“Wait…don’t…” she whispered urgently, twisting restlessly under his weight.
But the intense look in his eyes told her he wasn’t about to relent. So she gathered up what remaining self-control she had left and launched an assault of her own. Desperately clutching his shirt, she yanked it up, molding her fingers against the hard silk of his abdomen, then trailing down to the waist of his jeans. But rather than undoing the button there, she sought and found his erection. She squeezed him almost roughly, relishing in his low groan and the way he instinctively stilled his own hand and ground against her. With her thumb and index finger, she traced the long, wide length of him, then came back up again, increasing the pressure of her fingers with each pass. His breathing grew more rapid, his caresses more urgent. His hips bucked and he grabbed at her hand.
She tugged her mouth from his, then slipped the tip of her tongue between his lips for one last taste. “The way, um, I see it, we have two options.” She swallowed hard. “Either we continue the way we are, in which case it’ll be over with before we’ve even started. Or,” she squeezed his rock-hard erection for good measure, “we get undressed and do this the right way.”
He rolled off of her in a flash, nearly ripping off his clothes in his rush to get out of them, then helped her with hers. Her shirt flew to land dangerously near the lantern; her bra zinged over the back side of the couch; her jeans landed somewhere near the door.
Then every sweet, hot inch of him was lying against every throbbing, needy inch of her.
The only sound in the room was that of their breathing. Heavy, ragged. In and out. Connor caught and held her gaze in the warm glow from the lantern, as if asking her if she was sure this was what she wanted. Her response came by way of her hips straining up against his, driving his erection into the soft, quivering flesh of her belly.
Connor groaned then reached into the back pocket of his discarded jeans. She took the foil packet from him, swallowing when she noticed the extra-large size and the ribbing. Grasping his erection, she smoothed the lubricated latex down the length of him, wondering at his sheer size, hoping she could accommodate him.
His eyes half-lidded and full of passion, he dropped a long, lingering kiss on her lips, then guided himself to rest against her slick flesh. Bronte moaned, straining restlessly upward, seeking to extinguish the fire that seemed to have burned forever, needing to fill the aching emptiness that resonated through her and that only joining with him would satisfy.
He entered her slowly, as if aware of her need of time to adjust. She tensed, not realizing just how large he was until that very moment. She whimpered, torn between wanting him all the way inside and needing to pull away.
“Shhh,” he murmured, dropping small kisses along her jaw line, then trailing a path down to her breasts. He drew circles around her right nipple with the very tip of his tongue, then generously laved the yearning nub, pulling it deep in this mouth. The instant she sighed against the cushions, he pressed inside her another couple of millimeters. Then another. Then she tilted her hips and thrust upward with needy abandon, gasping as he seemed to fill every inch of her.
He started to pull out.
“No!” she whispered fiercely. “Don’t you dare go anywhere. Just…stay…still…a minute.” She bit on her bottom lip, feeling her unused muscles mold to him, feeling the fire in her belly rush out of control.
Then she slid back a few inches and thrust upward again, the answering pleasure almost unbearable in its intensity.
“Oh, my,” he said between gritted teeth, then bent to kiss her deeply, thoroughly, as she continued her exploratory movements. “Bronte…I don’t know how long…I’m going to be able to stay this way.”
She kissed first one corner of his mouth, then the other. The emotional connection she’d felt so intensely a short while ago, when they’d stood in front of the fireplace, transformed into a potent physical connection. She slowly moved her hips up to meet his. His instinctual buck made her smile. A smile that quickly left when he made a low sound in the back of his throat, grasped her hips, then pulled nearly all the way out only to thrust all the way back in.
Bronte’s back arched off the sofa and she clutched his shoulders—not in pain, but in exquisite, overwhelming pleasure. Her toes curled. Her scalp tingled. Her womb contracted. And all she could think about was how desperately she wanted this to continue.
For long minutes he stroked her both inside and out, one hand braced at the side of her hip, the other stroking her breasts, stroking her until the pressure in her belly threatened to explode.
Then his thumb sought and found the tiny, throbbing bud between her damp curls. She gasped, gripping his hips, digging her fingernails into the hard flesh of his rear, pulling him ever closer, wanting him deeper, faster, harder. Needing to follow the wispy clouds swirling through her body, up and up, around and around, twisting, turning until—
Her back came up off the sofa, her body convulsed violently, and somewhere within the whiteout that had once been her sight she heard Connor call out. He relentlessly drove into her, his muscles quaking, her body shuddering, the ultra sweet joining of their bodies culminating in soul-shaking climax.
Finally she dropped back down to the sofa, her skin drenched, her entire body quivering. She couldn’t seem to take in enough air as Connor propped himself up with his forearms on either side of her and dropped his head so his forehead lay between her breasts. He virtually shook from head to toe. Bronte smiled tremulously and lightly ran her fingertips over his sweat-dampened hair.
She shifted so she could gaze down into his face. His eyes were closed, his lips parted. He looked so utterly relaxed, trustful, fulfilled. She swallowed hard, realizing how very much that meant to her, his opening to her. And something opened in her, spreading throughout her chest like warm molasses and sticking there. In that instant, she knew a brief stab of fear. What was happening right now, at that moment, was unlike anything she’d felt before. Not with Thomas. Not with anyone. And that element of the unknown, the untried, both thrilled and scared the hell out of her.
She was falling in love with him.
She closed her eyes at the thought, thinking there wasn’t a cliff high enough to equal how far she’d already fallen. And, damn it, if she could just turn off her mind for a couple of hours, a few days, she could just enjoy the feeling and stop questioning it. She could delight in the lightness saturating her heart, the weightlessness of her stomach, give in to the desire to smile with no reason, and stop worrying about the rest.
She continued absently brushing back his hair with her fingers. “Now…wasn’t that much better than what you had in mind?”
“Oh, yes.” She watched him grin against her skin, apparently unaware that she could see him, and that sticky spot in her chest doubled in size. She laid her head back and closed her eyes, needing to savor the feeling. If just for now. If only for this one moment.
Tomorrow she could worry about exactly what all of this meant. Tomorrow she could ponder all the wonderful hows and whys and possibilities. Tomorrow they could start the long road back to getting Connor out of the mess he was in.
She bit softly on her bottom lip. And tomorrow she could find a way to get a grip on her heart.
10
SOMETHING WARM MARKED A path across Connor’s abdomen. He blinked against the brightness, then raised his hand to shield his eyes against the liquid sunshine spilling in through the large, multipaned front windows.
It took him a moment to orientate himself. His grandparents’ old place. On the living room floor. Bronte…
He snapped upright, staring at the sleeping bag he lay on, then searching the room for signs of the astounding, loving, inventive redhead who had turned him inside out the night before.
Nothing. Her jeans were gone. So was her shirt. And a check under the couch found her bra also missing.
Yanking off the sheet draped across his hips, he got to his feet and wound the swath of linen around his waist. A lo
ok outside found fresh tire tracks around the side of the house, marking grooves in the mud left by the rain last night. He realized Bronte must have parked at the side, which explained why he hadn’t known she was there when he arrived.
He absently rubbed his face, then ran his fingers through his hair. She was gone. There was no question of that. He didn’t know how, but if she was there somewhere, he knew he would have sensed it, felt it.
He padded back toward the makeshift bed they had finally made up at some point during the night. He picked up his watch and squinted at the face. Ten. He hadn’t slept that long, or that well, since…before he found himself in this mess.
Even then, he never slept in past eight. His internal alarm clock never allowed it. When he was younger, there were things that needed to be done, and only himself to see to them. He’d naturally carried the routine over into adulthood, his schooling in lack of sleep serving him well on assignments that sometimes stretched to days at a time until he got a witness settled and shifts were worked out.
A flash of white caught his eye. He looked at the piece of notepaper on the sofa, then moved to pick it up. He couldn’t help noticing the way his chest contracted at the mere thought of holding something in his hands that Bronte had so recently touched. He sat down on the couch and stared blindly out the front window.
If he’d been asked a month ago what love was, he would have scoffed and said something along the lines of love being some sort of imaginary, temporary state of mind that could be fixed with a little common sense and a harsh word or two.
Now…
Well, now he knew it was more than that. Much more. And he knew that what he was feeling could be nothing other than love. For one clever, sexy junior U.S. attorney, Bronte O’Brien.
He couldn’t put his finger on exactly what made him so sure that what he felt was connected to the “L” word. It was everything, it was nothing. It was the way his pulse sped up when he even thought her name. It was something about her outlook on life. It was the way she had listened to him speak about his mother, and responded, as if she’d been right there with him, shared his pain.
If he felt determined to clear his name before, he was doubly singleminded now.
And the hope he had lost just the night before had come back full force.
But until he did figure out a way to clear his name, he didn’t dare consider the rest.
Still, his mind ventured down that avenue on its own accord.
He recalled what he’d said to her when things between them had gotten hot and heavy, right before he had entered her hot sweetness…and felt his stomach tighten at his honesty. Before…
Well, before, he’d never told the women he’d been with prior to sex that he had no plans for them beyond tomorrow. But Bronte… He’d felt he’d owed it to her to know where things stood. Even if the design of a child’s nursery hadn’t been open on her kitchen table the other night, he’d sensed on a level he couldn’t begin to understand that she wanted children. She had the wit, energy and drive for an entire houseful. Balancing career and motherhood would be a piece of cake for her.
For him, it wasn’t even a possibility.
And she’d deserved to know that. Before things between them went any further. Before it was too late.
Unfortunately, he was afraid it already was.
He looked down to find he had crumpled the note in his fist. Swearing under his breath, he straightened it out enough to read it. “Courthouse. Noon. I’ll be waiting.” It was signed, “Love, Bronte.”
Love, Bronte.
The bottom of his stomach gave way, making him feel larger than the house in which he sat.
And making him feel hollow, knowing it could go no further than that.
Crumpling the note back up, he stuffed the wad into his jeans pocket. Within minutes, he was dressed and ready to continue his mission to uncover who exactly had set him up.
BRONTE LEANED AGAINST THE edge of the conference table and watched the familiar scenes on the television screen in front of her. She was alone in the room, but through the narrow windows on either side of the closed door, life went on. Assistants rushed to see through tedious tasks. Fellow attorneys came in from arraignments, left for hearings. Couriers delivered court papers. And witnesses tentatively negotiated the halls, obviously feeling out of place, and looking that way.
Bronte thumbed the eject button and exchanged the security video taken at the time of Melissa Robbins’s death with another. She pressed Play then leaned back against the edge of the table again.
Despite her familiar surroundings, she, too, felt out of place. Different somehow. Definitely not the same woman she’d been just the day before. Colors appeared brighter, sounds clearer, and she seemed aware of every single heartbeat.
Funny, she never remembered feeling this way about Thomas. Yes, she’d been happy. At least, she thought she’d been. But what she felt now transcended the mere urge to smile when she thought about Connor. It was as if a smile was permanently attached to her heart. As though he was a very part of her every move, with her even when he wasn’t.
Leaving him that morning had been one of the most difficult things she’d ever done. She’d awakened in his arms just before dawn, and burrowed further into his chest, wanting anything but to have to get up, to leave him lying there alone. She’d dropped off to sleep again, only to wake up again a short while later in a panic. It was bad enough she’d called in sick the day before. Being late this morning certainly wouldn’t help matters. And she needed to be on her toes if she had any hope of maintaining her job, much less be able to help clear Connor.
Now, four hours later, all she could think about was Connor and how he’d react to awakening and finding her gone.
Last night completely surpassed anything she could have ever anticipated. After that kiss in the park, it had been a foregone conclusion as far as she was concerned that she and Connor would sleep together. But last night had been more than just two consenting adults having sex. Last night, she had made love for the very first time. She’d felt Connor not only with her body; she’d felt him with her heart. Every beat of her pulse, every inhale of breath, he had been a part of. She’d never shared so much with one person before. Had him share so much with her.
She glanced down at her watch. Only an hour and a half before noon.
The images flickering across the screen only a couple feet away vied for her attention. She forced herself to focus. A quick press of Rewind, then Play again, put the tape back to the beginning. It was at the point where she had stopped paying attention to anything but Connor McCoy.
Seeing what the tape held, her heart sank to her feet, making the smile on her face fade away.
She had no squabbles with her assistant, Greg. He had gotten her exactly what she asked for, which was everything Dennis Burns had compiled so far against Connor. The first tape she viewed was a carbon copy of the one Connor had left at her town house. Little help to her except to give her goose bumps.
The second video, the one she was now watching, was a compilation of clips taken from various tapes. Connor’s greatest hits, she thought dryly. Each clip featured him around, talking to, or protecting Melissa Robbins. Bronte was surprised by the slight rise in her blood temperature as she watched. It was obvious to her that Connor was doing no more and no less than what his job required. But his dedication to that same job, his keen eye for detail, made him appear intense in a way that might be misinterpreted by others.
And though she knew that watching over Melissa had only been a job to him, she couldn’t help feeling jealous at the thought of him giving that type of fervent attention to any other female. Ludicrous, really, seeing as she knew for a fact that they hadn’t been involved intimately. More so, since the woman in question was now dead.
More than that, Bronte felt that with each millisecond of the tape that played, her chances at happiness, true lasting happiness, diminished. Because the man on whom that happiness depended might very well
end up spending the rest of his life in a federal penitentiary. And she’d stepped in front of that speeding train not only with her eyes wide open, but her arms stretched wide.
She’d known before giving in to her attraction, her feelings for Connor, that the outcome of the Robbins case was anything but guaranteed. She knew firsthand that sometimes the innocent were convicted right alongside the guilty. She’d just thought it wouldn’t happen to her. Believed that somehow, some way, Connor would find a way to prove his innocence, and that she would be the one to help him.
And then what? They would live happily ever after?
Her throat tightened. She’d never considered herself the rose-colored glasses type. Had preferred the Hardy Boys over Nancy Drew, and proudly scoffed at Cinderella stories in any format. Her own parents’ rocky marriage stood testament to the fact that there was no such thing as smooth sailing.
Yet the first time she fell, really fell, for a guy, she found herself peering into corners for a missing glass slipper that once put on would make the real world vanish and transport her and Connor to some misty fairy-tale land where lifetime imprisonment wasn’t even an option.
How was she supposed to help Connor when there was no help to be found?
Bronte rubbed her arms, then popped the second tape out as well. Her hands shaking, she gathered her things together, then made her way back to her office.
“Anything interesting?” Greg asked as she passed.
She shook her head and uttered a quiet, “No.”
He frowned. “Too bad. ’Cause the man of the hour has just returned. I’m afraid our borrowing habit is about to be found out.”
Bronte looked over her shoulder to where Dennis was just closing his office door. “Good. Now’s as good a time as any to have a little talk with him.” Still clutching the videotapes, she turned to do just that—and nearly plowed into Senior U.S. Attorney Bernard Leighton.
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