Obsession

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  “You don’t?”

  “Nope. But you don’t have to worry. It’s over for you now, and the deal stands: Your father’s early release is already in the works.” He reached out and trailed his knuckles along her cheekbone. Ignoring the way the warmth of his fingers made her stomach contract, she frowned direly and jerked her face away and took another step back. But that still didn’t put her very far away. She was not ready, she discovered, much to her own chagrin, to turn her back on him completely quite yet.

  Some part of her—the stupid part—still wanted Nick.

  “You better be telling the truth.”

  His smile was brief and wry. “You really don’t trust me, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, I guess I can’t blame you for that, either. Look, a lot of the stuff that’s happened I didn’t foresee. We were going to pull Katharine out while Barnes was out of town, and if things had gone down like they were supposed to, you wouldn’t have had any contact with him at all. You were just supposed to kind of hold her place for a week or so while she testified before the secret grand jury that’s been convened so we could get an indictment against Barnes to wrap this thing up. With an investigation of this magnitude, as high-level as Barnes is and as much dirt as he has on everybody in town, we had to make sure that he didn’t get the slightest hint that we were working to bring him down. Obviously, something went wrong and he did get wind of it. But believe me, I never thought, when I brought you into this, that you would get hurt. It kills me that you got hurt.” He took her hand, and she didn’t resist, although part of her wanted to. His jaw tightened as he looked down at the small, round burns on her arm. When he met her gaze again, his expression was stark. “When I heard you scream tonight down in that damned bunker and I couldn’t get to you, I almost lost my mind.”

  Lifting her hand, he placed it against his cheek. Her heart picked up the pace a little more and her breathing quickened as she felt the warm prickliness of his skin with its hint of stubble beneath her palm. Taking a deep breath, fighting to keep at the forefront of her mind the anger and hurt and sense of betrayal that were what she knew she should be feeling, she still didn’t pull her hand away. She realized that she wanted—no, needed—to hear the rest of what he had to say first.

  “I was ready to take the place apart with my bare hands. If they hadn’t brought you out when they did, I would have done whatever it took to get to you.” He turned his mouth into her palm, pressing his lips to the sensitive skin. Her breath caught. Her heart pounded. Her mouth went dry. It was a deliberate repeat of the way she had kissed his hand on the couch in her father’s house on that never-to-be-forgotten night when she had begged Nick to save her father from prison.

  Which he hadn’t done. He had, in fact, kissed her and turned her down flat, leaving her both heartbroken and humiliated.

  The memory broke the shimmering aura of heat and electricity that was building between them like a bucket of water to the face.

  She snatched her hand back, folded her arms over her chest, and glared at him.

  “Is there a point to this? Because it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere I care to go.”

  “There’s a point.” He gave her a small, rueful grimace. “And you’re going to make me spell it out, aren’t you? Fair enough. Here goes.” He hesitated, and for a moment she thought he was going to reach for her again and tensed in automatic rejection. But he didn’t, instead thrusting his hands into the front pockets of his pants and regarding her steadily. “From the first moment I saw you when you came walking barefoot into Mike’s office, I was attracted to you. The more I was around you, the more I got to know the person you were inside the beautiful, sexy package”—here she narrowed her eyes at him warningly just to let him know that she was immune to his flattery—“the more I was attracted. But there wasn’t anything I could do about it, because I was working a case that involved your father, and anything personal between you and me would be a huge conflict of interest. That night on Mike’s couch when you begged me to fix things so he wouldn’t have to go to prison, I almost lost it. You were tearing my heart out, and at the same time I wanted you so bad I—well, let’s just say I wanted you bad. But I walked away because I had a job to do. And I stayed away, for the same reason, even though through all those months I couldn’t get you out of my mind.”

  Her eyes were now clinging to his, no longer narrowed with suspicion but rounded with hope and vulnerability, and as soon as she realized it she immediately scowled in reaction. His mouth twisted in wry acknowledgment of her change of expression as he continued: “I knew Mike wasn’t a bad guy, and I knew how close the two of you were. I kept looking for an angle to help you both, and when I came across Katharine Lawrence and saw how much she looked like you, I found it. She’d been acting as an informant for us for months, and we only needed about a week of testimony from her without Barnes suspecting anything was up to wrap things up, but that was a very dangerous week for our investigation. I thought the best thing to do was put somebody in her place while she testified, so that Barnes wouldn’t even begin to suspect what was up. That somebody was you. I used your physical resemblance to her to give you what you wanted, which was your father out of prison, and I used it to get back in with you. And the reason why I did it is because I’m crazy about you.”

  As his words sank in, silence spun out between them, vibrating with an increasing tension that was almost palpable. Her heart, she realized, was beating really fast. There was a big knot in her stomach, and somewhere along the line she had completely forgotten to breathe. Exhaling slowly so that he wouldn’t notice, she frowned a little as she searched his face. His jaw was hard, his mouth unsmiling. His eyes were narrowed, with a restless gleam to them as he watched her. He looked tall and dangerous and impossibly sexy standing there in front of her in the silent, shadowy bedroom, and her body responded to him the way her body always did.

  It tingled and burned.

  “You gonna say something here?” His voice was wry. “You know, that’s how a conversation usually goes: I say something, you say something . . .”

  “No,” she said, and she didn’t. Instead, she did what she had been dying to do. She took a step forward, went up on her toes, wrapped her arms around his neck, closed her eyes, and kissed him.

  For a moment he didn’t move, while her mouth plied his and her tongue slid between his lips and she pressed herself with abandon against every hard, muscular inch of him. His mouth was hot and tasted faintly of coffee, just like it had the last time she had kissed him, and as she registered that her heart slammed in her chest and her pulse pounded in her ears and her insides went hay-wire. Then he drew in a deep, shuddering breath and kissed her back. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he pulled her even tighter against him and slanted his mouth over hers and kissed her with a hunger that made her dizzy. His lips were firm and dry, and his tongue was hot and wet, and the kiss itself was so exciting that she trembled. His body was bigger than hers, far more muscular, thrillingly, unmistakably masculine. She clung to him, kissing him with the pent-up desire of thousands of daydreams, and when finally he lifted his head she made a husky little sound of protest.

  “Jenna,” he said, his voice deep and raw, and she opened her eyes. His face was flushed with desire and his eyes gleamed hotly down at her.

  “Nick,” she said back, holding his gaze, wonderfully conscious of the feel of him against her, of the hardness and heat of him, of the shivery desire rushing along her nerve endings that had its center somewhere deep inside her body. The electricity between them was so strong that it practically sizzled in the air. Breathless, quaking, she smiled up into his eyes and stroked his warm nape with her cool, slender fingers.

  He caught his breath. His jaw tensed. His eyes were heavy-lidded and so hot that they practically scorched her as they moved over her face, touching on each individual feature, lingering on her eyes, on her mouth. His arms were hard and strong around her. His hips and thighs were t
ight against her own. She could feel the tension in him, feel the heat radiating from his body, feel—there was no mistaking it—the tangible evidence of his desire pressing against her.

  “I want you so much,” she said.

  His eyes blazed at her. Then, unexpectedly, that quick grin of his appeared and was as quickly gone.

  “I think that’s my line,” he said, and kissed her again, so thoroughly that she was bedazzled, absolutely lost in lust, clinging to him, kissing him back greedily. Her head spun, her heart pounded, and her legs trembled. She rocked against him, sliding her fingers into his newly long hair, kissing him as if she would die if she didn’t, wanting to make him as hot as he was making her.

  Nick, Nick, Nick . . . his name ran through her mind in a feverish refrain. She had wanted him for so long. Now she was melting for him, burning for him, on fire with passion for him.

  His hand found her breast through the thick towel. The pleasure of it made her knees grow weak. Her nipple tightened and swelled under his caress. His mouth left hers to trail hot, wet kisses along the line of her jaw.

  “Nick.” His name was scarcely louder than a breath. She clung to his shoulders while her bones turned to water and her insides to fire.

  “Hmm?”

  “Make love to me.”

  He lifted his head and looked down at her. His jaw was set and his eyes were heavy-lidded and burning hot.

  The smallest of smiles touched his lips, and the brief flash of humor in his eyes dazzled her. “Getting there.”

  Then he kissed her, his mouth hard and hot and compelling, and she kissed him back as devouringly as he was kissing her. He was still kissing her as he picked her up, swinging her clear off her feet with the easy strength that she’d come to know so well and that still managed to thrill her to her toes every time, even though she might not always admit it. He turned and took the two strides necessary to reach the bed, and then he lifted his mouth from hers so, she thought, that he could see what he was doing as he swept the covers out of the way with one quick yank. She busied herself in the meantime by pressing hungry kisses to the strong column of his throat.

  “I’ve been thinking about this for so damned long.” His suddenly hoarse voice bore no resemblance at all to his usual drawl as he lowered her to the mattress. It was only as her back touched the cool, smooth sheet that she realized that somewhere along the line she had lost her towel. The discovery caused her eyes to pop open. His arms were still around her, and he was still leaning over her, sliding his mouth sensuously along her collarbone. She shivered with reflexive pleasure even as her gaze sought and found the towel. It was lying in a crumpled heap where they had been standing, and as she saw the orange mound of it there on the beige carpet, she had a moment of absolute clarity in which she realized that she was totally naked and probably about a heartbeat away from getting it on with Nick. For a moment she backpedaled as she did a quick mental review of her many beefs with him and recollected how much she had hated him not more than ten minutes before.

  But of course she hadn’t ever really hated him at all.

  Her eyes widened as she faced the fact that she was wildly, madly, deeply in love with Nick, and probably had been for a long time.

  Not that she meant to tell him so. She had to get accustomed to the idea herself first. In fact, the knowledge sent anxious little curls of panic tumbling through her system. She stiffened, just about to freak out, when he straightened away from her to pull his T-shirt over his head. She looked up at him as he dropped it to the floor and found herself totally distracted. His shoulders were broad and bronzed and heavily muscled. His arms were bronzed and muscular, too. His . . .

  Here her thought processes faltered entirely as she realized that he was just standing there beside the bed, staring down at her naked body with eyes that burned her everywhere they touched. She was a nice toasty-golden color, she saw, glancing down at herself a little self-consciously, and thin, much thinner than she was used to being, but then that just gave her curves of a different scale, made her waist tinier and her hips narrower and her legs amazingly slender and long. Her breasts were smaller, too—she had an instant of regret for the usual lush fullness of her breasts—but they were still firm and perky, the nipples dark and erect as they swelled up toward him. From the diamond-hard glint in his eyes as they moved over her, he liked everything he saw, and the thought made her go all shivery inside.

  Then, just about the time she remembered being in love with him and was once again freaking herself out with the thought, his gaze landed there and she remembered about the Brazilian wax and the heart tattoo instead and totally lost her train of thought once more as she blushed from the soles of her feet to the top of her head.

  She must have made some small embarrassed sound, because his eyes suddenly met hers.

  “Sexy.” His eyes held a wicked glint over and above the heat in them, and his lips curved teasingly at her as he started unfastening his pants.

  Her face was burning still, but she guessed that it was probably too dark for him to tell. Besides, the unfamiliarity of her own body was exciting, too.

  “Hurry up.” She arched her back a little and reached out to stroke his hard-muscled thigh through the smooth synthetic of his pants.

  His jaw hardened. His hands stilled in the act of unzipping his fly. Passion blazed at her from his eyes.

  “Darlin’, two seconds and you’re mine,” he said, and finished stripping with swift, single-minded efficiency, ridding himself of pants and boxers and shoes and socks in scarcely more than the blink of an eye, clearly a man focused on a goal. Which meant she didn’t have a lot of time to admire the view, but still she saw that his torso was the classic vee shape, wide through the chest and narrow through the waist and hips, with tight, toned abs and long, powerful-looking legs. He didn’t have a lot of body hair, but what he did have was dark brown and formed a wedge in the middle of his chest before arrowing down to—well, she followed that trail with her eyes and caught her breath.

  And she thought, Wow.

  Then he came down on the bed beside her and kissed her again. His hands were everywhere, and suddenly her heart was pounding so hard and she was breathing so fast and her body was burning so hot that she couldn’t think at all. Kissing him, she ran her hands along the width of his shoulders and down his back, loving the damp heat of his skin, loving the flexing strength of the muscles beneath it. Hot and wet, his mouth found her breasts, suckling them one at a time, and at the exquisite sensation, her body tightened and quaked. She cried out at the sheer pleasure of it, only to have the sound swallowed up by his mouth as his lips found hers again.

  This is Nick, she thought, heart pounding, and wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back with hungry abandon. Nick, for whom she had yearned for so long . . .

  His thigh slid between her legs, parting them, rocking up against that part of her that ached and burned and wept for him, and she gasped against his lips. Then his hand replaced his thigh, stroking her, caressing her, and finally delving inside the velvety cleft. In the process, she lost the ability to engage in any kind of conscious thought at all as she moaned and moved and dug her nails into his back.

  His fingers moved within her, slid in and out, in the slow-handed, expert way of a man who knew his way around women, and she arched against his hand and gasped her pleasure into his mouth as her body pulsed with tremors.

  “Easy,” he murmured as lips left hers to trail hot, hungry kisses down her neck, over the dark-tipped globes of both breasts, and down the center of her rib cage. Breathing in fast little pants now, her pulse racing like she’d been running for miles, she slid her hands sensuously across his wide shoulders as his fingers continued to work their magic on her.

  “Mmm” was her intelligent response.

  “Great tattoo,” he murmured a moment later, his voice thick but bearing a trace of humor, too, and it was the amusement that allowed her to catch her breath and focus enough to muster a reply.r />
  “It better be temporary.” She tried to interject a threatening note into that, but it was hard to sound threatening when she was weak and shivery with desire, she discovered, so she succeeded only in sounding breathless instead.

  “It is. Think I could talk you into making it permanent? ”

  “No.”

  He pressed his lips to the small red heart, then trailed his tongue along the arrow that, she was only just realizing, suddenly seemed to have a purpose in life after all. It pointed directly to the place she most wanted his lips to go. Even as she had the thought, go he did. The feel of his hot, wet mouth moving over her sensitive skin sent streamers of delight rippling through her body. Heart pounding, pulse racing, she stiffened in anticipation. Because she knew what was coming next, and she was right.

  His mouth inched its way down between her legs, crawling with exquisite slowness over the satiny mound with its tiny strip of fur, making her squirm, making her lift her hips off the mattress, making her quiver and pant and grab fistfuls of sheet. Finally he was there, his hands beneath her, cupping her bottom and holding her still for him, pressing lascivious kisses where she most wanted them, and she cried out again and again as wave after wave of scorching heat broke over her body.

  “Nick, please,” she gasped, tugging at his shoulders when finally she was so hot and hungry and absolutely wild with longing that she couldn’t stand it any longer.

  He lifted his head then and looked at her, his eyes heavy-lidded and burning.

  “You taste like strawberries,” he said in a low, hoarse voice. “I’ve been wondering forever.”

  He lifted himself up and over her, wrapping his arms tight around her, kissing her with a torrid eroticism that turned the air around them to pure steam. She could taste herself on his lips and thought, Yes, he’s right, just as he thrust inside her, huge and hot and hard, with no more warning than that. It felt so unbelievably good, just what her body ached for—even the sudden fierceness of it was just what she craved. She cried out at the explosiveness of her response and clutched him and wrapped her legs around his waist and cried out again and again as she came in deep, shattering cataclysms.