by Leigh James
I pulled away and looked at him. His eyes were red and watery. “Wait,” I said, my mind racing through what he’d said. “You love me?”
“Of course I love you,” he said, and he looked even more wounded.
“Well, I love you too,” I said. He looked at me and laughed and cried at the same time. I pulled him to me, hugging him fiercely. “But you didn’t put me at risk, Walker. None of this is your fault. You’ve been framed, we’ve been illegally followed, two people have been killed; that we know about…”
“Watch the road,” Walker said suddenly and sharply to the driver, who was now watching us with avid interest and ignoring the cars around us.
“This is on me,” he said, turning back to me. “This is about my company, my technology, my enemies. They’re not your enemies, Nic. They’re mine. And I’m the one who has to deal with them.”
“Well, you’re sort of stuck with me,” I said, “seeing as you’re in love with me and I’m also your lawyer.”
“I am in love you with you,” Walker said. “And you’re fired. So that changes things.”
I stared at him, shocked. “What are you saying?” I asked. I looked around, panicked, as we crept towards the airport terminal.
“Which airline?” the cabbie asked.
“Southwest,” Walker said, his eyes never leaving mine. “You’re getting on a plane.”
“Not without you, I’m not,” I said.
“I can’t fly,” he said, flashing his GPS bracelet.
“Well, I can’t fly without you,” I said.
“You don’t have a choice,” he said, gently. He looked down at me and stroked my face. “Your safety is the only thing that’s important to me anymore. I’m turning myself in. I’m going to ask Judge Alvarez to put me in jail. I’ll be safer there, for now. Or at least it will be easier for people to tell who got to me.”
“Please don’t talk like that,” I whispered, horrified.
“Shhh,” he said. “Don’t.” He crushed his lips to mine and giving me the kiss I’d been waiting for since the day I met him. I threw my arms around him and jumped onto his lap, kissing him back wildly, feeling him respond to me. He grabbed my ass and slammed me up against his body as we kissed; it was savage, animalistic, almost painful in the cramped backseat of the cab. I didn’t care. I realized that we were both crying and I pulled back from him, wiping my face and looking at him in despair.
“You can’t leave me, Walker. I don’t want to be apart from you. I don’t care if I’m safe. Safe is nothing if you’re not there, if you’re not safe. Stay with me,” I whispered, and my voice cracked.
We pulled up to the curb at the packed airport. “You two gettin’ out? Or do you want me to circle?” asked the cabbie. He was asking as if he were genuinely curious.
“Yes, we’re both getting out,” I said, shoving some money at him and pulling Walker out with me. I stuck my head back in. “You’re going to want to forget that you ever saw us,” I said. “Otherwise it’s going to be seriously dangerous for you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, lady,” he said. “I haven’t had a fare in hours.” He winked at me and I gave him a small smile. Probably the one small smile I had left.
I turned back to Walker and grabbed his hand, dragging him into the airport. I dragged him into the first souvenir shop I saw; I bought us both baseball hats. Then I made him sit in a dirty, crowded seating area and I turned to him calmly.
He took a long look at me and I saw the shadow, the despair, cross his gorgeous face. And then he just looked down.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said. “You don’t have to go out like this.”
He looked back up. “It’s me they want. What I know. What I have,” he said, and picked up his phone.
“They were after me just now,” I said. “They were trying to blow me up.”
“That’s why you need to go, to get away from me. And I need to turn myself in. Nothing I can do will save either one of us. Except for that,” he said.
Don’t, I thought. Please. Because if this was going to be the end of it all, it was going to be the sorriest day of my life.
And I wasn’t ready to give up. Not yet. Not like this.
I roughly grabbed the phone out of his hand and clicked it off. “We’re doing this my way,” I said. And when he looked back into my eyes, I saw the man only I knew. The secret one. The one he hid from the world. The one who was worth fighting for.
I knew what they’d done. The people that they’d taken could never come back. And they weren’t going to get away with it.
“We’re not making that sort of exit. If this is how it’s going to be, we’re bringing them all down.” I took both of our cell phones and threw them into the trashcan at the end of the aisle. Then I reached across the table, grabbed his hand and squeezed it. The familiar heat shot through me at his touch; I let it course through my body, strengthening my resolve, giving me courage.
“Walker,” I said. My voice did not shake. “We can do this. Trust me.
“Now, let’s find a way to get that bracelet off you.”
CHAPTER 23
“Walker,” I said, carrying a bag of groceries into the cramped, outdated kitchen. “Did Levi call you back yet?”
Walker sauntered into the kitchen, wearing cargo shorts and nothing else. He was glistening with sweat; my mouth pooled with water when I saw him, like I was one of Pavlov’s dogs. “He did, Nic, he did.” He smiled that gorgeous smile at me. He took the bag from me, setting it carefully on the counter. Then he took my baseball hat off and ruffled my short, bleached-blonde hair.
“I do miss my hair,” I said, and frowned at him.
“You look hot. Dangerous, even.” He smiled at me. “Not like your ultra-buttoned up lawyer look. Although that was hot, too.” He grabbed the top of my jean shorts and drew me to him, slowly, so that I had enough time to appreciate him fully without his shirt on. His huge biceps flexed as he grabbed my sides, running his hands up and down my torso. I felt excited, just like I always did when he touched me; I felt sparks on my body where he touched me, heat pooling in my belly and in between my legs.
I touched the top of his head, which he’d shave almost bald. “I miss your hair, too,” I said wistfully.
“You still think I’m hot, though. I can tell.” He flexed his hips against me, and I could feel him, large and hard and getting larger and harder, and I squirmed against him and moaned.
“How can you tell?” I asked, pressing into him fiercely and leaning up so I could kiss him. He put his mouth to mine and I could feel him so hard against me that it seemed like he was about to burst. I jumped up on the counter and pulled him to me, wrapping my legs around him, pressing myself against him rhythmically, over and over.
“It’s just a guess,” he said, lowly. He started kissing my neck, my ear, and he reached up and tenderly stroked my breast in circles, mesmerizing me.
“You want to do this here?” I asked, abruptly, desperate to have him inside of me all of a sudden. I started to take my shirt off over my head.
“Easy, Nic. Easy,” Walker said, and he gently pushed my shirt back down. I looked at him, crestfallen, then he grinned a wicked grin at me. He picked me up and carried me, my legs still wrapped around his waist, over to the lumpy bed. We were in a filthy studio apartment in South Boston; the best thing about it was that you could get to the bed quickly from pretty much anywhere else in the room. In the week that we’d been here, we’d used it quite a bit. I was thrilled that I’d always kept my birth control pills in my work bag; I took one religiously every day, worrying what we’d have to do when I ran out in a few weeks. I pushed the thought from my mind. I’d been pushing lots of thoughts from my mind since we’d been here; luckily, Walker so was freakin’ hot, and I’d been foaming at the mouth to explore his body for so long, that it was the only distraction that could actually work.
He laid me down and hovered over me, and I had the opportunity to inspect the
absolute glory that was his chest. Broad, rock hard pectoral muscles…a six-pack leading down to……to the thing that was poking against my jean shorts so hard it almost hurt…while he held me down with Those Biceps.
I looked up at him and smiled. “I love you, Walker,” I said, and even though we’d said it to each other a thousand times over the past week, and made love a thousand different ways, my voice still sounded shaky and breathless to my own ears, as if I still couldn’t believe my own good luck.
Even with all of the bad things that had happened, I still couldn’t believe my own good luck.
“I love you, too,” he said, and leaned down and kissed me, deeply, over and over again. He leaned up for a moment and pulled me up, too; he raised my shirt slowly, gently over my head and then kissed my chest luxuriously, taking his time, like he was the luckiest man in the world to be able to touch my body and he wanted to revel in it. I moaned, wanting him, not wanting to wait, and he smiled at me again. “I knew you still thought I was hot, even without the hair.” He undid the button of my shorts and expertly slid them off, and my underwear and bra, too, and then kissed my belly until I moaned and whined some more.
“What do you want?” he whispered into my ear, his breath hot against my neck. I pulled him down on top of me and wrapped my legs around him, maneuvering so that the tip of him was inside me.
“I want you,” I said. Always, I thought. I couldn’t say that part. Not yet, maybe not ever. But my heart knew that I loved him, my secret-secret, and it was the sort of love you couldn’t ever recover from. I wanted to be near him every second of every day; to have him inside me gave me such an intense pleasure it was almost scary — it wasn’t just because of the physical pleasure, which was overpowering; it was the overwhelming feeling of us being one, of being together as close as we could.
He rocked back and forth against me, his throbbing, thick length becoming slick with my wetness. “The boss always get what she wants,” he whispered hotly, and slid all the way into me, all at once.
I threw my back and moaned; the feeling of fullness was almost overwhelming. He was rock hard and very, very large, the largest man I’d ever been with. Honestly, I could come with him just entering me, I felt so full, so satisfied, but I didn’t want to: I’d had to fight the urge every time, and as if he could sense it, Walker slowed down, brushing the blond bangs from my forehead, kissing me slowly.
“I love you,” I said again; I needed him to know I felt it, especially when he was inside me like that. I felt so connected to him, so complete. I let my body take over, pulsing against him. He leaned up on his arms and thrust all the way out and all the way into me, rhythmically, and I put my hands on his muscled ass and drew him into me, deeper and deeper each time. Every time he pulled out and thrust back in I thought I was going to pass out; I was so full with his hardness, his heat, I almost couldn’t bear it.
I could see him losing himself above me, the tendons standing out on his neck, as he thrust deeper into me. I closed myself around him and arched my back. He pulled all the way out, and then waited, waited until I scratched my nails up and down his back and begged him to fill me again, whimpering and pleading.
He waited until we were both shaking, hot with anticipation and need. And then slammed all the way into me.
“Walker!” I screamed, and as I started to come, he started to thrust into me harder. My orgasm shook the bed and he exploded into me, filling me with his hot wetness, and I continued to unravel beneath him, to shatter as I came again.
He thrust into me as fully as he could a few more times, grunting and moaning, his muscles taut and straining. He finally came to rest on top of me, crushing me in the very best way.
Later, we lay next to each other on the bed, looking into each other’s eyes and smiling. “This is messed up,” Walker said, “because so much bad stuff has happened recently, so many sad things…” His eyes darkened and he stared off for a moment.
“What’s messed up, babe?” I asked.
His came back into focus. “This,” he said, motioning to us. “This is what’s messed up.”
My heart froze and I looked up at him, petrified of what he was going to say.
He took in my look and he sighed at me and tucked my short hair behind my ear. “Nic,” he said, “that came out wrong. What I meant was, how happy I am is messed up. Because of you. We’re trapped in a shit hole in Southie, I’m wanted by federal agents for breaking my house arrest, your friend is dead, we’re getting fake papers so we can run and hide from the people who were following us and trying to kill you — and this has been the best week of my life, hiding out here with you. That is what’s messed up. Do you understand?”
“I do, Walker,” I said, relieved, and understanding completely. We were hiding in plain sight; we were wanted by the State Police and the FBI and the people who’d been after us in the first place. Two people I knew were dead. We had no money, no cell phones, and a very questionable future. I needed to somehow get a message to my father and to Tammy.
But other than that, yeah, this had been the best week of my life: Hell yeah, it had.
“But I am going to get my revenge,” Walker said, yanking me back to the present. “Don’t think all this hot sex and your gorgeous body have gotten me to stop thinking about it.”
“We,” I said, sitting up. “We are going to get revenge.”
“You still have a choice, Nic. This doesn’t have to be your fight,” he said, his eyes anxiously searching my face.
“I’ve made my choice, Walker. And it’s you. I choose you,” I said, and kissed him.
“I know it’s selfish, but I’m glad,” he said, stroking my hair. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. But I know what I’m going to do with you.”
“You mean, besides this?” I laughed, motioning to the bed.
“Well, I hope we keep doing plenty of this. Because I am seriously into this,” he said, and he ran his hand up my side, giving me the chills. “But besides this, we’re going to get those papers from Levi. Then we’re going on a road trip. We’re going to make a list of all the people we think are connected to what’s happened, and we’re going to track them down.
“Then, when we’re ready, we’re going to line them up. And then knock them down, like so many dominoes.”
He pulled me to him and kissed me slowly, deliciously, in the late afternoon heat of the run-down studio apartment. As we made our plans, I knew what happiness was. All I had was right now, and I was alive. I was alive in a way I’d never been before, and I loved my life. And I loved Walker.
I would fight for him. He was my fight, and he was totally worth it.
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NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Reviews are gold to authors! If you’ve enjoyed this book, would you consider rating it and reviewing it? Indicted (Bad Judgment #1)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leigh James writes steamy contemporary romance, with a healthy dose of action and adventure. In addition to writing, endlessly re-watching Pitch Perfect and searching the house for leftover Halloween candy to eat, Leigh is a lawyer and mother of three. She lives with her husband and children in New Hampshire.
For more information:
@LeighJames19
leighjames19author
www.leighjamesbooks.com
ALSO BY LEIGH JAMES
The Liberty Series
Liberty Begins (The Liberty Series, Book 1)
Liberty At Last (The Liberty Series, Book 2)
COMING SOON: Liberty…and Justice for All (The Liberty Series, Book 3)
The Bad Judgment Series
Indicted (Bad Judgment #1)
COMING SOON: Tough Justice (Bad Judgment #2)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I could not write without the love and enduring support of my husband and my three beautiful, patient, kind childre
n. I am thankful for you every day, even when I’m ignoring you and your repeated requests for snacks. And drinks. And more snacks. You guys make everything worth it.
Thanks to my amazing beta readers, Wendy Myler, Amy Warren and Cheryl Buchanan, for being brilliant, generous and kind, and for keeping me off the ledge. I don’t know what I would do without you. Thank you to James at goonwrite.com, who designed the fantastic cover, and Donna Rich, who did copy-edited the book and saved me. It’s people like you, as well as the other amazing authors I’ve met, with all of your professionalism, talent and hard work, that make publishing such an awesome industry to work in.
Thanks to all the fans, friends, and family who’ve been so supportive of my books. I love you all a LOT. I published my first book roughly one year ago and I have to say, aside from getting married to my awesome husband and having my kids, it was the best decision I ever made. Most exciting year of my life. Thank you for being a part of it.
At the risk of being redundant, I have to also (always) thank my mom and dad, who support me and root for me no matter how smutty my books have been…I love you guys. You are special people. Thanks in particular to my mom, who is always ready with a pep talk, and who always told me to never give up.
* * *
For Carter,
who catches every ball, reads every Harry Potter book,
and lights up my life.
* * *
