Melissa MacNeal - Beyond Redemption

"Billy!" I squealed. "My God, I-"

"Took you long enough." He pinned me fiercely to the tree. "You would've let some total stranger grope you this way?"

His midnight eyes riveted mine and I had no answer. His face, as dusky and handsome as I remembered, was limned with a lust every fiber of my being responded to. I had no choice! While he was the same magnificent Billy Tripplehorn I'd taken away from Lucy Legg, he was different somehow. Man, yet animal. Familiar, yet filled with an elemental power I'd never felt before.

And why would I have expected him to show up in formal attire, looking decidedly debonair and European?

I licked my lips, desperate to answer him. "After the way you abandoned me-again!-I thought you'd never be back. And I-I was afraid Perfidia had killed you."

"Do I kiss like a dead man?"

Only when I saw the flicker of his grin did I laugh. And when Billy joined me, I felt the prodding of that eager erection against my middle. It made the heat between us surge all over again, and before I knew what he'd done, Tripplehorn scooped me up so my legs splayed in surprise. He paused with his thick head at my entry, wetting himself with my dew…making me wait…

"Do you love me, Alexandrea?" he whispered, his tone teasing yet utterly serious as he gazed into my eyes. "Will you be my woman? Forever?"

"Lord, yes-I've loved you since-"

I cried out with his surge of passion, even more excruciating than I remembered before. What a sight we must've made there in the graveyard, rutting against that tree beneath the cover of his shimmering cape! But I was too filled with Billy Tripplehorn to care. My hips thrust to meet his every plunge. We were going at it like beasts in the wild, oblivious to decorum and the weather. All I knew was that I felt complete at last-not to mention ready to explode with heat and white light and excitement.

At my first convulsion, Billy drove deep. I quivered, lost in my climax, glad for the padding of my overcoat and those strong arms that kept me from falling to the ground. With a grunt, he shot me so full of cream it splattered onto his pants. Still he pumped me, as though driven by some force even he couldn't identify, until I clenched my teeth to keep from blacking out from another orgasm.

Billy rested against me then, until he caught his breath. Then he tweaked my mustache. "We've got to stop meeting like this, Mr. Moore. If folks find out, you'll never practice law in this town again."

He was teasing me, of course, but I wanted answers. I suspected there was more to this Billy Tripplehorn than the one I'd known before, and that he'd dance around my questions unless I kept him…naked.

"That's exactly why I believed you'd never come back," I said sadly. "When I saw the disgust on your face, when you discovered these male clothes in Andrea's closet, I knew I'd lost you."

"Oh, no. I'd have been back." He settled against me so we could talk seriously-if that's possible when two lovers are still joined at the hip, dripping. "I realized Perfidia was using her wiles against you while I was weakened, and frankly, your dual identity was what fascinated me most. Gave me something to puzzle over as I…regained my strength."

"But I took you to the mansion under false pretenses! And then I deceived you again about who I really was-"

"I was too damn cocky to thank you then, but you saved me from claiming Lucy Legg's baby," he replied, gently stroking my cheek. "I've come to realize what a strong, versatile woman you are, Alexandrea. And after all, I let Alex uh, handle me, on that first ride to the house. He had a grip on my situation long before I did."

Where had this humility come from? This profound gratitude? Mr. Tripplehorn was a changed man-but that didn't mean I'd surrender to him. It would take more than this wild, abandoned coupling to make us a couple in the way he seemed to want now.

"I'm really pretty ordinary, Billy."

"A lady lawyer who's outfoxed the magistrate-and everyone else-is hardly ordinary, sweetheart." His smile waxed boyish, enough that I noticed how his even, white teeth caught the moonlight. "You've got to have some smarts to triumph in the courtroom, and also manage the orphanage, and I admire that. Your father would be proud."

How did he know…?

I didn't want these unsettling details to derail my train of thought, so I pressed on. "Billy, I saw the way you responded to Pandora and Pink and Perfidia! Those vixens had you coming on command-doing aerial acrobatics, for Pete's sake! I'm just a boring little mortal."

"But you don't bite," he replied ruefully. "Perfidia gets a man's blood pumping, all right, but that's not what I have in mind when I want a woman to suck me. I almost didn't make it back to you."

I stroked the long, strong column of his neck. He was still young and strong as a bullmoose, even in these refined clothes. "So where did you go? How did you recover?"

"Who says I did?"

Once again he flashed his wicked grin, and I saw those white, even teeth…inscisors I'd never particularly noticed before.

Billy kissed me-a diversionary tactic-but I let it pass. "Let's just say there was some magic worked in my behalf. Call it an attitude transfusion."

He pulled something from his pocket then-a tarot card of The Lovers. "Pandora whisked me off to her villa in Italy to recuperate. Convinced me to make the most of myself, so I could be equal to loving YOU, Andrea."

Was I still hearing little hints between the lines? I sighed, wondering how to make Billy see our reality through his own, earthy eyes rather than Pandora's.

"Billy, I adore you, and the Three P's have the best intentions-mostly. But I'm not sure this'll work. You're a hot-blooded young stud, and here I am, at thirty-five-"

"So it's damn well TIME you had a lover like me making you scream! You're hitting your sexual prime, Miss Moore. You deserve a man who can handle that."

He kissed me again, running the tip of his tongue around my lips-another effective diversion. The change in this young guttersnipe went deeper than his elegant clothing, it seemed. But if he'd been to Pandora's villa-a seaside haven I'd heard her reminisce about-had she'd been coaching…

"I hear Alex Moore's to be the next magistrate," Billy said matter-of-factly.

"NO! I'm through acting like a man!"

"So only wear these clothes until you're sworn in, and then show everyone who you really are!" he said with a chuckle. "Who could've dreamed Redemption would have a female on the bench?! I, for one-"

"It would never work, Billy."

"Why not?" He seemed genuinely appalled at my attitude. "You've got the legal expertise-the experience-and think of the fun we'd have in court! I could crouch under your chair and slip my head under that black robe. What a scandal, to learn the new magistrate wears nothing under it!"

"Pandora obviously gave you some sort of magic potion-"

"A love potion, Andrea," he crooned. "With the money we've got, we could build a big house on that hill. We could have a French maid like Cerise-who sends her regards, by the way. And I could be your love slave, Andrea. There's something to be said for a life of service and devotion…"

My mouth hung open. I was SO tempted to agree to anything this sweet-talker asked…but what if this was some evil trick Perfidia had devised? For all I knew, she and the other two vamps were eavesdropping-I couldn't believe they would abandon me, forever. And it would be just like that blonde bitch to reel me in again, using Billy for bait. He was too good to be true.

My heart turned into lead as I looked at him. But I'd led him down the primrose path twice before, so I had to act responsibly. "You've painted a pretty picture, but I can't live in it. Goodbye, Billy. You really should go now."