White Collared Part One: Mercy (10 page)

He loosened his grip. She stumbled backward, twisting her ankle, and a bolt of piercing pain shot from her foot to her calf. But before she made contact with the wet concrete, a pair of strong arms held her steady, and, without looking behind her, she knew the identity of her rescuer.

Jaxon.

Tom rushed to her side. “Are you okay, Katie?”

“The woman told you not to touch her,” Jaxon rumbled in a deep, authoritative voice that vibrated low in her belly.

A chill unrelated to the weather spread goose bumps down her arms and pebbled her nipples into hard points. What was he doing here?

Tom puffed out his chest in a laughable attempt to compete with Jaxon for alpha male. “I don’t know who the hell you are, but you’d better take your hands off my girlfriend before you regret it.”

“Ex-girlfriend,” she said, sliding out from Jaxon’s hold and moving closer to Tom to make sure he got the message she was about to deliver. “I’ll never forgive you for cheating on me with Hannah. We’re through.”

The snarl on his face transformed him from friend to foe. “Fine by me. Saves me having to justify to my parents why I’m wasting my time with you. Guess they were right. You can take the girl out of the trailer, but you can’t take the trailer out of the girl.”

A low growl was the only warning she got before Jaxon charged Tom and punched him in the nose. Tom fell to his knees, blood pouring from both nostrils. Jaxon drew back his fist for the next hit.

She caught his arm to keep him from making a mistake he’d regret. “Stop! Jaxon, it’s fine. I just want to go home.”

Breathing heavily, he looked like a wild man, his pupils shrunken to pinpoints and his black hair sticking up in all directions. She had to get him out of here. They couldn’t afford the press or the police catching wind of him fighting. “Would you please drive me home . . .
Jax
?”

He lowered his fist, and his body’s tension eased. He surveyed her for a moment. Then he scooped her up in his arms and carried her away, holding her to his chest. As she spotted his car on the other side of the street, she considered protesting. After all, her ankle was fine. But having him take care of her felt too damn good.

The darkness she’d expected to find in him earlier had reared its dominant head. This man wasn’t the one who’d decorated the walls with paintings of rolling hills and fields of poppies.

This man had fought before.

This man believed in defending a woman’s honor.

This man could be capable of murder.

Chapter Eleven

A
FTER PROVIDING DIRECTIONS
to her apartment, Kate melted into the heated leather seats of the car, thankful for modern technology. Shivering, she rubbed under her eyes, not surprised her fingers came away smudged with mascara.

Jaxon sat next to her, his anger almost tangible. While she looked like something between a raccoon and a drowned rat, he resembled Poseidon, powerful and dangerous. The muscles of his triceps and biceps glistened and flexed as he spun the steering wheel. She had to sit on her hands to keep herself from touching him.

So many questions bounced in her mind, she didn’t know what to ask first. What was the best way to interrogate her client/pretend Dom/wannabe lover? “Do you want to tell me what happened back there?”

He ground his teeth and his muscles tensed. After a loud exhale, he said, “He hurt you.”

Lots of people have hurt me
. “I tripped. Accidents happen.”

His lips tightened into a thin line. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

Oh.
That.
Choking back the nausea,
s
he repressed the image of Hannah riding Tom to climax and committed herself to never thinking of it again.

She pressed her hand over her heart. “I won’t miss him. We were growing apart, not that we were close to start. It’s the fact he cheated on me with my purported friend. I don’t care I lost a boyfriend, but I will miss my friendship with Hannah.”

He swore under his breath. “Good friend?”

“Best,” she answered. “And the kicker? We’re both interning for Nick. I have to face her every day at work knowing how little our friendship meant to her.”

“You don’t think you can forgive her?”

“No. Once you lie to me, I’m done. I don’t give second chances.”

Hannah and Tom’s betrayal had transported her back to a time when she’d made the worst mistakes of her life, when her core beliefs had been shattered like a bullet to rose-colored glass.

She’d learned life’s lessons the hard way. Mothers didn’t always love their children. You were guilty until proven innocent. And there was no such thing as anonymity when it came to the press.

At fourteen, she’d found solace in a bottle of Jack, cocaine, and boys—many, many boys and, sometimes, grown men. When she’d climbed out of her self-imposed hell, she became determined to live in a way her father would have been proud of. Just because she no longer saw through that rose-colored glass didn’t mean she had to turn cynical.

She was cautious. Which is why she’d left the past in the past and re-created a new identity without an Internet trail. No one in Detroit knew anything about her other than she’d grown up in small-town USA. She’d worked hard in college to lose her accent, although once in a while she’d slip up, especially when emotional. If someone asked about her past, she’d deflect and turn the conversation to them. Most people loved to talk about themselves.

When they reached her place, he surprised her by turning off the engine. His lips curled in disdain. “You live here?”

“I sleep here,” she clarified. “I’m rarely home.”

“The building should be condemned.”

He wasn’t wrong. The lock on the front door no longer worked, allowing anyone access. A few times she’d had to step over passed-out strangers as she climbed the stairs to her second-level apartment. The building smelled like piss and mildew and probably had black mold growing underneath the cracked tile of the entryway. But the space was rat- and roach-free, so it was good enough until she could afford both a car and an apartment in the ’burbs.

She slid out of the car, and, possibly from some misguided sense of obligation, Jaxon followed her. “If all the properties like this one were condemned in Detroit, we lower class would have nowhere to live,” she said as they darted out of the rain and into her building.

He gripped her upper arm, his thumb inadvertently brushing her breast. “Don’t call yourself lower class. You’re a lawyer.”

Tom’s words still rang in her ears.
You can take the girl out of the trailer, but you can’t take the trailer out of the girl.
“I’m a legal intern. No salary. After I pay tuition and books, I can hardly afford groceries.” She laid her hand over his. “I live in the city because it saves gas money and the rent is cheap. It may not look like much, but it’s relatively clean and the muggers say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’” He didn’t laugh. “That was a joke.”

“Not funny.”

She removed his hand from her arm and pulled out her keys from her purse as she climbed the bum-free stairs to her apartment. “Not all of us can live in four-thousand-square-foot homes.”

She immediately cringed, knowing she shouldn’t have passed judgment on him based on his socioeconomic status. At her door, she turned to apologize. “I’m sorry. That was—”

“I wasn’t always rich. I grew up a few blocks from here.” He spoke quietly, the words laced with sadness.

Each moment she spent in his presence, he shattered another of her preconceived notions of Jaxon Deveroux, Dominant and high-society venture capitalist. Physically, he wasn’t soft like the typical white-collared executive. No, his body was hard—harder than he could achieve with a personal trainer a couple times a week. If he’d been raised in the ’hood, he would’ve learned how to fight by the time he’d graduated from elementary school. You couldn’t show weakness or you’d never live to adulthood.

Not only had he lived, he’d escaped poverty.

She flicked on the light, trying not to be embarrassed by her meager space, and then she realized her entire apartment could fit inside his playroom. Her living room contained an old burgundy couch she’d purchased from Goodwill and a plastic end table with a framed photo of her and her father fishing off their rowboat. The narrow galley kitchen sat behind the room and past that were the bedroom and bathroom.

Butterflies danced the jig in her belly. She dropped her purse on the couch and gripped the door handle. “Do you want to come in?”

He exhaled loudly, devouring her with his eyes. “More than anything.” He crossed the threshold into her apartment. “But it’s probably not a good idea.”

She took his hand and led him further inside then shut the door. “You’re right. It’s not.”

She could list dozens of reasons why making love to Jaxon would be a mistake.

He moved behind her, curling his hand around the back of her neck and squeezing.

He breathed heavily.

She couldn’t breathe at all.

With the gentle pressure of his palm at the top of her spine, he rotated her until her breasts brushed the hard planes of his chest.

She raised her gaze to his face and saw everything she felt reflected there in his eyes.

Heat.

Desire.

Longing.

He slammed her against the door and crushed her mouth with his own. His lips were soft, softer than she’d imagined possible. But the kiss was not. It was a primal taking as his tongue parried and plunged, searching and exploring. Their teeth clacked together as she responded, no longer a passive participant. His taste exploded on her tongue, a mix of spicy and sweet.

A deep groan rumbled from his chest. He bent his knees, angling his pelvis to bump his erection directly against her needy bundle of nerves. She whimpered, frustrated by their wet clothing. The raging inferno licked between her legs, her pussy pulsing with spasms. Her hands drifted to his ass, his muscles clenching and flexing under her fingertips as his hips continued to grind tiny circles against her core.

He captured her wrists and tugged them high over her head, pinning her between him and the door, imprisoning her. Pleasure darted to her aching breasts. Her clit swelled and hardened, and as her panties brushed across it, her juices trickled down her thighs.

Want to touch him.

Need to touch him.

She struggled, tugging and wiggling in an attempt at escape. His grip tightened, his fingers pinching her skin.

One word pounded over and over in her head.

More. More. More.

Never in her life had she experienced passion.

Until now.

“Please,” she begged, her voice raspy.

Although she wasn’t sure what she was asking him for, her plea spurred him into action. He lifted her up as if she was weightless, and she wrapped her thighs around his waist. Lust crashed into her like a tidal wave, submerging her deep below the water’s surface.

And she didn’t want to ever come up for air.

He carried her past her couch, continuing across the living room to her bedroom, his lips hovering over hers, a whisper away.

When he stopped at the foot of her double bed, she slid down his legs to her knees. She wasn’t sure if it was an accident. She didn’t care. Her thighs parted and she arched her back in a submissive offering.

Not only her body.

But everything she had to give.

The significance of her gesture flashed in his eyes. She sucked her lower lip into her mouth, her teeth sinking into the soft flesh, the spice of his kiss lingering. Would he taste spicy everywhere? She reached to unbutton his pants, to give him the relief he deserved, but he caught her hand midair.

“Please,” she repeated.

Her nipples pebbled from his molten gaze. He swallowed thickly and nodded once.

Craving more of his flavor, she flicked open the button of his jeans and used both hands to draw the wet fabric down his legs until he stepped out of them.

His cock sprang from its confinement, stretching proudly up to his belly from its nest of short curls. Long and thick, with a slight curve that would massage her G-spot perfectly, it twitched as she continued to admire its beauty. She’d never thought of penises as beautiful before, but there was no arguing that Jax’s was a work of art deserving worship.

Cupping his heavy balls in her hand, she massaged them and kneaded them until he threw back his head with a moan, and a bead of semen dripped from the tip of his cock. She couldn’t resist any longer. She ran the flat of her tongue from the base to its head, lapping up his tangy essence.

His fingers tangled in her hair, tugging just enough to bring tears to her eyes and sending a jolt of electricity to her pussy. “Suck it, Katerina,” he demanded.

He may have been the Dominant, but there was no mistaking the hoarseness in his voice or the need in his eyes. She’d done this to him. She may have been the one literally on her knees, but, metaphorically, it was as if he was the one on his knees before her. Here in her bedroom, she alone had the ability to gift him with bliss.

She’d never felt so strong.

Was this an exchange of power? Or was it simply a blowjob?

Looking up at Jax as she took him deep into her mouth, she realized there was nothing simple about this man. His eyes fluttered shut when the tip of him bumped against the soft tissue of her throat. She fought the gag reflex and swallowed, breathing through her nose.

Her lips stretched around his girth, and she wrapped her hand around the base, not surprised that her thumb didn’t reach her index finger. With her other hand, she cupped his testicles, rubbing her middle finger on the sensitive perineum. A couple more drops of semen coated the back of her throat and his cock jerked against the roof of her mouth. Always the perfectionist, she wouldn’t stop until she engulfed him completely. Relaxing her throat muscles, she swallowed repeatedly, taking him in so deep his curls tickled her nose.

“Ah, fuck, Katerina. So good. I . . . you have to stop. I’m too close. It’s been too long.” His actions defied his words, and his legs shook as he began shallowly pumping. She slid her finger over his perineum and up the crack of his ass. “Katerina. Katerina. Katerina,” he chanted breathlessly.