Amanda's hands clung deeply in his thick blond head of hair as his mouth burned a trail over her bare breasts and he blew lightly against her heated skin.
"Jake..." she whispered, her hips arching as his fingers hooked in the hem of her jeans. His tongue lapped circles around her belly button, sending her writhing as the button of her pants came loose and he worked the material over her hips.
In the dim light of his bedroom she stared wide eyed at the ceiling as she felt his breath on the exposed thatch of hair between her legs.
She so shouldn't be here...
Only two weeks ago she'd agreed to go on one date to him. Despite her rejection of his first advances, his green eyes and charming smile persuaded her otherwise. And he'd been so sweet... One date wouldn't hurt, so long as her parents never found out. Jake Hooper... her father would have a heart attack. Not so long ago the Hooper name had been all over the papers when Evelyn Hooper came clean about her alleged affairs with several state officials. A high end prostitute, they'd called her, and Jake happened to be her oldest child. If that weren't bad enough, Amanda's father was on the list of names she'd so generously handed over to the press.
None of it was true, of course. Even Jake seemed to believe that, and even seemed to have less love for his own mother than Amanda did. So one date turned into three, and then a few afternoons at the beach when she should have been studying in her dorm where her parents thought she was...
And she liked him, damn it. Forget she never meant to find herself alone with him in his one bedroom apartment. But then, that could be a problem. Especially since Amanda knew damn well that their budding relationship was doomed to go nowhere. In fact, she'd meant to break it off tonight. Gently, if possible. But now that her jeans were around her knees...
Reaching for him, Amanda meant to guide him upwards, away from her burning body.
"Jake..."
He took the pressure of her hands as encouragement and slid his bare chest up hers until his lips pressed her chin, her cheek, and then her mouth. His tongue slipped between her lips to touch hers and for a moment she was lost again. Her fingers gripped his shoulders, wrapped around him. His hand slid down her body to cup between her thighs and her eyes snapped open, her hands moved to his chest to push him away.
He smiled crookedly down at her, brushing her dark bangs away from her eyes. "Mandy..."
Pressing her hand over his mouth, she regarded him sadly as he kissed her palm. "Jake, wait..."
.......................
Twelve weeks later
Her fingers shaking as she looked down at the small, typed note she'd found on the windshield of her car that evening, Eve Hooper took a deep breath. She stared up at the rusting numbers drilled into the door in front of her. 2-2... and then a shadow where the zero used to be. Carefully opening her purse she slid the note inside, her eyes briefly halting on the shiny black handgun safely tucked in next to a half empty pack of spearmint gum and a wallet it three dollar bills and her identification cards.
Eve didn't even know how to use a gun. But somehow, it had seemed like a good idea to sneak it out of her father's safe the moment she'd decided to go through with this asinine idea. Of course, as soon as she'd read the note, she'd known she was going to go through with it. That's what desperate people did, didn't they? They met anonymous strangers in cheap hotel rooms.
And Eve Hooper was desperate. The last three months of her life had been complete hell, and if a typed up note suggested she could change that, she was willing to risk anything. She'd risk anything, anyway, for her brother Jake.
Six years ago she'd been a fifteen year old girl forced to hide in bathrooms of cheap hotels just like this while her mother entertained various men, claiming it was what kept them fed. Funny, Eve had always mused, since there never seemed to be any food around. Only the drugs and cheap wine that made her mother mean... whenever a man came over, Eve had learned to make herself scarce, knowing that if she didn't the belt would come out, and her mother would make her pay dearly for it.
Jake had been older, but still only seventeen, and had done his best to keep track of her, occasionally showing up with something descent to eat and money for Eve that their mom took as soon as he was gone. Eve never dared to ask him to take her with him when he left. Jake had gone from living on the streets to finding a job that paid enough for him to rent a small apartment. But the day he showed up with no notice to find his sister bruised and crying on the floor of the most recent hotel their mother had moved them into had been his final straw. He took Eve away, regardless of their mother's threats to have him arrested for kidnaping. Unable to provide for her himself, Jake had done the unthinkable and tracked down the father they had both been raised to believe had left them
To Eve's delight, they'd found a man nearly twenty years older than their mother. At sixty, Bill Hooper was possibly the only man who had ever loved the woman who'd raised his children enough to marry her. He told them in the first three years of their marriage, they'd been happy, but the day he'd lost his job was the day that Evelyn had left, only two days after Eve had been born.
He invited the siblings in, but Jake being as stubborn as he was to make it on his own, left Eve with their father, checking in every few days. She and Bill had gotten along well at first. She had no doubt that he loved her, though he turned out to be quite the strict father. He insisted she excel at everything she set out to do. He constantly watched her grades, set curfews, and was the only real parent she'd ever known. When Jake came to visit, Bill had openly attempted to develop a relationship with his son, and while Jake eventually became a part of their small family, he was forever independent, regardless of the consequences.
Before he turned eighteen, Eve's brother had been to jail twice, both times for petty theft, and then spent the first six months after his twenty first birthday locked up for selling drugs. When he was out again he'd finally agreed to move in with Eve and Bill to make an attempt at working towards a better life for himself. By then, Eve had graduated highschool and with her father's help had taken courses to become a massage therapist. Her hopes were that the job would help her work her way through college, as she'd decided to become a teacher. It was during her first year of community college that her mother had resurfaced, this time through the media as she made claims and went as far as writing a book about her liaisons with men in power. Bill had been devastated when photographs of himself and his children were scattered through the tabloids, most of the gossip aimed at Eve, who's resemblance to her mother was uncanny. The day she showed up at school and a fellow student had handed her twenty dollars and propositioned a blow job was the day she dropped out.
It was Jake who'd protected her from all of this, convincing her to go back to school and even using his part time job at a gas station to help her with tuition. She was half way through her second year by the time the media hype simmered down... and now this.
All because her brother had misplaced his heart and fallen in with a Governor's daughter. A governor who'd been slandered all over the press because of his own mother. Eve had told him it was a bad idea the day she spotted him with Amanda Chandler. But Jake had insisted he couldn't let her go, and when he'd enrolled himself in school only a week after meeting her, Eve couldn't bring herself to say the changes he was trying to make for himself-- and for Amanda-- were a mistake.
Until, of course, the evening the police had shown up to arrest Jake for the rape of Amanda Chandler. Eve had been heartbroken, and she feared the return of the media into their lives would kill their father, who'd recently recovered from a stroke. Amanda's word against Jake's was proving to be the biggest trial of their lives. The girl seemed hell bent to send him away, and Eve was equally determined to see him released. Regardless of the hype, she was convinced that her brother would never, ever, hurt a girl like that.
But they were due to go to trial in just a few weeks, and after the story had appeared in the papers, Jake's public defender was convinced that they wouldn't have a sympathetic jury. Desperate to help any way she could, Eve couldn't quite resist the note that read:
