Free Wild For Mr. Wrong by Virna De Paul

aggressively wrapped around her wrists, preparing to push her away.  She wouldn’t let him.
    “ The jury acquitted him.  You did your job.”
    “ My job.  Yeah.”  He laughed with scorn.  “I sure did.  I earned my paycheck and now Malia Blaker is an orphan.”
    “ Don’t say that.  You did what you felt was right.  You had to.  The evidence wasn’t there.  Not to convince the jury beyond a reasonable doubt.”
    He said nothing for a moment.  “But I knew.  I knew he was guilty.”
    “ I know,” she whispered.  “But the jury didn’t.”
    He looked at her with tortured eyes, as if trying to gauge her sincerity.  “You couldn’t have known what was going to happen,” she insisted.  “No one could have.”
    “ You knew,” he said.  “You tried to tell us.”
    She shook her head.  “You followed the law.  Daniel….”
    He didn’t let her finish.  He stood slowly, the hands wrapped around her wrists pulling her up with him.
    “ We should have listened to you….we should have listened.  God.”  Closing his eyes in agony, he tried to turn away.  
    Bryn grasped his shirtfront.  “Stop it,” she said firmly, shaking him.  “By your thinking, I should feel guilty, too.  My heart aches for that woman and her daughter, but it’s not my fault and it’s not yours either.  It’s Winsor’s.  We both did our best, Daniel.  We couldn’t have known what he would do.”  
    When he failed to respond, Bryn pulled him close.  She no longer felt awkward.  Holding him felt like the most natural thing in the world.  She pressed her forehead into his neck, sighing with relief when he wrapped his arms around her.    
    “ It’s okay,” she murmured.  “You’re okay.”  With her eyes closed, she savored his nearness.  She rubbed her cheek against his jaw.  Her lips brushed against the beginnings of his five o’clock shadow, and the friction caused her to tremor.  She couldn’t resist rubbing her lips against him again.  And again.  
    And again.  Until his eyes cleared of guilt.  Until her mind cleared of any thought except taking off his clothes and hers, holding him in her arms, and taking him so deep inside her he wouldn’t be able to think of anything but the pleasure he felt.  The pleasure she would give him.  
    ***
    Daniel’s guilt and confusion hadn’t disappeared.  Somehow, however, with Bryn sprinkling feather-light kisses against his jaw and cheek, his pain had been pushed into a far corner of his mind.  The press of her body and the smell of her warm skin soothed the hollow ache that had settled inside him.  Instead of visions of violence and death, he pictured her— them —limbs tangled, bodies merged, mouths finding the hills and valleys of each other’s bodies.  
    Groaning, he cupped her cheek until her eyes fluttered open.  She looked as dazed and dreamy as he felt, and when her tongue darted out to moisten her lips, he went after it.  
    She tasted like the sweet iced tea his grandmother used to make him when he visited her over the summer.  A cool, liquid treat preceding the sweet desserts that would follow.  She gasped when he pulled back to kiss her ear and cup her breasts in his hands.  Her slim fingers gripped his wrists, but not to push him away.  Instead, when he flattened his palms, she moved them back and forth to stimulate the tight points of her nipples.  He kept at it until her breath hitched and she whimpered his name.  
    “ I—I—”   I want you.  I need you .  But Daniel couldn’t say the words.  How could he?  She was only here because of Winsor.  She knew how he’d—
    “ Shhh,” she whispered, stepping back.  “Don’t go back there.  Stay with me, Daniel.  Stay right here.”  Grasping the hem of her knit shirt, she pulled it swiftly over her head, exposing her pretty pale breasts banded by a lacy pink bra.  His mouth worked open and closed, but before he could speak, she unhooked her bra, leaving