Rogue Acts Read online

  Because he’d never – not once – indicated he felt anything more than friendship.

  She’d put these feeling away for so long that she didn’t know what to do with them. How to handle them.

  “You better have something to drink in here,” he muttered, rummaging through the limo’s storage area.

  “There might be a bottle of champagne left from the nomination.” She pulled down her jacket, searching for some kind of composure. Equilibrium.

  It felt like the world had been tipped over. This new information changed everything.

  “How drunk are you?”

  “Not drunk enough. Ah-ha!” he said with ecstatic discovery when he found a half-full bottle of whisky. “I wondered where this went.” He pulled a red plastic cup from a small compartment, and she could taste the champagne they’d had out of those same cups just months ago.

  They’d been so happy. Or she had. And she’d believed that he was, too, but was all of that wrong? Had he been in pain? Had she been hurting him all along?

  “Want some?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  He poured a shot, stopped, seemed to consider something, and poured himself more.

  It had been a long time since she’d seen Jay so reckless. College. Her wedding. That weekend in Buffalo when the team got snowed in.

  I can’t be around you and not touch you.

  That night in Buffalo they’d had to share a room. And he’d acted like it was nothing. Like she was his sister. His mother. Some sexless roommate.

  Though he had spent most of the night in the twenty-four-hour restaurant.

  And she’d spent the night thinking of how she could convince him to come to bed with her. Rewriting their history, casting them as different people.

  Feeling foolish the whole damn night.

  “Have I been hurting you all this time?” she asked. Because of all the things she could think, all the things his confession made her feel—this was the worst.

  That she’d been such a shabby friend, so focused on hiding and managing her own feelings, that she didn’t even notice she’d been causing him pain.

  “I shouldn’t have said that,” he said and took another drink. A long one.

  “Is…is it awful being here? Working with me?”

  He set the cup down on his knee. Lifted it and set it back down again.

  Jay at a loss was a rare sight. She’d seen only once before. The night Ben died.

  “I never should have said that, either.”

  “And you want me to forget it, right?”

  “That would be ideal.”

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  He closed his eyes and rolled his head. Tired. He was tired. They all were. Yesterday she’d imagined for about ten minutes what it would be like to sit on a beach. To take off her shoes. To get a sunburn. To not have her phone. She’d imagined herself there alone for a few minutes, but that didn’t really make sense. She didn’t actually want to be alone on that imaginary beach.

  The rest of the time, those delicious ten minutes of vacation, Jay was by her side. His tie pulled off, his shirt sleeves rolled up. His shoes kicked off.

  “I’m drunk,” he said.

  “Not that drunk.”

  “Hey.” Jay found the button that controlled the dark screen between the front seat and the backseat, and he lowered the glass just enough that the driver’s head was visible. “Take me to my apartment,” Jay said.

  “Sure,” Gary said, and Jay pushed the button so the screen went right back up. The silence in the backseat was thick. Stifling. It was hard to breathe.

  He’ll reach for his phone in five…four…three…

  He fished through his suit jacket pulled out his phone and turned it on, and she could do the same. She could turn toward the window. Pull out her phone. She could make plans. Pretend not to feel anything more than friendship for him. She could go on the way she’d been going on.

  “Put your phone away,” she said. Because she didn’t want to go on the way she had been. The status quo was falling apart and there was no pretending. He ignored her, and she, frustrated and restrained for so long, smacked the phone out of his hand. It thumped to the floor.

  He looked up at her with wide eyes.

  “I won’t let you pretend like nothing happened.”

  “Pretending like nothing happened is what I do, Maggie. It’s what I’ve done with you…my whole life.”

  “Then stop.”

  “And do what?” He shrugged as if he didn’t know.

  The temperature in her body skyrocketed, and suddenly all she could think about were all the things she hadn’t let herself feel, hadn’t let herself imagine about his beard and his thin, wiry strength, about his mouth. She was flooded, bombarded by everything she’d pushed away and tried to ignore.

  Because he’d never, not once, indicated he’d felt that way about her.

  “Whatever it is you want to do.”

  She tried to sound firm. Like the candidate.

  But she sounded like a forty-year-old woman who hadn’t been touched in a long, long time. And wanted – desperately – to be.

  By him.

  He lifted his eyebrow, one gesture, one small thing, and it felt like her skin was burning off. She opened her mouth, trying to pull in a breath.

  “What I want?” he asked. “You have no idea what you’re saying.”

  “You said you wanted me.” That tremble in her voice wasn’t good. Wasn’t strong. But she couldn’t stop it.

  He tossed the empty red cup on the floor. “What do you want?”

  “You,” she whispered, and immediately his hands touched her waist. The flat of his palms cupped her tummy, his fingertips spread wide like the boning of a corset. She gasped. Moaned in her throat. Agonized by that touch.

  “You want this?” he asked. “My hands on you?”

  She couldn’t speak. Her mouth was too dry. Her brain too burned up.

  Her silence he took for nonconsent, and he pulled back. She reached forward and grabbed his hands, pressing them back to her stomach.

  His eyes searched hers.

  “What are you doing, Maggie?” he asked.

  “Being touched.”

  He groaned, dropped his head, and they were close enough she could lean forward, press her cheek to his head.

  Finally, she thought. Finally.

  His hands slid around her waist, up to her shoulders, and then back down. He didn’t kiss her. He didn’t reach for her breasts. He just touched her, stroked her, and breathed her in.

  “I fucking love this suit,” he said.

  “Me too.” Her body was igniting, small flames everywhere. She was damp, and the emptiness inside her felt unfillable. Unsatisfiable. She was restless and agitated with longing. With desire.

  So long. It had been…so long.

  And it seemed she had wanted him forever.

  The car stopped, the engine idling, and at the sound of the window between the front and back seats being cracked, they jumped apart.

  “We’re here.” The driver said and then the window was rolled back up.

  Jay was wiping a hand over his face. “This…this was—”

  He was about to say a mistake. Or something equally preposterous. Something that would send them both home alone. And she couldn’t take it. Not tonight. Not…feeling like this.

  “Invite me in.”

  “To my apartment?”

  She nodded.

  “Maggie,” he moaned like she was hurting him again. And a pain so sharp it brought tears to her eyes lanced her right through the stomach.

  “Okay,” she whispered. “Never mind. I don’t…I don’t know how to have you and not hurt you.”

  “Have me?”

  “Isn’t that what this is?” Having each other. Wasn’t that what sex was? It was what she’d been thinking of for months. Years, if she was being honest. Having him. Taking him. Being taken. God…just thinking the words made her half c
razed.

  He grabbed her hand, his big wide paw curling over hers. Even that seemed more sexual than it should.

  “Maggie,” he said. “I need you to be really clear. You want to have sex—”

  “Yes.” It burst out of her like the alien in that movie.

  “With me?”

  “Who else is here?” She laughed, sounding hysterical. But then she realized what he was thinking. Who he was thinking of.

  “Ben’s been gone five years, Jay.”

  “Yeah, but if I take you upstairs are you going to be pretending he’s back?”

  She gaped at him. Did he really think that? That he meant so little to her? That he was simply a stand-in for her long-dead husband?

  She touched his face, put her fingers through all that fur, forced his attention back to her.

  “No. No…not…at all, Jay. Not at all.”

  He stared down at his shoes. He did that when he was thinking. When he was weighing things out. Consequences. Cost–benefit analysis.

  The staff made jokes about his shoes being some kind of oracle.

  She wondered what she could say that would reassure him, but apparently it didn’t matter. He grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the car. Jack and Rick got out of the SUV behind them, and she waved them off.

  “It’s fine. I’m fine. You can stay here.”

  “Let them do their jobs,” Jay said, dropping her hand.

  “Jay—”

  “The death threats?”

  “You think they followed me here?”

  “I think after tonight I probably have a few of my own. And I won’t risk you getting hurt.”

  That sobered her, and she nodded. Because she wouldn’t risk him getting hurt, either.

  Jay gave Rick his keys and her security went in to sweep his apartment.

  Jay went back to studying his shoes, his body inches away from hers. But it felt like he was miles away. Miles and miles. Because she didn’t know what he was thinking.

  And she realized that all these years she’d actually never known what he was thinking.

  Not even a little.

  This man she thought she knew as well as she knew herself was suddenly a stranger.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  4

  “What am I thinking?” he asked, astonished. Well, embarrassed maybe. He hadn’t talked so much about his feelings…ever. “Are you forgetting that I told all of Hell’s Kitchen what I was thinking about twenty minutes ago?”

  “No. I haven’t…” She ran a hand down her stomach, across the buttons of her jacket. The belt. “I haven’t forgotten.”

  He turned on her, facing her, looking her in the eye for the first time since telling her he’d have died for her. And her face, as familiar to him as his own, was the same as it ever was. Beautiful…so damn beautiful. But unreadable to him.

  Untouchable, somehow.

  How, he wondered, how did he love her, know her so well and yet not at all?

  “How about you?” he asked. “How about you, for once, tell me how you feel. Tell me what you’re thinking. You’re the goddamned Sphinx, Maggie. You always have been.”

  “I’m thinking I haven’t been touched in six years.” The words came out of her like a sob. “He was sick and then gone, and there’s been nothing.” She held her hands wide against her stomach, holding herself together. “And I want…”

  Oh, God, she was cracking open in front of him. And he saw her loneliness. The sharp pain of it. The never-ending ache of it.

  He’d been so busy wanting her and not having her, he’d never thought of what she wanted and didn’t have.

  “Maggie, I’ll take care of you.” It would be his fucking privilege to take care of that for her. To ease that particular ache. He’d lie down in traffic for a shot at it. He reached for her, for her hand, but she flinched away.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She looked up at the night sky, the illuminated clouds, the searchlights from Madison Square Gardens.

  “It’s…ridiculous,” she said. “I’m forty years old and I feel like an idiot. Like I’m nineteen again. But not in the good way.”

  “Nothing about you is ridiculous.”

  “There’s only…ever been Ben. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know if I remember. I don’t know—”

  She was saying she’d only slept with Ben.

  “This is a mistake,” she said, reading his face, the shock he wasn’t quite able to hide. “We shouldn’t…I can’t…”

  She turned to leave, but he grabbed her hand.

  Ah, honesty. Was it worth it? Fuck it, he thought. Fuck it. He’d blown up everything else tonight, why not this?

  “Even if it’s this is one night, I don’t care. Even…and maybe it’s because I’m drunk…but even if this ruins everything, even if we can’t look at each other tomorrow…I don’t care. That’s how bad I want you, Maggie.”

  The apartment building door opened, and Rick and Jack came out and gave Jay his keys back. “All clear,” they said.

  He looked long and hard at her, because this had to be her decision. He loved her. He would do whatever she asked. Whatever she wanted.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” she said to Rick and Jack, and then she took the keys out of Jack’s hand. She took two steps and turned around to face him where he stood, rooted to the ground.

  “You coming?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Unable to swallow his grin, he followed her. Into hell if that’s where she was going.

  This might go up in flames. But who was he kidding? There was a seventy-five percent chance of this going up in flames—but he was past caring.

  All these years and it was finally happening.

  At the door to his apartment she stepped aside, and he felt the heat of her all along his left side. It was as if that suit had turned to fire.

  “After you,” he breathed,letting her walk in first.

  His place was clean because he paid a guy to keep it that way and then never actually lived here. So he didn’t have to worry about dirty clothes and a slightly rotten food smell in his kitchen.

  But he had plenty of other stuff to worry about.

  She hasn’t been touched. Not by anyone in six years.

  And he didn’t know why that was a surprise to him. But it was. It just…was.

  Because he’d wanted to touch her every minute of every day for those six years. Because he couldn’t imagine every man on the planet not feeling the same way.

  But her not being touched was about her, not people with penises.

  She stood in front of his windows. The curtains were closed, so he knew she wasn’t taking in the view. She was just…hiding.

  In all their life together, she’d taken the lead. He was her right hand. Her sword. But in this…in this he was going to be in charge. In control. Otherwise he knew it wouldn’t happen.

  He stepped up behind her, his hands on her waist. Felt the heat and strength of her through that suit. He felt her gasp, the hitch of her breath, the stiffening and then sudden relaxing of her whole body.

  Yes, he thought. Yes.

  He ran his hands down her hips and then by touch he began to undo that little back belt. And then the red buttons on the front of her suit.

  His fingers felt the silk of her chemise. He felt the heat of her skin, the warm curves of her breasts. And touch was enough…it was almost too much. Almost the end of him.

  He groaned and leaned forward, resting his head against her neck.

  “What…? What’s wrong?” she breathed, her hands covering his. Or covering herself.

  He’d never in his life seen her so unsure. Naked without the confidence she was known for. It broke his heart. Humbled him.

  “Nothing,” he breathed. “I’ve just…been thinking about this moment for a while.”

  “How long?”

  “Since 1994.”

  She laughed, her skin rising to meet his touch, and then he cu
pped her breasts in his hands. Groaning, he stepped closer until he was touching her spine with his chest. Her ass with the hard length of his erection. Her head fell back against his shoulder, and he set his lips to her neck.

  She tasted of perfume and sweat, just a little, and her. Maggie.

  Jesus.

  His cock throbbed, and suddenly he was flooded with every dream he’d ever had of her. Every base fantasy. Every dark wish.

  “When are you going on-air?” he asked.

  “What?” she breathed.

  “How long do we have?”

  She lifted her wrist and looked at her watch. “We have six hours.”

  “We better get moving,” he said.

  “You’re in a hurry?”

  “I’ve got a long list of things I need to do to you, Maggie Perkins.”

  His hands squeezed, finding the pressure she liked. That made her gasp. That made her lean back against him with more of her weight. Her nipples were hard and hot against his palms and he rolled them between his thumbs and forefingers until she was shaking.

  Until suddenly she stood up, away from him, and turned around.

  “I’ve got a few things I’ve thought about, too,” she said.

  He blinked. Surprised. This had been one-sided his whole goddamn life.

  “What…what do you want to do?” he asked.

  “This.” She put her fingers against his beard, rubbing one way and then the other, smiling slightly at the sensation. Which made him smile, because he liked seeing her happy on a basic level.

  Her thumbs touched the upward bend of his lips, where the smile generated, and she brushed one thumb across his bottom lip.

  And then she kissed him. Her mouth against his. Her breath. The taste of her…

  He tried to be careful. He did. He tried to be respectful. But everything was falling off him. Chains of restraint and care, all of them gone, and he wrapped his arms around her, holding onto her tight while his lips opened and his mouth claimed hers.

  Claimed.

  Ravished.

  Owned.

  And she opened up and claimed him right back.

  His blood was gasoline, the touch of her hands, the kiss of her mouth, all of it matches, and he couldn’t breathe for wanting her. He couldn’t think.

  She started pushing his jacket off his shoulders, yanking up his shirttails. He did the same to her, pushing that sexy red jacket off her body. Lifting the chemise she wore free from her waistband.