All The Queen's Men (Fantasy Heights) (3 page)

Mr. Hughes pressed. “You feel very responsible for these people, don’t you? Very protective.”

“I suppose so, yes.”

He stared at her again, and she struggled to maintain eye contact. He was taking her measure, she knew.

He frowned, looking troubled.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Nothing, I… Never mind. Let’s move on to another event.” He crossed Phillip’s name off the list. “I need to know what happened between Josh and Thomas after you all left the Accord offices. So far, I’ve been unable to get a straight answer about what started the argument, or what was said.”

Fantastic. This was the last topic Amanda wanted to discuss. “It was nothing. Just the guys venting a little stress, is all.”

“Stress over what?”

“I don’t see how this is relevant.”

“I don’t care what you see. Tell me exactly what happened.”

Okay, then. This was a lot worse than she thought. The DA was not following a logical plan. He was upset, and this interview could take any turn down any dark alley at any time.

Her mind churned, trying to find the harm in explaining the fight. For the life of her, she couldn’t find any reason not to. According to Thomas, Mr. Hughes was all too familiar with the working parts of that confrontation anyhow.

Amanda replayed the argument, repeating it as best as she could remember. The four of them—Thomas, Josh, Max and herself—had convened in the parking lot, standing alongside Thomas’s SUV. Thomas and Max were about to leave for the airport, on their way to Arizona. As so often happened, the argument started about one thing, and then escalated to its true cause.

Josh had grown quiet and sullen, and she had finally seen for herself what Thomas had meant about Josh not handling the resurgence of Janos very well.

He had deliberately picked that fight. Her mellow, steady Josh had snapped on Thomas. “If the enemy wants to get to us, all they need is Amanda. Why is she still here? I thought we agreed to send her away.”

Thomas defended his decision to let her stay. “I meant to, but we can’t. We can’t do it. Think about Amanda from their point of view. She shows up out of nowhere, and gets the two of us all stirred up. She helped Derek interrogate Brent. She’s top-dead center of the mess with Gail Warnous. Steph used her to get rid of Andrew West. Those DriveRate assholes have every reason to fear Amanda, and maybe even make another correction. Wade agrees with me. Amanda is safer here than she is out there in hiding, so I decided to let it ride for now.”

“Open your eyes,” Josh had said. “Wade is manipulating you. He’ll use Amanda against you every way possible until you finally tell us what the hell you’ve been doing these last few months.”

Thomas’s mouth and jaw tightened in frustration. “It’s none of his God-damned business.”

“What about me? Isn’t it my business?”

“No, as far as I can tell, your business is hiding behind Steph’s skirts so you can’t be blamed for anything that happens around here.”

Josh went very calm, which should have been a big clue something horrible was about to be said. “Really? And what about you? How many more people will they pick off before you sack up and start giving orders instead of taking them?”

Thomas’s body language in that moment had frightened Amanda into motion. She had darted between the two men who had been best friends an hour prior. She flattened a hand on each chest and shoved. “Stop it. Stop this. I know you’re scared and mad, but that’s no excuse to turn so vicious.”

Josh had immediately stood down, putting a hand over hers in silent apology.

Thomas had told Max to get into the truck, and continued to stare daggers at Josh.

Amanda warned him. “Thomas, please. Don’t say anything right now. You’ll only regret it later.”

He had leveled those eyes at her, his brows drawn down into a dark, devilish V. He stared at her with the theoretical steam still boiling from his ears. “Don’t make me regret letting you stay. You know what I expect from you.”

She did know. Despite the scene they had just made, Thomas expected her to add ‘protect Josh’ to the list of her responsibilities. “Understood.”

Mr. Hughes burst through the memory. “You didn’t tell Josh, did you? You never explained that I was the one who gave Thomas that file on Andrew West? You didn’t tell him that Thomas had been planning to leave Fantasy Heights for good?”

She shook her head. Mr. Hughes was the only one Thomas had confided in until Amanda had finally coaxed the story from him. Thomas had been meeting and training with someone from military intelligence, planning a return to his roots. “It’s not my place to tell Josh. Thomas will explain when he’s ready.”

“But you’ve convinced Thomas not to leave?”

“I didn’t need to. Thomas called the whole thing off the night Josh was appointed to the Accord.”

The DA twiddled his pen between his index and middle finger. “Good. Okay. So you were at the gatehouse with Josh later that night when he found the envelope from Derek, correct?”

She nodded. When Josh had said ‘gatehouse,’ she’d expected something small and quaint located near one of the two gates on the Prescott property. True, the gatehouse did sit near one of the gates, but there was nothing small about the place. It was two stories of beautiful stonework, solid and homey and timeless. Inside was a mixture of styles. A Chippendale cabinet and genuine Tiffany lamps shared the same room with a leather sofa so deep and soft and inviting she wanted to curl up into one corner and hide.

She replayed the critical moment for the DA. “Josh grabbed his mail on the way in. He was sorting through it, and I saw him frown. When I asked what was wrong, he said the handwriting on the envelope looked like Derek’s. He called Wade Fraser right away to have it picked up.”

“You didn’t check the contents?”

“No. We didn’t dare open it. But afterward, when we found out what was in it… That was… It somehow became so much worse. Derek must have known DriveRate was coming after him. And I couldn’t stop thinking how scared he must have been when he mailed Josh that SD card.”

Mr. Hughes reached a long arm to snare a box of tissues from atop a cabinet. He slid the box to her without a word.

“I’m not going to cry anymore,” she told him.

“Suit yourself. I understand from Josh that after the envelope was picked up, he tried to call Yvette Prescott. Can you confirm that?”

“Yeah. He must have left three or four messages overnight, asking her to call him back. I didn’t really think anything of it at the time. Of course, I had no idea who Yvette was. I had no idea Kay had a sister until later.”

“And how did you find out?”

Amanda clasped her hands in her lap and willed herself not to blush. That night had changed things between her and Josh. Both of them had been raw and upset, but they always seemed to create comfort out of nothing more than proximity.

Of course, comfort was not the only byproduct of proximity. The attraction combined with all the upheaval had a predictable result.

Less predictable had been her reaction the first time he reached for her. Their arrangement had seemed perfectly acceptable until that night. “Josh, no. If you want me, then be with me. As you, not as a client. I’m not a library book. You can’t just borrow me and return me whenever you want anymore.”

As soon as the words had left her mouth, she had almost buckled under the fear of what would happen if he disagreed. Indeed he frowned, his features betraying an angered response.

But he nodded. “I’m sorry I ever started that in the first place. You deserve more from me. Better.”

She remembered threading their fingers together. He put his arms around her, folding her arms carefully, gently across the small of her back so that he could draw her up against him. He felt familiar, yet different from any Josh she recognized. Still affectionate and provocative, but more demanding. Her response was different, too. Not the instant, white-hot ferocious flashover she sometimes felt, but something slower, deeper, and more constant.

She watched his pupils dilate with desire, but at the same time felt him withdraw. From the emotions gathering and straining on his features, she knew why. Derek was dead. Ridley and Nicole were probably gone for good, and somehow it wasn’t right to be dodging their loss this way.

While Amanda attempted to figure out what was the right thing to do, Josh lowered his head to brush her mouth with his. It was a nothing contact, feather light, but it stroked every nerve in her body. And it blew away any conflicted thoughts. This was not dodging the grief. They had a long, hard fight brewing against the people who’d caused it. She and Josh had to sustain themselves through the war somehow, and this was the best way to fuel up.

He kissed her again, this time with more purpose and force. Commanding. She felt a wanton response between her legs, her pussy beginning to heat and dampen in anticipation.

He lifted his head. “Take your clothes off.”

“Bedroom?”

His response was an order. “Take. Your clothes. Off.”

Hearing that insistent, sharpened tone from Josh had a resonant effect on her body. A rush of excitement rose up. He had never been this way with her before. What did he have in mind?

Impatient to find out, she relaxed in his hands. He immediately let go of her and she took a slightly shaky three or four steps backward to put some distance between them. She slipped off her sandals, and then unzipped her dress. Seeing the control on his features, she shimmied to hasten its fall.

Only once she stood naked before him did he order her up the stairs. She went a couple of steps ahead of him, subjected to an exploratory hand between her legs while she climbed. His fingers sought and found plenty of evidence that she wanted him.

Halfway up the stairs he leaned down to close his teeth on the left side of her waist. The sensation was so intensely erotic she would have gladly gotten to her knees and begged him to fuck her from behind, right there on the steps. But he did not want that. When he straightened again, he put his hands at her waist, driving her up the rest of the stairs and around to their right. He guided her down a hall through double doors at the end, kissing the back of her neck while he slapped at a light switch.

The gentle light of a golden-shaded lamp revealed a comfortable room with a four-poster black walnut bed. Josh swept her that direction. He paused alongside the bed to draw the jade-green duvet away, sending it sliding over the footboard onto the floor.

“Lie down on your back.”

She hurried to obey him, registering the coolness of the thick cotton sheets against her rapidly heating skin. She didn’t dare take her eyes off Josh until he gave his next command.

“Spread your legs for me.”

Once more she obeyed him, lifting her knees and letting them fall to her sides, parting herself wide open. The swell of excitement this time was hotter and deeper. Seeing his eyes zero in on her pussy made her nipples tingle. A deep, fluttery pang clenched inside like squeezing pleasure from a sponge.

She wanted to moan out a helpless “Oh, God,” of arousal, but there was an intensity about Josh that kept her silent and totally pliant as he got to his knees between hers.

“Use your hands to pull your pussy open.”

This time she couldn’t help a shuddery exhalation while she reached down between her legs to press her thumbs against her labia and pull them apart. He lowered his head to suck her clit, and she let out a high, desperate note of sexual greed.

When he released her, she could feel his unsteady, heavy breath on her cunt lips. And then his fingers were there, sliding over her slit, feeling how much wetter she’d become.

He took his hand away. “Bang yourself.”

Looking back on it now, she was a little self-conscious about how fast and how aggressively she’d carried out that command. But she’d wanted him so badly, her body racing and longing and so anxious to be penetrated. She didn’t care how, or by what.

While she banged herself slow and deep, he undressed. Not quick and fumbling but not exactly slow and controlled, either. When he stripped his boxers down, she could see he was so hard already that the tip of him was purple.

“Sit up.”

She withdrew her fingers from her pussy and hurried upright. Just as quickly, she slid off the edge of the bed onto her knees, wasting no time in taking that darkened tip into her mouth. As she did, she heard a sound of relief drawn out of his lungs. He rested a hand on top of her head while she skipped all the usual playing around and simply tightened her lips into a firm O, undulating it around the base of his tip in a hard, fast, figure-eight motion.

Another sound came in a whispered expletive.

She used her hands to lift his balls. Pulling his sack up against his shaft, she kneaded him, yet restricted him from getting too far ahead of her. A good idea, she realized. He strained against her, nearly losing his balance a couple times until he took hold of her head and forced her to stop long enough that he could sit down on the edge of the bed.

She took a couple long licks along his shaft, kissing the tip before getting serious again. He held onto her head, guiding her, giving a short, clipped warning to stop when she raised a hand with plans to rub his anus.

“No,” he told her. “Get up here and ride me.”

Even as she once again hurried to obey his command, she worried over the outcome. She could feel the sweet ache inside her pussy. With his wide, hot shaft penetrating her, she would have a chore following too many more commands.

He held his shaft steady while she worked the tip of him inside. He thrust in so hard and fast that she gasped out in surprise and a fair amount of pain. But that sort of pain always came with a torrent of pleasure from the satisfying warmth and pressure of deep penetration. He closed his arms around her, forcing her to hold still, spread and impaled on is hot, hard cock.

She couldn’t help it. She started to come almost immediately, and he held his mouth to her ear. “Yes. Come for me. Come harder.”

Every time he said come, he clenched his muscles and thrust. The dulcet pulsing crescendoed and ebbed again, leaving her uncharacteristically unsatisfied. Normally they were so in tune with each other they either came at the same time, or nearly.