“I’m merely trying to clarify our options,” Whitewood said, recovering some of his unctuous polish.
“Options? What options? There’s only one reason Kendall Chase went to the Superior Court Building, and that’s because that’s where the Probate Court is.”
Whitewood shook his head. “Why the hell does she care?” he repeated. “I still don’t get it.”
A pair of barren eyes flicked to Whitewood again. “You wouldn’t.”
“Oh, and I suppose you’re a believer in noble ideals?” the lawyer said, apparently having recovered enough to let sarcasm creep into his voice.
“No. But I’ve removed a few people who were,” he said, then, looking Whitewood up and down, added, “as well as rid the world of some scum.”
Whitewood turned the color of his name, and Alice nearly laughed. The pretentious fool thought he could play in the muck without getting any of the dirt on him. It was about time he learned it wasn’t possible.
“We have only one option right now,” she said. “We proceed as planned. We have the evidence we need to prove everything. If they think I won’t go through with this, they’re fools. They can rot in jail for all I care.” She turned to face Whitewood. “You make sure everything’s in place. Including that witness you promised. I don’t want to have any delays.”
Looking relieved to be escaping, Whitewood nodded. “I’ll make some calls,” he said.
“It’s your choice, of course,” the man in the brown jacket said mildly after the lawyer had gone, “but there is still another option.”
Alice turned to look at him. She knew what he meant. And she knew that he knew she understood him perfectly well. But she let him say it anyway.
“They could rot in their own graves, instead.”
So the tiger wanted off the leash, Alice thought. She savored the idea for a moment, setting loose a tiger that already knew the taste of human flesh.
“Yes,” Alice said softly, “they could.”
She meant it; she had little enough time, and she resented having to waste any of it to keep her money out of the hands of Aaron’s bastard. But she would do it. No matter what it took.
But now, since Kendall and that bastard had taken this irrevocable step, it would be more difficult than ever if she had to resort to such a final option; suspicion would naturally fall on her if the heir to such a large chunk of Aaron’s fortune were to turn up dead. But if she had to, she would do it. She would do anything to foil Aaron’s final insult.
And she couldn’t deny that the thought of Aaron’s son dead and buried gave her a great deal of pleasure.
JASON HAD NEVER felt more alive. Kendall was taking him deep and hard and home, and he wanted this to go on forever. He’d worried at first, she seemed so small, and he was so incredibly aroused, but the fit was perfect, tight, sweet. His pulse was hammering, his body throbbing, gathering itself for flight. He drew back, then thrust deeper, harder, again and again, savoring Kendall’s cry of pleasure every time he did it. He heard his own breathing, coming in heavy, rapid pants, felt the burgeoning heat building low inside him as the luscious friction of her body around his ripped a harsh groan from deep in his chest.
She clutched at him then, her fingers digging into his shoulders as she lifted her hips to meet his next thrust, urging him more eloquently than with any words to drive harder, faster, deeper. With a strangled growl of sound he did it, slamming into her repeatedly, so hard he wondered again that he didn’t hurt her. But she slid her hands down his back, beyond his waist to his hips, fingers curving around the muscles of his buttocks as she cried out his name.
That intimate touch, and the sound of his name murmuring sweetly from her throat, drove him to the edge, and for a long moment he clung there, desperately, trying to hold back, to wait, to prolong the exquisite torture that was teaching him things he’d never known about his body and his capacity for pure, hot, voluptuous sensation.
But then Kendall cried out, her body undulating beneath him, her hips twisting as she ground herself against him. He felt it begin for her in the instant he heard her cry out his name again, felt the clenching of deep, strong muscles around him, milking him, demanding he give himself to her. And in that instant he wanted to give himself to her, all of him, not just the explosion of seed that was boiling up in this last moment. He wanted to give her so much of himself that she was never completely without him again, that no matter where she went for the rest of her life, he would be there.
He heard someone say her name in a prayerful voice, low and deep with wonder; he knew it had to be him, even though he’d never sounded like that in his life. And then thinking was beyond him as his body gave up to the coaxing, relentless demand of hers. Her body clenched around him again, and he exploded in a burst of light and heat and a pure, pulsing pleasure that seared him to the boundaries of his body and back again, until he was straining in her arms, grasping at her frantically, not able to get close enough, knowing that even if he could get so deep inside her, he could never really leave, it still wouldn’t be close enough.
He collapsed atop her, barely aware of anything except the aftershock of that wild eruption and the feel of Kendall’s arms around him. Intermittently a little shudder seized him, tightening all his muscles in an echo of the explosion that had rocked him. And he could feel it happening to her, too, felt the tiny convulsions as she clenched around his ebbing flesh.
“My God,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” Jason said. It took every bit of energy he had left just to get the word out.
He supposed it should make him feel better to know that it was as explosive for her as for him, but somehow it didn’t at all. He didn’t know if anything could allay this sense of unease. He didn’t feel like this. He just didn’t. Ever. He didn’t get hot just glancing at a woman. He didn’t get thoroughly aroused just thinking about her. He didn’t practically come just kissing her. And he sure as hell didn’t let a woman know he was so out of control that he couldn’t even sit across a table in a restaurant from her without wanting her beyond his power to resist.
But tonight he’d done just that.
They’d gotten back to the hotel and stopped in the restaurant, pleased that they had gotten their tasks done today without being stopped by Alice or whoever she had hired. They had felt a sense of relief that they’d taken some action, had even laughed about spending so much time on the bus in the past two days. They’d been pleased by the simple fact that the healing cut on Kendall’s temple was beginning to itch, and Kendall had even laughed a little over Alice’s certain consternation when she found out what they’d done.
They had even kidded about the likelihood of winding up in adjoining jail cells if Alice went through with her threats, although he wasn’t sure Kendall’s heart was truly in it.
But when they’d gotten back to the hotel, the mood had shifted. And Jason had lasted about five minutes, watching her across the table, her eyes lowered as she read the menu, her soft lower lip caught between her teeth, before he’d utterly lost it. He’d yanked the menu away, then taken her hands and pulled her to her feet.
“We’ll order room service,” he’d said, his voice already thick and husky. “Later.”
She’d understood with one glance at his face, so he could only imagine what he must have looked like. But she hadn’t resisted, had, in fact, gone eagerly. So eagerly that he’d damn near had their clothes off in the elevator, ready to take her up against the wall and be damned to anyone who came along and discovered them.
As it was, they hadn’t made it to the bed the first time; the minute he’d had the room door closed she was up against it and he was tugging at her jeans. The fact that she’d been yanking at his as well, and ripping his shirt away, had only aroused him more, and by the time she’d unzipped him and he felt her hands on him, he’d been in a frenzy. He’d cl
awed her panties away and lifted her, and her legs came around him as if they’d been lovers for years. And they’d both climaxed so quickly after he was inside her that when they slid shakily to the floor, she was still clutching in one hand the key she’d opened the door with.
And despite the fury of it, it had been bare minutes before they’d begun again. And again, it had been . . .
He didn’t know what it had been. Now, still panting slightly, he drew in a deep gulp of air, trying to slow his breathing. And the spinning of his mind. He didn’t understand this. Sex was pleasant, at times necessary, sometimes self-indulgent . . . but it was never, ever the kind of cataclysmic thing that happened between him and Kendall. Each time, he’d expected it to ease, to be less than it had been. But each time it had been, impossibly, more.
When he could move, he shifted himself off of her to one side. But he couldn’t quite let go of her, and was glad when she turned on her side and snuggled close to him. He closed his eyes and waited, a little tensely, expecting her to speak, to say something about the extraordinary fire that burned between them. He remembered what he’d thought, that Kendall was the kind of woman who would have to dress it up and call it love. And that had been before he’d had any idea what it would be like; now she’d probably be even more convinced this was something more than just unbelievable sex. He wasn’t sure he wasn’t convinced it was more.
God, you’re losing it, he told himself acidly.
“You know we probably won’t be able to prove Alice killed your mother.”
His eyes snapped open. “What?”
She gave him a smile of understanding that told him she knew perfectly well what he didn’t want to talk about. He supposed she must have sensed the tension in him, and made one of her uncannily accurate guesses as to its cause. He let out a breath he hadn’t really been aware of holding. And he tightened his arm around her, the only thing he could think of to let her know he understood what she’d done and was . . . grateful, he supposed.
“It was so long ago, how could we find the man who did it? And prove it? You said he was a pro, so he surely isn’t going to confess all, not after twenty years, even if we could find him.”
“Unless he’s here, now.”
Kendall stared at him. “You were serious? About her using the same man?”
“Why not use him, if he’s still around? He obviously did a nice tidy job the first time.”
He kept his voice carefully even, but Kendall was looking at him as if she knew exactly how much effort it was taking. She probably did, he thought sourly. She read him better than anyone ever had.
“Well, I suppose, if he is still around . . . But if it is the same man, he’s even less likely to confess.”
“I know. I didn’t say we could prove it.”
“Especially since we can’t exactly use the book as evidence,” she said.
“We could,” he said dryly, “but it would land us in a mental hospital somewhere.”
She sighed. “Probably. But we may wind up in that jail cell anyway.”
“You think she’ll go through with it?”
“Do you think she’d have the slightest qualm, after what she’s already done?”
“No. I just wasn’t sure you knew that.”
“I don’t have many illusions left about how ruthless Alice can be, just as I didn’t have many about Aaron. Hawks are a ferocious bunch.”
He went very still. “Yes. They are. You should remember that.”
She raised herself up on one elbow to look at him. She clearly hadn’t mistaken his meaning, but he hadn’t expected her to.
“Was that a warning? Are you thinking of yourself as one now?”
“Maybe,” he said, not really clarifying which question he was answering.
Instead of looking wary—as she should have if she had any sense at all, Jason thought—she looked very satisfied.
“Good,” she said, taking it as an answer to her second question. “A Hawk just might be able to take Alice on.”
“Oh, I’ll take her on,” he promised softly. “And I’ll bring her down.”
He turned to her then, before she could ask him anything he didn’t want to answer. He kissed her, gently at first, then with more heat as she sighed and threaded her fingers through his hair. He trailed kisses over her jaw, then down the side of her throat, lingered in the hollow at the base to taste her skin with his tongue. Then he lowered his head farther, tracing the full, soft swell of her breasts, drawing each nipple in turn to rigid attention, with the careful rake of his teeth and teasing flicks of his tongue. She responded, moaning softly, with the swiftness that stoked an answering blaze in him, and he was achingly hard again so fast it almost scared him.
“Damn,” he muttered, “how do you do this to me?”
“I think that’s my question,” Kendall whispered. “I’ve never felt the way you make me feel. I think I understand what Aaron meant, now. How he felt about . . .”
Jason froze as her words trailed away. He didn’t want to hear this. He didn’t want to hear her say what he thought was coming. He’d had women tell him they loved him before, and he’d turned it aside with a laugh and a joke about not being fool enough to fall in love, or sometimes a callous reminder of the purely physical basis of the relationship. But he couldn’t bring himself to be quite so cold with her. And that worried him as much as anything else. Still, he warned her.
“You’re heading for thin ice, Kendall.”
She sighed, as if she’d expected it. Then her hand slid down his back past his waist, lingered for a brief, squeezing caress of his buttock, then around his hip. He moved without thinking, automatically, giving her the access she had silently asked for. Her fingers stroked through the thicket of hair at his groin, then curled around his erection in a caress that made him suck in his breath as his stomach muscles rippled.
“Actually,” she said, her light tone putting things back on the level he wanted them, “I was heading for this. And there’s nothing thin or icy about it.”
“And you,” he said through clenched teeth as she began to stroke him, applying exactly the right amount of pressure to drive him mad, “learn awfully damned fast.”
“Sometimes,” she said, rather wistfully.
But then she leaned forward to place a kiss in the center of his chest, moved to circle his nipples with her tongue, all the while stroking and squeezing him, and he forgot everything except how incredibly, unbelievably good it was going to feel to be inside her again, and how much he wanted to be there when she hit the peak, wanted to feel the exquisite gripping embrace of her body, telling him undeniably that she was with him.
Before, it had been simply a matter of male pride, the need to know he’d pleased his partner. But with Kendall it was, as were so many things, different. It wasn’t just pride; it was necessity. He had to know he wasn’t alone in this craziness, wasn’t alone in being swept up into this inferno they’d turned loose. And if that only added to his uneasiness, he couldn’t think about it now. He couldn’t think of anything now, except that she was touching him, caressing him, as if she found every part of him wondrous.
And he was far too close to the edge. He seized her busy hand and gently but firmly drew it up to the relative safety of his waist.
“Slow,” he said, not caring anymore that his voice betrayed his need by coming out as nearly a growl. “We’re going to go very, very slow this time.”
“We . . . are?”
The throaty sound of her voice made him both more determined to do exactly what he’d said, and more doubtful that he could. He reined himself in, setting his jaw as he fought down the conflagration her touch engendered in him.
“Yes,” he said, lowering his head once more to her breasts as he slid a hand down her body to probe the delta of dark curls. He
punctuated each phrase with a flick of his tongue over her nipple, or a circling of that tiny knot of aroused nerves his questing finger had found. “We’re going . . . to go . . . slow. Very . . . very . . . slow. Then we’ll stop . . . and start again . . . and stop . . . and start. Until you’re so damn close . . . you come the instant . . . I slide into you.”
She moaned, low and husky. “Oh, God, Jason.”
He caught a nipple once more, this time sucking hard and deep at the same moment he stroked her wet, slick flesh hard and deep. She cried out, and her body arched against him. He held her tightly, never letting up in his caresses, and proceeded to keep every promise he’d just made to her.
“I’LL LET YOU KNOW if you need to come bail me out,” Jason was saying jokingly into the phone when Kendall stepped out of the bathroom, toweling her hair, lifting the wet strands so they didn’t soak her shirt. She wondered who he was talking to. Someone he knew well enough to kid about winding up in jail, obviously. She wished she felt as lighthearted about it as he apparently did.
She had to get some fresh clothes, she thought. Buy some, if Jason still didn’t want to go back to the motel. But George had said it was probably safe enough now that they’d filed the challenge; he’d met them yesterday at the courthouse, to pick up copies of the codicil and the statements she and Jason had written out. It had been almost funny, seeing the two men eye each other so warily, but Jason had never spoken, never said he knew who George was, had merely nodded in answer to Alton’s watchful greeting and stood silently as Kendall handed over the papers.
When he sensed her presence in the room Jason turned his head to look at her, rather intently, as if he was trying to judge how much she might have heard. Then whoever was on the phone said something that drew his attention. After a moment he laughed.
“Yeah, I know. But they don’t. I’ll play it along for a while longer. Until everything’s in place.”
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