Tricks Read online

  She reached out and touched my hand.

  I wouldn’t have been surprised to see sparks fly up where she touched me. “It’s fine,” she said again. “Things got intense, but we were both active participants. Okay, Nicco?”

  “Okay.” I nodded slowly. “I mean, I guess I’ve been worrying about it. We barely know each other, and I might be working on a task force in the department, so it’s…” As she continued to watch me, I waved a dismissive hand. “But that’s not why you’re here, is it?”

  “No. But there is something I wanted to talk to you about, and it’s…” She paused and bit her lip, her gaze falling away for a brief instant before she looked back at me. “It’s kind of personal, so…”

  “I’m all ears.”

  And I was. Right up until I heard the words that came out of her mouth.

  “Is your father a man by the name of Gabriel Marks?”

  Not at all what I’d expected her to say. As a matter of fact, it was the very last thing on earth I’d ever expected her to say. But maybe that just made me a fool, considering the fact that she carried a badge.

  “Excuse me?” I said slowly.

  “Gabriel,” she said again, slower this time. “Is Gabriel Marks your father?”

  Fuck.

  Fourteen

  Ravenna

  I’d never understood the phrase torn in two as well as I did now.

  Internal conflict wasn’t something I’d experienced a lot of, never had much reason to. Seeing the name of Nicco’s father had changed all of that.

  I didn’t have a sleepless night, but I sure as hell didn’t rest. When I wasn’t lying in bed wondering how in the world I’d managed to come across the last man I should possibly want – Gabriel Marks’ son – I was asleep dreaming about the same man.

  And what dreams.

  Wow.

  The kind of dreams I was having were the sort that defined the term wet dream. I woke up achy and on the verge of climax twice, and after the second time, I finally got out of bed and decided to do my morning workout and get an early start on the day.

  That explained why my partner was glowering at me come lunch time. “If you yawn one more time…”

  I gave him a sheepish smile. “I can’t help it. I didn’t sleep all that great last night.”

  “Yeah, well, I did, but you’re making me tired,” Milo groused.

  “I’m sorry.” I grimaced and reached for the over-sized soft drink that had come with my fast food lunch. We tried to limit our junk food lunches to once a week, but I hadn’t gotten around to packing anything so we’d hit a drive-thru. They’d gotten my sandwich wrong, and the fries were soggy, but the caffeine in the soft drink might get me through the next few hours.

  Of course, what I had to do then…

  But I didn’t let myself think about it.

  I was still debating on whether or not I was going to do anything.

  Or rather, I was debating on what to do.

  How could a guy be in a position like Nicco was – a forensic accountant with police departments calling on him to help out on task forces – and yet have a dad who was a con artist?

  But even as I thought it, I felt uncomfortable, and I wasn’t sure I liked myself much for thinking it.

  People weren’t their parents.

  Sure, we could be a lot like them. I knew I had a lot of my dad in me, but that didn’t mean I was him.

  And it didn’t look like Nicco’s father had been in his life for some time.

  They didn’t even share the same last name.

  I’d done some more digging around last night after I’d seen Marks’ name, and it turned out that at one point, Nicco had been known as Nicco Marks, but he’d gone through a lot of trouble and paid the money to have his name officially changed to Nicco Alexander, his mother’s maiden name.

  Still, he was the closest thing I had to a lead on Marks at this point.

  No, it’s not…a soft voice murmured in my head. You know Marks lives in LA.

  I silenced the voice, though. Nicco was Gabriel’s son. A real connection.

  After all this time, I wasn’t going to let it slide by me.

  The end of the workday seemed to take forever.

  By the time it ended, and I was able to clock out, I felt like I’d worked a double and my entire body ached with fatigue, my eyes gritty with it.

  I wasn’t ready to go home, though.

  I knew if I left now, I’d just go home and brood.

  Taking my bag with a set of regular clothes in it, I headed to the women’s locker room to shower and change. There was a germ of an idea in my brain, and I didn’t know if I was hoping the shower would clear my head and help me make up my mind…or change it.

  Sooner or later, I’d leave and go back to try and hunt down Nicco. At least if I left now, he’d still be at his office, and maybe I could ask him…

  Ask him what? a small voice in my head murmured. Hey, do you know your dad is a con artist?

  Dread curdled inside me at the thought of the upcoming confrontation, but even as the idea wove itself through my brain, I had to acknowledge something else.

  A part of me was aching to see him again.

  Seriously aching.

  The responsible part of me was insisting that when I saw him, we should talk. And not about Marks, either.

  We had other, more personal things to talk about.

  Like the fact that we barely knew each other and yet we’d been crawling all over each other yesterday. Worth a discussion at least, and not the sort that started with, when can we do it again?

  Although I was dying to do it again – and more. For the first time in my life, I was seriously attracted to a guy. And the guy is the son of the man you’ve been wanting to find for years, I reminded myself.

  It should have cooled the want.

  But nothing did.

  Just thinking about him was enough to make my body burn, and I wasn’t exactly comfortable being that turned on while using the shower in the women’s locker room at the precinct.

  After I showered, I hurried out of the precinct before anybody could stop me and started down the street in the direction of the office where we’d gone yesterday.

  Hopefully, he’d be there.

  I didn’t want to have to use the home address I’d dug up for him, although it shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody that I knew how to find out where people lived.

  Nicco wasn’t stupid, either.

  He’d be able to figure out how I knew about his father.

  Everybody looked up everybody these days, researching their would-be blind dates online and all that shit. It might not even come as a shock to him that I’d already looked into him, although finding out who his parents were and all that…that was a little more than a typical Google search could reveal.

  Being a cop changed things though.

  “Stop trying to justify what you did,” I muttered to myself. “You did it, it’s done. Now you have to figure out how to deal with the fall out.”

  And shit, was there fall out.

  I didn’t know how to handle the fact that the one guy who really got me going was related to Gabriel Marks. I’d been looking for that guy for so long…

  I looked up and realized I was about to walk right past Nicco’s office.

  Maybe you should, the little voice in my head whispered. Maybe it would be for the best.

  But I didn’t.

  Grabbing the door handle, I jerked the door open and strode inside. I wasn’t even sure what I planned to talk to him about. Was I going to say anything about the day before?

  Was I going to just demand to know about his father?

  Was I going to do none of those things and just go over to that desk and kiss him, like right now because man, oh, man did he look good…

  “Ravenna…” Nicco looked up at me, rising from behind his desk, a startled look on his face.

  Damn, but he was beautiful. That dark, thick hair framed a face that was
almost too perfect. His mouth was open, on the verge of saying something and just looking at it made me remember how it had felt when he kissed me. My belly clenched, reminding me it hadn’t just been my mouth he’d kissed.

  Not that I could forget.

  I hadn’t forgotten any of it. Not the rough glide of his hands on my skin, the way he cupped the back of my head as he kissed me, like he wanted me as close as we could possibly be. The way he’d tugged at my jeans and panties and how I’d exploded when he’d gone down on me.

  As though he could read my every thought, his eyes darkened.

  I wanted to go to him and kiss him, drag him to me and demand that he touch me, demand that he just make me forget about everything. He could do it too.

  I knew that with a sudden, fiery insight.

  If I asked him to put his hands on me and make me forget, he could do it – and judging by the light in his eyes, he would do it.

  His eyes widened a fraction as he stared at me, and I had to wonder if he could read the thoughts on my face.

  Did he know?

  Could he tell what I was thinking?

  The thought turned me on – and it terrified me.

  As he circled out from behind the desk, I opened my mouth and blurted out, “Is a man by the name of Gabriel Marks your father?”

  The change that came over him was instant.

  One minute I saw subtle heat on his face, a faint smile on his lips. He had one hand outstretched toward me.

  In the next, the heat was gone. He was no longer smiling, and he’d tucked both hands into the pockets of his trousers.

  “Excuse me?” he asked, head cocked to the side.

  The words were delivered in such a cool tone, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see ice forming.

  “Gabriel,” I said again. “Is Gabriel Marks your father?”

  Nicco returned to his spot behind his desk, and he took his chair, leaning back in it as he studied me. “May I ask why you want to know?”

  “I…” I hadn’t thought to come up with an explanation of why I wanted to know, and I wasn’t about to tell him the truth either. What if he was like his father? What if they were close? What if he warned him? Shit, what was I thinking?

  I had no legit reason to be asking him anything, but I wasn’t about to back down now.

  “The name came up at the station,” I said coolly, knowing there was no way he could verify that. “And…” deciding to mix a bit of truth with fiction, I continued, “after last night, I got nosy. I did a background check on you.”

  “My father’s name wouldn’t come up in a regular background check,” Nicco responded stiffly.

  And it hadn’t.

  “Cops can do a bit more thorough job than the typical background check,” I told him, allowing a tight smile.

  “And you did all of that because we kissed?”

  A kiss?

  Calling what we’d shared a kiss was like calling the Pacific a little bit of water. It was like calling the Empire State Building kinda tall. I opened my mouth to fire back at him, that was more than a kiss, but I stopped myself. I wasn’t about to show any kind of reaction, not now. Not here. I wasn’t sure what was going on behind those dark eyes of his, but until I had a better grip on things, I planned to hold my cards close to my chest.

  “Are you close to your father?”

  He flicked a hand through the air. “Hardly. I haven’t seen him in years.”

  “Define years,” I demanded.

  “It’s a period of time,” he said lazily. “Three hundred and sixty-five days, to be exact. Years would be plural, as in more than one. That’s a rough definition or would you like the exact one from the dictionary?”

  Smart-ass. Curling my lip at him, I said, “How about you tell me how many years it’s been since you’ve seen him.”

  “Ah, that’s what you meant.” He gave me a sharp-edged smile. “Not since I was a kid, officer. Is that enough for you?”

  “Do you talk to him? Birthdays? Christmas?”

  “You think he’s been sending me birthday cards? Christmas cards?” Nicco laughed. “That’s something fathers do when they give a good damn. I assure you, Gabriel Marks only gives a good damn about himself.” He leaned forward, his eyes fastened on me. “What’s this about, Ravenna? Gabriel doesn’t live around here so why does a Monterey police officer want with a man like him?”

  I opened, then closed my mouth, uncertain what to say.

  Finally, Nicco waved a hand at me and gestured to the door. “I’ve got work to do, so unless you have answers for me…or a warrant…” his eyes glittered, “please leave.”

  Since I couldn’t really do much of anything, I turned on my heel and left.

  Once I was outside, I leaned back against the wall and muttered, “That went smashingly.”

  I wanted to hit my head up against the brick wall behind me, but it would only serve to give me a headache, so I didn’t bother. Still, as I pushed away from the building, I gave the door of his office one last glance.

  Nicco was standing there, staring out at me.

  The moment our eyes connected, he looked away.

  Damn it.

  Fifteen

  Nicco

  It wasn’t much easier to put her out of my head now than it had been before she’d shown up, asking about my father.

  Gabriel Marks, that fucker.

  All my life, he’d been screwing things up for me. More than once, being his progeny had cost me a consulting job, because if you’re going to be called on in court, it’s best that you have a lily-white past. While mine was clean, save for a few parking and speeding tickets, my father’s was a different story, and some people just didn’t want to take the risk.

  Fortunately, he wasn’t always the deciding factor. I’d made a name for myself by being the best, by being the sharpest and looking at angles other people didn’t think to look.

  But here he was, screwing me over one more time.

  Just what had brought Ravenna here? Well, other than to ask me about Marks?

  What was he to her and how badly had he fucked things up there?

  There was no doubt in my mind that he’d done something.

  He left a trail of broken lives and waste behind him like breadcrumbs, one messed-up Hansel.

  I gave myself a few minutes to brood about it before I forced myself to shove Ravenna and thoughts of my messed-up father out of my head.

  It took forever to actually focus on work and get anything done, but once I managed to get lost in the numbers, I was well and truly lost. Hours passed before I let myself surface, and by the time I did, I had finished going through yet another file for a client, and it was time to either close down for the day or just order something in and work myself into exhaustion.

  I considered the latter and decided I’d rather go home, make a decent meal and empty the better part of a bottle of wine. If I stayed here, it was going to be because I didn’t want to think about that ass or about Ravenna.

  If it was just Ravenna, I might have gone ahead and worked the long hours, but I refused to let Gabriel Marks have even that much influence on my life.

  Mind made up, I tallied up the hours I’d spent on the project and made a note of it, then saved and shut down my computer.

  Maybe I’d go over to my mother’s house instead of going home, visit with her, Suria, and Joelle.

  But it didn’t take long to decide that my mom and sisters weren’t who I needed to be around, though. My temper was perched on a knife’s edge, and it wouldn’t take much for me to slip over. They didn’t need to see that – didn’t deserve to see it.

  I’d call them from the condo, and we’d make plans for dinner. Tomorrow, maybe.

  Mind made up, I grabbed my briefcase, ready to head out. Parking wasn’t exactly ideal in the area where my office was located, but my office came with two spots reserved in the back so I always had a space. The rear exit opened into the alley, and I stepped outside, already turning to lock
the door.

  That was when I saw Ravenna leaning against the wall.

  I stilled at the sight of her, uncertain what in the hell she wanted now.

  If she had more questions about Marks, she was out of luck. She could ask me about him when she was ready to give me reasons for why she was asking or when she had a warrant.

  Somehow, I didn’t see the latter happening.

  She shoved away from the wall, her eyes on mine.

  I waited, certain she was going to say something that would piss me off again. But then she moved toward me, and a moment later her mouth was on mine, her hands framing my face.

  Greed ripped through me, stark and demanding, and I dropped my briefcase, reaching for her.

  She moaned as our bodies slammed together, a sentiment I could appreciate, because the feel of her against me was something heavenly. We fit together like we were made to do so.

  We fit together like we belonged together, just like this.

  Her mouth opened under mine, and I didn’t wait for an invitation. I just took what she offered, licking my way into her mouth and shuddering at the taste of her.

  Honeyed sweetness met me, and I could have gorged on her.

  She shoved one hand into my hair, the other sliding down to hook in the lapel of my jacket, hauling me closer.

  For us to get much closer now, we’d have to get naked, and the only reason I wasn’t on board with that idea was because we were standing in the alley next to my office. A few dozen feet away, that alley opened up onto a rather busy street. I had my share of kinks, but exhibitionism wasn’t one of them.

  She bit my lower lip, and I responded by catching hers in my mouth and sucking on it.

  She whimpered, a sound that I felt all the way down to my balls. Pushing my thigh between hers, I ground it up against the softness between her legs, imagined I could feel her heat. I wanted to feel her heat again, wanted to taste her and have her come against my mouth, then come wrapped around my dick.