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“Oh won’t you?” he asked her, almost wincing at the dark, rough tone of his voice. “Too late, sweetheart. I know your weakness, and I know your hunger. And Kimber…” he watched her closely now. “I know your secrets. Don’t think for a minute I won’t use every weapon I can find to have you. That would be a mistake you don’t want to make. ”
She drew in a deep, hard breath, the flush of arousal receding as she realized that now, he most likely knew far more than she had ever wanted him to.
“I’m still a virgin. ” She drew herself stiffly erect as a little painted smile of mocking triumph curved her lips. But her eyes were dark with pain. “And unless you’re into rape, you won’t win, Jared. You or Father. ”
The bitterness in her tone tugged at his heart. He could see the suspicions in her eyes, the fear that he was somehow working to aid her father’s triumph. Nothing could be further from the truth.
“Your father can go straight to hell. And no, Kimber, I’m not into rape,” he finally said gently. “But I will be into you. Sooner or later, one way or another, that I can promise you. You can keep your virginity, but I’ll be damned if you’ll continue to run. Not anymore. ”
He turned away from her, knowing if he didn’t leave now, then he may do something both of them would end up regretting. His control was shakier than he had ever known it to be, his hunger deeper than he could have imagined.
“Jared, this won’t work,” she warned him again as he opened the bedroom door, pausing in the doorway. “You have to forget what you saw tonight. ”
He turned back to her, smiling with a bit of mockery himself now.
“Do I, Kimber?” he asked her, his tone musing. “Tell you what, when you can look at me and not let me see the memories in your eyes, then we’ll discuss whether or not I can forget. Then we’ll discuss just how the hell I’m supposed to fucking let you go. ”
Because despite the obstacles he suspected he faced in possessing her, Jared had a feeling he would never manage to push her out of his head now. And if he did manage that, how was he supposed to break the threads weaving around his heart?
Chapter Three
“She’s going to make me crazy. A year. I’ve chased the woman for a blasted year and still she’s running from me. ”
Jared pushed his fingers restlessly through his short hair as he paced the length of his mother’s kitchen two days later, uncomfortable under the eagle-eyed scrutiny of his too perceptive mother, Carolyn Raddington Madison.
He couldn’t get Kimberly out of his head. It was frustrating, aggravating, driving him insane with the liquid heat pulsing through his bloodstream and keeping his cock in a constant state of readiness. But even more was the ache in his arms to hold her. Fuck, he just wanted to hold her close to his heart, to shelter and protect her from the pain he had glimpsed in her shadowed green eyes. He wanted to see laughter there. Wanted to see warmth and passion and naked need, and happiness.
He couldn’t sleep for the image of her lying across that table, fighting for her orgasm. And he knew, deep in the darkest hours of the night that it wasn’t the orgasm she was reaching for as much as it was a sense of freedom and escape. It was her escape. As extreme as it was, coming to The Club and baring her tempting little ass for a fucking was Kimberly’s way of escaping the pressure, hopelessness and needs that had not as much to do with the sexual, as it did with the emotional.
“Really, Jared, as you say, she’s been running for a year. What has you so upset over it now?” Carolyn’s voice was lightly amused and more than a little curious.
Jared stopped his pacing before turning his head to look at his petite, conservatively dressed mother. Her soft graying brown hair was upswept and held at the back with a silver clasp his father had given her for their tenth anniversary. Around her neck she wore pearls he had bought her for a birthday. She wore a plain wedding band on her left hand; on her right she still wore the simple engagement ring and thicker band she had worn as Judge Victor Raddington’s wife.
She was still a beautiful woman, one of the most beautiful Jared had ever known. With her pretty features and dark blue eyes, she wasn’t classically beautiful, but there was an air of calm stateliness about her that always comforted him. At least, at most times.
“I’m tired of this,” he finally sighed roughly as he turned back to her and paced over to the light oak kitchen table and returned to his seat. “I can’t get her out of my head. I can’t let her keep running like this. ”
She was destroying herself. He had seen that much, had glimpsed the bitter rage that filled her the moment before he kissed her. And that kiss. He breathed in deeply, still affected by the sensations that had swept through him. It was wildfire. It was an explosion of the senses, too intense to fight, too deep to ever let go.
“And how do you intend to stop her, Jared?” His mother lifted her coffee cup to her lips, but he saw the grin edging her lips. “Kimberly is a grown woman. You can’t force her into a relationship with you. Those days have long since passed, son. ”
She was amused. Hell, had there ever been a time when she hadn’t been amused when he and his father displayed what she called their “male quirkiness”?
He leaned back in his chair, watching her silently for long moments. She was married to Senator Madison, and though she didn’t appear deliriously happy, she did appear content. The shadows still lingered from her first husband’s death, though. That veil of sadness that he knew would never completely lift.
Her relationship with Victor Raddington had been tempestuous, passionate and, he knew, deeply loving. He had been raised in the shelter of their love, and later, after his adult years, in the unspoken knowledge of the fact their sexuality wasn’t what others would consider “normal”.
His father had helped found The Club. The secretive membership of highly public figures that had created the group had done so out of a need of privacy and protection. A judge, a governor, a vice president hopeful. Their sexuality would have been a smear on their public images.
“What do you know about this Trust her father’s holding over her head, Mother?” He finally asked the question eating at his mind. There had to be an answer to this, though after his meeting a few hours before with Senator Madison, it wasn’t looking as though it could be answered in his favor.
Carolyn glanced back at him with some surprise before a glimmer of understanding entered her gaze.
“She told you about it?” she asked curiously.
Jared shook his head. “Not in so many words, but this is Washington, you forget—there are few secrets. ”
She sighed in acknowledgement. “It was established generations ago. It states that she must marry a man her father approves of and that she must be a virgin to inherit Briar Cliff, the estate that has passed down in her mother’s family for generations. ” She held her hand up when Jared would have protested. “It’s entirely legal, Jared, I checked this myself. Her father enforces an exam every three months to ensure that she’s fulfilling the terms of the trust. It’s all entirely legal and unbreakable. In five years, the conditions of the Trust will become null and void. If there is no female child, or the female child has lost her virginity and not married with the approval of the father, signed and notated before the Trust lawyers, then Briar Cliff reverts completely to the oldest male heir or to the father. If neither father nor surviving male heir is in existence, then and only then, does it revert to the female child unconditionally. Daniel is determined that she will marry a man who can restrain her passions, not someone who will encourage them. ”
