More Than Gold (Capitol Chronicles Book 3)

by Shirley Hailstock

She stood up. Jack noticed she favored her bad leg. She came toward him.

  "Famished," she said, but the look Jack saw had nothing to do with nutrition and everything to do with sex.

  "This is a job, Morgan." Jack turned and put the bag down, then faced her. "It's not a romance." The words seemed flat. Who was he trying to convince? He'd bought condoms. He could feel the small box pressing against him through his pants leg.

  "What makes you think I'd want a romance with you?"

  Jack sighed, then walked toward her. He could see her reaction. She wanted to run faster than any jackrabbit he'd ever seen, but she was a fighter. She'd stand her ground for as long as there was breath in her body. Well, he'd show her how much breath he could steal.

  "The way you look at me."

  "And how is that?"

  "Like your body is ovulating and I'm the last piece of chocolate candy on the planet."

  CHAPTER 9

  "I do not," Morgan protested, her voice shrill and high.

  Jack took another step toward her and stopped. He'd seen her movement. It was slight but recognizable. He admitted she was good-looking, more than good-looking. At nineteen she'd been a budding beauty. Today, after running for her life, everything about her was alive and vibrant and eager for someone to hold her. He continued, walking all the way up to her until he was so close he could feel the fire between them. It was red and living, swirling, ready to consume, to take the life out of them with its oxygen-eating force. Jack waited, saying nothing. He wanted her to look at him, lift her head and look into his eyes. He knew she'd do it, knew she couldn't help but do it. He was patient. His life was built on being patient. Finally, she raised her eyes and her head. He let the moment linger, looking at her, running his eyes over her features like a lover ready to take what was his. Then he leaned closer. Neither his mouth nor his body touched any part of hers. There was nothing between them but want and need. She swayed forward. He watched her eyes close and her body begin to melt. Her arms came up to grab hold of him to prevent her from falling.

  "You're a job, Morgan. This is not a romance," Jack said, knowing what her reaction would be.

  He stepped back as her eyes flew open and she regained her balance. She glared at him through storm clouds of emotion, then stalked off into the darkness as much as her leg would allow.

  As the darkness swallowed her, Jack let his breath escape. God! To say she didn't have a stranglehold on him was like saying the blood in his veins was ice water. She positively drove him mad, but the only way the two of them would survive is if they never crossed the line. He'd tasted Armageddon more than once, but with Morgan there would be no reprieve. She was leaving when he got her to Washington. Jacob would give her a new identity and a new life. They would never see each other again. Even if he left the CIA, he couldn't go with her. Jack knew it. It was unfair to both of them to get involved, to begin a relationship that had no future. It had been the pattern of her life. People leaving her. He didn't want her to think of him as one of the others, someone from her past who'd come and gone.

  She'd be devastated and he'd—. Jack didn't want to think about what he'd be when this was over. He wanted her more than he'd ever wanted any woman. He'd come damn close to having her in that hotel bathroom. He'd wanted to ravish her then and that want hadn't diminished by a single iota. His only refuge was to keep his head and stay on his side of the line.

  ***

  Morgan was past angry. She sat on the ground, hugging her knees to her chest and rocking back and forth. Jack brought out the tiger in her and he seemed to do it on purpose. Why had he intentionally begun a fight? She'd done nothing, but they couldn't be together without some strong emotion occupying the same space. Jack was determined to make that emotion anger. She wondered why.

  Morgan checked the sky for a possible answer. Earlier she'd been wishing on a star, now she wanted to know why Jack—

  She stopped.

  "He's afraid,'' she said out loud. He was afraid of her. Why? Every time she got near him, he retreated.

  Morgan didn't have time to discover the answer. Something dropped in her lap and she jumped. Jack stood outlined in the darkness three feet from where she sat.

  "Morgan."

  She looked at what he'd dropped. It was makeup, lipstick, a comb and brush.

  "You thought about me," she said, not bothering to keep the incredulity out of her voice. It followed right in with the train of her thoughts. Jack never bothered with anyone, but when he went out he'd thought enough to bring her back lipstick and a comb.

  "They were at the checkout stand," he covered, with a slight lift of his shoulder. She saw the movement in silhouette.

  "Why are you afraid of me?'' she asked, voicing the thoughts that were uppermost in her mind.

  "Why do you think I am?" His question was asked slowly as if he were buying time, trying to figure her out. He didn't know her as well as he thought he did. Maybe he'd read her file. She didn't know what was in it, but she was sure it existed somewhere in the annals of the CIA.

  Morgan got to her feet. She moved toward him slowly. Her leg hurt but it was secondary to her purpose now.

  "You push me back each time you have to touch me and you take serious measures not to touch me."

  "I don't want to complicate things."

  "We're running for our lives, Jack. Things can't get more complicated."

  He stared at her but didn't answer.

  "If we get killed all complications end, so it can't be the threat to our lives you fear. Tell me what it is?"

  Jack didn't move, but Morgan noticed his shoulders move slightly. "You know Jacob Winston?"

  "Not personally. We've met once."

  "When we get to D.C., what do you think will happen?"

  Morgan looked away. She hadn't wanted to think about getting to D.C. She knew she and Jack would part there and while her life was on the line here, she was still with him.

  "I hoped I'd be safe."

  "How do you think that will happen?"

  "I don't know. I guess I'll find out what the FBI is going to do."

  "And if they could do nothing?"

  "Why are you asking me all these questions?"

  ''Morgan, Jacob Winston is the director of the witness protection program. That's where you're going when I get you to Washington."

  So it wasn't her. He was afraid of her leaving him. Could she be right?

  "Then you're not as impervious to me as you claim," Morgan challenged. She started toward him.

  "Back off, Morgan. You're way out of your depth here."

  Morgan didn't back off. She couldn't say what pushed her. She was so tired of Jack acting like he ruled the world. Her world at least. He made the rules and she was expected to follow them. Well, she wouldn't this time. Something inside her wanted to know that he wasn't all stone and granite, that he was human. That his control could either meltdown the way hers did.

  Jack stared at her, his eyes hooded and as impossible to read as always, but this time Morgan didn't care. This time she was determined to have the upper hand. She went toward him. He didn't move back, but she saw him react as if he wanted to. As quickly as it happened it was gone. He was in control again. A fragile control and she knew it.

  "Let's test my depth," she said. She grabbed the snap on his jeans, releasing it and the zipper in one smooth stroke. Her hands moved faster than he thought or he was more surprised than anything else when she plunged them inside his pants and surrounded him. He was already erect. She'd known it, but the proof gave her more confidence, more power.

  Out of pure reaction and self-preservation, Jack's hands grabbed Morgan's shoulders, crushing them so tightly she should have screamed. She didn't even feel the pain. Not in her shoulders. Not in her leg.

  "Morgan, stop!" His voice was a wail, like a wild, wounded animal. She ignored him, raking her long fingernails over the rigid length of him.

  "Tell me," she whispered, keeping her voice intentionally controlled, inte
ntionally low and seductive. "Tell me, Jack."

  Jack's knees bent and his head fell on her shoulder. She supported his weight, continuing her torture. She knew he was human, knew he wanted her. He'd told himself he wasn't human for so long, he believed it. She refused to let him continue to think like that. She'd force him to know the truth, just as he'd forced her to see it.

  His breath on her neck was hard and ragged and his hands would probably leave bruises on her shoulders.

  "Morgan, please stop." He pleaded with her.

  "You don't want that, Jack," she told him, continuing that seductively low voice, a whisper and a caress in one. "I know what you want. You want me. You've wanted me since that first day at Olympic training camp. I could see it in your eyes.''

  "You're wrong." His words were stretched apart like a person who was learning to speak the language and struggling to remember the right combination.

  "I could see it in the way you looked at me when you didn't think I noticed. You kept me in your sight as if we were would-be lovers with business ahead of us."

  "I did nothing. . .of the. . .kind." He faltered.

  "Didn't you, Jack?"

  "That's not the reason."

  "If I'm wrong, Jack, if we have no unfinished business, why don't you stop me?" She moved her head back, giving him access to her neck. He groaned. "Why don't you pull my hands away?" She'd worked his jeans and shorts down. Her hands touched his hot skin, drawing circles over his buttocks, teasing the skin as she brought her hands closer and closer together, closer and closer to the sensitive point of his erection. "I'm here, Jack." Her tongue licked his flame-incensed shoulder. "I want you." She kissed his collarbone. "Take me, Jack. Take me."

  "You don't know what you're saying."

  "I do." As harsh as his voice was, she kept hers velvet, dark and caressing like a summer night.

  His hands squeezed tighter on her shoulders. The pain registered and she winced. Quickly he released her and like lightning grabbed her wrists and pulled her hands away from his body.

  "You want me to make love to you," he stated. His eyes bore into her like a drill. "It wouldn't be love, Morgan. It's lust! Do you hear me? Pure and simple lust. And in its most basic form."

  She didn't have the use of her hands, but she had her body. She moved into him, making contact. Her breasts hovered against his chest. She spread her legs and let his erection find its home. His groan was muffled but she heard it.

  "I'm not in love with you," she lied. Then she raised her head until her mouth was only a kiss away from his.

  Jack's body was a mass of connected coils, but he was down to a single thread holding it all together. Morgan frayed that thread until an electron microscope would be needed to see it, but it held. One more rub and it would snap. She wouldn't cut it. He had to do that. He had to be the one to make the final step. She wouldn't make it easy for him. She wouldn't back off, step away, give him the chance to fall back into that safe world where there was no feeling, no emotion, no love.

  "Morgan," he groaned and yanked on the wrists he held, pulling her forward. His mouth slammed into hers, rough and hard. There was no softness in him. His tongue rushed into her mouth and his hands banded her to him. He took the kiss as if decades had passed since he'd kissed anyone. Everything about him said there was no escape for her. She'd asked for it and she was getting what she demanded.

  His hands moved over her clothes, ripping them from her and raking over her skin like claws. She felt their roughness on her breasts and shoulders as her T-shirt and bra were replaced by large hands. His mouth left hers and traveled over her neck. His teeth scored her skin, punishing it as he went to her breasts. His teeth closed over her nipple and she cried out at the pleasure that fissured through her, spiraling inside her and settling between her legs.

  Her hands held his head, keeping him there, allowing him to torture her as she had done him. She knew he was trying to prove himself right, that he wasn't making love to her. That this was lust, pure and simple, as he'd told her. Basic, he'd said. But she knew better. She knew nothing like this had ever happened to her before and the experience for him was new and wonderful and full of promise. But promises weren't something Jack understood or relied on. He couldn't give to another person. He had no practice in trusting another person and to completely lose control as he was doing was something he would want to stop. He would stop too. She wouldn't let him. Morgan clamped her arms around his neck and molded herself to him, sliding her injured leg up and down his, feeling his hardness against her increase, listening to the groans that passed from his mouth to hers.

  Jack held her crushingly tight, bending her backward as his mouth devoured hers. On one leg, she clung to Jack to keep from falling. She set her leg on the ground oblivious to any pain. His hands moved all over her. Burning heat surrounded her. She could almost see it glow in the darkness.

  Jack had to be out of his mind. There was nothing else to explain it. He should stop. Now! But he didn't want to. He'd dreamed about Morgan, awakened in frustrated sweats from the erotic fantasies he'd shared with her. Not one of them compared to what was happening to him now. No dream could match her softness, the way she felt in his arms, the way her smooth skin contrasted his rough hands, the way her soap smelled on clean skin.

  He was lost, over the edge, unable to do anything more than dive into the pool she'd created, make her his, keep her close and love her. The time for turning back had passed. He had to keep going. His chance to keep control ended when Morgan unsnapped his jeans.

  Jack's leg pushed her foot aside and he lowered her to the ground. Quickly he kicked his jeans away and pulled his shirt over his head. He removed her jeans and shirt without finesse, yanking the pink lace panties down and over her long legs, giving no reverence to her injured leg.

  At the last minute, he grabbed his jeans and pulled a foiled condom from his pocket. He sheathed the latex over himself. Then he was on top of her, thrusting himself inside her. She would have screamed, but his mouth clamped to hers and he swallowed the sound.

  Morgan thought she was lost when Jack had first kissed her, now she knew what he meant. He was a beast and she his willing victim. He held her arms above her head as he thrust stroke after stroke into her. She was helpless to stop the unleashed animal. And she gave what she got, lifting her hips and taking him further and further inside until she was sure the two of them would split into equal halves.

  Morgan pushed him over, rolling on top of him. She took the role of aggressor, vowing not to let him think she wanted to turn their struggle to tenderness. Jack would expect tenderness. She wouldn't give it to him. She'd give him what he gave her and he'd love it. She lowered herself over him, then began her ride. She rode him long and hard, her body joining with his. His hands took her waist, guiding her, completing the dance they both wanted to go on and on. Her heart beat fast and she thought it would burst with the sensations that flowed through her. She'd known life before, known love before, but after tonight, after being with Jack, nothing would continue the same.

  And she wouldn't want it any other way.

  ***

  Jack hadn't been this close to tears since he was eight years old and lost his first swimming meet by mere seconds. He rolled away from Morgan the moment the explosion he knew was inevitable between them shattered the night and he calmed down enough to move. He wanted to get away from her. He didn't want to discuss what had just occurred between them. He didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to admit that it had touched him more than anything else that had occurred in the past thirty-seven years.

  He sat with his back to her, his head in his hands. Behind him he could hear Morgan's soft hiccups as she tried to regain her breath. He didn't have much time. Two minutes, three at the most, before she turned to him, before she touched him. He didn't want her to touch him. That's how this had started. And it was his fault. He could have stopped it. Why hadn't he? Why did he let her put her hands on him? And why did he let it go on?
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  "Don't do it, Jack."

  He heard her soft voice, the one that sounded like warm brandy on a cold winter night. The one that sent chills down his spine and wrapped his resolve around her finger.

  "Don't crawl back into the shell. It's broken, shattered. There are too many pieces to put back together."

  Jack swung around and stood up. He took her hands and pulled her to her feet.

  "Get dressed," he said.

  He pulled on his pants, not bothering with his shirt. When Morgan had on her T-shirt and was trying to put her leg in her pants without falling, he grabbed her sneakers and lifted her off the ground. He carried her back toward the cave. Her head fell on his shoulder. She was light. Much too light for the strength she'd shown today and too light for the weight she'd pulled from his shoulders. She didn't know she now carried it.

  ***

  Nothing remained in the cave. Jack had cleared it earlier, moving everything Morgan had left there to the SUV before he went looking for her. He'd unrolled sleeping bags for them to sleep in, but now figured they'd only need one. He carried Morgan to the SUV.

  "Where did this come from?" she asked as Jack set her on her feet.

  "I'll explain it later," he said. He punched the security pad on the key and the back door unlocked. Pulling it open, Morgan looked inside. "You'll be warm tonight." Her head snapped around at him. "The sleeping bags." Still the look in her eyes seared through him, leaving him unable to look away. Morgan stepped in front of him. She was barefoot and wearing no pants. Jack looked at her upturned face. She was beautiful and no light complimented her more than the moonlight casting soft shadows across her skin. Hair, framing her face, turned silvery and he wanted to comb his fingers through the mane he knew was thick and soft to the touch. His breath became shallow. He controlled it with a practiced skill.

  He liked the way she made him feel, but she was right, it also scared him. She had a power he'd never before felt, one that made him both strong and weak at the same time. It made him want to be with her, yet ready to run away. Want to protect her, yet afraid of the threat she presented to his heart.