by Lora Leigh
“What sort of rumors?” she asked hesitantly, uncertain whether or not she wanted to know.
His lips pursed thoughtfully for a moment before they curled into a mocking smile.
“The day Wayne brought you home from college he took you to old Doc James to have your wrist set,” he stated. “Doc’s notes were pretty concise, sweetheart. The break, he observed, wasn’t consistent with the reason he was given for it.”
The look on his face said he demanded an explanation.
“I fell.” She pushed the lie from between her teeth. “I told him that.”
“What caused the fall?” The studied innocence in his expression warned her he had a trump card just waiting for her.
The problem was, Amelia couldn’t really remember what reason Wayne had given for the fall.
She excused herself with the fact she had been in an incredible amount of pain at the time.
“You didn’t answer me, Amelia.” He advanced on her slowly, his narrowed gaze locked with hers. “Exactly how did you fall?”
“I don’t exactly remember how I fell, Crowe. What does it matter how it happened?”
“Wayne broke your wrist, didn’t he, baby?” His voice deepened. The incredible gentleness in his tone—shadowing the anger toward Wayne in his gaze—had her aching to tell him the truth, to tell him—oh God, to tell him everything. And she knew that wasn’t possible.
Tightening the hold she had on her fingers, Amelia forced herself to stand her ground and glare back at him.
“Why would you ask me such a thing?” She hated lying, but God he was pushing her. She didn’t want to lie to him but neither did she want to answer his questions.
Unlike Wayne, if he became suspicious that Amelia was hiding something, Crowe would know what questions to ask.
The low rasp of another chuckle had her heart racing faster. He knew something. Something more than what he may have found in Doc James’s records.
The question was, exactly what did he know?
“Shall I make it easy for you?” he suggested, moving toward her, the lean-hipped, powerful stride bringing him to her in just a few steps until he was preventing her from placing any distance between them.
“Oh, why don’t you,” she invited mockingly, wondering at what point pressure against the fingers would result in a break.
No doubt Wayne could have answered that silent question for her.
She only barely controlled a flinch as Crowe reach out and brushed her hair back from her cheek.
“Cami told me about the journal, Amelia,” he murmured as she felt the blood leach from her face. “The same day he forced you to leave school, and when you arrived back in Sweetrock, your wrist was broken. Now, how did your wrist end up broken?”
“I fell,” she lied, coldly.
If Cami had told Crowe about the journal and Wayne’s reaction to it, then only God knew the questions Crowe would ask. Especially if he ever learned of Amelia’s visit to Clyde Ramsey’s ranch or the months before Wayne arrived at the school that Cami had been unable to find her.
She couldn’t afford those questions. Not yet.
* * *
Crowe could see how tightly her fingers were clenched, the pressure against them turning them white.
She was lying. Pride and willful determination gleamed in her gaze, her control over her responses so great that only her fingers betrayed her.
“Hmm,” he murmured. “Where did you break it?”
He was learning. Amelia was great at the surface lie, and she made it damned good. Until you looked beneath the surface.
“You know, Crowe, it’s been so long and it’s of so little concern to me that I don’t remember much beyond the fact that it really hurt. So can we be done with the questions and answers already? I have things to do, and arguing with you is not on tonight’s itinerary.”
The sarcasm fell off her tongue as though it had been created for sass. Her posture, tone, expression—hell, he bet at the moment every cell in her body was poised for another smart-assed comment.
It made him hard. It made his balls ache with the need to come, his cock throb with the need to fuck. And the need, the hunger wasn’t for just any woman. Hell no, it couldn’t be that easy.
It never was when it came to Amelia.
His sweet, never-argued-with-him sugar elf was definitely beginning to surprise him.
“So pencil me in, fairy-girl,” he growled, reaching out for her, his hands gripping her hips before she could jerk away from him, pulling her quickly against the hard length of his denim-covered cock.
Damn her, what did she do to him? The feel of her against him, the warmth of her body, the sound of her breath catching, only increased his hunger for her.
“Let me go, Crowe.” Small hands pressed against his broad chest as though to push away from him and escape the hold he had on her.
“You want to be free, sugar elf?” Lowering his head, he pressed a kiss just below her ear. “Letting you go means I won’t be able to taste that sweet little pussy like I’ve been dying to do.”
Her eyes darkened, the flush mounting her cheekbones, which turned from the bright red of anger to a fierce pink, indicating the arousal building in her body.
“I don’t care—” she tried to protest.
“But I do care,” he promised, nipping the lobe of her ear. “Because when I finished I was hoping I could convince you to return the favor.”
The thought of her mouth, heated silk, and damp hunger had his cock flexing in a hard, hungry pulse of need. Damn, she made him crazy to fuck her.
“Come on, fairy-girl,” he teased her as his senses burned to take her. “If you won’t tell me the truth about all those little accidents you’ve had, then at least play with me for a little while.”
Before she could stop him he managed to release the catch at the side of her skirt, slide the little zipper down, and push the skirt from her hips and over her thighs.
“Dammit, Crowe,” she gasped, trying to jerk out of his arms again.
“Come back here.” Wrapping one arm around her back to jerk her against him, Crowe stared down at the mutinous flare of anger in her eyes as it vied with the arousal darkening the gray-blue orbs. “Tell me you don’t want me, Amelia, and don’t you fucking lie to me, either, damn you. Tell me you don’t want me and I’ll let you go.”
“This has nothing to do with what I want.” She jerked against his hold again, struggling to pull away as she glared up at him. “I won’t let you bully me.”
“Bully you?” He narrowed his eyes on her, watching the sharp flare of her delicate little nose and the curl of anger at her lips. “I’m not trying to bully you baby, I’m trying to get into your pants. There’s a difference.”
“Maybe I don’t want you in my pants,” she retorted, her breathing rough, the blood pounding in the vein up the side of her neck.
She was just as turned on as he was and he knew it.
“Tell me your pussy’s not wet,” he dared her. “Tell me those pretty pink nipples aren’t hard and sensitive, begging you to let me suck them until you swear you’re ready to come from nothing else. Go ahead, Amelia, lie to me some more. Tell me you’re not dying to ride my dick until the world explodes around you.” His lips were nearly touching hers now, his gaze locked with the shocked, aroused depths of hers. “Because I promise you, baby, I’m so damned ready and aching to ride that hot little pussy that it’s all I can do not to take you standing here.”
Her eyes darkened further, lips parting as her eyes widened just that little bit.
“Do you want that, too, sugar elf? My cock buried in your tight little pussy as we stand here?”
He lifted her against him, ignoring her gasp as he pulled her up his body until his denim-covered shaft pressed between her thighs and her knees gripped his hips naturally.
“Yeah, that’s the way you do it,” he growled, reaching between them to loosen his belt and jeans before drawing the painfully hard length of his pe
nis from inside his pants.
He wasn’t about to let her go long enough to pull her panties down her legs.
“I’ll eat that pretty pussy later,” he promised as he tore the silk and elastic from her body, then dropped the ruined material to the floor at his feet. “Now lift that sweater and let me have those hot little nipples.”
To convince her, he tucked the wide crest of his erection just inside the swollen, incredibly slick folds of her heated cunt.
He stopped there, watching as her hips pressed lower, her knees tightening at his hips to hold herself in position for the penetration he was teasing her with.
“Give me those pretty breasts,” he ordered her again, wondering if the top of his head would blow off from the pressure he was putting on his aching cock. “Let me suck one of those pretty nipples while you ride me, sweetheart,” he groaned. “Come on now, take that fucking sweater off.”
A whimper left her lips, but her hands moved from his shoulders, gripped the hem of the sweater, and pulled it slowly up her torso before lifting it over her head.
The bra was no obstacle. Thin, delicate lace covered the tight tips, making it impossible to wait for her to remove it. His head lowered. Pushing the low-cut lace aside with the fingers of his free hand, he latched on to one hard tip, drawing it into his mouth and pressing his cock deeper between the swollen lips of her sex.
* * *
Amelia heard her whimpers with a distant sort of shock that wasn’t nearly enough to pull her out of the grip of pleasure so incredible, she was helpless against it.
His mouth drew on the overly sensitive peak of her breast as he wrapped his arm around her hips, holding her firmly against him. He pressed the thick erection against the entrance to her vagina; the wide crest stretched her flesh, demanding entrance and igniting her senses.
She could feel too much, too many sensations, too much pleasure.
She ached for him with a soul-deep hunger she couldn’t rid herself of. A hunger that weakened her, that held her mesmerized as pure, white-hot pleasure began to whip over her flesh.
Between her thighs, the mushroom-shaped crest of his erection parted her further, dragging an agonized moan from her lips. More of her juices fell from the inner depths of her vagina. The excess slid past the slight penetration to slicken her folds further.
“Crowe, more,” she whispered, a part of her shocked at the demand.
He eased farther inside her, slowly, so slowly until the full width of the blunted tip was buried inside her, stretching her with a heat she was still shocked she could actually take.
“Damn, that’s it baby, suck my dick inside,” he groaned, the explicit words shocking her as much now as they had the first time he had uttered them seven years before.
Even more shocking was the realization that the uncontrolled flex and ripple of her internal muscles felt as though she was indeed trying to suck him inside her, to milk the engorged flesh and draw it deeper inside her body.
Pulling the lace of her bra over the curve of her other breast, Crowe covered the unattended little bud with his mouth. Sucking it deep in his mouth, he used his tongue to lash at the sensitized nerve endings as his erection surged deeper inside the tender depths of her body.
Crying out at the stretch and burn of her flesh, she was only dimly aware of him moving, turning her, his body tensing as he pressed her back against the wall.
In the next breath a hard thrust sent the heavy shaft surging fully inside her, burying to the hilt as her vagina clenched and spilled its damp heat along the invading flesh. His lips abandoned her breast; his head lifting, he stared down at her with a fierce, predatory hunger.
Amelia couldn’t stay still, despite the grip he had on her hips or the tight press of her body into the wall. Her knees tightened on his hips, her hips shifting, lifting and moving against him as sensation struck at the responsive flesh stretched around him.
“That’s it, baby. Ride me. Show me how hungry you are for me,” he growled, his lips moving to her neck in hot, hard little kisses that heated her flesh and sent hot surges of electrified pleasure racing from the contact.
Show him how hungry she was for him? She had thought, for a while, that she wouldn’t survive after he’d left seven years before. The world had been a bleak, gray existence filled with pain and hunger. Then with a fear that drove such deep, nightmarish spikes of terror through her senses, it had nearly broken her.
As overriding as the pain without him had been, the pleasure now was a hundredfold in the opposite direction. So good, so hot and addictive it was almost agonizing.
When his lips covered hers, his hips drew back. His tongue pressed between her lips as he thrust his cock inside her again, suddenly moving, his hips pounding against hers. Pleasure whipped through her body in steadily increasing waves of searing tension.
Her nails dug into the cotton of his shirt as her knees tightened further at his hips, clenching on them, lifting herself against him and pressing down hard as he thrust inside her. She drove him deeper into the sensitive depths of her vagina, her flesh rippling, tightening on each heavy thrust.
His kiss was a hungry mating of lips and tongues, stroking the need and driving the lust building in their bodies. Striking need and burning lust began tightening in her pussy, pulsing in the sensitive bud of her clit as his pelvis raked it with each inward stroke.
The sensations grew stronger each time he took her.
Amelia whimpered at each hard, flaring pulse of sizzling pleasure as he shafted harder, faster inside her. Each inward thrust and quick withdrawal tightened the pleasure and pushed her deeper in the maelstrom of ecstasy.
“Look at me, Amelia,” he growled, jerking his head back as his thrusts became shorter, the friction against tender nerve endings increasing. She forced her eyes open, her gaze meeting his.
Heavy, drunk with pleasure, hammered gold gleaming against the deep brown depths of his eyes, Crowe held her gaze.
“God, yes,” he whispered. “Let me see your eyes, baby. Let me watch you come for me.”
She couldn’t bear it.
Staring into his eyes was like being hot-wired into a sudden, deepening electric pulse. It drew the pleasure into ever-tightening waves of destruction.
The pressure was beating at her clit, in the clenched tissue of her vagina. Each thrust forged past the spasming muscles that struggled to hold on to the shuttling thickness of his cock.
Agonizing pleasure struck at the tender bud, at her womb. It sent forks of sharp, rasping sensation tearing through her vagina, clenched it, tightened around her clit. It suddenly imploded inside her with spirals of ecstasy so blistering, they ignited a harder, sharper explosion.
Her senses ruptured. Flying into a blinding, white-hot vortex of erupting sensation and clashing ecstasy, she feared she’d never survive it.
It shouldn’t be like this.
She sobbed with the exquisite near agony of the ecstasy overtaking her, possessing her, marking her spirit.
As her pussy spasmed and milked at his cock, her release spilling around it, Crowe surged inside her in a final thrust that triggered his own orgasm and filled her with jet after jet of hot semen. A harsh, low male groan vibrated from his chest.
She could feel everything. The smallest touch, the stroke of air against her flesh, each cell of his body that met with hers amplified through her senses. The dampness of his perspiration stroking against her flesh, the heated warmth of hers as it met his already damp flesh.
Nothing escaped her senses. Not the pulse of his release, the rasp of his shirt against her nipples, or the breath that carried her name from his lips to stroke against the flesh of her neck where he’d buried them.
What also didn’t escape her notice were those few precious seconds when she swore she could feel him so clear, so close that they must be a part of each other. That sense of unity, of completeness, brought her the first, fragile moments of peace in far more years than she could remember.
CHAPTER
10
It was days later before Crowe actually realized that Amelia had never really answered his question about Wayne’s abuse.
He was immersed in reports from the Brute Force agents, the personal security team from the agency he co-owned with his cousins and the Resnova family.
Based in Sweetrock, the agency had garnered attention even before the Resnovas had invested in it. Now Crowe had every available agent not currently on assignment searching for Wayne Sorenson.
They were cutting off every venue of aid Wayne could possibly turn to. All his contacts were under investigation, or had an agent in place should Wayne attempt to contact them. Phones were tapped and the better part of the agency’s considerable electronic strengths were aimed at detecting any and every sign of the murdering bastard.
Bank security cameras had spotted him walking into one of the larger banks in Aspen. The disguise he had worn was enough to fool the naked eye, but not the facial recognition software Ivan Resnova had contracted from the far-flung Resnova family member who had created it.
They’d almost had him.
They had a single agent in town. He’d slipped inside the bank to catch sight of Wayne, who had obviously spotted the agent first. He’d rushed from the bank before the team could reach it and disappeared in a throng of shoppers in the outdoor bazaar several streets away.
They had managed to find out why he was there, though, and they’d uncovered yet another of Wayne’s identities. Under the assumed identity he’d rented a safe-deposit box years before. A court order was pushed through with the governor’s influence, and the box was opened to reveal a handgun, ammunition, close to a million dollars’ worth of high-grade, uncut diamonds, and several hundred thousand dollars in cash.
The assets were turned over to an account set up to eventually split them among the law enforcement agencies that had chased the Slasher for over fourteen years, as well as the family members of the victims Wayne and his partners had murdered.
So far, they’d found three safe-deposit boxes, two mountain cabins, as well as a home in Aspen. There were three vehicles, stashes of cash in each of the cabins, and a safe in the home that held more cash, stocks, and bonds in yet another assumed identity.