by Taylor Lee
When McElroy approached him and offered him the position in San Jose, he dismissed it out of hand. Given the rigid rules against superiors fraternizing with their subordinates, and knowing how intense their relationship had been, he knew it was inappropriate to consider taking the job that would make him Viviana’s direct supervisor. As Mac continued to encourage him, from the advantage of distance, Jax allowed himself to consider accepting the position. Looking back, he admitted how incredibly arrogant and irresponsible it had been for him to believe that he could resist Viviana. Christ, the moment he saw her he knew he was in trouble. But he convinced himself if he could get control of her, he could keep his feelings about her under wraps.
Until tonight. He now admitted that he’d insisted she wear that damnable dress to test himself. To prove to himself that he could keep her at a distance. That he could be the supervisor she’d needed all of her career. That he could do what no one else had been able to do with the irrepressible, outrageous sergeant. Make her toe the line, follow orders, contain her. Hell, he’d even decided that his coming to San Jose was a responsible thing to do. That he and he alone could make Sergeant Viviana Moreau into the stellar officer she could be. One who followed the rules and regulations and rose to the top of her profession. Damn, she might even become a commander someday because of him, long after he’d gone on to head up a major police department. That obnoxious self-delusion went up in smoke when she entered the ballroom.
He might have been able to control himself, contain the lust that was churning through his gut if it hadn’t been for the pain he saw on her face. That agonized look confirmed that she had been as wounded by his actions as he’d known she must be. He told himself that he owed it to her to explain his actions. To apologize for misleading her in Belize. That it had been the only way he could keep her from blowing his high-level mission. He would admit it had been a mistake for him to take the position at the SJPD, but they could work it out. They could put the past behind them. He’d convinced himself that was possible until he stood next to her at the balcony railing and saw the tears on her face.
Brushing at those tears and hearing her startled gasp, he was overcome by his need to touch her, hold her. Not to protect her nor to comfort her for the dismissive actions of Deidre and the others but to take her. Take her the way that he had in Belize. He wanted to storm her defenses, overwhelm her, and make love to her in the way he never had with another woman—only with her. He didn’t know what the final straw was that shattered his commitment to resist her. The spicy, citrusy smell of her hair, the soft skin on her flushed cheeks sucked him in. But it was when she leaned into him, seeking his support, that he knew he couldn’t stop.
He had to touch her. Her breasts surging over the top of her dress were magnets to his roving hands. Reaching inside the outrageous fabric, he felt her lush nipples hardening at his touch. He longed to tug on them, to know what they would taste like, how they would react to his tongue, his teeth, when he sucked on them. But the death knell to his resistance came when his wicked hands reached up under the damnable dress and stroked her firm ass cheeks. With a quick snap, he’d torn the flimsy, lacy thong that covered her succulent pussy. Seconds later, he sought her intimate lips, reveling in the erotic dew coating them, evidence that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. It was then, as he drove his searching fingers up inside her cunt, that he knew that they were both damned by the powerful attraction between them. She couldn’t resist him any more than he could resist her.
Staring into the dark moonless night, Jax acknowledged that he needed to do the hardest thing he’d ever done. He needed to tell the woman who had invaded his soul that they could not be lovers. That they needed to close the door on the powerful passion between them. To acknowledge that their affair in Belize was a tryst, a brief indefensible interlude. That the danger they’d faced had compromised their ability to think straight. It had amped up their passion in a way that was unsustainable. Particularly in the harsh reality of their current situation. He was her superior officer, and she was his subordinate. Tossing back the remaining alcohol in his glass, Jax promised himself that tomorrow morning he would tell her that policy and procedures dictated that they could not be lovers, not now, not ever. And that was his solemn pledge to her.
Chapter 8
Hearing the laughing troupe of officers coming down the hallway, Viviana ducked her head, pretending to be absorbed by the sheaf of papers on her desk. She’d been staring unseeingly at the file since she’d arrived at the office what seemed like hours earlier. She’d intended to get in and out before the morning meeting. She’d shoved a one-page document into the box beside the commander’s door. The four cryptic lines describing what she was working on were as much detail as she planned to give him. Having accomplished that task, she’d planned to leave and not come back at least for the rest of the day. But her weariness had undone her intent.
It wasn’t surprising that she sat at her desk for at least an hour. She was exhausted, frankly too tired, to hoist her numb body out of the chair and get the hell out of there. To say she’d spent a sleepless night wasn’t an overstatement. She truly had not slept the entire night. She’d sat on her patio and watched the moon set and the sun rise. She hadn’t tried to go to bed. There was no way that her churning gut would allow her to lie down. Even if she’d managed to quell the nausea that threatened to overtake her, she was afraid that if she let her defenses down enough to sleep, what had happened would invade her dreams. Which was not an option. At least if she was awake, she could face down the erotic images, fight the memories of his hands on her body, try to deafen the explicit words he’d whispered in her ears.
Not wanting to deal with her team members and knowing that she looked like hell, Viviana straightened in her chair, nodded briefly to O’Reilly, then focused on the file on her desk. Unfortunately her cheerful partner wasn’t going to let her off that easy.
“Hey, good morning, hotshot. I’m surprised you beat me in here today. I woulda thought you’d be out on the running trail doing twenty victory laps celebrating your success last night!”
Viviana glared at him. “I don’t know what you mean, Mick. Exactly what am I supposed to be celebrating?”
Mick whooped and turned to the other officers, who were hitting the morning sludge they called coffee and settling at their desks. “Did you hear that, men? Our little cupcake is pretending that she didn’t take the whole damn elite of this fuckin’ city by storm last night!” At the laughter and surprise of some of the squad, the incorrigible man continued. Prancing up and down between the aisles of desks, he chortled. “For any of you who weren’t at the bash last night, you gotta know you missed the sight of a lifetime. We all know that our blonde bombshell can trigger a seismic shift just by walking in the room, in her fuckin’ uniform no less. But I’m tellin’ you, you wouldn’t have believed what she looked like last night. When I say she brought down the house, I ain’t exaggerating. She sauntered into that ballroom like she was fuckin’ Princess Di come back from the grave to taunt every man there with her beauty.” He glanced inquiringly at Viviana, who shook her head, trying to tell him to stop. “Tell me, sweet cheeks, what the hell was that scrap of shiny ‘sex on a stick’ you were wearin’ made of? Never mind, it doesn’t matter. I can only tell you guys that it could have been Saran Wrap. The way it showcased and emphasized every fuckin’ curve on our glorious sergeant’s incredible bod, it looked like it had been painted on her. Believe me, chaps, I’m talkin’ true. There wasn’t a guy in the room, including yours truly, that didn’t ‘rise’ in appreciation.”
The barrage of laughter, applause, and catcalls reacting to O’Reilly’s over-the-top oration was interrupted by a cool voice. “Good morning, officers. Although hearing Detective O’Reilly’s tasteless review, for a moment I thought that I’d walked into a high school football team’s locker room, not the official squad room of SJPD’s renowned Violent Crimes Unit.”
Seeing Commander Hughes at t
he doorway, the shouts and laugher died as if they’d been sucked into a swirling vortex. At the silence that ensued, Jax entered the room. Amid the sounds of chairs scraping and drawers opening and closing while everyone avoided looking at him, Jax met O’Reilly’s flushed gaze.
Mick held up his hands in embarrassment and shook his head. “Aw, dammit, Commander. My apologies. I was just giving the guys a brief report on the mayor’s bash last night. Not everyone got to see the splash our golden girl made when she sauntered in. It was all in fun, wasn’t it, Vivi?”
Jax’s voice was crisp. “You don’t owe me an apology, Detective, but you most certainly owe your partner one. You and I will discuss this privately.” He stopped and surveyed the room.
Viviana refused to cower and met his gaze. Tossing her head, she said, “That’s not necessary, Commander. I’m used to it. Besides, I’m perfectly capable of handling these yahoos. I don’t need your help.”
He pinned her with a steely-eyed, narrowed gaze. The dangerous edge in his voice was apparent. “That’s a decision I will make, Sergeant Moreau.” Glancing at the rest of the squad, he said, “After I review the reports I’m confident all of you have turned in as I instructed, I’ll be scheduling meetings with each of you to discuss your current operations. In the meantime, Detectives, you may stand down.”
As he passed by a frowning O’Reilly, Jax nodded to the door at the side of the room. “My office, Detective O’Reilly. Now.”
Viviana did her best to ignore the glances being tossed her way. Dear God, how could her day get any worse? And it had barely started. Why, oh why hadn’t she left after she put her report in the commander’s box? Jesus, she should have come in, written the damn thing, which had taken her all of a minute and a half, and then gotten the hell out of the place. It was what she’d intended to do. But her exhaustion had overwhelmed her. A niggling thought poked at her brain. Did some self-destructive part of her psyche want to see him? Want to see if the man who had accosted her last night was real? Or if he was just a figment of her overwrought imagination? God knows it would be hard to dream up a man that looked like the frowning commander, who had just silenced a room full of hard-eyed detectives. That he’d done so wasn’t surprising.
He was tall, imposing, all man, lean, hard muscled. The shock of tousled black hair and carefully trimmed beard shadow underscored his piercing emerald eyes. Unbidden, the memory of his masculine odor pricked her consciousness. It had overwhelmed her last night, shaken her resolve to the core. Struggling to deal with the memory of what happened on the balcony, she forced herself to remember that she’d written him out of her life. It had taken her three months of daily reprimands and more hours of arduous running than she’d ever done, but she’d succeeded. She’d shoved the powerful man into a cage in her mind, locked it, and thrown away the key.
Or so she’d thought. She snorted. All it had taken was him standing next to her, his irresistible presence looming over her, to undo the painful hours she’d spent trying to erase him from her consciousness. She reminded herself that he had done a hell of a lot more than stand next to her. Remembering his wicked fingers separating her swollen labia, she groaned aloud. Glancing up, she saw several of her team members staring at her. Forcing herself to open her computer and pretend to work, she knew she had to leave and leave quickly. She knew that if she allowed herself to remember his erotic words, his hands on her breasts, his fingers separating her ass cheeks, and that damnable fragrance of his, she would not be able to stand.
Forcing herself to remember the one part of the unbelievable evening that was sure to stop her tortured erotic musings, she thought about Deidre Cummings. She made herself remember the sophisticated socialite staring up at Jax as if the Dark Knight himself had come down from the silver screen. Her possessive hand on his arm and the knowing smirk on her striking face confirmed that that the accomplished woman knew a prize when she saw one. The fact that he wasn’t pushing her away, rather, was meeting her sultry gaze with what Viviana was sure was one of his own, confirmed that her one-time lover was entranced by the raven-haired beauty. Any doubts she might have had given the importance of their erotic encounter were torpedoed when Mick O’Reilly had blithely told her that Jax left the party with none other than the snotty socialite that even Mick agreed was a hell of a looker.
Seeing her flushed partner return from his encounter with the commander and refuse to meet her gaze, Viviana knew she had to get out of this suffocating place now. As she closed her computer and shoved it in its case, preparing to leave, she heard his resonant voice at her elbow. “If you have a few minutes, Sergeant, I’d like to speak with you.”
Refusing to meet his eyes, she continued packing her things and mumbled, “I can’t right now. I have a meeting.”
He moved in a step, crowding her private space. His nearness forced her to look up at him. She didn’t miss the rigid set of his jaw and the deep frown creasing his brow. His order was curt. “Let them know you’ll be late. Or better yet, reschedule. I want to talk to you now.” When she hesitated, he said, “You heard me, Sergeant. Cancel or postpone your meeting. Then, please be in my office in no more than five minutes.”
Jax sat behind his desk, resting his elbows on the surface, steepling his fingers in front of his face. He’d resoundingly rapped the irrepressible O’Reilly, making it clear that he wouldn’t tolerate the kind of behavior he’d witnessed. At O’Reilly’s plea that Viviana knew he was teasing her, that it was part of their outrageous partnering, Jax had stepped on him hard. “I don’t give a good goddamn how you’ve behaved in the past. I’m in charge now, and I insist that every officer in this squad treats their fellow officers respectfully.” He’d added, “This is a one-time warning, Detective O’Reilly.”
After the clearly chagrined detective left the room, Jax snorted at his blatant hypocrisy. At least O’Reilly had been celebrating Viviana. He’d accurately described her outrageous entry into the bash and the response of every man there, including himself. Unlike him, her partner had been praising her, if in ways that were inappropriate and would not be tolerated on his squad. No, Mick had treated her like the phenomenon that she was. In contrast, he’d ripped a hole in her soul and done the same to himself.
At the slight knock on his door, he sucked in a deep breath and said, “Come in, Sergeant Moreau.” He rose from his chair and pointed to the chair in front of his desk. “Please have a seat.” When she sat down but refused to meet his gaze, he breathed a hard sigh and resumed his seat. Studying her for a long moment, he wasn’t surprised to see the exhaustion on her pale face. He’d seen the same expression in the mirror this morning before heading for the precinct. It was clear that neither of them had gotten much sleep. How could they have? The fatigue on her face was one thing, but it was the hurt in her eyes that he’d seen before she quickly looked down that tore at his conscience. Goddamn it all to hell, he’d put that pained look on her face. If that weren’t bad enough, now he needed to tell this pale, clearly shaken woman that what had happened last night could not happen again.
Breathing out a hard sigh, he said quietly, “Viviana, I owe you an apology.”
When she shook her head and continued twisting her hands in her lap, he said, “Look at me, Viviana.” She reluctantly raised her head and met his gaze. The tortured look in her eyes shot an arrow through his heart. She looked so fragile, so fucking vulnerable. He would have given a lifetime of riches if he could have risen from his chair and taken her in his arms and not let her go. Instead, he forced himself to speak firmly. “I was way out of line last night, and I’m sorry. I would try to explain my actions, but I can’t.” He huffed and gave a mirthless snort. “I could blame it on the dress or, better yet, on you. But no matter how enticing you looked, how fucking gorgeous you were, I had no business assaulting you.” When she frowned and seemed as though she might respond, he hastened to complete his speech. “Please, Viviana, let me finish. I am your supervisor, and you are my subordinate. The rules against fratern
ization are clear.”
She stared at him, then sniffed and raised her chin. He was glad that her voice was reasonably strong. “Is that what you call what happened last night? Fraternization? It sounds so . . . official . . . so bland.”
Jax managed a short laugh at her on-target jibe. “Yes, it does, doesn’t it? Blame it on too many years of throwing my ‘official’ weight around.” Seeing the pain flash across her face, he shook his head. “But it wasn’t bland or official. It was an emotional and physical assault, and I apologize.” He breathed out a hard sigh and met her stormy eyes. “I’m not trying to make excuses. What happened in Belize shouldn’t have happened. But it did. I would take it back if I could, but I can’t. The best I can do is assure you that it won’t happen again.”
He should have expected her to strike out. He knew how proud she was, how accustomed she was to controlling the situation no matter how challenging, but he was startled at her assertion.
Her lip curled derisively as she rose to her feet. “I hear you, Commander. Trust me, it won’t. I wouldn’t want to stand in the way of your ongoing pursuits. That would be unseemly at best.” At the door, she whirled on him and said, “I must say, Commander Hughes, you certainly don’t let the grass grow under your feet. Nothing like stacking your erotic rendezvous back-to-back.”
Jax frowned, not understanding what she was saying, then remembered her agonized expression when she saw him and Deidre together. Before he could take issue with her off-target assertion, true to form, she’d sailed through the door, slamming it behind her. Forcing himself not to chase after her, Jax decided that perhaps her misunderstanding was for the best. Better that she think he was a two-timing heel than her knowing that he was passionately in love with her but didn’t have the courage to act on it.