Deadly Pursuit (21 page)

“I’m sorry,” he said.

That rumbling croon set off wave after wave of shivers down her spine and pooled in her belly and lower, until her thighs were parting because they needed to and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

“This is exactly what I never wanted to happen. I didn’t want your life to be turned upside down because of me.”

In no mood to be gracious, she tried to pull free and said, “Well, it is.”

“I’m trying to make it right,” he told her. “I’m trying to protect you.”

“Protect me?” A laugh came out of nowhere and it was bitter, borderline hysterical. “I’m sure I’m safe
from all the killers and drug dealers in the neighborhood. But who’s protecting me from you?”

No one liked to be confronted with his own hypocrisy, Jack least of all. Those heavy brows came together over eyes glittering with splinters of brown and gold, desire and anger.

“We’re helping each other through. That’s all. We can’t make it more than it is.”

“More than what?” She raised her brows, wanting to hurt him, to smash his face in the mess he’d made of her so he’d have to deal with it. She shouldn’t have agreed to come. She should have stayed in Washington. She should have stayed as far away from this man as possible because the more time she spent with him, the more time she wanted. “More than me screwing you on demand and then you walking away when you decide the time is right without looking back or giving me a second thought? I think I’m clear on that, thanks. Now get out.”

She’d pushed him too far, and his retaliation was swift and merciless. Without warning, Jack jerked her sweater up to her chin and ripped her bra down. Her breasts, bared to the cool air, bounced free and her nipples tightened down to hard little buttons of throbbing sensation.

She cried out with some combination of affront and need, and he answered by lowering his head. Taking her in his hands, he rubbed and squeezed, licked and nipped.

He couldn’t have been more insulting.

She couldn’t have loved it more.

Arching for him, she widened her legs further and he was right there, slipping a hand beneath the low waistband of her jeans and stroking her until she went up and up and her panties were soaking wet. As if he hadn’t proved his point to his complete satisfaction, he withdrew his fingers from her greedy body, wiped her juices around first one nipple, then the other, and suckled.

Amara bowed over backwards, desperate to get away but more desperate to come.

And then, when she was teetering on the brink of an explosion that would shatter her and then blow the roof off this safe house, he stopped. Let her go, pulled back and stood up, staring at her with the grim satisfaction of a man who had a woman right where he wanted her and planned to keep her there for a while.

Exposed, both physically and emotionally, Amara knew she’d never been more vulnerable in her life. Only the heavy bulge in the front of his jeans and the sheen of sweat on his forehead saved her from complete devastation.

He wasn’t immune to this thing between them, thank God.

“You need to get this straight, Bunny. I’ll be in this bed with you tonight and every other night until the trial is over and we go our separate ways.” His voice was low and untroubled, his tone absolute. “If that’s not what you want, all you have to do is tell me no the next time I reach for you. But I don’t think that word has ever come out of your mouth when I’m touching you.”

Pausing, he looked her up and down, smiled a crooked smile, and stroked himself with a rough grip that had her hips writhing and her mouth watering.

“And I don’t think it ever will.”

Infuriated with him but more with herself, she yanked off her shoe and aimed it right at the bandage in the middle of his forehead.

Without any appearance of hurrying, he ducked in time for the shoe to hit the door as it closed.

Where?

The word raced through Kira Gregory’s mind, faster and faster as the hours crept past, fueled by her paranoia and agitation and the knowledge that Kareem’s retrial started in a couple days and she’d found no evidence of Kareem’s illegal activities to give Dexter Brady.

Which meant that, despite her desperate plea for help, Dexter Brady, her Plan B, hadn’t worked, and she was on her own. Again. Still. Always.

Well, she had Max, didn’t she? He was over in the corner under the table, gnawing on a bone. Too bad the little devil couldn’t take his ass out in the world and get a job to support the two of them.

No. It was up to her. Which was why she was here, in Kareem’s darkened study in the dead of night.

Where did Kareem keep the combination to the safe, the information about the offshore bank accounts she knew he had, and the unregistered weapons he collected the way boys collected manga?

Where?

It was all here in this house somewhere, probably in this room. She could smell it.

Where, where, WHERE?

A scream of frustration rose up in her throat, but losing her cool wouldn’t get her anywhere. She had to be as cunning as Kareem if she wanted to make it out of here alive.

Think, Kira.

She glanced around the big room, which was illuminated only by a small lamp on the console in the corner, and tried to put herself in the shoes and mind frame of a drug dealer.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

The thing was: Kareem had two conflicting considerations. On the one hand, he knew the feds were after him, knew his property was subject to warrants and searches and seizure at any time, knew that there could be wiretaps and hidden cameras all over his precious house, recording his choice in food, underwear and toilet paper.

He wasn’t stupid. He had all the trappings of respectability, and he tried, whenever possible, to keep his hands clean and present that face to the world. On the other hand, wasn’t it basic human nature to keep treasures close? To bury your money in the backyard where you could get it quickly if you needed to skip out of town unexpectedly? To sleep with your favorite gun under your pillow just in case one of your bodyguards fell asleep on the job and a bad guy—like, say, a competing drug lord who’d like nothing more than to slit your throat and take over your territory—broke into your house and tried to kill you?

So—yeah. It had to be here. Somewhere.

The computer screen glowed blue and the mocking little window asked for a password. Kira wanted to smash her foot through it. Password. Yeah. Like she knew it. Fuck you.

It wasn’t that she thought she’d turn up anything more than the DEA’s best had back when they’d executed their search warrant when Kareem was arrested. They’d found some money in the safe, a registered nine-millimeter that was pristine as the first winter snow atop Mount Everest, and nothing else.

But that had been a long time ago and they hadn’t been back since. She’d hoped—prayed—that Kareem had become complacent since then, or maybe outright sloppy or lazy. Maybe he’d temporarily stashed
something in the room with the hopes of removing it to a safer place quickly, when he had the chance. Maybe, she’d thought, she’d be lucky enough to stumble onto something during that narrow window of opportunity.

She should have known better.

Just then, the clock on the mantel chimed to life and began the belabored process of dinging the hour. Eleven o’clock.

Oh, shit. Kareem would be back from the meeting with his lawyers soon, if he wasn’t already on his way.

If he caught her in here, she was dead.

He had a study, she had a study, and both areas were clearly delineated and off-limits to the other. What would she say? That she had a sudden and urgent need to borrow paper clips at eleven o’clock at night?

And Wanda—what time had Wanda said she’d be home from playing cards tonight? Midnight? Or had she said eleven?

Okay. Check the room, girl. Make sure everything’s in its place.

The rug was laid flat, with the fringe pointing in the right direction, nice and straight. None of the artwork was crooked. One of the earthenware pots was about half an inch off center, so she corrected it. There. Perfect. The computer screen still glowed blue, but it would hibernate in a minute and Kareem would never know she’d been here.

She snatched Max up, along with his bone. Thirtyish silent steps down the crypt-dark and deserted hallway, past the kitchen and up the stairs, and she’d be home free.

Swinging the well-oiled door on its hinge, she
peeked over her shoulder toward the mud room—no sounds of a car in the garage, thank goodness—left the office and took care to tiptoe around a couple of creaky spots on the floor. Picking up speed, she glanced into the kitchen as she passed.

And came face to face with her mother-in-law.

Jack rested his palms on either side of the white sink, leaned in and studied his reflection in the mirror. He didn’t like what he saw. He never did.

The fluorescent light fixture threw shadows over his face and emphasized the dark patches under his eyes. That jagged-ass cut on his forehead was now scabbed and crusty. Ten o’clock shadow and a desperate glint in his expression rounded out his look, which was a twisted hybrid of
The Fugitive
and
Dead Man Walking
in a pair of blue plaid flannel pajama bottoms and nothing else.

He reached out and flicked the switch anyway.

The darkness comforted him a little, but it was the difference between hanging by your thumbs for twenty-four hours straight or hanging by your thumbs for twenty-four hours with periodic five-minute breaks. Didn’t matter much. In the light or in the dark, he was still the man who used to see the world in black and white and now saw only gray in every direction. He was still the man who knew what the right thing to do was, but couldn’t make himself do it. He was still a weak man grasping for whatever brief shining moments of beauty, peace and normalcy he could get.

Did that make him a selfish bastard? Then he was a selfish bastard.

But he was ashamed of his selfishness. It ate him from the inside out, a piranha with razors for teeth and intractable jaws that held on for dear life and sliced at him until he was wounded, bleeding, and too cowardly to look in the mirror and face his demons for what they were.

He couldn’t make sense of anything.

Not the continued bitterness he felt about giving up the life he’d known and the life he’d wanted for a mission he wasn’t certain, even now, had been worth it. Kareem Gregory wanted to kill him. Quite possibly would kill him. Pursuing the man had cost Jack his life as he’d known it, and for what? A lame-ass money-laundering conviction that got overturned on appeal?

Yeah. Fair trade.

Most of all, he couldn’t get to the bottom of his driving passion and need for Amara Clarke, however he could get her, for as long as he could have her.

This last part was the most unforgivable.

She wanted him to let her go; he should let her go. No mystery there. All he had to do was request that she be moved to another safe house. Easy, right? Just make that call to Dexter Brady, listen to his bitching and moaning about the cost, and it was done.

Amara would be safe somewhere else and untangled from the snake’s nest of Jack’s life. They’d never see each other again, which was best for Amara’s physical and emotional health and, as for what was best for Jack, well … too bad, so sad. This wasn’t about Jack.

He didn’t get a vote. Shouldn’t get a vote.

Only he was voting right here, right now, wasn’t he?

Amara was staying here, he’d decided. With him. Period.

The time would come for them to say good-bye to each other soon enough. They didn’t have to do it now. Two adults could maintain a consensual relationship for as long as they wanted, couldn’t they?

As long as they knew what they were getting—and not getting.

Amara would be insane to get emotionally attached to him when he had an anticipated life span shorter than the shelf life of a carton of eggs. Amara was the smartest woman he knew. Ergo, she knew better.

Apparently he didn’t, though. He longed for more time with her strength and laughter, wanted more slicing and dicing by her caustic tongue, wished he could die in her arms and buried deep inside her body rather than at the hands of one of Kareem Gregory’s hired guns.

Jack gripped the hard porcelain and squeezed. He leaned his forehead against the cool mirror, closed his eyes, scrunched his face and reached for a little clarity. But clarity danced around the edges of his consciousness, just out of reach, and Jack was alone, like always. In a sign of how desperate he was, he even thought about praying, but why give God one more thing to laugh at him about?

And then it occurred to him. He’d happily hate and punish himself forever if he could spend a few more days and nights with Amara. It was a price he was willing to pay. They’d only made love once.
Once.
How could anyone—even the indifferent God who’d ignored pretty much every request he’d ever made in his entire life—think that once was enough?

Why worry about what God thought? He and God
had parted ways years ago. And Jack always hated himself anyway; if he sent Amara away he’d hate himself for not keeping her here.

So why not go down in flames?

As long as he kept up the emotional brick walls between them and kept warning her about the inevitable outcome—where was the harm? She was a big girl. She could make her own choices. If she didn’t want him, she could say so.

Sudden euphoria made his head feel weightless and his breath fast and easy. Swinging open the bathroom door, he stepped over the threshold into the bedroom, and she was right there, standing less than ten feet away, waiting for him.

Jack’s skittering heart gave up the fight and stopped altogether.

Her face was lit with a glow he didn’t think could be explained by the ambient light from the nightstand lamp, at least not altogether. Her clothes were gone, all but a black satin bra and teeny-tiny panties skimming her hips and ramping up his imagination. Her gleaming skin, marred only by the bandage on her side, was smooth and warmly brown, a chocolate fantasy come to life right here within touching distance.