by Moriah Jovan
Finally, “Giselle.”
She couldn’t decipher his mood with two syllables, and she slowly lifted her gaze to see him lounging back in his chair, his elbows on the arms and his fingers steepled under his chin. The cocked eyebrow, the tightness of his mouth . . . Her eyes widened a bit.
“Strip.”
Giselle swallowed at his unexpected reaction, then felt her juices start to flow. “Make me,” she whispered, aghast and aroused and relieved all at the same time.
His eyebrow arched and she felt the fire in the pit of her belly begin to kindle and flare. “You know, I don’t think you want to challenge me on this, Wife.”
That only meant she’d have to fight harder and she was more than prepared after the draining day she’d had. She needed that hit of adrenaline and testosterone.
“Really, why?”
“You’re not stripping,” he said, his voice hard. He slouched in his chair, unmoving, watching her. “Why?”
She rose then and, as she passed him, she said, “Maybe I’m tired.”
“Oh, really?” He arose and stepped behind her to wrap his hands around her arms, and she smiled. He turned her around and she crossed her arms over her chest, watching him look at her.
His hand went to the towel on her head and he ripped it off, letting her damp hair fall free. His hand went to her pajama bottoms and ripped the drawstring and waistband with one swift yank. His eyebrow rose. “Take ’em off.”
“Make me.”
Like lightning, Bryce swept her off her feet and threw her at the bed. She bounced. Her legs far apart, she propped herself up on her elbows and laughed.
His face darkened and he approached her, stealthy, ever the predator. He grasped her ankles and straightened out her legs with a jerk. Then he ripped her pajama bottoms right off of her with one pull. He knelt on the bed slowly and crept over her until he had her trapped under him, his thighs straddling her and one hand on either side of her face, the way he’d had her in front of the bodhisattva. She stared up at him, then grasped his face to pull him down for a long, slow kiss.
“When I tell you to get undressed, you get undressed,” he growled into her mouth.
“No.”
His eyes widened and his nostrils flared. His kiss plowed her down into the mattress and she returned it with the same ferocity, then she put her hands flat against his chest and pushed as hard as she could.
Surprised, he rose enough for her to roll out from under him and off the bed. Her chest heaving, she watched him warily as he slowly unfolded his big, lithe body to step onto the floor.
He stripped off his shorts in one smooth movement, so he stood naked before her, his cock hard, erect, proud. Long, thick. She sucked in a breath at how beautiful he was, but then turned away with a flounce to drop into the club chair.
Giselle relaxed back into the cushion, then hooked her knees over each arm of the chair, opening herself for him. She gestured to the floor. “You know what to do.”
He shifted his weight to one foot and crossed his arms over his chest. “No, I don’t. Tell me what you want.”
“You. On your knees. In front of me.” His eyebrow rose. “Eat. Me.”
He waved a hand. “And . . . you think that’s all it takes.”
Staring at him, she ran her hand down the inside of her thigh and spread the folds of her bare vulva wider, then dipped two fingers up inside herself. He sucked in a sharp breath, but he didn’t budge.
“You know,” she said matter-of-factly as she brought her hand to her mouth and licked her fingers, “I taste pretty good. If you don’t want to service me, I can always go find one of my toys—”
Giselle jumped when he dropped to his knees in front of her, wrapping his big hands around her thighs. Her head fell back when she felt his tongue on her clit, then up inside her. She sighed and threaded her fingers through his silky hair, feeling every stroke of his tongue, his lips, his hands wherever he touched.
With every lick and caress, her orgasm built until her body tightened, her chest heaved, and she shrieked his name because she felt it there, right there, but not . . .
“My queen,” Bryce murmured reverently against the inside of her thigh just before he jerked her out of the chair and lay back onto the floor so that she straddled his hips. She took his cock in her hand and guided him into her all the way, slow and easy.
She closed her eyes. Sighed. Stayed that way to feel him inside her, filling her to overflowing. He gently wrapped his big hands around her hips to keep her still. After a long moment of savoring the stillness of their connection, she opened her eyes to see him watching her, a seriousness on his face she had never seen before.
“What?” she whispered.
He swallowed. Opened his mouth.
“I love you, Giselle.”
Her heart thudded in shock that not only had he said it, but under circumstances he’d forbidden.
The tears came. She bit her lip. She shifted to lie full upon him, wrap her fingers in his hair, bury her face in his neck. To cry. She felt his arms cradle her.
“What—?”
“Thank you,” she hiccuped, only vaguely aware their bodies weren’t connected anymore, his erection gone, but it didn’t matter. She kissed his scarred face, his ear, his jaw over and over again. “Thank you, Bryce, thank you so much.”
“Giselle—”
“My whole life,” she murmured, still kissing him, her tears smearing over his skin, making the crevices of his scars glisten in the dim light. “My whole life, waiting for a man I love so much to say he loves me too.”
She could feel him relax, his hold tighten around her. He brushed her ear with his mouth and whispered, “My queen.”
* * * * *
54: NEW WORLD MAN
There he was, all six feet and one inch of big-boned muscle, just the way she remembered him. Maybe a couple of new crow’s feet here and there. Raw masculinity encased in a gray suit, the jacket open to reveal a crisp white shirt and contrasting tie, with fine Italian tasseled loafers on his feet. Mere approximation of civility for a man who looked as if he’d be more at home in a Chiefs uniform.
He had a quarterback’s body: long face, square jaw covered by a five o’clock shadow even though it was only three, and a neck that fell straight from his ears to his shoulders without curving in. His nose was long and straight, his mouth hard. His ice blue eyes did nothing to diminish his aura of imminent danger. His short golden hair contrasted sharply with his tanned skin and made his pale eyes seem sharper, more omniscient.
He walked with an easy grace, a relaxed purpose to his long-legged gait that would allow him to stop on a dime or slow to accommodate the shorter stride of a person—a woman?—he respected. Or loved.
Justice sat on a bench in the hall just outside the Chouteau County prosecutor’s office and watched him stride toward her, each step screaming leashed power. Her throat clogged as he got closer, and her heart pounded in her ears. She prepared what she thought must be her most captivating expression and witty conversation, so that when he stopped to ask her to dinner using that devastating grin he possessed, she would not seem at all as immature and gauche as she had three years before.
Each self-assured step brought him closer to Justice and her smile grew with each one. Any moment now, he would see her and be taken aback in sheer delight that she was here. He would tell her that he had not forgotten about her, that he had waited until she graduated from law school before attempting to find her, that he’d read every word she’d published, that he followed her blogging—and wasn’t it lucky that she had found him instead?
However, as he drew closer, Justice’s smile dimmed, for he glanced at her, or more precisely, through her, then proceeded past her without a glimmer of recognition. Her mouth turned down in a full-fledged frown as the faint scent of the cologne she’d never forget wafted to her nostrils in his wake. Her bottom lip trembled as she watched him round a corner, out of sight.
Well, heavens to merga
troid! What had she expected? Justice scolded herself with a sternness she reserved only when she caught herself squeeing like a prepubescent girl over a boy band. He was a busy man, with lots of things on his mind. Justice would wait until the time was right and speak to him, give him the opportunity to take the first step toward a relationship.
“Miss McKinley?”
Justice’s gaze snapped up to her left to see a not-so-expensively dressed but very tall and handsome black man lean out of the threshold of the prosecutor’s office to call her name. She gulped, a pre-interview attack of the jitters assailing her. Standing, she smoothed her best business dress, a printed cotton chintz of cream and blue and green, and hoped that her tight French braid held her unruly hair in check.
Once she had her messenger bag over her shoulder, she took a deep breath and chucked her chin up a notch for the appearance of courage. The man’s smile of approval dazzled her and she took heart. “Okay,” she murmured.
“Come with me. Eric Cipriani is the one who’ll be talking to you today. By the way, my name’s Richard. Richard Connelly.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Same here. And don’t worry. You’ll do fine.”
“Thanks,” she said, the word released on a tremulous sigh.
Justice followed Mr. Connelly through a maze of desks in the open-area office, garnering barely a notice as men of every age and race imaginable, some dressed expensively and some not, buzzed this way and that, talking, shouting, cussing and discussing. Deputies, troopers, and KC cops roamed freely in and out.
Not a woman in sight. Not even an administrative assistant.
She lowered her eyes as she followed the man to a desk separated from the others by a rickety thigh-high railing that wouldn’t hold up under the weight of a small cat.
Richard Connelly pulled a chair out from under a man who was about to sit in it. He left the poor man cursing on the floor to seat Justice with a gallant flourish and told her he’d be right back with her interviewer.
“So,” said the man who had had the misfortune to try to sit in the wrong chair. He propped one hip on the absentee Mr. Cipriani’s desk. He was clad in a designer suit comparable to the one Mr. Hilliard wore, but he was not nearly so handsome, with his bald pate and mushy belly. He took her in from head to toe and back again. “You want to work in the Chouteau County prosecutor’s office?”
“Yes,” she said slowly, beginning to get the feeling that, her plan to give Knox Hilliard access and time to fall in love with her aside, this might not be the best idea she’d ever had.
“Okay,” he breathed and whirled away; Justice could hear the man’s eyeballs rolling in his head.
Justice stood as Mr. Connelly came back with yet another expensively-dressed man, as handsome as Mr. Hilliard, but much younger, taller, and darker. Carved, angular, and olive-toned features; black eyes, close-cropped black hair. He rolled the sleeves of his fine white shirt up to his elbows and his tie was a little too loose. He flapped the latter to straighten it as he sat without having either looked at Justice or acknowledged her outstretched hand.
She swallowed. Adjusted her bag awkwardly. Smoothed her dress under her as she re-seated herself.
“So. You’re Justice McKinley. Quite the rising star,” he said conversationally, a slight smile at the corner of his mouth, though he never looked up from her CV.
“Well, I don—”
He looked up at her then, and she abruptly quit speaking at his searing glance. “I do the talking, Miss McKinley. When I ask you a question, then you may speak.”
Justice gulped. Should she say yes, sir or not?
He went back to perusing her credentials. “Summa cum laude, very good. Two articles in the UMKC Law Review. Published many times over in the National Review and other conservative journals. You’re a regular contributor to several prestigious conservative blogs and you’re quoted all across talk radio. Your endorsement of Kevin Oakley was influential enough to put him ahead in the polls—and you only graduated from law school last week. I’m confused. Your emphasis is in litigation, but your field of interest is constitutional law and commentary. Why both?”
She cleared her throat. She had expected this question, practiced it in front of a mirror, but she couldn’t seem to quell her unease and hoped it wouldn’t come out in her voice.
“I would like to try cases, but I also enjoy studying and publishing on the Constitution; I guess you could say it’s a sideline.”
Mr. Cipriani pursed his lips and said, “Well, that seems reasonable.”
He sat back in his seat and clasped his hands behind his head. Stared at her. “Miss McKinley, I understand that you are eager to work here.”
She nodded.
“Why? I can’t imagine you haven’t had offers from every conservative think tank from here to DC. I’d be surprised if you haven’t been approached about your own talk show. You have a certain, ah, cachet in conservative circles.”
At the moment, Justice wished she’d given all those offers more than a cursory glance because she had no backup plan—and now she might need one.
“What I do is theoretical, academic,” she said without hesitation. She knew she’d be asked this question, but she couldn’t very well state the real reason. “I want to learn the practical side of things and I want to train with Knox Hilliard.”
“Do you know how many several dozens of other baby lawyers want to be trained by Knox Hilliard? What makes you any better than they are?”
“My CV makes me better than they are.”
Mr. Cipriani’s eyebrow rose. “That’s an arrogant thing to say.”
That confused her. “It’s not arrogant; it’s a fact.”
Clearly he wasn’t going to belabor the point. “Well, now that I know you want the same thing everybody else wants from this office, what can you do for us?”
“I can help you help people find justice.”
Mr. Cipriani gave a bark of amused, cynical laughter. “Your idealism is showing, Miss McKinley. We don’t help people here. We put them in jail. See that sign on the door?” He pointed to the glass door and Justice turned to look behind her.
PROSECUTOR’S
OFFICE
“That,” he said, and Justice turned back to see him in the same relaxed pose, “means that we’re the bad guys. We make sure that people who need to be put in jail are. You understand that?”
“Yes,” she said in a small voice.
“Okay,” he continued as he sat up and rifled through the papers on his desk. “I only have a few other questions for you, since your reputation precedes you and your background check came up—ah—excruciatingly clean.” He nearly sneered at her, and Justice decided she didn’t like him very much. He rested his elbows on his desk and leaned forward, his voice and expression hard. “Do you know how we work here in Chouteau County, Miss McKinley?”
Mr. Cipriani’s tone let her know that if she didn’t, she was the biggest idiot in the world—
There’re plenty of lawyers coming out of that office talking about the mysterious cash that gets passed around.
“Yes,” she murmured, her nerve endings tingling.
No women.
The tone surrounding her presence here.
It’s a racket. He’s a racket.
Lots of expensive suits.
Subtext galore.
“Would you be willing to work with us to ensure that the integrity of this particular office is upheld?”
“Um— Yes?”
“Up to and including the necessity for keeping complete and total confidentiality as to what goes on here?”
One big fucking conspiracy and all the rednecks up there love him for it.
“Ah—”
“Okay, Miss McKinley, let me be honest,” he began, and Justice breathed a sigh of relief. He glanced past Justice, then back at her. “I’m not going to offer you a posi—”
He broke off suddenly, his attention snapped back to that same point beyond Ju
stice. He bounded out of his chair, his hand behind his back as he bellowed, “KNOX!”
Justice, confused, swiveled in her chair to see what had happened, why utter silence suddenly cloaked the room—except for the ominous clacks of rounds being chambered in semi-automatic handguns. Her eyes widened at the scene unfolding before her. Through the circle of men all aiming guns at the same spot, she saw a man with his arm wrapped around the throat of the man who had rolled his eyes at her, a gun pressed against his temple.
“Put. It. Down.”
The dark voice of Knox Hilliard echoed off the walls. Justice looked over her shoulder to see him in the threshold of his private office, a gun in his outstretched left hand. He advanced on the thug and hostage like a lion stalking prey. “Put it down and let him go before I blow your head off.”
The only reason he keeps getting elected is because he killed that guy.
Justice couldn’t breathe and her heart raced in fear. She knew she should’ve left after she’d put together the expensive suits and no women, gone home to construct plan B.
“I’ll kill him, Hilliard, if you come any closer.”
“What do you want, Jones?”
“I’ve paid my payments to this office for years to keep a good track record and I haven’t won anything important since you forced Nocek out. What are you doing with my money and why aren’t you holding up the deal?”
“I never made that deal with you, Jones. Claude did. Take it up with him.”
“He’s dead!”
“And the world’s a better place. I don’t fix cases. Everybody else got the memo. How come you didn’t?”
“Then give me back my money.”
“Fuck no. If you were fucking stupid enough to hand it over, you’re too fucking stupid to know how to spend it if you get it back.”
Justice gasped as the man turned his gun on Knox Hilliard, but everything happened too fast. She jumped at the deafening boom. She wanted to close her eyes, but couldn’t. The man lay on the floor halfway out the threshold, his eyes open, the back half of his head missing where it had splattered on the wall.