Page 46 of Legal Seduction
She released a shaky sigh but he didn’t know if it was of relief or disappointment.
“Do you want me to add the tight skirts and lingerie into the job description?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. It would be hard for a guy to find and I probably would be better off with a male assistant. I’d be less distracted—” he moved his hand down her back to the curve of her hip and ass “—because you sure as hell distracted me the past two years.”
She snorted in disbelief.
“You did,” he insisted. “I couldn’t stop staring at your ass...”
A giggle slipped through her lips. Then she suggested, “Maybe Miguel has a friend. Another reformed gang member.”
“Too damn few of his friends are even alive yet, let alone reformed like he is,” he said.
“How long have you known Miguel?” she asked.
“A hell of a lot longer than two years,” he said. “I knew him from when I lived on the streets.”
“Why were you living on the streets? Did you run away from home?” she asked.
And he was glad that she had, that she actually wanted to know something about him. Other women had pried for information about his life, about his past. Until now, Bette hadn’t seemed to care. She hadn’t wanted to get to know him.
But maybe if she did, she would open up to him, too. So he told her everything: about never knowing his mom, about his dad training him to con people before he’d hardly known how to walk or talk, about how the only way he’d been able to escape that life was to run away from his father.
“Didn’t he try to find you?” she asked.
He shook his head.
She stroked her hand over his heart as if she was trying to soothe away the hurt. Miraculously, her touch seemed to do just that. It didn’t bother him like it usually did when he talked about his father.
“It would have been hard for him to look for me,” he said, “since shortly after I ran away, he got arrested.”
She gasped, her breath brushing warmly across his skin.
He chuckled but without any humor. “Fortunately for me, he is still serving that sentence.” If he wasn’t, Simon would have suspected his father of somehow being the mole. Hell, even with him being in jail, it made more sense for him to be the mole than it did for Bette. But she had access; he didn’t.
“Why is that fortunate?” she asked, her voice soft.
“Because he blamed me for his getting arrested,” he said, then shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him. But it did, and she must have known because she pressed her lips to his chest in a gentle kiss.
“Were you responsible?” she asked.
He’d never told anyone else this, but he felt compelled to tell her. “Yes. I turned him in, had some evidence.”
“Did you do that just to get away from him?”
“He had to be stopped,” Simon admitted. “He was conning people who couldn’t afford it. I had to do some things...when I was living on the streets. But I made sure nobody got hurt. He didn’t care.”
Least of all about his son.
She must have heard what he left unsaid because she reached up and pressed a kiss to his lips and nuzzled her hair against his cheek. “Sounds like both our fathers disowned us.”
He had never realized how much he had in common with Bette. She was an amazing woman, even if she was the damn mole. He hoped like hell that she wasn’t, though.
He moved her hand from his chest to his groin. “Look, I’m recovered.”
Her fingers closed around him, and she began to stroke him up and down. While she teased him with her touch, he reached for his pants and fished a condom from the pocket. Before he could sheathe himself, her mouth slid over his shaft—up and down. He nearly came then. But he wanted more.
He pushed her onto her back and feasted on her body, on her full breasts with the ultrasensitive nipples, on the curve of her hip, on her dimpled knee...then he moved between her legs. And he made certain she had recovered, as well.
