Fatal Affair: 1 (Courthouse Connections) (15 page)

“Maybe the most important thing of all I
got by marrying Wayne was that I knew I’d no longer have to see damn near
everybody I ran into laughing at me. They did that, you know, even the nice
ones who tried to hide their scorn with pity. That’s about all I remember, from
the time I realized it wasn’t normal to have no mom and a father who a

It struck JD that conventional wisdom would
dictate that he shouldn’t think about spending the rest of his life living with
a woman who had admittedly married her first husband for financial gain and
lived a lie with him for eight long years in order to hold on to the security
she’d craved so desperately.

“There,” she said, her voice unnaturally
high. “I admit it. I was a gold-digger who lucked into a situation where I
didn’t have to make my living on my back, where all I had to do was keep my
mouth shut about what had gone down at the Pussycat Paradise that night, go to
college classes, wear pretty clothes, eat good food and smile at Wayne in front
of voters so—”

JD realized he didn’t give a good goddamn
about conventional wisdom. He only cared about Lanie, about spending the rest
of their lives making up for the love they’d missed for so long. “Don’t you
dare put yourself down. You clearly did what you thought you had to do at the
time and I don’t blame you for it.”

She wiped away a tear. “You may not, but
everybody will dig up all the things I’ve tried to forget about now that
Wayne’s dead. Do you love me enough that it won’t bother you when this comes
out and all your friends think you’re a fool?”

JD didn’t have to consider that. “Yes,
baby, I do, but I’m not going to let anybody hold your past up to ridicule.”

“I’m not as weak as I was eight years ago,
JD. I love you too much to let you do anything that will drag you down. Nobody
will fault you for sleeping with me—even for taking me as your sex slave if
that’s what you want. You’re a hot-blooded guy who needs a woman and wants that
woman to be me for now, but what’s between us can’t go any further than that.
You deserve much, much better than a woman with my sort of past.”

When Lanie reached down and caressed his cheek
it felt more like goodbye than a promise for their future. That made JD want to
drag her away from everything, escape with her to some deserted island that
didn’t allow for extradition.

Unfortunately, running away wasn’t a viable
option. If nothing else Lanie needed the official verdict of “not guilty”—proof
to herself that she was incapable of killing anyone no matter how despicable he
might have been.

“No, baby,” he said softly. “You should
rate more than a beat-down widower with too many memories and too few qualities
to recommend him. But there’s no question that you’re the woman I want to love
for the rest of our days. I want to tie you to me as my only sex slave but I
also want us to be partners in the eyes of the law.”

She looked up at him, tears making her
indigo eyes look almost translucent. “You deserve a lot better than me, so I
have to find the strength to walk away and let you go. I don’t have that
strength now, though—not as long as I’ve got murder charges hanging over my
head. Be strong enough for both of us. Leave me and save yourself while you
still can.”

She wasn’t leaving just yet. Knowing that
gave JD new hope. Time to change Lanie’s mind and make her believe they could
heal the wounds and build a new, happy life on a rocky bed of old, hurtful
lies.

He took her hands and brought them to his
lips. “Come on, sweetheart—the only places I’m going, I’m taking you with me.
We’re going to take a walk along the Bayshore, watch the joggers and the folks
walking their dogs. Then at five thirty we’ll drop by at Tony’s house and talk
Krissie out of some of the spiced rum punch she always contributes for firm
parties. ”

He figured a couple of hours away from talk
about Lanie’s case would help to relax her, which was why he’d arranged for
them to meet with the defense team away from the stressful environment of the
eighteenth-floor conference room. She’d been wound up tighter than a ball of
string when Rocky had been there that morning, and he’d been afraid she might
shatter.

“I hope Kristine doesn’t mind,” Lanie
replied noncommittally.

“She won’t. It’ll give her an excuse to
leave the office early and get in some play time with Anthony Junior. Come on—exercise
will do us both good.” He put his arm around her when they got off the elevator
and made their way down Bayshore Boulevard past luxury condos and breathtaking
mansions. A cool January breeze ruffled Lanie’s dark curls, and as they walked
hand in hand, her tension seemed to float away.

The term “house” didn’t do justice to
Tony’s ivy-covered, redbrick mansion with its soaring white columns, sparkling
floor-to-ceiling windows and massive set of double doors painted cherry-red.

As JD lifted the brass door knocker, Lanie
glanced out at the separate garage that must once have been a carriage house
but now held Tony’s Ferrari, a white Mercedes sedan and a sturdy-looking
crossover vehicle. Tony had obviously moved past his humble roots into the
high-powered world of the super-rich, all because of the keen mind and
persuasive skill that had made him the most sought-after criminal defense
lawyer in the state.

He can’t be much more than thirty-five
years old
, Lanie figured, recalling the ragged
middle schooler who’d bossed the younger kids around while the old yellow
school bus had lumbered to and from the school. She’d noticed him because he
hadn’t let other kids pick on her for her holey shoes and ragged, dirty
clothes.

Now she was glad Tony had made it to where
he was now, even happier that he seemed determined to keep the court from
railroading her straight to prison. When she turned back to the door, it flew
open and a horde of familiar faces shouted, “Surprise!”

“What?” Confused, she looked first at a
shocked-looking JD and then at Tony, who was wearing a grin that lit up his
handsome face.

“They’ve dropped the charges, Lanie. Harper
Wells himself called a few minutes ago to let me know. I can’t even take a
whole lot of credit for this, I’m sorry to say, but we’re all damn happy you
won’t have to go through an indictment or trial.”

“Let them in Tony. You can tell them all
about it once everybody’s back inside. Shame on you for keeping them out in the
cold.” Kristine held out both hands to Lanie and JD and drew them into the
two-story-high entry hall. “Party’s back this way,” she said, leading the way
into a brightly lit room beyond a spiral staircase that dwarfed Wayne’s entire
downstairs.

The elegantly casual room might as well
have been a warehouse or a barn out in the strawberry fields. It would have
looked just as gorgeous to Lanie at that moment.

Over and over, she repeated in her head what
Tony had just told her.
I’m free, free, free.
“Tell me all about it,”
she said, hardly able to believe that her legal team was celebrating her
freedom when just yesterday they’d been preparing to defend her for capital
murder. “Come on—please tell me I’m not dreaming. Exactly what happened to get
the state attorney to drop charges?”

“You’re not dreaming but first things
first, little girl.” Tony took two crystal glasses from Hank. The deep-red
liquid in each glass sparkled in the light from a contemporary-looking
chandelier as Tony handed them to her and JD, who looked as confused as Lanie
felt. “My Krissie makes the best damn rum punch you’ve ever tasted. Try it.”

When Tony rapped sharply on a nearby
antique table everybody quieted down and turned to him. “Okay, all of you want
to know what went down, so I’ll make this short and sweet. As soon as they got
the coroner’s reports on the senator and his lover, the state attorney’s office
knew they had the wrong suspect. It seems that Wayne had died between four and
five o’clock, at a time when Lanie was sitting at the courthouse making a plea
deal with one of the assistant state attorneys and several other witnesses. Wayne’s
lover, a guy named Rafe Miguel, was shot and dumped in the lake during that
same timeframe. So Lanie’s off the hook.”

Hank shook his head but he was wearing a
triumphant grin. “I kept trying to tell everybody that the evidence against
Lanie was awfully flimsy, nothing more than that the fact that the senator was
planning to fight the divorce—and the fact they found her fingerprints on the
bloody handle on the French door.”

Tony laughed out loud at the usually
reserved senior associate whose bright idea it had been to have the lovers come
clean about their affair while Rocky’s operatives planted information about her
husband’s gay lover with the area’s tabloid rags. “Don’t forget that it was
Lanie’s .9 mm Beretta that killed Wayne. The one the senator bought her and had
monogrammed with her initials.”

He turned to JD. “My friend, you’ve just
been saved one hell of a fee, since nobody needs to defend your lady now. You
probably ought to put Harper Wells on your holiday gift list as thanks for
acting so promptly once he learned the true facts.

“Everybody drink up. I don’t know why I’m
throwing a party to celebrate that I just lost a damn lot of potential income
by not getting to defend Senator Winstead’s wife on a count of capital murder.

“Just kidding, Lanie. I’ve never been happier
not to have to try a high-profile case like this one.”

JD laughed. “Don’t cry, Tony. Maybe you’ll
get a call from the state attorney’s next guy to be charged with killing the
senator.”

“Yeah Tony, you’ll need to get another big
fee to make up for the one you just lost,” his secretary said in a teasing
tone.

Lanie wanted to pinch herself just to be
sure she wasn’t dreaming, but JD scooped her up in his arms, raining kisses on
her face, her throat and finally her lips. He’d stood by her, never once
faltering in his belief that she was innocent. Nobody else had ever had so much
faith in her for so little reason, just another reason that he was her love—her
only love.

Still holding her close to his side now
that he’d finally set her on her feet, JD looked around the room at his
partners and associates who’d taken out all the stops to make sure she wasn’t
wrongly convicted. As he told them all how much he appreciated everything
they’d done, she couldn’t help thinking about Wayne and Miguel, both dead
before their time.

She wanted to ask somebody—anybody on the
defense team who knew anything more than that she’d been eliminated as a
suspect in both murders—if the real killer or killers had been found.
Everybody, from Tony and his partner Gray Syzmanski to Rocky and his
investigators down to the newest associates and paralegals, seemed too busy
celebrating her good fortune to pay any attention to her questions.

After they’d wolfed down the magnificent
spread of gourmet goodies that rivaled what Lanie had seen at country club
receptions, she and JD settled with one last cup of rum punch in a quiet corner
of the room. “Gray’s wife told me they’ve arrested Bert. Apparently he broke
down when they questioned him this afternoon and admitted he’d given up on
promoting Wayne and decided to get him out of the way so he could champion the
next senator from his district.”

“Bert shot Wayne?”

“He killed both of them when Wayne’s master
tried to defend him.” JD gave Lanie a sweet, sensual kiss. “The ordeal’s all
over, sweetheart, much sooner than we could have hoped for. Let’s make the
rounds and thank everybody for their help—and then go home and celebrate our
future.”

“I’d like that.” Tonight they’d rejoice
together, making sweet, hot love. Tomorrow would be soon enough to start
picking up the shattered pieces of her life.

* * * * *

They’d hardly made it through the door of
JD’s condo before he stripped her from the waist down and laid her out on the
carpet, her legs spread wide apart and her torso pinned by his huge, hot body.
He wasted no time but zeroed in on her clit, sucking it between his teeth and
flailing it with his tongue.

“God, yes.” She’d never realized until JD
came into her life that sex could be so raw, so instantly physical, with or
without overt domination and submission, with toys or not. Lanie loved it,
loved the way her master devoured her as though he couldn’t wait for any of the
niceties that she knew were there, another part of his sexual repertoire. She
writhed under him, wanting more, wanting his hot cock inside her, here and hard
and now.

She reached between them, unzipping his
jeans and shoving aside the silk boxers he usually wore so she could drive him
as wild as he was driving her. The contrasting textures of rough denim and
slippery silk made an arousing cushion for his pulsating shaft as she stroked
him. She rubbed one finger over his cockhead, spreading the lubrication that was
already filling the slit at its tip.

When she squirmed, he shifted his position
enough to bring his throbbing erection into contact with her questing tongue.
His pleasured growl tickled her cunt when she raised herself enough to suck him
deep down her throat.

Still nibbling her tingling clit, he sank
his long, thick fingers into her cunt, first one then two and finally three, sliding
in and out as he moved up and down with his torso, fucking her mouth while he
used one thumb to ring her anus.

All of a sudden, pressure built low in her
belly. She sucked his cock harder, wanting his essence, wanting it all. All her
inhibitions slipped away. No holds were barred, no acts too intimate anymore.
Remembering how Wayne’s master had fucked his helpless ass no longer repelled
her. She now understood the ecstasy she’d seen on Wayne’s face, the
possibilities for pleasure in pain.

She wanted JD to take her that way, to
perform whatever acts on her willing body would give him pleasure. Because she
knew they’d give her pleasure too.

She was sopping wet for him, a source of
pride not embarrassment when her cunt made slurping sounds with every thrust of
his fingers. When he sucked her clit the noise was music to her ears, a harmony
for the sounds of loud and greedy suction on his cock that seemed to grow longer
and thicker with each ravenous thrust.

He shoved his thumb up her ass and sank up
to his balls against her lips, coming in a series of short, staccato bursts
while her throat opened and closed around him, flooding her mouth with what
semen she couldn’t swallow fast enough to consume.

She should have been appalled but instead
her cunt clenched around his fingers and she went over the edge, sensation
darting along her nerve endings until she felt the climax in every cell of her
body.

Replete, she looked up at JD’s glistening
cock while he kept up a slow, easy stroking of her swollen flesh. Somehow it
seemed right—no, necessary—so she took him in her hand and licked away the
slick, salty evidence that she’d managed to satisfy him with her mouth.

She was his for as long as he wanted her.
Right or wrong, however incongruous it might be for the notorious widow of a
gay submissive politician to be with JD Ackerman, fabulously wealthy attorney
with a blue-blood pedigree that went back generations, Lanie would go with the
flow. She might be able to walk away from great sex. She might even be able to
give up true love.

But she couldn’t do both.