Текст книги "Tall, Dark and Deadly"

Автор книги: Lisa Renee Jones

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Текущая страница: 34 (всего у книги 40 страниц)

Chapter Fifteen

Luke discovered Julie sitting in the dim glow of a lamp in front of the gas fireplace in his living room, wearing one of his t-shirts, with a big blanket he kept in a closet under her, and another over her legs. He found himself unable to move for the impact the sight had on him. A sense of rightness filled him. She belonged here with him, and he could easily get used to seeing her here and having her in his life.

She seemed to sense him watching her and twisted around. “Hey,” she said softly, and he could hear the concern in her voice, the uncertainty.

“Hey,” he replied, holding up her briefcase. “Got your things from the truck.” He set it on the hall table and walked toward her, forcing himself to go slow when he’d never wanted to rush so much in his life. He had to get a grip, to pull back, to give her a chance to let down those damnable walls he wanted to tear down.

“That’s great,” she said. “So the truck hadn’t been tampered with?”

“No. It was fine.” Luke sat down next to her. “How are you?”

She wet her pale lips, her face scrubbed free of make up, her hair soft and shiny and freshly washed. She’d never looked so beautiful. “It wasn’t a random mugging or car jacking attempt back there, was it?” she asked, bypassing his question.

“No,” he said simply, tucking hair behind her ear. “It wasn’t.”

“You said there was a body, when you called Blake from the truck.”

“I grabbed our intended attacker and his partner shot him.”

Distress furrowed her brow. “Who was he?”

“The body disappeared.”

She stiffened. “Disappeared. Oh my God, Luke. This is...terrifying. Who did this? Who sent them? Judge Moore? This cartel leader?”

“I don’t think it was Moore,” he said. “The man has too much to lose by the attention his wife and his divorce attorney dying would lend. And frankly, I can’t see the cartel doing it either. It brings attention to the judge.”

“Maybe they think he’s a problem and want him out of the picture.”

“Then they kill him,” he said. “That shuts him up. Getting him arrested makes him talk.”

“So then who?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Someone who thinks we know something we shouldn’t or thinks we’re close to finding it out. Maybe the person Elizabeth called Dragonfly. Maybe someone we don’t even know about.” He pulled the cover away from her and eased her to her back, trapping one of her legs with his. “I’ve never been as scared as when I realized I’d left you exposed in the truck with a shooter on the loose. I could hardly breathe for fear I’d just made the worst mistake of my life.”

She laughed but without humor. ”You Walker men do the protect and serve thing well. I’m fine.”

“Protect and serve?” he asked, pulling back to look at her. “Like you’re my duty?”

“Everyone is your duty. That’s what you brothers do. You protect everyone. It’s what comes natural.”

“You’re not my duty, Julie,” he said, amazed at how easily she dismissed what was between them. “Or I wouldn’t have felt like I was dying inside just thinking I might have lost you.”

Her lashes lowered, dark half circles on the pale perfection of her skin. “Luke.”

He caressed her cheek. “Look at me.”

“I can’t,” she said, her bottom lip trembling.

“Look at me,” he ordered, his voice still soft, but with a demand this time, and slowly she obeyed, letting him see the uncertainty only he seemed to create in her. “You think this is nothing, this thing going on between us, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes,” he insisted, teasing her lips with his, “you do. You know exactly what I mean. It’s not nothing and if that’s what want it to be, I should warn you right now. You matter to me, Julie, like I’ve never let any woman matter to me.” He claimed her mouth with his, unable and unwilling to hear her reply. No woman had ever had this power over him, this ability to hurt him, and he’d just given her more. He didn’t want her objections or her rejection. He wanted her acceptance, her passion, and some part of him knew she wasn’t ready to give it to him, not with words.

Luke parted her lips, pressing his tongue past her teeth, tasting her with a slow caress.

She moaned into his mouth, and the deliciously erotic sound had his cock expanding against his zipper, making him wish he’d done away with their clothes. Her fingers laced into his hair, giving him a tiny piece of her submission, so tiny, so far from all he wanted. She didn’t submit during sex, not even with him. Not in the past, but she had several nights before, and he wanted it again. He wanted that invisible sign of trust, of feeling something for him that she might not put into words, but showed him instead. With her body, her response to his touch, his kiss, his body buried deep inside hers.

His hand slid down her back, under the shirt and around her ass before he caressed the slender dip of her waist, and cupped her naked breasts.

She whimpered as he teased her nipple, her hips arching into his hand. He trailed his mouth down her jaw, over her neck, to her ear.

”I love those little sounds you make.” He shoved her shirt upward and she helped him pull it over her head, but Luke didn’t let her. He wrapped it around her hands and held them there, running his hand over her breasts, tweaking her nipple.

“I can do a lot more with my hands free, you know?”

“You can have them back after you come for me,” he said, his palm traveling down her stomach, his leg pulling hers open.

“That’s a–”

She gasped as he caressed and teased the silky heat between her legs. “There we go,” he said. “That’s exactly what I was looking for.”

He licked her nipple and she arched her back, thrusting her voluptuous breasts higher. Luke sucked one stiff peak into his mouth, and sunk two fingers inside her.

“Ah,” she panted. “I...Oh. I want to touch you.”

“Not until you give me what I asked for,” he said, his lips moving to hers, his tongue tracing the seam of her mouth, his fingers stroking her inner walls in a slow back and forth motion, even as his thumb played with her swollen nub. “Not until you give me what I want.”

“Just so you know,” she whispered. “I’m going to pay you back for this.”

He smiled. “I hope you do.”

“Oh I will,” she said, “and...”

He let go of her hands and slid between her legs to suckle her clit. She tensed instantly and began spasming around his fingers. He suckled and licked and brought her to a complete release. The instant he felt her relax, she tugged at his shirt, and he fully intended to let her pull it off of him. Only she didn’t. She knotted it at his hands.

He laughed and sat up on his knees, arching a brow. She was on her knees too, making sure the shirt was tightly nodded. “Sit back against the couch.”

“You do know I still have my pants and my boots on? It would be easier to take them off with my hands free.”

“I can handle it,” she said, shoving his chest. “Sit back.”

Who was he to argue with the hottest woman in the planet? He sat back against the couch, between the coffee table and the love seat. She shoved the coffee table away, those lush breasts bouncing with the movement, and he was pretty sure he was about as hard as he’d ever been his entire life.

She tugged at his boot. Again, her breasts bounced. He groaned. “You know you’re driving me crazy, don’t you?”

“You earned it,” she reminded him.

Yes, he supposed he did, but with Julie, she always gave as good as she got. He reminded himself it was one of the things that made her so damn hot. Nothing was easy with her, but it was always fucking phenomenal.

The instant his boots were gone she settled between his legs and caressed her way up his thighs. “Did I mention that your sounds of pleasure make me hot?” she asked.

“Then I’m pretty damn sure you’re about to make us both hot.”

A teasing smiled played on her gorgeous mouth. It had given him more than a few fantasies over the years and it was a mouth he knew could do some pretty amazing things. She bent over and pressed her breasts to his crotch, taking his bound hands in hers and sliding her lush curves up his stomach and chest until she urged his hands behind his head. Her breasts were now in his face and he captured one with his mouth, suckling it deeply, roughly.

Julie moaned and held onto his head, rolling her shoulders forward in pleasure before pushing him back from her. “Stop,” she ordered, her blue eyes finding his. The connection was jarring in its intensity, the emotion between them far deeper than the erotic play of this game.

For an instant, he saw that vulnerable side of her flash in her eyes before the sexy, sinful, confident woman claimed his mouth in a sizzling kiss, and then drug her lips down his neck. She kissed her way downward and the snap of his pants, the slide of his zipper, seemed to magnify and echo through the room.

The instant her hand was inside his pants, adrenaline sent a rush to his head. Her fingers stroked the soft skin of his shaft, and then pulled the hard length of him free. She leaned and licked the pooled liquid at the tip and then suckled just the head of him into her mouth before tugging at his waistband.

 “You can keep the socks, but nothing else.”

Damn, how he wanted to rip his hands free, and he could, but the desire to enjoy the woman in control gave him his own control, his own will to resist. By the time they’d worked together to free him of his clothes, he was thick and pulsing and all but going insane with the need for release.

She bent over, sticking that gorgeous ass of hers in the air, wrapping her hand around the base of his cock. She looked at him, scraping her teeth over her lip.

“Now what should I do?”

“Witch.”

“Tell me. Your wish is my command.”

“Alright then,” he said. “Suck me.”

She smiled. “Alright then, I will.” She bent down and cut him a taunting look. ”After I lick you.” She rolled her tongue around him and Luke moaned. She licked him up and down, and watching her was almost as good as what she was doing to him. She was driving him crazy.

“Suck me,” he groaned. “You–” She took him into her mouth. Oh and how she took him. The woman knew how to please him, and she’d practiced plenty during that summer month they’d spent together. She sucked, and pumped, and used her hand, her lips, her tongue, until he couldn’t even hold his eyes open, the pleasure was so intense. He leaned back, his head on the cushion, and when he would have said ‘harder’ and ‘faster’ she was already there, and so was he. Release came over him, intense and ripping through him with biting, painfully good pleasure. Slowly, he relaxed, the tension in his muscles easing. Julie climbed on top of him and he tore his hands free, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her.

“You know you drive me wild,” he said, “but not because of this. Because of you and us, and-”

She pressed her lips to his, silencing his words, and he was certain it was because she didn’t want his confession, because he’d let her slip back into the sex goddess routine too quickly. But then she surprised him, and murmured, “I know.”

He pulled back, forced her to look at him. “You know what?”

Her lashes lowered, then lifted. “That it’s more than...me driving you wild or you driving me wild. I know.”

They stared at each for several intense seconds before they were kissing again, wild and hot, a craving that had to be fulfilled. And when it shouldn’t have been possible, he was hard again, thick with need.

“Let’s go to the bedroom,” he said, before he forgot that they needed a condom.

She reached behind her, stroking his shaft. “I like it right here.” She started to lift herself and he stopped her.

“Condom.”

“I’m on the pill.”

He went still at that, at the idea that she hadn’t been before but she was now, at the implications there had been someone else in her life.

Her fingers curled at his cheek. “I’ve always been,” she said. “I’ve just never told anyone...until now.”

What he’d thought was a sign that he meant nothing to her only moments before, now seemed like a gift. “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to be inside you as much as I do right now.” He kissed her, and wrapped his arm around her, lifting her. She pressed him to the slickness of her core, before slowly inching her way down. When finally she settled fully on top of him, him buried inside her, they lingered, their mouths a breath apart, the energy in the room crackling with electricity and tension.

He pressed her down, thrusting into her, and a slow, sensual dance began. It built into something fierce, something that made them one, neither of them in control. Passion built until they were frantically touching, kissing, moving, and when they reached the edge of pleasure, she went first, and he followed.

They collapsed into each other, and clung together. No words were necessary.

***

A long time later, Luke lay with Julie on their backs in front of the fire, pressed together.

“You said you were on the pill as an extra precaution,” he said, the subject weighing on his mind. For the first time in his life, he was thinking of what settling down, what a wife and kids might be like.

“Yes,” she said after a long pause.

“Because you don’t want kids?”

“I...no.” She rolled to her side, away from him to face the fire. “I don’t.”

He turned to her, hugging her. “Because you had a bad childhood.” It was the only thing that made sense. She volunteered for children's events, she worried about the children of divorces.

“Too often parents let their kids down.”

“You aren’t your mother.”

“No,” she said. “But there are plenty of kids I can help who have parents like mine, or kids like the ones tomorrow night is about, who need me and people like me.”

Damn. Tomorrow night. This was not the best time to talk about this, but he wasn’t sure there was a better one either. “Let’s talk about tomorrow,” he said, sitting up and pulling her up with him.

“What about tomorrow?”

His gaze slid over her breasts and he felt the stir of his body. Luke grabbed the shirt she’d tossed aside. “I can’t complete many coherent sentences when you’re this naked and this gorgeous.”

 She didn’t respond and he could see the concern in her face. She tugged the shirt over her head before repeating, “What about tomorrow?”

Luke grabbed his pants, bypassing the boxers he couldn’t locate to pull them on before he sat down on the couch. “We have to assume that tonight was a hit on one or both of us, and that they will come for us again.”

“So you want me to do what? Go into hiding?”

“Yes,” he said, in no uncertain terms. “I want to keep you here or take you underground somewhere.”

“You need me to get to Judge Moore and the cartel. And I need my job.”

“Surely, you have enough success to be allowed to work off-site for a while.”

“I could and I’m willing to do that as long as I have a means to an end. I’m not foolish enough not to see the danger I’m in. But I can’t do it indefinitely, Luke. When I say I need a real means to an end, I mean it. I have only me to count on.”

That punched him in the gut and then right in the heart. “You have me and I thought we just moved somewhere towards you knowing that.”

“I...We did. We did. But Luke, I have bills to think about.”

“I’ll help you if I need to.”

“No. I’m not taking your money. To get to that point would mean the career I have worked night and day was lost. If you think that’s where I’m letting this go, I’m not. I can’t. And the children’s charity is counting on me. I’ll lay low. I’ll skip work, but I won’t skip that.”

“Julie–”

“This is bigger than me or you,” she said, going to her knees. “Stop playing my protector and think about this rationally. I’m scared. I’m scared to death, but people, children, are dying from tainted drugs this bastard is selling them.”

“I’ll find another way to stop him.”

“We both know that the task force you talked about would have found a way in if they could. I can get you inside the operation, or I hope you’re right and I can.”

“No,” he said, pushing to his feet.

“No?” she demanded.

“That’s right. No.”

She stood up. “I’m going to get dressed and leave.”

He shot to his feet. “So now you’re going to be irrational and go home and get killed?”

“No,” she said. “I’m going to go to Royce and Lauren’s apartment where I’ll be safe and you can think.”

“I don’t need to think.”

“Yes,” she insisted, “you do. You need to think about waking up and reading about another dead child and knowing you could have saved that child’s life by taking down this cartel.” She stormed off and Luke stood there, tension curled in stomach, prickling every nerve ending he owned.

Damn it, he loved Julie. He loved her in this moment more than he’d ever loved her. She was gorgeous, and sexy, and successful because she was smart and she worked hard. But even more than that, she was scared and yet she was still brave, still willing to sacrifice for others.

He ran a hand over his face and tracked after her to the bedroom, where he found her setting her bag on the bed, to begin packing. “You aren’t going to back off of this, are you?” he asked, leaning on the door frame.

She abandoned the bag again and turned to him. “I can’t abandon this.”

“Then you do exactly what I say, how I say it, and when I say it.”

She walked to him and wrapped her arms around him, tilting her chin up to look at him. “I have no problem with that. Like I said, I’m not foolish, or without fear. A whole lot of fear actually.”

“If you don’t, I swear I will kidnap you and hold you hostage somewhere until I know you’re safe.”

Her expression softened. “I don’t want to lose you either.”

It was the closest thing to really admitting her feelings to him that she’d come, and he slid his hand behind her neck and pulled her mouth to his. “I’m not going to lose you.”

“Good,” she whispered before he kissed her and took her to bed, where he was going to do his best to convince her to stay until after Tuesday night, and the charity event with Judge Moore, was over.

***

At exactly noon on Tuesday, Gina walked into the lobby – if you could call it that – of the dingy El Toronto Hotel, unable to suppress the apprehension in her stomach. A long lunch spent reliving the past wasn’t appealing. Not that she was ashamed of being a sexual person, but doing it for pleasure, and doing it with a bunch of disgusting men to pay her bills was a totally different picture. She’d been good at it too. She knew just how to make those bastards come back for more, even when part of her prayed they wouldn’t.

Glancing around her surroundings she felt the sickening feeling of deja vu. One thing about New York, it did extreme well. The high end was glitzy, the low end absolute scum city. This was about as low as you could get.

Dingy brown walls, scraped up and scuffed floors, with two cheap, torn chairs as the only furnishings. She could smell the musty scent of sex, drugs, and filth as if it were a part of the very lining of the walls. Clearly, the judge was trying to make a point, to tell her just how low he believed she was, and how low those in the firm she now worked would as well.

She’d worked hard to get her life back on track and he wasn’t taking that from her. Gina headed down a hallway, and up the stairs. As she reached the third floor, she flipped the record button on her cell phone, making sure every bit of this encounter was recorded. She fully intended to turn the power upside down.

She found the room she needed and knocked, no hesitation, no reason to wait. The door flew open and Judge Moore waved her in, still fully dressed in a dress shirt, tie and slacks, but the sly smile on his face told her he didn’t intend to stay that way.

The door slammed behind her.

“Lock it,” he ordered.

She did as he said, flipping the latch.

He stopped at the edge of the bed. She stopped at the edge of the hallway leading into the room. “Take your coat off,” he said. “I’d hate for you to get hot.”

She set her purse down, leaving the folds open to allow the recorder the best reception. Her coat followed but she tossed it on the bed, making sure not to cover her purse.

His gaze raked over the white lace blouse she’d changed into before arriving. It dipped low to reveal her ample cleavage and she’d paired with an equally seductive slim figure-hugging black skirt. The blatantly lustful look on his face let her know, that despite his almost ex-wife  being barely in the ground, he intended to fuck her. She knew that already. Only one question remained: what else did he want?

“Like what you see, Judge?” she asked.

“Don’t most men?”

“I didn’t ask about most men. I asked about you.”

She sashayed to him, letting her hips do a sultry dance, stopping in front of him, letting him know she wasn’t about to wilt under this threats. “What are we doing here, Judge? Or should I say, Master?” She glanced around the room. “I would have thought you’d have chosen a nicer place.”

“Isn’t this the kind of place you prefer?”

“I moved up from this years ago, honey,” she said. “I like my hotels plush and my men loaded. I hope you have lots of cash. I’m expensive.”

He laughed. “So you don’t mind if I pass your card out to your employers? There are eleven men and Julie, aren’t there? I bet we could get you a promotion.”

Her lips twitched as her gaze dropped to the bulge in his pants. “What is it you want besides the obvious, Judge?”

“It’s simple enough,” he said. “I want information on your boss and anyone she comes in contact with. Passwords to her private files, records of her calls, anything with my name on it, as a top priority.”

She clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth, seeing her chance for a turnabout. “Sounds like a big order. What will I get in return?”

He looked down at her breasts. “What we do,” he said, tearing his gaze from her cleavage, ”which I intend for us to do often, will be our little secret. Just as what you’ve done in the past will be as well.” He reached out and shoved her blouse and her bra down to expose her nipples, teasing them with his fingers. And damn, if her body didn’t respond, as it always did, even when she hated the bastard like she did this one.

“There is one condition,” he said with a raspy voice.

She quirked a brow, trying to ignore the way his fingers were arousing her. “Which is?”

He ignored her question. “Unbutton your blouse,” he ordered.

She didn’t hesitate. Her fingers worked the buttons quickly. His lust was her power. She went down on her knees in front of him, her hand striking his zipper. “I’ll give you what you want, all of it – pleasure and satisfaction. For fifty thousand dollars I’ll even get you your dead wife’s journal.” It was a mistake. He had her up and shoved against the wall in two seconds flat. “What journal?”

Her heart thundered in her ears but she recovered from the initial surprise of his attack. It wasn’t the first time she’d been roughed up. “I told you for fifty-”

He shoved a hand to her throat. “You have no idea what you are into, bitch. What journal?”

Gina grabbed at his hands, gasping for air. “Let go,” she squeaked. “Let...go.”

“You going to tell me what I want to know?”

“Yes. Yes.”

He loosed his hold on her neck but didn’t let go. “I heard Julie talking to someone named Diana about a dead person’s journal. I did some research and figured out that’s Elizabeth’s sister.”

“Where is it?”

“She and that Walker brother have it,” she hissed.

 “You’re going to get it for me and you can forget the fifty-fucking thousand dollars. The only one who’ll be paying anything is you if I don’t get it. That price will be your life. The people I work with will bleed you dry to get what they want and then make you disappear.”

***

Judge Moore sat on the edge of the lumpy mattress and dropped his head into his hands. “Shit,” he mumbled letting the word echo through the empty room.

He had gotten himself into a hell of a mess. If Arel found out he had done him wrong he would be a dead man. Just hearing his wife had caused more trouble would be enough to make Arel mad enough to draw blood. If Arel ever found out he and Dragonfly had double-crossed him, they’d be digging their own graves.

He picked up the hotel phone, knowing the call wouldn’t be traced because no one would ever know he had been there. The line rang three times before he heard a clipped hello.

“We have problems,” he said without any greeting.

“Damn you, I told you to never call me at work.”

“Unless you want Arel to know his trusted man Dragonfly did him wrong, you’d better listen.”

Silence greeted him for several long moments in which he could tell the other man was walking, probably to privacy. Finally, he said, ”Go on.”

“My wife had a journal which she gave to her sister. I doubt it exposes us to the police, but she saw you with me several times. We need that journal so Arel can’t get to it.”

A series of muffled curses rumbled across the line. “So I’ll do the sister and get the journal.”

“She gave it to Julie Harrison and if you kill either of them, you know damn well it’s going to bring attention on me.”

“No bodies, not murder. Believe me, I know how to make people disappear.”

“And if you bring me down, I’ll take you with me.”

More silence. “What do you propose we do then? Sit on our fucking hands?”

“I have someone close to Julie who’s going to get me the journal. Once we know what’s inside, we can decide what to do about anyone who’s read it.”

“When will you have it?”

“Soon.”

“Get it and get it now, because if you don’t make me feel as warm and fuzzy as a school girl in pink quickly, I’ll deal with this my way.”

The line went dead.