Unleashed. Lori Borrill

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      He clamped his eyes shut, not interested in letting his thoughts take over and ruin the restful climax to one hell of an evening. Especially when there were better ways to start the day.

      Rolling over, he reached for the sexy cowgirl responsible for his divine night of slumber, trying to decide which parting gift he’d like to leave her with. Several came to mind. All of them involving her legs around his neck. But when he slid a hand over the mattress, he came up with nothing but sheet. He felt the pillows, flat and cold, before opening his eyes and propping up on an elbow. The bed was definitely empty, and glancing around the dim room, he noted the rest of the master suite was empty, too.

      Was she down the hall making coffee? That would be too blissful to imagine. A smile quirked his mouth as he envisioned the petite, sexy redhead slipping back into bed with two mugs of black coffee and steam in her eyes. But when he rolled on his back and allowed his mind and body to slowly wake, the house felt awfully quiet.

      Frowning, he tossed his legs over the side of the bed and scratched his chest, still trying to capture his bearings. His clothes were scattered across the tan carpet, as were a number of foil condom wrappers—little remnants of a night well spent. A pillow had found its way to the foot of his stuffy sofa chair, and he wondered how it got there until the memory made him smile.

       Oh, Ms. Beane, you know how to have a good time.

      He shoved off the bed and began collecting the wrappers, counting them as he went until it occurred to him everything that belonged to Jessie was gone. The denim skirt she’d wiggled out of as he was still recovering from the first orgasm, the black strappy high heels she’d kicked off with her toes, the lacy green bra, the tight black T-shirt, the funky orange “Beane Bag,” all stripped from the room as if last night had been nothing more than a dream.

      He grabbed his pants and pulled them on, then crossed the room and opened the door. Stepping through his front room, down the hall to the kitchen past the bathroom and back, he came to terms with the fact that his spicy Texas lover was gone.

      And for a long moment, he stood, trying to understand why that irked him.

      Last night she’d been the answer to everything he’d needed just then, a lover that rivaled his every fantasy, fulfilling every horny desire and tossing out two or three more for good measure. Now this morning she’d gone the extra mile by adding one more favor. She’d taken off. No awkward goodbyes, no empty promises to call. She’d simply grabbed her things and left. And for a man already complicated by a hard past and a harder present, it was the sweetest move she could have made.

      So why was he so pissed?

      Padding back to the kitchen, he lifted the carafe of day-old coffee from the machine. He sniffed the contents and grimaced, but still opted to nuke a cup rather than brew a fresh pot. He was too disturbed by his own annoyance to fret over the quality of his morning’s caffeine, and as he choked down the first bitter sip, he leaned against the counter and tried to talk some sense into himself.

      What had he planned to do, ask for her number? Send her flowers and start taking her out for regular Friday-night dates? He’d made it clear before they’d left the bar that if she was looking for more than one fun evening, she’d need to keep trolling. She hadn’t balked, and this morning, she’d proven that her indifference hadn’t been an act. She’d truly meant what she’d said about wanting to keep things casual. There’d been no day-after confessions leading to guilty apologies and the ever-awkward, “Gee, I thought you’d understood…”

      She’d wanted exactly what he’d wanted. They’d been a goddamn one-night match made in heaven. So standing here burned, since she’d one-upped him on her race for the door, seemed immature at best.

      The rational thought helped only slightly. However, instead of spending the morning in his kitchen trying to analyze his feelings, he decided it was time to forget about it and head for the station.

      Until a sharp knock at the entry had him thinking again. Stepping down the hall, he grabbed the knob and whipped open the door, but rather than finding his wily sex-starved bedmate, he found a short Chinese man with a bad haircut and a frown on his face.

      “You forget you had a job?” his partner, Kevin Fong, grumbled as he pushed through the door and entered the flat, a cup of Starbucks in one hand. Kevin’s angry look had Rick guessing he hadn’t brought an extra cup for him.

      Rick closed the door behind them. “It’s barely eight.”

      “And when was the last time you showed up for work later than seven?” It hadn’t been in the year and a half he and Kevin had been partners. “And when did you stop answering your cell phone?” Kevin added.

      Rick glanced down at the mahogany side table where he could have sworn he’d tossed his car keys and cell phone the night before. “My phone?” he said absently, patting the pockets of his jeans then moving into the bedroom to look around.

      Kevin followed, eyeing him suspiciously as he leaned in the doorway and took in the surroundings. “Captain’s been trying to get hold of you all morning.”

      Rick stopped rummaging through the room and glanced at the clock. “It’s seven fifty-five!”

      “He’s apparently a vampire like you.” Kevin yawned. “Woke me up at an ungodly hour because he couldn’t reach you. You’ve been my mission for the last hour.”

      Rick seriously needed a lesson in expectation management. Barely having a life was one thing. Having his boss call out the posse because he hadn’t shown up for work early brushed the edge of illegal. “What’s the captain doing working on a Saturday anyway?” he grumbled.

      “Creed Thornton managed to get his property released from evidence,” Kevin explained. “They’re coming first thing this morning to pick up everything we seized from his condo.”

      “That’s why I got to it yesterday.” Rick went back to looking for his cell phone.

      “Captain wants to know why you checked out his laptop.” Then with an added layer of annoyance, Kevin added, “And since we’re supposed to be working this case together, it might be nice if you told me, too.”

      “If you’d met me at Scotty’s last night like you should have, you’d already know.”

      Kevin pulled a pen from his coat jacket, bent over and used it to lift Jessie’s emerald-green thong out from behind his TV stand. “Looks like you ended up better off without me,” he said, holding it up as if it were crime scene evidence.

      Rick stepped over and yanked the panties away from his partner. He preferred his personal life stay personal, having had enough of it all over the news when his wife was killed. And the look he flashed Kevin said the man wasn’t going to get the gory details he was looking for.

      “Message delivered. Why don’t you let me shower and get dressed and I’ll meet you down at the station?”

      “You forgot the part about filling me in on what you’re doing with our murder investigation.” Kevin moved in, kicked away the pillow from Rick’s side chair and took a seat. “Why did you check out the laptop last night? The crime lab said it was clean.”

      “I want a second opinion.”

      Kevin laughed. “Not that smarmy hacker friend of yours from the Haight.”

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