Ultimate Kill (Book 1 Ultimate CORE Trilogy) (CORE Series) (7 page)

He moved his hand between their bodies and unbuttoned and unzipped the front of her capris. When she slid her hands down his bare back and gripped his ass, he fought to keep his own desires in check, raised her up slightly and worked his hand beneath her panties. Swollen, soft and wet, he sank his fingers into her heat.

With a low moan, she released his lips and rested her forehead against his. Her warm breath mingled with his and came in short quick puffs. As he drove his fingers deeper into her, over and over, she sagged against the door. He kept her upright, kept her pinned and dipped his head again for another taste of her nipple. He tugged and sucked on the hard peak while she hugged him close and clung to his back.

His stomach clenched with desire. He wanted her to come. He wanted to come. But now wasn’t about him. Everything he’d done from the moment he’d met and fallen hard for Naomi had always been for her. The pleasure he could give her, the life she deserved, her wants and desires. He’d loved her more than life itself. He still did, and still wanted to please her in every way possible.

Her inner muscles clenched around his fingers. Her breathing grew labored. The leg she stood on trembled. Knowing she was close, wishing he could taste her orgasm, he quickly moved away from her breast and sought her lips. He captured her mouth as her body went rigid. Her groan vibrated against lips as she kissed him back, this time unhurried and with so much damned tenderness it made his heart ache.
 

With reluctance, he let go of her leg, slipped his fingers from her heat and tugged her shirt back down. She drew away slightly, a small smile tilting her lips as she kept her arms twined around his neck. “Still thinking about that room at the Lodge?” she asked.

“I’m having a hard time thinking about anything right now,” he admitted with a half-smile.
 

“Then don’t think. Stay.”

The day she’d told him she needed to leave Bola and what they’d just begun to build there, he’d asked her to stay. To give their new life a chance or to at least try to maintain a long distance relationship until his term as sheriff had ended. But she’d refused.
 

He wouldn’t stay now out of spite or childish recourse. He’d leave to keep the small amount of restraint he possessed intact, and to give himself time to come to terms with the confusing emotions unraveling inside him.

“Not tonight,” he said, tucking a lock of her silky hair behind her ear. “Can I see you tomorrow?”

He swore he caught regret in her eyes before she hugged him. “Yes,” she said against his chest, then quickly took a step back. “Be here at nine for breakfast.”

“Good night, bossy,” he said and touched her cheek, then opened the door and left before his willpower completely dissolved.

As he drove away from her quiet street and headed for the Lodge, his body and mind waged a vicious battle. Spending the day and evening with Naomi hadn’t brought him any closer to putting the past to rest. Instead, being with her was not only a bitter reminder of what they could have had if she’d never walked away, but that he was still in love with a liar.

Chapter 3

HE STARED ACROSS the table at his wife of six years, wishing she would do them both a favor and die. Liliana had once been a means to an end, a way to gain her father’s trust, confidence and the share holdings of a failing shipping company. A vessel to implant his seed in and create two children. Now, he no longer needed her. He’d wiped that long-standing shipping company, which had once been an American icon and his competition, from existence. In the process, he’d ruined her father and forced him into an early grave.
 

Yes, he wished she’d slit her wrists or swallow a bottle of pills. Or maybe drive into a telephone pole at eighty miles per hour. He could and should simply do as Ric had suggested and have her throat slit in a staged robbery. But then he’d have to deal with the press and the police, not to mention his children who would likely need therapy and coddling.

The pretty young kitchen maid he’d been meaning to fuck entered the dining room with a serving cart. Shy and no more than twenty-two, he could easily picture her coming to his office, dropping to her knees and taking him into her mouth. Maybe after he was through with the maid he’d let Ric have her. He eyed her pert tits as she leaned over and set a plate in front of Liliana. Yes, Ric had been working hard lately and deserved a little fun. He’d just have to make sure Ric didn’t take the fun to a level that required disposing of the young maid’s corpse.

“Thank you, Alison,” Liliana said to the maid. “Have the children had their breakfast?”

Alison
. Yes, now he recalled the hot little maid’s name.
 

“Yes, ma’am,” Alison responded, filling his wife’s Rogaska crystal glass with orange juice. “Waffles, eggs and sausage. Their nanny took them to the music room for their lessons after they finished breakfast.”

“Very good. I’ll have to stop by and see them. Charlotte has really taken to the piano, don’t you think, dear?”

He shifted his gaze from Alison’s breasts to his wife’s shit-brown eyes. “Yes, she’s doing well,” he said. “Mary Had a Little Lamb has never sounded better.”

Alison giggled as she set his plate in front of him. After she poured him a cup of coffee, she asked, “Do you need anything else?”

My wife dead and you sucking my dick
. “Nothing, thank you.”

With a smile first to him, then to his wife, Alison left the dining room through the servants’ entrance. Once the French doors were closed he looked across the table again. “Liliana, do you
really
plan to eat all of that?” he asked and nodded to the sparse breakfast morsels on his wife’s plate.
 

She blinked and looked to the six small chunks of grapefruit, half of a hard-boiled egg and half of a slice of dry toast. “I worked out for sixty minutes this morning and burned over five hundred calories.”

“So?” he asked, and raised a forkful of scrambled eggs to his mouth.
 

“This food is less than one hundred calories.” She pointed to her plate. “I think I can afford to eat it.”

He set the fork on the plate and picked up his coffee cup. “Are you sure? The charity ball is in two weeks and I refuse to go out in public with a fat ass.”

Her eyes widened and filled with contempt and insult. She glanced to her plate with longing, then picked up her glass of juice.

“That’s also high in calories,” he reminded her. “But you do what you think is right.”

After setting the juice back on the table, she folded her hands in her lap and stared at her plate of food. The dumb bitch had no backbone. She obviously needed glasses, as well. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on her scrawny body. If anything she should eat everything on her plate and his before her body shut down from malnutrition. Then again, death by starvation
would
save him from having to find a way to rid himself of his useless wife.

“Why do you hate me so much?” she asked, a tear slipping down her boney cheek.

“I don’t hate you,” he said and sliced into a sausage link. “I feel nothing for you.” He took a bite of the sausage and savored not only the delicious flavor, but the shock in Liliana’s eyes. She’d never been welcomed in his home. He’d never wanted her, but what she could give his empire. Lying with her, having to force himself to have sex with her, had been about as hot and satisfying as a root canal. But he’d wanted the children. Everything he’d worked for would not be inherited by distant relatives, but by his blood.

She wiped her cheek with her napkin and stared at him with hurt and hatred. “Then why not divorce me? The prenup you made me sign lets you keep your fortune. If you feel nothing for me, then let me go.” Her chin trembled. “Please,” she begged, her voice raw and ragged.

“Divorce?” He leaned back in his chair and shook his head. “And ruin my image? The press would have a field day. And I can’t allow that to happen. Until death do us part,” he said with a smile and raised his mug in a mock toast.

Tossing her napkin on her plate, she stood. “Then maybe I should have an affair,” she said, her voice shaking. “Maybe I should take a page from your book and have an affair. The pool boy is very attractive.”

Lack of sustenance must have warped her brain. Rage momentarily blurred his vision and he had to grip the armrests of the dining room chair to keep from climbing across the table and choking the life from her.
 

No one threatened him.

“Do that, and I’ll cut his dick off and stuff it down your throat.”

She gasped and held a hand to her neck.

“Do you doubt me?” he asked, narrowing his gaze.

“I wouldn’t,” Ric said as he entered the dining room through the main entrance. “Actually, I’ll probably end up being the one to cut off said dick and do the stuffing. And quite frankly, the thought of touching another man’s junk just doesn’t settle well with me. So do us all a favor, Liliana, keep your legs closed and your mouth shut.”

He grinned at his right hand man. “Well said.” He glanced at his wife with disgust. “Now get the fuck out of my dining room and go listen to my daughter play the piano.”

The fear and defeat contorting his wife’s face made him chuckle. When she didn’t move, he rose from the chair. “And by the way,
dear
, just for being a whiny bitch, the next time I bring a woman to my bed I’m going to make you watch.”

Ric burst into laughter as Liliana rushed from the room. “You wouldn’t, would you?” he asked, wiping tears from his eyes.

He pictured Liliana bound to a chair and watching as he bent the sexy little maid over the bed and pounded into her body. Aroused, he decided he most definitely would make good on his threats.
 

“What do you think?” he asked Ric.

The sadist grinned. “Forget I asked,” he said and poured a cup of coffee from the serving cart Alison had left behind. “I heard from Santiago.”

He resumed eating breakfast. “Are we on schedule?”
 

“They reached St. Louis last night around ten. Took care of business and then flew to Peoria, Illinois. Today they’ll take care of the stops in Indiana and Ohio. Tomorrow, Tennessee and Virginia. We’ll be set to go Monday morning.”

“Excellent. And the hired help?”

Ric shrugged and took a seat. “Bright enough to do the job, but too dumb to know what they’ve gotten themselves in to.”

The men Ric had hired were brothers who lived in the area. The one brother had tried to find a job with his company and after he’d been quickly dismissed due to his prison record, he’d gone to a local bar where many of his crew would hang out and drink. While there, he’d proceeded to become inebriated and had spouted off about how he and his brainy brother had pulled off a bank robbery without even entering a bank. Santiago had been there. Knowing what he and Ric needed to flush out the bitch who had evaded him for eight years, the Columbian had called Ric. After looking into the brothers’ background, he and Ric had decided they would not only be useful for this particular
job
, but easily dispensable.
 

“Very good.” He pushed his plate aside. “And my speeches, are they ready?”

“Already on your desk. Of course I’m biased, but I think they’re probably my best work to date. You’ll look like a hero and leave the country longing to have a man like you in the White House.”

He smiled.
President of the United States of America
. Now wouldn’t that be some wild shit?

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Besides, could you imagine Liliana as my First Lady?”

Ric chuckled and shook his head. “You know my opinion of your wife.”

He did. Which was why he wouldn’t give Ric free reign over her. Yet. If she didn’t die of malnourishment or suicide within the next year, then he’d let Ric do as he pleased. He couldn’t imagine having to be married to the scrawny shrew for any longer than that.

“Speaking of which,” Ric said and set his cup on the table. “If she is stupid enough to have an affair, please let me just kill her and her lover. I really don’t want to cut another man’s dick off. Aside from being a bloody mess, I wasn’t bullshitting Liliana. The homophobe in me really couldn’t stomach touching a man.”

He laughed and pushed his chair back. “Ric, if you’re going to eventually follow me to the White House, you’re going to have to learn to become politically correct, as well as more accepting of our fellow Americans.”

“Like you?” Ric asked.

“I’m very accepting,” he said and feigned insult. Race, sexual preference, age, religion…he didn’t care who he killed to obtain what he wanted. “And by Monday afternoon this country will be in chaos.”

“They’ll be looking for answers.”

“No. They’ll be looking for a savior.”

“Amen,” Ric said with a chuckle and made the sign of the cross. “If only they knew their lives depended on one woman.”

He grinned. “True. But
she
will know and that’s all that matters.”

“And what will you do with her once she comes to you?”

“Everything and anything I want.” She belonged to him and once he possessed her, he’d never let her free.

*