Wild For Mr. Wrong (2 page)

What an idiot he’d been.

Bryn was gorgeous.  

Her shiny ebony hair without a hint of curl.

The enticing curve of her calves above those utilitarian black pumps.  

The fullness of her lower lip, which even now she punished with straight, white teeth.  

And her eyes.  Man, her eyes.  

He pictured those golden eyes dazed with pleasure, pleasure he could give her in so many ways.  Verbally.  Physically.  Lying down.  Standing up.  Soft and slow.  Then hard.  Then harder still.

As if she could read his mind, she flushed, but said nothing.

Tam grinned at Daniel over Bryn’s shoulder.  Tall, and wearing heels despite the watermelon in her stomach, she towered over Bryn’s petite frame.  She fluttered her fingers in a cheery wave.  “Well hello, handsome.  We were just talking about you.”

Bryn looked ready to strangle Tam with her bare hands.  Instead, she tilted up her chin and walked past Daniel.  

Or rather, she attempted to.  Daniel blocked the exit.  Despite the arousal coursing through him, he stifled the urge to laugh.  “Really?  It sounded like you were talking about getting Thad to take Bryn to an engagement party.”  He snuck a sideways glance at Bryn.  “But I’ve known the guy for years and—even if he wasn’t in an exclusive relationship right now—”  He saw Tam’s eyes widen and narrowed his infinitesimally.  Immediately, she pressed her lips together to suppress a smile.  “—I’m not sure how he’d feel about being used as a—let’s see, what should we call it?—a diversion.  Can’t say I blame you, though.  I have an eternally optimistic mother, too.”  

Bryn’s gaze flickered, indicating that despite her best intentions, he was getting to her.  

“
But who would’ve thought it.  Apparently something does scare you, Ms. Donovon.”  He grinned, wanting to get those ramrod stiff shoulders to relax.  From the way she’d talked with Tam, she obviously had a sense of humor to match her acute intelligence.  Maybe once she relaxed she’d be more fun and warm than he’d ever imagined she could be.  “Careful or you’ll mar your trial dog reputation.”

She blushed.  For her, that was the equivalent of stuttering and getting knocked on her ass.  “Excuse me, but I’m late for court.”

Daniel lifted his gaze to the office clock.  “Court doesn’t start for another ten minutes.”

She tilted her pert nose in the air.  “Perhaps I’d rather stand outside the courtroom than stand here with you.”

Spunk, he thought again.  

“
Yes, get out of the way, Daniel,” Tam interrupted.  “You don’t want Bryn to get physical with you, do you?”

Tam winked covertly from behind Bryn’s back.

Daniel straightened, stepped to the side, and swept a hand in front of him.  As Bryn slid past him, he said, “I guess it depends on what she has in mind.  Say, for example, she wanted to rip off my—oh, I don’t know—big head…?”  

Bryn froze and Daniel heard her barely concealed gasp.  

“
That could be kind of fun,” he said, openly grinning now.  “What do you say, Justice?”

Shoulders tense, she slowly turned to face him. “I say I’d rather face a jury in my underwear.”

“
Whatever turns you on.  And I mean that.”

She left, her back as ramrod straight as ever.  

When she was out of earshot, Daniel turned to see Tam shaking her head at him in reproach.  He shrugged innocently.  “What?”

Tam snorted.  “Thad isn’t dating anyone exclusively and you know it.”

Widening his eyes dramatically, Daniel said.  “Really?  I could’ve sworn that’s what Vance said.  Hmmm.  My mistake.”

“
She’s not particularly fond of defense attorneys.”

“
Most prosecutors aren’t.  She’ll get over it.  I’m a great kisser, after all.”

Tam snorted again and he grinned. “I’m just sayin’…” he drawled.

Twenty minutes later, after telling Tam he’d buy her unborn child a drum set for its second birthday if she set Bryn up with anyone, let alone Thad, Daniel stared at Bryn’s back from the courtroom audience.  

No doubt about it.  She intrigued him.  He wanted to get to know her better, including what it would take to make her relax.  

To make her smile.  

To wrap her arms around him and moan in pleasure.

A renewed ripple of desire made him smile ruefully.  

Rumors aside, he was careful about who he dated.  He rarely dated lawyers and he’d never dated a prosecutor, let alone one with Bryn’s rigidity.  Still, who knew Bryn Donovon had so many luscious layers to explore?  He prided himself on seeing nuances others missed, and the fact that he’d missed hers pissed him off.

They’d worked at the Sacramento Courthouse together for the past two years.  He’d smiled cordially in greeting.  Admired her trial technique.  Even shook her hand to congratulate her when she succeeded in beating him at trial, which so far had been every single time.

But until today, he had never sat in court for the specific purpose of learning her.  He had never studied her body so intently, committing every angle and curve to memory, as if in preparation for a full frontal attack.  This was exactly what he was doing now, and exactly what he was planning.

It took him less than a minute to accept the truth.    

He’d been an idiot for overlooking her.  But no more.  The tough DA with the bedroom eyes was a mystery, and he wouldn’t be satisfied until he solved it.

Thanks to Tam, he just might have the chance.

The clerk called court into session.  Vaguely, he listened as the public defender and Bryn handled the first few cases.  Then, when the clerk called Kyle Winsor’s case, he rose and made his way to the front of the courtroom.  He sat at the defense table with his client, a nineteen-year-old punk with too much time on his hands, but a punk who could still turn his life around.

“
Are we still set for jury trial next week, Mr. Mays?” the judge asked.

“
Unless Ms. Donovon is willing to agree to probation in exchange for a no contest plea?”  He glanced at Bryn’s profile even though he already knew what she was going to say.

Without looking at him, Bryn quietly said, “That’s not going to happen, your honor.  The people are asking for the maximum sentence in this case, and we’re prepared to go to trial.”

“
Very well, counselors.”

As the judge discussed logistics with his clerk, Kyle cursed softly.  Behind them, his father, known to Daniel only as Winsor, cursed far more loudly.

Winsor’s curse was the only warning the courtroom got.

Before anyone noticed the man’s intent, he’d leaped over the low wall separating the audience from the court staff and made a beeline for Bryn.  Bryn looked up, eyes widening as Kyle’s angry father charged her.  Fear flashed across her face.  

“
No!” Daniel shouted, lunging out of his seat.  By the time he reached Bryn, Winsor had her pinned against the table.  She frantically clawed at his hands.  Gasped for air.  She kneed Winsor in the nuts an instant before Daniel grabbed the guy by the back of his shirt.  

Winsor released her throat but managed to grab hold of her lapel, pulling her with him.  Daniel wrested her away and covered her body with his own.  Winsor lunged again, and the bailiff hit him in the back of the head with his baton.  He crumpled to the ground. The bailiff picked the man up by the back of his pants and dragged him back, away from Bryn.

Shouts echoed.  The judge ordered everyone to calm down as Daniel and Bryn stood, Bryn trembling.  Someone jostled for a space next to her, but Daniel shouldered him aside. When Kyle’s brother Paul made a move for Bryn, Daniel grabbed the asshole.

“
Get back,” Daniel growled, wrapping his arms around Paul’s chest.  The man kept going, trying to drag Daniel forward.

“
Let me go,” he wheezed.  “I’ll finish what my dad started.  Witch!  Leave my brother alone,” he spat at Bryn.  

As Daniel tackled him to the floor, Paul got in a powerful punch to Daniel’s face, bloodying his lip before two more bailiffs dragged him after Winsor.  A quick glance confirmed to Daniel that his client was being ushered out of the courtroom.  Just before he disappeared around a corner, he looked back at Daniel, his expression one of shock.

Bryn half-leaned against the table.  Daniel rushed up to her.  With one hand under her elbow and one wrapped around the base of her neck, he looked into her dazed eyes.  Unlike the air he was dragging in and out of his billowing chest, she seemed unable to breathe.  “Bryn, are you okay?  Bryn!”

She just looked at him.  He ran his eyes over her body, trying to assess if she was hurt.  Her throat was red from where Winsor’s fingers had squeezed her delicate skin.  Her jacket had been wrenched to the side, and her button-down shirt ripped open, exposing part of a lacy pink bra covering a rounded breast.  His heart slowed its awful pounding when she finally managed to take in some air.

“
You’re okay,” he reassured her.  And himself.  He reached out to straighten her clothes when he noticed a dark mark just above the breast that peeked out from behind her shirt.  Thinking it was a bruise, he pushed the fabric back.  Not a bruise.  A tattoo.  A scrolled heart on her pale ivory skin.  

Daniel raised his brows and glanced at Bryn.  She was still shaken, leaning into him.  From what he knew of her, she never let herself lean on anyone.  He stared into her eyes and felt the oddest tightening in his chest, as if something had burrowed inside him.  He tightened his arm just as she seemed to get a hold of herself, pulled away, and began buttoning her blouse.  

“
Bryn—” he began, but was immediately jostled aside by Linda Mendell, the court reporter.  The woman, who was built like a freight train, grabbed Bryn’s arm, yanked her upright, and led her towards the judge’s chambers.  Bryn looked back at him, golden eyes wide, and he felt a sensation in his gut.

He’d been sucker-punched, hard, and not just by old man Winsor.

“
Now there’s a woman just waiting for an excuse to cut off a man’s balls and stuff them down his throat.”  

Knowing exactly who Vance was talking about, Daniel turned to watch Bryn walk into the lawyer’s pit.  Just as Vance had described, she looked more than capable of cutting down a man’s...ego.  

His, to be precise.  She’d certainly been taking her best shot lately.  

A week had passed since the attack, and Bryn had recovered well.  Too well.  She’d returned to court the next day with her armor perfectly in place.  Although she’d always been cool to him, she’d recently perfected the art of freezing him out.  

The morning after she’d returned to work, Daniel asked her how she was feeling.  She actually snorted, shooing him off with a casual wave of her hand, as if being attacked in court was an every day affair for her.  Then she pissed him off.   “As if you care,” she said, then continued, saying,  “What?  Are you looking to cop another feel?”

For one of the few times in his life, Daniel was speechless.  Incensed, he wasn’t sure what he would do.  Screw copping a feel.  He’d fuck her until she couldn’t walk, until she couldn’t breathe from the multiple orgasms he’d give her.

He was about to reach for her when he noticed she wouldn’t look him in the eye.  And that her hands weren’t quite steady.  

Very unusual for the fearless DA.  He continued to stand there, saying nothing.  When she looked up, he held her gaze for several moments before deciding not to push.  Since then, she’d continued to treat him with equal parts disdain and hostility.  The thing was, he wasn’t so easily fooled.  Or dissuaded.

One of the things that made Daniel such a great lawyer was his unfailing patience and determination.  That didn’t mean he won all of his criminal defense cases--he hadn’t even won most of them.  Of the hundreds of defendants he had represented in the past six years, only twenty had resulted in hung juries, and only fourteen had been acquitted.  But in criminal defense litigation, a fifteen percent success rate was almost unheard of.  He had confidence as a lawyer, and as a lover.   He wanted Bryn.  She wanted him.  Sooner or later, it was going to happen.

As she walked past him, Daniel met Bryn’s gaze.  Was it just his imagination, or did her leggy stride seem to falter a bit?  She swept past, leaving behind the faint scent of roses he’d come to associate with her.  Another surprise.

Which got Daniel to thinking of that tattoo, placed so alluringly on the swell of her left breast.  He’d been obsessing over it.  When had she gotten it?  Did she have more?  A tattoo certainly didn’t jive with her kick-ass, straight-laced, prosecutor image.  He was still pondering the possibilities when the clerk stood and announced Judge Lancaster’s arrival.  “All rise…”

***

Bryn set down her stack of files and took a seat next to her investigating officer.  Reluctantly, her gaze sought Daniel.  

Her attraction to the man had always been disturbing, but work had always been a good distraction.  As had his indifference.  But now, since Winsor’s attack, Daniel seemed determined to charm her.  Now, he took care to strike up a conversation, to casually touch her shoulder, or to simply smile from across the room, his eyes heated and intense.  Now, every time she looked at him, she was assaulted by memories of being in his arms.  And how good that had felt.  

She’d been terrified when Winsor had grabbed her.  Had struggled to catch her breath afterwards.  Had trembled for hours.  She still felt a jitter now and again when she walked to her car after work or was home alone.  But the memory of Daniel’s concern and the temptation of his current interest overshadowed the fear.

Her response to Daniel made her feel weak in a way Winsor’s attack hadn’t been able to.

Taking a deep breath, determined to get Daniel Mays out of her head, she took out her smart phone, checked her email, and frowned.  There was a text from Tam.

Found someone even better than Thad.  He’ll pick you up tomorrow night at six-thirty.  Your mom’ll be speechless
.

The first thing Bryn thought was: Speechless was good.