by Lora Leigh
J.D. and his son turned to him, nearly identical expressions of surprise on their faces now.
“I can handle this, Turk,” she breathed out wearily as she glimpsed the determination that filled his face and tightened his body.
J.D.’s smile was tight. John D. smirked back at her.
Really? she thought. Did she really have to deal with this bullshit tonight? Hadn’t she put up with enough already?
“I’m not a bone,” she informed them all as Turk moved in closer to her back, nearly touching her now.
John D. took a seat on the other side of the counter, propped his elbow on the counter, and rested the hard curve of his chin on his fist. The subtle wink he shot her as his black hair fell around the hard planes and angles of his face assured her he intended to be amused.
“Of course you’re a bone,” John D. drawled. “J.D. will never admit anyone else can take care of you.”
“John.” J.D. turned on him with a quiet, dark anger. “Get back to the van.”
John D. grinned but didn’t move.
“I’m not leaving. Leaving won’t solve anything. That attack was personal. It wasn’t a robbery,” she protested.
“All the more reason to have you reassigned,” J.D. pointed out, propping his hands on his hips like some Roman emperor surveying all he held power over.
He did not control her. She refused to allow it.
“All the more reason to stay here,” she argued. “If I run I’m always looking over my shoulder until the bastard catches me unaware. If I stay, Cooper, Turk, and the others will ensure it ends here.”
“Possibly ending your life as well,” he snarled. “And just how do you think your mother will handle this?”
“Don’t tell her,” she suggested blandly. “That’s where you always make your mistake. You blab, J.D.”
For God’s sake, why did he keep involving her mother?
“Don’t tell her?” J.D. asked her as though amazed she would suggest it. “And you think she wouldn’t find out?”
“What does it matter?” Crossing her arms over her breasts she found herself less than willing to continue this debate. “You can’t force me to leave. I won’t let you. Conserve your energy and the hair you’ll end up pulling out by figuring out who it is now rather than later. Or worse yet, when he catches me unaware and kills me because none of us were expecting it.”
“She’s right, Dad.” John D. was no longer amused.
“I didn’t ask you,” J.D. growled.
“If we keep her from sight,” Cooper cut in then, “let no one know where she’s at, someone will start asking questions. That someone would lead us to the answers we need.”
“I didn’t ask you either,” J.D. growled, casting Cooper a silencing look.
“Then ask me.” The sound of Turk’s voice had her wincing. “She stays right here. No one would know. They could suspect she’s here, next door at Iron’s place, or downstairs at Jake’s. They’ll have to come looking for her and when they do, we can eliminate the threat once and for all.”
Stay here? At Turk’s place?
“Well, sis,” John D. drawled then, obviously amused once again. “There are your options. Door number one or door number two?”
“Try door number three,” she murmured.
Her brother’s brow lifted as laughter gleamed in his emerald-green eyes. Behind her, Turk muttered a curse.
“And what would door number three be?” Only Cooper was brave enough to ask.
J.D. sighed. “She’ll decide once she makes up her mind which of us deserves to die first.” He looked at Turk. “She’s staying with you. I live with her mother, I know that look.”
She was quite certain he did. Since J.D. and her mother married nine years before and he’d seen their couch as a bed more times than once.
“I’ll sneak over and get her clothes,” John D. decided, then turned to Cooper. “Get Gabby over here to drive her car around and stay in her apartment with Jake. With a little work, she could look enough like Erin to perhaps fool whoever’s looking for her.”
Gabby was the bar’s camera and security tech, normally hidden in the basement of the bar and buried in code and camera surveillance.
John D. was all but rubbing his hands together in glee.
“Boys and girls, let’s have fun.”
“Good God, I should have drowned you at birth.” J.D. stared at his son as though he were demented. “Gabby will eat Jake alive, Miss Do-it-my-way-here”—he jerked a thumb at Erin—“will probably end up strangled before Turk realizes he’s done it and you’ll leave a hell of a mess for me and Cooper to clean up.”
John D. laughed. “And just think, I’m your heir.”
“It’s not too late to drown you, John,” J.D. assured him. “Not too late at all.”
His son only laughed back at him before shooting Erin another of those cocky winks.
Damn, J.D. could practically feel life beginning to twist and turn. What was would be no longer.
So why wasn’t he fighting it harder?
CHAPTER 9
Nearly a week later, Turk closed and relocked the apartment door after another visit from J.D. and his diabolical son. He was beginning to think perhaps John D. did deserve to be drowned at birth as his father had threatened.
If the little bastard kept flirting with Erin the way he was while pretending a brotherly air, then Turk would take care of that little task himself.
“I think that went rather well,” Erin stated cheerfully as he stepped into the living area to glare down at where she had stretched out on his couch.
Those little tank tops were going to get her ass in trouble. They outlined her breasts perfectly.
Today, instead of jeans or oversized sweatpants, she was wearing a pair of shorts that practically made his tongue hang out of his mouth like a slavering fool.
They weren’t indecent, but the material ended far too short for his peace of mind, and they fit. They fit her perfect. One slender leg was lifted and bent, her bare foot resting on the cushion of the sofa. She looked relaxed, comfortable, and just like the shorts fit her body, she seemed to just fit into his life.
“None of you threatened to kill each other, you mean?” he snorted.
She gave a small, light chuckle. “Mom says when that happens she looks for the safe room because the explosion is coming.”
He almost winced. Yep, he could almost feel it coming himself.
“What usually instigates the explosion?” he asked carefully.
“J.D.” She didn’t even hesitate before giving that answer. “He’s not allowed to screw with Mom’s life or her friends’ lives, but for some reason, she refuses to put her foot down on my life. And poor John D., his mother died when he was a baby, so he’s had no other example to follow but J.D.”
Plopping down at the bottom of the couch Turk almost felt sorry for John D. Almost. The entire time the bastard had been there he’d petted on Erin like she was a homeless pup or something.
As he sat there contemplating the other man’s drowning, a delicate little foot slid to his thigh. Automatically he reached for it, gently kneading her arch as he tried to convince himself that drowning her stepbrother was a bad idea.
“John D. and I are really close though,” she said.
He wondered how long he’d have to hold John D. under the water?
“How close?” He glared at the wall instead of her.
“Not that kind of close,” she answered, an edge of laughter flirting with her tone. “He was always the big brother. Pulling my hair and hiding my hair bows when I first moved in. The first time I caught him unaware and planted my fist in his solar plexus he still didn’t take it seriously when I told him to leave my things alone. Then I caught him coming in drunk as a skunk one night. He passed out in the garage. I spent the night chewing gum and planting it in his long, pretty black hair. The next day Mom nearly had to shave his head bald. He must have gotten the message then.”
Oka
y, he might let the bastard draw a breath or something.
Turk narrowed his eyes on her. “Vengeful creature,” he grunted.
It would be hard to get seriously aroused when a man knew a woman could do such damage, he thought.
She shrugged with a smile, lifting her breasts beneath that snug top. “He knew I’d done it, but he never told on me. Never got me back. But he did stop stealing my things.”
Kneading her little foot he stared over at her, seeing the genuine affection she felt for her stepbrother, but none of the hunger for him that lit her eyes.
Okay, he might let John D. live. Maybe. If he could keep his hands off what belonged to Turk.
That almost had him stilling in shock.
His? When had he actually decided she was his?
They’d settled into a wary routine for the past week, one Turk had felt unraveling from the moment it had developed. Still, they both seemed to be adhering to some unwritten set of rules.
Erin cooked, he cleaned up and stacked the dishwasher. While he remotely helped Gabby work the surveillance cameras at the bar, she worked on reports J.D. kept her busy with.
Come midnight, normally the busiest part of the night for the bar, and for them, was when the tension developed. When the air between them became rife with arousal, with awareness.
As it was now.
“You’re quiet, and you’re staring at me,” she said suspiciously. “What are you thinking?”
About her lips wrapped around his cock.
How sweet she tasted.
How tight she felt wrapped around his engorged flesh.
He was thinking about things he should never be thinking about and he knew it.
“I try real hard not to think too much where you’re concerned,” he grunted as he lifted the remote and flipped the television on. “It’s too damned dangerous.”
Yeah, like he might decide to actually stop pretending that he didn’t want her.
Lifting her foot from his hard thigh, where he’d been absently rubbing her arch, Erin swung her legs around and rose from the couch.
“I have things to do,” she stated.
She had no intentions of watching several hours of the news as they had the night before.
“Sure.” He sounded distracted, he might want her to think he was distracted, but she could feel his gaze on her. Like a physical touch, stroking along her back, her thighs.
She almost rolled her eyes.
She wasn’t going to beg him, if that was what he wanted. And she was damned if she would make the first move.
Her bedroom door closed quietly.
Running his hand over his face Turk clenched his teeth and told himself he was not following her.
He’d made it a week. Questions were being asked and several suspects were being investigated. Unfortunately, a lot of the bar’s customers had noticed the female bartender that was suddenly absent. Just as Cooper’s men had noticed those who pretended a disinterest, or too much interest.
Then there were those who had noticed his absence as well.
Blowing out a hard breath he leaned forward to the laptop opened on the wood coffee table. Waking the laptop and pulling up the surveillance cameras outside the apartment building he took note of each vehicle, comparing them mentally to those that were often seen at the bar.
Next he tapped into the bar’s cameras and the program Gabby had running from Erin’s apartment. Everything looked good there.
There wasn’t a damned thing for him to fill the upcoming hours with. Nothing to distract himself with.
God, what was he doing to himself?
What was he doing to himself as well as Erin?
He’d spent three months keeping other men away from her, watching her like a hungry wolf, telling himself he was saving both of them by not taking her, by not giving in to whatever kept drawing them toward each other.
He wasn’t saving either of them a damned thing. He was killing himself. And if he wasn’t careful he’d lose any chance he may have at the heart of the woman he couldn’t force himself to stay away from.
He’d lost his mind.…
Or had he lost something far more serious? he wondered as he rose from the couch and turned slowly to the closed bedroom door.
Had he lost something he hadn’t even been aware he actually possessed?
*
“Erin.” The bedroom door opened several hours later, Turk’s tall, powerful body stepping into the dimly lit room.
She lay back on the queen-size bed, the small lamp that sat on the bedside table not nearly enough to fully illuminate the shadowed planes and angles of his face.
Erin stared at him from across the room, never shifting position. Lying back on the pillows, one arm curled beneath her head, the other rested just beneath a breast.
The thin gray cami top snuggly outlined her breasts while matching brief boy shorts made her legs look longer.
The sleepwear was comfortable, but as lust burned in his chocolate-brown eyes she realized exactly how little it was covering as well.
Turk prowled closer to the bed, his eyes darkening to nearly black as his gaze moved over her slowly.
“I’m not in the mood for one of your quickies,” she informed him, though she knew better.
Her body was primed and ready for whatever the hell he wanted to give her for however long he wanted to give it to her.
Her mouth dried out as he gripped the bottom of his T-shirt, stripped it off, and dropped it negligently to the floor before his hands fell to his belt.
Sweet merciful heaven. Hard abs flexed, and the power beneath hard, sun-bronzed flesh caused her to swallow nervously.
“No quickie tonight.” The dark rasp of his voice, the sensual promise gleaming in his eyes had her breathing quickening, the blood rushing furiously through her veins.
Her gaze moved to his hands, watching as he unclasped his belt before releasing the first metal button of his jeans.
“Sit up.” The growl in his voice, the erotic hunger tightening his face, combined with the knowledge she may have asked for more than she could handle wasn’t lost on her.
Slowly, she sat up, mesmerized, aching for him. Drawn to him in a way she promised herself she’d figure out later.
“I tried to stay away from you, Erin.” Jeans loosened, he pushed them over his hips after freeing the impressive length of his cock.
“Why?” She had to fist her hands at her side to restrain the urge to touch him.
“There was a very good reason.” Shedding his jeans and stepping closer to the bed, Turk wrapped his fingers around the base of his erection and stroked the iron-hard flesh slowly. “Right now, I don’t even have a clue what that reason was though.”
But he wasn’t unaware of what he wanted.
Pushing his fingers through her hair, he gripped it, tugging at her head until the wide blunt tip moved slowly to her lips.
“Part your lips, Erin,” he groaned. “Sweet baby, give me that hot little mouth.”
Sweet silken lips parted, allowing the head of his cock to pierce the wet heat of her mouth.
The sight of her taking him, the feel of her mouth slowly surrounding the crest as her delicate hands gripped his thighs drew a strangled groan from Turk’s lips.
Damn her! It was too fucking good.
Damn him! Because he was stepping willingly into a waiting hell and he knew it.
He knew it, yet fighting it was impossible.
“You’re a fucking witch. You should be burned at the stake,” he accused her as electric pleasure rippled from the engorged shaft to his tightening balls.
Innocent green eyes blinked back at him with erotic promise as she worked her lips and tongue over his hardened flesh with feminine hunger. That wicked little tongue licked and stroked, rubbed at the underside of the throbbing crest and teased that ultra-sensitive spot just below it.
Her mouth was exquisite. What she lacked in experience, she more than made up for in hunger. And the h
ungry demand in each suckling stroke had his body tightening as pleasure lashed at his nerve endings.
He’d never felt that curling heat in his gut that he felt now with any other woman. He’d never burned for another woman like he burned for Erin. From that first moment that their eyes met, to that first kiss, and beyond. Each day with her, each time he touched her, his need for her only grew. This hunger for her touch, the need to just hear her voice … God, what was she doing to him?
Staring down at her, watching her lips move over him, her expression flushed and filled with pleasure and need, he could feel himself unraveling. His release boiled in his balls, threatened to slip his control.
“Enough.” Tightening his fingers in her hair and pulling her back, Turk watched as her lashes lifted languidly, her sea-green eyes darker now as arousal filled them.
“Lie back for me.” The demand was a hoarse rasp as he fought the need rushing through him, demanding that he take her now.
Gracefully, temptingly, she lay back.
His lips almost quirked at the witchy, hungry look in her eyes.
“Take the clothes off,” he ordered then. “Let me watch.”
Let him watch she did.
The teasing, taunting movements as she lifted the little top over her head, revealing swollen breasts and tight, cherry-red nipples had his cock flexing in demand. Then those slender, graceful fingers moved to the boy shorts she wore. Slipping beneath the elastic band she pushed them down her thighs, over her knees, then discarded them with a smooth shift of her legs.
“You’ve tortured the hell out of me for far too long,” he growled as he knelt on the bed. “Months too long.”
“You tortured yourself,” Erin assured him, her arms curving over her head as a sharp pulse of sensation clenched her womb before sending a heated strike of sensation to wrap around her clit.
He wasn’t touching her yet. She shouldn’t be feeling this.
Satisfaction curled at the corner of his lips.
“You’ll regret this later,” he assured her as he came over to her.
“And you know this how?” she asked, the shadows in his eyes sending a flare of uncertainty raging through her now.