Without Mercy - Lisa Jackson [50]
She reached into her inside pocket for her cell phone, the one she’d gotten on the Blue Rock black market. Each week, when the van went into town for supplies, a few of the TAs were allowed to go on the shopping spree, and one of them was running a banner business in contraband. She’d ordered and received one of those prepaid cell phones, and it was a lifesaver.
Except it wasn’t in her pocket.
But it had to be. She was always so careful with it. If it was ever found, she’d be in big, big trouble. She patted down each of her pockets, then turned them inside out. Damn! It must’ve fallen out of her pocket, like it nearly had on the way to the barns when she was running to catch up with her friends.
Panic crawled through her guts. She couldn’t lose it. She looked back at the path she’d just taken, searching for the slim phone, but didn’t spy any small black rectangle on the snow. Nothing. Not even when she swept the beam of her flashlight quickly along the edge of the bushes where she’d hidden.
So…if it had fallen out inside, probably as she’d pushed her way through the window, she’d find it when she returned. Right?
She tried to calm down.
It would be okay.
And if it was found, it couldn’t be traced to her, not unless the school was into fingerprinting.
It wasn’t a problem.
Just an inconvenience.
And it was worth it.
Anything was.
As long as she could be with him.
CHAPTER 13
The Leader’s breath shuddered in the cold night air, disturbing the snowflakes that were falling steadily. He couldn’t sleep, was too keyed up. There was a snap in the air, a tension that fired his nerves.
Outwardly, everything appeared as it always had.
Serene. Peaceful.
But a change was coming.
He would see to it.
His passion would guide him.
If he didn’t allow it to rule him. That was the trick. Passion was a double-edged sword. Especially when it came to women.
Shaylee Stillman’s face came to mind as he turned his gaze to the dorms and the window of her room. She was the challenge, the one he wanted. He would love to tame the mutiny he saw rising in her big hazel eyes, love to let his fingers graze the white, white skin of her side to linger at her waist. He’d surround it with a hand, his thumb poised right above her pubis, his fingers pressing hot near her spine. Making her hot inside. Making her wet.
He licked his lips and told himself to be patient. Careful.
His weakness was sex.
Always had been.
It had started with his mother, he knew now. She’d caught him with his tutor, a high school girl who had the most incredible breasts he’d ever glimpsed. Secretly, from his upstairs window, he’d watched her sunbathe in her backyard.
Lissa Harvey.
She’d oftentimes taken off her bikini top while the sun’s rays had been the most intense and caressed her skin, causing sweat to collect. Dark nipples had pointed upward at the sky. Perfectly round. Making him hard. Chocolate disks that were larger than he had expected. God, how he’d wanted to suckle and lick and bite at them.
Better yet, sometimes, when she was alone and the family minivan wasn’t in the drive, she’d slip her hand under her polka-dot bottoms and, closing her eyes, pleasured herself while baking in the warm summer sun.
He’d touched himself as well, timing his orgasm with hers. And he had fantasized about her in those sultry summer nights when no breeze had stirred the curtains and wasps, trapped inside, had beaten themselves to death on the windows.
She’d turned bronze over the summer, her nipples seeming to fade as her breasts darkened. She’d been a scholar, without a boyfriend, a college-bound student with long dark hair who understood math, algebra in particular.
He hadn’t cared about school at the time, and his mother had been worried, hiring Lissa in late July before she took off for university.
That’s when the affair had started.
In the musty basement with its low ceiling and tiny windows. On a futon reserved for guests, in front of the cold hearth of an unused fireplace with books and notes spread over the coffee table, they’d first kissed. First