STONE STARED DOWN at Hillary, kneeling between his legs, and a feeling more intense even than the release she’d just given him coursed through him. He was overwhelmed, awed and scared.
She scared the hell out of him. And not just because he suspected she was going to win this trial. She scared him because of how she made him feel.
Jealous.
Out of control.
And...
He wasn’t sure what the hell he felt because he’d never felt it before, so he had no way of identifying it. No way of knowing what it was or how to stop it.
But he wasn’t sure he wanted it to stop. He certainly didn’t want to stop having sex with her. It was too good. She was too good.
He usually didn’t come for blow jobs; he couldn’t make himself relax or lose control enough. But with her...
Hillary had given him no choice. She’d taken his control and she’d given him pleasure unlike any he’d ever known—except in her body. He loved sliding inside her; it felt like sliding home.
He tensed as the thought brought back a rush of fear. Home had never been a good situation for him. But then, neither was this...because just like those fleeting moments his mother had been clean, this wasn’t going to last, either.
He and Hillary had no future together. They would always be sitting at different tables: her for the prosecution, him for the defense.
Not that he’d presented much of a defense yet for Byron. That was what he’d been working on when she’d shown up. He’d rather focus on her than the trial, though.
He pulled her up from the floor, but he stayed sitting while she stood. He unbuttoned her jacket and pushed it from her shoulders. She wore a blouse instead of one of her camisoles—maybe because it had gotten colder, or maybe because it had a high neckline and he had left some marks on her silky skin. When he unbuttoned those buttons and pushed it off her shoulders, he saw what he’d done the other night.
“Sorry,” he murmured, and he ran his fingertips over the slight discoloration.
“No, you’re not,” she told him.
And he grinned. “No, I’m not.”
If Dwight showed up at her place for another booty call, he’d know that she was taken now. But was she?
What the hell were he and Hillary doing? Whatever it was, he didn’t want it to stop. So he reached for her bra now, unclasping it so that the nude lace dropped onto the floor with her blouse and jacket.
“Stone...” She murmured his name on a sigh.
Even before he touched them, her nipples tightened into taut peaks. He leaned forward and flicked his tongue across one while he rubbed his thumb over the other.
She moaned and trembled as if her knees were shaking. She was so damn responsive.
He reached for the button on her skirt, but his hand was shaking slightly and he fumbled as he undid it.
“You’re being careful with the buttons today,” she murmured.
“We’ve been lucky none have taken out an eye,” he replied.
And she laughed that throaty laugh he loved so much. It was as sexy as her body, as her beautiful face, as her sharp mind.
She trailed her fingers over his cheekbone, beneath his eye. “You’d look sexy with a patch...” She leaned down and pressed her mouth over his, kissing him deeply. Their lips nibbled and clung to each other’s, tongues teasing.
When she lifted her head, he panted. She literally took his breath away.
He unzipped her skirt and pushed it down along with the tiny bit of lace that was her panties. He had to have her, his cock hard and pulsating with need again despite the release she’d given him.
He wanted her—needed her—so badly.
She reached for his shirt and jerked it open, buttons pinging.
“You really want to see me with a patch,” he murmured.
She smiled. “I really want to see your chest.” But then she covered it with her hands, or as much of it as she could with her hands.
Her palms skimmed over his muscles, making his skin tingle from her touch. Then she teased his nipples, like he’d teased hers, making them pebble from the brush of her thumbs. Then she leaned down and brushed her mouth across them.
He slid his hands to her waist, gripping it as he lifted her so that she straddled his lap. He needed a condom, though, so he arched up and pulled one from his wallet.
She took it from his hand, tore it open with her teeth and rolled it over him. And he nearly came in her hand.
She was so damn sexy.
Then she arched up and guided him inside her. And he had that feeling like he belonged—with her, inside her.
He was losing his mind as well as his control.
She began to move, rocking back and forth, bouncing up and down. The chair creaked beneath their combined weights.
Stone didn’t care if it broke. He didn’t care about anything but the tension winding tightly inside him. And giving her pleasure like she’d given him.
He leaned down and kissed first her lips, then her neck and her shoulders. Then he arched his back and moved his mouth lower to her breasts.
She arched back and clutched his head to her breasts as she moved, writhing on his lap. Her inner muscles tightened around him, pulling him deeper. Then her body convulsed and she cried out as she came.
He felt the heat and wetness. And his control snapped. He gripped her hips and guided her—up and down—as he thrust inside her. And finally that tension inside him broke as he came again.
He was surprised he’d had anything left. But she turned him on as no one else ever had. He leaned his forehead against hers as they both panted for breath.
“Is that why you came?” he asked.
She smiled. “I came because you’re so damn good.”
He smiled, too. They were so equally matched. But that was the problem. They were too much alike. Too determined to win, even when they were on opposing sides.
“I’m glad you came,” he said.
But as he said it, her smile slid away, and she dropped her gaze from his. A chill chased the perspiration from his sweat-slick skin. “You didn’t come here for this,” he said. Gripping her hips, he lifted her from his lap.
She shook her head and reached for her clothes. “No.”
He knew he wasn’t going to like the reason that she’d really come. He stood up on legs that felt suddenly wobbly. He quickly used his adjoining bathroom to clean up, and when he returned, he found her briefcase sitting open on his desk.
She stood at the windows with her back to him. She’d dressed back up in her suit. And for a moment, he felt as he did in court, like he couldn’t look at her the way he looked at her when they were alone.
But they were alone now.
It didn’t feel that way, though. And when he walked to his desk and looked into her open briefcase, he understood why as he stared down at the faces in the photo.
A curse slipped through his lips as he dropped back onto his chair, stunned. He should have known. If not for her—if not for being so distracted by Hillary—he might have figured it out.
She’d messed with his self-control, his head and...
No. He couldn’t let her mess with his heart.
* * *
The glass of the window reflected at Hillary the room behind her back, and she saw every nuance of Stone’s reaction to the photo. He hadn’t known.
He reached into the briefcase and inspected the envelope lying beneath the photo. “You just got this,” he said.
“Yes.”
He sighed. “Of course you did or you would have already introduced it in court.”
She couldn’t argue that it would have been part of her prosecution.
“Why didn’t you surprise me with it like you did the bank records?” he asked.
“Because now I know that you didn’t send it,” she said. “Now I know I’d be surprising you.”
“Why don’t you want to?” he asked. “It’s a great tactic to catch the defense off guard.”
She shrugged.
“Are you going easy on me because of what we’ve been doing?” he asked, and he sounded almost disappointed to think she was.
“No!” At least she hoped that wasn’t the case. She couldn’t lose her edge. She couldn’t go all soft and sentimental over some sex.
No matter how mind-blowing that sex was.
“You know I am all about being fair,” she said. “About justice.”
And that was why they would never have anything beyond that mind-blowing sex.
“You’ll make a great judge,” he said.
“Someday,” she murmured. She knew she had a lot of dues to pay and politics to play before she would achieve her goal. And she couldn’t afford to be distracted the way Stone distracted her. She whirled away from the windows and walked toward his desk. “Maybe I should have saved it for court.”
She reached for her briefcase but he caught her wrist. “How are you going to admit this as evidence now?” he asked. “You can’t. It doesn’t prove anything.”
She jerked free of his grasp and stabbed at the photo. “Byron’s young bride was sleeping with his son. That’s why he killed her!”
He shook his head. “No. This shows who the real killer is.”
She snorted. “Now you want to blame his son?”
“I told you it was her lover,” he said. “I just didn’t know who the lover was.”
“Why can’t you accept that you’re representing a guilty man?” she asked.
“Because I’m not,” he stubbornly insisted.
“Are you going to claim you’ve never represented a guilty client?” she asked.
A muscle twitched along his cheek. “No.”
“Why?” she asked. “Why do you want to help the guilty elude justice?” That was something she would never be able to get over—the reason they could never really be together.
“You’re a hypocrite.” He called her on it. “You claim you’re all about justice.”
She tensed. “I am.”
“Then how can you forget that everyone is entitled to a fair trial?”
His accusation rankled, making her angry, and when Hillary got angry, she argued. Hell, she argued all the time. She knew it.
“I thought maybe you became a defense lawyer because you thought your parents didn’t get a fair trial,” she admitted. “But then I realized that you don’t represent people like your parents. You only represent rich people.”
“That’s not the case,” he said. “I represented the guard’s grandson.”
“Which benefited you as much as him,” she pointed out.
He ignored her. “And even if I did only represent rich people, why would that be an issue? Are you like Judge Harrison? Automatically prejudiced against the rich because you’re jealous they have more than you do?”
She laughed.
“That’s it, huh? You don’t think rich people deserve justice, too?”
“I have nothing against rich people,” she assured him. “In fact, the person I love the most in the whole world is much richer than Byron Mueller.”
He tensed, and then he snorted. “Dopey Dwight? I doubt that.”
“I don’t love Dwight,” she said.
“Who do you love?” he asked.
“My father.” And with that, she swooped her briefcase off his desk, snapped it shut and stalked out of his office. It was clear that with as much as they had in common, their differences were too great to overcome.