THE WAY HILLARY was staring at him was the same way she stared at a hostile witness—just before she broke him, like she’d pretty much broken Byron’s alibi witness, Scooter. He rubbed a hand around the back of his neck. Despite that soul-shattering release, he was still tense. Still edgy.
And it wasn’t just because of the way she was looking at him. It was because of the way she made him feel: out of control. Stone did not like that at all.
“It was a mistake coming here,” he murmured.
“So you’re not going to ask for a plea deal for your client?” she asked, and she arched a blond brow.
She knew that wasn’t why he’d come to see her. “I don’t plea out for an innocent client.”
She snorted. “There’s nothing innocent about Byron Mueller. Or you.”
“I told you I didn’t know about those bank records,” he said. And he was getting damn sick of defending himself.
“The envelope had the logo and address for Street Legal,” she said. “It came from your office.”
“The mole has access to our stationery somehow,” he said. The documents forged about Ronan had been on their stationery as well.
“So it’s someone who works for you,” she surmised.
He and his partners had deduced the same thing and had even identified a suspect. But Simon’s former assistant, Bette Monroe, wasn’t guilty of anything but making Simon fall in love with her.
Stone considered that a crime, though. Falling in love was too dangerous. It was what had caused his mom to turn to the same life of drugs as Stone’s father. She’d used and sold just to make her husband happy. If not for him, she would have never tried them. If not for him, she would have gotten clean. But she’d been more addicted to his father than she’d been to the drugs.
There was no way she would have ever left him—if she hadn’t overdosed some years ago. At least that was what Stone had heard from the private investigator he’d hired to look for his parents.
Fingers snapped in his face, and Stone focused on Hillary. Her blue eyes were soft with concern, and she asked, “Are you okay?”
He sighed and nodded. “Yeah.”
“What’s really bothering you?” she asked. “Your office mole or the fact that you’re losing this trial?”
You. She was what was really bothering him, making him think about things he hadn’t thought about in years. Like his past. Like his parents...
“I am not going to lose,” he insisted. He couldn’t. Not when he had an innocent client. “The truth will come out.”
“It already has,” she said. “You just refuse to accept it. Old moneybags Mueller killed his child bride in a fit of jealous rage.”
Stone snorted. “Jealous rage over what?”
“Her lover.”
“Rumored lover,” Stone said. “You presented no proof this person actually exists. Just speculation from the staff and her friends.”
“Speculation would have been inadmissible,” she said with a smile. “I had eyewitness accounts that Byron found out about the lover and was enraged.”
He shrugged like he didn’t believe her. But during his last meeting with his client, he’d gotten the impression that Byron did know she’d had a lover and who that lover was. “I’m well aware you presented that as your motive. But you’re wrong,” he said. “This was no crime of passion.”
She stepped closer to him then and said, “You’re right about Dwight. We’re more than friends. We hook up whenever we’re between relationships and bored.”
He’d known it, but her saying it put images in his head, images of her wrapped around that little skinny lawyer like she’d been wrapped around him moments ago. And once again his control snapped, and he dragged her up against him.
Before he could utter the word burning in his brain, she laughed and saved him from making a fool of himself. Because the word he’d been about to say was Mine.
* * *
Stone released her so abruptly that Hillary stumbled back and nearly fell. And her laughter stopped. He looked shocked. Maybe she’d finally gotten through to him.
“You get it now,” she said. “You understand how a man could become so jealous that he might commit a crime of passion.”
Stone shook his head. “I’m not jealous.”
But the words rang hollowly. She was tempted to mess with him again, like she had earlier. But before she could say anything more, he continued.
“And men get jealous all the time without ever killing anyone over it,” he said. “If Mueller had found out his wife was cheating on him, he would have just divorced her.”
She snorted. “And lose any of his millions?”
“Billions,” Stone corrected her.
She’d seen the bank records; he wasn’t exaggerating. But she hadn’t been impressed. She knew someone who had more money and wasn’t as obnoxious about it as Byron Mueller. “Exactly.”
Stone snorted now.
“I know he has some money to spare,” she said. “But men like Mueller don’t like giving up any of that money, especially to a woman who’s wronged him.”
“He wouldn’t have had to give up a dime,” Stone said. “My partner Ronan Hall drew up an ironclad prenup before Byron married his latest bride—”
“Late bride,” Hillary corrected him. “She’s dead.”
“But my client wouldn’t have killed her,” Stone insisted, “even if he found out she was cheating. He would have just divorced her.”
Damn it! Stone was good—so good that he was getting to Hillary. And she could not have that, could not have him swaying her, because if he could sway her, he would definitely sway the jury.
“Sure,” she agreed. “If he was thinking rationally, you’re right. He would have just divorced her. But in the heat of the moment, finding out that she was cheating on him...” She stepped closer to Stone and ran her fingertips over the cashmere that was molded to the sculpted muscles of his chest. They rippled beneath her touch, and his heart began to beat harder. She could feel it as she laid her palm over it. “...finding out that she was with another man, kissing him...”
She leaned closer and brushed her mouth across his throat, and his pulse jumped beneath her lips. “Touching him...” She skimmed her hand down his chest to the buckle of his belt, then lower, over his fly...
“Damn you!” he cursed her on a raspy breath. And he reached for her again. But he didn’t just jerk her against him. He swung her up in his arms. “Where’s your bedroom?”
She laughed again as she pointed out the door to him. It was painted white like the walls and the scarred wood floor. “See what I’m saying,” she said. “Passion...”
“You going to pull that in court to prove your point?” he asked as he turned to get her and his broad shoulders through her doorway. “You going to get every member of the jury all worked up and jealous?”
“Do you think it would work?” she asked.
He dropped her onto the bed so that she bounced against the mattress. Just like Dwight had warned him, her bedroom wasn’t girlie. Hillary was not girlie. So there was nothing pink or floofy. Her room was white, like the rest of the apartment. Her sheets were white, too, with thin blue pinstripes on them. But her bed was unmade, and the only pillows were the ones she slept on.
But Stone didn’t seem to mind a bit. He pulled off his sweater, his muscles rippling in his chest and washboard abs. “Worked on me...”
So he was all worked up and jealous...
Over her?
She never would have imagined that in a million years before that night in her office, when he’d kissed her. That had just been a little over a week ago, but it felt like a long time.
So long that she couldn’t remember a time that she hadn’t wanted him. But then, even before that night, she’d wanted him—had had her little hot fantasies about him.
If he was truly jealous about Dwight, she could have told him that the last several times she’d been with the other man, she’d imagined that he was Stone.
She’d wanted him to be Stone.
Why was she so damn attracted to a man like him? One who represented criminals and killers? And he didn’t just represent them; he got them off.
That wasn’t going to happen this time, though. This time she was going to win.
After stripping off his clothes, he reached for hers. He dragged off her sweater, tousling her hair. Then he peeled her pants and underwear down her legs. And as he did, he kissed every inch of skin he exposed. His lips skimmed over the arch of her foot and her ankle before moving up her calves and thighs to her core.
And then he teased her with his mouth until she was the one all worked up. She clutched her sheets in her hands as she writhed around on the mattress. The tension was wound so tightly inside her that she thought she might break. Then he flicked his tongue across her clit and slid his fingers inside her, and she did break, shattering into a million pieces as she came.
Shuddering with the release, she sank back against the bed. But then he was there, covering her limp body with his. The hair on his chest brushed across her nipples, making them tighten into sensitive peaks. And the tension wound inside her again. Despite that shattering release, she wanted him again. But he continued to tease her, just brushing his body against hers and his lips across her lips.
She wanted him as out of his mind as he was making her. So she touched him back, gliding her fingertips over every perfect inch of his body.
He groaned and cursed her as he reached for his jeans and grabbed another condom from a pocket. A muscle twitched along his tightly clenched jaw as he rolled it on. Then he eased himself inside her.
She tightened her inner muscles, pulling him deep.
And he groaned again. “You’re driving me crazy!”
She could relate. He did the same to her. And she must have lost her mind to have let him into her apartment and now her bed. But she wasn’t about to kick him out when she needed him so badly.
“Stone...” She raked her nails down his back to his butt, urging him to thrust harder, deeper.
Instead, he drew out. “What?” he asked, but his voice was so rough with passion it was barely recognizable. While he was teasing her, he was not unaffected himself. “What do you want, Hillary?”
“You!” She arched her hips and wrapped her legs around him. “I want you!”
Her confession seemed to snap his control. For he moved again, sliding in and out of her. And he lowered his head, kissing her deeply.
Until Stone—until experiencing the passion she felt with him—Hillary had never really understood crimes of passion. But as her tension broke and her body shuddered with the force of the orgasm Stone had given her, she understood why someone might kill to feel like this, the way only he had ever made her feel.
His body tensed, then shuddered, too, as his tension broke. He leaned his forehead against hers as he panted for breath. And he cursed her again.
And she knew that she had won this argument.
But what would happen once she won the trial? Would she and Stone never do this again? Never see each other again? Never feel this way again?
She didn’t feel like such a winner now—when she considered all that she might lose with winning.