STONE WAITED FOR the guy to get the picture and walk away. But he lingered yet in the hallway, as if he expected to stay and for Stone to leave. He was not going anywhere, though. And he was damn well not going to let this guy stay, either.
“So you’re just friends?” Stone asked him.
“Good friends,” Dwight Whatever replied. And there was innuendo in his voice. He was more than just a friend, and he wanted Stone to know that.
The blond guy turned toward Hillary now, and his voice lowered to an almost desperate plea. “I really need to talk to you, Larry.”
She sighed and shook her head. “I don’t think I’m the one you need to talk to.”
“But that’s complicated, and you and I don’t do complicated.” He glanced at Stone, though, and it was in his gaze and in his voice—the warning so many people had given Stone was being given to Hillary now.
Her good friend was warning her that it was too complicated for her to get involved with Stone.
Hillary didn’t need any reminder of that; she was well aware and that was why she’d banned Stone from her office. She obviously hadn’t counted on him finding her home, which was understandable since it hadn’t been easy for him to manage. It had taken him almost the whole damn week.
He’d lost enough time tracking her down. He didn’t intend to waste another minute on this guy. “I need to talk to Hillary,” Stone said.
Dwight didn’t budge from the doorway. “About the trial?” he asked, but he was clearly skeptical because he added, “Shouldn’t that be done at the courthouse or in your offices?”
“Haven’t you been a lawyer long enough to know that’s not how things always get done?”
“So you’re here to ask for a plea?” Hillary asked, and her lips curved into a triumphant smile.
“You know why I’m here,” he said. And it wasn’t to plead for his client. He wanted to plead for himself, for one more time.
At least...
Her blue eyes darkened, and her face flushed.
“You’re losing this one,” Dwight said, and whatever hero worship he’d been showing Stone was gone now.
Stone only spared him a glance. All his attention was on Hillary now.
Always...
That was the problem. That was probably why he was losing. His client was right to be worried. Stone needed to focus on the case, but he couldn’t do that until he relieved some of this tension inside him.
He could have called someone else. Hillary apparently might have. No. It sounded like Dwight had shown up on his own.
But if Stone hadn’t arrived when he had, would she have already let dopey Dwight inside? Not just her apartment but her body?
The thought sent some strong feeling coursing through him—so intense that he clenched his hands into fists. It wasn’t just anger. Anger he could control. This was stronger than that and had Stone stepping closer to the thinner man.
While his partners had used their charm and brains to survive on the streets when they were all teen runaways, Stone had used his size. Sometimes the brains and the charm had taken too long. Size was instant intimidation that usually had people backing down.
Dwight backed down. Actually, he backed up against the wall behind him. Then he looked to Hillary as if imploring her to help him.
Maybe he thought Stone would leave if she told him to. But even if she did, Stone wasn’t going anywhere. He’d worked too hard to find her. He was, at the least, going to talk to her. But he wanted more than that. He needed more than that.
He needed her. She was the woman he wanted. Maybe it was because of the trial—because the heat of their arguments fueled the heat of their passion.
Once the trial was over, maybe whatever was between them would cool off. Or go away completely. He hoped that was the case.
He didn’t want complicated any more than Hillary and Dwight. And it couldn’t get much more complicated than this thing with Hillary already was.
She hadn’t said anything yet, so Dwight implored her, “Tell him to leave.”
“You’re the one who needs to leave,” Stone said. And he stepped closer until the guy was pressed entirely flat against the wall. “Now!”
Finally, Hillary moved from her doorway and grabbed Stone’s arm, tugging him back. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.
Dwight had enough space now to ease from between the wall and Stone. He moved down the hall to where it curved around the bank of elevators. “Man, you must really hate to lose,” he bitterly remarked to Stone.
“You’re the one leaving,” Stone pointed out. So he was the one losing.
Dwight must have realized that because disappointment flashed in his eyes just before he literally turned that corner.
And Stone figuratively turned a corner. He went from the suave, cultured lawyer he had become back to the street kid who was always ready to fight.
Dwight was gone, so he turned toward Hillary. She was usually always ready to fight, too. And as if she’d read his mind, she swung her hand and slapped his shoulder.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” she asked again. “Why are you acting like a Neanderthal?”
“Because I am one,” he admitted. “You think it’s just a press release, but I was once a teenage runaway.”
She narrowed her eyes with suspicion. “Really? I know for a fact that not all your press releases are factual.”
“Not the last one,” he admitted. He knew she had no interest in her boss’s job. “But you are all about winning—your good friend just said so.”
He barely knew Dwight, but he hated the guy—hated that he’d touched her like Stone wanted to touch her again. Needed to touch her.
“And from living on the streets,” Stone continued, “I learned that I had to fight for what I wanted.”
“What do you want?” Hillary asked, and her usually strong voice sounded breathless.
She knew.
But he told her anyway. “You!” Then he pulled her into his arms. Her feet dangling above the floor, he walked her backward into her apartment and kicked the door closed behind them.
“I didn’t—”
Whatever she’d been about to say was lost when his mouth covered hers. He’d been so hungry for her for so long that he kissed her deeply, with all the emotion coursing through him. He didn’t recognize that first one—that one had been more intense than anger—because he’d never felt it before.
But he felt it again as he thought of Dwight coming here to be with Hillary. And he wanted to brand her as his.
He’d never felt such a primitive urge before. It was even more intense than when he’d lost control the first time they’d had sex. But just like then, she matched his passion.
Her fingers clutched his hair. But she didn’t pull him away from her. She held his head to hers as she kissed him back. Her desire was in her lips as they moved hungrily over his, in her tongue as it darted inside his mouth to taste him. Then she ran her hands over his sweater, molding the cashmere to his chest before she tugged on the hem to pull it up.
He stepped back, just enough so that he could drag off his sweater. Then he reached for hers. It had already fallen off one shoulder, leaving it bare but for the thin strap of a black bra. He tugged the sweater off and unclasped her bra so that it dropped to the floor, too.
Then he pushed down her pants and the little scrap of lace she wore beneath them. He had to have her now.
She reached for his belt, jerked it loose and lowered his zipper, metal hissing. His breath hissed, too, out between his clenched teeth, as she touched him, her fingers stroking over the head of his engorged cock.
He was too close to the edge. So he pulled her hand away. His was shaking as he fumbled for a condom and tore it open. He rolled it on quickly before he lifted her up and eased inside her.
She locked her legs and arms around him, clutching him as she moved. She was as desperate for release as he was, and for him as he was for her.
He turned her so that her back leaned against her front door. And he took her right there, just inside her apartment. He took her in a frenzy of need.
And not just for release.
He needed to be with her on a more elemental level, as if he was claiming her as his. He lowered his head and kissed her breasts, moving his mouth over the fullness of one before closing his lips over a nipple. He nipped at it gently with his teeth, and she cried out.
But it wasn’t in pain. She bucked and writhed in his arms, arching her hips as she slid up and down him.
Her inner muscles convulsed, squeezing him as she came, screaming his name. And his name on her lips snapped the last of his control.
He thrust again and again until his body tensed, then shuddered as a powerful release overtook him. He came and came...like he had never come before.
And when it was over, his knees shook, and he felt a fear like he hadn’t felt since he’d been living alone on the streets—before he’d found the other guys. No. He felt even more vulnerable than he had then. Back then he’d been afraid of losing his life.
Now he was afraid of losing his heart.
* * *
“What the hell was that?” Hillary asked as Stone stepped out of the small bathroom. Like her, he’d dressed again. He must have even splashed some water on his face because a droplet dripped off his rigid jaw.
Or maybe it was sweat. Hillary’s skin was damp beneath her sweater. She felt flushed yet, hot. And despite that release that had turned her muscles—the few she had—to mush, she wanted him again.
He looked so damn handsome, even with his jaw clenched and his brow furrowed. He seemed as frustrated as he’d been when he’d shown up at her door.
“I don’t know,” Stone said.
And she believed he was being honest. He had no idea. And neither did she. What was it about him that affected her so much, that made her want him?
Even now, after that mind-blowing orgasm, she wanted him again. But she wanted some answers first. “Why are you really here?”
“After that, you need to ask?”
“You don’t need me for that,” she said. “I’m sure there are slews of women who would be happy to have sex with you.” Desperate even. And she’d vowed not to become one of those women. But anytime they were alone together she forgot that vow, forgot what a bad idea it was to have sex with opposing counsel in the biggest trial of her career.
“Is that why Dwight was here?” he bitterly asked. “For sex with you?”
He sounded so pissy that she couldn’t help but smile. “Jealous?” she asked.
His eyes widened as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him. But then, given his life, the way women threw themselves at him and his partners, he’d probably never had a reason to feel jealous before.
But he shook his head. He was either in denial or too proud to admit the truth. “I just want to know what the hell you have with that guy,” he said. “The same thing you have with me?”
She’d never had with anyone else what she had with Stone. But she wasn’t about to admit that to him. “We don’t have anything,” she told him, “except a trial in common.”
He stepped closer to her and called her on the lie. “Bullshit. You know we have more than that—we have this...” He leaned down and kissed her, driving his tongue inside her mouth like he’d driven himself into her body. When he pulled away, they were both panting for breath. “You don’t have that with skinny little Dwight,” he said. “You can’t.”
“I can’t have anything with you,” she said. “Not when we’re both on this trial.” Maybe she shouldn’t have talked her boss out of taking the case from her. It was what Stone had wanted, but she didn’t think it was because he wanted to publicly date her.
He only wanted sex with her. Not a relationship. And that was all this was: sex. And she wouldn’t let that—or anything else—affect how she handled the trial.
His lips curved into that slight wicked grin of his. “How the hell did you talk Wilson Tremont out of taking it away from you?”
“I pointed out it’s what you want,” she said. “Because you think you can beat him. You know you’re going to lose to me.”
He shook his head. “If you get a conviction, the one who’s going to lose is Byron Mueller,” he said. “He’s innocent.”
She laughed. “How can you say that? I’ve pretty much presented my whole case, and there’s overwhelming evidence showing that he did it. He killed his wife.”
But Stone just stubbornly shook his head again. “No, he didn’t.”
“The only thing you had to prove his innocence was that fake alibi,” she said. “And those bank records blew that up. You’re going to lose.”
That was probably what was wrong with him—just like Dwight had suggested. He really hated to lose—probably because he’d done it so rarely. If ever...
She wasn’t sure if he’d ever actually lost a case. Usually if it looked like he wasn’t going to win, he pleaded them down to lesser charges.
“You wouldn’t have those records if not for that damn office mole,” he muttered as he glanced around her apartment. It was small. The hall opened onto a tiny living room that doubled as the dining room with a kitchen in a corner of it. There was one other door off the hall and that was to her bedroom. She wasn’t letting him in there, though.
She shouldn’t have let him inside at all. And she definitely shouldn’t have had sex with him.
“You wouldn’t have turned them over?” she asked.
“I didn’t have them,” he said.
She wasn’t sure if she believed him. He’d already proved that he would do anything to win: even her. But she wasn’t throwing this trial just because she was starting to have...
What?
What was she starting to have for him?
Feelings?
A chill chased down her spine, and she shivered despite the heaviness of her sweater. No. It wasn’t possible. She had vowed long ago to never fall in love with anyone. She knew all relationships eventually ended, or one person let the other person down.
She didn’t want to get hurt.
Again...