Her nostrils flare.
Now it’s my turn to silence her. I don’t lift a hand, but I continue speaking before she can interrupt. ‘How do we know if someone’s innocent or guilty? How can we decide? Are you okay with sending innocent people to prison? Just because they didn’t get an adequate defence?’
‘No. I said, In an ideal world.’
My smile is grim. ‘You’re a little old to believe in fairy tales, aren’t you?’
Her eyes hold mine and I feel a mutual sadness creep into the room. A wistfulness. This world isn’t what either of us would want it to be. It’s a fanciful thought—something I’m not prone to.
‘You can’t study law without respecting its mechanism.’
‘I do respect its mechanism.’ Her skin is goose bumped. Is she cold?
‘Yet you challenge its wisdom. You question the verdict.’
‘The whole country questions the verdict.’
‘That’s not how it works.’ My words are gruff. ‘The system decides who is innocent and guilty. Our job is to advocate for our clients and accept the ruling once all appeals are exhausted.’
‘Your clients are all guilty,’ she points out quickly.
‘The not guilty verdicts would seem to contradict that.’
‘That’s a load of crap,’ she says with a shake of her head, and I hear the passion in her voice and know that this is as deeply personal for her as it is for me.
‘One of the hallmarks of our legal system, one of the requirements that makes it unstintingly robust, is that anyone can have someone like me advocating for them.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ she says, shaking her head and tilting her face so that her profile is angled towards me. ‘Not everyone can afford the freedom you seem able to guarantee.’
More idealism. Of course.
‘There are hundreds—thousands—of men and women who were wrongly accused, who didn’t have the luxury of a Connor Hughes or Michael Brophy advocating on their behalf. Men and women who are rotting in prison because the system failed them.’
‘And you want to fix that, too,’ I surmise.
‘Yes.’
‘You want to form your own little Innocence Project?’ I am genuinely interested but the words come out as sneering and I’m too angry to take them back. Not angry with her. Angry with her arguments, which are predicated on lines of logic I instinctively seek to avoid.
‘Don’t mock my intentions!’ Her eyes spark like wildfire. I’m intrigued by the passion and outrage in their depths. Her anger matches my own.
‘I’m not.’ There is a gentle apology in the admission. ‘I’m interested in what your end-game is with law.’
She stares at me for a moment, and then nods crisply. ‘I want to put the Donovans of this world away. For good. I want to work for victims.’ Hearing his name on her lips makes me want to curl my hand into a fist and strike the wall. Heat flushes my face. The thought of Donovan ever knowing Olivia Amorelli disgusts me on a cellular level. My focus is lost; I home in on her statement, ignoring the visceral reaction I had to her use of my latest client’s name.
‘And the wrongly accused?’
‘They’re victims, too,’ she mutters.
‘Everyone suffers if the justice system breaks down. You talk about wanting to help the wrongly accused. How many more would be wrongly accused, lazily charged, if there were no accountability to police and investigators?’
‘I think most police officers are inherently good. That they want to see justice done. I trust them to see the case as it is.’
I can’t help my laugh. ‘Come on, Olivia. You’re smarter than that. Checks and balances are the only way any of this works. Police officers can’t be given free rein to investigate and prosecute, just like victims’ families can’t decide penalties. We hold the police to a standard that we all expect.’
I lift a finger to her lips, stalling the argument she’s about to make. ‘If you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, would you rather have a legal system that enables the police officer who walks in and finds you standing over a dead body to decide summarily against you? Or would you prefer to know that you would have a chance to explain? That the police officer would have to follow rules and procedures. And that if he didn’t you would be exonerated. Mistakes happen. But this, what we have, has been refined over centuries to give most people a chance at fairness. There are safeguards in place to make the system as fair as possible.’
‘It isn’t fair, though.’
‘No.’ I nod grimly. ‘Until mankind rises above its very nature, there’s nothing fair in life or law.’
Her eyes lift to mine and there’s speculation in them that runs through me, turning over all the pieces of my being I have long-ago learned to keep locked away from others.
‘Who was that lady with you tonight?’
The question isn’t what I expect and I welcome it. There is a heaviness in the air resulting from our conversation.
‘In the red dress,’ she prompts thoughtfully.
‘Cynthia Payne.’
‘A friend of yours?’
I close the distance between us and she draws in a shallow breath, then expels it; warmth and sweetness brush against my jaw so that I am reminded of the first time we crossed this line—after class. ‘I knew you were going to be trouble, the first time I saw you.’
A blush spreads in her cheeks. I’m fascinated by it—as I am by everything to do with this woman. ‘I think that’s the first time I’ve ever been called trouble,’ she says with a small self-deprecating smile that hits me right in the chest.
‘That makes it no less true.’
Her eyes are huge. I could get lost in them. She blinks up at me, and my whole body is attuned to her and what she wants, because it’s what I want, too. Her teeth press down on her lower lip and then, despite the fact she’s standing there like some kind of modern-day Madonna, she lifts her hands to my bow tie and begins to undo it. There is concentration on her features, and her fingers aren’t quite steady. Her breath is rushed. But I don’t make a move to help her. In fact, I hold my own breath, wondering if she’s caught in a trance and I will wake her if I speak.
‘The first time I saw you,’ she says, succeeding with the bow tie, removing it and dropping it softly to the ground, ‘I imagined you naked.’
She lifts her eyes to mine and smiles, but I don’t. Her words have a strange effect on me, locking something inside me.
‘Really?’ I manage to drag out, the word gruff.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Do you make a habit of imagining your professors in the buff?’
I’m rewarded with another smile. ‘Just the hot ones.’
She’s joking but a flare of something worryingly like jealousy bursts inside me.
‘Just you,’ she clarifies after a minute, and her trembling fingers find the top button of my shirt. She works it loose.
‘Professor Winterbourne has nice hair,’ I say, and she laughs then, and it’s like music and sunshine in this cold, exquisitely elegant penthouse of mine.
‘It wasn’t your hair I liked.’
‘What was it?’
Her expression is teasing. She frees another button. ‘You don’t strike me as a man who’s hungry for praise.’
Something jerks in my chest. Because she’s right and yet I’m filled with a desperate need to hear Olivia’s praise—all of it. It’s absurd. A stupid instinct. I ignore it.
She frees another button and then another, and her fingertips graze my chest when, at last, she separates the shirt completely. Her eyes devour my chest, trailing heat with the intensity of her gaze as she reads each and every ink I have scored there.
Eyes aren’t enough, though. Her fingers follow, chasing the dark swirls of writing, as though she can interpret their mysteries with her touch. ‘So many tat
toos,’ she murmurs after a moment and then, with her enormous eyes holding mine, and a look of sweet uncertainty on her face—despite all that we’ve shared—she brings her mouth to my collarbone and kisses one of the markings there, dragging her lips along it until I can barely handle the innocence of her investigation.
‘Turn around.’ The words are dark and hoarse, jarring. She pulls away, a look of confusion on her features. As though she’s done something wrong. I shake my head, then smile; it’s tight on my face. My needs are impatient to find satiation. I am impatient. ‘This dress...’ I say, and then my smile feels more natural, as I remember the corridor at the Tate, the frustration I’d felt towards such a beautiful piece of fabric.
She lifts a single brow, but does as I say, turning away from me. The back is cut out, so it’s all her beautiful flesh, right to the curve of her arse. I find the zip there and pull it downwards. Gently. Slowly, testing myself and the limits of my patience.
The zip parts and when the cool night air connects with her flesh I feel her breathe in. My hands curve around the cheeks of her buttocks, my fingers splayed wide, and my body tense, expectant. Waiting.
I lift my fingers to her sides, then higher still, inside the dress and around the front, curving them over her breasts.
She moans softly at the contact. Her nipples are hard and tight against my palms. I bring my mouth to her neck, kissing the flesh I find there, nipping it softly with my teeth. She quivers, and I smile.
‘I liked your accent,’ she says, the words drugged and thickened by desire. It takes me a moment to realise she’s responding to our earlier line of conversation.
‘Got a thing for Irish men?’
‘Not that I know of.’
There it is again—jealousy, and then the sharp relief from it. She’s not playing with me. She has no idea that I feel this possessive desire for her.
‘I liked hearing you talk,’ she says, turning around, dislodging my hands so she can face me. She lifts her own hands to my flesh, her fingers hooking over my shoulders. ‘I like your voice, even when I don’t agree with most of what you say.’
She smiles; I smile back.
Time seems to stand still. There is just the thundering beating of passion, surrounding us, drawing us in.
She drops her hands lower on my chest, then around my back; she pushes to the tips of her toes and her lips find the hollow at my throat, and then she groans, and I understand. Her desperation, her need.
I understand because the same desires are slicing through me.
‘Not like this.’ The feelings are so good, but I need more. We’ve already come together in a corridor, and now I’m about ready to take her here, in my lounge. But I don’t want to rush this. I want to luxuriate in the certainty that she’s mine. I step away from her and pace through the apartment, turning into my palatial bedroom, hoping she’ll be right behind me.
She is and, better, she’s discarded her dress along the way. I flick the lights on. They’re bright overhead and I can see every detail of her body. I stare at her long and hard, my cock like stone in my pants. She wears only a lacy little thong.
‘Like this?’ she asks, and her asking me for permission is fucking hot. I position myself in front of the full-length mirrors and nod.
‘Yeah.’ She comes back to my body and her touch is curious as she brings her mouth to my chest and nips at me with her teeth. I stare at her in the mirror.
I can see her naked back and butt, and the wildness of her hair—hair that I have untamed with my own hands. She moves lower down my body, kneeling before me as she undoes my belt and pulls it from my pants. She moves to drop it to the ground but I reach down and retrieve it, tossing it on the bed.
‘We might need that,’ I say, and she lifts one eyebrow but says nothing.
Her fingers are shaking again as she unclips my pants, making her seem younger than she is, and less experienced. Hell, actually, I have no idea how experienced she is. Not a virgin. But beyond that?
It doesn’t matter.
She’s here because she wants to be here. She chose this. I’m not doing anything wrong.
That’s bullshit. This is wrong on so many levels. If Dean Walters knew I was about to spend the night seducing this shining star of the London Law School, Olivia could be expelled and I’d...well...it doesn’t matter what happens to me. But I wouldn’t find it easy to forgive myself for ruining her professional prospects.
Fuck it.
She wants this and I do, too. She knows the risks and she’s willing to stare them down.
That’s her choice. Still, I’m not completely blind to what she stands to lose. ‘Olivia?’
Her eyes lift to mine and my gut twists.
‘You’re sure you want this?’
Her expression is droll. ‘You seriously need to ask?’
She pushes my pants down, taking my boxer shorts with them, so that I am naked before her. As she drives my clothes down my legs, she crouches lower and I groan at the sight of her in the mirror. So sexy at my feet.
‘I’m serious.’ The words come out weighted by lust. ‘This would be a disaster for you if anyone found out.’
She lifts her eyes to my face, staring up the length of my body.
‘No one’s going to find out. And don’t think I didn’t notice you didn’t answer my question before.’
I step out of my pants and hold my hands down for her to grab. She does so, standing, her body cleaved to mine in a way that makes me impatient to possess her.
‘What question?’
‘Who is she?’ She kisses my shoulder, her tongue teasing me in circles before she moves around to my back and begins to trace her mouth over my flesh, while her fingers curve around my chest, heating me with their gentle enquiries. Her eyes meet mine in the mirror.
The sight of us burns into my mind.
She’s so small, I feel an instinctive urge to protect her. To be gentle with her. But I know she doesn’t want that. I know she feels the same aggressive, savage need to be with me as I do with her.
This is what we both want.
‘Who?’
‘The woman in the red dress.’
‘Oh.’ Did I not answer? I can’t remember. I’d been so distracted by Olivia and what lay ahead for us. ‘Someone I went to university with.’ I am dismissive. I have no interest in Cynthia.
‘Someone you’ve slept with?’
Her question catches me by surprise, but then, I suppose her curiosity is only natural. She’s weighing me up. Assessing how many women I’ve dragged into deserted corridors, perhaps?
She steps back from me and I spin around, my eyes pinning her to the spot. She swallows, such a gentle movement of her throat and yet I see it on a cellular level. Her every gesture is like a drop in the pond that turns into a tsunami by the time it reaches me.
I was conscious of it the first day I met her. I’m used to high-stress situations. I’m used to standing in packed courtrooms, giving interviews to the media, speaking with Supreme Court justices as though we are equals.
And it was Olivia Amorelli, all five and a smidgen feet of her, that made me feel strangely aware of myself. It was Olivia, sitting there with her eyes as round as plates and tumbling blonde hair, her sweet pink lips and diligent note-taking, that made every pulse point in my body shoot into overdrive.
She’s doing it again now.
‘Would that bother you?’
I reach for her, jerking her to my body. Her breath is loud, her lips parted.
‘It was a long time ago,’ she points out huskily, unknowingly drawing my attention once more to the age gap between us. ‘It would bother me if you’d brought her home tonight.’
I laugh. ‘No chance of that.’
‘I’m glad.’ Her eyes meet mine and certainty throbs in my gut. This is wrong. This is right. It just is.
* * *
Connor lifts me up as though I weigh nothing, wrapping me around his waist and dropping me onto the bed. He towers over me, his eyes, so intensely watchful, doing strange things to the rhythm of my heart. I am completely overcome by my need for him.
I turn my head to the side and my eyes land on his belt, the dark black leather intensely distracting. We might need that.
He follows my gaze and then presses his forehead to mine. ‘Have you ever been tied up?’
My eyes flare wide and I shake my head. I’m not weirded out by kinky shit, but Pietro and I had the most perfunctory sex life you can imagine, and beyond that my experience is pretty limited.
‘I...no. I...haven’t had the opportunity.’
He’s straddling me, and his weight on my hips is so pleasing. He rests on his haunches as he sits up straighter, sliding the belt from my fingers with an expression that is darkly watchful.
He loops the belt over, forming a teardrop shape, and he presses it to my shoulder, his eyes still on mine.
He runs it lower, to my breast, dragging it over a nipple that is hard and tight, screaming for him to take it into his mouth. He lifts the belt and then slaps the end on my nipple. The pain is not a bad one. It is an intense awareness that starts in my abdomen and spirals uncontrollably through my body. I curl my toes and bite my lip.
‘Are you afraid?’
I shake my head. I’m not. I’m so turned on.
He leans forward, running his tongue over the nipple he’s just slapped, rewarding it with his mouth, flicking it gently until I am incandescent with an overload of sensations. He catches one of my hands in his and then the other, bringing them to rest in front of me.
‘I have wanted to do this since the first day I met you.’
‘I thought you’ve wanted to fuck me since the first day you met me,’ I remind him of what he said in the maintenance corridor.
Her Guilty Secret Page 6
