“I didn’t know you would be there.”
“Which only makes it worse.” She swiped her fingers beneath her eyes before blinking back her tears. “I’ve paid enough for our affair, Joe.”
She turned, stalking from the room before he could stop her. Following her, he caught the bedroom door before she could slam it closed and moved slowly into the room.
“Explain that comment.” Suspicion uncurled in his stomach. He had tried to convince himself that Grant had been good to her, that he had loved her. Through the past two years he had never imagined she had been anything but worshiped.
“He married me because he was convinced you cared about me.” Her eyes flashed with pain and anger. “Three months after our marriage I left him, Joe.” Mockery twisted her features. “Only to be forced back. He blackmailed me with a mistake my father made when first starting the newspaper. He wasn’t about to let me leave, to lose the one thing he had to torment you with.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He forced back his anger, his disbelief.
“Blackmail, Joe. You understand the concept, right?”
“I understand the concept.” He held on to his control by a thread.
She wasn’t lying. He knew Maggie. In that moment he realized that he knew her better than he had ever known anyone in his life. And he couldn’t make himself believe that she was lying.
“He left me alone for the most part, as long as I played the role.” She sniffed back her tears as she sat slowly on the edge of the bed. “We had separate bedrooms. He never tried to touch me. He got off on hurting you. He hated you.” She shook her head, confusion filling her voice. “I never understood that.”
Joe met her gaze as she lifted her eyes to his, watching him with such perplexed anger that it caused his chest to clench.
“Did he ever say why?” He had never really known Grant—Joe realized that now—but a lifetime of believing in the friendship he thought they had was hard to put behind him. He had trusted Grant above anyone else in the world, even his family. Grant had been the brother Joe had never had. At least, he had thought Grant was. Separating himself from those memories sometimes felt as though he were separating a part of his soul from his body.
“Oh, he had plenty of reasons.” Weariness washed over her expression. “The promotion you got and he didn’t. Something about bullies in school. But I think most of it came down to the fact that your family was stinking rich, according to him. That bothered him most of all.”
And Joe had never known. That was the hardest part for him. He had never suspected that Grant had hated him so thoroughly.
“I loved him like a brother.” And he had, since they were boys. “That’s why I didn’t stand between you when I learned who he was dating, then marrying. It’s the reason I left it alone, Maggie. I thought you deserved someone to love you, and I thought he loved you.”
She stared back at him for long moments, remnants of anger glittering in her dark green eyes.
“Such sacrifice,” she snorted, the sound causing him to clench his teeth against the frustration eating at him. “You should apply for sainthood, Joe.”
She rose to her feet once again, moving slowly around the bedroom before stopping on the far side and turning back to face him.
“What did you think I was going to do now? Fall back into your arms as though the past two and a half years never happened?”
“I could have handled it.” He shrugged tensely. “I never forgot, Maggie—”
“Then forget now.”
Joe read the wariness in her eyes.
“Have you forgotten, Maggie?” He moved toward her slowly, dying to touch her, to taste her one more time. “Did you forget how hot I could make you? How hot and wet you got for me, baby?”
He didn’t touch her as he moved to her; he stared into her eyes, feeling the needs rising inside him as fiercely as they reflected in her eyes.
“This isn’t going to get us anywhere,” she whispered, her hands clenching the material at the front of her shirt. “I won’t let you do this to me again.”
“That’s what I swore about you a week ago,” he admitted. “That I wouldn’t get so hard for you that the only thing that mattered was getting you beneath me, burying my cock so deep inside you I didn’t know where you ended and where I began. That I wouldn’t ache for you, that I wouldn’t need to hear that soft little cry you make when you come for me.”
“That you wouldn’t use what I felt for you to try to trap me?” she suggested mockingly, causing him to grit his teeth in frustration.
“I wouldn’t use the sex against you, Maggie.” Would he? He was telling himself he wouldn’t, but he knew he would push her. She had to know where that information was, if only subconsciously.
“You would use any weapon against me that you could find,” she threw back at him as she edged away.
Joe followed.
“You were married to him for two years,” he said softly. “You may have hated every minute of it, but you were there, in that house with him. There had to have been something he said, something he did…”
“And you think I haven’t thought of that?” she spat out. “That’s all I’ve thought of, Joe. Because if I could give you that damned information you want so bad, then I’d be free. Of you, of Fuentes, and of Grant. Trust me, no one wants you to have that information more than I do.”
“You want to leave me that bad, Maggie?” He moved behind her, leaning in close, careful not to touch. “I remember a time when you found excuses to stay in my bed, to remain at my place.”
“And I remember a time when you found excuses to escape,” she reminded him, stepping away again, but not before he saw the little tremor of response that washed over her. “You didn’t want what I had to offer before, Joe, and now, whatever you’re offering, I’m passing on.”
He watched her move across the bedroom and enter the bathroom. Unhurried, her slender body shifting beneath the loose clothes she had worn to sleep in. Her head was lifted, her shoulders straight, and the pride that was reflected in her stance caused a grin to edge at his lips.
He wondered if she knew she moved against him in that big bed each night. More often than not, her head ended up on his shoulder, a shapely leg thrown over his, and her hand lying directly over his heart. Just as she had lain when she had shared his bed so long ago.
And each night his control withered further away as his cock became more demanding. She could argue until she was blue in the face, and sometimes she could, but he knew what he felt each night. Hard nipples pressing against his side through her T-shirt. Her hands touching him tentatively, as though he were a dream.
He was a fool to let her go the first time, and he could be playing a bigger fool now. Only time would tell. And that was why he’d brought her here, he reminded himself. If she was lying, he would find out. If she was telling the truth … then he would protect her with everything he had. If she was telling the truth, then he would never let her out of his life again. She would be his. One way or the other.
chapter 4
men sucked. they were the root of every problem any woman could ever have. They were the reason for bras, the need for makeup, hair stylists, shaving legs, and high heels that made the arch feel like it had a steel rod slammed up it. They were picky, arrogant, argumentative, and so damned certain of themselves it made her grind her teeth in fury.
And Joe was the worst. He always had been. He didn’t argue, debate, or consider anything; it was his way, however he had to make certain it came about. And once again he was working her. She could feel it.
He watched her now in a way he hadn’t all week, eyelids lowered, his expression brooding, thoughtful, calculating. His dark eyes rarely left her, and she could feel the sexual hunger thickening in the air around him. He had a look when he was aroused to the point that the sex would be hard and brutally satisfying. And he was getting that look.
“Stay away from me,” she ordered, as he moved close to he
r that evening, brushing against her as she stacked the dishwasher with dinner dishes.
His male grunt did little to calm her nerves. Nothing he could do, though, could calm her nerves. He wasn’t the only one aroused after a week of enforced confinement, of nights spent in the same bed with him, feeling the heat of his body.
She was dressed in jeans and T-shirt, and a bra, but the layers of clothing did absolutely nothing to stem the needs that only grew. She remembered nights, hours on end that he would take her, throwing her into one orgasm after another, leaving her breathless, exhausted as the sun rose beyond the windows of his apartment. He was inexhaustible. And the memory of it was killing her.
“You’ve changed,” he remarked as he stood back from her, propping himself against the counter as he watched her. “You were never so confrontational before, Maggie.”
“I was never in danger for my life before,” she reminded him, flashing him a short glare. “It does change a girl’s perspective, Joe.”
“You’re going to be fine.” A quick frown edged at his dark blond brows as he watched her. “We’ll figure out where the information is and we’ll take Fuentes down.”
“One thing you never lacked was confidence.” Maggie closed the door to the dishwasher before setting the power and flipping it on.
“There has to be someplace Grant hid things. What about his other journals?” he asked her. “We only found the current one, it began six months before. Where did he keep the others?”
“I have no idea.” She shook her head as she breathed out roughly. “I spent as little time around Grant as I had to. I didn’t question him, I just wanted him to leave me alone, so I left him alone.”
“Did he mention a safe deposit box?”
“Joe, these are all questions the detective asked me at the station,” she reminded him abruptly. “If he had one, I didn’t know. I never cared about his journals, his friends, or his comings and goings. If I had suspected for a moment what he was up to, I would have paid more attention. But I didn’t.”
“Men like Grant like to brag.”
“Grant bitched, accused, and went into paranoid delusions.” She shook her head at his perception that Grant would tell her anything. “Everyone was to blame for everything that had gone wrong in his life, except him. I assumed his journals were filled with the same crap, so I never gave them a thought.”
He was silent then, but she could feel his eyes on her as she wiped down the counter and the table before pulling out the Swiffer to go over the floor.
She could feel the little tremors of response building beneath her flesh as he watched her, she could almost feel his eyes raking over her snug jeans, the press of her breasts beneath the T-shirt.
Minutes later she propped the Swiffer back in its place before turning and heading for the living room. She was aware of Joe following her, stalking her like a damned animal. As though he could sense her arousal and was debating the best way to act on it.
Let me love you, he had whispered earlier. He had no idea how those words had ripped through her heart. She had dreamed of him loving her, had believed he was beginning to until she covered that damned party she had no idea he had been invited to. Because he hadn’t told her. Hadn’t invited her. Oh no, he’d had one of his society women on his arm, decked out in silk and diamonds and platinum blond hair.
Had he slept with her?
She couldn’t let herself think of that. Even now, two and a half years later, the thought that he would take another woman so quickly after having shared a bed with her had the power to rip her defenses to shreds.
“You can’t ignore me forever, Maggie.”
She stopped in the middle of the living room, breathing in deeply before turning to face him.
“I’m not trying to ignore you, Joe.”
His eyes were brilliant with lust, the same look that had had the power to bring her to her knees during their relationship. Literally.
He tucked his hands into the pockets of his slacks and stared back at her silently, as her gaze flickered to the action. The heavy bulge between his thighs sent heat burning through her body. Her vagina ached, echoed with emptiness, as her nipples pressed hard against the material of her bra.
She swallowed tightly as she felt the need for oxygen increase.
“Did he please you in bed?”
The question took her by surprise.
“Excuse me?”
“Grant.” He frowned back at her. “Did he please you in bed? Did he make you scream and beg for more, even when you were too exhausted to take more?”
Her eyes widened at the flicker of anger in his eyes.
“That’s none of your business—”
“The hell it’s not,” he snapped. “I went crazy for two and a half years wondering if he pleased you, knowing he shared your bed…”
“Stop it, Joe. This isn’t going to get us anywhere.”
“I’ll know.” He kept his voice low, even, a sure indication that he wasn’t going to let the subject go.
“No, you won’t.” She lifted her chin as she stared back at him, her fists clenched at her sides as she fought to maintain her control. “Because I’m not answering you.”
Shame filled her at the thought of revealing the truth. She had known on her wedding night that the mistake she had made in her marriage was more severe than she had expected. Grant’s lust had sickened her, his spoken perversions filling her with disgust and fear.
“His journal was pretty in-depth concerning your sex life,” he informed her then. “He was quite descriptive.”
Maggie felt herself pale. “We weren’t having sex then. I hadn’t shared his bed since the first months of our marriage, I told you that.”
“Why?” He moved closer, stalking her like a predator.
“That’s none of your business, Joe. Let it go.” She watched him closely, warily, uncertain as to how he would react.
“You’re a very passionate woman, Maggie. I can’t imagine you denying yourself, or cheating on your husband to attain satisfaction.”
“I like sex, so automatically I had to be fucking someone?” she snapped out furiously. God save her from hardheaded men.
“That wasn’t what I said.”
“Yes, Joe, that was what you were saying.” She waved her hand back at him in a gesture of frustration. “What did you do for the last two and a half years? We both know you weren’t a virgin when you came to my bed. How many women have you had since me?”
“No one.”
The answer had her flailing for a response; instead, she could only stare back at him in shock.
She stared back at him silently as he came closer, his expression dark and intent as he watched her.
“You tormented me, Maggie.”
She shook her head desperately. “Don’t play with me like this, Joe. Please.” She was willing to beg. She had left him, believing he didn’t hold her heart. Now, two and a half years later, she admitted the truth she hadn’t wanted to face then. She had loved him then, and that love had never died.
“I’m not playing with you, Maggie.” His hand covered her cheek as she lost her breath. The sound of her tremulous gasp would have been humiliating if his touch weren’t so warm, so needed. “I’m trying to save us both this time.”
She was panting for air, certain her shaky knees would give out before she found the strength to move away from him.
“Do you remember what it was like?” he asked her gently.
Maggie stared back at him, dazed, uncertain, as his lips lowered to breathe a kiss against hers.
“All night long,” he whispered over her lips. “I would fall asleep, still buried in your body, still hungry for you. Do you remember that?”
“I remember seeing you with another woman.” She forced the words past her lips. “I remember you staring at me across the room, your expression as cold as ice. That’s what I remember, Joe.”
His jaw clenched. “You can forget that.”
??
?No, I can’t forget that.” She pushed away from him slowly, fighting back the regret as she did so.
“I didn’t sleep with her, Maggie.”
The tension tightening his body had her stepping back further. She could feel the certainty that he was at the edge of his control. Once he slipped past the veneer of civility, denying him wouldn’t be an option. The hunger in him called to her too fiercely, pulled at her too desperately. When Joe began coming after her in earnest, she would be lost, and she knew it.
“It doesn’t matter that you didn’t sleep with her,” she told him softly as she moved to the couch. There was no way in hell she was heading to the bedroom. “It’s not about the woman, Joe, it’s the fact that you did it. You weren’t as invested in me as I was in you, otherwise you would have told me about the party. You would have told me about your date.”
She curled into the corner of the overstuffed couch, drawing her legs up until they bent to her side and gave her a measure of protection against the throbbing heat between her thighs.
He hadn’t moved from where he stood, other than to turn and follow her progress across the room with his eyes. She knew what he was doing, what he had been doing all day. Trying to push her buttons. From the first words out of his mouth that morning, when he accused her of pouting, to now, he was trying to work her, to get what he wanted without giving any of himself in return.
That wasn’t enough for her now. She wanted as much in return as she had to give, or she wanted nothing at all. And giving all of himself wasn’t something she thought Joe would do easily. He faced her, his jaw flexing with tension, his brown eyes raging with frustration and arousal.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Joe?” She tilted her head when he said nothing. “What would you have done if you’d seen me on another man’s arm that night?”
“I would have torn him apart,” he snapped.
“Your date left with all her hair and teeth intact,” she pointed out gently.
“And you never came back,” he growled. “You wouldn’t answer my calls. By God, you didn’t want to hear explanations.”