had a tennis player’s build, so a long, slim torso but well-defined with muscle, same as his arms and legs. “I finished on set at nine o’clock last night; I’ve already given them the production assistant’s number to corroborate my whereabouts when I left the studio. I went to dinner at an Italian spot about five miles from the studio, then had a drink at McAnally’s after dinner. I was there until after midnight and drove home.”
He pointed to the hallway. “I came in through the side door and the lights were off since my maid came through yesterday and I hadn’t been home since then; I stayed over a friend’s place last night. Since the lights were off, I didn’t see the bed at all and just got my clothes, showered, and got ready for bed. That’s when I found…”
Dresden then hesitated, swallowing hard. “That’s when I found Liz like that.”
I noted the way his brown eyes flinched a little when he’d glanced in the direction of the bedroom. Hmm…now, he was a porn star, so that meant he could act, but that reaction felt suspiciously genuine. “I see. What happened next?”
“I went to call 9-1-1 when the door busted open and your guys found me, which means someone set me up. It happened that quick; I pretty much found her and then they swooped in and arrested me before I even got a chance to finish dialing.”
I tried not to scowl or purse my lips in suspicion. I’d heard this story from plenty of men that murdered their girlfriends. “And what’s your relationship to the victim?”
“Liz and I are coworkers and friends,” he explained. “She and I have done, uh, I think four films together. Sometimes she gets stressed out and comes over for a drink and a quick FWB thing; I gave her a key about four months ago.”
“Noted. So you’re not officially dating her?”
“No ma’am. Just friends with benefits.”
“Did she text you that she would be over this evening?”
He shook his head. “She rarely does; she just comes over if she has a bad week and needs to blow off some steam.”
“Are you aware of anyone that wanted to hurt her?”
He paused. “I seem to recall something about a tiff with an ex-boyfriend? Um…Dalton. Last name’s Dalton.”
He rubbed his five o’clock shadow, then snapped. “Walter Dalton. That’s her ex. I remember since it’s kind of a ridiculous stage name, really. I mean, who wants to fuck a guy named Walter? I just picture that puppet from the old Jeff Dunham specials.”
Again, I actually had to bite my cheek to keep from laughing. He was surprisingly funny for a potential murderer. “Got it. We’ll see where he was around the time of death. At the moment, Mr. Dresden, I’m going to have to hold onto you until we get the cause of death straightened out. If your alibi checks out, then I can cut you loose. We’ll get your statement and everything else squared away down at the precinct once they’re done with the search and photography of the crime scene.”
“Hold onto me?” he mused. “Lucky me.”
I sent him an arch look. “You know damn well what I meant.”
Those brown eyes sparkled with mischief. “Of course I did, lieutenant. You need to hold onto me.”
I sighed. “Look, go get dressed already, smartass.”
He cocked his head slightly, smirking. “Why? Am I distracting you?”
I glared then. “Beat it.”
Dresden saluted me. “Yes’m.”
I then left and found another uniformed officer. “Talk to me about the security system.”
He pointed to the console in the wall. “I have two door entries recorded: one at 12:34am and another at 1:15am. Footage shows her coming in through the garage and he came in through the side door. Nothing else until we busted in.”
Just like he’d said. Well, it might’ve meant he was telling the truth to an extent. “When and where was the 9-1-1 call for the murder?”
“The call came in from a nearby phone booth at 12:45am. Someone who claims to be her friend said she told them she was afraid for her life and went over to his place. They felt like she wouldn’t be safe there and wanted the police to check on her.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “And let me guess: no name and no number?”
“You got it, boss.”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t mean he didn’t still do it, but that does sound like a set up to me. Is his driveway visible with the cameras?”
“Yes ma’am.”
I thought about it. “How about the actual street itself?”
He cycled through the views. “Sort of. There’s one that can see the bottom of his driveway, but that’s about all of its field of vision.”
“If this was a set up, there’s a good chance someone followed her, so comb the footage to see if you spot anyone that drove up behind her. There’s also a good chance someone followed Dresden to be able to set him up to find her body at an incriminating moment. It might also be that someone tampered with his system or planted a camera to see when he came home to set him up. The fact that he didn’t see her when he first walked in, but we still arrived on time to find him standing over the body is an odd sock. That’s precise timing, especially considering our response time to the 9-1-1 call. Did he have 9-1-1 dialed when his phone was confiscated?”
He nodded. “Mm. Alright, that’s food for thought.”
“Lieutenant?”
I turned to see the medical examiner in the doorway, holding a baggy with the Steuben Liz had drank from as well as the decanter of whiskey. “Tested negative for any poisons or tampering.”
“Noted, thanks. I think we’ve got enough to go ahead and take her downtown.”
“On it, lieutenant.”
“Guess that just leaves you and me,” Dresden’s unfairly deep and sensual voice said from right behind me. I tried not to jump when I heard it, but the smirk said he was amused that he’d managed to sneak up on me. He now wore a black dress shirt and nice jeans with boots, his dark hair combed a little bit neater but still sticking up in the front in a charmingly boyish fashion. “Whatta ya say, lieutenant? Wanna give me a ride?”
I glared. “This investigation would go a lot smoother without all the innuendo, you know.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” he asked as he held the front door open for me.
“I’m a cop,” I grunted as I walked down the porch steps. “My job’s not about fun.”
“Then this introduction was long overdue. You gotta cut loose every once in a while. You can’t tell me you’ve never been tempted to do something with your handcuffs other than arrest criminals.”
“I assure you that you’ll never be privy to that information.”
He pouted as we reached my car. “Killjoy.”
I rolled my eyes. “Get in the damn car, pretty boy.”
“You think I’m pretty?”
“Now.”
“Yes, lieutenant.” He climbed in and I fired up the engine, pulling down the long driveway to take him back to S.I. headquarters. He relaxed into the seat as if he belonged there, though those long legs meant he had to push it all the way back and even then, he barely had room. It had to be a pain being that tall and handsome.
Wait. Handsome? Get a grip, Murphy.
“So I’m guessing this is your first time with a porn star, eh?”
“And it’ll be the last if you keep talking.”
Dresden laughed. “Right. Cops are ornery. Got it.”
“We’re not ornery; you’re just irritating.”
“And you’re uptight, so we’re even. What’s the beef, lieutenant? Not a fan of sex workers?”
I scoffed. “Not a fan of sex workers who murder people.”
He narrowed his eyes at me then. “I was telling the truth; I never touched her. And you should watch how you talk about a friend of mine who was just murdered. Show some respect.”
I frowned, but accepted the reaction. As a cop, I forgot that murder wasn’t normal to the average person. He did genuinely sound hurt by Elizabeth’s death. Granted, it could be him playing me like a fiddle to throw off suspicion, but…my gut said that was a sincere statement. Again, food for thought.
“Fine,” I admitted. “I apologize for being callous about her murder. Doesn’t change the fact that you’re annoying the hell out of me.”
“Why am I annoying you?”
“You’re way too chipper for a guy accused of murder, for one.”
“Being dour about it won’t make me any less of a suspect.”
“Uh-huh. It also makes you look guilty that you’re this…bubbly considering what you came home to find, allegedly.”
“Sadly, I’m not really much of a stranger to death,” he admitted, his expression sobering a little. “My dad passed away when I was just a kid. I found him the next morning. Passed in his sleep. My mom died giving birth to me, too.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I said, and it was sincere this time. “Did Liz ever talk about any enemies other than Walter Dalton?”
He shook his head. “And that’s the thing that’s bothering me—this may not even be about her.”
I considered that. “You think you’re the target and she got caught in the crossfire?”
Dresden nodded. “I just can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt her, not unless it’s some crazy stalker. We all get them when you reach a certain level of notoriety in the sex worker world. Maybe someone wants me out of the picture, so pinning her murder on me would do the trick.”
“We’ll get a list of your stalkers and enemies while we’re filling out paperwork at the station.” I then sighed as my conscience ate at me. “And yes, this is my first time meeting a porn star. I’m not uptight and I have nothing against sex workers. It’s four in the damn morning and I haven’t had enough coffee, alright?”
Dresden chuckled. “There we go. That actually sounded human. Congrats, lieutenant.”
I bristled. “I have a name. Why do you keep calling me by my title?”
He sent me a sly look. “Because you like the way it sounds when I say it.”
I flushed pink before I could help it. Goddamn him. He was deceptively perceptive. “Shut up.”
He chuckled softly. “Sorry. Can’t help it. I tease beautiful women on reflex; it’s just what I’m used to doing considering my career choice.”
“How’d you get into it?”
“My brother.”
“Oh, right, Thomas Raith’s your half-brother.”
“Mm-hmm. He got sick one time when I was just barely into my twenties and he asked me if I would be willing to take his part since I hadn’t figured out what I wanted to do after I dropped out of the University of Illinois. I was just waiting tables and I knew I wasn’t ever going to have some big shot job where having a porn movie on my resume would mess up future opportunities, so I said yes. Turns out I had a knack for it, so after he got well again, he brought me into the fold.”
I shook my head. “Your brother got you into your porn career. Dunno how many people on Earth can say that.”
He grinned. “I know. Makes me unique, honestly. And no, I’m not stupid enough to ask if you’ve seen my work. I suspect if I did, you’d shoot me in both kneecaps and throw me in the trunk.”
I batted my lashes. “Aww, we are getting to know each other.”
“Speaking of which…” He rested his chin on one hand. “I’ve got to know how a woman as gorgeous as you ends up a cop. Not that pretty women can’t be cops; you just don’t see it too often unless you’re watching ABC.”
I snorted again. I assumed he meant Castle, since Stana Katic, the actress playing Kate Beckett, was nothing short of a knockout. “My dad was a cop. He died when I was a kid, so I decided to pick up the mantle.”
“Mm-hmm. So who’d you piss off to get hired for Special Investigations?”
I grunted. “No one specific; just a bunch of top brass in general. They wanted to fire me, but I close too many cases and their bonuses are proportionate to number of cases closed, so I got kicked upstairs and downstairs simultaneously.”
“So you’re great at what you do, then. Good. Let’s hope you’re good enough to prove I’m innocent.”
I leveled an even look at him. “We might find out you didn’t murder Liz, but you are the furthest thing from innocent, Mr. Dresden.”
He grinned again. “That I am, lieutenant. That I am.”
“Congratulations, Mr. Dresden,” I said with the utmost irritation as I walked into the conference room of my bullpen with a huge stack of folders in my arms. “You are the most hated porn star of all-time.”
Dresden grinned at me, his brown eyes laughing over the rim of the coffee mug in his hand. “What did I win?”
“An ass-whupping, if you don’t get your damn clodhoppers off my table,” I grumbled as I dumped the huge pile on the long table beside him. He obediently lowered his stork legs and eyed the huge stack.
“I take it that’s the number of death threats and complaints that I’ve filed with the police over the years?”
“Christ. Pick a new profession, buddy. I don’t even think Al Capone had this many enemies.”
He offered a sympathetic look. “To be fair, a good chunk of Americans are stuck in the Stone Age and don’t believe in a sex positive society.”
“I know, but sheesh.” I sat down. “I didn’t think we had quite this many Bible-thumping, anti-porn nut jobs in this country. It’ll take forever to parse out a legitimate threat from all this garbage. Not to mention the shit that they say to you in these messages. I don’t know how you stand it.”
“To be fair,” he said, grabbing half the pile. “I also have the best job ever, so you take the good with the bad. I mean, I’m kind of my own boss in a way; I get to choose which roles I do and I make a lot of friends and good business partners, too.”
“If you say so. Better settle in; we’re gonna be here a while until we find a lead. My men are running down where Liz was before she arrived to your place, so with any luck, we’ll have something to go on by noon. Until then or until your alibi clears, we’re joined at the hip.”
He made an obvious, teasing glance down at my waist. “I’ve been attached to worse hips.”
I flicked a paper clip at him, which he ducked, and then started on my half of the pile. We made it a solid hour before he couldn’t take any more of it. He left the conference room and came back fifteen minutes later with a hilariously large box full of donuts. He offered them to the entire office, which immediately won them over—they were suckers for free food—and then brought me a blueberry cake donut and some coffee.
“I don’t eat many carbs.”
“Then start,” he insisted, pushing them over to me. “Come on, lieutenant, it’s been an hour. Eat something.”
I grumbled mutinously under my breath, then took a bite. Damn him. It was delicious, too. He plopped down at my side dutifully while biting into a raspberry filled donut, picking up where he left off. He then sat all the way up, tapping my shoulder. “Lieutenant?”
“Hmm?” I said without looking up.
“This one’s dated from two weeks ago. It was mailed to my fan letter PO Box. It says ‘One day, you’re gonna wake up and I’ll have destroyed your life. I’m going to make you regret every single thing you’ve ever done and then I’ll kill you and anyone you’ve ever cared about.’ The wake up comment is what stopped me. Do you think maybe the timing was off when they tried to do what they did?”
I ran it through my head a few times. “It’s still a bit ambiguous, but you’re not wrong. Set that one aside as a person of interest.”
“Not enough to go on?”
“It could be, but given the nature of that statement, the writer is probably a narcissist. Narcissists feel compelled to let their victims know it was them, so if we’d found a taunting letter or a message with Liz’s body, I’d be more inclined to think it was that person. This is definitely pre-meditated and required knowledge of your life, habits, and your home, so I’m checking the death threats as a redundancy. I think it’s someone you know personally.”
His eyes widened. “No shit. Really?”
“Sadly, yes. You’d be disturbed to know how many celebrities have people in their lives that actually secretly hate and resent them, but pretend to be their friend for whatever they can use them for.”
Dresden shook his head. “Christ. If I find out it’s someone I know…I may go to jail that day.”
I could sympathize. Nobody deserved to come home to their friend dead in their bed. “Can’t say I blame you.”
My cell phone rang. I picked up. “Murphy?”
“Morning, Murph,” Dr. Waldo Butters said in his usual cheerful voice. “I hear you caught quite the stiff.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t start, Butters. What do you have for me?”
“Just more shit that’s gonna wrinkle your brain. So Addison’s initial exam was thorough. He’s right—for the life of me, I can’t figure out what killed this poor girl. Toxicology shows jackshit. No blunt force trauma, no poison, no heart attack, no stroke—hell, no medical malady of any kind. She was healthy as a horse when she kicked it, to the degree that I genuinely don’t get it.”
“So we’re looking at one of the weird ones. Not surprised. Thanks for ruling out the usual suspects, then. I can get to work on our off-kilter murder methods from here. Anything else?”
“I checked the contents of her stomach. She had a steak dinner before she died, in case that helps you find her whereabouts before she ended up in Mr. Porn Star’s bedroom.”
I frowned. Another odd sock. “Thanks, Butters. Keep me posted if you find anything else.”
“Will do, lieutenant. Have fun!”
“I’ll hurt you.”
He cackled. “Later, Murphy.”
I hung up and then gave Harry an abbreviated version of the conversation. He immediately picked up on the same thing that I did, surprisingly. “Now, wait a minute. If the Good Samaritan called and said Liz told them she was in danger, why the hell would she be sitting down to a steak dinner before coming to see me? That’s the kind of situation where you get a drive thru meal.”
“Exactly. It’s an anomaly and it’s contradictory. Her body also showed no signs of struggle, so that is another thing that possibly discredits the 9-1-1 call from the so-called witness. My folks are working on getting the subpoena for her credit cards and last phone calls; that should tell us where she was before she went to your house or at least hint at what area she was in.”
“What about the last production she was in?”
“We’re running that down too. It’s still early, so it takes a while to get to the deceased’s family and friends to find out what production she was working on before she died. Before tonight, when did you last see her?”
He flipped through his phone briefly. “Ah, looks like three weeks ago. She came through on Friday night to just smoke some weed and have some nice sex. She didn’t seem agitated at the time, just tired like most of us get after a long shoot.”
Dresden chewed his lower lip. It made him look absurdly cute. Argh. “Can I ask a weird question?”
“No.”
He looked at me tersely. “Oh, come on.”
“Fine, what?”
“How much do you know about magic, lieutenant?”
I eyed him. “A fair amount. Depends on what kind of magic you’re talking about.”
“Alright, well, to get more specific, I’m fairly well-versed in magic that’s related to vampires, given that Thomas is White Court. It’s sounding more and more like this is an assassination attempt that simply went sideways, whether it was timing or whatever. Have you ever heard of an entropy curse?”
I nodded. “Yeah, it’s ritual magic that packs a huge wallop and takes a lot of hard work and mastery to get it to work. You think maybe someone sent one after you and it just happened to catch her?”
“I don’t know if the wires can get crossed, but that could be the COD since depending on how the curse worked, it can sometimes kill without leaving a mark. And if it is someone that I know personally, that may have been how the curse was set up. Maybe it was set to just kill me the next time I climbed into bed and poor Liz did it before me.”
My eyes lit up. “Wait. You said you spent the night at a friend’s house last night?”
“Yeah, why?”
“And your maid came through and cleaned up the joint last night?”
“Mm-hmm.”
I sat back in my chair. “What if someone paid your maid to set up what they’d need for the entropy curse while you were out? It would be the perfect opportunity.”
“God, I hope not; I actually like my maid service.”
“It may not be the case,” I assured him. “It could be that they used the maid as a patsy too. They’d need your effects in order to power up the curse, so it’s possible that she came through and they went behind her to steal things to power the spell.”
His face then lit up out of nowhere. “Hang on a second!”
I stared in confusion as he hopped to his feet and went into my office. He returned with the manila folder holding the crime scene photos. He then knelt beside my chair and shuffled through them until he got to the side of his garage where the dumpster was. “Take a look.”
I peered at the photo. Then I realized what he was getting at. “The bags are torn open.”
“Yes!” he cheered. “And I know Melinda. She’d have tied those off and put them in the dumpster so the critters wouldn’t get to them. Someone went through my crap and found hair or something else that could power the curse, so if we comb the footage—”
“We may find our suspect,” I finished for him. “That’s some damn good detective work, Dresden.”
He grinned and waggled his eyebrows. “I have my moments.”
I dialed up the officer I’d assigned to review the footage and told him to go further back in time than we’d previously set for reviewing it. I put the phone on speaker as he checked. “Uh, let’s see here, um…I have the maid leaving at timestamp 6:30pm. Let’s fast forward and see what we find.”
A pause. “Oh. Looks like your boy-toy is right. At about ten o’clock, someone came through. They’re getting into the trash bags. I can’t see what they took from here, but they definitely went through them.”
“Good. I’ll send some uniformed cops to the neighbors’ to see if they saw a car parked out front. Any chance you can make out if they’re male or female?”
“Unfortunately, it’s too dark and grainy, but I’ll do my best to try and enhance the footage.”
“Thanks, Jimmy. Keep me posted.”
“My pleasure, lieutenant.”
“Boy-toy, hmm?” Dresden said cheekily after I hung up.
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t get cute. Cops talk shit to each other constantly.”
“Whether that’s the case or not, you seem like you need to lighten up a bit, lieutenant. Why don’t you go get a drink with me tonight?”
I stared at him. “You’re a murder suspect.”
“And?”
“And?” I sputtered. “I’m not going to go get a drink with the active suspect in a murder investigation.”
“If my alibi checks out, what’s the issue?”
I finally set my papers aside and faced him squarely. “Look, what’s with you? Why are you so into me? Are you just bored?”
He studied me for a moment, then shook his head. “Alright, fine. You want me to be blunt?”
“Go for it.”
Dresden then stooped over my chair, resting those big hands on either side of me, and my heart rate shot into the thousands. I was no blushing maiden of any sort, but it had been a substantially long time since a handsome gentleman paid me any attention and it was disconcerting being this close to someone I also secretly knew could fuck like a champion.
I wasn’t proud of that knowledge and I’d do my damnedest to make sure he never found out that I knew of his work and frankly found it drool-worthy. He wasn’t like your average mainstream porn star. He mostly did amateur work that allowed him to seem much more genuine than the professional grade pornography where it’s readily apparent that everyone involved on camera is faking it to get the viewers off. I had to put a wall between us or the simple fact that I knew how damn good he was at sex would override all my precious logic. I couldn’t afford to slip up in a dry period.
“What I do for a living isn’t always raw dogging pretty girls,” he said quietly. “I listen. I learn. I care. I like women. I like being around them. I like entertaining them. I like taking care of them.”
His eyes wandered over me. “And you seem like someone who could use a little TLC, that’s all. Doesn’t mean you’re weak. Doesn’t mean you’re not your own woman. I just…recognize that quality in a woman when I see it. And I think you don’t have to be that way.”
I licked my lips. “What way?”
“Alone,” he whispered. “I think maybe I can show you a good time and that’s enough. Doesn’t have to be anything other than a moment in an oasis. No obligations, no commitments, no pressure. Just you and me, alone, in the dark, enjoying each other. If that’s something you want.”
His eyes then settled on my lips. They started to tingle and I hated that. “And I think it is something you want, but you’ve taught yourself not to want it out of caution.”
For the first time in my life, a man left me speechless.
I’d never been exposed that way before. Most men ran from me, citing my ambition and work ethic as being unattractive to them. It seemed Harry Dresden didn’t scare easily.
And I had no idea what to do about it.
He cocked his head slightly, lifting his brows. It made his dark hair slide forward onto his forehead more, shading his eyes, the gesture effortlessly attractive. “Well, lieutenant? What’s your answer?”
I swallowed hard. Then, mercifully, Rawlins knocked on the open door and stuck his head into the conference room. “Hey, boss. Her next of kin have arrived. I sent them to your office.”
“Thanks, Henry.”
Harry frowned, but let me rise from the table without hearing an answer. He called out to me when I reached the doorway. “If I may, lieutenant?”
“What?”
“It might help a little bit if I’m there,” he said. “I know her sisters, at least.”
I studied him, noting his sincerity, then nodded. “Alright, you can come along. Just let me do most of the talking, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, lieutenant,” he said as he stood to his ridiculous full height, winking. “I always let the lady lead.”