Deadly Pursuit (23 page)

As he greedily absorbed her every expression and every tiny whimpering cry, he circled those strong hips, driving her farther than she thought she could go.

Trying to get as much of him as she could, she wrapped her legs around his waist and then … oh, God, and then all that slow, easy friction zeroed in on the sweetest spot in her body. All that delicious rubbing condensed and coalesced into contracting waves of pleasure so powerful she wanted to run from it and drown in it, all at the same time.

He knew it, too.

“Now,” he murmured against her lips and then nuzzled and licked his way as deep into her mouth as he was in her body.

Now.

There was one second of frozen waiting, and then Amara’s body jackknifed and only Jack’s protective arms holding her tight kept her in one piece. Piercing ecstasy ricocheted through her and her inner muscles gripped him with a pulsing wet suction that was rhythmic and endless.

And then Jack came, too. She thought her cries had been loud, but his were louder. His sounded choked and shocked, almost joyous. He gathered her closer as she scratched his back, clamped his hands on her flexing butt and thrusting hips and drove himself right into an orgasm that turned all his muscles to stone.

They lay there after, their limbs entwined in the kind of sweat-slicked and messy tangle that was the earthiest, most sensual thing in the world. His scent was all over her, musky but still fresh, intoxicating,
and she thought that anyone coming within ten feet of the door to the room must smell it.

Jack raised his head and focused eyes on her that were half closed and drowsy with satisfaction, but there was a silent question in their dark depths:
Are you okay?

Amara smiled with her swollen lips, pushed the tangle of hair back from her face, and gripped the tight round globes of his butt, bringing him closer.

“Again,” she said.

“What would you be doing,” she asked after a while, “if you weren’t here?”

“Wishing I was here.”

She laughed. Feeling his grin against the back of her neck, she wished she could see it. Jack never grinned enough.

They were spooned together in the bed, with Jack’s groin—relaxed now, but she’d change that in a minute—molded to her butt and his arms and legs surrounding her with warmth.

It was somehow easier to talk in the dark. Maybe wheedle a secret or two out of the Sphinx here. While she had the chance.

“Let me clarify: what would you be doing if you didn’t have to hide? Special agenting again?”

His muscles tightened, but he didn’t head for the shower or demand that she shut the hell up, so she considered that progress.

“No.”

“Then what? Open your own restaurant? Chez Jack?”

Another grin, this one accompanied with the unmistakable
contraction of his belly against her back. Wow. A laugh. She was getting good at this.

“I, ah, had actually thought I’d go to law school.”

What?
This tidbit had her twisting around to see him, maybe turn the light on and get a good look, but he merely locked his arms and kept her in place.

“Law school?” she said. “Are you kidding?”

“Shhh.”

He nipped the back of her neck, nuzzled it, and her foolish body shivered. She knew what he was doing, and it was a diabolically effective ploy, she’d give him that, but she wouldn’t be diverted this time. “Don’t try this distracting routine on me. It won’t work.”

He sighed. “It never does.”

“Are you telling me you want to be a lawyer—like me?”

“No, not like you. I’d be a prosecutor, possibly look for something in the U.S. Attorney’s Office. I’d leave the criminals to you and your ilk.”

“Alleged
criminals.”

“Whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep at night.”

This conversation was too important and interesting to have while she couldn’t see his face. Ignoring his groaned, “Why can’t you lie still for thirty seconds?” She turned to face him.

He sighed with obvious resignation but didn’t seem too upset.
“What?”

“Do you have family?”

To her astonishment, there was no stony silence. Just a very sad answer. “No.”

“Have you given up on the idea of having your own family?” she continued.

Of course she was assuming facts not in evidence:
some people weren’t cut out to be parents, didn’t want a family and didn’t need the excuse of being marked for extinction as a reason not to procreate. Maybe Jack was one of those, although she doubted it.

There was a long silence, and then, “Yes.”

That single word held enough regret to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, but no particular self-pity, which surprised her. “Aren’t you bitter about that? You didn’t sign up for a life sentence of looking over your shoulder—”

“I knew there were risks with the DEA. If I wanted safe, I’d’ve been a dietician.”

That
was funny. She couldn’t think of anyone she’d ever met who was less the white-coat type. Smiling because she was happy for this one second in time, she tipped her head back and let the laughter come.

Jack’s breath hitched. “I can’t stop staring at you. It’s bad.”

Obviously he wasn’t the kind of man to fall into bed with a woman he thought looked like a rottweiler, and he’d told her she was pretty. No news flash there. But,
man,
the way he said it, with all that awed reverence shining in his eyes, as though he was witnessing a sunset wrapped in a rainbow from atop a spectacular seaside cliff, sent her imagination into overdrive. The words seemed pregnant with more meaning than she could comprehend.

Boy was she in bad shape. Her gut told her to believe while her practical lawyer’s mind told her not to be such a flaming romantic idiot. “Thank you.”

She kissed him, soaking up his expression and storing it away for later. In the meantime, though, she had more questions.

“Did you go to college? The DEA doesn’t take dummies.”

That got her the belly laugh she’d been looking for and it was stunning. All flashing white teeth, dimples, and that deep rumble of unrestrained amusement that was like a Frank Sinatra–Ella Fitzgerald duet, it was so wonderful to her ears.

“I have my degree, yes. Math,” he added when she opened her mouth again to ask.

Math.
Wow. “And you went to …?”

“None-of-your-business university.”

“You do realize that the second I can, I’m going to Google you.”

“Good luck with that.”

From the amused gleam in his eye she figured his past had been thoroughly erased before he went under cover and such a search would turn up only a look–alike farmer in Topeka named Jackson Parker, but she intended to try anyway.

“And you were in the Marines before that?”

“Uh-huh.”

Now he was the distracted one. His rapt attention seemed to have snagged on the heavy swell of her breasts as they disappeared under the gaping sheet, and he stroked the curves, slowly … slowly … tracing across her skin until she felt the goose bumps rise.

Against her thigh she felt the hard ridge of something else rising too.

“Why did you go into the Marines?”

He flashed her a look of purest annoyance, at least a hundred-proof, before his attention reverted to the sheet and the process of pulling it away from her. “Because it was the best way to say
fuck you
to my father.”

“Ah,” she said, and then a soft, sighed
ahhh
as his
hand covered her breast and kneaded in the gentlest of circles until her swelling nipple sent streaks of pleasure to her wet sex.

Burying his lips in the hollow between her shoulder and neck, he kissed and inhaled his way up to her lips, where he hovered, levered over her with his chin on one hand.

“Any other questions?”

There was no time for an answer because he took her mouth in one of those deep but languid kisses that was more of a flowing of bodies together, a joining of something more important than tongues.

Pulling back just enough to speak, she looked up at him and hoped he’d keep answering. “Do you ever regret your choices?”

This seemed to be the one question too many. With a sudden intake of breath, he glanced off across the room, gathering his thoughts, and when he turned back and spoke again she could almost see the scalpel he used to slice away the words and feelings he didn’t want to reveal, not ever.

“When I think about … this guy,” he told her, “and I think about the damage he’s done and the lives he’s ended and ruined and the drugs he’s put on the streets—heroin, crack, Oxy, you name it, he’s distributed it, he’s like the Walmart of drug dealers—no. I have no regrets. I’d do it all over again a hundred times. Someone had to do it. Why not me?”

The other half of this carefully worded sentence hung in the air, tantalizing her, and she prodded a little to help it along. “But …?”

“Lately,” he said, and the hand on her breast resumed its tender stroking, circling but never touching her nipple until the need nearly blinded her, “I’ve been
spending a lot of time wishing I’d been a ditch digger instead of a DEA agent because at least then my life would have been my own.”

When he raised his head and stared her straight in the eyes, the strength of his glittering bitterness and despair, the sheer volume of it, made her gasp, and everything she’d wanted to know was right there.

Even if his strict code of honor or protective streak or whatever it was demanded his eternal silence on the subject, he wished he could be with her for longer than these few stolen nights. She meant more to him than that.

Clinging to this quiet knowledge, she opened her arms and legs to him as he settled between her thighs.

Marian Barber didn’t want to take the kids with her, but what could she do?

That shit Jerome sold her last time was good. Really good. So good it shot right through her with an extra head-lightening jolt of
don’t worry about a thing
relaxation, as though Bobby McFerrin and Bob Marley had exploded inside her and spread peaceful calm in every direction.

It wasn’t the same dosage she’d been taking. There were a couple extra grams of Oxy in there—thirty milligrams in the brown tablets instead of twenty in the pink. The old stuff hadn’t done this for her.

The problem was: he’d only given her a few pills—the fucker. Now they were almost gone again and she needed more.

What were her options? She’d narrowed them down to shitty, shittier and shittiest.

Shittiest was telling her husband she might have an
issue. But why would she do that? So he could worry and lecture her, fret about the possible damage to his precious career and then send her to rehab?

Yeah, right.

And anyway—she didn’t have a problem, so why make a whole big production out of it? A slight issue, yeah, sure. A challenge area for growth potential? Absolutely. A problem? No way.

So shittiest wasn’t an option.

Neither was shittier, which was going back to her doctor or pharmacist or a new doctor and trying to get the Oxy the hard way. The legal way. But she’d seen the narrowed light of suspicion in the doctor’s eyes the last couple times she was in the office, and now he was talking about more tests and/or additional rehab, both of which would reveal what she already knew: that her original injury had healed just fine, thanks, and there was no reason on God’s green earth for her to take the Oxy anymore except that the shit made her high as the orbiting space shuttle and she needed it to get through every hour of her duty-filled mommy-mommy-mommy life.

Oh, and for a few extra laughs, the old stuff wouldn’t do it for her anymore, even if she could get it legally. She could just see it now. After finagling an appointment with a doctor, suffering through the tests and the questions and the who-knew-what, the doctor finally whips out his prescription pad. And what would she do? Tell him not to waste her time with anything less than a thirty-milligram dose?

Yeah. That wouldn’t raise suspicion or anything.

That just left the shitty option: taking the kids along for a quick little prework run to meet Jerome and get a few more pills to help her along.

It wasn’t an ideal situation. She knew that. You didn’t take your kids into a bar and you didn’t take them to meet your street pharmaceutical supplier. Mothering 101. But they were two and clueless. They’d stay in the SUV munching Cheerios from their cups, as oblivious to this little errand as they were when she stopped by the dry cleaners.

Easy as pie.

But … she hadn’t gotten the information he’d asked for.

That part might be a little trickier, but Jerome had been very pleasant when she called his cell and hadn’t mentioned the information at all. So maybe he’d forgotten all about it. He wasn’t exactly a Rhodes scholar, was he? You didn’t become a dealer if you were that bright. So hopefully he’d forgotten about the request or decided to get the information some other way.

If not, her plan was to simply explain that she couldn’t do what he’d asked because the risks if she got caught were too great. If she got caught and landed in trouble, he’d lose a paying customer, wouldn’t he? Where was the win-win in that?

Nowhere. Surely he’d agree.

Still, when she pulled the Land Rover into the alley and cut the engine, her nerves skittered on her. The alley was still sort of darkish at this hour of the morning, and Jerome was already there, leaning against some unmarked doorway with his hands in the pockets of his puffy jacket and his ankles crossed.

Something about him was menacing.

Well, she knew what it was, even if the PC police would arrest her for thinking it. He was a young black man on the street. Period. That was enough reason to be scared shitless, but today there was something
about the absolute stillness as he watched her that raised the scary factor just enough to make her sweat.

“I’ll be right back, you two,” she told the girls as she got out.

“Okay.” Bethany flashed a quick smile filled with white baby teeth.

Veronica, who had her tiny fingers stuck in her plastic cup, just smiled.

Marian felt a sudden swell of unexpected emotion. They were so cute with their curly hair and chipmunk-on-steroids cheeks. At times like this it was hard to remember why it felt like these two sucked another gallon of her blood every day of her life.