Make Me Melt (15 page)

Marisola’s feet slipped on the wet surface of the floor, and her face registered her surprise as she lost her balance. Her arms pinwheeled as she sought to regain her footing. Caroline spun away as Marisola tried to aim the gun at her.

Then the door of the bathroom exploded inward, and Jason was there, his own weapon drawn, followed hard by Colton and the FBI agents. In an instant, Caroline was in his arms, and the three other men restrained the woman, knocking the gun from her hand as they bore her down to the floor and wrenched her arms behind her back.

Marisola was sobbing and screaming at the same time, deep, anguished sobs that were full of grief and fury. “My daughter is dead, and he didn’t care,” she cried. “It’s only right that he lose his daughter, that he knows how it feels!”

The two FBI agents hauled the struggling woman to her feet and dragged her, still screaming, out of the bathroom. Caroline clung to Jason, unwilling to let him go.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, setting her away from him and sweeping her body with one all-encompassing look. “Did she hurt you?”

“No, I’m okay.”

“Christ,” he muttered. “Thank God.”

He hauled her back into his arms, and she could feel the deep thump of his heart beneath her ear. His breathing was a little uneven, and when he finally pulled back to tip her face up, she realized his hand was trembling.

“I’m okay,” she repeated, humbled and chastened by his obvious fear for her safety.

His eyes blazed down at her, and now that she was safe, she saw the anger that had crept in. His fingers tightened around her upper arms where he held her.

“I want to throttle you, Caroline Banks. What in hell were you thinking? You know better than to go anywhere alone. We’ve been through this over and over. Jesus!”

He released her to jerk away, raking a hand over his hair. When he turned back around, he was clearly still furious but had managed to regain some control over his temper. He held his arm out to her. “C’mon, let’s go.”

She moved toward him, and he held her snugly against his side as he led her out of the bathroom. In the corridor, a crowd had gathered, drawn by the gunshot and Marisola’s impassioned screams. Caroline could see her being led away by two police officers. Next to the ice machine, the man with the flowers stood with his back pressed against the wall, his eyes wide with shock as he watched the scene. Jason led her away, walking with her until they reached a quiet spot with nobody else in sight. Only then did he push her up against the wall, pinning her there with the hard weight of his body. He bracketed her face in his hands, searching her eyes.

“I don’t ever want to go through something like that again,” he muttered. “When I think how close I came to losing you—”

“No,” Caroline said, covering his hands with her own. “You didn’t. I’m fine. She wouldn’t have hurt me. I’m strong, and I would have stopped her.”

He gave a huff of disbelieving laughter. “Caroline, she had a gun. She would have killed you.”

“But she didn’t.”

“And she won’t get another chance,” Jason vowed. “Officers are on their way to her residence right now to gather information. You’re not leaving my sight until we figure out if she acted alone, or if she had an accomplice.”

“My guess is that she acted alone,” Caroline said. “She was a grief-stricken mother who had lost her daughter through a fluke of nature. She had to blame someone, so she fixed her rage on my father. And when she failed to kill him, she refocused her anger on me.”

Jason bent his head to hers, his thumbs stroking her jaw, his fingers warm on her neck. “I never want to go through anything like that again,” he murmured. “When I think what might have happened— I love you, Caroline. I think I fell in love with you that night when you were sixteen.”

And then there was no more opportunity to talk as his mouth came down over hers in a kiss so sweet and so perfect that Caroline felt it all the way to her toes. Uncaring of the medical personnel who walked past, and of Deputy Black, who rounded the corner and then hastily retreated, Caroline kissed him back with all the love she had in her heart—all the love she’d been holding for him since that long-ago summer night.

15

C
AROLINE
LAY
IN
bed at the beach house in Santa Cruz, and listened to the distant crash of the waves against the shore. A week had passed since Marisola Perez had tried to kill her, and she still had a difficult time believing that the nightmare was finally over.

Her father was safe.

She was safe.

Jason had spent most of that day at the courthouse in San Francisco, where her father normally presided, as a different judge listened to preliminary findings on the case. Marisola had spent several days in a psychiatric unit, while doctors determined if she was well enough to stand trial. She’d made her first court appearance that day, and Caroline was grateful that she didn’t have to appear. She would, eventually, but not today.

Rolling to her side, she picked up the bedside clock. It was still early, barely nine o’clock, and she knew that Jason was on his way from San Francisco to join her for the weekend.

Now she heard his footsteps on the staircase, and she waited, breathless, as he made his way down the hallway. When he finally pushed the bedroom door open, she sat up.

“Hey,” he said, silhouetted against the light in the hallway. “Are you okay?”

“Absolutely okay,” she assured him. “Just waiting for you.”

She knew he could see her clearly. She wore pale blue baby-doll pajamas with satin straps. The top plunged low in the front and left little to the imagination. Leaving the door ajar, he walked over to the bed, and it wasn’t until he stood directly by her side that she could see the smolder in his eyes.

Without taking his eyes from her, he dragged his shirttail out of his waistband and slowly began unfastening the buttons. Peeling the shirt from his body, he fisted his hand in the material of his undershirt and dragged it over his head in one fluid movement.

Caroline’s heart lodged in her throat. Shirtless, Jason Cooper was the embodiment of every fantasy she’d ever had. She made no move to touch him when his hands fell to his belt, and he deftly unbuckled it before opening the clasp of his jeans. Slowly, as if he enjoyed tormenting her, he drew his zipper down and then pushed his jeans down the length of his body, toeing his shoes off at the same time, until he stood before her wearing nothing more than his boxer briefs.

“Come here,” Caroline whispered and hooked one finger into the waistband of his shorts. She drew him onto the bed, feeling the hot jut of his arousal against the back of her fingers.

He eased himself down on the bed beside her, propping his head on one hand. Reaching out with his free hand, he traced a single finger down her cleavage.

“How was your day?” he asked.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you over at the courthouse and wondering how it was going. What happened?”

“I think Ms. Perez understands just how wrong her actions were,” he said quietly. “She’s very remorseful.”

“Poor woman.”

“Don’t you feel sorry for her,” Jason commanded. “She made her own choices, and she has nobody to blame but herself. Other people have lost children without resorting to attempted murder as a coping mechanism.”

“So it’s pretty clear that she acted alone?” Caroline asked.

“She enlisted the help of her brother for the break-in here,” he said. “It was her brother who disabled the electrical and actually broke in. But she was here, too. For what it’s worth, I think her brother was an unwilling accomplice, and I don’t think he had any idea of just how far his sister was willing to go to settle the score.”

“Wow,” Caroline breathed, hardly able to comprehend it all. “So her daughter gets admitted for a routine appendectomy, but nobody knows she has an underlying heart condition. She has a bad reaction to the anesthesia, and dies on the table. They resuscitate her, but she’s brain-dead, and after a few days, Marisola has to make the decision to remove her daughter from life support. Worse, when she files a medical malpractice case, the judge finds on behalf of the hospital.”

“Yes.”

“So Marisola needs closure. She wants revenge on the person she feels is responsible, and she focuses on my father.”

“That’s right,” Jason said, dipping his head to kiss the soft swell of her breast above the pale blue fabric of her negligee. “But because the judge keeps such late hours, and is hardly ever home, she can’t establish a schedule of his activities. She knows if she just sits outside in her car and watches him that people will notice. Like Steven Anderson did that night. But then it seems luck is finally on her side.”

As his lips brushed over her sensitive skin, Caroline’s fingers curled into the blankets, and she had to struggle to keep her thoughts straight. “My father’s neighbor puts out an ad for a housekeeper, and Marisola applies. Now she can watch my father’s house. She knows when he’s home, and when he’s not. Even better, nobody questions her presence in the neighborhood.”

“You got it,” Jason purred and tugged the fabric down, until her breast sprang free. He devoured her with his eyes. “She blended in. She and her brother did the same thing when they came here. She dressed as a housekeeper, and her brother dressed as the gardener. Nobody thought twice about it or even noticed them.”

“Hiding in plain sight,” Caroline gasped as Jason dipped his head and drew her dusky nipple into his mouth.

He skated his mouth along the side of her neck and gently bit her earlobe before soothing the area with his tongue. “She waited for him, hiding in the shrubbery until he came home, and then she simply walked up to his front door and rang the bell.”

“He probably didn’t even recognize her,” Caroline said. “He simply saw a woman in a housekeeping dress, and probably thought she needed help. He was always helping people.”

Jason raised his head and looked down at her, his eyes filled with empathy. “Yes. But your father is going to make a full recovery, and Ms. Perez is going to get the help that she needs.”

“What a tragedy,” Caroline murmured. “I remember reading the case file and thinking that it didn’t seem fair for the hospital to get off scot-free. Why did my father rule in their favor?”

Jason made a sympathetic sound. “Without knowing her medical history, there was no way they could have predicted what would happen on the operating table.”

Caroline shook her head. “I’m glad she’s been caught, but I can’t help feeling sorry for her. She lost her daughter.”

“And I almost lost you,” Jason growled. “Don’t feel too sorry for her.”

“All this time, we thought it was Eddie Green or Sanchez. But it was a grieving mother.”

“You did try to tell me that our most likely bet in finding the shooter was to examine the malpractice cases.” He kissed her chin. “Sure you want to become a child welfare advocate? You’d make a great private investigator.”

“Hmm.” Caroline pretended to consider, winding her arms around his neck. “My powers of deduction
are
exceptional. Like right now, I know how much you want me.”

* * *

H
E
DID
WANT
HER
.
He’d spent most of the day thinking about how very differently this whole thing could’ve gone down, and how close he’d come to losing her. Even before Marisola Perez had attacked Caroline, Jason had decided there was no way in hell he was letting her go. He’d done that once. He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. He’d spent the entire day in court, listening to the preliminary testimony so that the judge could make a ruling on whether or not there would be a trial. When all the facts had been presented, he’d been a little horrified at how close he’d come to losing the two people he cared most about in the whole world.

As he’d driven back to the beach house, knowing that the judge would recover and that Caroline was waiting for him, he’d felt like the luckiest son of a bitch on the face of the planet. He didn’t deserve to have so much happiness. He didn’t deserve to have his life turn out so freaking good, but he was long past the point where he would question his own good fortune. He’d grab on to it with both hands and be eternally grateful for it.

Now Jason brushed his mouth over Caroline’s, their breath mingling as he drew his free hand slowly over her body. “What would cause you to believe that I want you?”

“This,” she replied and reached down to cover him with her hand. He was already hard. “And this...”

Leaning into him, she pressed her lips against his in a kiss that made his toes curl. He’d been aroused since he’d opened the bedroom door and spotted her in the bed, looking like a sugary confection in her little blue nightie. He wanted to lick her everywhere.

“God,” he muttered against her mouth, “you drive me crazy.”

He felt her smile, and he took the opportunity to deepen the kiss and explore the damp silk of her mouth with his tongue. He captured her moan, fusing their lips together as she held his head in her hands.

With supreme effort, he tore his mouth from hers and bit a tender path along her jaw to where her heart pulsed erratically against the base of her throat. She gasped and arched upward, then slid one hand to the small of his back to urge him closer. Bracing his weight on one forearm, he lifted himself away from her enough to grasp the hem of her short nightgown and drag it upward. She helped him, pulling it over her head and tossing it aside until she was gloriously bare beneath him.

“Jesus,” he muttered, cupping his hand around one breast. “You’re the prettiest thing I’ve seen all day.”

He bent his head and flicked the dusky nipple with his tongue. Her breathing hitched and her hips shifted restlessly beneath him. He stroked the curve of her hip until he encountered the waistband of her silk panties and put his fingers beneath the fabric.

“Take these off,” he demanded.

“Yes,” she murmured and lifted her hips to help him as he pushed the material down and then she kicked them free.

Jason sucked in his breath at the sight of her pale skin and the shadow of curls at the juncture of her thighs. Her breasts rose and fell rapidly, and when he stroked the back of his knuckles across her stomach, her muscles contracted.

“I’ve thought about this all day,” he growled.

Two weeks ago, he’d have been scared to death at the intensity of his feelings. Until Caroline had come back into his life, he didn’t believe in meaningful relationships. He was committed to his job, and that was it. He’d have run in the opposite direction if any woman had suggested he commit himself to her. But with Caroline, that was all he seemed to want to do. He wanted to commit himself to her—mind, body and soul. He wanted to imprint himself on her so that she would have no doubts that she belonged to him, and that he loved her with every breath he took.

He knew they had some logistical issues to work out, but as far as he was concerned, he’d already won the battle—she wasn’t returning to Virginia. Even if she decided to remain in San Francisco, they could make it work. He’d been making the trip from San Diego about every month in order to see her father. He figured he could do it every weekend, if he needed to. Or he could fly her down to stay with him.

Right now, with her sprawled beneath him, his own arousal was such that he pushed his own misgivings about their future aside. He wanted her.

Badly.

She still cupped him through his briefs, and the sensation of her hand on his rigid cock caused him to groan. He bent his head once more and caught her mouth with his own. She responded by arching against him and sliding her lips against his so that pleasure lashed through him. She stroked him through the fabric of his boxers, before easing her hand beneath the waistband to grasp him in her fingers. Her touch was like an electric shock, and he quivered reflexively in her hand.

“You’re so hard,” she murmured against his mouth, stroking one finger across the head of his erection, “and hot.”

Oh, yeah.

He eased himself to his side to give her better access to his body, holding her in the curve of his arm as he used his free hand to explore her more fully. She turned into him, and he ran his hand along the curve of her waist and over her hip before cupping her buttock, enjoying the satiny softness of her skin. But when he dipped his fingers between her cheeks and stroked her intimately from behind, she gave a cry of surprise and jerked against him.

“Shh,” he soothed, stroking her. “Let me.”

She made an incoherent sound and pressed damp kisses against his throat, even as her hand continued to explore him. He was stiff and aching and wanted nothing more than to turn her onto her back, spread her thighs and thrust himself into her, but he forced himself to slow down. He separated her feminine folds with his fingers.

“Ah, sweetheart,” he said. “You’re already wet.” Slowly, he eased one finger into her, feeling her inner muscles contract around him even as she closed her hand around his cock. She was incredibly tight, and his balls ached with the need for release.

She withdrew her hand from his body and wordlessly pushed his boxers down until he could shimmy them free. Then there was nothing between them.

Jason hooked a hand behind her knee and drew her leg across his hip, opening her for him as he resumed stroking her and swirling moisture over the small rise of flesh until she made an inarticulate sound of pleasure and shivered in his arms.

“Good?” he murmured against her ear before tracing the delicate lobe with his tongue.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “So good.”

Easing two fingers into her, he thrust them slowly in and out, and then caught her mouth with his own, using his tongue to imitate the movement of his hand. She moaned deeply.

Pushing her onto her back, Jason came over her and began working his way down the length of her body with his mouth while continuing to torment her with his fingers. She watched him through hazy eyes, her lower lip caught between her teeth. He licked her breasts, suckling first one nipple and then the other before moving lower, skating his tongue along her smooth stomach while his fingers worked strongly inside her. Her hips lifted into his hand, and when he reached her navel, he dipped his tongue inside before trailing his lips lower, to kiss the inside of one thigh. Then, as he continued to stroke her, he bent his head and touched his tongue to her clitoris. She gave a strangled cry and her hips bucked, but Jason had no mercy. He continued to lave her with gentle laps, while his fingers caressed her until she cried out and her whole body convulsed. He felt her muscles contracting around his fingers, but he didn’t stop until he’d wrung every last shiver from her and she collapsed weakly against the pillow.