“Yes.”
“I don’t give a damn, Kate. I’m not a politician and I have no patience for it. I think that becoming DA would give me a chance to fine-tune our process and allow me to dictate how we prosecute criminals.”
“You think Roth is too soft?”
“I think that he’s not as aggressive as I would be.”
She nodded, beginning to wonder if Jericho’s association with her would ruin his chances of getting where he wanted to be. She admired his tough attitude, and she couldn’t be sorry about nailing Ken Mitchell, but getting involved with a coworker could cause much more trouble for them down the line. Kate cleaned up her work area, made sure the process was working, and they left the lab.
CHAPTER12
He had Kate in his bedroom. Finally. She walked in and stood for a moment, taking it in. Had she fantasized about being here just as he had about having her here?
There was a roll-top desk near the French doors to catch the most amount of light. An antique highboy that matched the four-poster bed with intricate scrollwork of birds and fruit carvings. A little ornate for his tastes, but he’d given the decorator free rein in his house. Most of what she’d done, he liked, but this room he felt needed a feminine touch. It was rich in mahogany wood, heavy caramel, and red brocade, and echoed with loneliness.
She walked to the bed and curled her hands around one of the four posts. Her fingertips flowed over the carvings.
“This is beautiful, but it seems a bit much for you, Jericho.”
He smiled at the way she had effortlessly slid into him, already knowing his tastes.
“It is.”
She was a seductive vision in her blue dress and black high heels. A choker-tight strand of pearls wrapped around her throat, then flowed down to her navel. He wanted to see her in nothing but those pearls.
She left the bed and walked to the desk, peered at the array of pictures over it. Pictures of his friends and family.
“I see,” she said softly, her hips swishing seductively as she walked. Her bared back looked like creamy silk in the dim glow of his bedside lamp.
“See what?”
“That you like to keep your private life, uh, private.”
“What?”
“There are no pictures in your office, no mementos, but here there are pictures and bits and pieces of your life.” She ran her hand over his polished desk, the scarlet-painted nails erotic in the half light.
“If you want to know anything about me, all you have to do is ask.”
With her back to him, her eyes still gazing at the pictures, she said, “I already know so much, but I want more.”
He closed his eyes at the soft, husky tone to her voice. “Like what?” he asked.
She turned then and walked up to him, slipping her hands under the tux jacket, and pushing it off his shoulders. “Like the tattoo you have down here.” Her hand slid down his chest and rested on the bulge of his pants. “I’ve already been with you twice and didn’t get a chance to really see it, even though I was up close the night we made love on the piano.”
She pulled his shirt out of the waistband of his trousers and deliberately popped the studs as she pulled the fabric apart. They flew every which way.
Her usually angelic eyes were a deeper, richer blue, swirling with a hunger that sent a shiver of awareness down his spine. A white-hot flame that burned. A hunger that called to his own. A recognition of a common need that could only be fulfilled by him for her, her for him.
He closed his eyes as she splayed her hands against his chest, her palms silky as they ran over his pectoral muscles and down the hard ridges of his abdomen.
“I used to sit in your office and wonder at the hardness beneath your shirt. You have such wonderful broad shoulders.” She ran her hands over them, down over the hard bulge of his biceps. “Little did I know that reality would be so much more exciting than fantasy.”
“What else did you imagine?”
“Having you completely at my mercy.”
“Whoa,” he said, closing his eyes at the ripple of sensation that went through him, sending heat pooling in his groin.