Page 51 of The Perfect Deception

“Hon­or­ing the fam­ily name.” His voice was low and a lit­tle fuzzy, but un­der­stand­able.

“Why would he think you weren’t?” What kind of fa­ther would say that in pub­lic?

“Screwed up three cases. No one wants ta work wi me. Giv­ing firm a bad name. Time for me ta get out on my own.”

“Did you talk to him? Find out what you can do to fix things?”

“Does’n mat­ter. Can’t change his mind.”

“You did say you wanted to get a job in Man­hat­tan.”

“Ha!” It sounded more like a bark, re­ally, and he jumped up, again. “Like I’ll get any sort of ac­cep…ac­cept­able ref’rence now.”

“I’m sorry, Adam. What can I do?”

He squinted at her. Loom­ing over her as he was, she felt at a dis­tinct dis­ad­van­tage, so she rose. Still, she had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze—not that star­ing at the col­umn of his throat was such a bad thing, es­pe­cially where it dis­ap­peared into the col­lar of his shirt.

She swal­lowed. This was ridicu­lous. She was here, in Adam’s apart­ment, to make him feel bet­ter, not to come up with more rea­sons to fan­ta­size about him. Dina met his gaze.

His eyes had dark­ened, pupils wide. This close to him she could see the stri­a­tions of brown and green in his irises, the in­di­vid­ual lashes around his eyes and the mus­cle that jumped around his cheek­bone as he clenched and un­clenched his jaw. She swal­lowed again.

“Who are you?” he whis­pered.

“You know who I am.” She wanted to cup his face and stroke his cheek.

As if read­ing her mind, he lifted his hand, but in­stead of stroking her cheek, he ran his fin­gers through her hair, squeezed the curls and re­leased them. His hands weren’t gen­tle, but each tug of her hair sent rip­ples through her body. He slid his fin­gers over her scalp and around the back of her neck, and she sti­fled a moan. Shiv­ers ran down her spine and she in­haled, lean­ing to­ward him. Her breasts brushed against his chest. Her head jerked as they tin­gled on con­tact.

“Yurre the only one who’s ever be­lieved in me, the only one who hasn’t left,” he whis­pered. “Why?”

“Be­cause I care,” she whis­pered.

He low­ered his head close to her. His lips were so close to hers, their breath min­gled and it would take barely any move­ment at all for them to meet.

He was go­ing to kiss her. Or maybe she was go­ing to kiss him. She couldn’t tell at this point. All she knew was it was go­ing to hap­pen. De­spite her best ef­forts to pre­vent it, de­spite all her rea­sons it shouldn’t, it was hap­pen­ing.

He was drunk but she didn’t care.

When their lips fi­nally met, she melted, like but­ter left out­side on a ninety-five de­gree day. His mouth was firm and de­ci­sive. It brushed hers, back and forth and she opened for him. When she did, he swiped his tongue along her lips and delved deeper into her mouth. She did the same, tast­ing the whiskey. They ex­plored each other’s mouths to­gether, each of them thrust­ing and re­ced­ing in equal mea­sure. She re­mem­bered learn­ing in bi­ol­ogy that the tongue was the only mus­cle in the hu­man body that worked with­out the sup­port of the skele­ton, but she was loathe to men­tion that now—if she did, Adam might stop what he was do­ing and it was too de­li­cious to stop. He brushed his hands up and down her back, and she imag­ined what it would feel like to have his hands on her bare skin.

She rested her hands on his shoul­ders, feel­ing the flex of his sleek mus­cles be­neath her palms, be­fore let­ting them drift along his neck to cup his jaw, like she’d wanted to be­fore. Her fin­gers played with his ear­lobes and threaded through his hair and he groaned against her mouth.

“Dina.”

He grabbed her el­bows and backed her up against the wall with­out break­ing con­tact with her mouth, and she was grate­ful for the sup­port. Her knees felt like a jel­ly­fish and with­out the wall, and his hands, she would have dis­solved onto the floor.

If he never got an­other lawyer job, he could hire out as a pro­fes­sional kisser. Or maybe not, since he’d have to kiss other women and she wanted him all to her­self. She pressed her body against him, her soft­ness melt­ing into his hard­ness as he grabbed her hips.

She shifted and his breath caught. He pulled away from her mouth and trailed kisses along her jaw and down her neck, suck­ing her skin, no doubt leav­ing marks. Let­ting her head fall back, she gave him ac­cess and he con­tin­ued kiss­ing his way south to her col­lar­bone. She whim­pered and ran her hands up and down his ribcage, feel­ing the play of his mus­cles be­neath his shirt. She hooked her fin­gers in his belt loops, lock­ing him to her, and ro­tated her hips against him.

He hissed and pulled the hem of her shirt, loos­en­ing it enough to slide his palms be­neath it. Fi­nally, he was touch­ing her bare skin, leav­ing a trail of heat in their wake. She growled and took his lips be­tween her teeth, nip­ping them and mak­ing him chuckle.

“You’re as wild as your hair,” he said, plung­ing his tongue once again into her mouth.

Tak­ing a cue from him, she slid her hands be­neath his shirt. His skin was warm, and she ran her fin­gers over the ridges of his abs. When she reached his chest, she played with the hair there, and by the re­ac­tion of his tongue, he liked it.

“I want you.” His words formed al­most silently against her mouth.

Her whole body stilled. He was drunk. Would con­tin­u­ing this take ad­van­tage of their friend­ship?