Shades of Desire (19 page)

“Don’t be afraid. You need this. You know you do. And I’m right here with you. You know I won’t let anything bad happen to you.” He inserted another finger inside her, and then another, stretching her to the point of pain but not quite, until her hips were following his movements, trying to keep him inside her whenever he pulled back. “You gonna trust me?”

She surrendered. She should have known better than to try and control this. Control him. As his fingers continued to move, he swiftly brought her back to that place, just on the edge of a tempting precipice. In the distance beckoned pure pleasure, shimmery and hot, with a pinch of the forgetfulness she longed for. “Okay, okay. You win. Just…wait. I want to lie down. On my stomach.”

Again, his fingers stilled. “Why?”

Because I don’t want you to look into my face. In my eyes.

He’d said that’s what he wanted, but she couldn’t bear the thought of him doing that and seeing nothing but his own reflection. Seeing how empty she was even as he made her feel the most incredible pleasure. So she lied. “I like it like that. From behind. It’s the best way to make me come.”

“But—”

“I want it like that, Mac. Give me what I want or this ends now.”

* * *

S
HE
MEANT
IT
. He could tell by the stiffness of her body and the tone of her voice. Around his fingers, her sweet heat was drenching him, pulsing and clinging in a way that belied her words. But he’d pushed her so much. Wanted only to give to her. So if being taken from behind was what she wanted…

Slowly, he withdrew his fingers, eased her off him, and pulled her up.

“Wha—”

“We need room. A bed.”

He led her to her bedroom. It was neat and plain, just like the rest of the house. Nothing like the complex and sensual woman who lived there. He settled her on to the bed, kissed her, then flipped her onto her stomach. She buried her face in the sheets, and it was then he fully understood.

She was hiding from him. From what they were doing and what they were giving each other. More than physical pleasure, but connection. Intimacy.

He almost called her on it and made her turn to face him but told himself to go easy. She had far too many issues to deal with now, and he wasn’t promising to stay and help her with them. Quite the opposite. The fact that she’d let herself go this far was huge. He needed to reward her for it and give her the pleasure he’d promised her.

With precise deliberation, he leaned over her and placed a soft sucking kiss beneath her ear. Then he sprinkled kisses down her body, taking care to give equal attention to every part of her. Beneath his ministrations, her body moved restlessly and her soft moans of pleasure drove him to the edge of madness.

Far too soon, he couldn’t take it anymore. Moving to a kneeling position, he pulled her up on her knees and nudged them apart. He ran a finger through her cleft, causing her to jerk. “My God, you’re so sweet here. So tender and pink and pretty.”

“Mac,” she moaned. “Please. Do it. I want to feel you inside me.”

Her impatience unleashed his own. He pressed against her, slipping inside her enveloping heat, the feeling better than anything he’d ever experienced. His head tilted back, and he closed his eyes before remembering.

“Shit,” he said, gritting his teeth. “Protection. I forgot protection.”

Beneath him, she tensed.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve got something in my wallet, but I need to—”

“No.”

No? His mind rebelled. She couldn’t change her mind now. It would kill him. But if she didn’t want—

“I mean, you don’t need protection.”

He shuddered at the implication of her words. The fantasy of all of him being enveloped by all of her. A white-hot inferno that would make him lose what little was left of his mind. But he did have a little left, enough to say, “Natalie, your life is complicated enough as it is. We can’t take a chance like that. I’m clean, but—”

“I’m clean, too. And I can’t get pregnant. Literally. I made sure of that a long time ago, Mac.”

The revelation slammed into him like a wall of bricks. He knew immediately why she would have done so. A mother who’d passed on a genetic eye disease. A mother who’d passed on the genes and as a result the possibility of mental insanity. She would never take the chance of passing along either to her own child.

There was no sorrow in her words, only truth, but he felt sorrow for her anyway. She was a warm, wonderful woman whom he instinctively knew would have made an equally wonderful mother.

Mac rubbed her back in slow, soothing circles. “Baby, let’s slow things down. Talk—”

“No, no. No talking. Sex. Pleasure. That’s what I want, remember? That’s what you promised me.” She didn’t give him the chance to argue with her. Taking him completely off guard, she pushed back against him until half of him was buried inside her.

He shouted at the sudden rise in sensation, the small of his back tingling with the need to pull out and thrust back into her completely, hard. But he forced himself to remain still. To go no further until he gave her a chance to get used to what she’d already taken. When she tried to push back farther, to take more of him, he gripped her hips tight, immobilizing her.

She struggled against him. “Please. Do it.”

“Easy. Give me a second.”

She countered by squeezing him internally, her muscles sucking at him like a mouth. He lost it.

He thrust completely inside her and froze. In that moment, he was the one who was blind. Lost to anything around him except her and the way she made him feel. And the way he was determined to make her feel.

Taking his time, he eased slowly out of her, then quickly punched back in.

Her wail of ecstasy was his reward.

He did it again. Then again. Urging her to squeeze him as she had before. Telling her in explicit terms that no one had ever made him feel this good. That she was a goddess. The best he’d ever had. At some point, he wasn’t even sure he was understandable since his voice had turned all growly and mingled with deep, harsh moans and sobbing breaths.

She was right there with him, not speaking, but pushing back against him again and again, demanding everything he was giving her and more.

Then she reached back and grabbed his ass. Dug her nails into his skin. That small, voluntary need for connection despite her inability to see him and his inability to see her face undid him. The pressure in his balls built and built and then exploded in a flood inside her. Over and over again, he ejaculated. At the same time, she cried out and held him in a grip so tight he could barely thrust anymore.

When the pleasure ebbed and he could see again, but just barely, he stayed poised on his hands and knees over her, shaking, trying desperately not to collapse her underneath his weight. With supreme effort, he moved to the side, still partially inside her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and buried his face in her neck.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“W
HAT
IS
IT
? Is it Allison?” Clemmons rushed into Reverend Morrison’s office, panting. He’d sped the whole way back to Sacramento and run from the parking lot into the familiar church building in which he’d dedicated years of his life.

Morrison had left him a message on his phone indicating he needed to get to the church as soon as possible. It was an emergency. A life or death situation. But when he’d tried calling him back, he hadn’t answered.

No one at the church had. And no one had picked up the line when he’d tried to call Allison.

When he’d pulled into the back parking lot, he’d seen traces of the police security tape, and his heart had clenched in horror. His first thought had been that the police had discovered what they’d done. But if that was the case, Morrison wouldn’t be standing in front of him. Which increased the chances something had happened to Allison.

Instead of answering, Morrison simply looked at him.

“What’s wrong? Is Allison okay?”

“She’s fine,” Morrison said. “She’s with Shannon. Your brother, however, is dead.”

Just like that. So calmly. With no expression on his face.

Clemmons stumbled and staggered to a chair. Sat down. “How?”

“He overdosed on heroin. And rather than do it in some back alley like a regular criminal, he decided to do it in his car in the church parking lot. Which brought the police here. Not something I’m happy about, as you can imagine.”

“I—I’m sorry,” he said lamely, not knowing what else to say.

He
was
sorry. For everything. For Alex. He hadn’t known him well, not long at all, but they’d been brothers. Clemmons had wanted to help him. Grief was a hollow ache inside him, one edged with regret and guilt. But at least Allison was okay.

“Unfortunately, Alex left a job incomplete. We’re going to need you to finish it.”

He stared blankly at the other man. “Wh-what job?”

When he explained, Clemmons actually laughed. But the reverend didn’t.

He was a very handsome man. Tall and elegant, with no outward manifestation of the devil that was clearly inside him.

“You’re serious,” Clemmons said, his tone echoing the disbelief he was feeling. “You truly expect me to do what you’re asking. To hurt—no, kill—an innocent woman because she might have seen something she shouldn’t have?”

“Your brother was quite certain she’d seen something she shouldn’t have. He came to me after he saw her photos run in the paper.”

“The pictures were obviously nothing to worry about. It was his action, the action you urged him to commit, that brought the police into this.”

“Actually, it was the action that
you
urged him to commit that brought the police into this. You asked him to dispose of Lindsay’s body, and, because he didn’t do a good enough job, because he took her necklace when he shouldn’t have, the police learned her true identity and became involved. The detective who questioned me earlier today made that quite clear.”

“He was fishing. Throwing out bait. You said the photos Alex recovered are benign. The fact that we haven’t been arrested already proves it. Alex was wrong. Wrong to approach you about the pictures in the first place.”
He should have come to me. I was his brother.
The one who wanted to save him. Yet the one, in the end, who’d pulled him back into the same darkness he’d been trying so hard to escape.

Looking back, he wasn’t exactly sure how it had happened. One day his conscience had been clear. The next day, he’d been helping cover up Morrison’s affair with a minor, one of Clemmons’s students, a young runaway named Lauren. And then everything had truly gone crazy. Lauren had challenged Morrison. Then she’d made the fatal mistake of challenging Shannon. Enraged, Shannon had slapped her. Lauren had fallen back, hitting her head against a corner of the brick hearth. The wound had bled like crazy and Clemmons had known it was fatal.

Shannon had obviously thought the same thing.

He’d had to make an agonizing choice. He knew if he didn’t do it, Shannon would. He, at least, had medical training.

So he’d cut Lauren’s baby out of her to save him.

He’d thought there was no other alternative, but maybe he’d been wrong after all. He’d certainly been wrong to drag Alex into the mess by asking him to cover up his crimes. Still, he tried to focus on stopping the madness Morrison seemed hell-bent on continuing.

“They haven’t arrested us yet because they obviously don’t have proof that anyone but Alex was involved. Yet,” Morrison emphasized, “the detective told me they have an eyewitness. Someone who saw Alex and Lindsay together in Plainville. I was with Lindsay the entire time. If they know they were together, then they know I was there, too. The photographer must be the eyewitness the police have. She knows something.”

“But her pictures—”

“I don’t care what her pictures show or don’t show. If she saw me with Lindsay, that’ll be enough. They won’t stop until they nail me to the cross.”

“We can tell them Alex was obsessed with Lindsay. Or that your visit to Plainville to see Lindsay was innocent, but Alex got the wrong idea and killed her out of jealousy. Or maybe he killed her to protect you, because he didn’t want the congregation getting the wrong idea—”

“Listen to me, you fool,” Morrison hissed. “Those are all arguments that a defense attorney will make to a jury, but they won’t stop the police from questioning me further. Or arresting me even if they don’t think they can convict me. Even if they eventually buy that Alex killed Lindsay, how is that kind of police attention going to look to my father-in-law? To the congregation? My reputation will be destroyed. That is not acceptable. Least of all now. You make the photographer disappear and all the questioning stops. Even with their suspicions, they won’t have proof. Not without her.”

Clemmons heard the unspoken addendum to his statement. Not acceptable when Morrison was so close to replacing his father-in-law as the church’s national leader. “I’m not—not a murderer,” Clemmons said, despite the voice inside his head telling him that a murderer was exactly what he was. “I’m not going to kill a woman to cover up what’s happened. What if you’re wrong about her being the eyewitness?”

“Then I’m wrong and we’ll adjust accordingly.”

“And how many people do you plan on killing until you’re satisfied you got the right one? Think, Reverend. Alex’s death is a sign. This has to stop. We need to tell the police the truth.”

“And throw away everything I’ve worked for? My church? The power that’s just within my reach? That is not going to happen.”

The fear was almost debilitating, but Clemmons forced himself—too little, too late—to stand up to Morrison’s insanity. “Are you threatening me?”

“I don’t need to threaten you. You’re an intelligent man, Clemmons. Unlike your long-lost brother, you were born with the control and the nature to get you where you need to go. It was you who came to us about wanting to take over the congregation once we vacated it. You have ambition.”

He shook his head fiercely. “Not this much ambition.”

“Ambition enough to cut a baby from its mother’s womb.”

The words made a host of bloody images erupt in his mind. “That wasn’t ambition. It was necessity. After what you and your wife did to her, she was going to die. I had to cut the baby out of her to save him.”

“You don’t know that. She might have lived. But you knew if she had, we would have lost the baby. All our plans would have gone up in smoke, and that included your own plans to take over when we were gone.”

Was that really what had motivated him? He didn’t know. Not anymore. As much as he prayed for reassurance, it didn’t come. But resolve did. “I can’t kill for you. I’m telling you, there’s no need.”

“I won’t leave things to chance. I want her dead.”

“Or what? You’ll go to the police? I don’t think so.”

“No, but I will go to Allison. What do you think will happen then? Do you think she’ll stay with you, have your baby, let her children go anywhere near you once she knows what you’re capable of?”

“And what if
she
goes to the police?”

“Allison might leave you, but she won’t want that scandal for herself or her children. Regardless, we’re willing to take our chances. I’m beginning to learn that some risk-taking is necessary. Even preferable.” Morrison grinned, his expression one of slipping sanity. “You must have felt it when you took Lindsay’s baby. The power you wielded over life—to save it or destroy it. I’m giving you the opportunity to feel that again. If you leave it to me, I guarantee it’ll be much less pleasant for everyone involved. Natalie Jones, yes, but also you. You
and
your family.”