More Than Lust (Courthouse Connections Book 1) (5 page)

Chapter Six

Gray had seen people who’d been afraid with far better reason, but he’d never before felt so protective, so determined to take care of another human and chase her demons away. He cradled Andi against his body, using his hands to move up and down her back because the motion seemed to calm her. “It will be all right, I promise.”

She burrowed her face against his shoulder when another roll of thunder rattled the windows and set her to shivering yet again. “Would it help if I drew the drapes?” he asked.

“N-no. Don’t leave me, please. I’m sorry to be such a coward. I know, in my head, that we’re safe—it’s my mind playing tricks on me, taking me back . . .”

When she raised her head and met his gaze, he couldn’t resist lowering his lips to hers, intending the contact to be only a gentle, reassuring kiss. She was having none of that, though. She wound her arms around his neck, holding him captive, opening her lips to him. When he tried to keep his original goal in mind, she looked up at him, tears glistening in her eyes.

“Please, Gray. Make love with me. I don’t want to think. Not about the storm or the trial or anything else. I just want to feel. To find out if the we’re really as good together as I’ve been imagining ever since I first saw you from across that room.”

How could he say no? How could he be sensible when every cell in his body told him to do as she asked, devour the woman he was beginning to think meant far more to him than a weekend hookup? He couldn’t, not with her looking at him as though he’d hung the moon, practically begging him to drive away the demons that the storm outside had brought to life.

When she burrowed her hands under his T-shirt and found bare skin underneath, he let her go long enough to peel the offending material over his head and toss it away. His breath caught in his throat when he got rid of her top and found creamy, delightful skin—no bra, not even a inconsequential scrap of see-through lace to impede his view of her small, firm breasts.

“God but you’re beautiful.” Lowering his head, he took a taut, pink nipple between his teeth and worried it with his tongue, loving the way her heartbeat slowed at first, then accelerated as passion began to replace her fear. She gave as good as she got, skimming her soft, seeking hands down his arms, along the back of his neck and lower, until he felt her fingers slip tentatively under the elastic waistband of his pajama bottoms.

There was no false shyness about her, no pretension of innocence that so many women affected. Andi knew what she wanted. He liked that. He liked it, too, that when it came to sex, she let him take the lead—something he was certain would never happen if he should someday face her in a courtroom.

As he caressed her and enjoyed her tentative exploration of his lower back, he imagined her submitting . . . handing over control of her mind and heart to him. Not just her dy.

Just as he recognized a streak of sexual dominance in himself, he imagined a need in Andi to relinquish control, to find the greatest pleasure in a lover who would command her pleasure. He wanted to be that lover who broke through her reserve and made her soar under his command.

He stood. Taking the two condoms he’d put into his pocket and tossing them on the table, he shoved his pants down, never taking his gaze off her arresting features. “Stand up for me. I want to see you naked.” The idea of lying with her, skin to skin, had him so damn hard that it hurt to move when he took her hands and brought her up on her feet, beside him.

She unzipped her shorts and let them glide over her satiny flesh, her gaze on his until the material rested at her feet. Her eyelids shuttered and she lowered her gaze, a subtle sign of submission that he liked.

He saw no hesitation—just the slightest bit of nervousness in the way her hands shook as she moved to get rid of the scrap of see-though pink silk that did little to hide the proof that she was a natural redhead but worked wonders at firing his already raging libido.

“Let me.” With deliberately slow motion, he dragged his hands along her sides, taking the last of her protection with him when he pushed the bikini undies over her hipbones. “You don’t need to hide anything from me, Andi. I’ll take care of you.”

“I know you will.” She said that so softly he had to strain to understand.

“I was trying to be a gentleman, but I can’t resist taking what I’ve wanted from the moment I laid eyes on you at Bennie’s.” He took her lips again, tracing them with his tongue before accepting her invitation and claiming her mouth. No longer banked, his hunger now grew unrestrained, his body reacting predictably when she moved closer, her flat, soft belly cushioning his erection.

He cupped her chin, deepened the kiss. Her skin felt as soft as a baby’s, smooth as satin against his fingertips. Her pulse raced, and that made his own breath come harder, rougher as her desire fed his. Breaking that connection, he moved his lips along the path his hand had taken, moving past the column of her throat to cup her breast.

“Oh, yes, don’t stop,” she murmured, her wet breath tickling his cheek. When the thunder rolled again, he felt her shiver, but just for a moment because he found a taut nipple and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger.

“It’s all right, I promise. Concentrate on us. Forget about the storm.” While Gray couldn’t care less about the storm raging outside, he had to fight to control the one inside his body. That one was setting him on fire. “Concentrate on what’s going on between us.”

She let out a little squeal when he increased the pressure, tugging on her nipple while he shifted so his erection settled between her thighs. When she looked up at him and whispered, “I need you inside me,” it was all he could do to resist until he could grab a condom, rip the package open, and sheath himself.

“Lie down for me.”

No hesitation. She lay back against the cool leather, her eyes half closed, her expression dreamy. Gray had a feeling that Andi was the angel he’d fantasized about but never consciously sought out even as his friends were settling down around him. His need visceral, he came down atop her and nudged her legs apart so he could kneel between them.

● ● ●

Andi welcomed his weight atop her as he joined their bodies, chasing away the last of her terror as a storm greater than the one outside built inside her. This felt right . . . The wetness, the heat. The delicious stretching of her sheath around his rigid sex. The security of having his big body over hers, shielding her from Nature’s onslaught.

“Oh Gray.” Her inner muscles contracted around his heat and hardness.

He moaned. “You feel so damn good. Oh yeah. Squeeze me again. Like that.”

When he moved inside her, it felt right. Forceful yet tender, he went deeper with each stroke. God but this felt incredible—better than anything she remembered from a few past encounters, as though they’d been destined to be together.

This didn’t seem like a weekend hookup, but much more. His substantial weight grounded her, gave her a sense of security that banished the storm from her mind, leaving her feeling only him and the supple leather of the sofa cushions beneath them.

Slow motion, like a gentle sea, emotion flowed between them, even as the storm raged outside. The pure physicality of him clutching her hips while he moved in her, ever stronger and faster, of her digging her fingers into the taut muscles of his back and shoulders, merged into a climax beyond anything she’d experienced before.

Later, after he’d picked her up and taken her to his bed, they lay together in the dark, oblivious to everything except the slow, steady beat of his heart against her ear . . . the mingled sounds of their breathing as the storm slowed to a gentle rain against shuttered windows.

Andi had never felt so peaceful . . . so fulfilled. It was incredible, she thought as her eyes drifted closed, to feel this way with Gray, when she’d known him less than twenty-four hours.

Chapter Seven

When Gray woke at the sight of sunlight streaming through the windows of his room, he was momentarily surprised. An early riser, he was used to seeing the sky still dark—or at least that hazy, blue-and-pink glow of sunrise. But he felt good. Fantastic, in fact, as he stretched out in bed, inexplicably pleased to discover he wasn’t alone.

Andi. She slept much like she made love, with wild abandon, on her side with one arm draped over his belly, both legs tangled in the covers, her auburn hair draped over his arm. Her breathing was slow, steady, her mouth slightly open. He couldn’t help grinning because it looked as though she felt perfectly natural lying here with him.

The woman didn’t show the slightest bit of pretense. He liked that. A lot. With Andi, what he saw was exactly what he got.

Normally Gray didn’t sleep with his lovers. Doing so felt too personal, too confining, or at least it had in the past. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d brought a woman home, period, much less spent the entire night with her on his turf. Now that he thought of it, he realized that he generally took women to their homes, had sex with them, and left—sated and without any need to give them any more than the requisite “Thanks and I’ll call you” speech.

Waking next to Andi felt right though. As if she belonged here with him, for more than the mind-blowing lovemaking that still lay gently in his mind. Leaving her to the sleep he figured she needed after last night’s storms, the one outside as well as the one they generated in each other, he rose quietly and padded to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee.

Before the storm, she’d seemed eager to look for shells, and they should be plentiful enough this morning, following last night’s blow. Turning on the TV, he checked the times for low tides, when shell hunting would be at its best. Eleven o’clock. They’d have plenty of time to get down to the beach that was practically deserted when he looked out and saw the aftermath of the storm—upended lifeguard stands, remains of broken chairs and chaise lounges, even a trio of to beach umbrellas floating some fifty feet offshore in the foaming surf.

No, it wasn’t a day for swimming in the Gulf, even if he’d been inclined. They should find plenty of shells, though, even though the Pinellas County beaches weren’t prime hunting grounds for unusual specimens. Sand dollars should be a dime a dozen, along with the tiny, colorful coquinas that some natives liked to make into soup. With luck, they might come across a battered conch shell churned up from the sea bottom by the storm and brought ashore on the incoming tide.

Taking his coffee and checking to find Andi still fast asleep, Gray moved to the sofa where they’d laid out her case file and made notes of possible cases she might want to use in her opening and closing statements. As he had back in law school, he felt a strong pull toward criminal defense . . . advocating for defendants wrongly accused, or who’d been caught up peripherally in a serious crime that could conceivably ruin their lives forever, as was the case with two of Andi’s defendants.

When he got back from this upcoming assignment he wished now that he’d never volunteered for, Gray fully intended to resign from the DEA and persuade his uncle that he wanted to join Winston-Roe—in the criminal defense division, not estates and trusts or corporate law, which still held no appeal.

Andi Young had a lot to do with his potential ninety degree about-face in career plans, which shocked the hell out of Gray because no other woman had even tempted him, after years’ acquaintance, let alone in less than twenty-four hours. There was something about her . . .

But first things first. He re-read the police report and depositions, this time from the perspective of a defense attorney—what he fully intended to become despite his uncle’s feeling that criminal defense was the redheaded stepchild of the firm.

The primary defendant, a Venezuelan national who spoke no English and was in the United States illegally, reminded Gray of several acquaintances he’d cultivated during undercover assignments with the DEA. He had no sympathy for the man but wasn’t the least bit surprised that he’d managed to retain a defense lawyer—a Latino solo practitioner reputed to have Mafia ties. The man’s extensive practice included clients similar to the present defendant. These scumbags provided smaller dealers with their merchandise and took the fall for the big drug lords, who paid their legal fees in return for keeping their own names clean. Gray had more experience dealing with these guys than he’d ever dreamed of before joining the DEA.

The dealer who’d bought into the sting was small potatoes, a user with a long rap sheet who’d done three terms in Florida prisons. Crack cocaine was his poison of choice, although he allegedly dealt whatever poisons he could find that his customers—mainly university students—wanted. Gray had no sympathy for this guy who apparently smoked up his ill-gotten gains since he’d pled poverty and had a public defender trying to get him a light sentence by having him render “substantial assistance” to the undercover narcotics cops.

Gray found himself paying special attention to the information about the kids who’d been caught up with their dealer and the dealer’s supplier. They should have known better than to mess around with hard drugs. They should have stuck with booze and pot for fun, the way Gray and his buddies had as undergraduates and even occasionally as law school students when they needed to let down their hair.

Still, he couldn’t see how they deserved to be charged with trafficking cocaine for the very minor roles they’d played. As though he were the one planning to defend these unfortunate young men, Gray picked up his pen and drafted an opening statement that included every piece of exculpatory evidence he could come up with on short notice.

While he was on his laptop, seeking out case law that might justify negating Florida statutes in the case of the kids who’d drawn his sympathy, Andi stepped up next to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Good morning. I see you’re an early riser. Sorry I slept so late, but you gave me quite a workout last night. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. Is there any more of that coffee?”

Gray got up and pulled her into his arms. “The pot’s in the kitchen. I was just about to go and grab a couple of the cannoli that we brought home last night.” Bending, he took her mouth and used his tongue to trace the seam between her incredibly sexy lips. When she closed the distance between their bodies, he felt himself getting hard against her soft, flat belly.

She had a way of turning him on faster than any woman in his memory—except, just maybe, when he’d been a horny teenager who had probably spent more time with an erection than without.

● ● ●

By the time they finished off the cannoli and had a second cup of coffee, Gray had impressed Andi with the depth of his insight about her upcoming trial.

“You really should think about making full use of your law degree because you’d make a fine defense attorney,” she commented as they strolled along the seaweed-littered shoreline looking for unusual shells, their buckets in hand. “You’ve got me convinced that at least two of my defendants don’t belong in prison, even though it’s my job to see that prison is where they end up.”

Gray laughed. “Funny. While you were snoozing and I was prepping to play devil’s advocate for you, the same thought crossed my mind. Somehow my reasons for choosing the DEA over going to work for Winston-Roe seem less important now than they did when I made my initial choice. I’m thinking that if I argued well enough, I could get myself assigned to the criminal division now.”

Andi wondered as she watched him sift through a stack of sand-encrusted seaweed whether she had anything to do with him suddenly seeing the prospect of practicing law in Tampa more appealing today than it apparently had been when he’d volunteered for the undercover job that would take him away early Monday morning. No, she told herself, it was a lot more likely that helping her prepare for trial had simply reminded him that he enjoyed the mental exercise involved in criminal defense.

“Look,” he told her. “It’s a fair-sized conch. They only blow up on the beach here after a good storm.”

The white shell, smooth on the outside with a conical shaped tip, measured around three inches lengthwise. When Andi looked closely, she saw something moving near the lip of the shell. “It has an animal growing inside it.”

“Want to keep it?”

Andi thought for a few seconds. The shell was beautiful—unusual too. It would make a fine memento of what was shaping up to be the best weekend of her life. “No. Whatever creature has made a home inside it deserves to live. Let’s help it get back to the water.”

“Good idea, although I’ve eaten more than a few bowls of conch stew in my time. You’ve obviously got a tender heart. I bet you dragged home stray puppies and kittens when you were a kid.”

“I still do. Just a month or so ago, I found a half-starved mama cat and three babies in the weeds next to the parking lot at my apartment building. Mom and Dad now have four new feline family members living on their back porch because I can’t have pets at my place.”

Gray smiled. “I thought so,” he commented as he carefully picked up the conch and they walked together to return it to the water. “When I was a kid, I told myself I’d get a dog or cat when I grew up and got a place of my own, but my job makes it nearly impossible to have even a goldfish or two since I’m away from home so much.”

“Didn’t you have pets when you were a child?” Andi found it hard to imagine Gray growing up without the animals that had been as loved as any other members of her family for as long as she could remember.

“I had a salt-water aquarium. And a pet grass snake until it scared the housekeeper half to death and Dad made me let it loose.” Bending, he lowered the little conch beneath the water. “There, the critter inside it ought to be okay now. The tide will carry it out to sea.”

He took her hand, and they strolled along, stopping every now and then to look at an unusual looking shell. When Andi watched Gray look longingly at a golden retriever playing in the surf while its owner waded nearby, her heart went out to him.

She hadn’t grown up living in a mansion, with fancy sailboats and sports cars at her disposal, but as she spent more time with Gray, she realized that she’d take the modest home where she’d grown up over his, any day. They may not have had a lot, but Andi had never doubted that her parents loved her and her brother—and saw that they had all the memorable experiences they could afford that children needed—including summer vacations that included their pets, in a beat-up camper trailer Dad had towed behind his truck.

They hadn’t gone far from Tampa or to any places that could be considered exotic, but those trips had been adventures that Andi was sure she treasured at least as much as Gray valued the times he’d mentioned going sailing with his dad. One summer her family had spent a week at Manatee Springs, on the Suwannee River, paddling in a canoe her dad had found at a yard sale. On another trip, they’d met some of her mom’s relatives up in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Once, they’d splurged and stayed at a hotel on Cocoa Beach so they could watch a launch at Cape Canaveral, up close.

Yeah, Andi had a lot of memories of her childhood that would last the rest of her life. She had family who loved each other—and who treasured their time together even now that she and her brother were grown and had places of their own.

“You’re awfully quiet all of a sudden,” Gray mentioned as they reached the point where the Gulf and Intracoastal Waterway came together at the tip of the key.

“Sorry, I was remembering some of the times my family spent together during summers when I was little. We did simple things, nothing glamorous like sailing to the Bahamas—but we had fun, packing up ourselves, the dog, and the cat, and going camping for a week whenever Dad had time off from work.”

He grinned. “That sounds like fun. Not that I didn’t enjoy sailing and fishing with Dad—until he died when I was still in high school. I still miss the times we had together, just the two of us. One summer he and Mother took me to Europe. I must have been eleven or twelve then, too young to get the most out of visiting castles and museums, and resentful as hell because the trip interfered with me playing in my Little League all-star game.”

Andi turned to him and met his gaze. “I’ve never even thought about going abroad. Maybe someday . . . if I can afford the time and money to see all I’d like to see in one trip. Still, I don’t think I missed anything vital. I’ve toured castles on the Internet, not to mention looking up ancient artifacts and seeing videos of famous cities.”

“You’ve probably seen more of Europe than I remember.” He took a close look at her face and brushed her cheek with a fingertip. “You’ve also seen more of the sun than you should have, with your fair skin. We’d better head back to the condo.”

“Oh no. I put on sunscreen before we left.” At least, Andi figured, her long-sleeved cover-up should prevent a full-body lobster effect. “I’m not as sun sensitive as most redheads, so I should be okay as long as we get out of the direct sun.”

“Here, put on my baseball cap. It ought to give you a little protection.” He sounded worried as they headed back toward his place.

Andi was worried too, but not as much about being sunburned as she was about falling too hard for Gray.
I’ve got to remember this is just a weekend fling, nothing more,
she told herself, but she was afraid no warning she could give herself would keep her from feeling a whole lot more for him than just the desire she couldn’t resist.