by Lora Leigh
“Did your father have any suspects?” Travis asked, attempting to pull his attention back to the subject.
“Several,” she admitted as she turned back to him. “He just hadn’t given me names. I was still being trained. Certain information MI5 was hesitant for me to have. Father followed those dictates.”
“Did you have any suspects?” he asked.
Lilly paused at that.
“Lilly, now isn’t the time to hold anything back,” he warned her.
Her arms crossed over her breasts defensively.
“There was no one person that tied into all the accounts targeted,” she answered, her expression mutinous. “My original suspicions were way off base because of that.”
“And they were?” Travis pressed.
“My uncle, Desmond, and my brother. Other than my father, they had access to the Harrington funds that were targeted but not to the other targeted accounts.”
“Your brother Jared works for a very exclusive law firm,” he pointed out. “The clients targeted were also represented by that firm.”
Jared Harrington as well as his uncle Desmond were still suspects as far as the Elite Ops were concerned.
“Yes, but not all of them. At least three other families who had no such connections were targeted as well,” Lilly said. “Besides, Jared wouldn’t have done such a thing. He especially would have never killed Father.”
“Yet you suspected him of embezzling,” he pointed out. “He and your father argued often about the business as well as about the title.”
“Jared wouldn’t kill Father…”
“You’re defending a man who essentially disowned you.” Anger surged through Travis at her defense of the other man. “Perhaps he wants you dead, Lilly. With you out of the way, he doesn’t have to share the Harrington inheritance.”
“Stop.” He could see the pain glittering in her eyes now. “Jared wouldn’t do it. I know he didn’t because Father and I eliminated him and Uncle Desmond as suspects.”
Travis’s lips thinned. As far as he was concerned, Jared and Desmond Harrington were still at the top of the list.
“Stop!” She lifted her hand as his lips parted to argue further. “I’m certain I can easily prove Jared isn’t involved. But to prove it, I’ll first have to gain access to the family financial vault. It should be easy enough. I know Desmond and Jared share the online financial vault. I’ll see what I can find.”
But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt to do so. Travis moved to her, the need to comfort her, to ease the confusion and pain glittering in her eyes, was overwhelming.
“Lilly.” He drew her against him, his hands caressing her slender hips. “We eliminate Desmond and Jared and then go on from there. But make sure they have no contacts with anyone listed in that investigator’s report on the past six years of your life.”
His money was still on Desmond, but Jared was in the running.
“Check files and financial reports Desmond brought with him.” He wanted her to find the information Desmond had in the office. “Go through the online vault. Get the account numbers and I can go from there. We’ll do this together, love.”
He reached up, his thumb caressing her trembling lower lip. “You know how to do this.”
“Because you trained me?” Breathy, filled with sensual awareness now, the sound of her voice stroked over his senses.
“I trained you,” he agreed.
“You protected me.” She licked at his thumb, tempting him.
“I’ll always try to protect you.” His head lowered.
He needed a taste of her. A touch. For just a moment he needed to fill his senses with her.
Though he knew a moment would never be enough.
CHAPTER 7
IT WAS ALMOST A DREAM.
Lilly stepped into Travis’s arms, felt them come around her, felt his lips slant across hers and the world around her go up in flames.
She couldn’t have this man, and she knew it, but she knew she already belonged to him. She had somehow always belonged to him.
Lifting herself to his kiss, Lilly let her hands grip his hair, pulling at the coarse strands to deepen the kiss as she felt a raging hunger begin to burn inside her.
That wildness she remembered fighting all her life took control, she became a woman who instinctively knew what she needed and who she needed it from.
Never had arousal taken her like this.
Pulling her head back, she stared up at him, her breathing heavy, rough. “You were my first, weren’t you?” She knew it, sensed it.
“I was your only,” he growled, possessiveness raging in his tone and fulfilling some need she hadn’t known existed within her. A knowledge, that final certainty, that she hadn’t been the woman her uncle’s report alleged.
His head lowered again before she could voice any further questions, his lips took hers again, his tongue pushing past her lips, stroking over hers and locking her in a battle of desire that she knew she had no hope of winning. A battle she didn’t want to win. It was a triumph she wanted to share.
She was only his woman. She had shared herself with no other man, just as she had known instinctively, but the woman inside had needed more proof. She had needed the verification that only one man could give her.
Black Jack.
Her hands fell from his hair to his shoulders, then the front of his T-shirt. Pulling, tugging, she dragged at the material until it came free of his jeans.
He shrugged his jacket away, allowing the cool leather to fall to the floor before his hands returned to push her denim jacket from her shoulders.
She wasn’t moving her arms. She wanted that shirt off his back. She wanted to feel his flesh, naked and hot, against her palms.
He tore off the t-shirt then returned to her jacket, forcing her arms down and pulling the denim over it to reveal the sleeveless camishirt she had on underneath.
The slender straps cleared her head as he jerked the material from her waist, up, baring her breasts, and tossed the top aside. He filled his palms with the swollen curves, his thumbs raking over the hard tips of her nipples and sending fingers of raw sensation to attack her womb, to heat her clit.
Lilly arched into the touch, a gasp passing her lips as her back met the wall, and her palm flattened against the bare skin of his chest.
Curling her fingers, Lilly raked them down his chest, just enough to feel the flex of muscles beneath, to relish the heat and hardness of his corded body.
Her fingers rasped to the band of his jeans where she found the snap and zipper of his pants and quickly released them.
She couldn’t touch him enough. She couldn’t get enough of his kiss. She wanted to feel all of him against her at once. She wanted all the pleasure at once. She wanted to feel alive, something she hadn’t felt for six months.
Alive. Living. A woman that had no part of her missing.
In Travis’s arms, there was only the woman, there was no past, no danger, and there was nothing to fear.
“God help me, I missed you,” he groaned as his lips tore from hers and moved to her jaw, her neck. “Missed seeing you, touching you.”
A moan echoed from her chest as her heart tightened in a realization that she had missed him as well; even though she hadn’t remembered him, she had missed him, achingly.
He was making up for whatever time they had lost though. His hands cupped her breasts, lifted them. His head descended, his tongue licking over the tight thrust of her nipples as shards of sensation began to tear over her nerve endings.
It was incredible. It was the fantasy that followed her when she slept, the one she awakened from, her body dampened with sweat.
This was Travis, and denying him wasn’t something she could allow herself to do. Not this pleasure. Not this incredible, blinding heat.
Her fingers stroked into his jeans and found bare flesh. No tighty-whiteys, no boxers, just the hard, thick thrust of his cock pushing into her hand. The wide crest was hot to her touch
, slightly damp. The heat of it sent a rush of pleasure flexing through her pussy as she felt his hand smooth from her breast, down her stomach.
His fingers worked her jeans loose as her hands stroked and memorized the iron-hard width and length of his cock. The more she touched him, the more she wanted.
Looking down, Lilly lost her breath as she watched his cheeks draw in, watched him suckle at the hard tip of her nipple. His eyes were slitted, staring up at her, the spark of green in the golden brown more intense now, glittering in his dark face.
Her knees were getting weak. Standing wasn’t as easy as it had been when she first walked into the cabin, or when she had first seen him in Hagerstown. It made her wonder what she had felt when she had first met him, six years before.
Just when she doubted she could remain upright, his head lifted. He licked her nipple, first one, then the other. His expression was tight with hunger, with sensual pleasure, as he stared up at her, need glowing in his eyes.
Then he straightened to his full height, lifted her in his arms, and strode to the large bed with its old-fashioned quilt and large fluffy pillows.
Her head fell back on the pillow as Travis’s hand moved beneath her back and cupped her shoulders, pressing her breasts firmly into the heat and hardness of his chest as his lips moved over her neck and breasts in heated, nipping kisses.
Arching beneath him, Lilly felt her blood boiling as pleasure heated her flesh and left her trembling. Within seconds he was moving down her body, removing her boots, his own. He shed his jeans, then smoothed hers down her legs, leaving her dressed in nothing but the contour-hugging soft cotton panties she wore beneath the jeans.
Standing at the bottom of the bed, he let her look her fill. He stood before her as her gaze roamed his hard body and paused at the jutting length of his cock.
Before he could come down to her, Lilly was on her knees. She saw the surprise in his face, though how he could truly be surprised she couldn’t explain. Surely he felt the wildness rising inside her, the hunger burning deep and hot?
Travis watched as she came to her knees like a sensual, sexual little cat. Her back arched, her head lifted as she crawled to him, her green eyes narrowed as she licked her swollen, sexy lips.
She was the most exquisite sight he had ever seen. The sexiest thing he had ever known.
His breath caught as she came level with his dick, her tongue peeking out, stroking over the flared head with a hot, luscious lick.
“Fuck!” One hand buried itself in her hair as the other caught the base of his hard erection.
He saw it in her now, felt it in her. She was as wild as the wind, the sexy, sensual creature he had known existed inside her.
Holding her firmly, he restrained that fire, controlled it, and watched it burn brighter inside her as her lips opened over the thick crest and took it into the burning heat of her mouth.
Clenching his teeth, Travis only barely held back the groan of complete ecstasy as the inexperienced wonder on her face held him entranced.
Innocent though she might be, she knew how to drive him crazy. Her tongue stroked around the too-sensitive head as she sucked at his cock hungrily. The heated licks were a hot counterpoint to the firm sucks, to the warm moisture he was delving into as she took as much of his dick as she could into the wet, velvet interior of her mouth.
“Hell yes.” He couldn’t hold back the growl, the hoarse rasp of complete pleasure that tore from his chest. “Damn you, Lilly. Your mouth is like pure pleasure.”
It was more than pleasure. There were no words that he could find for the exquisite sensations racing from his cock, to his balls, and up his spine. It was like being immersed in pure sensation, pure ecstasy. Undiluted with worry, danger, or upcoming missions. It was a pleasure that built upon itself, that intensified and filled him with a driving need for nothing but the pure heat of her body.
His thighs strained with the effort it took to hold back. He could feel perspiration building at his temple, on his shoulders. Heat surrounded him, burned through him. The effort it took to hold back, to allow her the time she needed…
“Fuck yes!” Her head lifted from his cock, slid down the shaft to the tight sac below where her tongue licked and stroked, played and wreaked havoc on his control.
Damn, she was making him crazy. Rapid-fire pulses of sensation raced through his dick, tightened through his balls, and tore across his nerve endings as he fought to enjoy it for a few more seconds.
Just another lick. Just another kiss of those satiny lips. Both his hands went to her head, his fingers threading through her hair. Short, agonizing strokes of his cock past her lips tested that final limit of his control as he fucked her sweet mouth, slow and easy.
He was on the edge. Holding back his release was nearly impossible but he had no intention of allowing it to end here. When he came, he had every intention of coming deep and hard inside her tight little pussy rather than the suckling heat of her seductive little mouth.
Ignoring her startled mewl of protest, he forced himself to remove his cock from the ecstatic grip she had on it.
“Not yet, minx,” he growled, as she gripped his thighs and attempted to pull the hardened flesh back to her honeyed lips.
Gripping her shoulders, he tried to ease her back onto the bed. That wicked feminine smile that drove him insane crossed her lips. She resisted him, refusing to ease back.
Travis’s eyes narrowed.
“I’m going to taste that sweet pussy before this goes any further,” he informed her, his tone rougher than he intended. “I’m going to fuck you with my tongue, suck that hard little clit, and feel you unraveling to my mouth before I fuck you.”
Her gaze glittered, the green flaming as her face flushed with heightened arousal.
“Sounds like a rather tall order.” Still on her knees, still so tempting, so seductive and demanding, she blew his fucking mind.
“Sounds like a plan to me.” Before she could evade him he had her on her back, struggling halfheartedly against him, a light, arousal-filled laugh leaving her lips as he forced his way between her thighs.
Before she could push him back, before she could distract him, he wedged her thighs farther apart, then laid his lips and tongue to the sweetest honeyed flesh he had ever known.
Her juices were slick and hot, like the finest syrup, glazing his lips and tongue as he bestowed kiss after kiss to the intimate folds. He sucked her clit into his mouth, tasted, laved it with his tongue, and lost himself in the intoxicating taste and heat of her.
Lilly stared at the ceiling, dazed, submerged in sensations that washed over her with the force of a tidal wave. Spreading her thighs wider, she tangled her fingers in his hair and lifted her head, watched and became mesmerized by the complete sexual absorption on his face.
This was paradise. It was pure ecstasy. His tongue licked around her clit, flicked the tender bud, causing her to jerk with an excess of sensations.
“Travis.” The little cry came unbidden from her lips as pleasure raced through her system. It wasn’t confined to the area he was kissing so intimately. The pleasure tore across her nerve endings and invaded every cell of her body.
Perspiration sheened his flesh as well as hers, as her juices glazed his lips.
He parted the swollen folds with his fingers, and his tongue licked, laved, loved. It circled the clenched opening to her pussy, flicked inside only to retreat as her hips jerked closer in a silent plea for more. Always more. She could never get enough.
She arched beneath him, her hips lifting to his lips, watching as slowly, so slowly, he licked to the aching center of her pussy, then, slow and easy, pushed his tongue inside her.
A long desperate wail left her lips. Her fingers tightened in his hair, trying to force him closer as she felt his tongue inside her taking quick shallow licks that stroked and caressed nerve endings she hadn’t been aware she possessed.
It was incredible.
Heat surged inside her, built around her.
White-hot, blinding pleasure exploded inside her with a force that had her arching tight and hard to his lips, her pussy flexing around his tongue as she cried out his name, held on to him, relinquished control and gave herself to him.
She was still flying. Ecstasy still held her in its grip when she felt him move between her thighs and thrust inside her with a fierce, hard stroke.
The forceful, immediate stretching of tender muscles, the pleasure-pain that tore through her, brought her higher. Shock widened her eyes, rapture tightened her body, as he pulled back and began working inside the tight grip of her climaxing pussy with powerful strokes that pushed her deeper into ecstasy, flung her into a white-hot center of pure pulsing sensation that refused to release her.
Travis was dying. Sweat dripped down his face as he buried his cock inside her to the hilt on the fourth stroke. The orgasm that held her in its grip tightened her pussy to a near-painful snugness that had his release threatening to explode out of his control.
Pushing inside her again, he stilled, grimaced, and fought not to come. Hell, he was going to come. His balls were so tight they were painful, the sensitivity in his cock was near agonizing. He wanted to fuck her forever but he knew if he didn’t come soon he was going to die of a stroke.
Her pussy rippled around him, the ultratight muscles clenched and gripping, milking him with ever-increasing little tremors that stole his mind.
He was lost in a world of such sensual pleasure that nothing mattered but the moment and the woman. He was bound to her, more than just physically, more than just his cock buried inside the tightest, sweetest pussy he had ever known. He was bound to her soul, and he knew there was no way to escape.
Flexing his hips, he moved, dragging the fiercely throbbing length of his shaft back before thrusting inside her. Slowly. He couldn’t go faster, not yet. One wrong move and he was gone. He’d never manage to feel her pulsing around his cock in release again, he’d spill into her without thought.
Without thought.
