by Lora Leigh
Before she could evade him, he jerked her to him, his head lowering, his lips stilling the rage spewing from her even as it ignited five years of desperate need. His tongue plunged into her mouth as he dragged her into his chest, his head tilting, lips slanting over hers, eating at her lips. A hoarse moan ripped from her throat at the pleasure exploding through her. Her hands flew to his shoulders, nails biting deep as his hunger, his lust, began to fuel hers.
His lips nipped at hers to force them open, his tongue plunging inside again as one hand threaded through her hair, gripped the thick strands and pulled her head back sharply.
Deeper, remorseless, the ravishment of her mouth swept through her senses as they both seemed to feed to the other the lost dreams, the hunger, the aching emptiness of the years past. A burning brand of heat raced through her as she fought to get closer, battled to purge the bond that held her within the grip of one weekend’s worth of memories. One man’s touch. This man’s hunger.
“Did Jazz please you, baby girl?” He tore his lips from hers, his voice graveled, assured. “Did you come with him until you begged him to make it stop? Did he make you hotter every time he touched you?”
The fingers in her hair held her head in place as his lips drew back from his teeth, the primal snarl on his face almost terrifying to behold.
“No…” she snapped back, hating the satisfaction that filled him. “He did it right the first time.”
He threw her away from him, barely catching her as she stumbled over a kitchen chair, righting her before he stalked to the other side of the room, his breathing harsh, fury radiating from the tenseness of his body as he kept his back to her.
“You’re going to cause me to kill a man,” he snarled. “One I grew up with, trusted with my life.” He swung back to her, spearing her with the livid depths of his eyes. “Don’t do that, baby…”
“Don’t call me that,” she bit out, her voice rough. “I’m not your baby, I’m not your anything. Not yours and not Jazz’s. The two of you can fuck each other for all I care.”
“I like your ass better,” he growled. “Now is the wrong time to lie to me, Jessie. Hate me if you have to, curse me if you need to, but don’t fucking lie to me about this.”
“You have no right to demand anything,” she yelled back, her heart pounding, her pussy weeping. She hated him. Hated everything he had done to her, made her feel, everything she couldn’t forget. She hated him. Just as fiercely as she hungered for him.
“Get out.” She was crying. She could feel the tears washing down her cheeks now, and had another reason to hate. “You didn’t want me then, and I don’t want you now.”
“Liar.” There was no heat in his voice, no anger. “I hurt you. God knows I’ve paid for it a million times over in the last five years. I lied to you and I left you. And I have no right to be here. I know all that, Jessie. But it won’t change the fact that I am back, and I won’t let you go. Not now. Not ever again.”
“And nothing will change the fact that I don’t want you here. Clean the wax out of your ears, hillbilly. Fuck off.”
His lips quirked in amusement. “I missed you, Jessie.”
“I never thought of you once.” She waved her hand dismissively, fighting the weakness filling her, the need to touch him, to be touched by him.
“Not even once?” He sighed, looking around the apartment. “That explains why you bought my camper. Why you sleep in my bed, here. Why not so much as a thread of the carpet has changed in five years. Do you dream of me, Jessie? Like I dreamed of you? Hot, deep, filling every particle of your soul until you awake drenched in sweat, aching for release?”
“And you had release, didn’t you, Slade?” She couldn’t forget that. Could never forget it. “Amy was there—”
“Amy is something we have to talk about,” he gritted out, a grimace twisting his face. “God knows we have to. I need to explain—”
“Why should you?” The shudders were ripping through her body. She didn’t want to hear explanations. She didn’t want to know what made Amy the better woman. She knew the other woman had walked away with the man who held her soul. What else mattered? “Why the fuck should you care, Slade? I wasn’t mature enough—”
“Don’t.” He shook his head, staring back at her fiercely before raking his fingers over his shortened hair. He hunched his shoulders in weariness.
“Don’t what? Remind you of what you said? What you did?” She shook her head, exhausted. “You’re right, what’s the point? It didn’t matter to you then, and it doesn’t matter to me now.”
She turned, walking away from him, fighting years of wasted dreams and a need she couldn’t destroy. She was worse than a junkie. There had been nights, just as he said, she awoke sweating, crying, reaching for him. Needing her fix.
“Take Jazz to your bed again and I’ll kill him,” he said as he moved to the front door, his eyes blazing at her in the dim light of the living room. “Don’t test me on this, Jessie.”
“Maybe I love Jazz now, Slade,” she shot back. “Five years is a long time. Maybe it’s time to let the past go.”
He turned, a slow lethal move that had her tensing warily.
“Don’t start with the damned maybes, I’ve had enough from that grinning loon out at the lake. And stay away from him, Jessie. I’ll kill him. I’ll kill any man who touches you now. Remember that.”
The door jerked open, only to slam behind him a second later, leaving her to stare at his back incredulously. She had no doubt he meant every word of it.
Chapter Eleven
Slade didn’t leave. He moved into the apartment next to her, sliding open the bedroom window, knowing any sound that came from the opposite room next to his own balcony would be clearly heard. He couldn’t leave her. He couldn’t walk away.
He sat in the chair beside his own sliding door, staring at his hands as he listened to her rage, listened to her cry. She ripped his heart out a thousand times over with her vows that she didn’t fucking care, then gave him hope each time he heard the aching hunger in her voice when she cried his name.
The offices of Rigor Construction were set outside town, the large building holding three apartments, one downstairs and two upstairs. Zack, like Slade, had built his own home even further from town, leaving the upstairs rooms free. There were no neighbors here, no reason for anyone to stand near, to hear Jessie’s agonized voice screaming out at him. He couldn’t have stood that. Couldn’t have stood for anyone else to hear her pain, to know his own.
He had left her five years before, the threat of the danger he could bring to her too overwhelming. And the operation had been left uncompleted. It was his responsibility. He had signed on. And God only knew the regret that had eaten him alive for five long years.
The wedding had gotten him in place with Kingston and Baines, then Amy had taken it a step further. She had gotten pregnant. One of the few nights he had shared her bed, and she had been waiting on him. The child had been no more to her than a ticket to push Slade deeper into the organization they were mired within. But the proof had come in. He had collected the evidence, had worked steadily to take down the men he called friends, and to keep a handle on a wife determined to get them all killed.
He had believed Cody was his child, that he knew Amy well enough to be able to trust her. He hadn’t realized how deeply involved she had become with the organization, or how it would threaten his life, and the child he claimed as his own.
God, how he had craved Jessie over the years. He had hungered with a desperation that never stilled, that only grew. He poured over the emails that bastard Jazz sent, often. Pictures. He had never imagined the other man was sleeping with her, that he was taking what Slade believed belonged to him alone.
He wiped his hands over his face as dawn peeked over the horizon, realizing that Jessie’s sobs had stilled and at some point she must have fallen asleep. He prayed she was asleep. One of them needed some rest, and Slade knew that until Jessie was his again, rest wo
uld be only a dim memory.
He faced a battle in getting Jessie back and he knew it. Jazz and the others would stand aside, not so much because they wanted to, more because he had no intention of backing down. Life had been a living hell every minute he had spent away from Jessie. He wasn’t staying away from her now.
The thought of that separation was a separate, aching bitterness inside him. He had done his part for his country and destroyed his own happiness in the process. Through the grief and his determination to complete the operation as quickly as possible, he hadn’t paid enough attention to the danger Amy was involving herself in. She was supposed to be his backup, his marriage was his ticket into the organization, but Amy had wanted more. She had seen it as a means to the power and the money he hadn’t known she craved. It was a hunger he had overlooked right until the night her lover took them over an embankment and killed them both. The same night Kingston and Baines had been arrested.
Slade had nearly died that night. It had been Amy’s job to call in the backup team of agents when he got into trouble. Instead, Amy was no place to be found. She had warned her lover, and with his help stolen nearly a million dollars in cash before attempting to escape.
The only person who cried at her funeral had been Cody. He was barely four, and though Amy hadn’t been the best mother, she had been all Cody had known. Slade sighed wearily, shaking his head at the thought of his boy. Cody might not have his blood, but he was still his kid. He had raised Cody, loved him, given up his soul in the operation that had conceived him. He couldn’t let him go.
How would Jessie feel about him though?
He dragged himself from the chair, slipped out onto his balcony before jumping the short distance to Jessie’s. There, he unlocked the balcony door again, punched in the code to the alarm and then stood staring at her, soaking in the sight of the woman who had tormented him for five years.
He couldn’t stay this morning, he had to head back to Amy’s parents house and check on Cody before heading out to the house he had kept when he left town. The place needed opening and airing out before he and Cody moved into it.
Stepping carefully through the room, he only meant to check on her, but when he stepped to the bed, he felt the pain that wracked his chest. She was wearing that fucking shirt and sweat pants he had given her to wear home five years before. Both were faded with age, holes had been worn in the knees, but they wrapped around her, holding her as he couldn’t.
She was lying on top of the blankets, her cheeks flushed, her pink lips parted and her dark hair spread around her head like a halo. Damn, she was prettier than ever. A soft, sexy little kitten that fit his body perfectly.
Slade knelt beside her, careful not to awaken her, his fingers moving to that glorious spread of hair, feeling its softness, luxuriating in the silken feel of it. He was a weak man. He had known that years ago when he had been forced to walk away from her. He had gotten the hell out of Loudoun as fast as he could, knowing that if he stayed much longer he would risk both their lives.
But God, he had missed her. Losing her had been like losing a limb, losing his soul. It had torn a hole through his spirit that still bled with pain, with aching hunger. But he was back now, and Jessie belonged to him. Fuck Jazz, Zack, Ron and whoever else thought they could keep him away from her. He had lived on dreams of her, on aching fantasies and the prayer that he would return to her.
He leaned toward her, his gaze captivated by her lips, drawn to her more now than he had ever been before. While she slept, her lips parted as she breathed deeply, he allowed his own to feather over them. Pillowy satin. Damp heat. The moan he held back shuddered through his body as he let himself settle further against her, kissing her like the treasure she was, the need for control tearing his muscles apart.
Until her lips parted further. A soft moan welled from her throat as she turned to him, her arm curling around his neck.
“Slade.” The whispery sigh shattered his control.
His tongue slid past her lips, tangled with hers, and for the first time in five years he knew life. Heat exploded inside his body, pouring to his cock, hardening it instantly as her hand curved behind his neck while the other went searching for his abdomen. His hands clenched in her hair as he fought for his sanity, to confine his caresses to the kiss alone. And the kiss itself was paradise. They sipped at each other, lips, tongues and barely contained moans feeding into each other until Slade found himself stretched out on the big bed with her, holding her close as the taste of her filled his senses.
He licked at her lips, pulling back just enough to allow her little pink tongue to follow him, to lick back at him, to sink inside his mouth as a growl of need tore from his throat. His hands were beneath the shirt, shaping one firm, nipple-hardened breast while her hand tugged at his shirt, fought with his belt and her hunger grew.
He could feel it, with each second the kiss grew deeper, her hands more frantic until she finally tore the belt loose and began to struggle with his jeans. His cock was throbbing in anticipation, his muscles tense, so tight they ached as he fought to hold back. But she was so sweet, like nectar, like the soft warm syrup he knew was gathering on her pussy.
Did she still wax? The thought had his hands trembling as he restrained the need to check and see. She was still more asleep than awake. He should be shot for taking advantage as he was, for letting her fingers tear open the snap to his jeans, lower the zipper and reach in for the thick erection straining beneath his underwear.
His tongue plunged forcefully into her mouth as her fingers wrapped around the heated shaft. His thumb and forefinger plucked at her nipple as the other hand tugged at her hair until her head fell back and he lost himself in her.
He was only barely aware of his hands jerking at the sweatpants moments later, pushing them over her thighs as she fully released his straining cock. They were twisting against each other, lips stealing any protest she could have thought to make, though he was fairly certain the nails digging into his back had nothing to do with rejection and everything to do with the lust building between them.
He kicked his sneakers from his feet as her hands jerked and pulled at his jeans. Frantic cries were echoing in her throat as he finally managed to get one of her sweetly shaped legs free. The damp heat of her pussy pulled at him almost as desperately as her fingers did.
“Jessie,” he groaned her name, his lips moving to her neck. “For God’s sake. Wake up. Wake up, baby.”
“Fuck you. Let me sleep.” She was moving beneath him as he moved over her, her hands pushing his shirt out of the way as he felt the buttons tearing from the one she wore. “Finish it. Don’t leave me hurting again, Slade. For God’s sake, finish it this time.”
She was awake. Her eyes were dark slits, staring up at him. He moved between her thighs, his cock nudging, sliding through the slick cleft of her pussy as her thighs parted for him.
Slade gritted his teeth, positioned himself at the entrance and began to push inside her. She was tight. He stared down at her, watching her expression as she struggled to take him, feeling her hips lift, writhe beneath his. She gasped, her head tossing on the pillow while he pushed in further.
“You’re as tight as you were the first time, baby girl,” he growled. “Sucking at my dick like a hungry little mouth.”
Her cheeks flushed further as her pussy grew slicker.
“You like that, don’t you, baby? That little bit of pain biting into your cunt.” He pushed deeper inside her, lowering one arm to lift her leg higher along his hips, hearing her whimpering cry as the tight little muscles struggled to take him.
“There, sweet baby,” he whispered. “Tell me what you want. You want me to take you bit by slow bit? Or do you want it all at once? Tell me, baby. Do you want more heat?”
“More…” Her cry had his teeth clenching. “Oh God, Slade. Take me hard. I want it all…”
She arched as he slid back, then her scream echoed around him when he tore inside her with one hard, furious
stroke. He stilled, embedded in her to the hilt, his head falling to the pillow at her shoulder. He felt the delicate tissue ripple around him, enclose him, suckling him with a firm, ultra-tight grip that had his balls drawing up tight to the base of his cock.
“God, you’re hot.” He bit at her shoulder then licked the little wound as her hands scratched at his back. “So hot and sweet.” He pulled back slowly, an inch at a time, relishing the flex and clench of her pussy as she fought to hold him inside her. “Want to do it again, baby? Hard and deep?”
“Again.” She was panting, her hips jerking as he felt her tightening beneath him, reaching for her orgasm.
He chuckled hoarsely. “Close, aren’t you, baby girl? One more hard push will do it for you, won’t it?”
He didn’t give it to her. He worked his cock inside her instead, his hips pushing, twisting, his erection digging into the clenched tissue as she moaned and cried beneath him. She was as fist-tight, as hot and desperate as a virgin. She may have taken a lover, but she hadn’t found what only he could give her. What he had taught her to take from his body alone.
“Look at me, Jessie,” he growled as her eyes closed. “Look, baby.” He reared back on his knees, lifting her hips as he pulled back. His cock dripped with her juices as her eyes focused, widened and he felt her pussy clutching harder at the head of his cock. “There you go. Watch me take you, sweetheart. Watch and know who this sweet little body belongs to.”
He slid in slowly, watching as the soft folds parted for the thick shaft sinking inside her. He was forced to clench his teeth against the pleasure, the need to fuck her until they were both screaming in release.
But he couldn’t. Not yet. In this moment he had to reinforce the knowledge that she belonged to him. Only him.
“Don’t torture me, Slade.” Her plea nearly broke his control. “Oh God, please fuck me. Please…”
“Easy, baby.” He was embedded to the hilt again, his balls pressing against the curves of her ass as her clit peeked out, swollen and pink. He stared down at the point where he possessed her, feeling her milking his cock, aching to come.
