Deception

by Tory Hayward

  I sat and watched him work the machine like a professional barista. The man obviously knew coffee.

  ‘Tell me the story of the jewels?’ He glanced at me, face a picture of neutral interest.

  Some of my tension ebbed. I had nothing left to hide from him. I could tell him everything.

  ‘I got a message that I had to exchange Dad for the Piprahwa Jewels or he’d be killed. I didn’t believe it at first. I had no idea what the jewels were, and no idea they’d been stolen.’

  ‘The Indonesian government kept their theft secret,’ said Jack. ‘To save face and keep the uneasy peace between the different faiths that rub together in their country.’

  I nodded in understanding.

  ‘I got a message from Dad. Oblique, so only I could understand, but I knew the jewels were buried near the beach house. So I dug them up. And I’ve been trying to get a swap happening ever since.’

  ‘At the charity ball, when you lost your shoe?’

  I leaned my head on my hand, still shuddering at the mistakes of that night. ‘I thought I’d failed. That Dad would die. But they have given me another chance. They used my mistake to make me come to Myanmar.’

  ‘So Myanmar is a trap.’ There was resignation in his voice, but no fear.

  ‘You don’t have to come,’ I said quickly. ‘You see how dangerous it will be. I’ll be fine on my own.’

  He hesitated with his hand on the coffee machine, which was making gurgling noises. ‘I’m not leaving you, Merry.’

  He left the machine to its machinations, sat in front of me.

  ‘Are we clear about that?’

  ‘Yes. No.’ I smiled despite myself and took a breath which caught and hitched. ‘No. I don’t get it.’

  ‘I don’t blame you for your father’s actions.’ He opened his hands.

  ‘I feel like I should apologise for him,’ I said, honestly.

  ‘You shouldn’t.’

  ‘He’s always been … willing to do things his way, and not the right way.’ I sounded bitter, and I was. ‘He cares nothing for anyone else, not even my mother.’

  ‘Oh, Merry.’ There was such sympathy in his voice that I had to look at the view to keep my composure.

  ‘It’s okay. Don’t—’ I held up a hand to stop him talking.

  Taking the hint, he went back to the coffee; the sound of the machine drowned out any other conversation. After a few minutes, he came and sat at the table and placed a white coffee in front of me.

  ‘Thanks.’ I reached for the sugar bowl and spooned in several spoons of sugar.

  ‘I read your mother died in a car accident.’

  I glanced away again, at the beautiful harbour views. ‘Allow me to explain—’ The pain in my voice made me sound distant and haughty.

  I launched into the story. Of my father’s neglect, and terrible attitude. Of my mother drinking the days away and then the affairs, the other men and other women.

  ‘Not that I realised at the time,’ I said. ‘I was too young. But later, after Mum died, when I was older. People talk. People want to make sure you know everything.’

  I heard the pain in my voice and abruptly shut up. Picked up my cup and sipped the too-hot coffee. I met Jack’s eye, almost scared of what I’d see there.

  A shiver crept over me, not an unpleasant feeling, and instead of trying to repress it and to shy away from how I felt, and stave off any emotion, I relaxed. A cold defensive remark that would put distance between us hovered on my lips. It was a habit I had, being cold, to keep the world at arms-length.

  A habit I realised didn’t want to keep anymore.

  The story of my mother’s death had ruled my life. I’d used it to hide, to keep myself safe inside my own head. Shut off from life in so many ways.

  ‘I’m tired of this,’ I said.

  ‘Tired of what?’ A slight frown sat between Jack’s blue eyes.

  ‘It’s all been the same for so long. The same story. Nothing new. Nothing different. Nothing changing. Me, Dad, Mum. The circumstances around her death. I’ve been going around and around in circles for years.’

  I stared at Jack for a minute, collecting my thoughts.

  ‘I’ve been terrified of becoming my mother. When I don’t even fully understand what happened between her and my father, or if the stories were true.’

  I stood, pushed the chair back with a screech that set my teeth on edge, and then sat again.

  ‘Are you okay?’ asked Jack quietly.

  I thought of my list. The list of suitable men I’d marry and not care if I loved them or not, and wondered how on earth I’d got to that point and not even realised what a deluded idiot I was.

  ‘Lib knew,’ I muttered. I’d talk it over with Lib when I got back from Myanmar. Talk it over with Dad, too. Find out the truth.

  ‘Sorry, I’m making no sense.’ I reached out and touched my fingertips to Jack’s hand, which lay loosely on the table; his eyes zeroed in on the gesture.

  I watched him, feeling like I was allowing myself to see him properly for the first time.

  I liked him.

  I really liked him.

  Always up-beat, always cheerful. Never without a smart comeback. Kind too, and not afraid of it. Vulnerable, I realised. He was fine with being vulnerable and showing how he felt.

  ‘I misjudged you,’ I said. ‘I assumed you were something that you weren’t.’

  His eyes lit up at my words. ‘I did break into your beach house,’ he said, nearly following my line of thought.

  ‘Technically I left the door open.’

  ‘So you actually lured me in and shot at me?’

  I raised a shoulder in a shrug and grinned at him. ‘I was flirting.’

  He shifted in his seat but didn’t move his hand, and leaned a little closer. ‘Funnily enough, Lioness, I like the way you flirt.’

  I thought of the handcuffs. ‘I like the way you flirt too.’

  He brushed a lock of my hair with his fingertips.

  So I leaned in and gently pressed my lips to his. Closed my eyes, pushed away the worry and the old anxious instincts that shouted at me to pull back, to protect myself.

  His hand slid across the curls of my hair, down to the tips which fell between my shoulderblades. He drew me closer across the table as he deepened the kiss.

  I heard him breathe as our teeth clicked together, and smelled his fresh, masculine scent.

  He ended the kiss and met my eyes with unflinching honesty and said, ‘Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you now?’

  ‘Yes, I think I do.’

  He was saying he liked me.

  He wanted me.

  That it was okay to trust him.

  I turned my head slightly.

  ‘All logic says I should stay as far away from you as possible,’ I murmured.

  ‘Well, Lioness, I fully understand that line of reasoning.’

  ‘Did you really try out that spray on yourself?’ I sat back and looked at him. The warmth and desire in his eyes made my stomach flip.

  He nodded, guilt in his face. ‘Someday, somehow, I’ll make it up to you. Things got so—’

  ‘Out of control,’ I whispered. I knew what he meant. ‘I’m not good at forgiving,’ I straightened and rolled my shoulders back. ‘I’m terrible at trusting or believing in anything or anyone. But I understand why you did what you did, because of Dan. If I was in your situation, trying to keep Libby safe and her boys, I would have done the same.’ I laughed in hollow amusement. ‘Actually, I probably would’ve done a lot worse.’

  ‘Now that is something I’d like to see.’ His grin crinkled his eyes.

  ‘I hope you never do.’ I spoke with determined resolve. ‘So,’ I inclined my head in the direction of the door. ‘Bring your coffee, we can go upstairs and work on those pot shards.’

  ‘Is that a euphemism? I hope it is.’

  ***

  Up in my study, I made a beeline for the pot he’d started to fix.

  His sh
oulders slumped when he saw I only planned to help him with the pot.

  ‘I really wanted it to be a euphemism.’

  I dragged my chair over to his and, resting my chin in my hand, looked over the shards spread out on the table.

  ‘Look.’ He leaned over me and slid two pieces of the base together.

  I pressed a tiny kiss to his earlobe, as it was in kissing distance.

  ‘Oh good,’ he said, sounding slightly more enthusiastic. ‘Archaeology and kissing. My favourite.’

  I ignored him, picked up the tube of glue, carefully ran a small line of it along the raw edge of the shard and pressed the two pieces together.

  ‘Here—’ He pushed over another pair for gluing.

  I turned to kiss him again. But this time he was ready for it and met my slightly parted lips with his own.

  ‘I find fixing pots very calming,’ I said, breathlessly, when we came up for air.

  ‘I don’t.’ Jack groaned softly and made an adjustment to give his growing hard-on room.

  ‘More please,’ I said.

  He reached for me.

  ‘No, no.’ I waved a finger. ‘More shards.’

  ‘This is torture,’ he muttered.

  ‘It’s exactly what you deserve.’

  And so we slowly pieced together the pot, which could’ve been in bits for over four thousand years. The minutes drifted past in a sexy haze. Each piece we put together, we took things just one tiny step further.

  Jack had one hand up my t-shirt, fingers doing terrible things to my achingly hard nipple. I straddled his lap, pressed against the hard-on, which I fully intended to have in the palm of my hand as soon as he’d put the next piece of pot together.

  Dragging up my t-shirt, he expertly lifted my breast from my bra and placed his mouth around the nub. I groaned and decided the game had gone on long enough. It was time to move somewhere more comfortable.

  My phone, ever-present on the desk, began to ring.

  ‘No.’ I gasped in dismay, and Jack may have sobbed.

  ‘Leave it,’ he growled.

  ‘I can’t. It might be Dad.’ I tugged my t-shirt down over my supersensitised nipples.

  I answered.

  ‘Hey,’ said a voice. ‘I wanted to give you an update about Wuu Sing Chow.’

  ‘Trev – I mean, good afternoon, Detective Jackson.’ I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to get my brain to work faster. He was calling to give my an update? I didn’t think the police did that.

  Jack grabbed for my hips, but I moved quickly away. Just one touch from him and my brain would stop working again, and there were some things that Detective Trevor Jackson did not need to hear on the phone. In fact, there were a lot of things.

  I glanced towards the window, the shadows were lengthening but I could tell from the heat haze shimmering off nearby rooftops it was intensely hot outside. It’d been another perfect blue-sky Sydney day, but now, in the late afternoon, the heat was at its most intense as the sun beat down, sucking up what little moisture there was before it dropped beneath the horizon and left the baked earth to radiate back the warmth it’d absorbed.

  I gave Trevor Jackson my full attention.

  ***

  ‘I need to get ready for Myanmar,’ I said reluctantly after I hung up. ‘Trevor said Wuu is facing charges that will keep him locked up for years, and China has already been on the phone about extraditing him.’

  ‘Get ready in the morning. I want to finish what we started.’ Jack’s expression made liquid heat surge under my skin and I took steps towards him. But the ramifications of the journey ahead crowded around me.

  ‘I want to slow down,’ I said with difficulty. Kissing Jack had managed to hold the whole horrible situation at bay, but now I had to face reality and get myself as prepared as I could.

  ‘That sounds sensible,’ he said. ‘I hate sensible right now.’

  I nodded. In full agreement. I hated sensible as well. Deeply.

  ‘Do you need me to help with anything?’ he asked.

  I shook my head. ‘No.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  A shiver of nerves tingled in my chest. I crept through the house, dark except for the moonlight streaming through the windows, silently making my way towards the guest suite.

  I’d tried to sleep, but the only thing I’d been able to think about was him. And now I wandered through the house, certain that this magical moonlit night was not meant for sleeping, but for something entirely different.

  I hesitated outside his closed door, then pressed my palm flat against it and pushed it open.

  ‘Merry?’

  He sat up, and I could see his shadow reach to turn on the bedside light.

  ‘Don’t—’

  He dropped his hand.

  I pulled my white nightdress over my head and threw it aside, in a puddle on the floor.

  Goosebumps prickled over my skin at the chill of the air. I could feel my heart, beating hard in my chest. I wanted him. So badly. I ached for him, low in my abdomen, so intensely it felt like a cramp.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ he said. ‘So glad.’

  I relaxed a little. I’d guessed I wouldn’t be getting a ‘no thanks’ if I turned up unannounced in his bedroom. Even so, the thought had crossed my mind more than once as I slipped through the house.

  I took a step towards the bed, knelt on its edge and stretched towards him. Slowly, watching him in the pale moonlight, I lowered my mouth onto his. He met my lips in a kiss that was without restraint or delicacy. He bit my bottom lip and then explored the spot with his tongue before delving deeper into my mouth.

  With one hand he urged me over, onto my side, and the other came up underneath my loose hair to clasp the back of my neck. I could feel his hard-on through the blankets.

  He groaned, low in his throat, and I took advantage of the moment to pull back a little and loosen his grip on me. His hand dropped to my throbbing nipple. He curved fingers beneath my breast and ran his thumb across the sensitive tip. I gasped as the gentle scrape of his nail intensified the feeling.

  ‘Lie back,’ he murmured. ‘I want to see you.’

  ‘I’m kind of out of practice at this.’ A moment of insecurity swept over me. It’d been a long time.

  Laughter rumbled through his chest. ‘Me too.’

  ‘Liar.’ He struck me as the kind who always had some fuck-buddy tucked away somewhere.

  He shook his head. ‘True.’ The conviction in his voice convinced me he wasn’t lying.

  He pressed me over onto my back and threw back the blankets. His warm skin felt like fire against my cold flesh.

  He ran his fingers down the exposed skin of my side, barely touching me, in an airy caress. I shuddered and Jack pulled away a little.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ I murmured. ‘Please.’

  ‘I want to taste you,’ he said.

  My breath caught in my throat and I parted my legs slightly, in invitation. I was so wet, and I wanted him to touch me, to see how much I wanted him. To see the effect he had.

  Jack dipped his head and licked across my nipple. I sucked in a breath; it made them ache, but I was desperate to have his hands and mouth move lower. I pressed my hips against him and ran my hands down his flat stomach to where his cock lay, hard and enticing.

  I felt rather than heard his groan as I ran fingers gently over the silky soft skin of his cock and its damp tip.

  But he shook his head slightly, moved away and drifted his hand down to my knee, then slowly up my inner thigh, higher and higher. Fingers barely touching my skin as they slipped across the top of my thighs.

  I sighed in delight when he drew in a breath, as he felt how wet I’d become for him.

  ‘Merry,’ he muttered. ‘You are so perfect.’

  Every cell in my body was buzzing. I squirmed under his hand, wanting more, and thrust my hips up slightly against his fingers.

  He leant down and kissed my hipbone, bit it lightly, making me gasp in surprised pleasu
re, and writhe. I wanted his mouth on me. I clutched at the blankets, fisting handfuls of them, almost panting in anticipation.

  ‘Jack,’ I groaned. ‘Please.’ I parted my legs further, just in case he hadn’t got the hint. ‘Please.’

  I needn’t have worried. Traced the edge of my landing strip, and planted a kiss at its apex. Then brushed his fingers between my legs. The sensation was electric. I wanted more, harder, instantly. I parted my legs even more, and he pressed his open mouth against me. Flicking my hard nub with his tongue.

  I pressed my hands over his head, and though the only thing I could focus on was the sensations washing over my body, I noticed the silkiness of his hair beneath my fingers. He took me to the edge of orgasm. He gently ate me, in long divine mouthfuls, until I could feel myself tense, moments away from coming.

  He felt it too. He raised his head and caught my eye with a wolfish grin. ‘You taste delicious,’ he said. ‘I could eat you forever.’ He planted a kiss on my sensitive clit, which made me gasp, then moved up my stomach with kisses and feathery touches to my breast, where he flicked my pert nipples with his tongue. I arched toward him, panting and starting to get impatient.

  His mouth left my breast and travelled to my neck, I felt him hard against my thigh.

  ‘Oh I want you,’ I muttered against his neck. I raised myself up on my elbow and pushed him gently onto his back, I touched his hardness, his skin silky beneath my fingers. It was his turn to gasp, and he urged me over him with a hand. For a split second I had a sense of deja vu, a vivid memory of when I’d touched the jewels. I’d seen this.

  I slid my leg over his hips and sank down onto him.

  ‘Oh God,’ I groaned. It felt perfect, like I’d finally found what I’d been craving. He slid into me, to the hilt, finally taking away the ache.

  He thrust his hips up, and leaned to roll his tongue across my nipple. I groaned, and knew that this time there would be no holding back, this time I could not retreat from him.

  ‘Please,’ I said breathlessly. ‘Oh God, please. Yes.’

  Jack pressed his thumb against my clit as he thrust up into me. The sensation was so intense I was helpless to do anything but go with it.