With a chuckle, Axel took his sweet time rising to his feet. He enjoyed a moment of towering over the other man before he trudged upstairs. In the bedroom, he found Mystery stretching, her completely naked body visible to his hungry stare, opening her eyes to the world.
He sat on the edge of the bed and cradled her breast, sweeping down her abdomen to pet her pussy before he leaned in to kiss her forehead. “Morning, princess.”
“Morning.” She winced. “If you have any wicked ideas, you should know I’m awfully sore right now.”
“And you should probably get used to that state around me.” He winked. “But you’re in luck this morning. I’m here for a shirt because Heath doesn’t like the way I’m dressed. When you’re up and ready, come downstairs. We’ll rustle up some breakfast, then we have to talk about who might want to hurt you and why.”
She nodded at him solemnly. As Axel brushed a lingering kiss on her lips, he realized this wouldn’t be easy on her. “All right.”
Reliving both her mother’s death and her own kidnapping would be traumatic enough. Forcing her to look at everyone in her life as a potential suspect on top of that? Absolutely both shitty and heartbreaking.
“We’ll be downstairs.”
With that, he left her in privacy and shuffled back downstairs, tugging his T-shirt over his head. In the kitchen again, he watched Heath pace the room in about three steps in any given direction, each of his long strides eating up ground.
“Better?” Axel held out his arms. Not that he really cared for Heath’s opinion. As long as the asswipe shut up about his attire, that would be great.
“Much. I think we need to talk to Mullins, try showing him this picture your friend procured once more and see if we jog his memory.”
Since he still had to reassure the man that Mystery was fine and had merely misplaced her phone, he could mark two things off his to-do list with one call. Axel nodded. “Go for it.”
Heath yanked out his cell and punched a few buttons, then enabled the speakerphone.
Mullins answered quick. “Heath, anything wrong?”
“Not per se. Mystery and I left Dallas last night and are now at her aunt’s home. We’ve tried to hoodwink whoever is after her by announcing that she’ll be returning to London on Twitter. We think that will buy us at least today to solve as much of this riddle as possible. If we can’t piece it together by then, she’ll probably have to fly home.”
“I’d rather have her here, anyway. Fly her home ASAP.”
“As you know, we’ve tried. Mystery will fight us all on that. We can safely hold her here today, then we’ll get her home.”
The director sighed noisily, obviously not liking the situation.
“Hi, Mullins. Axel here. I’m sure you’ve been trying to call your daughter. She accidentally left her phone at my place. A friend of mine is keeping it safe for her.”
Mystery’s father paused. “Your place. I can track her phone, you know. I know exactly where her phone is.”
Fuck. Axel had hoped her father was low-tech and he wouldn’t have to explain Dominion to his girlfriend’s father. “It’s actually my place of employment. I took her there last night because it’s secure, but she had other ideas.”
“And insisted we reach her aunt right away,” Heath filled in.
Axel shot the other man a shocked stare. Why would the Brit help him out? Or maybe he’d told the white lie to keep the director off Mystery’s back. Either way, it worked in his favor.
“That girl needs to stop being so damn impulsive . . .” Mullins sighed. “So you work there, huh? Do you play there, too?”
Though Axel would prefer to tell Mullins that his sex life was none of the man’s business, if he wanted to be in Mystery’s future, lying to her father wouldn’t get him far. “Yes.”
The man sucked in a breath. “Does Mystery know?”
Translation: Have you played with her? Fuck, fuck, fuck. He’d never really dealt with overprotective fathers before. “Yes. Sir, with all due respect, she’s a grown woman.”
“But she’s always going to be my daughter. How does she feel about your kink?”
“She’s not protesting. Look, I didn’t once touch her in the desert when I rescued her. She was too young and emotionally rattled. Now, everything between us is completely consensual—”
“I know you didn’t touch Mystery back then. She was actually crushed you hadn’t.”
Axel couldn’t help but smile. “She’s made me see the error of my ways since she returned to the States.”
“I don’t want to know what you two do, but if she’s happier, then I’m glad for her.”
Letting out a pent-up breath, Axel sagged into his chair. Thank fuck the man didn’t want to kill him. “I’ll do my best to always make her happy. But we’ll have to talk about that after we’ve dealt with the danger to her. Sir, Heath and I genuinely believe that whoever’s threatening her now had something to do with your wife’s murder.”
Mullins hesitated. “Julia’s passing was never definitively ruled a homicide.”
“But you know it was,” Axel shot back. “A friend of mine spoke to the detective in charge of the investigation when your wife died. He showed me the picture from the hikers.”
“Photos can be doctored,” Mullins pointed out. “I’m not convinced those people didn’t tamper with the photo to sell it to the Enquirer or Star or some other rag that would have paid them a fortune, regardless of whether it was real. Everyone wanted a piece of that story.”
“The hikers never sold that picture to anyone,” Axel reasoned.
Mullins scoffed. “I’m not giving them a medal for their restraint.”
Marshall was a brilliant director and a protective father, but the man was more than a tad convinced the world revolved around him. “If they’d simply wanted money for their picture and to ride your coattails for their fifteen minutes of fame, wouldn’t they have doctored the image to make the man on the mountain with your wife look like you? Or someone you knew?”
A long pause followed. “That would be most obvious, but—”
“Then let’s pretend for a minute that the picture is real. You haven’t seen the image in . . . what? Over fifteen years?”
“No,” he admitted.
“I’ll send it to you again from my phone.” Axel texted the snapshot to him. “Just look at it one more time and tell me if you recognize the man with your wife at all.”
He heard a little ding on the other end of the line, and a few tense moments passed. “No. I have no idea who he is.” A pause ensued, followed by Mullins’s distressed sigh. “God, even seeing Julia in a grainy image like this is . . . It’s so hard. I loved that woman. I wasn’t a good husband. I know it. But she gave me the most precious gift ever.”
At that moment, Mystery skipped down the stairs and raced to the kitchen. “Hi, Dad.”
“Mystery. How are you, kiddo?” he sounded wistful.
“Fine. Heath and I drove most of the night, so I slept in. But I’m good now.”
“Excellent.”
Axel noticed cynically that the man didn’t ask his daughter how she felt about the newfound kink in her sex life.
“So . . .” Mullins went on. “How’s your aunt Gail?”
“I only saw her briefly last night, but she seems well. Nothing much has changed here.”
“I know that would have made your mother smile.”
“Yeah. It’s nice to be here again.”
A million questions swirled through Axel’s brain. He wanted to ask the man about his wife’s death, but he didn’t want to be the one to break the truth about the murder to Mystery. Unfortunately, waiting for the right moment cost time, and that was a luxury they didn’t have.