“I’ve been ready.” She followed the statement with a long groan that he swallowed with his mouth as he covered her lips with his.
Mallory caught on quick. Her tongue invaded his mouth and began a long and leisurely exploration. She lapped at his tongue and nibbled on his bottom lip before coming up for air. “Mmm. Delicious.”
The husky sound shook him to his core and if he’d been sated minutes before, he was aroused again now.
“Chocolate.”
“Very good. Ready for the next one?”
She licked her moist lips. The erotic gesture sent shooting darts of desire straight to his groin.
Somehow he managed to suck in a breath and hold off tossing her onto the mattress. They had an experiment to complete first.
“Sense of smell, okay?” He turned her to face him, placing her hands on his shoulders.
After his shower and before leaving for the city, he’d splashed aftershave on and headed out the door. If his scent worked on her the way her exotic, unique scent worked on him, he’d have to pull her off him after this test.
He grabbed her hips and said, “Scoot forward and wrap your legs around my waist.”
A few misses and some jockeying of positions later, she’d done as he requested. Her thighs bracketed his waist and her damp, feminine heat pressed warm and enticingly against his groin.
“What are you doing to me?” Her words came out more of a whimper than a question.
Jack understood. His body was strung tight and begged for completion. But just being cocooned against Mallory and knowing it would have to last him a lifetime enabled him to savor the experience. And wait.
He kissed her lips. “Arousing you, sweetheart. Just like you’d intended to do to me with this scarf of yours.”
She scrunched up her nose. “I’ll have to pay you back, you know.”
He laughed hard. “I’m shaking. Now rest your head right here.” He guided her chin onto his shoulder.
She nuzzled her soft cheek against his roughened one and they sat in silence as her heart beat fast and strong against his chest. Her breasts softened against him and the head of his penis nudged against her opening, unprotected and insistent.
He prayed for restraint.
“You’re breathing fast,” she noted, a playful teasing tone in her voice. “Hard and shallow. Does that count for my heightened sense of hearing?”
If it brought him closer to the end of this experiment, hell yes, Jack thought. “It’s fine.”
She snuggled cheek to cheek for a moment before burying her face between his neck and shoulder. Her skin was soft, her breathing as shallow as his. She lifted her arms around his waist, hugging him close. That fast the gesture became more intimate than experimental. More an honest expression of emotion than a light and easy game.
Jack clung to the remaining strength he had left. Until she began to nuzzle his neck with her nose.
“Musky,” she murmured. “Masculine.” The words vibrated near his ear. “And so sexy.” She nipped the skin on his neck with her teeth then soothed with her tongue.
He’d ached. Now his body shook and restraint became a memory. The experimenting was over. It’d been harder on him than on her anyway. He’d survived taste, smell and hearing. Now he wanted touch.
Drawing her down to the bed he pulled the scarf off her eyes. She blinked as she adjusted to the light.
He looked into her face. “I want touch.”
Her lips parted. “Me, too. God, me, too.” Her permission was all he needed. He nudged her legs wide and drove himself into her.
He drove himself home.
MALLORY PULLED herself to a sitting position and watched Jack sleep. His tanned chest rose and fell and the warmth emanating from him drew her toward him all over again. She lay back and curled into him. His arms immediately reached out and cradled her in comfort and security. Desire hovered beneath the surface, a secondary emotion to her love for this man.
With this relationship she’d violated Mallory Sinclair, Esq.’s ethics and aspirations yet she couldn’t regret discovering Mallory Sinclair, the woman, and revealing her buried emotions. And though Jack said he couldn’t return her feelings and wouldn’t want a relationship that extended beyond this trip, Mallory would walk away from this experience forever changed.
For the first time in her life, she realized
No answer came. But with dawn breaking outside her window, she realized the career path she’d chosen for the wrong reasons conflicted with acting upon the private investigator’s revelations regarding Mrs. Lederman.
And it was past time she dealt with certain facts and faced up to her feelings.
“Are you up?” Jack’s morning-roughened voice sounded in her ear.
“Mmm. I’ve been thinking.”
“About last night, I hope.” His hand reached around to cup her breast.
The pleasing tingling started immediately but her mind was worked up and she needed to talk first. “Last night was amazing. But we need to talk work before we get sidetracked again.”
He laughed. “You want me to talk work while I’m in bed with you and more awake with each passing minute?” He inched closer, until his groin, hard and erect, nestled against her back.
She let out a sigh. “Hard as it is…”
When he chuckled, she caught his double meaning and laughed. “No, hard as it is for me to say no to you now, I need to get this information off my chest.”
“What is it?” he asked, sounding concerned.
“Alicia Lederman has a history of abusing prescription drugs.”
“Bingo!”
Mallory cringed at the excitement she heard in his voice.
“This is exactly what we need to force her into a settlement. Once we tell Lederman about this…Wait a damn minute.” Behind her, Jack pulled himself to a sitting position.
Not wanting to feel exposed, she yanked the covers over her chest and sat up, too. “What’s wrong?”
“Was this abuse while they were married?”
Mallory nodded. “So was her stay in an expensive rehab clinic.”
“Then why didn’t Lederman share this piece of information?”
“Well, we’re not his attorneys of record,” she reminded him.
“I can buy that. But there’s another possibility-”
“He was testing us,” Mallory said, finishing his thought and sharing her own conclusions at the same time. “He wanted to see if we’d uncover the information on our own and how far we were willing to go with it.” And Mallory wasn’t willing to go the distance on this one.
She wasn’t sure when she’d made the decision, but it was somewhere between getting to know and like Alicia Lederman and falling in love with Jack. A soft side she hadn’t realized existed had crept up on her and settled in.
Mallory couldn’t use the woman’s past against her. Even if it cost her her job and the partnership she’d thought she’d coveted. She admired and respected Alicia Lederman too much. Her sense of fairness dictated she take the woman’s feelings into account.
Without warning, Jack tossed off the covers and climbed out of bed.
“Where are you going?”
“To talk to that son of a bitch. It’s one thing to be undecided about counsel and to invite us out here to get to know us better, but it’s another to play the games he’s been playing, disappearing, withholding information. I’m through. Either my record speaks for itself or it doesn’t.” He grabbed for his jeans.
“Jack, wait.”
He paused. “You’re right. I’ll shower first and then I’ll tackle Paul Lederman.” He charged toward the bathroom, magnificent in his nudity and masculinity.
She licked at her dry lips. “What’s the plan, Jack?”
