When he finally ended the kiss, she looked up at him with love and trust in her eyes. "Oh, Jamie, I love you so much."
"I know you do. And I love you even more. We're going to be the happiest young couple in the state of Tennessee come three weeks from Saturday." He lifted her into his arms and swung her around the room. "Hell, make that the happiest couple in the whole United States of America."
Reve wanted nothing more than to escape Cherokee Pointe as fast as she could. She'd been a fool for coming here, for seeking out Jasmine Talbot in the hopes the woman might prove to be her biological sister. Even though she didn't quite believe Sally Talbot's staunch denial that Sally's younger sister had given birth to more than one child, Reve couldn't accept the fact that she and a woman such as Jazzy Talbot might be blood related. The woman was trash. And from what she'd gathered on very brief acquaintance, Jazzy was a whore. Even if by some weird trick of fate she and Jazzy were related, Reve didn't want to pursue the truth. She didn't want to be the woman's sister. Hell, she didn't want them even to be cousins. And she certainly didn't want the likes of Sally Talbot to be her aunt!
As she zoomed her Jag along the highway leading out of town, she considered the can of worms she might have opened with her visit. Why had she told them her name? If any of them wanted to find her, it would be very easy. Everyone who was anyone in Chattanooga, in all of Hamilton County, knew who Reve Sorrell was. She was the heir to Sorrell fortune! People like Jazzy Talbot and her aunt Sally were the type to want money from a long-lost relative.
And what about Caleb McCord? She'd taken an instant liking to him, but she didn't kid herself about what sort of man he was. From the looks of him, he was a diamond in the rough, a poor boy from the wrong side of the tracks. A woman like Jazzy would know how to handle that kind of man, but Reve figured she would be out of her depths. She liked her gentlemen friends to be her social, intellectual, and financial equal. It didn't take a genius to figure out Caleb McCord didn't fit that bill, at least on two counts.
Would Caleb's curiosity about why Reve Sorrell and Jazzy Talbot looked enough alike to be twins translate into action? Would she have to pay him off so he would let the matter drop? And once they discovered how rich she was, what would it cost her to make Jazzy and Sally Talbot disappear from her life?
Cursing herself for allowing her desire to know the truth about her "double" to create a potentially embarrassing situation for her, Reve didn't realize how fast she was driving until she whizzed past a big black pickup truck going in the opposite direction. Suddenly she heard a siren. Damn! Glancing in her rearview mirror she saw the blue flashing light atop the truck, which had turned around in the middle of the road. Oh, great. Just great. Who was this guy? A policeman? A sheriffs deputy?
Slow down and pull off to the side of the road, she told herself. Pay off this overeager lawman and be on your way.
Before she could follow through with her plans to be a cooperative citizen, an enormous animal dashed across the road in front of her. Good God! A full-grown buck with an impressive rack that would gain the deer the admiration of any hunter. She swerved, trying to keep from hitting the magnificent animal, and in the process wound up running her Jag into the ditch. And not just a shallow ditch on the side of the road. No, it was a deep ditch, on the side of the mountain. Luckily she managed to bring the car to a full stop only seconds before it would have hit head-on into a massive oak tree. When she skidded to a halt, even her seat belt didn't prevent her from bouncing. Thankfully, the air bag didn't deploy.
With her heart beating wildly, her nerves screaming, and a sudden headache pounding in her temples, Reve tried to undo her seat belt. Her nervous fingers couldn't manage the simple task. What was the matter with her? She wasn't hurt. Didn't have a scratch on her. Whatever damage had been done to the Jag could be repaired, and if not, she'd simply buy herself a new car and use one of the five others she owned in the meantime.
Why she was shaking like a leaf?
Shock. She was in shock. That had to be it.
A loud rapping on the driver's side window gained her immediate attention. When she looked through the window, she gasped when she saw the face of a dark-skinned savage, with black hair down to his shoulders, and a set of slanted green eyes peering at her. Maybe she'd hit her head and didn't remember. Surely she was hallucinating. This man couldn't be real.
Suddenly the driver's side door opened and the hallucination spoke to her. "Are you all right? Are you hurt?"
Reve gulped as she came face-to-face with the most brutally masculine man she'd ever seen in her entire life. A big, fierce warrior, with an angry look in his moss green eyes, reached out and began running his huge hands over her head, neck, shoulders, and arms.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she cried. "Get your hands off me."
He ceased his inspection and withdrew his hands. "I was trying to check you for injuries, since you didn't respond. If you're all right, let me help you get out and up the hill to my truck. I'll call a wrecker and-"
"Who are you?" She stared at the guy, noting that although he spoke with authority, he wasn't wearing any type of uniform. For all she knew he was a serial rapist who just happened to be in possession of a flashing blue police light.
"Sheriff Butler," he told her.
"You're the sheriff?" Inspecting him further, she realized he was Native American, at least part Native American. Of course half-breeds and quarter breeds probably weren't all that uncommon in this area, which wasn't that far from the Cherokee reservation just over the state line.
"I noticed you have a Hamilton County tag," he said. ‘'You visiting somebody here or you just passing through?"
"Just passing through," she replied.
He reached over and undid her seat belt. "Think you can manage to get out, or should I help-"
"I can get out without any help, thank you very much."
After grabbing her purse off the other bucket seat, she shoved the sheriff aside and managed to exit the Jag, but the minute her high heels hit the soft, uneven ground, she lost her balance. He grabbed her around the waist, the action unintentionally bringing her body up against his rock-hard chest. She gasped, then looked up at him as her heartbeat drummed loudly in her ears. Their gazes locked instantly.
"Well, I'll be damned," he said as he stared at her, his mouth slightly parted.
'Take a picture, Sheriff, it'll last longer."
"Sorry." He apologized, but continued staring at her. "You remind me of a friend of mine. The two of you could be-" 'Twins," Reve finished his sentence for him.
"Yeah, how'd you know?"
"Just a wild guess." She pulled away from him and tried to walk up the steep embankment, but three-inch heels weren't made for mountain climbing.
Sheriff Butler came up beside her, put his
arm around her waist, and all but hauled her up the hill. How totally demoralizing, she thought. Up until this moment in time, she'd never had so much as a parking ticket. And here she was being dragged away from the scene of an auto accident she had caused by her reckless driving. Well, not reckless, just speedy.
When they reached, the side of the road, the sheriff released her instandy, as if he had no more desire to touch her than she had for him to have his hands on her. There was something unnerving about the man, something about him that sent off warning signals in her brain. And what disturbed her the most was that her reaction to him-to his touch-wasn't revulsion. No, it was something else. Something she couldn't name.
"We'll get a wrecker out here to bring your car up and take it to the garage," he told her. "You're lucky. It would have been a damn shame if your bad driving had totaled your little XKR. I guess that fancy sports car must have set you back at least eighty grand."
She didn't like his tone, didn't like his condescending attitude. Hell, she didn't like him! He was too bossy, too big, too masculine. "No big deal," she replied. "The only tiling that matters is that no one was injured, not even the deer." 'Yeah, you're lucky, all right." He surveyed every inch of her, studying her closely as if he was memorizing her face and body. "Speeding the way you were doing often leads to serious accidents. Sometimes fatal."
"I wasn't driving that fast."
"My guess is you were doing over seventy-five in a fifty-five speed zone."
"You guess my car cost eighty grand. You guess I was doing over seventy-five." Reve crossed her arms over her chest and glared at the sheriff, giving him her best I'm-important-and-you're-not expression. "Do you know anything for certain, Sheriff, or do you just go through life making uneducated guesses?"
His gaze narrowed as he focused on her. She shivered. That stern, disapproving glare rattled her nerves.
"Get in the truck," he told her as he headed toward his vehicle. "I'm taking you to my office where I'll get all the information I need. Then, if I decide not to arrest you-"
"Arrest me!" Reve stormed around the hood of the truck, following him until she could grab his arm. "Now, you listen here to me, you big country hick Cochise wannabe, I'm not accustomed to being treated this way. I can easily contact the governor and-"
He turned around, grabbed her by the shoulders sternly but gently, and said, "Get your butt in the truck. Now. And if you want to call the governor when we get to my office, then you call him. Hell, call the president for all I care. The way I see it, you must have a screw loose to overreact to everything that's happened the way you have."
"Are you implying that I'm mentally incompetent?"
"Lady, I'm not implying anything. Now, get in the truck before I pick you up and put you in it."
Reve jerked away from him and planted her hands on her hips. "Do you have any idea who I am?"
"Nope. I don't have the foggiest idea of who you are, except that you're the spitting image of a lady much nicer than you are, by the name of Jazzy Talbot. And I sure hope for Jazzy's sake that you aren't some long-lost cousin or something."
"Is every man in Cherokee County a friend of Jazzy Talbot's?" The minute the question left her lips, Reve wished it back. Damn, now this infuriating man would realize she knew who Jazzy was. So much for her escaping Cherokee Pointe and any complications from her inquiries about Jazzy.
He eyed he skeptically. "I thought you said you were just passing through."
"I was. I am. And just as soon as we clear up this mess about my speeding and about the accident, I plan to be on my way. The sooner I see the last of Cherokee Pointe, Jazzy Talbot, and you-, the better." 'Then just shut up, get in the damn truck, and I'll do my level best to see that you get what you want!"
She loved that he was rough with her, hurting her just enough to make it exciting, to make her heart pound faster and her pussy drip with moisture. He wasn't like any lover she'd ever had and despite being only twenty- her next birthday in a few months-she'd already screwed at least two dozen guys, including her high school history teacher and a deacon in their church.
What she loved about Jamie was his sense of adventure, his willingness to take a risk. They were kindred souls. Why the hell he wanted to marry her sister she'd never figure out. She was a far better match for him. Laura would never dream of doing what she was doing. She'd never meet her sister's fiancé at the stables in the middle of the morning, strip buck naked, and fuck the guy's brains out in one of the empty stalls where anybody might come up on them. No, not sweet Laura. She was far too shy and sensitive, much too much of a Goody Two-shoes to ever be able to satisfy a man like Jamie Upton, who had all sorts of dirty, wicked desires.
It was that chance of discovery here in the stables that heightened the tension and gave her a climax only seconds after he first rammed himself inside her.
"Harder," she demanded. "And faster."
He lifted her hips and delved deeply, then withdrew. Just before he started jackhammering into her, he bit her shoulder. Bit her hard enough that she cried out in pain. But she loved the pain. She felt it in every fiber of her being. Every muscle. Every nerve. God, she wished he was bigger, wished every thrust brought the pleasurable pain that she craved. But he was big enough, hard enough, and wild enough to give her another orgasm. It was building now, her body tightening, the sensation increasing with each millisecond that passed. She bucked up against him, encouraging him to hold back nothing. She wanted to come again before he did-or at least by the time he did. She wanted it to be so fierce and hot that the top of her head would come off. It had been that way the first time they'd hidden in her closet at her parents' house and tore at each other like a couple of animals.
"Damn, girl, you're wild," Jamie told her as he increased his movements to a frenetic pace.
When he groaned deep in his throat, she knew he was fixing to spew into her. Her pubic lips swelled even more and moisture gushed out of her. And the very second he burst inside her, she unwound like crazy. Screaming with release, she clawed at his back, still covered by his white tuxedo shirt. While the aftershocks rippled through them, he collapsed on top of her, then rolled over and onto his side. She purred like the satisfied kitten she was, then rose up over him just enough to lick a wet trail from his right shoulder to his navel.
"You want to lick me clean, don't you, you little she cat?" Jamie grabbed her head and shoved her face against his penis. "Do it, darlin'. Get a good taste of me."
She struggled against his hold, but he was bigger and stronger and she couldn't escape. Sheridan Willis growled, bared her teeth and opened her mouth. She could bite him. Bite him hard. That's what he deserved. But, God, it would be such a shame to put him out of commission, even temporarily. She licked her lips, then placed her tongue on the tip of his sticky, deflated sex and licked off the mixt
ure of their combined juices.
* * *
Chapter 5
"She's insane even to consider going through with the marriage," Andrea Willis told her husband in the privacy of their guest quarters at the Upton home.
When Laura had told them at lunch today that Jamie had explained-to her satisfaction-about his sudden absence from the engagement party last night and that the wedding was definitely on, everyone seemed as shocked as the bride's parents. Although a sweet, sometimes even docile child, Laura had always been difficult to understand. God knew Andrea had tried to bond with their eldest child, but it had proved an impossible task. Of course she loved Laura. Who wouldn't5 But having to deal with the girl's ongoing emotional and mental problems often proved too much for Andrea.
The Last To Die Page 7
