Cry Wolf

by Tami Hoag

  “You told me not to trust you,” she said, trying to stiffen muscles that had begun to melt with the warmth of desire. “You said yourself, you're bad for me.”

  “Well, you can't listen to me, darlin',” he murmured, kissing his way back up her neck to her ear. He traced the tip of his tongue around the rim of the delicate shell, drew the lobe between his lips and sucked gently. “I'm a writer; I tell lies for a livin'.”

  “Then I should know better than to get within an arm's length of you.”

  “Why? We don't need to talk at all for making love. Bodies don't tell lies, sweetheart.” To prove his point he caught her hand and drew it to the front of his jeans, pressing her palm against his erection, holding her there while he feathered kisses along her jaw to the corner of her mouth and probed delicately with the tip of his tongue. “I want you, angel,” he whispered seductively. “That's no lie.”

  She snatched a breath and forced herself to stand instead of succumb. Her legs wobbled beneath her, and she was glad her flowing, gauzy skirt hid her quaking knees. She folded her arms across her middle, holding herself together, keeping her hands from reaching out to him.

  “I don't have casual sex with men who are admittedly liars and bastards,” she said, struggling for and not quite managing the calm, cutting voice that had won her more than one court case.

  Jack looked up at her from the bench, eyes wide with false innocence. He splayed his hands against his chest and rose with careless grace, stalking her across the narrow confines of the pontoon.

  “Did I say I was a liar?” he asked with disbelief. “Oh, no, chère,” he purred, backing her into the console. “I meant to say I was a lover. Come here and let me show you.”

  Laurel shook her head, sidestepping him as he reached for her, amazed at his ability to change personas—teasing, then sober, then seductive, then teasing again. It was almost more unnerving than his ability to make her want him. “Last night you warned me away from you. Today you act as if it never happened. Who are you this time, Jack?”

  His expression grew serious, intense, as he stared down at her, and a tremor went through her. This Jack looked like a dominant male, a predator, capable of anything. “I'm the man whose gonna make love to you until you forget every stupid thing I ever said,” he muttered.

  If he had tried to snatch her against him, she would have bolted. If he had stepped too close, she would have kneed him. If he had tried to force her, she would have done her best to get her hands on the gun in her purse and shoot him. But he did none of those things. Instead, he lifted his hand and cupped her cheek, the fire in his eyes softening to tenderness.

  “Let yourself live a little bit, angel,” he whispered. “Live. Not for work, not for somebody else's cause. For the moment. For yourself. Reach out and take something you want for once.”

  Then he lowered his head and kissed her, softly, gently, experimentally. His lips, firm and smooth and oh-so-clever, moved against hers, rubbed over hers, seduced hers into softening and responding. He inched a step closer, raising his other hand and sliding his fingers back into her silky hair.

  “Kiss me back, mon coeur,” he commanded on a phantom breath. “There's no reason you shouldn't.”

  Just that she didn't trust him or respect him or want the complication of an affair in her life, she thought dimly. But she gave voice to none of those reasons, thinking that they didn't really have much to do with the here and now. “Let yourself live a little bit, angel. . . .”

  She'd been so careful for so long, she couldn't believe she was being seduced by a rogue like Jack. But then that was his allure, wasn't it? He was bad for her. He was wicked. And she had always followed the rules, made the correct choices, done the right thing.

  “Reach out and take something you want for once.”

  Jack's mouth moved insistently over hers, coaxing, luring, tempting, offering pleasure, promising bliss, guaranteeing an hour or two of blessed oblivion of the problems in her life. And God knew she wanted him.

  Hesitantly, she obeyed his command, rising on tiptoe, relaxing her lips beneath his. Her fingers curled into fists, gathering the fabric of his shirt in bunches. Then he slid his arms around her, anchoring her against him, holding her safe and secure as she opened to him.

  Jack groaned at her surrender and deepened the kiss. With a slow, sensuous stroke, he eased his tongue into her mouth, probing deeply, suggestively. She answered him with a tentative foray of her own, her tongue tracing his lower lip, dipping inside his mouth.

  He wanted her, had wanted her from the first, this angel with her alluring combination of fire and fragility. He wanted her in a way he hadn't wanted a woman in a long time—possessively, obsessively. He wanted her to be his in a way she had never been any other man's. He would have seen it as dangerous thinking if he had been able to think at all.

  Without breaking the kiss, he took her glasses off and set them aside on the steering console, then guided her hands down to his waist and abandoned them there as he shrugged his shirt off and tossed it aside. He gasped a little at the feel of her hands, so cool and soft, gliding back up his chest.

  Laurel explored the smooth, hard planes and ridges of his body, marveling at the strength there, marveling at her own response to his fever-hot skin. She couldn't get enough of touching him, wanted to press into him and feel that strength and heat against the length of her and absorb it through her skin. When he lifted the hem of her top, the sound she made in her throat wasn't protest, but the eager anticipation of pleasure. Naked from the waist up, she moved into him, what was left of her breath vaporizing in her lungs as her breasts flattened against him.

  Jack growled low in his throat as he kissed her. Like a sculptor admiring a work of art, he traced his hands down her back, caressing, exploring, interpreting every graceful curve, every plane and hollow. Lifting her into him, he pressed her hips to his, pressed her into his arousal, letting her know how badly, how urgently, he wanted her. He felt her tongue dip into the hollow at the base of his throat, and the flames of desire licked at his sanity.

  Need making his fingers clumsy, he fumbled with the button and zipper at the back of her skirt and pushed the garment out of his way. At last she was naked in his arms. He stood back for a moment and drank in the sight of her with greedy eyes.

  She was slender and sleek, but there was no mistaking her feminine curves—or her uncertainty about showing them to him. A delicate blush rose up her neck into her cheeks as he studied her, as if she were afraid he would somehow find her lacking.

  “Viens ici, chérie,” he whispered, holding out his hand to her. “Come here before your beauty undoes me.”

  He pulled her tight against him, kissing her greedily, hungrily, letting her know his words were more than just the clever prattle of an experienced Lothario. They were truth.

  Slowly he lowered her to the red flowered cushions of the bench that was directly behind her, following her down, sprawling over her. She arched her back off the cushion as he found her breast with his mouth, capturing her nipple between his lips and sucking hard on the turgid tip, then sucking gently, massaging her with his tongue.

  Laurel tangled her hands in his dark hair and moved restlessly beneath him, soft, wild sounds of yearning keening in her throat. She wrapped her legs around him, lifting her hips against his belly, seeking contact, seeking to assuage the urgent ache that burned at the core of her desire.

  He stroked the swollen petals of her woman's flesh tenderly, seductively, opening her to his touch like a precious, fragile flower. She gasped with pleasure as he eased two fingers into the hot, tight silken pocket between her thighs. Then he found the sensitive bud of her desire with his thumb, tapping against it with the slightest of touches, then rubbing gently until she was breathless.

  “You like this, sugar?” he whispered, stroking deep, then easing slowly out of her, opening her, stretching her.

  “Yes—no—” she gasped, lifting her hips.

  “Enjoy it, da
rlin'. Let yourself go,” he coaxed. “Let me make you happy,” he murmured. He kissed her quivering stomach, mouth open, hot, wet, tongue dipping into her navel. “Are you ready for me, angel?”

  “Yes. Jack, please . . .”

  She gulped a breath and strained against the fist of desire that tightened and tightened within her. She'd never wanted like this. When Jack sat up, reaching for the button on his jeans, Laurel reached out to help him. Sitting up, she pressed fervent kisses to his chest as she closed her fingers around his thick, pulsing shaft.

  Jack's control broke at the feel of her small hand stroking him. He tumbled her back on the cushion, pushed her hand aside and guided himself, squeezing his eyes shut as he eased into her.

  “Mon Dieu, you're tight!”

  Laurel moaned. “I'm a little tense,” she said breathlessly. “It's been a long time for me.”

  Her admission caught Jack by the heart and squeezed. “No,” he said, bending down to kiss her. “It's the first time. Our first time. Just relax and enjoy, darlin'.”

  Laurel closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around him as he began to move against her and within her. He kissed her deeply, then playfully. He nipped the side of her neck, murmured hot, sexy words to her as they moved together. The pleasure built and intensified, swelling inside her until she could barely breathe for the pressure of it.

  Jack's kisses grew more urgent, more carnal, his thrusts deeper, driving, straining, filling her to bursting. The time for play faded, paled in the face of something hot and intense that enveloped them and threatened to consume them. Something like fear gripped Laurel by the throat, and she tightened her hold on him, not sure where this was taking her or what would happen after.

  “Don't fight it, sweetheart,” he whispered urgently. He rubbed his cheek against hers, swept her hair back from her face, kissed her temple. “Don't fight it. Let it happen. Take us to heaven, angel.”

  Not giving her a choice, he slipped a hand between them and touched the tender nerve center of her desire, taking her over the edge. Taking them both over the edge.

  “Mon Dieu, angel.”

  Even in the dim light of dusk he could see the color rise into her cheeks as she turned her face away from him. “Oh, no, sweetheart,” he said softly, skimming his fingertips along her jaw. “Don' be shy with me now. Don' be embarrassed. That was beautiful. That was perfect.”

  “I'm not very good at this,” she mumbled, still not looking at him, despite the gentle pressure he applied to her chin.

  “At what? Sex?”

  That, too, Laurel thought, chagrined. “Talking afterward.”

  “Your ex-husband, he was a mute, or what?”

  She laughed at that because she was still feeling embarrassed and because laughter was what Jack had been aiming for with his teasing. He tickled the side of her neck, and she cringed, turning toward him at last. “No. He just never had much to say afterward.”

  Jack looked down into her face, reading vulnerability there in her wide dark eyes, and it tugged at his heart. So fiery, so sure of herself in other ways, she was uncertain about this most natural and basic aspect of her femininity. How different she was from Savannah, whose expertise in the bedroom was the stuff of legends. He wanted to know what forces had shaped their lives to make them so different from one another, but this wasn't the time to ask. This was the time to reassure.

  “What was he—paralyzed from the neck down?” he queried dryly.

  No, Laurel thought, he was sweet and kind and honest, and he'd tried his best to make their marriage work, but she had failed him in so many ways. What she had felt with Wes was friendship and a sense of emotional security, not all-consuming passion. She had used him to anchor her life and had given him little in return, had in fact turned on him when The Case had been at its most stressful, all but pushing him out of her life.

  “Hey, sugar . . ,” Jack murmured. “Don' look sad, angel. I didn' mean to drag up bad memories.”

  If it weren't for bad memories, I'd have no memories at all. She looked away from him and tensed herself against the ridiculous urge to cry at his concern.

  “We've all of us got bad memories,” he said. “But they don' belong here, between us. We came out here to have fun, remember?” His fingers found another ticklish spot along her ribs and tortured a little smile out of her. “We were doin' pretty damn good there for a while, no?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, the corners of her mouth turning up in pleasure, in embarrassment.

  “That's it,” he praised her in a warm, seductive voice. Settling himself on top of her, he lowered his head until they were nose to nose, lips to lips. “Smile for me.” He smiled as she did. “Kiss me,” he whispered, groaning with pleasure as she complied.

  Her breath caught as he shifted his hips and eased into her again. Need took precedence over old memories. “Reach out and take something you want for once.” She wanted this. She wanted Jack—for now, for the pleasure he could give her and the bliss that transported her mind away from the problems that plagued her. Heaven, he called it. She arched her hips against his, closed her eyes, and held on to him for the return trip.

  Midnight was nearing when they finally dressed. The process was complicated with much touching and teasing and long pauses for kisses and hot, whispered words. Laurel felt like a teenager—not the quiet, serious teenager she had been, but an ordinary, hormone-crazed teenager out for a night of forbidden fooling around with the class bad boy. Jack played his role to the hilt, trying to take off every article of clothing she put on, trying to talk her into spending the night on the bayou with him.

  “Come on, sweetheart, stay with me,” he coaxed, murmuring the words against her throat as he dragged the hem of her blouse upward, stroking his fingers up her sides toward her breasts. “We're just gettin' started . . .”

  Laurel's sense of responsibility was too ingrained, and she wriggled out of his grasp and reached for her glasses on the steering console, settling them on her nose and settling the issue.

  “If I don't get back soon, Aunt Caroline and Mama Pearl will worry,” she said, brushing futilely at the wrinkles in her clothes. “You don't want them sending the sheriff out looking for us, do you?”

  Jack jammed his hands at his waist, the picture of a disgruntled male who was too sexy for his own good. He wore nothing but his jeans, and they weren't quite zipped. “Kenner couldn't find his own ass in the dark, let alone us.”

  “He could get lucky.”

  “But I'm not gonna,” he grumbled.

  “You already have.”

  Instantly he grinned his wicked grin and backed her against the console. “Mais yeah, angel.” He chuckled, dipping his head to nibble her neck again. “And I like my odds for another go.”

  Laurel ducked away before he could get his arms around her. “Go weigh anchor, sailor, before I pull my gun on you.”

  Purring low in his throat, he sprang toward her and stole a kiss, dancing deftly away when she would have slugged him. “I love it when you boss me around.”

  She snatched up a pillow from the bench and hurled it at his head. Jack darted outside and used the door for a shield, chuckling the whole time.

  Giving up on the idea of seducing her again, he went about the business of pulling up the anchor, cursing under his breath as it caught on something tangled in the reeds. He hauled back on the nylon rope, damning people who used the swamp for a garbage dump. The anchor finally pulled free, and he hauled it aboard. Minutes later the motor was puttering and the pontoon eased away from the bank and headed west . . .

  . . . and the body of a naked woman, brutally tortured, cruelly slain, buoyed by the dense growth beneath her, floated out of the reeds and bobbed in the wake of the boat, her sightless eyes staring after them, her arm outstretched toward them in a plea for help that was much too silent and far too late.

  Chapter

  Sixteen

  The sun shone, butter yellow, a soft, indistinct ball on the far side of the
morning haze. Laurel sat at the table on the gallery, staring out across the courtyard, through the back gate, and toward the bayou, where the mist hung in gauzy strips above the water and wound like ribbons of smoke through the trees. She stared toward the bayou . . . and L'Amour.

  The old brick house stood stately and alone, half hidden by trees and shrubbery that had been allowed to encroach during generations of neglect. From the branches of one gnarled live oak hung two dozen or more neckties, their tails fluttering in the slight breeze—a testimony to Jack's abdication from the world of corporate law, she supposed. She certainly couldn't imagine him putting on a tie, much less a suit, in his current phase—the rebel, the rogue. But she thought of him younger, intense, hungry to prove himself, and the image came quite easily. Jack, elegant in double-breasted gray silk. Handsome, yet rough around the edges. Educated, but with some aura of that boy who had grown up wild on the edge of the swamp. Like a panther that had been domesticated, always with a shadow of his former self nearby, the air of danger lingering around him.

  She wondered what had driven him from that world he had worked so hard to conquer. She wondered if it was wise to care.

  She shifted on her cushioned chair, curling her feet beneath her, and lifted her tea cup with both hands to take a sip of Earl Grey. The rest of the household would be stirring soon. Caroline would be subjecting her body to the contortions of her daily yoga regimen. Mama Pearl would be shuffling around her kitchen in a cotton shift and terrycloth slippers, starting the coffee, setting out a bowl of chilled fruit, grumbling to herself about the state of the world while the morning news came over the radio. But for now, the gallery and the morning belonged to Laurel, and she relished the peace. Unable to sleep past four o'clock, she had showered and dressed.

  She had expected to feel a certain amount of turmoil concerning her night of lovemaking with Jack. After all, she had never been one to indulge in reckless passion—had, in fact, disdained and avoided it. But sitting in the dewy-soft quiet of the courtyard, she could find no regrets, no recriminations. He had offered something she wanted, needed—not just sex, but a release from other tensions—and she had accepted. And it had been wonderful. . . .