Deadly Pursuit

by Ann Christopher

  And Wanda—what time had Wanda said she’d be home from playing cards tonight? Midnight? Or had she said eleven?

  Okay. Check the room, girl. Make sure everything’s in its place.

  The rug was laid flat, with the fringe pointing in the right direction, nice and straight. None of the artwork was crooked. One of the earthenware pots was about half an inch off center, so she corrected it. There. Perfect. The computer screen still glowed blue, but it would hibernate in a minute and Kareem would never know she’d been here.

  She snatched Max up, along with his bone. Thirtyish silent steps down the crypt-dark and deserted hallway, past the kitchen and up the stairs, and she’d be home free.

  Swinging the well-oiled door on its hinge, she peeked over her shoulder toward the mud room—no sounds of a car in the garage, thank goodness—left the office and took care to tiptoe around a couple of creaky spots on the floor. Picking up speed, she glanced into the kitchen as she passed.

  And came face to face with her mother-in-law.

  Jack rested his palms on either side of the white sink, leaned in and studied his reflection in the mirror. He didn’t like what he saw. He never did.

  The fluorescent light fixture threw shadows over his face and emphasized the dark patches under his eyes. That jagged-ass cut on his forehead was now scabbed and crusty. Ten o’clock shadow and a desperate glint in his expression rounded out his look, which was a twisted hybrid of The Fugitive and Dead Man Walking in a pair of blue plaid flannel pajama bottoms and nothing else.

  He reached out and flicked the switch anyway.

  The darkness comforted him a little, but it was the difference between hanging by your thumbs for twenty-four hours straight or hanging by your thumbs for twenty-four hours with periodic five-minute breaks. Didn’t matter much. In the light or in the dark, he was still the man who used to see the world in black and white and now saw only gray in every direction. He was still the man who knew what the right thing to do was, but couldn’t make himself do it. He was still a weak man grasping for whatever brief shining moments of beauty, peace and normalcy he could get.

  Did that make him a selfish bastard? Then he was a selfish bastard.

  But he was ashamed of his selfishness. It ate him from the inside out, a piranha with razors for teeth and intractable jaws that held on for dear life and sliced at him until he was wounded, bleeding, and too cowardly to look in the mirror and face his demons for what they were.

  He couldn’t make sense of anything.

  Not the continued bitterness he felt about giving up the life he’d known and the life he’d wanted for a mission he wasn’t certain, even now, had been worth it. Kareem Gregory wanted to kill him. Quite possibly would kill him. Pursuing the man had cost Jack his life as he’d known it, and for what? A lame-ass money-laundering conviction that got overturned on appeal?

  Yeah. Fair trade.

  Most of all, he couldn’t get to the bottom of his driving passion and need for Amara Clarke, however he could get her, for as long as he could have her.

  This last part was the most unforgivable.

  She wanted him to let her go; he should let her go. No mystery there. All he had to do was request that she be moved to another safe house. Easy, right? Just make that call to Dexter Brady, listen to his bitching and moaning about the cost, and it was done.

  Amara would be safe somewhere else and untangled from the snake’s nest of Jack’s life. They’d never see each other again, which was best for Amara’s physical and emotional health and, as for what was best for Jack, well … too bad, so sad. This wasn’t about Jack.

  He didn’t get a vote. Shouldn’t get a vote.

  Only he was voting right here, right now, wasn’t he?

  Amara was staying here, he’d decided. With him. Period.

  The time would come for them to say good-bye to each other soon enough. They didn’t have to do it now. Two adults could maintain a consensual relationship for as long as they wanted, couldn’t they?

  As long as they knew what they were getting—and not getting.

  Amara would be insane to get emotionally attached to him when he had an anticipated life span shorter than the shelf life of a carton of eggs. Amara was the smartest woman he knew. Ergo, she knew better.

  Apparently he didn’t, though. He longed for more time with her strength and laughter, wanted more slicing and dicing by her caustic tongue, wished he could die in her arms and buried deep inside her body rather than at the hands of one of Kareem Gregory’s hired guns.

  Jack gripped the hard porcelain and squeezed. He leaned his forehead against the cool mirror, closed his eyes, scrunched his face and reached for a little clarity. But clarity danced around the edges of his consciousness, just out of reach, and Jack was alone, like always. In a sign of how desperate he was, he even thought about praying, but why give God one more thing to laugh at him about?

  And then it occurred to him. He’d happily hate and punish himself forever if he could spend a few more days and nights with Amara. It was a price he was willing to pay. They’d only made love once. Once. How could anyone—even the indifferent God who’d ignored pretty much every request he’d ever made in his entire life—think that once was enough?

  Why worry about what God thought? He and God had parted ways years ago. And Jack always hated himself anyway; if he sent Amara away he’d hate himself for not keeping her here.

  So why not go down in flames?

  As long as he kept up the emotional brick walls between them and kept warning her about the inevitable outcome—where was the harm? She was a big girl. She could make her own choices. If she didn’t want him, she could say so.

  Sudden euphoria made his head feel weightless and his breath fast and easy. Swinging open the bathroom door, he stepped over the threshold into the bedroom, and she was right there, standing less than ten feet away, waiting for him.

  Jack’s skittering heart gave up the fight and stopped altogether.

  Her face was lit with a glow he didn’t think could be explained by the ambient light from the nightstand lamp, at least not altogether. Her clothes were gone, all but a black satin bra and teeny-tiny panties skimming her hips and ramping up his imagination. Her gleaming skin, marred only by the bandage on her side, was smooth and warmly brown, a chocolate fantasy come to life right here within touching distance.

  She was breathtaking.

  Long legs with plump, biteable thighs, big breasts, wide hips and soft curves in every direction he looked. That wavy black hair that had always been up in those messy ponytails—how many times had he stared at her from the grill at the Twelfth Street Diner, dying to get his hands in that heavy silk?—was down around her shoulders, skimming them. Behind her, the door was shut and the bed turned down.

  She waited, saying nothing.

  There was so much he wanted to say. So much he could never say.

  His thick tongue and dry mouth didn’t work until he’d cleared his throat a couple of times. “Are you kicking me out?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  As he reached for her and felt that first contact between them, the first slide of skin to skin, the first sigh, the first brush of lips, he acknowledged what he’d always known:

  It was all a lie.

  All the justifications and excuses he’d just given himself, that whole pep talk, were a shimmering mirage with no substance whatsoever.

  There would be no emotional distance between them, at least not on his part. She wasn’t the one who needed protection from this thing they did to each other; he was.

  He was in love with Amara Clarke.

  Maybe he could never tell her. But he could damn sure show her.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he murmured.

  “You won’t.”

  Her lips skated across his chest as she said it and her hands slipped beneath the elastic waistband of his pajamas to grip his ass and bring him tight up against that soft, sweet spot between her legs.


  Didn’t want to hurt her. Huh. Wasn’t he considerate? And who was on the lookout to make sure he didn’t get hurt? Did she have any idea that his heart sang every time he looked at her and broke whenever he thought about leaving her?

  He nuzzled her forehead and sank his fingers deep into that fragrant hair, tipping her head back so he could see her face.

  “Jack,” she began.

  “You talk too much,” he said, and silenced her with a kiss.

  Chapter 18

  Wanda was waiting for Kareem when he arrived home, sitting in her leather chair in front of the fire with her feet on the ottoman, a blanket in her lap, and a snifter of brandy on the side table.

  Time to set the ball in motion and see if she couldn’t get rid of Kira, once and for all.

  You couldn’t get too eager with Kareem, though. He always knew. And if you ever acted like you really cared about something, he’d see it as a sign of weakness, so she didn’t want to do that.

  Best to be casual.

  “Is that you, Baby Boy?” She looked around just as Kareem came in. “How you doing?”

  “I’m all right.”

  He kissed her cheek on his way to the drink cart, looking tired. Dark circles ringed his pretty brown eyes, and if she didn’t know better she’d think the spaces beneath his cheekbones were beginning to hollow out.

  He opened a bottle of his expensive red and poured while she watched.

  He sure did look like his daddy. It squeezed her heart to think how much. Of course, Kareem Sr. hadn’t stuck around past the fifth month of her pregnancy. That partially accounted for the boy’s relentless ambition and the occasional bursts of anger that flashed, white-hot, across his face. Kareem Sr. hadn’t had that darkness. But she’d loved him and she damn sure loved his son. She’d do anything for their son.

  Kareem was already sipping his wine, loosening his tie and looking around for his sorry excuse for a wife. Wanda could read the disappointment in his eyes like a large-print book. He didn’t want to ask where Kira was and admit either that he couldn’t keep tabs on her or that she didn’t bother to stay up late and find out how his trial preparation had gone. He seemed to think that the separate bedrooms were a temporary setback and everything would switch right back to sunny days in paradise the minute the trial was over.

  Poor boy. He was the only one in the house who didn’t know that Kira didn’t love him and never had.

  It wasn’t his fault for being blind. Kira was beautiful and she seemed sweet. What red-blooded male could resist that combination? Kareem was hardly the first man in the world to be manipulated with his dick. Just look at his daddy and the way he’d taken off after that skanky waitress when she crooked her little finger at him.

  “How’d things go tonight?” Wanda asked.

  “Pretty good.” Kareem was now over at the desk, flipping through the day’s stack of mail. “We met with the jury consultant.”

  “Does he know what he’s doing?”

  Kareem looked up from the envelopes long enough to shrug and shoot her a worn-out smile. “That’s the million-dollar question. And I do mean million dollar. Ask me again when the jury brings back the verdict.”

  He glanced toward the foyer, as though he could make Kira appear if he only wished it hard enough. The poor boy needed his eyes opened for him. That was why Wanda considered it her duty, as his loving mother, to help him out.

  Kira was a bitch. She was selfish and arrogant. She thought that because she’d been raised in a big house in the suburbs, with a mama who was a doctor and a daddy who was an engineer, she was better than Wanda and Kareem, who’d grown up in the projects, where the fences were chain-link, not picket.

  Her lack of gratitude for everything Kareem did for them was unforgivable. Even Kira’s upcoming nursing degree (and getting a college degree was another reason Kira thought she was better than everyone else) was something that Kareem had paid for off the sweat of his back.

  Was Kira grateful? Did she support Kareem and cook his favorite meals for him, the way Wanda did? Did she lay on her back and fulfill her most basic duty as a wife?

  Hell no.

  And this, among so many other reasons, was why Kira had to go.

  Yawning, Wanda got up and stretched. “It’s past my bedtime. I am beat.” She took her drink and headed toward the hall, blowing a kiss to Kareem as she passed.

  Ask me, boy. Ask me.

  “What time did Kira go to bed?” Kareem asked.

  With her back to her son, Wanda gave herself a quick second to smile. And then she locked that smile safely away and did a slow about-face as she tried to look thoughtful.

  “Hmm,” she said. “Last time I saw her was around eleven, I guess. She was coming out of your office with Max.”

  Kareem stilled, the wine halfway to his parted lips.

  “Good-night, Baby Boy.”

  Wanda continued on her way. Easy as pie.

  Jack gathered Amara in his arms and touched her. Face, neck, shoulders … back, breasts, hips … butt, thighs, face again, then hair, and the endless caressing circles started over again, each more devastating than the last.

  It was all over for her and they both knew it. He’d won and she’d lost. She couldn’t tell him no and therefore he could screw her at will and leave her when he was ready with no emotional attachments. Whatever worked, right? Unfortunately, this little arrangement was proof positive that she was her mama’s daughter. The only thing left was for him to flick a couple bills on the nightstand on his way out the door.

  The worst part was, when she was in his arms she didn’t give even the tiniest damn.

  Not when the skin across his shoulders was so sleek and hot and the surging muscles beneath so hard and immovable.

  And his sounds. God, his sounds.

  She drank up his incoherent murmurs and rumbling purrs and soaked in his harsh, panting breath because it meant she was driving him as wild as he was driving her.

  He kept the pace slow and easy and ignored her surging hips and implicit invitation, but his control was slipping away and she was happy to help it along and get him thrusting into her needy-slick body at the earliest possible opportunity.

  So she flicked her bra clasp free, released her aching breasts and waited to see how he liked them apples, Mr. Controlled and Slow.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  Hah.

  They’d been kissing this whole time, but now he pulled back and stared, too far gone to hide behind his mask of indifference for once. Boy would he be pissed if he could see himself in the mirror right now. His face glowed with a rapt expression that she’d never thought to see on a man’s face, not in this lifetime, and she knew—she knew, down to the marrow of her bones and up to the limits of the universe and beyond—that she wasn’t her mama’s daughter after all and she meant something to him even though he wished she didn’t.

  “Amara.”

  Her name was never as beautiful as when he said it, especially when his voice was choked and his tone reverent, as though he’d latched onto heaven and didn’t plan to ever let it go.

  She smiled a lazy smile because her body was so loose and easy, and his heavy-lidded gaze tracked her every sighing response as he filled his hands with her breasts and circled her nipples with his rough thumbs until her pleasure made the room swim.

  “I knew I should have stayed away from you.”

  Something came over her, some inner courage she’d never had until now because God knew she’d never been a resounding success with men. Whatever it was, it wiped the smile from her face and made her speak to him with the utmost pity because, really, there was something between them and she was determined to keep him from walking out on her without a look back.

  “Poor Jack,” she whispered. “You don’t really think you can stay away from me, do you?”

  He froze, helpless to deny it or even to work up an evasion of some sort. “I’ve never been able to stay away from you—”

  —a
nd I never will be.

  The words were there and she heard them even if he caught himself at the last second and snapped his jaws shut.

  The meaningful silence was enough, for now. Touching him was enough—for now.

  Straining on her toes, she wrapped every part of herself around as much of him as she could reach, anchoring them together with her arms around his neck and one leg hooked around his hip.

  Ahhh, God. Crying out, she almost had to push him away so she could breathe.

  Mostly she needed him closer and was ready to fight if he pulled back by so much as one-half millimeter. He didn’t. She felt his driving need for her in the waves of heat off his body and in the trembling of his arms. Tasted it in his kiss as their mouths and tongues found their way back together, nipping and licking and then, finally, thrusting deep in time with the surging rhythm of their hips.

  Deeper. Harder. Hot tears of pleasure and frustration collected at the corners of her eyes and she couldn’t stop them from leaking out because it was so good with Jack, so damn good, and yet it was never quite enough and he would be gone soon and she’d be destroyed.

  “Don’t cry,” he whispered against her lips, still watching her.

  “I can’t—”

  “What, baby?”

  She didn’t want to confess anything damaging or waste time talking, not when her tormented body needed him now. Her aching inner muscles were rippling with faint contractions and the cream was thick between her thighs, but this was one of the many things he did to her: push her past caring, past pride, past dignity.

  “I can’t get enough of you.”

  His jaw tightened with grim and unmistakable satisfaction. “I know the feeling.”

  Planting his hands on her butt, he lifted her and she clung, and the next sensation she felt was the cool of the sheets sliding against her back as he lowered her to the bed and bent to take off his pajama bottoms.

  He hadn’t bothered with underwear, glory hallelujah, and she squirmed out of hers, getting ready, needing to hurry, hurry, even as she struggled against her heavy lids to keep an eye on him.