by Jillian Neal
She barely recognized this version of herself, and yet she walked on. Jack halted abruptly. “Do you want me to carry you?”
“What?” Of all the things she expected him to say, that was not one of them.
“We’re only halfway there, and you’re in heels.”
“Is it grass for the rest of the way?”
Jack nodded, and Meridian promptly kicked off her heels, gathered them in her hands, and forced a slight grin. “I’ll be fine.”
“I won’t let them hurt you,” spilled from his lips in a fervent vow.
“I’m not scared of them.” As far as she was able to discern her own thoughts, that was true.
“You should be.” They walked on another few paces. “Brent was right.”
Now they were getting somewhere. “About which part?”
Jack’s jaw flexed visibly. For the first time in her life, Meridian waited patiently for an answer. Finally, he stared directly at the ground and informed the grass that, “I’m putting you at risk having you here.”
Meridian reached and grasped his chin. She lifted his gaze back to hers. “Don’t lie to me.”
“That’s rich,” he countered.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Why did you draw up a continuance on the Marsden case? What are hiding from me? What’s going on with the mustangs that has you making—pardon me for saying this—incredibly stupid decisions that could impact your entire family’s way of life? Why did you insist on coming here with me?”
Fury ricocheted through Meridian’s mind. Dammit. “How dare you?” She tried to sound threatening, but he’d hit much too close to her worst nightmares.
“Spare me the courtroom diva routine. You want me to tell you the truth, fine, but I’d appreciate the same from you. Every single thing Brent said is true. There, I said it. I’ve never cared about anyone the way I care about you. And…that scares me.”
Shock staggered through Meridian, making her physically sway. Words spilled thoughtlessly from her mouth. She had no option to halt their progress. “Four of the mustangs are pregnant and that wasn’t on the record sent to us when they arrived from the state.” She gnawed the inside of her mouth for a split second but that did nothing to stop the confessions. “Best-case scenario for my family is that they weren’t registered as being pregnant, that someone in the state made a mistake, but that’s the worst case for the horses because when that happens the state might take the foals before they’re really ready. The state legislature wants to end the mustang program and kill the horses because of the cost. Worst case for us, one of our studs got into their pasture, and then we’re really, really screwed because that is never supposed to happen. We could lose a tremendous amount in fines. We could lose the horses altogether. I need to keep the inspectors off of the ranch until the babies are born and we figure out what happened. That’s why I filed the continuance.”
Jack reached for her hand again, but she pulled away.
“I’m not finished. I told myself I wanted to come with you so that I wouldn’t feel badly when I took the case from you. I told myself that this made everything fair, but I was lying.”
Jack gave her a solemn nod. “Then why did you really want to come here with me?”
Momentarily certain she was having an out-of-body experience, she went on with the final truth. “I wanted to spend the week with you.” Her eyes squeezed shut as if she couldn’t be in the physical presence of her own vulnerability. “I wanted to know why you make me question every single thing I’ve ever believed, everything I’ve worked so hard for…everything I’ve ever wanted.”
She was so dedicated to the act of keeping her eyes shut that Jack was able to sweep her off of her feet and into his arms. Her eyes sprung open. “What are you doing?”
“Carrying you.”
“Put me down!”
“No.”
“Jack. What the hell?”
“Every question you just asked I also have. Let’s go figure out the answers together. Then we’ll figure out what to do about the horses. I will not let your family lose anything at all. I will never let anything or anyone hurt you.”
“I don’t need your…” he cut the word help from her lips with his own. The kiss was the perfect combination of demanding authority and soft bourbon-warmed lips moving in time with hers. She opened her mouth readily, allowing him in. Her skin pulsed and her pussy begged for the strokes of his tongue against her. Her nipples gave throbbing demands for his attention. His low groan vibrated her soul. She wanted to feel every one of those sounds he made.
Drugged from his all-consuming kiss and the feeling that she was being whisked away from every problem they were leaving in their wake, Meridian let herself enjoy this. She tucked her head against his chest. Maybe having someone to rely on outside of her family wouldn’t be so terrible, but he wasn’t the only one that was scared of what they were doing.
Caught up in this world that was all Jack, where he stood between her and every other thing, she wasn’t certain what was happening until he stood her on the grass before a stone front porch of a small cottage. She pulled her heels back on and looked around. They’d traveled so far on Denton property that she could no longer see either the immaculate gardens or the estate house.
“Where are we?” She spun on the porch trying to get her bearings.
With the same assuredness that Meridian was growing addicted to, Jack turned the doorknob. “This is one of the guesthouses. The stables are over there. I was going to take you to see the horses, but I’m just not that patient.”
Her heart jolted and then broke out in wild applause at all of the delicious things that could be accomplished in an empty guesthouse. Jack turned the knob slightly to the right, pressed down with his full weight, then jerked it back left. Much to Meridian’s relief, it sprang open.
He gave her one of those incredibly cocky smirks and gestured inside. “Shall we?”
Matching his smirk with one of her own, she took his hand and feigned confusion. “Shall we what?” She raced inside the home.
Jack kicked the door shut, pulled her back to him, and spun to pin her between the door and his body. “As it turns out, I didn’t get to finish my dessert.”
“Poor baby,” she teased.
“I’ll be fine,” he assured her. “I’m about to make a feast out of you.”
“That a promise?”
“I’m going to have to fill that smart mouth with my cock and see if I can’t get you to hush long enough to hear me out.”
A low grunt met her hungry whimper as he filled her mouth with his tongue and his bourbon-laced heat. She’d never wanted to get drunk on anything so much in her entire life. She pulled his tongue fully into her mouth and gave gentle sucks.
When he finally allowed her breath, she cooed, “I assure you if I was giving you a blow job, you sure as hell wouldn’t be doing anything but begging me for more.”
“That a promise?” His capable hands worked the silk of the dress up her legs. He bunched it in his fists just above the mound of her pussy. A desperate shudder worked through him, drawing another moan from her. “So fucking beautiful. My god,” he growled.
His palm skimmed over the swollen, tender skin, making her quake. His fingertips continued to trail up her tightly clenched stomach, teasing her with the silk as he worked, making her feel like she was a gift he was slowly revealing, savoring, reveling in. A priceless piece of art behind a velvet curtain. Slowly, his hands climbed to her breasts until he lowered the zipper just enough to lift the dress over her head and toss it on the floor. She was the reward of a magician’s final, stunning act, left in nothing but her strappy black heels.
Uninhibited carnality ignited in his eyes. “Let’s see you make good on that promise, cowgirl.” He had his belt undone and the slide on his slacks open in record time. “You’re going to have to take me deep, honey, and suck nice and hard to scramble my mind enough that I can’t talk law.”
Distantly aware that he’d just tapped into her inherent competitive nature to get himself a blow job, Meridian should’ve called him on it, and yet once again she just didn’t care. She wanted his length in her mouth, wanted to make him melt under the persuasion of her tongue. And if she searched in that distant, recessed space of her mind, she knew she’d find that what she wanted was to give him this.
With quick, adept fingers, she worked through the buttons on his shirt, parting it over the chiseled planes of his chest. Desperate to feel the hot burn of his skin against her palms, she let herself explore. His eyes closed and his mouth clenched tight.
“You’re not the only one with office fantasies, you know?” The words lit from her lips in a breathy mewl that spoke of her desperate need far more than the words themselves had allowed.
“Show me, honey. Show me what you’d do if I had you on your knees at my desk. Put your hands on me. I promise I’ll reward you. I’ll fuck you so hard you won’t ride a horse for a week.”
A harsh gasp wrenched from Meridian’s lungs as the world around them continued to spin. Nothing was familiar here. She was standing in the entryway of a home she’d never been in and hadn’t even seen the rest of.
When you stand in an unknown landscape, a foreigner in a foreign land, the only knowns are the truths you carried with you. The truth was she’d wanted Jack Denton since she’d first met him, and she just wasn’t strong enough to deny him anything at all.
Teasing her thumb back and forth along the silk band of his boxers, she stared him down and licked her lips. His fists clenched on either side of her head. “We’re calling Mitch and having the continuance withdrawn,” ground from his mouth in raw challenge.
“No, we’re not.” She dipped her fingers beneath the elastic and circled his head, drawing a strangled curse from him. Now they were getting somewhere. His erection was every bit as long and thick as it had felt grinding against her, and yet it was somehow twice as hard as she’d imagined.
Another round of need pooled between her legs. She had no idea how long she’d be able to go before she did beg him to fill her so full nothing else mattered.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jack’s thighs tensed as he arched up with a groan, forcing more of his cock into her hands. He was so fucking gratified to finally have her touching him he swore he almost would’ve settled for a hand job just to be with her like this.
But he was incapable of not feeling the selfish desperation he always felt around her. Still, he had to keep it together long enough to get her to listen. Her refusal to admit that she might need to look at things from another perspective had her making grave mistakes. He wouldn’t let that happen ever again.
Forcing more words from his already addled mind, he used the breath trapped in his lungs to elaborate. “The inspectors need to come now, and you need to tell them that you received four unregistered pregnant mares.”
She tightened her hand around him and gave him a gentle tug. A frantic shudder shot through him as a tidal wave of hot cum sought her touch. She spun her tongue against his collar bone before she rasped, “And what happens if the foals look like one of our studs? They’ll notice that next year when they come to inspect.”
Jack had engaged in this bet knowing he would lose happily. He just hadn’t quite guessed how quickly his loss would come or how fucking much it would feel like a win. She kissed her way down his midsection as she sank slowly to her knees. He ground his teeth and forced out one more point before he gave himself over to the persuasion of her lush mouth. “When they’re born, issue an apology to the state and immediately return the money for the foals.”
Staring up at him through her dark eyelashes, she slowly spun her tongue around his head and then she sat back, leaving a cool breath over the wet lash. “This is why whiskey barons should never be cattle ranchers,” she informed him. Before he could even contemplate a response, she was cleaning the pearlescent drop of precum from him and he was thrusting at her lips, shamefully desperate for more of her mouth.
Keeping himself upright with one hand against the door, he laced the other in her hair. Taking control with her was yet another gamble, but this one he was certain he would win. As he cinched his fist tighter, her moans spoke volumes. “That’s it, honey. Let me hear you. How else will I know for certain that what you want is for me to take control? Now, suck me.”
Her hands slid up to the waistband of his trousers and boxers. She yanked them lower. His cock swelled to the point of abject pain. She dug her nails into his ass and finally, mercifully let her tongue dance up and down the thick bulging veins begging for her mouth.
“Suck,” hissed from him as he gave up focusing on anything but how good she looked naked on her knees and how intoxicating the velvet heat of her mouth was going to be.
She complied now, giving up any pretense of not liking to be told what to do. She slowly let him breach her lips as she began to bathe and suck in rhythm. Her right hand fastened to his base and moved in accordance with her pulling mouth. And Jack was done for.
All hopes of the point he’d needed to make were gone. She was too good, too skilled, that mouth far too lethal for him to have a shred of hope. He just didn’t care anymore.
Without giving himself explicit permission, his hips made a hesitant thrust, and she swallowed around him like a pro. The pressure built with every expert pull of her mouth and her hand until his head fell back in ecstasy.
But in that moment, as he took his eyes off of her, a thousand uncomfortable realizations hit him all at once. How many times had this happened to him on his family’s land? How many women had he touched here, not like an exploration but like a transaction? And dammit, how many times had he sworn to himself that he would never be that man again?
He took a step back and gently released her hair. Confusion fought for outrage in her eyes.
“It can’t be like this,” he whispered as he leaned low and lifted her off of the ground again. “Not like this,” he reiterated, more for himself than her.
“What are you talking about?”
“I need you to hear me out, and then I need to take care of you, not the other way around.” Frustration overtook the other emotions evident on her features. “Don’t worry, baby. I still know exactly what you want, what you like, and how hard you need to be fucked. I’m just not going to come down your throat before I’ve filled your pussy full of me. I need to see you come undone for me before I allow myself that pleasure. That’s all I’m negotiating for here.”
When her rushed breaths eased a moment later, she rolled her eyes and grinned. “I guess Miss Scarlet should get to come first.” Always a step quicker than him, it took Jack a split second to recall their conversation before dinner about Clue.
“Precisely. But I don’t want to be Colonel Mustard. It’s easily the most useless of condiments.”
“You get to be Mr. Boddy,” she informed him with another quick kiss on his neck as he whisked them back to the master bedroom.
“Because you like my body or because you’re going to do me in? I’m fine with either answer, honestly.”
A delighted laugh spilled from her. “Guess you’ll have to wait and see.”
Using his shoulder to hit the light in the master bedroom, far more quaint and simple than anything in the estate house, he managed her with one arm and threw back the down cover before he laid her out on the pure white sheets.
His patience was immediately rewarded by the stunning visual display of sensual helplessness, of her needy and wet, staring back at him as he stood over her.
His mouth went dry, and his palms itched to touch her again, to satisfy the longing in her eyes and the hollow ache he knew she felt between her legs. With a sensuous smirk, she sat back up. “As long as we’re negotiating could we do the ‘me hearing you out’ part later?”
He cradled her face in his hands, unable to keep from touching her flushed skin. “Like I could ever really tell you no.”
Sh
e liked that; he could tell. “Good. I hate being told no.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
“Take your clothes off, Mr. Boddy.”
“Anything you want, Miss Scarlet.”
Thankful for the early morning hours he normally spent jogging around the Holder County square—once a man runs it’s difficult to determine when it’s safe to stop—he stepped out of his brown leather derbies, a relic from his former life. He made quick work of tossing his shirt and slacks to the floor. But he paused before climbing over her, giving his ego a second or maybe three to appreciate the whiskey fire ignited in her eyes as it licked at his skin.
Before he could tease her about her obvious approval, her hand snaked up his chest and then teased back down to his cock. His eyes closed as her fingers explored.
“I want to hear more about your inappropriate workplace fantasies, District Attorney,” she cooed.
Unable to keep the truth from her, his soul as naked as his body, he grunted. “That leather skirt you wear all the time…” A moan choked back the next words. She backed off with her hand. To prevent that trick from happening again, he wrapped his fist around hers. “I shove it up over your fucking gorgeous ass, lean you over my desk, and fuck you until you’re too weak to stand. Too weak to do anything but let me hold you until you’re begging me to do it again. Every single person who comes in that courthouse can hear what I’m doing to you. They know who you belong to, know who you beg for.”
A breathy moan preceded her wiggling in the bed, trying to create her own friction, trying to do his job for him, to rob him of the pleasure. He refused to allow that. “Does that make you wetter, baby? Make you ache?” He tipped her chin up until she had nowhere to look but deep into his eyes. “I’m a selfish lover. I need you to understand that. I tried to tell you. I try to fight it, but it’s in me. It’s who I am. I want it all. Every time you’re wet and needy, you come to me. I make it better. Me and only me.”