Forbidden Dreams (16 page)

And Lilianne! Enough had been said to put him on the track, to suggest to a man with the kind of mind he must have that there was a secret to be dug out. Looking at him, at his complacent face, she knew that he had used her, had done what she’d accused him of doing his second night in her home—seduced her for his own purposes, none of which had to do with caring or wanting or even liking her. She’d been nothing more than a tool.

“Oh, God, Jase!” The words came out as a low, aching moan. “How could you do this to me?” She caught the back of the couch in her hands, her fingers biting into the rich leather.

He met her gaze, shrugged, and grinned—like a jackal. “Hell, Shirl. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

She stared at him in total disbelief.
A man’s gotta do what …

Her heart turned over with a terrible lurch as she remembered another time he had said that to her. She had laughingly called him a hero, and he had said she should see him in action when she was in peril. He had called her Pauline. And now, he had called her not Shell, as he always did, but Shirl, as her mother did.

She continued to stare at him, then took another enormous leap of faith, faith in her own instincts, faith in the man, faith in the future. To conceal it, she whirled away from him contemptuously.

“He hasn’t learned a damned thing here tonight, Daddy. I can promise you that. He’s been too busy trying to seduce me. I’m happy to report that he didn’t succeed in that, either. I suggest you call security and have him thrown out. Now, if you two gentlemen”—she deliberately refrained from looking at Jase and including him in the honorific—“will excuse me, I’m going to my room.”

Elwin gazed at her with sympathy. “Shell, honey, I—”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed her father’s cheek. “I’ll be all right, Dad. But I want to be alone for a while. Please make my excuses, and give Sondra my apologies. Just get rid of that—that scum for me.”

She wheeled and strode out, head held high.

An hour later Shell knocked at the door of Jase’s hotel room. He opened it, dragged her in, and slammed the door shut. Leaning against it, he held her tight and kissed her until she was limp and he was not.

“Really!” She arched away from him. “ ‘A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do’? Jase! What kind of real writer would use a phrase like that?”

“One who writes a column purely as a cover,” he said. “As a reason for being in the Los Angeles area and for visiting Palm Springs, where most of my ‘victims’ reside. I
have
to appear to be gainfully employed. Hell, since I took my leave of absence, I’ve had to be gainfully employed. My superiors may not have accepted my resignation, but they sure as hell refused to keep my bank account flush.”

He hugged her tightly again. “Thank you for being quick enough to pick up on my message.” He swallowed visibly. “And thank you for coming here.”

She placed her hands on his face and captured his gaze with her own. “I was invited, wasn’t I?” He drew in a deep breath. As he released it, it fanned across her cheek, lifting tiny tendrils of hair that had escaped her gold clip when she’d dragged a sweatshirt over her head. “Darling, you don’t need an invitation. Ever.”

She closed her eyes and smiled. He kissed her lids, her lips, her chin, then she turned her face away. He looked at her questioningly.

“I have to know,” she said. “Do you … do what he said, Jase?”

He undid the clip at the back of her head, slowly worked her hair loose, and spread it over her shoulders. “Find weak spots?”

She nodded.

“Yes,” he said, his tone hard, his eyes momentarily cold. “When someone needs to have his deeds exposed and I can get the goods on him, I do it. But create them where they don’t exist? No. I never have. I never will.”

She shrugged out of her jacket, letting it fall to the floor. “I’m sorry I had to ask.”

He stripped off her sweatshirt, then cupped her bare breasts, lifting them, kissing them. “I’d rather have you ask,” he said, his breath cool on her hot, wet skin, “than wonder and imagine the worst.” He sucked a nipple into his mouth.

“That’s one,” she breathed, clinging to his shoulders.

“One what?”

“Weak spot.”

“Mmm.” He tended to the needs of the other. “And is this … too?”

She arched into him. “Oh! Yes!”

“Shell?”

“Hmm?” She opened her eyes and realized she was lying on her back on an enormous bed and had no clear memory of having got there. Jase knelt over her, his hands on either side of her, his knees bracketing her hips.

His eyes were black with emotion. “I never meant to fall in love with you.”

Slowly, concentrating hard, she undid the black onyx studs on the front of his shirt. “Did you?” She parted the shirt and slid her hands over the thick, dark hair that curled over his chest. “Fall in love with me?”

He smiled and brushed the lightest of kisses over her lips. “Oh, yes. Very much so.” He flopped down to lie beside her, one arm over his eyes.

“After Sterling accused me and I admitted it, and you looked at me as if I were the lowest scum on earth, I wanted to sit down and bawl like a little kid, because you hated me. In that moment I knew I loved you. You don’t know how close I came to blowing my entire case before I even have one.”

She pulled his arm down and leaned over him, trailing one finger through the thick hair on his chest. She fiddled with a nipple and kissed it, then sat back to admire the result. The bruises that had been so livid only four days earlier were now pale yellow around the edges and several shades of hideous green in the center.

“Do you have a case?” she asked, and her voice wobbled.

Jase hurt for her. “The message read, ‘We have a match.’ I’ll be getting enlargements tomorrow.”

Her shoulders heaved once as she sat up and dropped her head to his chest. “Poor Grandma.” He enfolded her with love, rocked her with compassion and tenderness. “I know, my darling. I know how bad it makes you feel.”

She leaned back, her eyes glistening with unshed tears, and traced the shape of his lips with her finger. His grandmother hadn’t had a hero to prevent the villain from tying her to the railroad tracks. And Jase still suffered because of that. “Yes,” she said. “You do know, don’t you?”

He nodded. “That’s why I have to stop him.”

She swallowed. “Jase … make love with me. Please.”

“So you can forget?”

She smiled weakly. “No. Because I ache with wanting you, and I’m not sure how to get things going. None of what I’ve done so far seems to have worked.”

He laughed and shoved her hand down to the front of his trousers. “It’s worked, darlin’. Believe me, it’s worked. But I always seem to be rushing you. I didn’t want to scare you again.”

“I’m not scared. Or, if I am, it’s only because I’m not very experienced, and maybe I won’t … please you.”

A flare of alarm lit his eyes. “You’re not a virgin!”

“No. But …” —she smiled wryly—“not far from it. And you’ve explored … the world.” She wet her suddenly dry lips. “Sharba was somewhere in that world and you still dream about her.”

He shook his head slowly. “Sometimes I have nightmares. About Iraq. I was in an undercover military unit there, before I got out and joined the FBI. It was … compromised. So Sharba may figure in some of them. She … seduced me and then betrayed me. Only, instead of me getting killed, it was my buddy Carson who paid the price for my stupidity.”

She nodded. “Carson. Yes. You cried out his name, too, that first night. In my house.”

His warmth engulfed her as he held her close, and she nearly sobbed aloud at the incredible sensation of his bare skin against hers, his chest hair abrading her nipples, his heat invading her breasts. “Sharba was a long time ago,” he said. “I thought I loved her. Maybe I did. I promised to get her out of there, but she was a spy. I stopped loving her. Now, I love you.”

Shell lifted her head. “End of story?”

He smiled. “No. Beginning of story.” She kissed him until he groaned and pulled away. “May I make love to you now?”

“Haven’t you been?”

“Not the way I want to.” He sat up, tilted her back, and lifted her hips to pull her jeans and bikini panties off. His mouth followed the garments all the way to her feet, where he paused and kissed her toes before working his way back up. He kissed her breasts, molded them, took gentle and not-so-gentle bites of her neck, and wrapped his hand tenderly around her throat in that unique and madly arousing way he had while he took her mouth, making it his own territory to plunder as he chose.

Shell ached deep inside, filled with a terrible yearning. She shifted her legs against his, twisted them around his, then struggled to undo his pants and slide them off him. Rolling to a half sitting position, she forced his pants down over his knees and feet, then kissed her way back up, as he had done. She lingered at his injury on his thigh, where only a small bandage remained, then traced up the inside of his thigh to the edge of his bulging underwear. She laid her cheek on that and released a shuddering breath.

He caught her, pulling her high against his chest, then wrapped her tightly in his arms and legs and rolled her under him. He pinned her legs with his, and his breath rasped against her neck as he spread her hair out over the pillow. “Woman … you’re going to be deadly when you have what you think is enough experience.”

“I want to start getting it. Now, Jase! Now!” Her undulating hips seemed to urge him on, and she didn’t try to quell them. Her low moans broke like waves over her ears as she lost herself in the sensations his caresses created. She pleaded with him, raked his back with her nails, arched to his mouth and probing fingers. When she thought she could take no more, she took more, until he thrust back from her, readied himself, then knelt over her again, between her legs. He stroked her slick moistness with soft, delicate touches, watching her face as she stared at him.

“Jase … please,” she begged again, writhing beneath him. He gave in, sinking down over her, entering her with exquisite slowness at first. She surged up, though, and he drove hard, again and again, taking her completely, forcefully, and her world shattered around her.

“Sweetheart?” Long moments later he nuzzled her neck and shook his head, his hair tickling her chin.

“Hmm?”

“I’m sorry. I meant for that to be slow and sweet and to last forever. I rushed you again, didn’t I?”

She laughed softly as she played with his earlobe. “I didn’t mind. Maybe next time will be slow and sweet and will last forever.”

Next time? At her words Jase felt himself grow and harden inside her. It had been good enough for her that she was already anticipating a next time? He kissed her very, very quickly, restraining himself with all the strength he had left.

“It will be,” he said. “I promise you that, my love. But now I have to leave you for a minute.” She let her arms fall limply to the bed as he eased out of her carefully. “We don’t want any spills or other accidents,” he said, turning his back for a moment.

“I’d like to have your baby.” Her words surprised even her, and her eyes were wide as he stared at her over his shoulder. “I mean … well, sort of as a hypothetical exercise in … in … speculation. If I was ever going to have a baby, I wouldn’t mind if it was yours.”

He lay beside her again and drew her close, pulling the covers over them. “Honey, babies aren’t hypothetical. I’d never have one … on spec. I don’t suppose I’ll ever become a father. My life doesn’t lend itself to that kind of self-indulgence.”

She traced the line of one scar as it crossed his back from shoulder blade to armpit. “That’s right,” he said, as if she had asked. “I hate the idea of a widow and fatherless children weeping over my grave.”

There was nothing she could say. Nothing she could do. Except kiss him.

“Don’t I remember something about a promise?” she asked a few later as she listened to the heavy hammering of his heart, felt the hard, insistent prodding of his erection against her thigh. “Something about slow and sweet and lasting for … for a long time?”

Jase didn’t correct her memory of the word he’d so carelessly used. Nothing lasted forever.
Nothing
.

But this time their lovemaking lasted for a long, long time.

There was something deliciously decadent, Shell thought the next morning, about stepping into a hotel elevator with a man after a night of making love, and going downstairs for breakfast. It made her feel even more wantonly wicked than the room-service breakfast in bed he had suggested would have. Were people looking at them, she wondered, taking their linked hands as proof that they were lovers? She liked having the world see her as Jase’s lover.

And there was something decidedly embarrassing, she thought two hours later, about walking into her grandmother’s apartment with that same man; they were no longer hand in hand, but Shell suspected that her grandmother would know without being told that she and Jase were lovers. Would she approve?

Especially after she heard what Jase had to tell her.

Evelyn Landry, a small, aristocratic-looking woman whose smooth, soft skin and erect bearing belied her age, met them at the door.

“Good morning, dear,” she said after a moment of clear astonishment at seeing Jase with Shell. She kissed her granddaughter on the cheek, gave Jase a cool nod, then addressed Shell as if Jase did not exist.

“I thought you’d be alone,” she said, a faint admonition in her tone. “You asked me to be alone when you called this morning.”

Shell clenched her fists inside her jacket pockets. “Yes, Grandma. I know. But …” She slid an uneasy look at her companion. “Jase is the one who has something to tell you, something you must know.”

“Oh?” Evelyn smiled bleakly and flicked another dismissing glance at Jase. “And what might that be? Exactly how he intends to write about my son and attempt to destroy his career? Does he want to try to justify his deeds, or does he hope I’ll give him some dirt out of my son’s distant past?” She waved Shell to silence when she tried to answer what had been a purely rhetorical question.

“Sterling told me, you see,” Evelyn went on, “what happened last night in your father’s office. He is most disturbed at having been the one to hurt you by exposing this man for what he really is, but now that you know, I fail to understand why he is in your company. And in my home.”