Beth Kery Read online

  Later he wouldn’t be able to say at what point she stopped struggling, precisely when her tongue began to tangle with his, or when her hands rose to caress his neck and her fingers delved through his hair. She pressed against him almost frantically, the abrupt appearance of her need shocking him . . . and nearly blinding him with lust.

  The sensation of the hard centers of her breasts pressing against his chest, the feminine softness between her thighs rubbing subtly against his hard cock, the incredible silkiness of her skin, all combined to form a powerful ward against logic.

  Desire, distilled and potent, overcame Shane’s anger. His tongue was just as demanding in its actions, but as he plunged into her exquisite taste he also paused to linger on her full lips, using his teeth and tongue to mold and nip at them, before he plunged into her once again, drowning in her sweetness.

  When he felt her hands cup his ass and pull him even tighter against her body, he groaned and maneuvered her over to the couch, pushing her down. He tore roughly at the button fly of her jeans. She lifted her hips compliantly, all the while watching him with huge, desire-glazed eyes.

  He pulled off her socks, palming one of her heels in the process and stroking her. She moaned softly. He glanced up at the sound. Her white underwear created an erotic contrast to her smooth, honey-colored flesh.

  He slid his hands along her skin beneath the elastic band of her panties and lowered the tiny garment slowly, caressing the silky skin of her thighs as he did so.

  “I’ve never touched anyone with skin like yours. It’s like warm satin,” he muttered. His nostrils flared in feral lust at the sight of her long, shapely legs, naked hips, and the delicate pink folds of her labia peeking out through neatly trimmed dark brown pubic hair.

  He placed his hands between her thighs, spreading her farther, looking his fill at a sight that had been cruelly stolen from him. It was pitiful to think it, but Shane was still shell-shocked by that theft.

  Still stunned by Laura’s treachery.

  An ache of anticipation stabbed through his cock, the strength of his reaction like nothing he’d ever known. He yanked his gaze from her pussy and looked into her eyes. She stared up at him with an expression of wide-eyed, stunned arousal. He couldn’t resist the invitation of her parted lips. He leaned down and dipped his tongue into her mouth again and again.

  He saw nothing but a red haze of pure lust. A primitive mandate to mate hard, fast, and well overcame him. If he didn’t bury himself deep inside her within seconds he would lose it. Explode . . . implode, he couldn’t tell which. He no longer knew up from down, right from wrong. An unstoppable tsunami of desire rolled him along helplessly in its wake.

  “I’m sorry for rushing but I can’t wait . . .” he muttered apologetically as he raised himself off her and reached for the button on his jeans.

  “I don’t want to wait, either.”

  Her husky whisper made him even more frantic. He hastily extracted a condom from his wallet before he ripped at the fastenings of his own jeans, his breath sounding harsh and ragged in the otherwise still room. Within seconds he lay between her parted thighs, positioning himself.

  Mindlessly he nuzzled at her breasts through the soft sweater, inserting one thrusting, stiffened tip between his front teeth and biting lightly. She cried out in surprised pleasure, the sound deepening his already intense excitement. Her fingertips pressed to his scalp, urging him on.

  He shifted his hips, pressing the head of his cock against her pussy. He grimaced in frustration when he thrust and went nowhere. She was warm and deliciously slick but he wasn’t a small man and the couch was narrow . . .

  And so was she.

  “Put your leg on the back of the couch,” he said. He waited, a bead of sweat rolling down his abdomen as she complied. He sensed the slight give in her flesh. He flexed his hips and drove into her.

  She screamed. His own shout sounded guttural . . . triumphant.

  She moaned shakily as he began to fuck her. He watched her through narrowed eyelids as she stretched back her neck and raised her hips to meet his demanding thrusts. Her back arched off the couch. Her full breasts pressed tightly against the sweater, the promise of their softness taunting him.

  He growled and braced himself on one hand. With the other he shoved up her sweater to reveal the elegant lines of her stretched torso. His fingertips slid beneath the clinging satin of her bra, plumping the pale, firm flesh over the restraining fabric.

  It felt like more sharp, agonizing pleasure than he could bear to lean down and suckle the large pink nipple that he’d exposed while he plunged his cock into Laura again and again. Her nipple distended against his thrashing tongue. She whimpered in pleasure.

  Their mating became maddened, his thrusts hard and forceful, the tempo of their briskly slapping flesh increasing with each passing second. She met him stroke for stroke, her hips pistoning his cock into the wet, sleek tunnel of her pussy in a perfect, driving rhythm.

  Her catchy, anguished cries drove him wild. He hooked the leg that wasn’t on the back of the couch into the crook of his elbow and took her even deeper, as though he were desperate to find some answer at Laura’s farthest reaches. She grew taut beneath him. She clenched her eyes shut and ground her pelvis against him, trying to get friction on her clit.

  He reached between their bodies and separated the swollen folds of her labia. When she pressed back against him her exposed, erect clit rubbed directly against his skin. Her warm juices anointed him. She gyrated her hips, grinding against him in small circles. Her pussy squeezed tightly around him.

  His eyes crossed at the sensation.

  When he felt her break and shudder around him he gave up trying for even an ounce of restraint. He fucked her fast and furious while she shuddered beneath him and uneven cries erupted from her throat, her pussy pulling and convulsing around his stabbing cock.

  He slammed into her one last time and roared as he leapt into the inferno with her.

  A moment later he fell heavily on her, his breath falling in jagged pants along her neck.

  He didn’t want to move, wanted to stay in that mindless state of bliss with his sated cock buried inside Laura for an eternity. Her pussy tightened around him and he quickly changed his opinion.

  He’d be more than happy to hop straight from satiation to another bout of brain-frying lust. Just as long as he didn’t have to think . . .

  He nuzzled her neck languidly, pressing his lips to her leaping pulse. His eyes clenched tight when he felt her blood running wildly in her veins.

  No one tasted like Laura. No one smelled like her.

  The first time he’d kissed her she’d been twenty years old. Earlier that day she’d been suntanning out on the roof of Sunny Days, the West Side diner and cop bar that her uncle bought after he’d retired from the CPD. She’d worn a white sundress. Her sun-drenched, dark honey-colored skin had set off her exotically tilted green eyes to stunning effect.

  It had been the first time that he’d realized Laura Vasquez wasn’t just an extremely pretty girl, but a singularly beautiful woman. And when he’d tasted her lips and dipped his tongue into the sweetness that lay behind them, Shane’d been a goner.

  He leaned up and brushed kisses on her nose and cheek, eventually settling on her parted lips, all too eager to relive the sins and follies of the past. After a few moments of rubbing and nipping at the plump flesh of her lips he sank his tongue between them. He groaned and flexed his hips, stroking her warm, snug channel.

  Being surrounded in her taste made him burn all over again. Yes . . . if there was one thing that could make him forget, surely it was this.

  As their kiss grew wilder Laura made a sound in her throat of mixed desire and anguish, making him pause. He leaned up and studied her in the dim light. His cock lurched inside her clasping pussy at the vision before him. Her full lips looked red and swollen from his kisses, her eyes limpid.

  She looked anything but aloof at that moment. The realization struck li
ke a hammer to a gong, vibrating deep inside of him. She wasn’t as impervious to him as she pretended to be. Logic, threats, and fury bounced off Laura, but sexual desire pierced straight through her thick defensive armor.

  Was she like this with any man who dominated her and bent her to his will?

  Certainly that’s what Huey must have done to her years ago. Shane had been her lover . . . a besotted, devoted one. Huey had been ten years older than her when Laura married him, seemingly out of nowhere. She must have been fascinated by the handsome older man.

  Shane had only been twenty-four at the time of their all-too-brief love affair. In his opinion, Laura’s and his sex life had been phenomenal . . . electrifying, even. But it obviously had been lacking for Laura. He hadn’t tied her down, after all, or used sex toys on her.

  He’d already guessed Laura was a natural submissive, but they hadn’t gotten around to exploring those avenues when their relationship abruptly ended. She’d been so young, after all, and Shane himself hadn’t been much older. He would have loved to be the one to introduce her to the BDSM lifestyle, but it’d been Huey who had done it instead. Not that Shane’s domination of Laura would have been anything like Huey’s. The mere thought of sharing her with other men made Shane nauseous with rage.

  He’d suspected the nature of Huey and Laura’s relationship. Feared it even. And after hearing those tapes several weeks ago all of his suspicions had been confirmed. Even though he’d begun to think of Laura less and less frequently over the years, after hearing those tapes it’d all started again.

  The worrying. The needing. The anger at her treachery.

  “I’m not married yet,” he said, realizing that he had never corrected her earlier.

  “Yet?”

  “In two months.”

  She gave a tremulous smile and leaned up slightly from the couch, averting her gaze from him.

  “Please, Shane.”

  He cursed under his breath and moved. It just about killed him to withdraw from the one place where he knew for a fact that Laura wasn’t indifferent . . . from the place where she burned hot.

  As soon as he’d removed his weight she sat up and grabbed the afghan off the back of the couch, covering herself.

  He ground his back teeth together in frustration as he walked to the bathroom down the hall, disposing of the condom. “You’re not going to pretend that just didn’t happen,” he warned when he reentered the living room, buttoning his jeans.

  She looked up at him slowly, her lustrous dark hair falling away from her exquisitely chiseled jawbone. The evidence of her weariness made his follow-up comment freeze on his tongue. Her eyes were like mirrors reflecting the harsh reality of what he’d just done.

  She’d just discovered that the man she’d been married to for thirteen years, and who she apparently worshipped in some warped manner like a slave did its master, had shot himself in the head. And Shane’s reaction had been to shove her down on a couch and fuck her like there was no tomorrow.

  Regret lanced through him, sharp and burning.

  She glanced down, avoiding his gaze. “You need to go, Shane.”

  For a full ten seconds he stood paralyzed.

  Of course he should go. He not only had risked all the hard work that his agents on the Organized Crime Squad at the FBI had put into the CPD theft ring case by having sex with Laura, he’d just sounded the death knell on his relationship with Clarissa.

  But still he remained unmoving.

  “Joey?” he asked harshly.

  She jerked her head up.

  “Is that why you did it, Laura? Why you do it?”

  Her expression settled into a mask, but he didn’t miss the flash of panic in her green eyes.

  “Why don’t you trust me to help you? Goddamn it, tell me.” His whisper cut like a serrated knife through the weighty, poisonous silence.

  “Tell you what? That I regret it? That it was a mistake?” She drew the afghan tighter around her torso. “Do you expect me to reveal some detail to help your investigation just because of this?” She glanced down pointedly at the couch. Despite her disdainful expression he saw how she trembled.

  “You know damn well that’s not what I wanted you to tell me, Laura.”

  He felt her eyes on him as he walked out. But as usual, Laura remained mute.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Laurawaited, her posture rigid, until she heard the sound of Shane shutting the front door behind him with an angry click of finality. Her body sagged. An almost debilitating fatigue suffused her, weighting her limbs so greatly that for a moment she wondered if she would move again . . . ever.

  The explosive encounter with Shane had made her feel the heaviness of her choices a hundredfold.

  Her head fell back onto the couch. That’s right, Laura, suck him nice and deep like a good little wife. Show him how nice we treat our guests.

  It felt like pouring acid on a raw wound every time she replayed it in her mind.

  She clenched her eyelids shut, trying to rid herself of the image of Shane’s furious, disdainful expression as he’d looked down at her and said those ugly words. There’d been something else there on his face—something that cut even deeper than his contempt.

  Hurt. What he’d said pained him deeply.

  How could you do it? How could you let those assholes touch you? You’re mine.

  He still loved her. Shane—the object of her single-minded, worshipful devotion since she was a small girl of six—still cared for her. Despite everything.

  Her face collapsed. It was the sweetest knowledge. The bit terest.

  A sob tore at her throat. Her anguish was so great that her body must have instinctively tried to protect her from the unbearable weight of it combined with everything else the fateful night had brought her.

  The sound of her cell phone ringing insistently pierced her consciousness. She sat up wearily, confused. Her eyes widened in shock when they fell on the antique grandfather clock. She’d been sleeping for more than two hours.

  She paused when she saw that the number had been blocked on her caller ID. Her heartbeat quickened. It might be the anonymous caller—the one who had hinted he possessed some evidence that could help her. She pressed the receive button and put the phone to her ear without speaking.

  “My condolences, Laura,” Randall Moody said. She shut her eyes in disappointment. Not the anonymous caller who hinted at a means for freedom from the devil’s snare, then.

  It was the devil himself calling.

  “What do you want?”

  “Is it a crime to check in on the grieving widow?”

  That comment warranted icy silence, which is precisely what it received.

  “I know who was there earlier this evening.”

  “Does it surprise you? Huey was his trump card. He’s furious about Huey’s death,” she hissed, injecting as much cold disdain into her tone as she could muster. Of course Moody was having her watched. The devil didn’t miss much that went on in his domain.

  “Does he suspect anything?” he asked.

  Laura felt like all the blood in her head surged down to her feet in a dizzying rush. She reached out blindly, her hand finding the back of the couch, steadying her vertigo.

  “Are you asking if Shane Dominic suspects that Huey was murdered?”

  “That’s right.”

  “No. He believes it was a suicide.”

  “Are you sure he wasn’t after anything else, Laura? Not interested in rekindling the old flame?”

  “I could care less if he were. You know as well as I do the only thing Dominic wants is to find a way to nail Huey along with any other neck he can wrap his hands around. He was just here to badger me for details about the case.”

  Moody made a sound of disgust. “He must be pretty desperate, roughing up a woman who just discovered her husband killed himself.”

  “Did he kill himself?” Laura asked, hoping Moody didn’t hear the tremor in her voice. There was no love lost on her part whe
n it came to Huey. He’d lived by a code of violence. It didn’t surprise her that he’d died by one. But the thought of yet another murder to cover the tracks of these men’s crimes made her physically ill.

  A gravid pause ensued. When Moody resumed speaking, however, he sounded entirely calm.

  “That’s what it looks like. You and I both know Huey didn’t have what it takes to weather the difficult times. Weak. Huey couldn’t face the day unless he thought riches were going to fall into his lap simply because he blessed the rest of the world with his presence. And I’d be careful about voicing any doubts about Huey’s suicide, Laura. It just struck me that if an investigation were to be launched and certain unsavory details were revealed, you could be a prime suspect.”

  Laura glanced around her living room warily while he spoke. Shane had said that the basement had been bugged. Surely he wouldn’t have had sex with her on that couch if they were being listened to by members of his own staff. He might have been half-crazed with fury and lust, but Shane was also a vastly intelligent, methodical man—the consummate professional. He didn’t make stupid mistakes like that.

  But what if other ears were listening . . .

  “Huey’s death doesn’t change a thing in regard to you, Laura. I just wanted you to know that.”

  Laura found herself staring fixedly at the antique grandfather clock. It had been one of several pieces that she’d inherited from her uncle Derrick when he’d died in a car wreck thirteen years ago. Derrick hadn’t been the only tragedy of that accident. Laura’s younger brother, Peter, had died later in the hospital from injuries sustained during the crash.

  “I’m aware that nothing has changed,” she replied coldly.

  “Good, I’m glad to hear it. You know how fond I am of you, Laura. Huey was a top-notch soldier and you’ve always been a good wife to him . . . but there are others who could take his place.”

  “Not a chance,” Laura hissed before she could stop herself.

  “Your loyalty to Huey is touching, of course. I’ve got my eye on you, though, Laura. You won’t appreciate my methods if you should do anything rash,” he warned, all the while using that warm, grandfatherly tone that made her skin crawl. “These are difficult times for you—for all of us. Joey and his family will be there for you, of course. He’s always been a good brother to you, hasn’t he? Invaluable. That’s what family is at times like these. Wouldn’t you agree?”