Page 87 of Shadow

“You’re doing good,” he encouraged. Then he took her breath away and slammed all the way inside. From then on, he kept a relentless pace, pinning her down by the shoulders as he fucked her hard and fast.

“Come for me, Olivia,” he ordered through clenched teeth. “I need to feel it.”

Her cunt gripped him harder than ever, and she cried out as pleasure coursed through her.

She continued to pulse around him as he drove into her harder and faster until he couldn’t take it anymore, then he exploded inside her with a loud growl.

It took a few minutes for them both to recover, but he collapsed on top of her as they caught their breath.

“That was fucking perfect,” he said when he eased off of her and off the bed to find a towel.

“You’re perfect,” she murmured as he cleaned her up. “Thank you for that.”

She climbed out of bed and went to the bathroom and shut the door. When she returned, he’d already pulled the covers back and was sliding in between them. She crawled in next to him and laid her head on his chest.

“We’re perfect together, baby girl.” He kissed the top of her head.

“We should take a nap before Peter calls us. I’m sure he’ll have news for us sometime tonight.”

Her eyes were already drooping, and she rolled onto her side, pushing her bare ass against him.

He rolled over to spoon her, and together they drifted off to sleep, much to his surprise.

Sometime later, a cell phone ringing woke him up. He eased away from the still sleeping Olivia and slipped out of bed to answer it.

The bright screen said two in the morning, which meant they’d been asleep for about three hours.

“Peter, what did you find?” he asked when he answered the call.

“We tracked her to within six blocks of the bar. After that is when surveillance footage in the area started messing up. But that’s not the really interesting thing we found. Turns out she was an admirer of yours. Or at least she admired Ripley Matthews.”

Ripley frowned as he lowered himself onto the sofa and opened his laptop.

“What do you mean?”

“We did some digging into her online history from when she worked for the Doll House. She used to keep some kind of online journal, and she spoke highly of someone named Rip. Very highly. That is, until you disappeared. Did you ever flirt with this girl?”

Ripley gave a mirthless laugh. “I was undercover as a bouncer in a strip club. Flirting with the women who worked there was how I got half my information. I remember seeing her, but I don’t recall ever being overly flirtatious with her.”

Peter hummed. “I just sent you a couple of links. Check them out. You weren’t the only one she was infatuated with. She apparently had a thing for Corbit Upwood as well. I can’t tell if she was sexual with him or if it was a crush from afar, but it would be worth finding out. An official assessment from a profiler would probably lead to the conclusion that this girl is extremely easy to manipulate. Upwood knew who you really were. If he passed that on to someone who knew about your time at the Doll House and her connection to you, they could use that to get to you. Be careful. We both know this kind of perp is one of the most dangerous.”

Peter was right. The emotionally unstable criminals who were committing crimes of passion, or the ones who didn’t think they were committing a crime at all but were instead serving some higher good were volatile and dangerous as fuck.

“Thanks for all the information. I’m gonna let Liv sleep as long as possible and then show her this. Anything else I need to know?”

“Not yet. We’re going to dig into her communication history for the past few years, though, and see if we can find out who might be pulling the strings.”

Ripley said goodbye and started scrolling through the blog posts of a woman who had clearly been obsessed with him.

Chapter 23

OLIVIAwokethenextmorning sore but satisfied. She stretched in the bed and reached for Ripley. But his side of the bed was cold, so she rolled off the mattress and headed for the bathroom to start her morning routine.

By the time she came out after a quick rinse in the shower, Ripley was in the bedroom with breakfast.

She smiled at him, suddenly shy despite all they had done. Or maybe because of all they had done.

“Morning, baby.”

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