Taste Me Read Online Free Page A

“Okay,” he growled to the EMTs through a bloody, half-lupine mouth.
    The EMTs scooped Andi up, quickly found a vein, and inserted an IV. At the board meeting, Krispin Woolf listened while the siren, Claudette Fontaine, spoke, unaware that his daughter was fighting for her life.
    “Jack and I were attending a meeting with her father when you called,” Lukas said. “We can notify him and meet you at the hospital.”
    “Okay. Give us a few minutes here,” Gideon said as the gurney rolled briskly out of the bathroom, wheels clattering against the uneven tile.
    Through Williams’ video feed, Lukas watched Gideon raise his hand to his mouth, pause, put it back down again. Gideon looked to his trainee. “Can you bring the kit over here, Jenny? We’re going to have to process me for evidence.”
    Williams gulped audibly as she brought her commander the kit. Through her vid, Lukas watched Gideon extract a tarp and spread it on the floor, then step onto it. He removed a large evidence bag from the kit, set it on the tarp, and opened it. Snap. His gloves dropped into the bag. His shirt quickly followed. “Get a swab,” he said grimly. “I tasted semen.”
    Lukas’s stomach dropped.
    *ping*
    [JKirkland:] I’ll bring Krispin to the hospital.
    [LSebastiani:] k
    While Lukas opened a chat with his father and gave him a quick update, he saw Jack approach Krispin Woolf, put a hand on the man’s shoulder, talk quietly. The other man’s flint-tinged fear, his father’s horror, spilled onto Lukas’s tongue.
    Lukas sat for a moment, his bleary eyes staring sightlessly at the glowing monitors. Rancid tastes and toxic smells converged: the rookie’s diesel-tasting horror, Gideon’s soil-scented helplessness. Andi Woolf’s sweet, grassy musk. Cooling coffee. Krispin’s mothballs. His own vomit.
    As he took a healthy swig of antacid from the bottle on the desk, Lukas watched Claudette Fontaine rise and put her arms around Krispin Woolf.
    From this angle, Claudette looked more like Scarlett’s sister than her mother.
    Shit, where had that come from? Lukas wearily speared his hands through his still-damp hair. He’d managed to put the Scarlett’s Web show out of his mind, for a while, anyway. Thankfully, Scarlett Fontaine was Jack’s client, not his. Jack’s problem, not his. And if Lukas knew that her tour bus had already pulled into Underbelly’s underground parking ramp, right on schedule?
    It was only because it was his name on the door, not Jack’s.

Chapter 2
    Scarlett Fontaine tried not to wince as laughter exploded around the table like shrapnel. The band’s traditional “welcome home” celebration was just getting warmed up, and she could barely keep her eyes open. She rolled her shoulders and tried to get comfortable in the padded chair. Her apartment—her bed—was ten floors overhead, so close, yet so far away.
    Just hold it together a little bit longer. What’s a half hour more after a year on the road? She sighed and took a sip of the excellent Chianti that Flynn, Underbelly’s night manager, had just poured. “Mmm, just what I needed,” she said to Flynn, burrowing into his hug.
    “The wine?”
    “The hug,” she replied with a smile. “It’s good to be home.”
    “Glad to have you back. And don’t think I don’t notice how bony you are under that floppy sweatshirt. Are you okay?”
    No. I’m not. “Just tired,” she responded instead. And other than a raised eyebrow, he didn’t call her on it, thank the universe—not that he’d hold off for long. But she couldn’t explain how she felt to herself yet, much less to someone else.
    “Hey, Flynn!” a disembodied voice hollered from the club’s back office. “Are you going to close out the tills here or what?”
    Flynn hesitated.
    “Go count some money,” she said, shooing him with one hand and picking up the bottle he’d set beside her with the other. “You’ll have all the time in the world to browbeat me.”
    As Flynn departed,