by Lora Leigh
She hated that. She hated the response to him, unwilling and unwanted, that she had learned she had no hope of controlling.
She stared into the forest, watching the mist rise like a veil of dreams above the treetops to meet the heat of the rising sun.
“If the Fuentes family knew where I was, then they would have already struck.” She shrugged her shoulders, wishing she had worn a bra beneath the loose T-shirt she had slept in.
Her nipples were hardening, her breasts were swelling, and this was no time for it. She could feel the steadily rising sense of expectation building within her. She had spent a week with Joe, alone, and the tension was only growing worse by the day.
“You aren’t showing much faith in my protective abilities,” he grunted.
“Of course I am.” She kept staring into the forest; she wasn’t about to watch him. Watching him only aroused her further. “I’m sitting here watching the dew meet the sunrise, in plain view. See, I trust you to know I’m well hidden.”
“You make about as much sense now as you ever did.” His voice turned surly. “Come inside, I have coffee ready.”
Yeah, she had smelled it for the past half-hour, tempting, strong, teasing her senses. Rather like Joe did.
This was not going to work.
“You’re sitting out here pouting,” he accused, when she didn’t move to follow him.
“I don’t pout, Joe,” she reminded him. “I think.”
“You think too much then,” he growled. “Now get your butt in the house. Maybe the coffee will even out your temper.”
She clenched her teeth. She was not going to argue with him. Arguing with him was a pointless exercise. It was like beating her head against a wall. She only ended up hurting herself.
“I don’t have a temper.” She was restrained. Hell, he was still alive, wasn’t he?
“Uh-huh.” Was that amusement she heard in his voice?
After a week?
She couldn’t help herself, she turned and looked at him and her senses went into overload. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. The leanly muscled contours of his hair-matted chest brought back memories better forgotten. Memories she had never forgotten.
The warmth of him as he came over her, his thighs parting hers, the feel of his cock nudging against her sex, filling her slowly, riding her fiercely.
Maggie shivered as her vagina clenched with a sudden spasm of hungry need, a clenching of lust as the heated dampness began to prepare her for a touch that certainly wasn’t coming. She jerked her eyes from his chest and lifted them to his face. Beard-roughened, the darker growth contrasted with the dark blond, rakishly cut hair that framed his face. The two days’ growth was nearly black, and gave him a piratical appearance that was too mouthwatering for words. It just made his lips appear sexier, more lickable. And she really wanted to lick them.
“Come on, Maggie. Coffee and breakfast. Then we can talk.” He held his hand out to her, the ice that had filled his eyes for the past week thawing, warming.
Maggie licked her lips nervously, feeling her heart racing in her chest, her nerve endings sensitizing. She rose from the chair, though she ignored his outstretched hand as she watched him warily. He was like a damned chameleon, and the abrupt changes were throwing her off balance.
“So where’s the prick I’ve spent the last seven days with?” she asked as she moved around him to enter the cabin, feeling the walls closing in on her as he stepped in behind her.
He had a habit of that, sucking all the space out of a room until nothing remained except him. At least, that was all she was aware of. The warm, cheery tones of burnt reds and soft desert browns of the living room were lost on her. The couch was wide, comfortable. Joe liked making love on couches. Floors. Coffee tables. Kitchen counters.
She stepped back quickly, giving him plenty of room as the corner of his lips kicked up in a grin.
“Same cautious Maggie,” he said, as he moved past her and headed to the kitchen. “How long did it take me to get you into bed the first time?”
“Not long enough,” she stated. “And I am not having sex with you again, Joe.” Yeah. Right. Her body was all in agreement on that one. In another second, the dampness building on the folds of her sex was going to start dampening the fleece of her pajama bottoms. If it wasn’t already.
“We’re sleeping in the same bed…”
“That’s not my choice,” she argued, as he glanced over his shoulder, casting her a wicked look. “You wouldn’t let me sleep on the couch.”
“Sure you can.” He shrugged his tanned shoulders negligently. “But it’s going to be an awful tight fit with both of us there.”
That was pretty much his stand on it seven days ago. She followed him slowly into the kitchen, admiring the tight contours of his rear beneath the snug jeans he had only zipped, not buttoned. Yeah, she had caught that little detail out on the porch.
“How much longer are we staying here?” She finally asked the question that had been hovering on her lips for days. “When are you going to give up, Joe?”
“When the Fuentes family is dead.” He padded to the coffeepot, lifted the carafe, and poured the liquid into waiting cups.
His answer shocked her. Before, his answer would have been once a culprit was behind bars, not dead.
“I just want to know how they managed bail,” she sighed, moving to the kitchen table as he turned back, the coffee cups firmly in hand.
“One of Fuentes’s lieutenants paid off the judge. We have the money and evidence in hand. Judge Gilmore was none too pleased with the offer. He could take the money and let them out, or his grandchildren could suffer the consequences. We opted to go with the bribe, taped it, and now have the money impounded in a safe location until it’s needed. All with Jose’s and Santiago’s fingerprints.”
She couldn’t have been more surprised if he had said he was Santa Claus.
“And that’s not enough to lock them up for a while?” she asked, amazed.
“We need it all, Maggie. We want them locked away forever, if they’re smart enough to live until the trial. I don’t want them out on a technicality. And I don’t want families murdered to get them there.”
Maggie stared back at him suspiciously. She had been questioning him for a week now, and he was finally giving her the answers she wanted: Why?
“If I’m suspected of being part of this, then didn’t you just put several people in danger by telling me?”
His gaze was hooded as he glanced back at her before shrugging. “I don’t believe you’re part of this.”
Oh yeah, she really believed that one at this late date.
“So I’m here why?” she questioned him as he set the coffee in front of her. “And they are still out on bail for what reason?”
“We need that proof Grant hid and the Fuentes family still believes you have that.” Joe took his seat across from her, watching her steadily. “You don’t know where it’s at; that means your life is still in danger. And the Navy needs that mole. There’s too much at stake here to risk a trial on what little evidence we have of the two aiding and abetting Diego. If we want to shut down this cartel and that drug, then we have to do it here.”
Ahh, so the truth was emerging, perhaps.
“You’re using me…”
“Hell no!” Anger flashed across his expression. “You are not bait, Maggie. No matter what you think. I told you I’d protect you, and I meant it.”
And she didn’t trust him, not even for a second. Fear raced down her spine as she stared back at him, suddenly wondering to what lengths he would go to in capturing the Fuentes men. But she knew the lengths he would go to, she reminded herself. He blamed the Fuentes family for what happened to Grant, rather than blaming Grant himself.
“And this information the federal prosecutor thinks I’m hiding?” she asked, not bothering to hide the mockery in her voice. “Have you just given up on it, Joe?”
He tilted his head as he regarded her for several seconds.
“You don’t know where it’s at. That’s a dead end.”
“Oh, you are so good.” She would have cried if it didn’t hurt so damned bad. The truth was there in his eyes, the suspicion, the calculation. Others might not have recognized it, but Maggie saw it and knew it for what it was. “Do you really expect me to swallow that line of crap, Joe? Do you think I’m that stupid?”
“On the contrary, you’re not stupid at all. Suspicious,” he chided her with a quirk of amusement. “But not stupid.”
Maggie ignored the coffee sitting before her, the smell of it suddenly as unappetizing as the lies passing his lips. Standing slowly to her feet, she stared back at him impassively, fighting to hide the pain exploding inside her.
“You’ve changed, Joe,” she whispered. “I never pegged you for a liar. An asshole and a prick maybe, but not an out-and-out liar. Congratulations, you did the impossible. You made my opinion of you sink lower than it was two and a half years ago.”
Turning on her heels, she moved to stalk from the kitchen, to put distance between herself and his games, his lies. She hated lies. She hated herself. Because she wanted to believe him, she wanted to trust in the arousal and the warmth that had heated his eyes, just as she wanted to believe that he could trust in her, just once. She was a fool.
“No, you don’t.” She came to an abrupt stop as he jumped from his chair, his hand reaching out to catch her upper arm as she moved to pass him.
The shock of his flesh touching hers, the heat and strength in it, nearly drove the breath from her body.
“Let me go.” She jerked against his hold, feeling the anger growing inside her, the hurt burning through her heart.
“I won’t let you go, Maggie,” he suddenly snarled, jerking her around, as his free hand buried in her hair, his fingers locking into the strands. He jerked her head back and stared into her eyes fiercely. “I won’t let you go and I won’t let you die. Lie to me all you need to. Fuck it. I’ll get Fuentes in the end, if I have to kill him to do it. But I won’t let you go.”
“You don’t have a choice.” She pushed against his chest, desperate to escape him, to break free of the hard temptation of his body. “I don’t belong to you, Joe, not anymore…”
“By God, you always belonged to me. Always.”
Before she could stop him his head lowered, his lips covered hers, and time came to a stop. There was only Joe’s kiss. His lips moving against hers, his tongue licking, piercing her lips, moving between them in a fierce, dominant kiss.
Her fingers curled against his chest, then spread out, nerve endings soaking in the feel of him, remembering, relishing the rasp of the short, crisp hairs on her palms, the fiery warmth beneath his flesh.
Against her lower stomach she felt his erection pressing intently through the material of his jeans. His arms enfolded her, his kiss intoxicated her.
“Joe,” she whimpered as his lips slid to her cheek, to her jaw. “Don’t do this.”
Don’t make her feel again. Don’t make her ache for all the things she knew she couldn’t have. Don’t make her love him more than she already did.
“I dreamed of you.” The arousal and the anger pulsed in his voice as he nipped at her ear. “For more than two years, I remembered what it was like to feel you beneath me, to hear the soft little catch in your voice when you came beneath me, the feel of your body tightening around me. I remembered, Maggie, and it drove me insane.”
She whimpered at the pain that enveloped her, the raking fingers of need, regret, and sorrow that filled her.
“This won’t fix the past.” She tightened her fingers on his biceps, feeling the power and the tension that vibrated in his body. “It won’t solve anything, Joe.”
He wanted to punish her. She could feel it pulsing in the air around them, feel it in the rake of his teeth along her neck, the nipping little kisses, and the press of his erection against her.
Even as her head screamed out a warning against his touch and the probability of heartbreak down the road, she felt herself relaxing, leaning into him, the response he had always commanded from her leaping through her system.
“I know one thing it will definitely solve.” One hand slid down her back, gripped the swell of a buttock, and lifted her to him.
Maggie moaned at the feel of his cock notching between her thighs, his lips at her neck, his tongue licking erotically at her skin. Blood pulsed hot and fast through her veins, heating her flesh, sensitizing her nerve endings, as lust began to spike the air around them.
Hunger surged through her. More than two years of aching, of needing, of suffering the restless, shadowed dissatisfaction that edged at her mind, culminated here. In Joe’s arms. His touch. His kiss. It was the drug she had never recovered from, the one very likely to destroy her.
chapter 3
the feel of her lips beneath his, her body pulled against his, was heaven and hell. Memories swamped him, and following close on its heels was a lust that tightened in his balls and sent hunger slamming through his system. This was Maggie. Redheaded, fiery, a need he had never exorcised from his heart. A hunger he couldn’t forget. No matter how hard he tried—and he had tried, for two and a half years he had tried. He was tired of denying himself.
His lips moved over her jaw, back to her lips, and he stole the words he could feel rushing past them. A denial, the cautious, intuitive part of her that had always driven him crazy. There was only one way to silence it, one way to steal beneath her defenses and make her melt in his arms.
“Maggie,” he whispered, lifting his lips until they ghosted over hers. “Let me love you…”
“You son of a bitch!”
He was unprepared for the raging fury let loose on him. A redheaded mini tornado that kicked, slapped, and threw herself at him like a force of nature intent on destruction.
“Dammit, Maggie…” He grabbed her wrists, only to let go as she kicked at his shin.
Jumping back, he stared at the aberration confronting him. Her red hair was wild, waves of fiery splendor cascading to her shoulders, her cheeks flushed, her green eyes brilliant with tears.
“I can’t believe you!” Her fists were clenched at her sides as her breasts rose and fell with the quick pace of her breathing. “‘Let me love you,’” she mimicked him. “You know about as much about that emotion as Grant did. Zero, Joe. Nada. And you can kiss my ass.”
“Give me the chance.” He narrowed his eyes on her, letting a mocking smile curl his lips. “If you had put the bitch on hold for a minute, I might have gotten around to it. And the next time you compare me to Grant, you might find that sweet ass spanked rather than kissed.”
“Lay a hand on me and I’ll charge you with assault,” she yelled back. “You had your chance to love me, Joe, and you blew it.”
“Like hell,” he snarled, sexual tension and raging anger rising inside him. “I loved you every damned chance you gave me, Maggie. Completely. Neither of us could move after we were finished.”
“You fucked me,” she corrected him brutally.
Joe flinched at the explicit wording, something dark and inexplicable rising inside him to deny it.
“And what did you do, Maggie? I hardly think it was love; you married the man you believed was my best friend six months later.”
“I didn’t know until he brought you to the wedding rehearsal.” Her gaze was filled with disgust as it raked over him. “I nearly broke the engagement then, and I would have if he hadn’t begged me not to. I knew.” Her laughter was tinged with bitterness. “God, I knew better. I should never have listened to him when he swore to me that my relationship with you didn’t matter. That he hadn’t known about it.”
The pain in her eyes made him pause. Maggie had never been much of liar, at least not before her marriage to Grant. She wore her heart on her sleeve, loved or hated with equal intensity. A person didn’t have to guess where he stood with her.
“He knew about our relationship,” he informed her, watching her closely. “He knew th
e night you walked out on me, and he knew why.”
Her lips parted for a second before closing firmly, tightening into a bitter line. There was no surprise there, though, only remembered pain. Grant’s lies couldn’t surprise her anymore, only her own stupidity at the time still had the power to hurt her.
“Yes,” she finally admitted. “He did. He knew about our relationship and he used it the entire time we were married. Too bad I didn’t know any better before the vows were spoken.”
“Why did you marry him?” That question had haunted him, had driven him to drink more nights than he could count.
“Because I thought he loved me,” she threw back at him fiercely. “And I thought I loved him. I thought he was honest, that he wanted more than the quick fuck his buddy had decided was all I was good for.”
“Say that word again and you’re going to regret it, Maggie,” he snapped.
“What? Fuck?” she sneered. “What’s wrong, Joe, does it offend you to know what a complete bastard you were?”
“I know well how damned stupid I was.” God knew it had been driven home night after lonely night for two and a half years. “But you were never just a fuck.”
“Oh, you loved me?” she asked mockingly. “Yeah, sure you did, Joe. Even while you were parading Miss Big Boobs around on your tuxedoed arm for a night out? Did you think I had forgotten that one?”
Miss Big Boobs. Fake boobs maybe, not that he had checked. The woman in question, Carolyn Delorents, had been the daughter of a suspected drug kingpin. He had been on assignment. Nothing more. An assignment he hadn’t told Maggie about.
“I haven’t forgotten,” he growled. “And you would never listen to explanations.”
“Explanations come before you spend the night with another woman hanging off you, not after,” she pointed out sarcastically. “And I didn’t want explanations. The fact that you did it, without telling me, was enough.”
“We weren’t married…”
“I was falling in love with you,” she cried out. “You knew it. You knew it, and rather than telling me I was wasting my time, you let me find it out at an event I was covering for the paper. You didn’t tell me anything.”
