Read Fatal Affair: 1 (Courthouse Connections) for Free Online Page B

before the fire could roast me alive. I wanted to get ahead. I figured
dealing with one asshole who had money and didn’t mind spending it on my
education if I’d be his beard would beat hooking and continuing to scrape for
every penny.”
    “What do you think now, Lanie?”
    “I know better now. I made the wrong
choice. I realized that a while ago, but only in the past month or so have I
mustered up the strength to try to break free.”
    JD turned her in his arms, wishing he could
make her feel better, both about the choices she’d made and the one she was
making now. “You know, I wondered when we made love the first time how you
could seem so inexperienced. You never had sex with the senator, did you?”
    “No.”
    “You never had an affair before, either,
until last weekend.” He didn’t have to ask—he knew instinctively because he’d
seen and felt her sexual inexperience.
    She shook her head. “We had an agreement—an
open marriage—but I thought I’d done enough wrong by agreeing to marry Wayne in
the first place. It seemed bad to add adultery to my long list of crimes, not
to mention that I never ran across a man I wanted enough to violate what was
left of my principles. Until I met you.”
    “You’re not a bad person. You never have
been. You’ve got to believe that.” JD brushed away a tear that had made its way
down Lanie’s cheek.
    “I’m trying to. It’s my past, though, that
Bert is threatening to use to keep me married to Wayne. He’s threatened to ruin
me, wreck my career if I go ahead with the divorce.”
    JD felt like chasing down Bert Davies and
strangling the life out of the sleazy bastard. “I won’t let him hurt you,” he
told Lanie, though he wasn’t quite sure what he could do, short of murder, to
protect her. “Come on—let’s forget all this for a while. I believe I promised
you that the next time we made love we’d do it in a bed, when neither of us was
pressed for time.”
    He stood, still holding her, amazed she’d
retained that aura of innocence in spite of all she’d experienced. “There’s so
damn much I want to show you, so much pleasure I want us to share. Most of all
I want to drive all the bad memories out of your beautiful head and replace
them with ones you’ll remember in sweet dreams, not nightmares.”
     
    When he set her on her feet in the bedroom,
her gaze settled on the bed. A king-size or better with a heavy-looking carved
headboard and footboard, it dominated the small bedroom. At some time before
she’d arrived, he’d turned back an appliquéd quilt to reveal snowy-white bed
linens. Two plump pillows had been propped invitingly against the headboard and
four colorful silk ties slid sensually on their surface as though JD intended
to tease her with them.
    While Lanie hadn’t given much thought
earlier today to her physical needs, seeing that bed reminded her of the
adventurous sexual journey JD had promised her they’d take together.
Surrounding a huge, thick mattress, the dark wooden frame had a substantial
look about it—a look of strength, of safety. It was as though the bed offered a
reassuring promise of his caring, his dominance.
    She unglued her gaze from the bed and
looked up at him. “You planned on this, didn’t you?”
    His grin made her go all warm and fuzzy
inside. “I hoped. Lanie, there are so many things I want to say but I can’t
find the words. Hell, it will be okay if you want to keep this platonic for
now. It may kill me to wait but I’m ready to show you that it’s not just casual
sex I’m looking for with you.”
    She wasn’t certain what she needed from JD,
but it definitely wasn’t platonic friendship. She’d had that with Wayne for
long enough to realize that without sex, there was something vital missing from
a relationship—not that all the time they’d spent together had been unpleasant.
    “We don’t need to wait. I want you too. I
just hope you still want me now that you know