Dangerous Secrets (19 page)

Julie moaned and held onto his head, rolling her shoulders forward in pleasure before pushing him back from her. “Stop,” she ordered, her blue eyes finding his. The connection was jarring in its intensity, the emotion between them far deeper than the erotic play of this game.
 

For an instant, he saw that vulnerable side of her flash in her eyes before the sexy, sinful, confident woman claimed his mouth in a sizzling kiss, and then drug her lips down his neck. She kissed her way downward and the snap of his pants, the slide of his zipper, seemed to magnify and echo through the room.
 

The instant her hand was inside his pants, adrenaline sent a rush to his head. Her fingers stroked the soft skin of his shaft, and then pulled the hard length of him free. She leaned and licked the pooled liquid at the tip and then suckled just the head of him into her mouth before tugging at his waistband.
 

 
“You can keep the socks, but nothing else.”

Damn, how he wanted to rip his hands free, and he could, but the desire to enjoy the woman in control gave him his own control, his own will to resist. By the time they’d worked together to free him of his clothes, he was thick and pulsing and all but going insane with the need for release.
 

She bent over, sticking that gorgeous ass of hers in the air, wrapping her hand around the base of his cock. She looked at him, scraping her teeth over her lip.

“Now what should I do?”

“Witch.”

“Tell me. Your wish is my command.”

“Alright then,” he said. “Suck me.”

She smiled. “Alright then, I will.” She bent down and cut him a taunting look. ”After I lick you.” She rolled her tongue around him and Luke moaned. She licked him up and down, and watching her was almost as good as what she was doing to him. She was driving him crazy.
 

“Suck me,” he groaned. “You–” She took him into her mouth. Oh and how she took him. The woman knew how to please him, and she’d practiced plenty during that summer month they’d spent together. She sucked, and pumped, and used her hand, her lips, her tongue, until he couldn’t even hold his eyes open, the pleasure was so intense. He leaned back, his head on the cushion, and when he would have said ‘harder’ and ‘faster’ she was already there, and so was he. Release came over him, intense and ripping through him with biting, painfully good pleasure. Slowly, he relaxed, the tension in his muscles easing. Julie climbed on top of him and he tore his hands free, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her.

“You know you drive me wild,” he said, “but not because of this. Because of you and us, and-”

She pressed her lips to his, silencing his words, and he was certain it was because she didn’t want his confession, because he’d let her slip back into the sex goddess routine too quickly. But then she surprised him, and murmured, “I know.”

He pulled back, forced her to look at him. “You know what?”

Her lashes lowered, then lifted. “That it’s more than…me driving you wild or you driving me wild. I know.”

They stared at each for several intense seconds before they were kissing again, wild and hot, a craving that had to be fulfilled. And when it shouldn’t have been possible, he was hard again, thick with need.
 

“Let’s go to the bedroom,” he said, before he forgot that they needed a condom.

She reached behind her, stroking his shaft. “I like it right here.” She started to lift herself and he stopped her.
 

“Condom.”

“I’m on the pill.”

He went still at that, at the idea that she hadn’t been before but she was now, at the implications there had been someone else in her life.
 

Her fingers curled at his cheek. “I’ve always been,” she said. “I’ve just never told anyone…until now.”
 

What he’d thought was a sign that he meant nothing to her only moments before, now seemed like a gift. “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to be inside you as much as I do right now.” He kissed her, and wrapped his arm around her, lifting her. She pressed him to the slickness of her core, before slowly inching her way down. When finally she settled fully on top of him, him buried inside her, they lingered, their mouths a breath apart, the energy in the room crackling with electricity and tension.
 

He pressed her down, thrusting into her, and a slow, sensual dance began. It built into something fierce, something that made them one, neither of them in control. Passion built until they were frantically touching, kissing, moving, and when they reached the edge of pleasure, she went first, and he followed.
 

They collapsed into each other, and clung together. No words were necessary.
 

***

A long time later, Luke lay with Julie on their backs in front of the fire, pressed together.
 

“You said you were on the pill as an extra precaution,” he said, the subject weighing on his mind. For the first time in his life, he was thinking of what settling down, what a wife and kids might be like.

“Yes,” she said after a long pause.
 

“Because you don’t want kids?”

“I…no.” She rolled to her side, away from him to face the fire. “I don’t.”

He turned to her, hugging her. “Because you had a bad childhood.” It was the only thing that made sense. She volunteered for children’s events, she worried about the children of divorces.
 

“Too often parents let their kids down.”

“You aren’t your mother.”

“No,” she said. “But there are plenty of kids I can help who have parents like mine, or kids like the ones tomorrow night is about, who need me and people like me.”

Damn. Tomorrow night. This was not the best time to talk about this, but he wasn’t sure there was a better one either. “Let’s talk about tomorrow,” he said, sitting up and pulling her up with him.
 

“What about tomorrow?”

His gaze slid over her breasts and he felt the stir of his body. Luke grabbed the shirt she’d tossed aside. “I can’t complete many coherent sentences when you’re this naked and this gorgeous.”

 
She didn’t respond and he could see the concern in her face. She tugged the shirt over her head before repeating, “What about tomorrow?”

Luke grabbed his pants, bypassing the boxers he couldn’t locate to pull them on before he sat down on the couch. “We have to assume that tonight was a hit on one or both of us, and that they will come for us again.”

“So you want me to do what? Go into hiding?”

“Yes,” he said, in no uncertain terms. “I want to keep you here or take you underground somewhere.”

“You need me to get to Judge Moore and the cartel. And I need my job.”

“Surely, you have enough success to be allowed to work off-site for a while.”

“I could and I’m willing to do that as long as I have a means to an end. I’m not foolish enough not to see the danger I’m in. But I can’t do it indefinitely, Luke. When I say I need a real means to an end, I mean it. I have only me to count on.”
 

That punched him in the gut and then right in the heart. “You have me and I thought we just moved somewhere towards you knowing that.”

“I…We did. We did. But Luke, I have bills to think about.”

“I’ll help you if I need to.”

“No. I’m not taking your money. To get to that point would mean the career I have worked night and day was lost. If you think that’s where I’m letting this go, I’m not. I can’t. And the children’s charity is counting on me. I’ll lay low. I’ll skip work, but I won’t skip that.”

“Julie–”

“This is bigger than me or you,” she said, going to her knees. “Stop playing my protector and think about this rationally. I’m scared. I’m scared to death, but people, children, are dying from tainted drugs this bastard is selling them.”

“I’ll find another way to stop him.”

“We both know that the task force you talked about would have found a way in if they could. I can get you inside the operation, or I hope you’re right and I can.”

“No,” he said, pushing to his feet.
 

“No?” she demanded.
 

“That’s right. No.”

She stood up. “I’m going to get dressed and leave.”

He shot to his feet. “So now you’re going to be irrational and go home and get killed?”

“No,” she said. “I’m going to go to Royce and Lauren’s apartment where I’ll be safe and you can think.”

“I don’t need to think.”

“Yes,” she insisted, “you do. You need to think about waking up and reading about another dead child and knowing you could have saved that child’s life by taking down this cartel.” She stormed off and Luke stood there, tension curled in stomach, prickling every nerve ending he owned.
 

Damn it, he loved Julie. He loved her in this moment more than he’d ever loved her. She was gorgeous, and sexy, and successful because she was smart and she worked hard. But even more than that, she was scared and yet she was still brave, still willing to sacrifice for others.
 

He ran a hand over his face and tracked after her to the bedroom, where he found her setting her bag on the bed, to begin packing. “You aren’t going to back off of this, are you?” he asked, leaning on the door frame.

She abandoned the bag again and turned to him. “I can’t abandon this.”

“Then you do exactly what I say, how I say it, and when I say it.”
 

She walked to him and wrapped her arms around him, tilting her chin up to look at him. “I have no problem with that. Like I said, I’m not foolish, or without fear. A whole lot of fear actually.”

“If you don’t, I swear I will kidnap you and hold you hostage somewhere until I know you’re safe.”

Her expression softened. “I don’t want to lose you either.”

It was the closest thing to really admitting her feelings to him that she’d come, and he slid his hand behind her neck and pulled her mouth to his. “I’m not going to lose you.”

“Good,” she whispered before he kissed her and took her to bed, where he was going to do his best to convince her to stay until after Tuesday night, and the charity event with Judge Moore, was over.
 

***

At exactly noon on Tuesday, Gina walked into the lobby – if you could call it that – of the dingy El Toronto Hotel, unable to suppress the apprehension in her stomach. A long lunch spent reliving the past wasn’t appealing. Not that she was ashamed of being a sexual person, but doing it for pleasure, and doing it with a bunch of disgusting men to pay her bills was a totally different picture. She’d been good at it too. She knew just how to make those bastards come back for more, even when part of her prayed they wouldn’t.
 

Glancing around her surroundings she felt the sickening feeling of deja vu. One thing about New York, it did extreme well. The high end was glitzy, the low end absolute scum city. This was about as low as you could get.

Dingy brown walls, scraped up and scuffed floors, with two cheap, torn chairs as the only furnishings. She could smell the musty scent of sex, drugs, and filth as if it were a part of the very lining of the walls. Clearly, the judge was trying to make a point, to tell her just how low he believed she was, and how low those in the firm she now worked would as well.
 

She’d worked hard to get her life back on track and he wasn’t taking that from her. Gina headed down a hallway, and up the stairs. As she reached the third floor, she flipped the record button on her cell phone, making sure every bit of this encounter was recorded. She fully intended to turn the power upside down.
 

She found the room she needed and knocked, no hesitation, no reason to wait. The door flew open and Judge Moore waved her in, still fully dressed in a dress shirt, tie and slacks, but the sly smile on his face told her he didn’t intend to stay that way.
 

The door slammed behind her.
 

“Lock it,” he ordered.
 

She did as he said, flipping the latch.
 

He stopped at the edge of the bed. She stopped at the edge of the hallway leading into the room. “Take your coat off,” he said. “I’d hate for you to get hot.”

She set her purse down, leaving the folds open to allow the recorder the best reception. Her coat followed but she tossed it on the bed, making sure not to cover her purse.
 

His gaze raked over the white lace blouse she’d changed into before arriving. It dipped low to reveal her ample cleavage and she’d paired with an equally seductive slim figure-hugging black skirt. The blatantly lustful look on his face let her know, that despite his almost ex-wife
 
being barely in the ground, he intended to fuck her. She knew that already. Only one question remained: what else did he want?
 

“Like what you see, Judge?” she asked.