Deadly Pursuit

by Ann Christopher

  But then she thought of the look on his face when he realized that she was a druggie. He’d want to send her to rehab. And then everyone would know.

  And the girls. What would she tell the girls?

  This last thought galvanized her and she dropped to her knees and scurried around the floor, looking in the far corners and ignoring stray hairs and dust bunnies.

  She didn’t have a problem and she didn’t—

  There. Under the far corner of the embroidered rug. Was that—was that pink?

  A quick flip of the edge of the rug and there it was, the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in her life: a little pink tablet, dropped and forgotten, just waiting for her to discover it.

  Laughing, she ignored the layer of lint on it and chewed it happily.

  Thank God.

  No, she thought, staggering to her feet and wiping the lint off her tongue, she didn’t have a problem at all. She just needed her medication. She was like a diabetic, not a drug addict.

  But … she would need to do something she’d been avoiding.

  She’d have to call Jerome on his cell phone and pray he’d sell her some shit.

  Again.

  Chapter 10

  Jack came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist and don’t mess with me etched deep in his face. If Amara had any doubts about his mood, it was cleared up by the tight-lipped glower he shot her as he strode past on his way to his bag in the corner, pausing only to toss his black toiletries case on the nightstand.

  She’d been lounging against the pillows, wondering if she should try to get a little sleep, but now she sat up straight and watched him, reading his body language, which was like an open book with large print, pictures and helpful commentary in the margins.

  So he didn’t want to talk to her and was trying to block her out. That was just too freaking bad. She had a couple of things on her mind, and staring death in the face had a real good way of putting things in perspective. If she was going to die soon, the least he could do was answer a couple of questions and tell her the truth.

  Somehow the world had shrunk down to her and Jack, the walls of this room and the experiences they’d shared together. Sharing a hotel room and seeing his toiletries, not to mention facing down an assassin together, forced the kind of intimacies on them that would have been unimaginable a couple of days ago, back when she wasn’t certain he’d ever voluntarily looked at her and was positive that he hated her.

  Her jaw opened up the way it was supposed to, but her mouth was dry suddenly, her voice tight, and it had nothing to do with any danger, which seemed momentarily far away from this cozy hotel room.

  It had everything to do with Jack and his soapy-fresh scent layered over the sporty smell of deodorant. The muscular lines of his back and shoulders didn’t help. Neither did the flex of his hard butt as he stooped over the bag or the gleam of his caramel skin stretched taut over a powerful thigh where the white towel fell away.

  He had the shapely calves of someone who’d played soccer at some point in the not-too-distant past, and even his feet, as well-kept as his strong hands, were nice in their flip-flops, with high arches and strong toes.

  He rose and faced her, yanking another white T-shirt—he seemed to have an endless supply—down over the heavy slabs of a chest that had flat nipples and a narrow streak of hair disappearing to southern parts whose bulkiness couldn’t entirely be explained away by the knot in the towel.

  He was perfection. Six-plus feet of everything a woman could ask for and more than she could dream of. The kind of man whose mere presence made other men superfluous if not outright invisible.

  Jack pulled on a new pair of jeans and tossed the towel aside without ever giving her a glimpse of what was beneath the towel, damn him. “You’re staring.”

  Yeah, she was, but she couldn’t seem to stop.

  If the killer knocked on the door right now, poked his head in, and announced that they had better say their prayers, Amara wasn’t certain she could stop.

  Maybe it had to do with the heightened adrenaline. Maybe it was because she hadn’t had sex during the current president’s administration and the sex she’d had before that had been forgettable in the extreme. Maybe it was because Jack’s skin looked so warm and inviting and the thought of never touching it before she died suddenly seemed more tragic than never going on safari or seeing the whales off Nova Scotia.

  Mostly it was because there was always something in Jack’s eyes when he did look at her, something unidentifiable but disturbing, hot and cold, untouchable and irresistible, all at the same time.

  Like right now.

  “What’s on your mind, Amara?”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Could I stop you?”

  No, he couldn’t stop her, but now that her chance had come she couldn’t quite get the words out. It seemed so melodramatic, like she’d been caught in a Bette Davis movie and had three months to live or something, and she’d never been an emotional person. Not really. But there was a growing weight in her heart—it felt like a boulder now and would soon be a solid wall of insurmountable rock, like Gibraltar—and she needed to know.

  “Will we ever see each other again after tonight?”

  “No.”

  The way he refused to look at her hurt almost as much as the answer. No. Just like that. With no signs of regret or even recognition, as though he was thinking right now, for the very first time ever, hmm, yeah, I guess I won’t ever lay eyes on Amara again—I wonder what’s on ESPN?

  And here she was, sick.

  As always, when she got upset, she got mad. The focal point of her anger at the moment was his stupid black duffel, which he’d placed on the bed and was now rummaging in. Again. What the hell was so important in that duffel bag that he couldn’t be bothered with looking up at her and acting, even if he had to pretend about it, like she was a worthwhile human being to whom attention should be paid?

  Feeling huffy and itching for a fight, she jumped to her feet, marched around to stand in his face and shoved the bag across the bed—man, it was heavy—and out of his reach. She was taking her life in her hands, she knew. The warning rumble in his chest confirmed it, and so did the sudden lowering of those heavy dark brows. Even the vivid red gash of his cut forehead, which had thankfully stopped bleeding, seemed pissed at her.

  “I’m talking to you,” she snapped.

  “I answered your question,” he told some vague point off to the left of her face, his voice roughening with each choppy syllable.

  “Maybe you could look at me.”

  Ah, but he didn’t want to. He hardly ever wanted to. Jaw tightening, he looked heavenward, no doubt cursing God for saddling him with Amara. Looked to the floor. Looked to the wall behind her. Then, finally, met her gaze with slow murder flashing in his eyes.

  “We’ll never lay eyes on each other again after tonight?” she asked again.

  “No.”

  “That makes me sad. Even though you’re a jerk, it makes me sad.”

  His lips twisted with such derision that she flinched. “It should be the best news you’ve ever heard. Since I’m such a jerk.”

  “It’s not.”

  He stared at her for several beats and then, oh, God, and then something shifted in his expression, and that thing, whatever it was, streaked across his face and was gone, but not before she felt it in her breasts and her suddenly aching sex, low in her belly and in her soul.

  “What do you want, Amara?”

  This wasn’t a growl. Oh, no. It was a purring murmur; it was the husky voice of a man who wanted to give her what she wanted, whatever it was.

  “I want you to tell me why you hate me so much and why you’ve gone out of your way to be as offensive as possible to me.”

  There it was. Her hidden vulnerability and the thing that had kept her awake more nights than she’d ever admit. No one else much liked her. Fine. Jack didn’t like her and it was a devastating injury, the kind
that might make her bleed out before help could arrive to save her.

  She’d expected her question to surprise him, to make him uncomfortable, and it did. Color rose up over his cheeks and he naturally tried to hide his discomfort by distracting her. “What do you care? I’m just the cook.”

  Amara shifted closer, until the zone of heat surrounding his body engulfed her from head to toe and just another inch or two would brush her up against the heavy slabs of his chest.

  They were close to something here, a breakthrough or a breakdown, she wasn’t sure which, and all she knew was that she needed to keep pushing his buttons, no matter how much it scared her to do so.

  “You’re not just the cook. And I want you to be a man and tell me why I bother you so much.”

  Unblinking, he stretched his lips in a crooked approximation of a smile that struck terror in her heart and hitched up her breathing with something that wasn’t terror at all.

  “You don’t want to question my manhood, Angel Eyes. It puts me in a bad mood.”

  Angel Eyes.

  Amara’s heart, which had been stuttering along, skipping some beats and doubling up on others, stopped altogether. They stared at each other, the tension between them notching slowly higher, a roller coaster with a peak way up in the clouds somewhere, still well out of sight.

  She became aware of the rasp of his breath, the tiny cleft in his chin, the faint scent of minty toothpaste that lingered around his mouth, which wasn’t so tight anymore, but full. Lush. Infinitely inviting.

  “Angel Eyes.” Her whispery voice was giving her trouble, so she paused to clear her throat. And when she licked her lips, his hot gaze tracked the movement the way a starving cat would track a mouse he wanted to swallow whole. “That sounds a little better than Bunny. Your hatred is slipping, Jack.”

  An invisible force was operating on them, some pull like gravity that had them drifting closer together without conscious movement. All Amara knew was that now his brown eyes took up the whole field of her vision, and they were dark and turbulent, splintered with black and gold and filled with the kind of desire that, if unleashed, would flatten her to paper-thinness.

  She wanted it unleashed and wanted, just as much, to unleash her own passion.

  “Amara.” The huskiness in his tone screamed at her but the note of warning barely registered. “I’m trying to do the right thing by you, but I’m no saint. Not even close. So if you’re offering me something, I’m going to take it.”

  His words of caution didn’t interest her. She was a big girl.

  “I’m offering.” God, it felt good to say it and stop pretending she didn’t feel the effect he had on her. “If the worst-case scenario is that we’re both going to die soon, and the best case scenario is that you’ll go your way and I’ll go back home and never see you again, then … yeah. I’m offering.”

  That was as clear as she could make it.

  A blank check. The keys to the kingdom. The whole enchilada.

  He could have her now, however he liked, and she was sure her enthusiastic sincerity was shining on her face like an airport beacon.

  Still, he hesitated.

  Some internal struggle was going on inside his sharp brain, some epic battle that looked as though it might tear him in half. Because his breathing was harsh now, his face strained. And his body all but vibrated with the force of his simultaneous restraint and need to reach for her. Her peripheral vision caught the pulsing action of his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides, opening and closing, again and again.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re going to regret this.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “I probably will.”

  His face fell but he nodded, as though this was exactly what he’d expected her to say and he didn’t blame her for choosing the smart option.

  “But I’ll regret not doing it more.”

  Jack gaped at her for one frozen moment, and the tension between them peaked. Amara felt the precise moment that roller coaster summited and knew the ride had begun in earnest.

  With a hoarse cry, Jack reached for her and yanked her against his body.

  Chapter 11

  There he was.

  Twenty minutes late for work now and on her fourth circuit around the block in one of the worst sections of downtown Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine, where every moment without being eyeballed, leered at or questioned by the police was cause for celebration, Marian Barber finally saw Jerome.

  Cursing everything about him, from his collection of thuggish friends, all of whom probably had an early violent death and/or prison time in their immediate future, to his insolent black stare to his baggy jeans, black skull cap and pristine athletic shoes—green today; they’d been orange last time—she pulled the Land Rover up to the curb in front of a shabby brown-stone and rolled the passenger side window down to talk to him.

  The SOB took his own sweet time about sauntering over to her. She checked her watch, impatient to get to work and, more than that, to take her meds so she could face work.

  The more time she spent in this shithole, the more chance there was of getting caught, but she couldn’t worry about that. If the cops ran her plates, they ran her plates. She could say she was lost and asking for directions. She had bigger problems to deal with today, namely, what kind of payment Jerome was going to demand for the Oxy. She had the strong and terrible feeling that the bills she’d grabbed from the ATM—there went this month’s Visa payment—weren’t going to be enough this time.

  Jerome finally made his way over and leaned one hand on the roof. “Hey, Jerome.”

  “‘S’up?”

  Bastard. Like he didn’t know what was up. Like there was some chance she’d driven down here and risked getting caught just for the pleasure of asking him how his day was going so far.

  “Like I told you on the phone, I need some Oxy.”

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure I have any today.”

  Marian waited. Her skin stretched so tight she felt certain that her flesh would explode out of it any second and ooze, glistening, like a slug. “Well, could you check?”

  He yawned with a flash of gold and a loud cracking of his jaw. “How’re you planning to pay me?”

  “Cash.”

  Dread wrapped its fingers around her throat and squeezed, especially when his lazy gaze drifted lower, to her breasts. “Maybe I want to lay a little pipe.” He smiled, revealing a hint of dimples. “Or maybe I want to have a seat in your ride so you can suck me off. You up for that?”

  “No.”

  He laughed.

  She tried not to vomit.

  Because she was lying. To get her shit right now? Yeah, she’d suck him off. Probably let him fuck her, too, as long as he let her take her meds first and used a condom.

  “Well, Marian,” said Jerome, “this is your lucky day today because all I want is that information we talked about. And the cash.”

  “I don’t have it.” Her gut cramped again, hard, and even though she’d thought her earlier episode of diarrhea had cleaned her out nice and good, she apparently had enough left inside her to make an embarrassing mess any second. She shifted, trying to hold it in. “I can’t get it.”

  “Okay.” Jerome wheeled around toward his sniggering friends. “Buh-bye.”

  Marian lost it. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Punctuating each curse by smacking her hands against the wheel, she gave herself over to one moment of despair, one moment where she considered how far she’d sunk, how much she still had to lose, especially if she did what he asked, and how much she needed her shit.

  The shit won.

  “Okay,” she called after Jerome. “I’ll get it for you.”

  Jack didn’t mean to do any of it. Not respond to the naked heat in Amara’s eyes, take her up on her self-destructive offer or even touch her. He especially didn’t mean to lose control to the point that Kareem Gregory and his contract killers and vendettas seemed like a minor irritation that he should think
about some day when he had the time.

  But all of it happened anyway.

  There was one moment when it wasn’t too late and he could have turned back. A single second where they stood there, frozen with the sudden shock of being in each other’s arms, twined together like wisteria around a trellis, hip-to-hip, thigh-to-thigh, with one of his hands squeezing her butt and pressing her closer to his rigid erection and the other in her hair, feeling that wavy silk—ah, God, it was so soft, so thick, and her scalp was warm beneath—and she had her arms around his neck and one hand on the top of his head as though she refused to take even the slightest risk that he might pull away, and he wasn’t too far gone yet.

  His presence of mind was slipping away but enough remained for him to notice the fan of her sweet breath against his lips, the tiny curve of her mouth in a smile, the glow of joy, no matter how temporary, in her face, and he thought, no, this is wrong, I can’t have her one time and then never see her again; one time is never going to be enough.

  Some of his turbulence must have broken through because her expression darkened as though she knew she was losing him. And Amara, street-fighting defense lawyer that she was, played dirty by murmuring, “Don’t think, Jack,” and then licking her way into his mouth.

  In that one heartbeat, it was too late.

  But of course it had been too late for him the second he laid eyes on her.

  All kinds of crazy sounds erupted from some hidden place inside him—broken sounds, euphoric sounds—and he gathered her closer, kissed her deeper, because if he had to die he damn sure wasn’t going to do it without tasting the hottest depths of Amara Clarke’s mouth.

  There was no guarantee that there was a heaven waiting for him on the other side or that God wouldn’t laugh and throw him out on his butt when he showed up at the pearly gates, but that didn’t matter because heaven was right here, in his arms.

  But … he needed to take this slow and not miss anything, to mark this moment for the rest of what was sure to be a cursed and lonely life.