Deadly Secrets

by Ann Christopher

  “Listen, Jayne, I swear that I— Jayne? Jayne?”

  Her picture disappeared.

  He stared at the phone, taking a couple bewildered seconds to realize she’d hung up on him.

  35

  A few minutes later, Jayne slumped onto her sofa, set her emergency tub of cream cheese frosting, which was still sealed (for now), on the coffee table and tried to think of a way she could eat some of it without totally ruining her diet.

  Option 1: peel back the aluminum foil top and lick the icing off that. Couldn’t be more than a couple points at most.

  Option 2: lick the top, have a few spoonfuls and throw the rest away after first pouring bleach on it so she wouldn’t later be tempted to pull it out of the trash. Let’s call that…five points.

  Option 3: eat the whole freaking tub right now and call it a night. One million points.

  Damn Kerry Randolph. This was all his fault. Asshole.

  So what was it going to be, Jayne?

  Right choice or wrong choice?

  If that asshole were here, he’d predict that she’d make the right choice. Because he thought she was some kind of saint.

  Ha. Little did he know.

  You know what? Screw him. She lunged, picking up the tub and spoon—

  Knock-knock-knock.

  She froze, her head launching into a who the hell? rant even as her thumping heart knew exactly who it was. Her protective brain fired off a command for her to ignore it, but no other part of her body listened.

  She hurried to the door, pausing when she got there. Listened. Debated.

  “I know you’re there, Jayne,” came his muffled voice.

  Wonderful. Now she was predictable on top of everything else.

  “Go home, Randolph,” she called.

  His long-suffering sigh was audible through the door.

  “Kerry. I want to talk to you.”

  Once again, her head said no, but her criminally foolish heart somehow commandeered her arm and forced it to open the door.

  And there he was, looming on her doorstep, his face as shadowy as the night sky and his motives just as opaque.

  They stared at each other.

  His eyes flashed with dangerous emotions, whatever they were, and skimmed her from head to toe. By the time that impenetrable gaze returned to her face, she was excruciatingly aware of the cold night air against her cheeks, the thin silk of her robe and her beaded nipples beneath the lace of her nightie. When she felt the slow curl of desire in her belly, as stealthy and unwelcome as a rattlesnake at a picnic, she looked away and stepped aside to let him in.

  Maybe it was a good thing he’d come.

  Now she could give him that big piece of her mind and send him forever on his way. Now was her chance to remember what was wrong and what could never be right between them, no matter how much she might wish things were different.

  “What’s that?” He pointed to the icing and spoon clutched in her hot little hands as he brushed past her and headed for the living room.

  “What?” Caught, she ducked her head and tried not to look like a fox with a chicken dangling from her snout. “Oh. It’s nothing.”

  “Looks like icing.” He took off his jacket and tossed it on the chair. “Thought you were watching your points.”

  “I am watching my points,” she said, distracted by his clothes, which consisted entirely of a white T-shirt and blue and green plaid flannel pajama bottoms. “That’s why I didn’t eat it.”

  “What’s with the spoon?” he asked silkily.

  Suppressing a curse, she put icing and spoon back on the coffee table and crossed her arms. Bad move, because it made the two halves of her robe separate across her girls. Something perverse inside her noted the way his greedy gaze tracked the movement and rejoiced in his attention.

  “I thought I might need to the spoon, but I didn’t. Because I didn’t eat the icing.”

  “Indeed.” His eyes lit with amusement. “So you’re telling me you can resist temptation. I believe you. Too bad you won’t extend me the same courtesy.”

  She hitched up her chin. She was not the bad guy here. “You told me you shouldn’t drink. Next thing I know, I see you with an empty bottle. How am I supposed to know whether you drank it or not?”

  “Come here.” His throaty voice was every bit as sensual as the way her robe felt as it brushed her thighs. “There’s one sure way for you to find out.”

  Oh, but she’d already sniffed him out. Noted the minty freshness of his breath as he came inside, the bleachy freshness of his T-shirt and the complete absence of the pore-permeating yeasty smell that was always a dead giveaway with her father.

  “I believe you,” she said sourly. “A thousand pardons. But if you don’t want to drink, why keep a bottle of Jack around? And what’re you doing here in your pajamas? I don’t appreciate you just showing up without calling.”

  “I’m here because one second we were having an important conversation, and the next second I’m staring at a dead phone in my hand. I’m in my pajamas because I was in a hurry to get here and find out what the hell happened. And I don’t appreciate you hanging up on me right when I’m being raw and honest with you.”

  “You don’t appreciate?” she cried. “Well, I don’t appreciate this roller coaster you’ve got me on!”

  He went deathly still. “Excuse me?”

  Frustration crept into her voice. She didn’t care if it made her weak and pathetic, and that was her entire problem in a nutshell. There was a direct correlation between how much time she spent with him—how much she wanted him—and how much of her mind she lost.

  At this rate? There’d be nothing left of her good sense by the end of the week.

  “I can’t even… It’s like you look at me and I can’t think straight. I don’t know what I believe when I’m with you. All I can think about is that I’m with you.”

  His breath hitched.

  “I’m way too old for this, Randolph! I’m thirty-six. I don’t do drama anymore. If I want to have sex with someone, I do. If I don’t, I don’t. I work hard, I watch movies, I eat and count points, and that’s my life. I don’t need to feel off kilter. I didn’t ask for this.”

  He stared at her, doing his whole sphinx routine.

  His silence only made her more manic, as though someone had attached a fire hose to her mouth and used it to spray her words as quickly and forcefully as possible.

  “You have the impression that I know right from wrong, but I don’t,” she continued. “I don’t! Because if I did, I wouldn’t be spending time with you and wishing I could spend more time with you. I wouldn’t be jeopardizing my career. And don’t kid yourself—that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m thinking about hooking up with my confidential informant. You think people in my office do that? Well, they don’t!”

  Something in his expression softened. “Jayne…”

  “Don’t you Jayne me! Ten minutes with you and I’m sounding like my mother. ‘You’re not going to drink that, are you? You’re not drunk, are you?’ Well, I don’t want this, Randolph. I didn’t sign up for this!”

  His face twisted into a rabid snarl.

  That was her only warning.

  “You think I got a vote?” His unleashed voice was like the crack of thunder inside her apartment walls. “You think I don’t know that you’re way too good for me? You think I don’t know that I’ll never deserve you? You think I would upset you if I could think of a way to breathe when you’re not there?”

  A dizzying combination of fear and jubilation made her heart stop. “What does that mean?”

  He took a shuddering breath and reined it all in. Everything except the feverish light in his eyes.

  “It means this is where we are now, Jayne. This is what we have to deal with. It means I would give Kareem another year of my life if I could have a shot with you.” Shaky laugh. “Hell, I’d give him that for one night with you.”

  She gaped at him, running it all back through her
stunned mind.

  What?

  What did he just say?

  Blinking, she tried to boot up her dry mouth.

  “Kerry…”

  “You know what?” His shoulders slumped with what looked like sudden and complete exhaustion. He grabbed his jacket. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be here.”

  “What?”

  “Bye, Jayne.”

  He headed for the door.

  For one arrested moment, Jayne didn’t have the first freaking idea what to do.

  Then her heart sprang into action.

  She sidestepped, blocking him.

  His eyes widened with surprise. Darkened with determination.

  The next thing she knew, her hands were gripping the soft cotton of his T-shirt (ah, God, his belly felt hard and hot beneath, a fantasy of coiled strength and straining muscle) and his fingers were flexing low on her hips.

  Everything crystallized inside that one breathless moment. Her vulnerability. His need.

  Their mutual abandon.

  He ducked his head.

  She turned her head just as quickly, denying him her mouth for a few more seconds.

  His entire body clenched with unmistakable frustration. “Jayne…”

  “Who is Kira Gregory to you?” She kept her voice to a whisper because she didn’t do vulnerable well. Hell, she wished she could force him to answer without ever hearing her ask such a clingy question. “I need to know.”

  He hesitated. His torso heaved as she felt him leash his passion and hold it with an iron grip. He pulled back just enough to look her dead in the eye.

  He didn’t blink. Didn’t waver.

  “She was the one bright spot in the darkest period in my life. She was a good way for me to stick it to Kareem.”

  She searched his face, determined to uncover any bullshit, and found none.

  “Are you in love with her?”

  “No.”

  When she said nothing else, his hands shifted lower, massaging her ass as they pulled her close enough for his rigid erection to rub against the tender spot between her legs. Jayne gasped as her face contorted with gathering ecstasy.

  “I don’t think about her now, and she’s not here between us,” he said. “So don’t bring her here. Okay?”

  Jayne nodded as her body drifted closer to pure sensation. “And who am I to you?”

  No hesitation this time.

  “My future.”

  Her heart thudded to a stop.

  “Don’t you break my heart,” she warned. “Not ever.”

  “I’d die first,” he said, lowering his head to kiss her.

  36

  Kerry had experienced dozens of first times with women during his life. Some had been drunken mistakes. Others were frantic and thrilling. All were exciting.

  But this, here, with Jayne, was the first time he’d ever felt two sensations at the same time: the wild euphoria of finally touching the woman he’d desperately wanted and the profound peace and comfort of coming home.

  Home.

  Jayne.

  Her lips were ripe and insistent, as hungry for him as he was for her. Those lips kissed and rubbed. Sucked and nipped. Parted for him, accepting the full sweep of his tongue so he could learn everything about her. Her mouth was hot and slick, and she tasted tart, like the wine she’d drunk before he arrived.

  And he…

  His mouth produced throaty noises he’d never heard before. Low hums and growls. The broken sounds of a man grateful to finally get what he needed after wasting a lifetime on wanting the wrong thing.

  The delicious taste of her was one thing.

  The voluptuous feel of her was something else again.

  The fine strands of her hair wrapped around his fingers. The velvety smoothness of her cheeks and throat. The slippery whisper of her robe as he brushed it off her shoulders, down her arms and out of his way.

  Her body.

  Her body…her body…her body.

  Fuuuck.

  He broke free of her mouth and buried his face in her neck, taking a minute to breathe in her skin’s thrilling take on some fruit he could never identify, work a breath through his heaving lungs, get his hands on her and wrap his mind around the fact that he’d lived long enough to get this lucky.

  Nothing in the world could be softer or more addictive than her skin, and that was only the beginning of the superlatives. She was the tallest woman he’d ever been with, but also the strongest and the most feminine. This was no little pixie who’d break if he thrust too enthusiastically when the fucking got good. This was a goddess with more titties, ass, hips and thighs than he knew what to do with.

  His hands overflowed with her. No matter how he strained to reach it all…touch it all…taste it all…there was always a little bit more of her that remained maddeningly out of reach. Her body challenged him in the hottest ways imaginable.

  If his dick got any harder for her, it would probably split open.

  And oh, the things he was going to do with her.

  As soon as he regained control of his spiraling sensations, trembling hands and shallow breath.

  He lifted his head, intending to kiss her again, to lose himself in that mouth, but when he caught a glimpse of her face, rosy and passion-stained, a hot surge of emotion caught him by surprise.

  “Jayne?” he said, bewildered, a thousand unspeakable questions trapped in his throat.

  Had she known it would be like this?

  Would she kindly stop unraveling him from the inside out, and also—would she never stop?

  Did she know he could never go back to life without her after this?

  She opened her heavy-lidded eyes, met his gaze and, being Jayne, understood it all. She stroked his cheeks and gave him a sensual half-smile full of secrets, promises and desire.

  Everything was all right here, in his arms.

  The answer to all his questions.

  His sunshine and moon. His freaking universe.

  This was real. She was real.

  They were real.

  He shook his head and faltered, his constricted heart refusing to beat when she looked at him like that.

  “Shhh,” she said, licking her way into his mouth again. “It’s okay.”

  They kissed long and deep, until his lips felt swollen and his thrusting hips couldn’t wait. Especially when he held her ass tighter and she began gasping and then crying out with every surge, and it seemed like she might come before he even got her naked.

  “I need to be inside you.” That guttural voice didn’t belong to him, did it? “Now.”

  “Here.” She backed him up to the sofa and pressed his shoulders. “Sit.”

  He managed to focus long enough to give the sofa a fleeting glance and dismiss it as a possibility.

  “Forget it. I can’t do what I need to do with you on that sofa.”

  Wicked amusement flickered in her eyes. “Big words.”

  He took her hand and pressed it, hard, to his dick.

  Those bright eyes widened. She traded in her amusement for an appreciative gasp. “Bedroom. Now.”

  She led him down the darkened hallway, whereupon he discovered it wasn’t that easy to let her out of his arms, even for a mission this important. So he caught her from behind and reeled her back in, with one hand cupping her heavy breast from underneath and the other low on her belly, fingertips just grazing her pussy.

  “Hold up,” he said.

  Sharp cry from Jayne, whose hips undulated. Her arm, meanwhile, reached back to hold his neck, and her head tipped to the side to welcome his lips to her throat.

  He made like a vampire, kissing, sucking and nipping until she writhed against him.

  “I thought we were going to the bedroom,” she said.

  “We are. But I want you to come for me first.”

  “Kerry.”

  “I can’t wait to hear how you sound,” he said in her ear.

  He touched the engorged nub between her plump thighs—ah, shit
, she was soaking wet; he could feel her cream through her nightie and panties—and it didn’t take much.

  He rubbed.

  She pumped her hips, murmuring something unintelligible but urgent.

  He bit the tender slope between neck and shoulder.

  Jayne flew apart with a choked version of his name on her lips. The sound was music to his ears. The best he’d ever heard. Her body stiffened and jackknifed, freezing inside her pleasure. One beat passed…two…three…and then she slowly slackened. Exhaled a breath. He held her tight while she rode it out, his hand sliding up to rub over her nipples and give her more sensation because she pleased him so much.

  “Well,” she said when she’d caught her breath. “That was a good start.”

  He burst into startled laughter, squeezing her breasts and rubbing her pussy again. Her body spasmed with rippling aftershocks. She let out an involuntary mewl as her sharp nails scratched his neck.

  “Take it easy on me, okay?” she said. “I had no idea you were such an animal.”

  Dissent rumbled in his chest.

  Christ. Now she had him growling. He’d be King Kong in a minute.

  “If you weren’t so beautiful, I wouldn’t be such an animal.”

  He inched his fingers up…up…under the bottom of her little nightie to the edge of her panties and the skin underneath. She was hot and slick, her flesh plump, her fragrance ripe and earthy. He stroked her again—“Kerry!”—and withdrew his fingers so he could suck them into his mouth.

  Ahhh, shit.

  She tasted like fresh oysters.

  And he was never going to get enough of her.

  “I’m going to fuck you all night.” He nipped her earlobe. “Just so you know.”

  “Make sure you do.”

  It all came together. His overloaded hormones. Her throaty murmur. The delicious taste of her as she turned in his arms to kiss him.

  He lost his head when she pulled away to lead him, frantic to get out of his too-tight skin and lumbering like the Hulk without a single coherent thought in his head.

  She backed down the hallway. He leaned in, desperate to get his tongue back into her mouth. She reached for the waistband of his pajama bottoms and yanked them down over his hips. He toed off his shoes and tripped and stumbled the rest of the way out of the bottoms. They bumped into the doorframe, corrected their position and made it inside her bedroom.