I Want You, Prologue
It was the shower coming on at 3:37am that woke Lincoln up, but it was the half-naked, partially wet woman who climbed into bed with him twenty minutes later that made him hard.
“I can’t get warm,” she muttered against his bare shoulder, as though she expected him to be awake. Maybe she could see his hard-on even in the darkness.
He lifted an arm, pulling her closer even as he said, “It’s like 80 degrees outside.”
“I’m scared,” she whispered. “When I’m scared, I get cold.”
“There’s no reason to be scared. Michael wouldn’t have left us here if we weren’t safe.” Lincoln felt this was a reasonable argument, but when her knee edged up over his thigh, he shoved his other hand down there to keep her from easing her leg all the way up over his. “I’m naked, Sara,” he warned.
“I know,” she said, and Lincoln swallowed about forty swear words. All the good ones, too, sliding down his throat like terms of endearment, things he wanted to say to her, do to her. His hand relaxed and her leg finished its journey up over his.
If she knew, then this had to be what he thought it was. He wasn’t in prison so long he couldn’t read the signs. He wasn’t so stupid that he couldn’t see what a bad idea it was when Michael had said he would take the key Sara’s father left her and go to the bank alone that held the safety deposit box. Lincoln knew he had to stay, Jane and LJ would be meeting up with them within a few days, and Sara couldn’t go, she needed time to recover from all she had been through.
But still.
The prison doc, outside of prison, was the only woman Lincoln had been aware of or alone with in a very long time. And it hadn’t been a very long car ride from picking Sara up to getting to the safe house Jane had found for them, and it had taken even less time than that for Lincoln to know that Sara might be half in love his brother, but she didn’t know what to do with it. And maybe they’d had sex when they saw each other during the three days Linc and Michael were apart, but they definitely hadn’t before Michael took off again to find the tape their father had told them about. Scared, barely escaping a madman’s hands, and having stitched herself up, she was looking for some life affirmation.
Lincoln was just…Lincoln. And horny. And three years past his resistance level.
When she scooted even closer to him, he could feel her breasts through the thin t-shirt she wore and even if he’d thought about not doing it, that would have chased that idea right out of his head. Breasts hadn’t been anywhere near him in such a long time. He smoothed a hand down her arm, over the curve of her hip and across her ass. Then his hand slid up inside the t-shirt against the warm, soft skin of her back and he said lowly, “You don’t feel cold.”
Her head turned into his shoulder and her teeth grazed his skin as she levered herself up on to him. “It’s on the inside, the coldness.” Lincoln choked back a groan as she eased over him, and his erection pressed between their bellies. Her lips bounced off his chin and hit the end of his nose before finally finding his actual mouth. Her lips were cold, but inside her mouth was hot, and he found it hard to believe that there was coldness, figurative or literal, in her anywhere.
He could have stood flat-footed and recited a long list of reasons why he shouldn’t do this, but when her tongue danced over the tip of his, he knew the only moving he was going to do was to tuck her underneath him as he settled himself between her thighs. The sooner, the better. The sooner, the… “Oh, fuck,” he groaned when her hand skimmed his side and he felt her lift herself up so it could wrap around his cock. “No, no, no…” he said, squeezing his eyes tightly shut and reaching for her hand at the same moment. “Sara, no,” he commanded, his voice fierce.
Her head rose up from his and in the darkness he could feel her eyes scalding a path across his face. “Not ‘no, we’re not doing this’ but ‘no, don’t touch me there, if you want this to be longer than a 30 second show’ okay?”
“Lincoln,” she said, her voice hardly distinguishable. “Why wouldn’t he wait until I could go with him?”
Lincoln pulled her hand away from where their bodies touched and said softly, “Save Lincoln, kill the world, save Sara, save the world.” It was the truth that had burned in him as he watched his brother leave, as he thought of every incident that brought them to this moment. When he fucked Sara it would just be further proof that Michael never should have done any of it, and despite the words he’d tried to give Michael to excuse them both, it never sounded sincere. It never was sincere. It never would be.
“Make me warm.” Her voice laid the words against his lips and her body trembled, waiting for him to do as she asked.
Rolling them over so he was on top of her, he pulled the t-shirt up over her head and flung it away. With no light in the room, the only thing he could do to find his way down her body was follow his hands closely with his mouth and his tongue. At her neck, he licked and sucked and nipped with his teeth until her hands urged him lower. At her breasts he rolled her pebble-hard nipples with his thumb and forefinger and then flicked them with his tongue until she screamed his name, begging him for more. Against her stomach, he mouthed the words forgive me, and he had no idea who he sought forgiveness from. Against the wet heat between her legs he drank of her essence until he trembled and shook so badly he could hardly move upward to get his aching flesh to the place it needed to be. By the time he propped himself up on strong but empty arms, he could feel the heat of sweat all along the curves of her body and her legs wrapped eagerly around his hips. She impaled herself, and her hands clamped on his buttocks as she undulated under him in short strokes and he growled her name against the bruises he’d left on her neck.
On the verge, he somehow pulled back at the last moment. She gasped as he rolled again, this time putting her back in the position of power, and his hands found her breasts, the beaded crests stabbing into his palms. She leaned into his hands, her hips moving steadily but slowly enough he didn’t explode before he was ready for it to be over. He wished for a light for a moment, so he could see her hair trailing over her shoulders, so he could see her head thrown back as she moaned and gasped with delight. He wished for something to make this a separate piece of the broken shards of his life. But he knew it was the sharpest, largest piece, the piece that would sever all the rest of it.
And somehow he gloried in it anyway, his hips bucking hungrily under her body, his hands spreading wide, catching her nipples between his fingers and spasming with joy when he felt her tighten around him and shout her triumph as she approached the peak of her pleasure. She fell forward on his chest as his mind spun out with the white hotness of his own fulfillment. Her breath flowed over his skin and Lincoln realized that, other than a few joyful moments that lasted only a heartbeat’s amount of time with LJ, this was the first time he’d felt anything other than overwhelming despair or frustrated anger in days, weeks. This was the first time he’d had any kind of release, for his mind or his body.
When he also realized Sara was asleep on top of him, he knew the same was true for her.
~*~
To answer his ringing cell phone, Lincoln had to untwine his limbs from around Sara and roll over towards the bedside table. “Yeah?” he croaked.
“Dad? Are you guys in there? We’ve been pounding on the door for like ten minutes.”
“Oh, shit,” Lincoln groaned, sitting upright and nearly dumping Sara out of the twin bed they were lying in. “Hey, LJ,” he said loudly, which caused Sara’s head to whip around on the pillow. “Sorry, buddy, we-I’m still sleepin’, uh, just a sec. I’ll be right there.”
Scrambling out of the bed and grabbing his pants, he muttered over his shoulder, “They were supposed to call me and let me know when they were getting here.” He glanced at Sara in time to see her jumping out of the bed and looking around frantically for her t-shirt. It was on his side of the bed, on the floor, and he stooped down, picked it up and threw it at her. She caught it against her chest and made for the door. “Sara,” he said, stopping her naked body from leaving his sight too quickly. “Mike can never know about this.”
“I know,” she said quietly. She raised her chin to look into his eyes and a small smile curved her lips. “I know,” she repeated. Turning, she left the room, he presumed, to go back to her own.
Hurrying out to the front door, Lincoln yanked it open to see LJ standing on the step, looking a little impatient, but relieved to see his father. Bare-chested, with his pants barely buttoned up, he dragged LJ into a hug and smiled at Jane over his son’s head. “Hey, sorry about that. Didn’t get to sleep until late, and I thought you guys were gonna call when you were close.”
Jane eyed him candidly and Lincoln could feel the rush of heat in his cheeks. It’s not that anything could really embarrass him at this point, it was more the idea that Jane could tell what had kept him up most of the night. “We made better time than I anticipated,” she said. “LJ drove half the night while I slept.” She made a production of checking her watch. “It’s nearly noon. You guys on a bender?”
Lincoln laughed, and released LJ, his hands cupping the boy’s face to look at the little scar on his cheek. “You got the stitches out, okay?” he asked, rubbing a thumb over the red mark.
“Yeah, Dad. Everything’s fine. Where’s Uncle Mike?” LJ asked pushing through the door. “Uncle Mike!” he called.
“Not here, and hush up, Sara’s still sleeping.”
“Sara? Who’s Sara?” LJ asked.
“Where is your brother?” Jane demanded.
As Lincoln gave them the short version to get them up to date as to where Michael was and why Sara was there with them, Jane walked around the living room, and he could tell she was checking things out. Making sure it was safe, for all of them. The jacket she wore moved with her body and occasionally he could see the outline of her gun at the small of her back.
They already knew Aldo was dead, and Lincoln had wondered if that might be a hardship for Jane. He wondered about the nature of their relationship and why Jane was so loyal to his father, but there hadn’t been time to get a history, and now they were sort of stuck with each other.
“When did Michael leave?” Jane asked.
“Two days ago. He’s supposed to call me tomorrow at a certain time to let me know what’s going on.”
LJ started to say something, but as his mouth opened, Sara appeared at the top of the stairs, dressed in jeans and a white button up. “Hi,” Lincoln’s son said and Lincoln didn’t miss the way LJ’s eyes goggled a bit. He turned to watch Sara descend the stairs himself, and felt a clenching in his gut that hadn’t been there before. Her climbing into bed with him had not resulted in one round of lovemaking. The reason they had been dead asleep at noon was because they had only slept for an hour before going at it again, and then slept again only a few hours before he awoke to the best blowjob of his life. In fact, if Jane and LJ hadn’t arrived when they did, Lincoln couldn’t help but feel a tightening in his groin at the idea of what they’d be doing right now.
She was a beautiful woman, and there was no denying that. But the fact that he had carnal knowledge of her definitely made his temperature a little higher than normal. “Sara Tancredi, this is my son, LJ, and this is Jane. LJ, Jane, Sara.”
*~*
The next day, Michael called exactly at 6pm and told Lincoln exactly what he wanted to hear. He had the tape, and their father had been right about Sara’s father. Michael’s big plan for this, which was already in motion, included a public broadcast on the news. “It will probably break into regular programming, I’d guess, in about 30 minutes.”
“Are you all right?” Lincoln asked. He could feel the piercing eyes of Jane, LJ and Sara all along his spine, but he didn’t turn to face them. He wanted to know what was going on before he gave anything away.
“I’m fine,” Michael said, and Lincoln could hear the grin in his tone. “Really, Linc, it will all be over in about 30 minutes.”
“You need to get the hell out then, they’re going to arrest you, you know that.”
“I’ve already surrendered. This is my one phone call.”
“What? What the fuck are you thinking?” Lincoln shouted. “That was not the plan!”
“It was my plan. You had to stay there, but I’ve got to appear sorry. I’ll get leniency for turning myself in.”
“You’re a sitting duck, that’s what you are!”
“No, Linc. It’s okay. It’s all okay.”
“Well, excuse me if I find that a little hard to believe!” Lincoln could feel the rage boiling up inside him and if it hadn’t been Michael’s only phone call, he would have hung up on him.
“Linc, trust me. You do trust me, don’t you?”
“Don’t try that shit now. You know this isn’t about you, it’s about them, all of them wanting to kill us.”
“They won’t be able to kill us when everyone will be hunting them. Trust me,” Michael’s emphasis on those last words tore a bloody path through Lincoln as he felt Sara’s hand on his arm.
Lincoln’s eyes flew to hers as she moved around in front of him, so he couldn’t not look at her. Her eyes held concern, but Lincoln didn’t know if it was for him or for Michael or both. Her hand slid up his arm, and her fingers curled around it, her touch familiar and comforting, whatever motivated it. “Do you want to talk to Sara?” Lincoln asked.
“No, not now. I need you to call a guy named Doug Gillespie for me. He’s the best defense attorney in Illinois.” Lincoln signaled Jane for a piece of paper and pen and wrote down the number Michael gave him. “We won’t have any trouble getting the best, because the publicity on this is going to be out of this world. Call him, retain him, and then get your butt back to Chicago, but wait until tomorrow. Let it all explode, Linc, and then come home. That’s what you deserve.”
Lincoln’s eyes closed, shutting out the number on the piece of paper in front of him, shutting out Sara’s inquisitive gaze, shutting out everything except the sound of his brother’s voice. “What about you?”
“It’s going to work out. Call Doug Gillespie. They’re keeping me at Statesville until anything gets decided. Linc,” Michael said, again, the deep, resonant sound of his little brother’s voice took on an intensity that ate his heart. “You’re going to be free, and we’ve brought them down. It was all I started out to do plus the one little thing I could set right. I feel great about it. Don’t worry.”
Chapter One