of pleasure dancing beneath her skin, igniting a hot flame that seared her from the inside out. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew allowing them to continue was wrong, yet even the knowledge that she was charging down a forbidden path did nothing to stem the insistent need where she craved his touch the most. As much as her conscience screamed at her to push him away and put an end to this erotic nonsense, her heart yearned for the single moment in time where she could forget the past three years of loneliness, of longing for what could never be, of steeling herself against the hurt she’d seen in his eyes the night she’d betrayed him.
The kiss ended all too soon and he backed away from her. He shoved a hand through his hair and stared at her as if he’d never seen her before. Or maybe he was remembering another time, a time when they’d been in love.
Cool air brushed her skin, sending a chill down her spine. The desire to slip back into his arms, to feel the heat of his body pressing against hers, to reassure herself she wasn’t suffering from another dream where she’d wake up to nothing but darkness and a deep ache in her chest, stunned her. She didn’t know whether to weep with frustration or shout for joy that he was standing in front of her, holding her, kissing her, making her forget the horrendous pain after he’d run from the feds, leaving her behind to cope with the emotional and physical aftershocks from events that had spun out of control.
“That shouldn’t have happened,” he said, turning his back to her while he buttoned his shirt. “I apologize.”
She shouldn’t have let it happen, for a whole series of reasons, but she hadn’t let it stop her from enjoying every second she’d been in his arms. It was only the shock of seeing him again, of knowing he was alive. Yeah, that made sense. She’d plastered herself all over him and kissed him as if it was the most natural thing in the world, just to reassure herself he wasn’t a ghost of her imagination this time.
Now there was an argument she could never hope to sell to a jury.
“But it did happen,” she heard herself saying. “And dammit, Jared, it felt right.”
Was she insane?
Obviously.
He spun around to face her and stared in disbelief. “Right?” he said, after a half-dozen heartbeats of dead silence. He took a step toward her and snagged her left hand, lifting it until the engagement ring Leland had given her was between them. “Take a good look at that and then tell me again how right it felt.”
There wasn’t a single thing she could say in her defense, so she kept her mouth firmly shut. The absolute truth of it was she hadn’t given Leland a solitary thought when she’d been wrapped around Jared. Did that make her a bad person? Maybe. Probably. But would a jury convict her because she’d lost her head for a moment in the arms of the man who’d once touched her soul?
Without a doubt, she thought. She’d slipped. Made a mistake. Her emotions were running in high gear and she’d been momentarily rendered conscienceless. No matter how right her heart and body had felt being in Jared’s arms, she wouldn’t let something like that happen again.
She hoped.
He let go of her hand. “That’s what I thought,” he said, and moved away from her as if he couldn’t stand to be near her. He dropped into one of the vinyl chairs at the round table and leaned back, lacing his fingers together over his stomach. “So who is he?” he asked, his tone conversational, as if he was asking whether rain was expected in the forecast.
She bent to pick up the keys and set them on the nightstand before answering. “Leland Atwood.”
She returned to the table and sat across from Jared. To someone who didn’t know him as well as she did, his impassive expression just might have been believable, but there was a hardness in his eyes that belied the boredom he attempted.
“Atwood?” He laughed, but the sound held more bitterness than humor. “The pompous ass with the DOJ? He’s a good ten, twelve years older than you.”
She folded her arms over her chest and gave him a level stare. “Leland is not pompous, just conservative. He’s a federal court judge now, with the D.C. Circuit Court.”
“I don’t care if he replaced Scalia on the high court, he’s still not your type. What do you see in him?”
She really didn’t care much for Jared’s sarcasm, but considering their history, maybe it was to be expected. “He is too my type. Leland is kind, he works hard and he has a promising career ahead of him.”
“He’s a blowhard,” Jared said with a caustic laugh. “And so full of himself he can hardly fit through the door.”
“He is not.” So what if she sounded like a petulant child? This was her fiancé they were discussing, even if the entire conversation bordered on ludicrous.
A cocky grin canted his mouth. “You’ll get tired of him within a year.”
She didn’t appreciate his smirk in the least. “That just goes to show how little you know me.”
“Oh, I know you, sweetheart.” He leaned forward suddenly and reached across the space separating them to rest his hand on her knee. Her skin tingled.
“I know you like it on top,” he said in that low, husky voice normally reserved for late nights in front of the fireplace. “I know you like it hot and nasty.”
She shoved his hand away, not because she didn’t like him touching her, but she wasn’t exactly thrilled that her body responded to him when she was engaged to marry another man. “That was a long time ago. Besides, there’s more to a marriage than great sex.”
He rested his hands on his knees and gave her a smug, I-know-better look. “I’ll bet Atwood doesn’t make love to you like you need to be made love to, either. All you’ll get out of him will be a duty fuck because it’s the expected method of reproduction, not because it drives him crazy to see you go wild with desire. And not because he knows how to make you cry out with pleasure.”
She shot out of the chair and circled the bed. “You’re out of line, Jared. Way out of line. You don’t know me anymore.”
He was the second person in one day to make the same basic assessment of her fiancé. First her secretary and now Jared. Leland was a good man. He had staying power, and a strong sense of right and wrong. They didn’t come any straighter than Leland Atwood.
“Within a year he’ll have you knocked up and then you’ll be lucky to get laid until he’s deemed it’s time for the next kid. The picture of the perfect family to show off to the world while he waits for an appointment to the Supreme Court,” he continued. “And you’ll go along with it because of some misguided sense of what happiness is, but you know what? You’ll be dying inside. Little by little, the woman you were will disappear. Because Atwood, for all his drive to succeed, doesn’t know a thing about the woman you are, or have the first clue about what you need.”
She turned and looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Oh, and you do?”
That cocky grin was back for the sole purpose of setting her teeth on edge. “I never heard you complaining.”
“That’s because you were never around long enough,” she retorted.
His grin faded and she felt a small sense of satisfaction.
“What
