Wicked Lies

by Lora Leigh

  At first slow, exploring his lips with hers, tasting them with her inquisitive little tongue. Jazz remained at her mercy, never taking his eyes from her as his heart ached for her.

  * * *

  She was convinced she would be running soon.

  Like hell!

  Jazz was more than willing to be the recipient of the pleasure; he could be a bit selfish like that, he decided. But his would-be-runaway was done running. She just didn’t know it yet.

  Encouraging her hunger with each kiss, with each lick of her soft teasing tongue, he learned just how completely arousing a woman’s innocence could be.

  Or maybe it was just Kenni’s innocence that was so damned arousing.

  With each kiss, with each hungry stroke, the sensuality that was so much a part of her built until her own needs began consuming her.

  Hell yes.

  This was what he wanted.

  Her hungry lips and quick hot tongue taking what she wanted.

  A groan broke from his chest as heated kisses moved down the side of his neck. And damn, it felt good. Turning his head, he let her have her way.

  Let her play.

  Let her think he was actually going to let her run whenever she decided it was time to go.

  Hell, she’d be lucky if he let her out of his bed.

  Kittenish little nails pricked at his chest as she tested his muscles. She must have liked what she found in the feel of his flesh because she kneaded it again.

  “Damn, darlin’, how I love your kisses,” he groaned, his jaw tightening at the catch of her breath when he spoke.

  His Kenni liked hearing his pleasure.

  Her teeth raked at his collarbone, that rasp of sensual hunger causing his already engorged dick to swell further and his balls to clench with a surfeit of sensation.

  “Ah, baby, that hot little mouth will make me crazy.”

  She tightened against him, a little whimper vibrating over his flesh as her lips and sweet tongue moved lower.

  “Kenni, darlin’.” He stretched against the rasp of her nails running down his chest, nearly to his navel. So fucking close to the heavy weight of his cock as it lay against his lower stomach.

  Her kisses continued over his chest. The flick of her tongue over the hard disk of his nipple had his teeth clenching. When she delivered a lingering kiss to it he had to curl his fingers into the arms of the chair to keep from grabbing her and dragging her over his thighs where she could ride them both into exhaustion.

  “Kenni, you’re going to make me crazy,” he groaned. “That hot mouth of yours destroys me.”

  And she had no mercy.

  Lower she went until his fingers tangled in her hair, his muscles tightening to the breaking point.

  Sweet, hot kisses—the head of his cock pulsed, throbbing with the need for attention.

  “Come here, baby.” He watched her as he glimpsed the uncertainty that flashed across her face.

  And uncertainty was something she should never feel while in a bed with him.

  As he tightened his fingers in her hair to pull her up his body, the hot swipe of her tongue over the head of his cock had him stilling in shock and exquisite pleasure.

  “Kenni, you don’t have to … Sweet mercy…”

  Fuck!

  It was good.

  Her mouth encased the sensitive crest, damp heat milking it, pretty lips surrounding the thick flesh as she stared back at him in dazed fascination. And as she drew on the throbbing crest, that quicksilver tongue of hers tormented it.

  Damp heat flicked against the sensitive head, rubbed at it, tormenting flesh already so sensitive it was all he could do to hold back, to keep from filling her sweet mouth with his release.

  “Fuck, Kenni.” His fingers tightened in her hair. “Baby, it’s so good.” She drew back, her tongue still lashing at the eager flesh before sucking him in again.

  Slow, experimental. She was letting herself get used to the feel of his hard flesh as she demanded the intimacy with greedy licks and slow, suckling hunger.

  “Ah hell. Damn.” Weak with the surfeit of pleasure, Jazz let his head rest against the back of the chair, only barely aware of the fact that it was grinding into the cushion behind him.

  She took him deeper, filling her mouth and rubbing her tongue against the ultrasensitive spot beneath the throbbing head. Each rubbing stroke against the nerve-ridden area sent pulsing fingers of pure ecstasy to race over his cock and arrow-straight to his already tormented testicles. Each slow rippling caress had his balls tightening, clenching with the need to spill his release to her hungry mouth.

  “That’s it, baby,” he groaned. “Just like that. Sweet Kenni, your mouth is killing me.”

  Each suckling stroke of damp heat was pushing him past the point of no return.

  “That’s it, darling.” Breathing was almost impossible. “Ah hell. Yeah. Suck it harder, baby. That’s it.” Her mouth tightened, drawing him deeper. “How fucking good your mouth is,” he groaned. “So hot and sweet.”

  Holding the base of his eager flesh, she widened her eyes as he began moving. Drawing his hard flesh nearly free of her lips before pushing in again, slow and easy. He watched. Watched her take him. Watched her sweet lips stretch around the width of him as he felt her sucking him inside.

  “I’ve dreamed of fucking your mouth,” he bit out as his balls throbbed warningly. “Of sinking my cock past those pretty lips as you suck, hungry for the taste of me.”

  Moving his hands from her hair to the chair arms again, he clenched the material desperately. His muscles tightened, sweat breaking out on his skin as heat began to consume him.

  “Fuck, Kenni, I’m going to come. Baby, sweet Kenni.” He thrust inside her mouth again. Once. Twice.

  His fingers returned to her hair, clenched, held her still and felt her mouth tighten further on him. He thrust past her lips again. Once. Twice.

  God.

  Pulling from her was agony.

  Forcing his cock from the heat of her mouth, from her licking tongue nearly undid him.

  And his control was shot.

  “Ride me, Kenni.” Lifting her along his body, Jazz guided her leg over his hips as he held his cock ready to sink inside the sweet heat awaiting him. “Let me feel you take me, baby.”

  Teeth clenched, Jazz watched as the engorged head of his cock parted the smooth, silken folds of her pussy.

  Slick, wet heat began stretching around the engorged crest. Parting, taking him, her silken honey flowing around the penetration.

  “Kenni, that’s it, baby,” he rasped, both hands gripping her hips as he pushed deeper, harder inside her.

  Watching her face, his hands caressed from her hips to her swollen breasts. There he found the plump nipples atop her swollen mounds, ready for his fingers to rasp and excite.

  The silky heat of her pussy enveloped him, wrapped around flesh throbbing with the exquisite sensation.

  Ah fuck. It was so good his toes wanted to curl with the pleasure.

  “Fuck me, baby,” he groaned, his voice graveled as her sheath rippled around his cock, sucked at it.

  Hips bunching, straining, the need to push inside her, to stroke in to the hilt, was nearly overpowering.

  Kenni’s hands braced on his chest, her nails pricked the flesh, and her hips moved with increasing speed. Taking his cock deep with each downward thrust, her head fell back in pleasure, perspiration gleaming on her creamy flesh, giving it a satiny sheen.

  Soft, desperate mewls of pleasure slipped past her lips and just when Jazz was certain he couldn’t bear the pressure another second, complete, searing pleasure engulfed his cock.

  Tight. So fucking tight.

  Like a silken vise tightening and rippling around his erection, her internal muscles milked the entire length of his shaft.

  Jazz’s hands tightened on her hips, the fragile hold he had on his control completely disintegrating.

  “Jazz! Yes. Oh God, yes!”

  All sense of realit
y disappeared as he felt her unravel, the pulsing ripples of her inner flesh milking his cock until he exploded with complete rapture.

  Quick, heavy thrusts.

  Rapture tightened in his testicles, taut bands of pleasure so extreme Jazz knew that holding back his release wasn’t happening.

  He was dying.

  His cock was so engorged, pounding with a furious need to come, that perspiration poured from him with the battle to hold back.

  To feel her—

  Stroking inside her, thrusting hard, heavy—her pussy gripped, milked his shaft. Tightened further with each contraction of her orgasm.

  Tighter than ever—so fucking hot—

  His release took him by surprise.

  As her pussy rippled around him, gripping him like a vise, it was like a direct switch to his balls.

  The first hard pulse of release tore a shattered groan from his lips. Arching, pushing deeper inside her with each furious ejaculation spurred ecstatic waves of sensation to tear through him. In some distant part of his soul, Jazz knew his fate was sealed. This woman was his. And there was no debt too great if it meant ensuring her safety and their future together.

  CHAPTER 12

  What had she allowed to happen?

  How had she come to a place where the very thought of being without Jazz was almost more than she could bear?

  All because of some damned fluke that sent Cord checking to be certain of the background she was using. Since when did he begin running teachers’ backgrounds? Things like that he left to men like Slade and several others in the county with federal ties.

  Hell, how could she have stopped her brother from checking deeper into Annie Mayes’s background? She couldn’t have. No matter what she’d done or the contacts she might have formed, there was no stopping Cord’s instincts. They were phenomenal.

  And he was nosy.

  He just couldn’t keep his nose out of her business, could he? He’d always been such a damned busybody, making her crazy by snitching on her with Momma and Poppy when she least expected it. He’d even told Poppy how she was watching Jazz that summer, after telling her she had to stay away from him.

  Stay away from Jazz?

  The very thought had been inconceivable. It was all she could do not to beg Jazz to kiss her, to show her why she was so mesmerized by him. But she hadn’t told Cord that. She’d known better, because he would have immediately had Momma and Poppy send her to a convent or something.

  Momma wouldn’t have allowed it, though. Her mother would have been concerned, perhaps, but she would have also been terribly amused by her sons. Their protectiveness was something she’d warned Kenni she may as well get used to, because they would always feel it was their privilege to watch after her.

  But they hadn’t watched after her.

  That summer was the first in years that her brothers didn’t accompany her and her mother to New York. There had been some job they’d had to complete. One that couldn’t wait for any reason as far as Poppy had been concerned.

  She pushed the memories back. She didn’t want to remember the flames and the blood.

  Leaning against the open balcony door the next morning as a cool breeze whispered past her, she remembered telling her mother how she felt about Jazz on the drive to New York that summer.

  That was part of the shopping tradition. Every summer they went to New York for three or four days. On the drive there her mother would always ask her about whatever boys she was interested in. That summer, though, Kenni hadn’t dated; nor had she spent much time on the phone with any of the young men who called her. For that reason her mother had asked her who’d managed to steal her heart.

  Once a year, Kenni could tell her mother anything. The rule was, what happened in New York, what was said in New York, stayed in New York. Momma never told Poppy her secrets, and her brothers never learned of them. What Kenni confided stayed just between her and her mother.

  God, she missed her momma.

  Kenni had never had to worry about her place in her mother’s life; she had known Sierra Maddox loved nothing in the world as much as she loved her husband and children. But her relationship with her daughter had been special. They were girls together. They shopped and laughed and Kenni knew she could tell her anything.

  She’d had no one to talk to since her mother’s death. There had been no one to dry her tears when she’d cried, no one to soothe her when the pain of being hunted had torn her soul to pieces.

  Gunny had kept her alive, though a few times it had been close.

  He hadn’t been good with tears. If he saw even a hint of them he’d disappear until the danger of them was gone. He could handle her silence, he could handle her staring off into space, steeped in her agony, as long as she didn’t cry.

  So she’d learned not to cry. Having him disappear for hours on end had terrified her. She’d always been scared he wouldn’t come back for her.

  Then he hadn’t come back for her.

  She hadn’t even cried then, she thought, frowning absently as she rubbed at the chill racing over her arms. He was supposed to be meeting with someone who had information on the Kin. No big deal. He’d sent her to pick up the car he’d arranged to buy from some dirty, shifty-eyed old guy on a back street.

  When he hadn’t arrived at their prearranged meeting place, she’d gone looking for him.

  Swallowing tightly she pushed the memory of what she’d found away. She couldn’t deal with it right now, either. Right now she had to gather her courage and her strength to slip away from Jazz.

  She had no car, no decent shoes, and getting away from him was going to be next to impossible, but she had to go. She had to get out of Loudoun, preferably alive, and figure out what she was going to do.

  And where she was going to hide.

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t think of anyplace else to hide. Without her contacts hiding would be much harder as well. She’d taken them out as Jazz had asked, then they had completely disappeared from the bedside table where she’d put the small case.

  The rest of her contacts were at the rental house, hidden with her laptop. Contacts, alternative ID, and a little cash. She might need them. If Jazz caught her running they wouldn’t do her a damned bit of good, though.

  Drawing in a deep breath, she left the comforting silence of the bedroom and headed downstairs to the kitchen instead. Entering the brightly lit room, she wished she’d stayed in the bedroom.

  Stepping past the doorway she was suddenly pinned by half a dozen gazes, and all staring at her eyes.

  Kate and Lara, along with Jessie, Slade, Zack, and Jazz, watched her from where they sat around the large kitchen table. Steaming cups of coffee sat in front of them, plates of doughnuts and croissants beside their coffee cups, as tension thickened in the room.

  “Geez, and I thought Jazz’s eyes were bright,” Lara muttered. “You’re right, Jessie, there’s no mistaking who she is.”

  Just fucking great.

  Slicing Jazz a condemning look, she wondered if he even had the good grace to realize the risk he was making her take.

  “Coffee?” Jazz asked, his expression completely innocent, as though he hadn’t forced her to remove the color-dimming contacts. Rising from his chair he moved to the coffeepot, grabbed a cup from beside it, and filled it quickly.

  That didn’t keep the others from staring at her.

  “Morning, Jessie, Slade, Zack,” she greeted, ignoring the comment on her eyes. “Slade, I thought you were keeping Jessie away for a while?”

  It would have been best if he’d done just that.

  “Oh yeah, like I was going to miss this,” Jessie snorted. “Finding out my best friend is none other than the missing Maddox Princess was more than I could pass up. Come on, Your Highness,” she teased then, her brown eyes sparking with laughter. “You know me better than that.”

  Kenni almost grinned. Jessie could do that, take something that should piss Kenni right off and make her laugh instead.

&n
bsp; Rather than giving in to that urge, she turned to Jazz as he moved to her with a cup of coffee.

  “Snitch,” she accused derisively. “Really, Jazz? You couldn’t even hold out and let them see me first? They may not have even guessed.”

  The look of disgust didn’t even faze him. He just winked, those wicked blue eyes laughing at her.

  “Sweetheart, trust me, they would have guessed. Besides, you were sleeping and wouldn’t talk to me,” he pointed out. “I had to tell someone and Kate and Lara were tired of talking about you.”

  She slid a look to the other two women. They really weren’t pulling off the whole innocent-expression thing. Then she turned to Slade.

  “I need to leave,” she told Slade, the only person she believed would have Jazz’s safety uppermost in mind. “Would you please take me back to the house?”

  Slade just watched her for a long silent moment before his gaze turned to Jazz. A second later his lips quirked in amusement.

  “I would, Kenni, but he’d kill me before I got you out of the house. I’d hate to make my children an orphan today.”

  “Versus tomorrow, or the day after that?” she asked him, amazed that she sounded so calm, so cool. “Really, Slade, I’m sure you’ve seen the report these two busybodies dug up.” She flicked her fingers toward Kate and Lara. “No one survives attempting to help me. Is that what you want for Jazz? For yourself?”

  Kate and Lara glanced at each other in mocking surprise.

  “Busybodies?” Kate murmured to her sister. “That’s one of the nicest insults we’ve ever received.”

  Kenni had hoped the two women weren’t as insane as the rest of the group seemed to be. She’d hoped in vain.

  “She’s just as overdramatic now as she was as a teenager,” Zack observed as he sat back in his chair and lifted his cup for a sip of the steaming liquid. “Hell, Kenni, you should know better than that. Whoever’s betraying your father can’t possibly pull together enough Kin to come against us. Why do you think your father and Cord do little things like come to one of us when someone we know has come to their notice? We could divide the Kin if we wanted to, and they know it.”

  Arrogance.

  Every damned one of them was so arrogant and self-assured it was sickening.