He reached between their bodies to position himself, rubbing his thumb over her clit while it was down there. “You’re making me crazy,” she gasped.
Adam couldn’t help but chuckle. “Serves you right. You’ve driven me crazy for the last month.”
He thrust inside her then and the laughter died in his throat. Holy fucking hell. So tight, so wet, so, so... “Jess,” he groaned. “God, Jess.” He’d never felt anything like her before. He eased in deeper, until he was buried to the hilt. He went stock-still, deep within her, practically going into shock. He’d never realized a woman could feel so...absolutely...
“Perfect,” she whispered, meeting his eyes, which he knew were wide with astonishment. She blinked and began to move her hips. “God, you feel...perfect.”
He withdrew, almost all the way out. He had to have imagined it, right? Nothing could feel as good as that first plunge did. But then he thrust in again—and almost passed out from the sheer burst of sensation. It was even better.
“Harder, please, harder,” she said, spreading herself open to him and wrapping her legs around his hips. He felt her heels on his ass.
He plunged again and again, his vision beginning to blur at the edges. In fact, the entire world just vanished at the edges. Aside from the dark-haired, dark-eyed woman writhing beneath him, nothing else existed. Maybe he’d never existed either, before her. That’s what it felt like in this moment—that nothing prior to her mattered and nothing else but her would ever matter again.
Adam felt her inner muscles start to clench, making her even tighter around him. “I’m coming,” she moaned. “Oh. Adam. Adam.”
Yes. He let go of any final restraint, pounding into her over and over until he gave an actual fucking roar of pleasure and emptied himself into her.
* * *
She must have dozed for a few minutes, because when she came back to herself, Adam was walking back to the bed from the bathroom. He’d left the door fully open, so the bedroom was much brighter.
She closed her eyes, not quite ready to face him after...whatever the hell just happened.
The sex was phenomenal. Incendiary. It had blown away her expectations, which had been pretty high to begin with. She’d known it would be good, but she hadn’t known there would be such intensity to it. The way he stared at her while he pulsed within...the way she’d needed to scream his name...well, it was just so far past any of her previous experiences that she felt a little uneasy.
Well, clarification. Her mind felt uneasy. Her body wanted to dance on top of the bed and then fling itself on Adam for another round. The things she wanted to do with him... Great, now she was blushing.
The mattress dipped as Adam lay next to her. She wondered if he felt as undone as she did, if he would find some excuse to leave. To her surprise, she felt his fingers stroke her face. Lightly, they traced her lips and cheeks.
She opened her eyes and he brushed the back sides of his fingers over the edges of her eyelashes. “I’m a little obsessed with these,” he said matter-of-factly.
That was unexpected. It made her giggle. “My eyelashes? You’re a strange man.”
He grinned down at her, and the crinkles at the corner of those vivid blue eyes took her breath away. “Yes, but a strange man who just made you come. Screaming, I might add.”
“Maybe that’s what happens after a month of verbal foreplay?” she wondered.
He cocked his head to one side, considering. “Could be. Or maybe it’s just crazy chemistry.”
He jumped out of the bed, headed to the bathroom. She heard the click of a door, and Jess’s spirits took another downward turn. Was he just going to hop in the shower and then go? She couldn’t be disappointed now, she told herself. He’d given her the ride of her life. He was under no obligation to stay.
But before she could blink, he was back in the bed. Naked and warm and pulling her against him. She blinked in confusion, looked behind him to the hallway. “What were you doing?”
“Putting the Do Not Disturb on the door, obviously,” he teased, lowering his head to kiss her throat. “Your limo is coming to take you to the airport at nine,” he breathed, licking along the column of her neck. “It’s noon right now.” He nibbled on her earlobe, and Jess felt a rush of fresh moisture between her legs. “I think we should spend the rest of the day devoting ourselves to the mystery of exactly why the sex between us is so fucking fantastic.”
With one last tug, he propped himself on one elbow and looked down at her. “What do you think?”
She wasn’t quite sure what she thought, but she knew how she felt. Hot and giddy and so turned on she might come from his words alone.
Taking him off-guard, she used her arms, hips, and legs to flip him on his back and climb on top. His pupils dilated so fast that his bright blue eyes turned dark in an instant.
She reached behind her bottom and gripped him. He was unbelievably hard, considering their last bout ended just a few minutes ago. She rubbed herself against him, moaning, and he stared at her like she had the answers to all the questions in the universe.
Frankly, at the moment, she felt like she did.
“That may be,” she said, rocking her body over his, “the best idea I’ve ever heard.”
Chapter Eleven
The Cubs beat the Reds, six to one. Adam took his earbuds out and slowly climbed the stairs to the apartment where Henry, his usual hacker, lived. Henry refused to deliver his reports via phone or email, which drove Adam nuts. But he’d never found anyone as thorough or skilled, so he made the trek to Henry’s Uptown condo with a minimum of complaint.
The last time he’d seen Henry was right before he surprised Jess at AJ Hudson’s. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Hell, anything before Vegas seemed like a lifetime ago. Probably because he couldn’t get that day with Jess out of his mind. Jesus, they’d been insatiable. He’d taken her again and again—on the bed, floor, in the shower. He’d never forget that day as long as he lived. He’d probably be daydreaming about it when he was ninety years old.
He hadn’t wanted her to go. When the limo driver called to announce that he was on his way to take her to the airport, they’d clung to each other and kissed like it was the last kiss of their lives.
Which it was. The last kiss between them anyway. The moment Jess walked out the hotel door, Adam knew he was dissolving their partnership. Further, he was going to be a coward about it. He wasn’t going to tell her it was over, he would just disappear. Jess was a smart girl; she’d know.
Sure, he felt like a complete ass for pulling the disappearing act. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her. It made him sick to his stomach to think about her feeling betrayed. But he didn’t feel conflicted about his choice. To keep Jess involved in this game any longer was to put her in danger—of jail or worse. He’d already lost the most important person in his life because of his own idiocy and bad decision-making. He wasn’t losing her.
If that meant he never saw her again, so be it. If that meant she hated him, he deserved it.
Rounding the last flight of stairs, he shook his head. If only he could be sure that she’d stay out of it. But she was so goddamn stubborn and insistent on proving her innocence. And he’d made another mistake—he’d given her the recording of Knoll and Sedarno talking in the golf cart. Idiot. But he’d handed it over before they fell into bed together and after he was too dazed to even remember that she had it.
He’d listened to the recording of Knoll and Sedarno so many times he had it memorized. It started with some chit chat about Sedarno’s wife, his tango-dancing mistress, some ongoing renovations to his vacation home in Lake Tahoe, the cost of Knoll’s divorce attorney, what Jess’s ass looked like as she bent over the tee. They didn’t start talking business until the eighth hole.
“My couriers will be returning with your merchandise
sometime in May,” Knoll said. “Once I consolidate, I’ll be ready for the hand-off. Where should I bring them? Tahoe?”
“No, I’ll come to you.” Sedarno’s words, while innocuous, had sounded vaguely threatening. “I have to trust you to get the goods to Chicago, but I’ll be taking possession almost immediately thereafter.”
“Fine!” Knoll managed to laugh heartily while still sounding scared. Adam always enjoyed the thread of fear in his voice. “Sweet home Chicago, it is.”
It was May. The diamond-smuggling fake-exchange students would fly home any day now and sometime soon after, Knoll would collect the diamonds and Sedarno would arrive in the city to pick them up.
He could act on this information because of his contact on Knoll’s staff. But Jess would be stuck. There wasn’t any way she could find out the actual logistics of the diamond transfer...could she? His stomach started to hurt. There’s only so much you can do. Just stay away from her.
He knocked on Henry’s door. Rolled his eyes when Henry whispered, “Identify yourself,” as though he didn’t have security cameras tracking every visitor’s movements.
“Thomas Paine.” When Henry opened the door, he handed over his wallet without comment, and let him do whatever paranoid bullshit made him feel better.
“You said you had something on Knoll?” Adam had commissioned Henry to watch for anything unusual on Knoll’s accounts. Now that he was finally in his sights, he didn’t want Knoll fleeing the country or anything. Which would be the smartest course of action to escape Sedarno’s wrath if something fell through with the diamonds. Since things seemed to be progressing fine with his Ignatius University plan, he didn’t expect unusual activity from Knoll, but he hadn’t lived this long and successfully as a thief without a lot of double-checking.
Henry handed his wallet back and gestured for Adam to follow him to his command center at the back of the apartment. He did this every time Adam stopped by, gesturing to the lines of code on his screens as though Adam could understand any of it.
“Not Knoll. Nothing weird there. He’s just living his normal, extravagant life.” Henry sniffed.
Adam stifled the flare of annoyance. “So why did I make the trip up here?”
“The chick—the one you asked me to electronically surveil the last time you were here—I found weirdness on her.”
Adam’s stomach flipped all the way over. He’d almost forgotten he asked Henry to look at Jess’s electronic profile. He’d known almost nothing about her when he made the request. “What is she doing that’s unusual?”
“Nothing.” Henry gave him a Cheshire smile.
“Henry.” Adam’s tone was soft but dangerous, and Henry dropped the act.
“Chick’s not doing anything odd,” Henry explained. “But I’m not the only one watching.”
Adam went cold all over. “Elaborate.”
“Someone else set up bots to watch her—her financial accounts, social media, email. Everything. She’s not doing anything weird, but whatever she’s doing online is being tracked.”
Adam thought about Jess’s custom encryption programs, her hacking prowess, her easy entry to the Dark Web. Somehow he doubted that everything she was actually doing was being tracked or Henry would have commented on it. But just the fact that someone was looking was enough to change this entire game.
“Can you tell who’s tracking her?”
One side of Henry’s mouth quirked up. “Think so. Shitty-ass programmer. Leaves his ugly fucking footprints on everything.”
Adam took a deep breath. “Some sort of law enforcement?” Maybe the police had never stopped looking into her after the scandal at the University. Christ, she’d been innocent then. But she was slightly less innocent now. Please God, let her have been good enough to cover her tracks.
Henry laughed. “No way. No cop. This dude is a private hire. Can’t be sure, but I think he mostly does work for the families.”
If Adam thought he’d been cold before, now his blood felt like solid ice. The families. Sedarno. “Fuck.”
**It only took him a few minutes to silently disengage her locks. Jess’s apartment was pitch black at 3:00 am. While he’d wanted to run screaming straight from Henry’s, he played it smart and waited. He doubted Sedarno was physically surveilling her as well, but if so, he certainly didn’t want to be seen.
He passed the kitchen and saw a doorway on the right—her bedroom. Now he had to figure out how to wake her up without scaring her.
But Jess always managed to surprise him. “I know you’re here,” she said from the bedroom. Her voice was quiet and even in the still apartment. He wondered if it was the intense physical awareness between them that woke her up. His own body was completely rigid and cognizant of every breath she took.
He took a step forward and hovered in her doorway. “Hello, Blondie.”
She climbed out of the bed wearing purple pajama pants and a long-sleeved, gray thermal shirt. Her hair was mussed on one side and there were lines from the blanket on one of her cheeks. Adam had never seen anything as gorgeous in his entire life.
Her voice was cold as she walked by. “Back to Blondie, am I?”
Oh, she was pissed. Pissed enough to not even bother with her poker face. Not that he could blame her. And, since he was about to inform her that her life as she knew it was over, she was going to be more upset before he was done. “We’ve got a big problem,” he started.
“Really?” She laughed. He followed her down the hallway, watched as she grabbed a Gatorade from the fridge and took a long sip. “We have a problem? I wasn’t aware that there was any we, not anymore. I have a problem. In fact, I have multiple problems.” She took another drink. “I’m almost broke because I haven’t had a paycheck in eight months and no one will hire me because of the scandal. I’ve applied to seventy-eight jobs—nothing—I’m a pariah.”
She paused for a moment. Oh God, was she crying? But when she spoke again, her voice was angrier than ever. “Let’s see, what else? Oh right, I used to send a third of my paycheck to my dad. He had a little health scare the other day, had to go to the hospital. Turns out he let his health insurance lapse because he can’t afford it without me.”
Adam wanted to reach for her. God, this mess was so fucked up. She put the Gatorade back in the fridge and glared at him. “The one thing that can solve all my problems is clearing my name so I can work again, so I can help my family again. But then you decided that we were done being partners.”
He exhaled. She wasn’t wrong, but... “You always knew we had different end games, Blondie.”
She glared at him. “Understood. But we were supposed to work together until Knoll had the diamonds. That was our deal.”
He knew he had no business being angry with her, but he felt the flame of temper anyway. “I was trying to protect you.”
“Oh really?” She jabbed him in the shoulder. “You were protecting me by vanishing?”
“Yes!” he shouted down at her, a little shocked at the volume. But God, he was tired of doing the right thing. “Do you think I wanted to stay away from you? Fuck, no.” He raked his eyes over her body, wanted his hands to follow suit. “If I could have, I would have been inside this apartment and inside your body every goddamn night of the past few weeks.”
Her lips formed a perfect “oh” and her gaze roved between his eyes and lips. “Then why—?”
He settled back against the wall of the hallway and crossed his arms over his chest. “It didn’t work, but I was trying to keep you out of trouble, you ungrateful little amateur.” The sting of his words was mitigated by the note of exhaustion in his voice. “If you’re associated with me and something goes wrong...at best, you’ll be linked to a thief, a criminal, for the rest of your life. You could go to jail, Jess.”
The words were only a whisper now and he broke their ey
e contact. “I couldn’t survive being responsible for that happening to someone else I care about.”
After a long pause, Jess lifted her hand to his chin and forced him to meet her eyes again. Now she looked more curious than angry. “Why do you blame yourself for what happened to Tony? It wasn’t your fault, Adam. You know it was Knoll’s.”
His mouth dropped open. How did she keep blindsiding him?
Jess just gave him a ghost of a smile. “I’m nosy, okay? You refused to talk about why you wanted Knoll’s diamonds so badly when it’s completely out of your normal behavior. You didn’t want to talk about Tony either. Ta da—turns out they’re linked. I may have hacked into Tony’s court case.”
Adam sank to the ground, put his head in his hands. “Jesus, Jess, you’ve got to stop doing shit like that. Breaking into law enforcement databases? What the fuck’s gotten into you?”
She lowered herself next to him. “You,” she said, so simply it broke his fucking heart. She shrugged. “I know it’s illegal, but it doesn’t hurt anyone for me to look at old case files. Just like it doesn’t hurt anyone when you rob rich, insured assholes.” He almost smiled; he couldn’t argue with that.
“Tell me what happened,” she said.
Well, why not? If he didn’t, who knows what the hell she’d do next? “Knoll was one of Tony’s regular employers,” he said. “For years. Knoll’s old-school Chicago. He likes to portray this whole venerable, honorable businessman deal, but he figured out a long time ago how to walk the line between legitimate business...and other stuff. Tony would be muscle, he’d steal for him, whatever. Tony worked for him on and off for more than a decade. At one point, I think Knoll decided that Tony knew too much about him, so he decided to clean house. He tempted him with a huge job, and...”
“It was a setup,” Jess finished. “He was caught red-handed in the robbery. It wasn’t his primary address, but Knoll owned the property where Tony was caught.” She narrowed her eyes. “But why would you blame yourself?”
Caught in the Act: A Jewel Heist Romance Anthology Page 28