Hotter After Midnight

Colin took the hint. He rose, headed for the door, then paused, unable to contain his curiosity. “Captain, just how did you and Dr.

Drake meet?”

The phone receiver was cradled at McNeal’s ear. For a moment, his lips curved in a somewhat taunting smile. “When you’re ready to tell me your secrets, Detective, I’ll tell you mine.”

“I want more than just sex.”

Emily lifted a brow as she studied the succubus stretched out on her couch. “And what exactly is it that you do want, Cara?”

Cara pounded her small fist against the leather cushions. “I want someone to want me, me! Not some hyped-up dream of a sex goddess!”

Ah, now here was the tricky part. “Well, umm, you know, you actually…are pretty close to being a sex goddess.” A succubus was created to entice men, born with a high level of pheromones. Just the scent from one of Cara’s kind had been known to drive mortal men wild with lust.

Of course, normally, the driving men wild with lust bit worked out well for the succubi. They derived a shot of magical power from the sex act. That power enabled them to alter their appearances, to live longer—heck, most succubi thought it was a pretty good deal all around.

Cara was definitely not like most succubi.

She sat up on the couch, pushing back her long, blond mane. “I’m tired of men looking at me and only wanting one thing.”

Emily didn’t speak. She’d learned it was best sometimes to just sit back and let the patient talk.

“I’m tired of random men, tired of guys who can’t remember my name a week after we’ve met.”

Her brows wrinkled at that. What kind of moron would forget a woman as gorgeous as Cara?

“I want someone who knows that I like sunsets, that I swim every morning before dawn, that I like damn blueberries on my pancakes—” Cara’s face was starting to redden. “Dammit, I want someone to know me!”

And not just the sex goddess.

“What’s wrong with me, Dr. Drake?” Cara’s hands balled into fists. “I’m not like the others, am I? They’re all happy. My friends love the power they have over mortal men. They laugh about it, but I—I—” She broke off, floundering. Then she swiped her hand under her left eye, rubbing away a lone tear that had fallen. “Shit, I guess I’m just a freak.”

Reaching for her tissue box, Emily said very softly, “No, you’re not.” She offered the tissue to Cara. “You just…” Now here was the hard part. Cara might not be ready to hear it, but she needed to realize, “You just want someone to love you.”

The tissue fell from Cara’s fingers. “But men don’t love women like me.”

Cara had been coming to see her for nearly a month now. In that time, Emily had discovered that beneath the succubus’s perfect exterior, there was a smart, kind, caring woman. A woman who’d been born into a life that didn’t necessarily match up with the person she was. And it was time Cara changed that life.

Men don’t love women like me. Gazing straight into Cara’s glistening blue eyes, Emily softly asked, “Don’t they?”

Emily had just shown Cara Maloan out when her intercom beeped.

“Hey, boss, you got a call on line one.” Vanessa whistled softly. “A guy by the name of Colin Gyth. Very sexy voice.”

Colin Gyth. Emily hurried around her desk. “Ah, okay.” It’d been nearly three days since she’d heard from Colin. Not that she’d been counting or anything. “Put him through.”

Inhaling deeply, she waited a moment for the telltale click that signaled the call transfer. Then she picked up the handset. “Emily Drake.”

“Hi, Doc.”

Heat bloomed between her thighs. Vanessa was right, the guy did have a sexy-as-sin voice. She’d forgotten the deep timbre of his speech.

Damn. What was wrong with her? Was she honestly getting turned on just by Colin’s voice?

Cara’s problem is that she has too much sex in her life. Maybe my problem is that I don’t have enough.

Maybe she’d just been alone too long. What had it been? Five, six months since she’d broken up with Travis? Or rather, since Travis had broken up with her.

I don’t know you, Emily. You won’t let me know you. And I’m tired of ramming my head into a wall just because I want to get close to you.

She jerked off her glasses. That had been bad, very, very—

“Uh, Doc? You there?”

“Ah, sorry, yes.” Emily coughed. “What can I do for you, Detective?” She really, really hoped he hadn’t just heard that little quiver of excitement in her voice. In talking with the guy for less than two minutes, she’d gone from professional psychologist to needy woman.

Maybe she could use some therapy of her own.

There was a brief pause on the other end of the line, then Gyth’s deep voice announced, “You can tell me that you meant it when you said you’d help out on this case.”

Now that got her attention. Her back snapped straight. “Yes, yes, of course, I meant it.” He was calling about business. Time for the professional psychologist to get her ass in gear.

“Good, cause the big boys just gave me the go-ahead to bring you in as a profiler.”

A profiler. Her fingers tightened around the phone. Working a murder investigation.

“The press is already crawling all over this case. Once you’re officially in, they’ll get your name.” He sighed, then said, “So prepare to start seeing a lot of yourself on the six o’clock news.”

For a moment, she hesitated. She hadn’t given a thought to the press. Hadn’t even considered that they’d learn of her. “Can’t we keep my involvement quiet for now?”

“The DA wants to make sure the public feels like we’re doing everything possible to catch this guy. He wants to release data about our profiler to make everyone feel better.”

“O-okay.” Surely there was no way that anyone would discover her past. It had been so many years since—

“Relax, Doc, dealing with the press will be the easy part. Catching the killer, that’s the challenge.” There was a rumble of voices in the background, then he asked, “Hey, when are you gonna be free this afternoon?”

“I’m free now.” Maloan had been her last patient of the day. No night clients were scheduled.

“Good. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes? But—”

“You need to start on the profile, right? Well, I’ll take you back to the crime scene, then you can come meet Smith.”

“Smith?”

“The medical examiner.”

Oh. Her stomach tightened. She didn’t have a good track record with MEs.

He laughed softly. “Don’t worry, Doc. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

Not exactly reassuring.

A thin line of yellow police tape blocked the door at 208 Byron Street. Colin pulled out a knife, slashed through it, and opened the door.

The smell hit her when she stepped inside. The stale, cold odor of death. The coppery scent of blood.

Emily swallowed. The house was dark. Shadows loomed across the floor. “Can you do something about the lights?”

He tapped a button on the wall. Light flooded the foyer and the den.

She inched forward, keeping her attention on the ground. Colin had told her that the killer had entered through the front door. So he’d come this way, walking slowly, carefully into the house.

The thick carpet swallowed her footsteps as she entered the den. The killer had crept into this room, found Preston Myers. And attacked him.

The stark outline of Preston’s body still marked the floor. The stain of his blood covered the brown carpet.

Her gaze rose to the nearby wall. Dried blood marred the surface. So much blood.

“This guy was in a fury,” she murmured, bending to inspect the carpet. Her hand lifted over the outline, hesitated.

“Is this your first murder, Doc?”

She hadn’t heard his approach but wasn’t really surprised to hear his voice sounded from right behind her. Shifters often made no sound when they moved.

Her fingers were trembling. She balled her hand into a fist and glanced back at him. “Yes.” But not her first blood soaked scene.

For an instant, her mind flashed back to that last bloody room. She saw the man’s body, slumped on the floor. His brains and tissue were on the wall, blood surrounding him.

Her father’s death hadn’t been pretty, and sometimes, late at night, she still woke up screaming.

Emily drew in a deep breath. She had to focus on Preston, not the past.

Standing, her stare swept the room, lingered on the pictures decorating the mantel, on the chess set in the corner, on the books lining the built-in shelves near the doorway.

From all appearances, Preston Myers had been a normal guy. Completely human.

So why had he been attacked? Why had the killer chosen him?

“It doesn’t make sense,” she muttered. “SBs stick to their own kind.”

“Uh…SBs?”

“Supernatural beings.” In her experience, SBs always stayed with their own for mating, for fun, and for killing.

To cross over like this and to murder a human, to so blatantly attack—

Her gaze narrowed as she glimpsed a familiar face in one of the photos.

Hell.

She marched closer to the mantel. Snatched up the picture.

“Hey, Doc, what’s—”

Her fingers tightened around the small frame. “Have you run a background check on Preston yet?”

“My partner’s working on it.” His eyes narrowed. “Why, Doc? What do you know?”

She held up the picture. “I know that one of the guys in this picture is a demon.”

One black brow shot up. “A patient?”

“No.” She would never have agreed to treat Niol. The guy gave off black waves of energy that made her far, far too nervous. Her nail tapped just over Niol’s unsmiling face. “But I’ve met him a few times. He owns a bar near here, a place called Paradise Found.”

“Then I guess I’ll be paying him a visit.” He smiled at her. “Good thing I brought you over. You might not have gotten any more details about the killer, but you sure did just speed up the—”

“Oh, I know more about the killer,” she interrupted, frowning at him, feeling slightly insulted. What did he think she’d been doing?

Daydreaming over a dead body?

He pulled out his notebook. “Then tell me.”

Emily licked her lips. “This wasn’t an impulse kill. Nothing’s disturbed. Nothing’s taken. The guy came to the house with the attack already planned out. He knew where the security cameras were, and he knew how to hide from them. That probably means he’s been here before, that he knew the victim.”

She pointed to the blood on the wall. “When there is this much violence, this much rage, it’s usually very, very personal.”

“Yeah, I figured that.” So far, Colin wasn’t sounding particularly impressed.

She dropped her hand, squared her shoulders as she faced him. “The killer had to be strong to overpower Preston. The victim was what, six foot two? One hundred eighty pounds? He would have fought back, would have fought as hard as he could.” Her lips tightened for a moment. “But then, supernaturals are always stronger than humans, aren’t they? Preston never had a chance.”

“No,” Colin agreed, his voice quiet. “He didn’t.”

When they left the house, they found a reporter waiting for them. A blond woman with close-cropped hair stood on the walkway, a black microphone clutched in her hands. A cameraman stood behind her, his face partially obscured by the bulk of his equipment.

“Detective Gyth!” The woman’s face lit with hungry enthusiasm. “Darla Mitchell, News Flash Five. I have a few questions for you.”

“Shit.” The word was a bare breath of sound, but it reached Emily’s ears, and for a second, she almost smiled at the disgust she heard.

But then Darla shoved the microphone into her face. “Dr. Drake, my sources say that you’ve joined this case as a profiler.”

“Ah…” Her sources? She’d been on the case for less than an hour. How had the woman already found out about her?

Colin stepped in front of Emily. “The Atlanta PD has no comment at this time.”

Darla tried to squirm around him. “But what about Dr. Drake? Does she have—”

Colin grabbed the bobbing microphone, leaned close, and snapped, “No comment.”

“Fine!” Darla snarled. “Cut it, Jake!”

Emily stepped to Colin’s side just as Jake lowered the camera.

A hard glare twisted Darla’s pretty face. “You can’t keep information from the public forever, you know, Gyth!”

“When I have information, I’ll give it to you.” He smiled. Okay, well, he flashed a lot of teeth. Not really a smile so much as a baring of fangs.

Darla growled at him, then spun on her two-inch heels and stomped back to the News Flash Five van.

The cameraman studied Gyth and Emily. Then he sighed. “She’s been pissed since Channel Three scooped her on the Butcher story.” His eyes narrowed on Emily. “Dr. Drake…I’ve heard a lot about you.”

A tingle of awareness skated down her spine as she stared into his golden eyes.

He was Other.

He smiled at her, and for just a second, his eyes shifted, the gold changed into a midnight black.

Demon eyes.