Always (Family Justice Book 1) (19 page)

Direct approach. No shitting around. Full frontal assault.

“I love you, Mrs. St. John,” he murmured. She softened instantly, melting against him with a husky sigh.

With an arm holding her securely in place, he used his free hand to lift her chin so he could look into her beautiful eyes and drown just a little.
Mine
, he thought. She was furious at him, but she was all his. Body and soul.

Putting his palm against her neck, he felt the rapid beating of her pulse with his thumb, moving it back and forth gently across her skin as he pulled her mouth toward his. Drae loved kissing Victoria. Nothing quite compared to that first moment when their lips met and he felt her surrender. Without any hesitance whatsoever, she opened to him and let him go deep with a kiss that came from his heart.
Mine
, he thought again.

When he let her come up for air some minutes later, she was quivering in his arms, tears sparkling in her pretty eyes.

“I hate you sometimes,” she whispered.

He smiled. “I know.”

She put a delicate hand on his chest and fiddled with the buttons on his dress shirt. The move was so Victoria. Shy. Unsure. Conflicted and completely without any artifice whatsoever.

She sighed and he felt her breath on his skin. Tilting her head back, she looked into his eyes. “Find the boy quickly, Draegyn.”

“I will, my love. Please don’t worry. We’ll be back before you know it, okay?”

The sexy, pregnant waif nestled on his lap nodded, reached for him, and brought his mouth back to hers. She wanted a kiss for reassurance? Done. Pouring a shit ton of emotion into the lip lock, Drae tried to tell her with his response how precious she was and how very much he worshipped and adored her.

Smirking when he finally pulled back, he told her in a low, deep growl, “You have a naughty mouth, wife. What you did last night…”

Relief pulsed through him when she giggled. The storm had passed.

“Yes, well—be that as it may…if we had just a little more time and less of an audience I’d be on my knees in this wicked mobile sex playground with you nudging the back of my throat until I got what I wanted.”

He had to laugh. Little shit. She knew damn well how provocative her words were. Time to get in a suggestive comment or two of his own.

“I love the way you look at me when my dick is in your mouth, Victoria. Your eyes say a lot when you can’t talk.”

He should have known she wouldn’t let something like that go by without a response. Drae had to close his eyes and groan when her hand moved between them and stroked his cock through the fabric of his pants.

Shuddering, he growled through clenched teeth, “Keep that up, wife, and I’ll be face fucking you before I get out of this car.”

“Mmmmm. I’d like that, baby.”

“Okay, that does it,” he groaned. “You’re getting on that plane with me so we can finish this the way it needs to end. Sawyer can fly you back before dinner and no one will even know.”

She gurgled with naughty delight and squeezed his sex for good measure. “No can do, big guy. Flying isn’t on this pregnant lady’s agenda and Cam would know exactly what we were doing since he’d be sitting right there.”

Shit. She was right. “Goddammit woman. You’re going to let me get on that plane with a throbbing hard-on aren’t you?”

“Yep,” she sneered. “And serves you right, too.”

Drae threw back his head and laughed. The wife always got the last word.

“OKAY. PUSH THE FIVE ROLLING casters into the base until you hear them click in place.” Reading the easy-to-follow instructions aloud, Stephanie snapped each caster with ease then sat back on her knees, glancing at the diagram for the next step.

“Well, that part at least was simple,” she muttered to herself. “Insert the three part cap and gas cylinder into the hole on the base.”

Rising up, she leaned over the base and pushed the two pieces into place, widening her knees at the last second for leverage since the mechanism needed quite a shove.

“What in the hell are you doing?” a voice boomed behind her, startling Stephanie and making her topple over onto her butt on the hardwood floor.

Calder Dane.
Shit.
What in the hell was he doing here? And not only that, why in God’s name did everyone just come and go from each other’s homes without knocking? Okay—maybe the fact that she’d left the porch door wide open accounted for why he was standing less than five feet behind where her bottom had just been wagging in the air.

Rising swiftly to her feet, she smoothed down the slim skirt with the pleated side vent and pirouetted around on her favorite gray Prada suede heels until she faced the man invading her privacy. Shame that the minute she had him in her sights she forget her name, what he’d just barked at her, and whether they were speaking in English. Why the hell did he have to be so good-looking and so damn infuriating at the same time?

“Hello to you, too,” she finally jeered with a good dollop of
eat shit
implied in her delivery.

Well
, she thought when he grimaced; at least he had the sense to appear peeved that she’d called him out on his lack of manners, but that didn’t stop the look he gave her which was full of menace and bordered on downright nasty. Unless she was reading him all wrong, he didn’t like her one little bit.

“Hello,” he snarled, then paused for good measure. “I’ll ask again,” he enunciated with a bite as if she was a dolt while nodding at the chair she was assembling, “What in the hell are you doing?”

She pursed her lips and glared at him. “I think it’s fairly obvious what I’m doing. What isn’t clear, however, is what you’re doing here. Draegyn left for the airport earlier—as I’m sure you no doubt know.”

The big man ignored her attempt to put him in his well-deserved place and shuffled past her, checking out the pieces left of the chair she was putting together on the floor.

“You’ll need a screwdriver. A Phillip’s head,” he said absently while surveying her chair-building progress. “And I’m here because Alex wanted me to check on Victoria—make sure she was okay with Drae being gone.”

He looked back at Stephanie, and she stiffened slightly when his steel blue eyes went on a head-to-toe visual inspection that left her wanting to slap his handsome face.

“Aren’t you a bit overdressed for what you’re doing?” he taunted. “You do know that we’re in the middle of the goddamn desert, right? The heels seem a bit much.”

Okay. She’d had enough. “Why,
shugah
,” she drawled with her Southern twang set to high, “don’t you know that a proper lady sleeps in her heels? Never know when some beefy hunk of testosterone may come calling.”

To her surprise, Calder Dane flinched at her pithy put-down, then reared back and barked a laugh, shaking his head and swinging his hands to his waist.

“Okay lady,” he chuckled. “I deserved that but really, heels? Please tell me you own at least one pair of jeans and some footwear that isn’t meant to drive a man insane.”

She couldn’t help but smile in return. Pushing some hair behind an ear, she sucked in her stomach and made an effort to look somewhat dignified even though Stephanie suspected she was failing miserably. This man had the strangest effect on her composure.

“Of course I have jeans,” she answered swiftly. “It’s the uniform of my generation after all!” she said while eyeing what he was wearing to make her point. “But I’m having lunch with Carmen once my daughter and Lacey get back from dropping the men at the airport—we’re going into town, and knowing Alex’s housekeeper as I do, she’ll be dressed to impress so I’m just following along.”

Calder nodded then went back to considering the pieces of the chair still on the floor. “So, explain the chair thing.”

Stooping to retrieve the instructions, she smacked a hand on her skirt, specifically on her bottom in case she’d gotten dust or dirt on her clothes when she’d sat on the floor and caught an odd gleam in the eyes of her surprise guest.

H
mmm
. She’d let it go for now but a prickling sensation dancing along her nerve endings was sending some confusing signals. While she got the distinct impression that Alex’s uncle didn’t exactly care for her, he was also giving off a deepening sexual vibe that was rattling her cage.

“The chair thing,” she repeated softly. Straightening she said, “Yeah. About that—it’s quite simple really. When Tori was younger, we used her father’s old desk chair as a sort of rolling wagon. We’d stack it with grocery bags and shove it from the front door to the kitchen. Since she’s having a bit of a tough time getting around, I thought it would be fun to get a couple of these pneumatic chairs. That way she can sit and scoot all around.” She shrugged like it was no big deal and quirked a grin.

He nodded approvingly and gave her a serious raised eyebrow like she’d just discovered life on another planet.

“That’s actually a great idea,” he drawled. “And you got the ones with the arms so she’d have something to keep her steady.”

They both stood there and surveyed the chair she’d been building and the two additional chairs still in boxes.

Laughing, Calder slapped his hands together rubbing them gleefully. “I like the way your mind works—now locate that screwdriver for me and I’ll have these things put together in a flash.”

He dropped to his knees and started rearranging the pieces then looked up at her with a frown. “You
do
have a screwdriver, I hope?”

Cocking her hip defiantly with a hand resting at her waist she bit out, “Of course, I have a screwdriver. I’m not helpless, you know. And you don’t need to do that. I’ve got this, Mr. Dane.”

God but the man rubbed her the wrong way and excited her at the same time. Something about seeing him on his knees with those broad shoulders hunched over the half-assembled chair and noticing the way his overly long hair hung past the collar of his chambray shirt got her pulse pounding.

CALDER WAS HAVING ONE HELL of a hard time keeping his thoughts out of Stephanie Bennett’s underwear. From his vantage point on the floor, he had a devastatingly close view of her fantastic legs in those damn heels. If he leaned slightly to the left, he’d be close enough to run his hands from ankle to knee, and up under the slim gray skirt she wore. He bet she wouldn’t be stuffed into one of those stretchy Spanx garments—she in no way needed the help because her figure was impressive as it was. That thought only made him wonder what type of lingerie she preferred. Probably something soft, silky, and very, very feminine.

That didn’t mean, however, that the lady wasn’t in possession of a serious set of balls. He didn’t doubt that she was capable of kneeing him in the groin if he overstepped, and judging by that snarky mouth she had going on, he was pretty fucking sure she’d be impressive in a verbal altercation. His initial impression that Tori’s mother would be some high-maintenance Southern belle was quickly evaporating. This woman was nothing like he imagined. Nothing at all.

“You can forget that Mr. Dane shit, Stephanie,” he jeered. “I think we’re kind of beyond that, don’t you? Now hand over the fucking screwdriver and be quick about it.”

She glared at him in silence. It took all his strength not to laugh. It was abundantly clear to him that this dragon-woman saw herself as some sort of one-woman dynamo—capable of doing it all. Typical
I am woman, hear me roar
shit. And she probably could.
Thank God
. He hated helpless females, especially when the helplessness was an affectation. It was challenging to a man like him to go up against just the opposite. She didn’t want help.
Yeah, well fuck her
. He was the guy in this scenario and helping was what he was built for.

Holding his hand out like he was waiting for a scalpel in the operating room, Calder bit back the chuckle building in his throat when she stomped to a side table and grabbed a screwdriver while muttering under her breath. He wasn’t sure what was cuter. The way her ass tightened up, the sound of those damn heels tapping on the wood floor, or the under-her-breath comments, which he was sure, involved damning his entire sex to the fires of purgatory.

Handing him the tool, she backed off when he started deftly building the chair. After a minute she said, “Tell me again why Alex sent you down here.”