Sacrifice (7 page)

It didn’t take Jared long to find
his prey. After escorting Kimberly to her bedroom where she swore she was going
to take a nap, Jared went hunting.

Knowing that one of the men
Kimberly should be able to trust was no more than a Judas sent by her father
was more than he could stomach. The Senator was beginning to piss him off in
ways that Jared knew wasn’t healthy for either of them.

Kimberly should have never been a
pawn in whatever fanatical vision her ancestor had. The Trust was bad enough,
holding over her head the preservation of an estate that should have rightfully
been hers without such extreme conditions. But to know that her father, the man
who should have cared more for her happiness and welfare, cared only about the
preservation of her chastity, that should be criminal.

Kimberly hadn’t been born to
restrain the natural sensuality that burned within her body. It was like a
flame, white-hot and intense, threatening to burn the man lucky enough to tap
into it. As Jared had. His body tightened at the knowledge that he had released
a passion inside her that he knew even she had been unaware existed.

His ears still rang with her
screams, her pleas for release. The scent of her arousal had been like the dew,
fresh and wild, sweet and clean. Her body had been like a flame, undulating
beneath his lips and tongue, spilling the sweet essence of her need to his
greedy lips. He’d be damned if he’d let her pay for the pleasure she had found
in his arms.

He moved silently through the
house, his eyes narrowed as he entered the hall in time to see his office door
closing silently. Within seconds, he had opened the door, pushing it forcefully
into the bastard on the other side before stepping in and grabbing the
bodyguard by the back of the neck and shaking him like a recalcitrant pup.

For a bodyguard, the bastard was a
simpleton. Jared had seen more experience in street thugs than he saw in the
moron he threw away from him.

“Hey… Dammit, what’s your problem?”
Tim Adams turned on him, his body moving into an attack position before he saw
Jared.

Jared smiled in anticipation. He
could see the other man’s desire to jump, to attack. It quivered in the muscles
of his body, glittered in his hazel eyes and flushed his pale face with an
unattractive ruddy color.

“Go for it,” he said simply, his
body relaxed, ready for any move the other man would make. “I dare you.”

Adams tensed, then evidently
thought before attacking the man he had been sent to guard.

“This is my office,” Jared said
simply, warningly as the other man stood down. “You don’t have any business
here.”

Adams’ lips firmed as his gaze went
around the room before pausing at the couch. There was no mistaking the
dampness that still lingered on the center cushion, proof of Kimberly’s passion
and her need.

Jared watched as fury built within
the younger man, his body shaking with it.

“Sorry,” he finally snapped with no
sign of apology. “Wrong turn.”

He moved to pass Jared and escape.

“I don’t think so, junior.” Jared
caught Adams in a neck hold that had him gasping for breath, his body tensing
in surprise.

“I think you know just how easy it
would be for me to snap your neck right now,” Jared kept his tone pleasant
despite the fury pouring through him. “Someone as well trained as yourself,
Adams, should know better than to ever turn your back on your enemy. And trust
me, you just made an enemy,” he growled at the other man’s ear. “Now you listen
here, and you listen good. Kimberly is none of your business. Period. And don’t
think you can report this to the Senator and get away with it. Won’t happen,
son, I’ll hear about it. And when I do, I’ll kill you. You understand me?”

Adams choked with fury, the harsh
sounds of his anger and his fight to breathe filled the room for long seconds
before Jared loosened his hold enough to allow him to take a breath.

“You understand me, Adams?” he
repeated the question, keeping his voice soft, deadly.

“He’ll find out,” Adams gasped.
“She won’t get away with it.”

Jared smiled tightly. “As long as
she remains a virgin, she can get away with whatever the hell she wants to,
right?” He tightened his hold as Adams struggled vainly for release. “Answer
me, boy, before I break your neck now.”

“Yes,” Adams hissed.

“Exactly.” Jared loosed the grip on
his neck further. “But whether she does or not, you’re not going to be
spreading any tales are you, pissant? You want to know why? Because you know
who I am. You know what I can do. And you know I will kill you. Don’t you,
Adams?”

“Yes.” Raw helpless rage echoed in
the voice.

“Good boy,” Jared commended him
mockingly. “Now, you make sure you remember this little lesson, because I would
sure hate to have to spill blood in my house. My housekeeper gets real testy
when she has to clean up the mess. We wouldn’t want that, would we?”

Jared released him slowly, watching
with narrowed eyes as Adams tore out away from him. The smaller man turned
back, his eyes flashing with anger.

“Do you think the Senator doesn’t
know what she is?” Adams snarled. “Do you think he won’t have her checked first
thing after this assignment?”

Jared stilled the need to kill the
other man. Hiding the body would be a pure pain anyway.

“Won’t matter,” he finally said,
his voice chillingly cold. “She’ll be a virgin. He won’t win and neither will
you. I’ll make certain of it. Now get the hell out of my office before I lose
my control and show you just how far you’re pushing me right now.”

He evidently didn’t have to give a
second warning. Adams shot out of the room, the curse that fell from his lips
echoing in the room behind him.

“Get fucked.”

Jared sighed wearily. If only…

Kimberly admitted she had little
experience with the male of the species. And she had even less experience with
this relationship deal that Jared seemed to want. She felt unprepared for him,
inadequate in the face of the experience she was beginning to suspect he had.

She had merely played at The Club.
A visit every three months, a quick tumble across whatever table was handy and
off she would go. There had been no emotional attachment, no sentiment. And she
hadn’t wanted any, couldn’t afford any.

But she was learning that Jared
intended to play the game by a whole other set of rules. The truly frightening
part was the fact that rather than feeling intimidated or threatened by the
intimacies he had warned her were coming, she was instead, excited, nervous,
balanced on a laser point of uncertainty and exhilaration that should have been
terrifying.

As she stepped from the shower
later that evening and toweled off slowly, Kimberly admitted she was in deep
trouble where Jared was concerned. But she had known for months now that he
represented a danger to the goals she had kept firmly in mind for the past six
years.

She had only five years left to go.
Remain a virgin for five more years and she would win. She would do what no
other woman in her mother’s family had been able to in five generations. She
would laugh in the face of the edicts that had governed her life since
adulthood and in her father’s face in particular.

Five more years.

She sighed deeply as she smoothed
lotion over her body, paying particular attention to the waxed folds of her
cunt and her firm breasts. Her nipples were peaked and hard, her flesh
sensitized as she remembered Jared’s touch.

A small smile tipped her lips as
she shook her head, drawing her hands firmly away from her body and picking up
the blow dryer. The unruly mass of long, red gold curls took forever to dry.
But she loved the sensuous feeling of it as it slid over her bare back and
curled around her shoulders. She felt feminine, desirable. And when Jared’s
fingers threaded through it, flexing and tugging at the long strands, sending
shards of pleasure and intense sensuality erupting along her nerve endings like
wildfire, it increased the wanton sensations.

He was a creature of sexuality, of
pleasure. A grin tugged her lips at the thought. Jared would understand why it
felt good to lay naked in the sun, or to swim nude in the ocean. He might not
do it, man that he was, but he would understand her need to do it.

A frown tipped her brow at that
thought. Why should she care if he understood? He wouldn’t be a part of her
life; she couldn’t allow him to be a part of her life. Five years could be an
eternity if she let her emotions for Jared get out of hand. Or it could slide
by without a ripple if she kept her heart free.

She had a feeling though, her heart
was already involved.

She flipped off the dryer and laid
it carefully on the sink as she closed her eyes, drawing in deep, controlled
breaths. Just the thought of him made her more aware of her own body and the
satisfaction she was denying it.

She had accepted years ago that she
would be tormented by the same desires that her father claimed were demons
inside her mother. An intense sexuality, a need to be touched, a need to feel
more than just a tame caress from her lover.

She wanted to be spanked. She loved
having her ass opened, feeling a cock boring deep inside that forbidden
entrance. Having her nipples roughened, her hands restrained. And the thought
of experiencing those acts with Jared sent moisture weeping desperately from
her vagina.

“Now there’s a look that could
bring a grown man to his knees.”

Kimberly breathed in roughly as she
jerked around, staring back at Jared as her blood began to race through her
veins, her heart pounding in double-time to the throb in her clit.

“You don’t believe in knocking?”
she asked him, wondering at the husky pitch of her own voice.

He leaned against the doorframe,
crossing his arms over his chest, and watched her intently as she pulled the
blue silk robe from the hook beside the sink and shrugged into it.

“It’s my house,” he excused himself
with an amused smirk as she belted the robe.

“Lord of the manor, huh?” she asked
him with a smile, her gaze going over his tall body, and feeling the helpless
femininity he never failed to inspire in her.

“If I can get by with it.” His eyes
gleamed with laughter as the sensual curve of his lips deepened.

She shook her head, feeling
something inside her loosen and lighten with his laughter.

“You’re too arrogant for your own
good,” she warned him then. “One of these days, someone is going to knock you
down a peg or two, Jared.”

He grunted at that, a sound of
disbelief and superior male self-assurance all in one.

“You can try if you want, baby,” he
told her, the smug smile firmly in place as his gaze went over her body. “The
struggle could get interesting.”

Kimberly licked her lips as she
fought the nervousness determined to attack her system. Nerves or uncontrolled
arousal, at this point she wasn’t certain which it was, the only thing she knew
for certain was her inability to fight the attraction building between them.

“Think you’ll win, do you?” she
asked as she approached him slowly, watching his eyes narrow, darken with lust.

“Definitely.” His voice was laced
with such arrogance she didn’t know if she wanted to grit her teeth in
irritation or laugh at the subtle challenge she knew he was deliberately laying
in front of her.

“And what is it you’re playing
for?” She stopped directly in front of him, staring up at him, determined to
stay as cool and amused as he appeared.

She could feel the subtle
undercurrents though, the tension rising between them as her breasts became
more sensitive, her nipples harder. She could feel him, his very presence,
sinking into her. It was a strange, oddly comforting feeling, and all the more
terrifying for it.

His lips tilted self-mockingly as
his eyes gleamed with rueful laughter.

“Whatever the hell I can get,” he
growled as he reached out for her, his expression changing abruptly from amused
arousal to hard, driving lust.

Before she could do more than gasp
his name, he was pulling her through the connecting door and into his bedroom.
She had a quick impression of heavy, dark wood furniture, reflected in the dim
light from the bedside table before he picked her up and tossed her on the
thick mattress of the bed.

Kimberly came to her knees quickly,
her eyes narrowing as she watched him unbutton the dark blue cotton shirt he
wore. His deeply tanned fingers worked at the buttons quickly, freeing the
cloth before shrugging it from his muscular shoulders.

She had no intentions of fighting
him. No desire to delay the promise she could see glittering in his dark gray
eyes. Her lips opened then, her tongue peeking out to dampen the curves as his
hands went to the belt of his jeans.

“Am I about to be ravished?” she
asked him huskily while her heart raced out of control.

His lips quirked in a sideways
smile that had melted her heart for a year. Did he know, she wondered, what
that smile did to her?

It warmed her heart, heated her
arousal and made her feel like the most beautiful woman ever created. A smile
she considered hers alone, simply because she had never seen him smile in such
a way with anyone else.

“Ravished, ravaged, eaten alive,”
he growled. “You have no idea, Kimberly, just how eager I am to possess that
sweet little tush of yours.”

His words shouldn’t have sent heat
striking forcefully into her womb, but that was exactly what they did.

Then her breath caught in her
throat as he loosened his jeans and began to push them from his lean hips,
revealing the full extent of his arousal. His cock was fully erect, engorged
with his need for her. She watched, entranced, as the fingers of one hand
encircled it, stroked slowly as he kicked the jeans away and advanced on the
bed.

“Take the robe off.” His voice was
deep, dark. A forbidden vein of emotion throbbed beneath it, making her throat
tighten in response.

Her fingers fumbled at the belt for
a second before the loose knot came free, allowing the edges to fall apart
until they draped enticingly over the swollen curves of her breasts.

Her nipples ached, burned for
relief. The weight of the gold rings that pierced them was more pronounced, an
erotic little pain that reminded her of the rasp of his teeth against the
sensitive points.

“Take it off,” he ordered again,
watching her from beneath lowered lids.

“You take it off.” She was
breathing so harshly she could barely say the words.

That smile. It flashed again,
slightly crooked, a bit boyish.

He was having fun. That knowledge
was nearly as strong as the arousal. He was having fun with her. Had anyone
ever had fun with her? She was sure they must have, but she had never felt the
knowledge that they were like she did now.

“A dare.” He appeared to approve.
“I think I can handle that, Kimber…” He caught her ankles, pulling her to the
edge of the bed with a quick movement. “But can you?”

She expected another of the hard,
hungry kisses he destroyed her mind with. Expected him to consume her. Instead,
he destroyed her.

He rested his forehead against
hers, staring into her eyes, allowing her to see the shifting color, the unchecked
emotion, the essence of him as his hands moved to her shoulders and began to
slowly, gently ease the silk from her.

“Jared…” Chills of pleasure raced
over her body, making her shiver at what she saw, at what she felt.

She blinked back tears, and yet
didn’t understand why they welled in her eyes, why she felt shaken to the very
core of her being.

“Your eyes are darkening, baby,” he
whispered roughly. “I can see the heat rising within you; see the need growing
to a fever pitch. Do you know what that does to me? How hard it makes me to
know I can turn those pretty green eyes almost black with hunger?”

The silk slid over her hands as she
lifted her arms, pooling about her hips as she raised her hands to his face.
Her fingers touched his lips. Trembled. They were warm, not moist or slick but
like heated velvet against her fingertips.

She whimpered, her lips parting
with a soundless cry as his eyes darkened in turn. Stormy. Like the turbulent
center of a storm she feared she would never survive.

She shuddered then as his hands
moved as well, cupping the swollen weight of her breasts, his fingers rasping
over the hard nipples and sending flares of white-hot heat spearing to the
depths of her pussy.

She was burning alive. She could
feel the blood racing through her veins, boiling with the intensity of
sensation building within her. A touch shouldn’t do this, she screamed
silently. It shouldn’t wrap her, not just in pleasure, but in an emotion that
terrified her.

“I could touch you forever.” His
lips moved against her trembling fingers, his breath a caress she felt clear to
her soul. “You’re like hot silk and satin, as seductive as sin itself, Kimber.”

His head lowered then, turning to
brush her fingers against his chin, to nudge them aside as he sought her lips in
a kiss so soft it was like the caress of fairy wings against hers.

“Touch me, baby,” he whispered the
heated plea against her lips. “Touch me, Kimber, like we’ll never touch again…”

Like he was touching her.