by Lora Leigh
Hunger surged through her. More than two years of aching, of needing, of suffering the restless, shadowed dissatisfaction that edged at her mind, culminated here. In Joe's arms. His touch. His kiss. It was the drug she had never recovered from, the one very likely to destroy her.
Chapter Three
The feel of her lips beneath his, her body pulled against his, was heaven and hell. Memories swamped him, and following close on its heels was a lust that tightened in his balls and sent hunger slamming through his system. This was Maggie. Redheaded, fiery, a need he had never exorcised, from his heart. A hunger he couldn't forget. No matter how hard he tried—and he had tried, for two and a half years he had tried. He was tired of denying himself.
His lips moved over her jaw, back to her lips, and he stole the words he could feel rushing past them. A denial, the cautious, intuitive part of her that had always driven him crazy. There was only one way to silence it, one way to steal beneath her defenses and make her melt in his arms.
"Maggie," he whispered, lifting his lips until they ghosted over hers. "Let me love you . . ."
"You son of a bitch!"
He was unprepared for the raging fury let loose on him. A redheaded mini tornado that kicked, slapped, and threw herself at him like a force of nature intent on destruction.
"Dammit, Maggie . . ." He grabbed her wrists, only to let go as she kicked at his shin.
Jumping back, he stared at the aberration confronting him. Her red hair was wild, waves of fiery splendor cascading to her shoulders, her cheeks flushed, her green eyes brilliant with tears.
"I can't believe you!" Her fists were clenched at her sides as her breasts rose and fell with the quick pace of her breathing. " 'Let me love you'," she mimicked him. "You know about as much about that emotion as Grant did. Zero, Joe. Nada. And you can kiss my ass."
"Give me the chance." He narrowed his eyes on her, letting a mocking smile curl his lips. "If you had put the bitch on hold for a minute, I might have gotten around to it. And the next time you compare me to Grant, you might find that sweet ass spanked rather than kissed."
"Lay a hand on me and I'll charge you with assault," she yelled back. "You had your chance to love me, Joe, and you blew it."
"Like hell," he snarled, sexual tension and raging anger rising inside him. "I loved you every damned chance you gave me, Maggie. Completely. Neither of us could move after we were finished."
"You fucked me," she corrected him brutally.
Joe flinched at the explicit wording, something dark and inexplicable rising inside him to deny it.
"And what did you do, Maggie? I hardly think it was love; you married the man you believed was my best friend six months later."
"I didn't know until he brought you to the wedding rehearsal." Her gaze was filled with disgust as it raked over him. "I nearly broke the engagement then, and I would have if he hadn't begged me not to. I knew." Her laughter was tinged with bitterness. "God, I knew better. I should have never listened to him when he swore to me that my relationship with you didn't matter. That he hadn't known about it."
The pain in her eyes made him pause. Maggie had never been much of liar, at least not before her marriage to Grant. She wore her heart on her sleeve, loved or hated with equal intensity. A person didn't have to guess where he stood with her.
"He knew about our relationship," he informed her, watching her closely. "He knew the night you walked out on me, and he knew why."
Her lips parted for a second before closing firmly, tightening into a bitter line. There was no surprise there, though, only remembered pain. Grant's lies couldn't surprise her anymore, only her own stupidity at the time still had the power to hurt her.
"Yes," she finally admitted. "He did. He knew about our relationship and he used it the entire time we were married. Too bad I didn't know any better before the vows were spoken."
"Why did you marry him?" That question had haunted him, had driven him to drink more nights than he could count.
"Because I thought he loved me," she threw back at him fiercely. "And I thought I loved him. I thought he was honest, that he wanted more than the quick fuck his buddy had decided was all I was good for."
"Say that word again and you're going to regret it, Maggie," he snapped.
"What? Fuck?" she sneered. "What's wrong, Joe, does it offend you to know what a complete bastard you were?"
"I know well how damned stupid I was." God knew it had been driven home night after lonely night for two and a half years. "But you were never just a fuck."
"Oh, you loved me?" she asked mockingly. "Yeah, sure you did, Joe. Even while you were parading Miss Big Boobs around on your tuxedoed arm for a night out? Did you think I had forgotten that one?"
Miss Big Boobs. Fake boobs maybe, not that he had checked. The woman in question, Carolyn Delorents, had been the daughter of a suspected drug kingpin. He had been on assignment. Nothing more. An assignment he hadn't told Maggie about.
"I haven't forgotten," he growled. "And you would never listen to explanations."
"Explanations come before you spend the night with another woman hanging off you, not after," she pointed out sarcastically. "And I didn't want explanations. The fact that you did it, without telling me, was enough."
"We weren't married . . ."
"I was falling in love with you," she cried out. "You knew it. You knew it, and rather than telling me I was wasting my time you let me find it out at an event I was covering for the paper. You didn't tell me anything."
"I didn't know you would be there."
"Which only makes it worse." She swiped her fingers beneath her eyes before blinking back her tears. "I've paid enough for our affair, Joe."
She turned, stalking from the room before he could stop her. Following her, he caught the bedroom door before she could slam it closed and moved slowly into the room.
"Explain that comment." Suspicion uncurled in his stomach. He had tried to convince himself that Grant had been good to her, that he had loved her. Through the past two years he had never imagined she had been anything but worshipped.
"He married me because he was convinced you cared about me." Her eyes flashed with pain and anger. "Three months after our marriage I left him, Joe." Mockery twisted her features. "Only to be forced back. He blackmailed me with a mistake my father made when first starting the newspaper. He wasn't about to let me leave, to lose the one thing he had to torment you with."
"Why didn't you tell me?" He forced back his anger, his disbelief.
"Blackmail, Joe. You understand the concept, right?"
"I understand the concept." He held on to his control by a thread.
She wasn't lying. He knew Maggie. In that moment he realized that he knew her better than he had ever known anyone in his life. And he couldn't make himself believe that she was lying.
"He left me alone for the most part, as long as I played the role." She sniffed back her tears as she sat slowly on the edge of the bed. "We had separate bedrooms. He never tried to touch me. He got off on hurting you. He hated you." She shook her head, confusion filling her voice. "I never understood that."
Joe met her gaze as she lifted her eyes to his, watching him with such perplexed anger that it caused his chest to clench.
"Did he ever say why?" He had never really known Grant—Joe realized that now—but a lifetime of believing in the friendship he thought they had was hard to put behind him. He had trusted Grant above anyone else in the world, even his family. Grant had been the brother Joe had never had. At least, he had thought he was. Separating himself from those memories sometimes felt as though he were separating a part of his soul from his body.
"Oh, he had plenty of reasons." Weariness washed over her expression. "The promotion you got and he didn't. Something about bullies in school. But I think most of it came down to the fact that your family was stinking rich, according to him. That bothered him most of all."
And Joe had never known. That was the hardest part for him. He
had never suspected that Grant had hated him so thoroughly.
"I loved him like a brother." And he had, since they were boys. "That's why I didn't stand between you when I learned who he was dating, then marrying. It's the reason I left it alone, Maggie. I thought you deserved someone to love you, and I thought he loved you."
She stared back at him for long moments, remnants of anger glittering in her dark green eyes.
"Such sacrifice," she snorted, the sound causing him to clench his teeth against the frustration eating at him. "You should apply for sainthood, Joe."
She rose to her feet once again, moving slowly around the bedroom before stopping on the far side and turning back to face him.
"What did you think I was going to do now? Fall back into your arms as though the past two and a half years never happened?"
"I could have handled it." He shrugged tensely. "I never forgot, Maggie—"
"Then forget now."
Joe read the wariness in her eyes.
"Have you forgotten, Maggie?" He moved toward her slowly, dying to touch her, to taste her one more time. "Did you forget how hot I could make you? How hot and wet you got for me, baby?"
He didn't touch her as he moved to her; he stared into her eyes, feeling the needs rising inside him as fiercely as they reflected in her eyes.
"This isn't going to get us anywhere," she whispered, her hands clenching the material at the front of her shirt. "I won't let you do this to me again."
"That's what I swore about you a week ago," he admitted. "That I wouldn't get so hard for you that the only thing that mattered was getting you beneath me, burying my cock so deep inside you I didn't know where you ended and where I began. That I wouldn't ache for you, that I wouldn't need to hear that soft little cry you make when you come for me."
"That you wouldn't use what I felt for you to try to trap me?" she suggested mockingly, causing him to grit his teeth in frustration.
"I wouldn't use the sex against you, Maggie." Would he? He was telling himself he wouldn't, but he knew he would push her. She had to know where that information was, if only subconsciously.
"You would use any weapon against me that you could find," she threw back at him as she edged away.
Joe followed.
"You were married to him for two years," he said softly. "You may have hated every minute of it, but you were there, in that house with him. There had to have been something he said, something he did ..."
"And you think I haven't thought of that?" she spat out. "That's all I've thought of, Joe. Because if I could give you that damned information you want so bad, then I'd be free. Of you, of Fuentes, and of Grant. Trust me, no one wants you to have that information more than I do."
"You want to leave me that bad, Maggie?" He moved behind her, leaning in close, careful not to touch. "I remember a time when you found excuses to stay in my bed, to remain at my place."
"And I remember a time when you found excuses to escape," she reminded him, stepping away again, but not before he saw the little tremor of response that washed over her. "You didn't want what I had to offer before, Joe, and now, whatever you're offering, I'm passing on."
He watched her move across the bedroom and enter the bathroom. Unhurried, her slender body shifting beneath the loose clothes she had worn to sleep in. Her head was lifted, her shoulders straight, and the pride that reflected in her stance caused a grin to edge at his lips.
He wondered if she knew she moved against him in that big bed each night. More often than not, her head ended up on his shoulder, a shapely leg thrown over his, and her hand lying directly over his heart. Just as she had lain when she had shared his bed so long ago.
And each night his control withered further away as his cock became more demanding. She could argue until she was blue in the face, and sometimes she could, but he knew what he felt each night. Hard nipples pressing against his side through her T-shirt. Her hands touching him tentatively, as though he were a dream.
He was a fool to let her go the first time, and he could be playing a bigger fool now. Only time would tell. And that was why he'd brought her here, he reminded himself. If she were lying, he would find out. If she were telling the truth . . . then he would protect her with everything he had. If she were telling the truth, then he would never let her out of his life again. She would be his. One way or the other.
Chapter Four
Men sucked. They were the root of every problem any woman could ever have. They were the reason for bras, the need for makeup, hair stylists, shaving legs, and high heels that made the arch feel like it had a steel rod slammed up it. They were picky, arrogant, argumentative, and so damned certain of themselves it made her grind her teeth in fury.
And Joe was the worst. He always had been. He didn't argue, debate, or consider anything; it was his way, however he had to make certain it came about. And once again he was working her. She could feel it.
He watched her now in a way he hadn't all week, eyelids lowered, his expression brooding, thoughtful, calculating. His dark eyes rarely left her, and she could feel the sexual hunger thickening in the air around him. He had a look when he was aroused to the point that the sex would be hard and brutally satisfying. And he was getting that look.
"Stay away from me," she ordered, as he moved close to her that evening, brushing against her as she stacked the dishwasher with dinner dishes.
His male grunt did little to calm her nerves. Nothing he could do, though, could calm her nerves. He wasn't the only one aroused after a week of enforced confinement, of nights spent in the same bed with him, feeling the heat of his body.
Dressed in jeans and T-shirt, and a bra, the layers of clothing did absolutely nothing to stem the needs that only grew. She remembered nights, hours on end that he would take her, throwing her into one orgasm after another, leaving her breathless, exhausted as the sun rose beyond the windows of his apartment. He was inexhaustible. And the memory of it was killing her.
"You've changed," he remarked as he stood back from her, propping himself against the counter as he watched her. "You were never so confrontational before, Maggie."
"I was never in danger for my life before," she reminded him, flashing him a short glare. "It does change a girl's perspective,Joe."
"You're going to be fine." A quick frown edged at his dark blond brows as he watched her. "We'll figure out where the information is and we'll take Fuentes down."
"One thing you never lacked was confidence." Maggie closed the door to the dishwasher before setting the power and flipping it on. "There has to be someplace Grant hid things. What about his other journals?" he asked her. "We only found the current one, it began six months before. Where did he keep the others?"
"I have no idea." She shook her head as she breathed out roughly. "I spent as little time around Grant as I had to. I didn't question him, I just wanted him to leave me alone, so I left him alone."
"Did he mention a safe deposit box?"
"Joe, these are all questions the detective asked me at the station," she reminded him abruptly. "If he had one, I didn't know. I never cared about his journals, his friends, or his coinings and goings. If I had suspected for a moment what he was up to, I would have paid more attention. But I didn't."
"Men like Grant like to brag."
"Grant bitched, accused, and went into paranoid delusions." She shook her head at his perception that Grant would tell her anything. "Everyone was to blame for everything that had gone wrong in his life, except him. I assumed his journals were filled with the same crap, so I never gave them a thought."
He was silent then, but she could feel his eyes on her as she wiped down the counter and the table before pulling out the Swiffer to go over the floor.
She could feel the little tremors of response building beneath her flesh as he watched her, she could almost feel his eyes raking over her snug jeans, the press of her breasts beneath the T-shirt.
Minutes later she propped the Swiffer back in its place before turn
ing and heading for the living room. She was aware of Joe following her, stalking her like a damned animal. As though he could sense her arousal and was debating the best way to act on it.
Let me love you, he had whispered earlier. He had no idea how those words had ripped through her heart. She had dreamed of him loving her, had believed he was beginning to until she covered that damned party she had no idea he had been invited to. Because he hadn't told her. Hadn't invited her. Oh no, he'd had one of his society women on his arm, decked out in silk and diamonds and platinum blonde hair.
Had he slept with her?
She couldn't let herself think of that. Even now, two and a half years later, the thought that he would take another woman so quickly after having shared a bed with her had the power to rip I km defenses to shreds.