Take Me - A Bad Boy Steals a Bride Romance

by Layla Valentine

  “Cass! What are you doing here?” He sprung back, away from the prostitute.

  Whether or not he’s separated from his wife, he’s clearly moved on, Cassandra thought absently.

  The woman tugged at the tie binding her wrists and Max pulled the knot loose. “You owe me, asshole,” she said, gathering up her clothes. The woman dressed herself quickly, glaring at Max. “I didn’t agree to having an audience.” She gathered up a stack of bills from the coffee table and beat a hasty retreat, muttering insults under her breath.

  “Hello, Max,” Cassandra said, as the door slammed behind the nameless escort. “Sorry if I’ve come at the wrong time, but something came to my attention and I wanted to come straight to you.” She reached into her purse and found the item she wanted. Touch-memory brought her finger down on the correct button and then she withdrew her hand from the bag.

  “If you wanted to drop in on me for a little fun, all you had to do was call,” Max said, sitting down in his chair and making no move to put his pants back on. “I’m always happy to oblige.”

  “Well, actually… I’m not the one who’s going to be screwed this evening,” Cassandra said, smiling faintly. “Come on in,” she called over her shoulder.

  The moment that Jack walked through the door, Max’s demeanor changed completely.

  “You! What the… You’re supposed to be three states away by now,” he said, a mixture of anger and fear in his voice.

  Jack smiled grimly. “I’ve been having an interesting time on the lam,” he said, blocking the only possible exit route that Max could take.

  Cassandra saw her boss’ gaze land on the screwdriver now gripped tightly in Jack’s hand. She slipped her hand into her pocket and withdrew the ring she’d found in Laura Granger’s back yard.

  “I think I’ve got a scoop for you,” she said quietly, as she walked towards the desk.

  Cassandra laid the ring down where the light would catch it best. It touched the wooden surface with a muted clink, and Max tore his gaze away from Jack for long enough to look at it, the expression on his face removing all doubt from Laura’s mind as to whether it could be someone else’s ring.

  “Now tell me, what would your wedding ring be doing in Laura Granger’s back yard?”

  Max’s face went red and then pale once more. He glanced at Jack and shuddered. “I’m not saying anything,” he said, shaking his head.

  Jack raised the screwdriver, holding it up in an unmistakable threat.

  “You’ll talk or we’ll worry about the story of how you came to kill Laura later, when your body washes up in the bay,” Jack told him firmly.

  “Oh Christ,” Max said, his gaze fixed on the weapon. He threw his hands up, cringing slightly. “Don’t kill me. Please.” He swallowed convulsively and looked at Cassandra. “It was me, I killed her.”

  A poignant moment of silence enveloped them.

  “How did you even know her?”

  Cassandra looked at her boss intently; it was the question that the rest of her theory hinged on. She had never even known that Max had known Laura as anything other than the hero cop.

  “We were partners,” Max said with a shrug, his gaze constantly shifting from Cassandra to Jack.

  “Partners?” Cassandra moved closer to the desk and put her purse down on the surface, sinking into one of the chairs.

  “You know what that bitch was like,” Max said, his voice tight. “At least, you do now.” Cassandra shrugged. “She had the in. She gave me the intel on what was going on in her investigations—juicy stuff for the paper. I gave her tips we got from some of the sources we go to. It worked well.”

  “Okay, and what else?” Cassandra said, gesturing for him to continue.

  She glanced at Jack; the fugitive’s attention didn’t waver from Max for even a moment, and Cassandra sensed that he was just waiting for an excuse to plunge the screwdriver into Max’s body.

  “She was a good lay too,” Max said, his smug confidence briefly returning. “She’d come up here in the middle of the night, while I was working on the next day’s features. She’d bring a bag of whatever she had to spare, and we’d fuck like animals.”

  Jack’s grip on the screwdriver tightened and he moved forward a step.

  Max, possibly realizing how dangerous the man he was talking to was, held up his hands defensively. “She was a dirty cop! She sold to dealers, she sold to me, she was about as corrupt as you could get, all while everyone’s going around making her into a saint.”

  “And you certainly weren’t going to make sure that everyone found out about that,” Cassandra said, rolling her eyes.

  “Of course I liked partying with her. She always skimmed the best stuff, and she gave me my pick. It was a solid arrangement…until that bitch walked out on it.”

  Max’s face reflected sulky displeasure, and Cassandra wondered how a man so powerful and well off could look so much like a spoiled child.

  “What happened, the night that you killed her?” Cassandra said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “She came to see me, like always,” Max said, shrugging. “We got a little buzz on, and I asked her if she had any new information for me. That’s when she told me it was the last time she’d give me anything. She wanted out of the deal—sex, drugs, everything.”

  “Did she give you a reason?”

  “’I have to look out for myself now,’ she said. She couldn’t take the lies anymore; she wanted to go straight, and she didn’t feel she could do that while we were still fucking.” Max’s hands balled up into tight fists “I was furious. I wanted more than just to fuck and do drugs with her,” he said ruefully. “I loved the bitch. I told her I was ready to leave my wife for her, to sacrifice everything so we could make a real go of it, and she just turned and walked out.”

  “What happened next?” Cassandra asked, wanting to extract as much detail from Max as possible. The police had taken a big hit when it had come out that Laura Granger had been a dirty cop—they would love to be able to say that they’d nabbed the guy who had not only murdered her, but been witness to some of her most corrupt activities before that.

  “I was in shock.” Max continued. “I couldn’t accept that she wanted to break things off just like that. I felt like there was something she wasn’t telling me, and I tried to let it lie but I couldn’t. Maybe an hour after she left, I followed her to the club where she was supposed to be at some work party. That’s when I saw her kissing you, and suddenly everything made sense.”

  “What?” Jack stared at the editor in shock. “I only knew who she was because we met a few times through work, when I brought in bounties. I was there, that night at the club, and yeah, she tried it on with me, but I pushed her away. Maybe you didn’t stick around stalking her for long enough to see that.”

  “Bullshit!” Max’s voice came out shrill, and he moved to get to his feet before remembering the weapon in the bounty hunter’s hand. “I went to her place. I waited till she got home, and I confronted her, said I could have understood if she’d really wanted to go straight, but it seemed like she’d been trying to pull the wool. Told her I’d seen her in the club that night, and I asked her if the real reason she wanted out was because of the guy I’d seen her with. She didn’t say anything, just looked towards her nightstand. That’s when I saw the dog tags, just lying there with your name on them. That’s what made me flip. I could deal with her cutting me loose from the drugs, I could deal with her wanting to go legit… but finding out she was fucking you was the last straw. I beat her until she bled, then I wrapped my hands around her neck and squeezed until she stopped moving.” Max whimpered. “I put your tags right there in her hands, and that’s when I called Cass.”

  Cassandra saw the confusion on Jack’s face, and remembering what he had said about the tags and their mysterious disappearance, more of the puzzle pieces began to fall into place in her mind.

  “So how come your ring ended up in Laura’s back yard?” Cassandra asked, advancing
toward Max.

  “I panicked. I wasn’t thinking straight. I tossed it in the bushes when I saw it all covered in blood. I went back to her place later, I tried to find it out in the back yard. When I couldn’t find it, I figured it wouldn’t be a problem. And it wasn’t, not until—”

  “Not until right now,” Jack finished for him.

  Cassandra looked at her bag on the desk, piecing through the information she had gleaned. At least half a dozen people in Laura’s life had testified to the woman’s fixation on Jack—the fact that Laura had been convinced that Jack was a real hero, the fact that she had wanted to get him into bed—some of her friends even believed they were sleeping together. The bartender and two of her friends recalled seeing Laura kissing Jack on the night she was murdered—further evidence which helped convict Jack.

  “Jesus,” Cassandra said, thinking of the violent end that Laura had come to. She looked at Jack. “It must have been her,” she said, seeing the anger and the confusion on the fugitive’s face. “Jack—she must have been the one who stole them from your room. I don’t know how, but…” Cassandra shrugged. “She was obsessed with you.”

  “You killed her,” Jack said, his attention shifting back onto Max. He stepped closer to the desk, his hand tightening on the handle of the screwdriver. “You killed her, and then you ruined my life—all because you couldn’t get over your ego!”

  “He wanted to make as much money for the newspaper as possible,” Cassandra added, glancing askance at her boss. “Two birds with one stone: a huge story for the paper, and condemning the man he thought stole his girlfriend away from him. He’ll have plenty of time to think about the fact that he framed you for no reason while he rots in jail.”

  “I promised myself that when I found out who did this to me, I’d kill them,” Jack said.

  Cassandra’s heart stuttered in her chest; it was one thing to get to the bottom of the mystery, another thing to stand by while Jack used extreme measures to interrogate his suspects—but to watch him commit murder?

  The familiar sound of sirens drifted through the open window, cutting through Cassandra’s abstracted thoughts.

  “Jack,” she said, shaking her head and standing. “Jack—you can’t. The cops are coming, and they’ll catch you red-handed if you touch him. You can get your conviction overturned now—but what the hell will any of this matter if you go and hurt someone for real?”

  “How can I get the conviction overturned?” Jack glanced from Max to Cassandra and back again. “What are you suggesting I do, show them a fucking ring?”

  Cassandra smiled slightly and reached into her purse. She hadn’t realized until they had arrived at the building how lucky she had been that she always kept her voice recorder in her purse, in case of a last-minute interview.

  “You play this recording for them,” she said, lifting the device out of her purse and showing it to the two men. “It may not be admissible as evidence, but they can definitely use it to find some more, don’t you think?”

  Jack stared at the recorder for a moment, and Cassandra worried that the man was going to give in to his rage, but as the sound of the police sirens increased in volume, Jack’s hand fell to his side.

  “You’re right,” he said, glaring at Max. “If I kill him, they won’t even bother investigating. They’ll throw away the key.” Jack looked at Cassandra, smiling faintly. “Think you can help me get the ball rolling on clearing myself?”

  Cassandra mirrored his smile. “I think that’s very possible—but they need a living body if they’re going to investigate.”

  Jack nodded. “They’ll have a living body, all right,” he said, glancing at Max with a satisfied expression. “But if you try to run, asshole, I’ll break you.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Cassandra hurried the last few steps along the hallway to her apartment, already smiling. The past two months had sped by in a flurry of depositions, talking to law enforcement, and court appearances. With the information she’d been able to provide about Max Adelman, including the tape of his confession, the wheels of justice had started to turn. Jack had been released from prison, and Max would face trial for murder in a few weeks’ time. The official pardon was Jack’s prized possession.

  “I’m home!” Cassandra called out, after unlocking the front door.

  Jack hadn’t needed much time to get back onto his feet. Once his conviction had been overturned, the public nature of his trial had actually helped promote his business—he was probably the best-known bounty hunter in the country after breaking out of jail to bring in the murderer responsible for framing him in the first place.

  Cassandra had offered to let him stay in her place—an offer she had made not only out of guilt for her part in his original conviction, but also because she wanted to have as much sex with him as their schedules would allow, after their explosive debut in the backseat of her car.

  The apartment was silent. Cassandra frowned as she closed the door behind her, hearing no response to her call. She had called it a night at eleven o’clock, wanting to be awake enough to enjoy Jack’s company before she fell asleep; she couldn’t help but feel a pang of disappointment that he wasn’t home.

  Sighing, she strode toward the kitchen, tossing her purse onto the table by the front door on her way. The light was off, and Cassandra reached along the wall, feeling for the switch. She would reheat some leftovers and change into one of Jack’s tee shirts—with nothing on underneath it—and wait for him to get home.

  Suddenly a hand closed on her wrist, and Cassandra found herself being spun around, her back colliding with the wall as another hand covered her mouth. She gasped, her heart beating faster in her chest with a mixture of surprise, fear, and instinctive arousal, as the memory of the last time filled her mind. Her body tingled as a large, broad body pressed against her, pinning her to the wall in the darkness. The hand let go of her wrist, and then with a muted click, the light came on, flooding the room and dazzling Cassandra’s eyes for a moment.

  A heartbeat later, as her eyes adjusted, Cassandra took in the sight of Jack’s face, his bright eyes staring into hers.

  “Don’t scream,” he said, his lips twitching at the corners with suppressed amusement.

  Cassandra’s body heated up in an instant, and she smiled against Jack’s hand, pushing her hips down against his. Jack brought his hand away from her lips and covered her mouth with his own, pinning her even more firmly to the wall, lifting her up off of her tired feet.

  “You didn’t mind me screaming last night,” Cassandra murmured, twisting her hips under his. She could feel the hardening ridge of Jack’s erection pressing against her, rubbing up against the crotch of her panties.

  Jack smothered a laugh against her neck, his hands moving over her body in quick, devastating touches that made her shiver. He reached up under the hem of her skirt and tugged her panties down, ripping them as he got them off of her. Cassandra’s hands came to life, fumbling slightly as she struggled to pull Jack’s shirt up and over his head.

  It seemed like an eternity, but only moments later, Cassandra felt the heat and hardness of Jack’s cock rubbing against her slick folds, his strong arms holding her up against the wall as he rocked his hips against hers.

  “I’m so glad you wore a skirt today,” he murmured, smirking slightly. “Less for me to have to take off to get what I want from you.”

  Cassandra laughed breathlessly, wrapping her legs around his waist and leaning against the wall as Jack guided the tip of his cock along her slit. He thrust into her all at once, filling her up in an instant, and Cassandra moaned out in pleasure, her inner walls tightening.

  Jack started moving immediately, holding her in place as he thrust into her hard and fast, pushing deeper and deeper into her body. Cassandra writhed, trapped against the wall and wrapped up in the pleasure that coursed through her with every hard pump of Jack’s hips. She kissed his face, his neck, everywhere her lips could reach, both of them abandoning the pretext
of the little fantasy they’d had since Jack had first re-entered her life.

  Cassandra twisted and writhed between Jack’s body and the wall, moving like an animal, moaning and crying out as the man she had come to love pounded harder and harder into her. He buried his face against her breasts, claiming each of her nipples in turn, sucking and licking until Cassandra thought she wouldn’t be able to hold back any longer. Every movement of his hips brought pressure and friction to bear on her clit; every third thrust made her almost shriek with pleasure as the tip of Jack’s cock collided with her G-spot.

  In a matter of moments, Cassandra felt the tension coming closer to the breaking point, and she clutched at Jack’s shoulders, digging her fingernails carelessly into his skin as wave after wave of pleasure rushed through her, driving out all of the thoughts and cares of her long work day.

  She kept moving as she sensed Jack approaching his own climax, twisting her hips down against his, her inner muscles rippling around him in uncontrollable spasms as her orgasm intensified. She felt the telltale twitching of his cock buried deep inside of her, the tensing of his muscles, and Jack groaned long and low, his face buried against her neck. Cassandra’s climax reached new levels as she felt the hot, slick gush of his orgasm flooding her, and she shuddered against him, panting and gasping for breath.

  As they both reached the end of their orgasms, Jack’s hold on her wavered for a moment, and Cassandra came back to herself just enough to worry that he might drop her; instead he pulled her free of the wall and cradled her body against his, carrying her into the living room. Still panting for breath, Jack bore Cassandra down onto the couch with him, holding her body tightly to his as they both shuddered in the aftershocks of their mutual pleasure.

  After a few moments, Cassandra opened her eyes to find Jack looking down at her, an amused smile curving his lips.

  “You look so fucking hot like this,” he told her, cupping her breast and idly teasing the nipple.

  Cassandra laughed, pushing her sweat-sticky hair out of her face. “You mean all sweaty and sexed-up like this?”