Deadly Pursuit (22 page)

She was breathtaking.

Long legs with plump, biteable thighs, big breasts, wide hips and soft curves in every direction he looked. That wavy black hair that had always been up in those messy ponytails—how many times had he stared at her from the grill at the Twelfth Street Diner, dying to get his hands in that heavy silk?—was down around her shoulders, skimming them. Behind her, the door was shut and the bed turned down.

She waited, saying nothing.

There was so much he wanted to say. So much he could never say.

His thick tongue and dry mouth didn’t work until he’d cleared his throat a couple of times. “Are you kicking me out?”

“No.”

“Good.”

As he reached for her and felt that first contact between them, the first slide of skin to skin, the first sigh, the first brush of lips, he acknowledged what he’d always known:

It was all a lie.

All the justifications and excuses he’d just given himself, that whole pep talk, were a shimmering mirage with no substance whatsoever.

There would be no emotional distance between them, at least not on his part. She wasn’t the one who needed protection from this thing they did to each other; he was.

He was in love with Amara Clarke.

Maybe he could never tell her. But he could damn sure show her.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he murmured.

“You won’t.”

Her lips skated across his chest as she said it and her hands slipped beneath the elastic waistband of his pajamas to grip his ass and bring him tight up against that soft, sweet spot between her legs.

Didn’t want to hurt her. Huh. Wasn’t he considerate? And who was on the lookout to make sure
he
didn’t get hurt? Did she have any idea that his heart sang every time he looked at her and broke whenever he thought about leaving her?

He nuzzled her forehead and sank his fingers deep
into that fragrant hair, tipping her head back so he could see her face.

“Jack,” she began.

“You talk too much,” he said, and silenced her with a kiss.

Wanda was waiting for Kareem when he arrived home, sitting in her leather chair in front of the fire with her feet on the ottoman, a blanket in her lap, and a snifter of brandy on the side table.

Time to set the ball in motion and see if she couldn’t get rid of Kira, once and for all.

You couldn’t get too eager with Kareem, though. He always knew. And if you ever acted like you really cared about something, he’d see it as a sign of weakness, so she didn’t want to do that.

Best to be casual.

“Is that you, Baby Boy?” She looked around just as Kareem came in. “How you doing?”

“I’m all right.”

He kissed her cheek on his way to the drink cart, looking tired. Dark circles ringed his pretty brown eyes, and if she didn’t know better she’d think the spaces beneath his cheekbones were beginning to hollow out.

He opened a bottle of his expensive red and poured while she watched.

He sure did look like his daddy. It squeezed her heart to think how much. Of course, Kareem Sr. hadn’t stuck around past the fifth month of her pregnancy. That partially accounted for the boy’s relentless ambition and the occasional bursts of anger that flashed, white-hot, across his face. Kareem Sr. hadn’t had that darkness. But she’d loved him and she damn sure loved his son. She’d do anything for their son.

Kareem was already sipping his wine, loosening his tie and looking around for his sorry excuse for a wife. Wanda could read the disappointment in his eyes like a large-print book. He didn’t want to ask where Kira was and admit either that he couldn’t keep tabs on her or that she didn’t bother to stay up late and find out how his trial preparation had gone. He seemed to think that the separate bedrooms were a temporary setback and everything would switch right back to sunny days in paradise the minute the trial was over.

Poor boy. He was the only one in the house who didn’t know that Kira didn’t love him and never had.

It wasn’t his fault for being blind. Kira was beautiful and she seemed sweet. What red-blooded male could resist that combination? Kareem was hardly the first man in the world to be manipulated with his dick. Just look at his daddy and the way he’d taken off after that skanky waitress when she crooked her little finger at him.

“How’d things go tonight?” Wanda asked.

“Pretty good.” Kareem was now over at the desk, flipping through the day’s stack of mail. “We met with the jury consultant.”

“Does he know what he’s doing?”

Kareem looked up from the envelopes long enough
to shrug and shoot her a worn-out smile. “That’s the million-dollar question. And I do mean
million dollar.
Ask me again when the jury brings back the verdict.”

He glanced toward the foyer, as though he could make Kira appear if he only wished it hard enough. The poor boy needed his eyes opened for him. That was why Wanda considered it her duty, as his loving mother, to help him out.

Kira was a bitch. She was selfish and arrogant. She thought that because she’d been raised in a big house in the suburbs, with a mama who was a doctor and a daddy who was an engineer, she was better than Wanda and Kareem, who’d grown up in the projects, where the fences were chain-link, not picket.

Her lack of gratitude for everything Kareem did for them was unforgivable. Even Kira’s upcoming nursing degree (and getting a college degree was another reason Kira thought she was better than everyone else) was something that Kareem had paid for off the sweat of his back.

Was Kira grateful? Did she support Kareem and cook his favorite meals for him, the way Wanda did? Did she lay on her back and fulfill her most basic duty as a wife?

Hell no.

And this, among so many other reasons, was why Kira had to go.

Yawning, Wanda got up and stretched. “It’s past my bedtime. I am
beat
.” She took her drink and headed toward the hall, blowing a kiss to Kareem as she passed.

Ask me, boy. Ask me.

“What time did Kira go to bed?” Kareem asked.

With her back to her son, Wanda gave herself a
quick second to smile. And then she locked that smile safely away and did a slow about-face as she tried to look thoughtful.

“Hmm,” she said. “Last time I saw her was around eleven, I guess. She was coming out of your office with Max.”

Kareem stilled, the wine halfway to his parted lips.

“Good-night, Baby Boy.”

Wanda continued on her way. Easy as pie.

Jack gathered Amara in his arms and touched her. Face, neck, shoulders … back, breasts, hips … butt, thighs, face again, then hair, and the endless caressing circles started over again, each more devastating than the last.

It was all over for her and they both knew it. He’d won and she’d lost. She couldn’t tell him no and therefore he could screw her at will and leave her when he was ready with no emotional attachments. Whatever worked, right? Unfortunately, this little arrangement was proof positive that she was her mama’s daughter. The only thing left was for him to flick a couple bills on the nightstand on his way out the door.

The worst part was, when she was in his arms she didn’t give even the tiniest damn.

Not when the skin across his shoulders was so sleek and hot and the surging muscles beneath so hard and immovable.

And his sounds. God, his sounds.

She drank up his incoherent murmurs and rumbling purrs and soaked in his harsh, panting breath because it meant she was driving him as wild as he was driving her.

He kept the pace slow and easy and ignored her surging hips and implicit invitation, but his control was slipping away and she was happy to help it along and get him thrusting into her needy-slick body at the earliest possible opportunity.

So she flicked her bra clasp free, released her aching breasts and waited to see how he liked them apples, Mr. Controlled and Slow.

“Jesus,” he said.

Hah.

They’d been kissing this whole time, but now he pulled back and stared, too far gone to hide behind his mask of indifference for once. Boy would he be pissed if he could see himself in the mirror right now. His face glowed with a rapt expression that she’d never thought to see on a man’s face, not in this lifetime, and she knew—she
knew,
down to the marrow of her bones and up to the limits of the universe and beyond—that she wasn’t her mama’s daughter after all and she meant something to him even though he wished she didn’t.

“Amara.”

Her name was never as beautiful as when he said it, especially when his voice was choked and his tone reverent, as though he’d latched onto heaven and didn’t plan to ever let it go.

She smiled a lazy smile because her body was so loose and easy, and his heavy-lidded gaze tracked her every sighing response as he filled his hands with her breasts and circled her nipples with his rough thumbs until her pleasure made the room swim.

“I knew I should have stayed away from you.”

Something came over her, some inner courage she’d never had until now because God knew she’d
never been a resounding success with men. Whatever it was, it wiped the smile from her face and made her speak to him with the utmost pity because, really, there
was
something between them and she was determined to keep him from walking out on her without a look back.

“Poor Jack,” she whispered. “You don’t really think you can stay away from me, do you?”

He froze, helpless to deny it or even to work up an evasion of some sort. “I’ve never been able to stay away from you—”

—and I never will be.

The words were there and she heard them even if he caught himself at the last second and snapped his jaws shut.

The meaningful silence was enough, for now. Touching him was enough—for now.

Straining on her toes, she wrapped every part of herself around as much of him as she could reach, anchoring them together with her arms around his neck and one leg hooked around his hip.

Ahhh, God. Crying out, she almost had to push him away so she could breathe.

Mostly she needed him closer and was ready to fight if he pulled back by so much as one-half millimeter. He didn’t. She felt his driving need for her in the waves of heat off his body and in the trembling of his arms. Tasted it in his kiss as their mouths and tongues found their way back together, nipping and licking and then, finally, thrusting deep in time with the surging rhythm of their hips.

Deeper. Harder. Hot tears of pleasure and frustration collected at the corners of her eyes and she couldn’t stop them from leaking out because it was so
good with Jack, so damn good, and yet it was never quite enough and he would be gone soon and she’d be destroyed.

“Don’t cry,” he whispered against her lips, still watching her.

“I can’t—”

“What, baby?”

She didn’t want to confess anything damaging or waste time talking, not when her tormented body needed him now. Her aching inner muscles were rippling with faint contractions and the cream was thick between her thighs, but this was one of the many things he did to her: push her past caring, past pride, past dignity.

“I can’t get enough of you.”

His jaw tightened with grim and unmistakable satisfaction. “I know the feeling.”

Planting his hands on her butt, he lifted her and she clung, and the next sensation she felt was the cool of the sheets sliding against her back as he lowered her to the bed and bent to take off his pajama bottoms.

He hadn’t bothered with underwear, glory hallelujah, and she squirmed out of hers, getting ready, needing to hurry,
hurry,
even as she struggled against her heavy lids to keep an eye on him.

He was unspeakably beautiful, amazingly perfect. The mere sight of him threatened her with cardiac arrest, he was that thrilling. He had those wide linebacker’s shoulders and arms rippling with the kind of definition that the flabby of the world spent millions on personal trainers trying to get. His taut torso narrowed down to square, notched hips, and his strong thighs and long legs looked as sturdy and powerful as the mightiest oak.

And in between that torso and those legs?

Amara levered herself up on her elbows, hardly knowing where to look. His ass was round and tight, and the thought of it flexing and releasing as he moved inside her was enough to dry out her mouth.

In front was a jutting erection. Ruddy and heavy, it strained for her and was big enough to give her more than a moment’s pause if she hadn’t already experienced the unspeakable pleasure it could bestow.

She parted her thighs, angling her hips this time just in case he was a little slow reading body language. His glittering gaze tracked the movement and a wicked half smile flickered across his lips and then disappeared. He reached out for one of the foil packets on the nightstand but took too long about ripping it open with his teeth and getting himself covered.

Waiting one more second was impossible, even as he crawled over her and settled his weight, so she reached down to stroke herself and moaned with the relief, letting her head fall back and her eyes roll closed.

“Are you ready?” Shoving her hand away, he replaced her fingers with his own.

“Oh, yeah.”

Everything about him was an invasion, like the way he took the plump head of his penis and stroked her with it, lubricating them both until there was nothing but a hot, slick readiness as he inched his way inside, stretching her and then waiting for her body to ease a little more to accommodate him, stretching and then waiting again, longer.

And the way he stared her in the eyes was an invasion because he saw too far inside the hidden parts of her soul and didn’t turn away from the ugliness. The scared, pouty Amara was right there for him to see, and so was the Amara who cared way too much about him if she was at all interested in maintaining sound mental health.

And the way he’d crept under her skin and into the region surrounding her heart—that was the worst invasion of all.

The worry built, but so did the pleasure. The pleasure won. When he’d gone as far inside her body as he could go, which was both unbearably far and a hundred miles from far enough, and she was stretched
and tight, gasping and trying to keep one little part of herself protected from this man, the ripples started.