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By the Deputy PM’s own orders, all staff resided in the outer cottages, only entering the house to keep it clean and ready for his arrival whenever he chose to visit, usually—Jess had found—during election years, when he was trying to remind the people of the Outback he was one of theirs. The resident staff had informed her no one from the Deputy’s family was in attendance, nor should there have been anyone inside the homestead at all the previous evening. Which didn’t explain the supposed ignition of the cigarette in the gar
bage bin under the sink. Nor the wax residue on the floor in the living room.
Ignoring the fact a cigarette couldn’t make its own way to a garbage bin, the wax residue set off all sorts of alarm bells in Jess’s mind. When it came to wax residue, Jess had become the most suspicious person on the planet. It still tore at her heart to think of the residue found in her brother’s home from the fire that killed him. Wax residue Desmond’s father fucking refused to acknowledge or question.
Not now, woman. Don’t think of that now. Not with his son right here.
Stopping at what was left of the wall, she forced herself to scan the debris and destruction, her mind registering it, even as it doggedly played with the conundrum of Desmond Russell.
The bastard really had got under her skin. She, who never let anyone get to her. Jessica Montgomery, famous in Wallaby Ridge for being a tough nut to crack, was letting a big-city tosser make her feel like a vulnerable teenage virgin. Huh.
“Tell me, Captain—”
A squeal ripped from Jess before she could stop it.
“Fuck!” She spun around, her heart smashing a violet path into her throat as she fixed her glare on the man towering over her. “Jesus fuck, did you fucking mean to scare the shit out of me, you dick?”
Desmond had the audacity to step closer to her. So close she could feel the heat from his body kissing her thighs, her belly, her breasts. “We have a situation to deal with, Captain Montgomery,” he said, as if she hadn’t just spewed forth a tirade of indignant profanity at him with the speed of a machine gun. His Ray Ban-covered gaze roamed her face. She could feel it as well as she could feel the heat from his body caressing hers.
Her pulse quickened. Her nipples chose that moment to bead into painful tips of urgent hunger. Her sex squeezed a cock that wasn’t there with equal greed. She stared up at him. Too aware of his concentrated maleness. Of the arrogant force of his presence.
Oh god, woman. Control yourself.
“Of course we have a situation,” she snapped. Or rather, croaked. Damn it, she needed to get a grip on herself. “There’s evidence of this fire being deliberately lit, and what are you doing? You’re fucking standing in one spot in a fucking suit doing diddly fucking squat.”
Desmond didn’t flinch at her foul language.
What he did was remove his sunglasses and lower his head closer to hers.
Jess caught her breath. Her pussy contracted again. Her heart continued its attempt to break free of her body via her throat.
Oh god, his eyes. They were…they were…who had eyes so blue? So—
“That’s not the situation I’m referring to, Captain,” he said, an enigmatic light burning in those eyes of his as he bent his head even closer to hers. Close enough for her to see the indigo flecks in the mesmerizing arctic-ice blue of his irises. Close enough for her to feel the soft kiss of his warm breath on her lips. “And you know it.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” She swallowed, incapable of tearing her stare from his. Or putting more distance between them with a simple backward step. In the junction of her thighs an exquisite, traitorous heat began to bloom. Bloom and throb and pulse and grow impatient with wanton greed.
“The way I see it,” he said, his smooth poise driving her crazy with both lust and furious irritation, “you’re behaving this way towards me for one of three reasons: one, you despise me because of who my father was; two, you feel professionally threatened by the very fact I’m here; or three, every fibre in your body wants to surrender to what you are so desperately trying to deny right now. And I would lay my very sizeable income on it being option three.”
Jess stared up at him. A maelstrom of insane emotions broiled inside her.
Lust.
Hate.
Contempt.
Hunger.
Frustration.
Want.
Need.
Desire.
Submission.
