Читать книгу The Billionaire's Bargain - Naima Simone - Страница 10

Two

Blackout.

Malfunction. Doors locked.

Remain calm.

The words shouted in anything but calm voices outside the bathroom door bombarded Isobel. Perched on the settee in the outer room of the ladies’ restroom, she hunched over her cell phone, which had only 2 percent battery life left.

“C’mon,” she ordered her fingers to cooperate as she fumbled over the text keyboard. In her nerves, she kept misspelling words, and damn autocorrect, it kept “fixing” the words that were actually right. Finally she finished her message and hit send.

Mom, is everything okay? How is Aiden?

Fingers clutching the little burner phone, she—not for the first time—wished she could afford a regular cell. But with her other responsibilities, that bill had been one of the first things she’d cut. Constantly buying minutes and battling a battery that didn’t hold a charge presented a hassle, but the prepaid phone did the job. After seconds that seemed like hours, a message popped up on the screen.

He’s fine, honey. Sleeping. We’re all good. Stay put. It’s a blackout and we’ve been advised to remain inside. I love you and take care of yourself.

Relief washed over Isobel in a deluge. If she hadn’t already been sitting down, she would’ve sunk to the floor. For the first time since the world had plunged into darkness, she could breathe.

After several moments, she located the flashlight app and aimed it in the direction of where she believed the door to be. The deep blackness seemed to swallow up the light, but she spied the handle and sighed. Without ventilation, the area was growing stuffy. The hallway had to be better. At the very least, she wouldn’t feel like the walls were closing in on her. Claustrophobia had never been a problem for her, but this was enough to have anyone on edge.

She grabbed the handle and pulled the door open, the weak beam illuminating the floor only feet in front of her. As soon as she stepped out into the hall, the light winked, then disappeared.

“No, not yet,” she muttered, flipping the phone over. But, nope, the cell had died. “Dammit.”

Frustration and not-a-little fear scrabbled up her chest, lodging there. Inhaling a deep breath and holding it, she forced herself to calm down. Okay. One thing her two years in Los Angeles had granted her was a sense of direction. The ballroom lay to the left. Follow the wall until it gave way to the small alcove and the side entrance she’d exited.

No problem. She could do this.

Probably.

Maybe.

Releasing that same gulp of air, she shuffled forward, hands groping until they knocked against the wall. Step one down.

With halting steps, she slid along, palms flattened, skimming. The adjacent corridor shouldn’t be too far...

Her chest bumped into a solid object seconds after her hands collided with it. A person. A big person, if the width of the shoulders and chest under her fingers were anything to go by.

“Oh, God. I’m sorry.” She snatched her arms back. Heat soared up her neck and poured into her face. She’d just felt up a man in the dark.

Horrified, she shifted backward, but her heel caught on the hem of her dress, and she pitched forward. Slamming against that same hard expanse of muscles she’d just molested. “Dammit. I—”

The second apology drifted away as a hoarse, ragged sound penetrated the darkness and reached her ears. For a long moment, she froze, her hands splayed wide over the stranger’s chest. It rapidly rose and fell, the pace unnatural. She jerked her head up, staring into the space where his face should’ve been. But she didn’t need to glimpse his features to understand this man suffered some kind of distress. Because those rough, serrated, wounded sounds originated from him.

The urge to comfort, to stop those god-awful moans overrode all embarrassment at having touched him without his permission. At this moment, she needed to touch him. To ease his pain.

As she slid one palm over his jackhammering heart, she swept the other over his shoulder and down his arm until she enclosed his long fingers in hers. Then she murmured, “Hi. Talk about an awkward meet cute, right? Citywide blackout. Get felt up in the hallway. Sounds like the beginning of a rom-com starring Ryan Reynolds.”

The man didn’t reply, and his breathing continued to sough out of his lungs, but his fingers curled around hers, clutching them tight. As if she were his lifeline.

Relief and determination to tow him away from whatever tormented him swelled within her. It didn’t require a PhD in psychology to figure out that this man was in the throes of a panic attack. But she had zero experience with how to handle that situation. Still, he’d responded to her voice, her presence. So she’d continue talking.

“Do you know who Ryan Reynolds is?” She didn’t wait for his answer but kept babbling. “The Green Lantern? Deadpool? I’m leading with those movies, because if you’re anything like my brother, if I’d have said The Proposal, you would’ve stared at me like I’d suddenly started speaking Mandarin. Well...that is, if you could stare at me right now.” She snickered. “What I wouldn’t give for Riddick’s eyes right now. To be able to see in the dark? Although you could keep Slam City and, ya know, the murder. Have you ever seen Pitch Black or The Chronicles of Riddick?”

This time she received a squeeze of her fingers and a slight change in the coarseness of his breathing. A grin curved her lips. Good. That had to be a positive sign, right?

“The Chronicles of Riddick? I enjoyed watching Vin Diesel for two hours, but the movie? Meh. Pitch Black, though, was amazing. One of the best sci-fi movies ever. Only beat out by Aliens and The Matrix. Although I still maintain that The Matrix Revolutions never happened, just as Dirty Dancing 2 is a dirty rumor. They’re like Voldemort. Those Movies That Shall Not Be Named.”

A soft, shaky chuckle drifted above her, but seemed to echo in the dark, empty hallway like a sonic boom. Probably because she’d been aching to hear it. Not that she’d been aware of that need until this moment.

An answering laugh bubbled up inside her, but she shoved it back down, opting to continue with what had been working so far. Talking. The irony that this was the longest conversation she’d indulged in with a person outside of her family in two years wasn’t lost on her. Cruel experience had taught her to be wary of strangers, especially those with pretty faces wielding charm like a Highlander’s claymore. The last time she’d trusted a beautiful appearance, she’d ended up in a loveless, controlling, soul-stealing sham of a marriage.

But in the dark...

In the dark lived a kind of freedom where she could lose her usual restrictions, step out of the protective box she’d created for her life. Because here, she couldn’t see this man, and he couldn’t see her. There was no judgment. If he were attending the Du Sable City Gala, then that meant he most likely came from wealth—the kind of wealth that had once trapped her in a gilded prison. Yet in this corridor in the middle of a blackout, money, status, lineage traced back to the Mayflower—none of that mattered. Here, they were only two people holding on to each other to make it through.

“My next favorite sci-fi is Avatar. Which is kind of funny, considering the famous line from the movie is ‘I see you.’” She couldn’t smother her laughter. And didn’t regret the display of amusement when it garnered another squeeze of her hand. “Do you have a favorite?”

She held her breath, waiting. Part of her waited to see if his panic attack had finally passed. But the other part of her wanted—no, needed—to hear his voice. That part wondered if it would match his build.

Being tucked away in a mansion’s dark hallway in a blackout...the insane circumstances had to be the cause of her desire. Because it’d been years since she’d been curious about anything regarding a man.

“The Terminator.”

Oh. Wow. That voice. Darker than the obsidian blanket that draped the city. Deeper than the depths of the ocean she sorely missed. Sin wrapped in the velvet embrace of sweet promise.

A dangerous voice.

One that invited a person to commit acts that might shame them in the light of day, acts a person would revel in during the secretive, shadowed hours of night.

Her eyes fluttered closed, and her lips parted, as if she could breathe in that slightly abraded yet smooth tone. As if she could taste it.

As if she could taste him.

What the hell?

The inane thought rebounded against the walls of her skull, and she couldn’t evict it. Her eyes flew open, and she stared wide into nothing. For the second time that evening, she thanked God. At this moment, she offered her gratitude because she couldn’t be seen. That no one had witnessed her unprecedented, humiliating reaction to a man’s voice.

“A classic.” She struggled to recapture and keep hold of the light, teasing note she’d employed with him BTV. Before The Voice. “But I take your Terminator and one-up you with Predator.”

A scoff. “That wasn’t sci-fi.”

Isobel frowned even though he couldn’t see her disapproval. “Are you kidding me?” She dropped her hand from his chest and jammed it on her hip. “Hello? There was a big-ass alien in it. How is that not sci-fi?”

A snort this time. “It’s horror. Using your logic would mean Avatar was a romance.”

Okay, so this guy might have the voice of a fallen angel tempting her to sin, but his movie knowledge sucked.

“I think I liked you better when you weren’t talking,” she grumbled.

She was rewarded with a loud bark of laughter that did the impossible. Made his voice even sexier. Desire slid through her veins in a slow, heady glide.

She stiffened. No. Impossible. It’d been years since she’d felt even the slightest flicker of this thing that heated her from the inside out.

If she harbored even the tiniest shred of common sense, she’d back away from this man now and blindman’s bluff it until she placed some much needed distance between them. Desire had once fooled her into falling in love. And falling in love had led to a heartbreaking betrayal she was still recovering from.

No, she should make sure he was okay, then leave. With moving back to Chicago, raising her son as a single mother and working a full-time job, she didn’t have the time or inclination for something as mercurial as desire.

You’re sitting here in the dark with him, not dating him.

One night. Just one night.

She sighed.

And stayed.

“Is something wrong?” A large hand settled on her shoulder and cupped it. She gritted her teeth, refusing to lean into that gentle but firm hold.

“Nothing. Just these shoes,” she lied, bending and slipping off one and then the other to validate the fib. “They’re beautiful, but hell on the feet.”

He released another of those soft chuckles that sent her belly into a series of tumbles.

“What’s your name?” His thumb stroked a lazy back-and-forth caress over her bare skin, and she sank her teeth into her bottom lip. Heat radiated from his touch. Until this moment, she hadn’t known her shoulder was an erogenous zone. Funny the things she was finding out in the dark.

What had he asked? Right. Her name.

Alarm and dread filtered into her pleasure, tainting it. Gage had done a damn good job of demonizing her to his family, and then his family had made sure everyone with a willing ear and flapping gums knew Isobel as a lying, greedy whore. It’d been two years since she’d left Chicago, but the insular ranks of high society never forgot names when it came to scandals.

Again, she squeezed her eyes shut as if she could block out the scorn and derision that had once flayed her soul. She still yearned to be known as more than the cheap little gold digger people believed her to be.

“Why do you want my name?” she finally replied.

A short, but weighty pause. “Because I need to know who to thank,” he murmured. “And considering we’ve known each other all of ten minutes, ‘sweetheart’ seems a little forward.”

“I don’t mind ‘sweetheart,’” she blurted out. His grasp on her shoulder tightened, and a swirl of need pooled low in her belly. “What I mean is we don’t need names here. In the dark, we can be other people, different people, and I like the idea of that.”

The bit of deception plucked at her conscience. Because she had no doubt that if he was familiar with her name, he would want nothing to do with her. And selfish though it might be, she’d rather him believe she was some coy debutante than the notorious Widow Wells.

That large hand slid over her shoulder, up her neck and cradled the back of her head. A sigh escaped her before she could contain it.

“Are you hiding, sweetheart?” he rumbled.

The question could have sounded inane since it seemed like the whole city was hunkered down, cloaked in darkness. But she understood what he asked. And the lack of light made it easier to be honest. At least in this.

“Yes,” she breathed, and braced herself for his possible rejection.

“You’re stiffening again.” The hand surrounding hers squeezed lightly, a gesture of comfort. “Don’t worry, your secrets are as safe with me as you are.” He paused, his fingertips pressing into her scalp. “Just as I am with you.”

Oh, God. That...vulnerable admission had no business burrowing beneath skin and bone to her heart. But it did.

“Keep your name, but, sweetheart—” he heaved a heavy sigh, and for an all-too-brief moment he pressed his forehead to hers “—thank you.”

“I...” She swallowed, a shiver dancing down her spine. Whether in delight or warning, she couldn’t tell. Probably both. “You’re welcome. Anyone would’ve done the same,” she whispered.

Something sharp edged through his low chuckle. “That’s where you’re wrong. Most people would’ve kept going, only concerned with themselves. Or they would’ve taken advantage.”

She didn’t answer; she wanted to refute him but couldn’t. Because the sad fact was, he’d spoken the truth. Once she’d been a naïve twenty-year-old who’d believed in the good in people, in the happily-ever-after peddled by fairy tales. Gage had been her drug. And the withdrawal from him had nearly crushed her into the piece of nothing he’d constantly told her she was without him.

Shaking her head to get him out of her mind, she bent down and swept her hands along the floor, seeking the purse she’d dropped. Her fingertips bumped the beaded clutch, and with a small sound of victory, she popped it open and withdrew the snack bar she’d stashed there before leaving her apartment. With a two-year-old, keeping snacks on hand was a case of survival. And though her son hadn’t joined her at the gala, she’d tossed the snack in out of habit. Now she patted herself on the back for her foresight.

Unbidden, a smile curved her lips. If Aiden could see her, he would be holding out his chubby little hand, demanding his “eats.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose, battling back the sting in her eyes. Obtaining help for her son had driven her to this mansion, and she’d failed. It would be easy to blame the blackout for her not locating and approaching the Wellses. But she couldn’t deny the truth. She’d left the ballroom and headed to the restroom to convince herself not to leave. The plunge of the city into darkness had snatched the decision out of her hands, granting her a convenient reprieve from facing down the people who’d made it their lives’ purpose to ensure she understood just how unworthy and hated she was.

But it was only that—a reprieve. Because when it came down to a choice between her pride and providing a stable environment for her son, there wasn’t a choice.

When the blackout ended, she still had to face the Wellses.

“Did I lose you?” His softly rumbled question drew her from her desperate thoughts.

Clearing her throat, she settled on the floor, tucking her legs under her. She tugged on the hem of his pants, and he accepted her silent invitation, sinking down beside her. When the thick muscles of his leg brushed her knee, she reached out and skated a palm down his arm until she located his hand. She pressed half the cereal bar into it.

“What is this?” His low roll of rich laughter slid over her skin, and she involuntarily tightened her grip on her half.

“Dinner.” Isobel bit into the snack and hummed. The oats, almonds and chocolate weren’t caviar and toast points, but they did the job in a pinch. And this situation definitely qualified as a pinch.

“I have to say this is a first,” he murmured, amusement still warming his voice.

God, she liked it. A lot. No matter how foolish that feeling might be.

“So, you don’t want to share your name,” he continued. “And I’ll respect that. But since I’m sharing a cereal bar with you, I feel like I should know more about you besides your predilection for sci-fi movies. Tell me something about you.”

She didn’t immediately reply, instead nibbling on her snack while she figured out how to dodge his request. She didn’t want to give him any details that might assist him in figuring out her identity. But another nebulous reason, one that she felt silly for even thinking, flitted through her head.

Giving him details about herself...pieces of herself...meant she couldn’t get them back.

And she feared that. Had been taught to fear that.

Yet...

She bowed her head, silently cursing herself. What was it about this man? She’d never seen his face, didn’t know his name. And still, he called to her in a way that electrified her. If she’d learned anything from the past, she would shield herself.

“I’m a grudge-holder,” she said, the words escaping. Damn it. “I’ll never let my brother off the hook for burning my Christmas Barbie’s hair to the scalp when I was seven. I still give Elaine Lanier side-eye, whenever I see her, for making out with my boyfriend in the eleventh grade. And I will never, ever forgive Will Smith for Wild, Wild West.”

A loud bark of laughter echoed between them, and she grinned. The sound warmed her like the sun’s beams.

She tapped his leg. A mistake on her part. As she settled her hand back in her lap, she could still feel the strength of his muscle against her fingertips. Good God. The man was hard. She rubbed her fingertips against her leg as if she could erase the sensation. “Now your turn,” she said, forcing a teasing note into her voice. “Tell me something about yourself.”

He hesitated, and for a moment, she didn’t think he would answer, but then he shifted beside her, and his thigh pressed closer, harder against her knee. Her breath snagged in her throat. Heat pulsed through her from that point of contact, and she savored it. For the first time in years, she...embraced it.

“I love to fish,” he finally murmured. “Not deep sea or competitive fishing. Just sitting on a dock with a rod, barefoot, sun beating down on you, surrounded by quiet. Interrupted only by the gently lapping water. We would vacation at our summer home in Hilton Head, and my father and I would spend hours at the lake and dock behind the house. We’d talk or just enjoy the silence and each other. We even caught fish sometimes.”

His low chuckle contained humor, but also a hint of sadness. Her heart clenched at the possible reason why.

“Those were some of my best memories, and I still try to visit Hilton Head at least once a year, although I haven’t been in the last two...”

His voice trailed off, and unable to resist, she reached out, found his hand and wrapped her fingers around his, squeezing. Her heart thumped against her chest when his fingers tightened in response.

“I have the hugest crush on Dr. Phil. He’s so sexy.”

He snorted. “I cook the best eggplant parmesan you’ll ever taste in your life. It’s an existential experience.”

Isobel snickered. “I can write with my toes. I can also eat, brush my teeth and play ‘Heart and Soul’ on the piano with them.”

A beat of silence passed between them. “You do know I recognize that’s from The Breakfast Club, right?”

Laughter burst from her, and she fell back against the wall, clutching her stomach. Wow. She hadn’t laughed this hard or this much in so long. It was...freeing. And felt so damn good. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it.

At twenty, she’d met Gage, and within months, they’d married. She’d gone from being a college student who worked part-time to help pay her tuition to the wife of one of Chicago’s wealthiest men. His family had disapproved of their marriage and threatened to cut him off. Initially, Gage hadn’t seemed to care. They’d lived in a small one-bedroom apartment in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood of Chicago, and they’d been happy. Or at least she’d believed they had been.

Months into their marriage, the charming, affectionate man she’d wed had morphed into a spoiled, emotionally abusive man-child. Not until it’d been too late had she discovered that his fear of being without his family’s money and acceptance had trumped any love he’d harbored for Isobel. Her life had become a living hell.

So the last time she’d laughed like this had been those first four months of her marriage.

A failed relationship, tarnished dreams, battered self-confidence and single motherhood had stolen the carefree from her life, but here, stuck in a mansion with a faceless man, she’d found it again. Even if only for an instant.

“Hey.” Masculine fingers glanced over her knee. “You still with me?”

“Yes,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m still here.”

“Good.” His hand dropped away, and she missed it. Insane, she knew. But she did. “It’s your turn. Because you phoned it in with the last one.”

“So, we’re really not going to talk about how you know the dialogue to The Breakfast Club?” she drawled.

“Yes, we’re going to ignore it. Your turn.”

After chuckling at the emphatic reply, she continued, “Fine. Okay, I...”

Seconds, minutes or hours had passed—she couldn’t tell in this slice of time that seemed to exist outside of reality. They could’ve been on another plane, where his delicious scent provided air, and his deep, melodic voice wrapped around her, a phantom embrace.

And his touch? His touch was gravity, anchoring him to her, and her to him. In some manner—fingers enclosing hers, a thigh pressed to hers, a palm cupping the nape of her neck—he never ceased touching her. Logic reasoned that he needed that lodestone in the blackness so he didn’t surrender to another panic attack.

Yet the heated sweetness that slid through her veins belied reason. No, he wanted to touch her...and, God, did she want to be touched.

She’d convinced herself that she didn’t need desire anymore. Didn’t need the melting pleasure, the hot press of skin to skin, of limbs tangling, bodies straining together toward that perfect tumble over the edge into the abyss.

Yes, she missed all of it.

But in the end, those moments weren’t worth the disillusionment and loneliness that inevitably followed.

Here, though, with this man she didn’t know, she basked in the return of the need, of the sweet ache that sensitized and pebbled her skin, and teased places that had lain dormant for too long. Her nipples furled into tight points, pressing against her strapless bra and gown. Sinuous flames licked at her belly...and lower.

God, she was hungry.

“You’ve gone quiet on me again, sweetheart,” he murmured, sweeping a caress over the back of her hand that he clasped in his. “Talk to me. I need to hear your beautiful voice.”

Did he touch all women this easily? Was he always this affectionate? Or was it the darkness? Did he feel freer, too? Without the accountability of propriety?

Or is it me?

As soon as the traitorous and utterly foolish thought whispered through her head, she banished it. Yes, these were extraordinary circumstances, and she was grabbing this slice in time for herself, but never could she forget who she was. Because this man might not know her identity, but he still believed her to be someone she absolutely wasn’t—wealthy, a socialite...a woman who belonged.

“Sweetheart?”

That endearment. She shivered. It ignited a curl of heat in her chest. It loosed a razor-tipped arrow at the same target. No one had ever called her “sweetheart.” Or “baby” or any of those personal endearments. Gage used to call her Belle, shortening her name and because he’d met her in her regular haunt, the University of Illinois’s library, like a modern-day version of the heroine from Beauty and the Beast. Later, the affectionate nickname had become a taunt, a criticism of her unsophisticated and naïve nature.

She hated that name now.

But every time this man called her sweetheart, she felt cherished, wanted. Even though it was also a stark reminder that he didn’t know her name. That she was lying to him by omission.

“Can I ask you a question?” she blurted out.

“Isn’t that kind of our MO?” he drawled. “Ask.”

Now that she could satisfy the curiosity that had been gnawing at her since she’d first encountered him, she hesitated. She had no right—never mind it not being her business—to probe into his history and private pain. But as hypocritical as it made her, she sought a piece of him she sensed he wouldn’t willingly offer someone else.

“Earlier, when I first bumped into you...you were having a panic attack,” she began. He stiffened, tension turning his body into a replica of the marble statue adorning the fountain outside the mansion. Sitting so close to him, she swore she could feel icy waves emanate from him. Unease trickled through her. Damn it. She should’ve left it alone. “I’m sorry...” she rasped, tugging on her hand, trying to withdraw it from his hold. “I shouldn’t have pried.”

But he didn’t release her. Her heart stuttered as his grip on her strengthened.

“Don’t,” he ordered.

Don’t what? Ask him any more questions? Pull away? How pathetic did it make her that she hoped it was the latter?

“You’re the only thing keeping me sane,” he admitted in a voice so low that, even in the blackness that magnified every sound, she barely caught the admission.

A thread of pain throbbed through his confession, and she couldn’t resist the draw of it. Scooting closer until her thigh pressed against his, she lifted the hand not clasped in his to his hard chest. The drum of his heart vibrated against her palm, running up her arm and echoing in her own chest.

She felt and heard his heavy inhale. And she parted her lips, ready to tell him to forget it. To apologize again for intruding, but his big hand covered hers, halting her words.

“My parents died when I was sixteen.”

“God,” she breathed. That hint of sadness she’d detected earlier when he’d talked about fishing with his father... She’d suspected, and now he’d confirmed it. “I’m so sorry.”

“Plane crash on their way back from a business meeting in Paris. Ordinarily my mother wouldn’t have been with my father, but they decided to treat it as an anniversary trip. They were my foundation. And I...” He paused, and Isobel waited.

She couldn’t imagine... Her father had been a nonfactor in her life for most of her childhood, but her mom... Her mother had been her support system, her rock, even through the years with Isobel and Aiden’s move to California and back. Losing her...she closed her eyes and leaned her head against his shoulder, offering whatever comfort he needed as he relayed the details of the tragedy that had scarred him.

“My best friend and his family took me in. I don’t know what would’ve happened to me, where I would be now, without them. But at the time, I was lost. Adrift. In the months afterward, I’d skip school or leave my friend’s house in the middle of the night to go to the building where we’d lived. The penthouse had been sold, so I no longer had access to my home, but I would sneak into the basement through a window. It had a loosened bar that I would remove and squeeze through. I’d sit there for hours, just content to be in the building, if not in the place where I’d lived with them. My best friend—he followed me one night when I sneaked out, so he knew about it. But he never told.”

Another pause, and again she didn’t disturb him. She wanted to hug that best friend for standing by the boy-now-man. She’d had girlfriends in the past, but none that would’ve—or could’ve, given their own family situations—taken her in as if she were family. This friend of his, he must’ve been special.

“About four months after my parents’ death, I’d left school again and went to the basement. I’d had a rough night. Nightmares and no sleep. That’s the only reason I can think of for me falling asleep in the basement that day. I don’t know what woke me up. The noise? The heat?” His shoulder rose and fell in a shrug under her cheek. “Like I said, I don’t know. But when I did, the room was pitch-black. I couldn’t even see my hands in front of my face. I heard what sounded like twigs snapping. But underneath that, distant but growing louder, was this dull roar. Like engines revving in a closed garage. I’d never been in one before, but somehow I knew. The building was on fire, and I was trapped.”

“No,” she whispered, fingers curling against his chest.

“I couldn’t move. Thick black smoke filled the basement, and I choked on it, couldn’t breathe. I can’t tell you how long I laid there, paralyzed by fear or weak from inhaling smoke, but I thought I was going to die. That room—it became my tomb. A dark, burning tomb. But then I heard someone shouting my name and saw the high beam of a flashlight. It was my friend. I found out later that he’d heard about the fire on the news, and when I hadn’t shown up at his house after school, he’d guessed where I’d gone. The firemen had believed they’d cleared the entire building, but he’d forced them to go back in and search the basement. He should’ve stayed outside and let them come find me, but he’d barreled past them and entered with only his shirt over his face to battle the smoke, putting his life in danger. But if he hadn’t... He saved my life that day.”

“Oh, thank God.” Sliding her hand from under his, she wrapped her arm around his waist, curving her body into his. She’d known him for mere hours, and yet the thought of him dying, of being consumed by flames? It bothered her in a way that made no sense. “He was a hero.”

“Yes, he was,” he said softly. “He was a good man.”

Was a good man. No. It couldn’t be... Horror and disbelief crowded up her throat. “He’s gone, too?”

“A couple of years now, but sometimes it seems like yesterday.”

“I’m so sorry.” Isobel shifted until she knelt beside him. She stroked her hand up his torso, searching out his face. Once she brushed over his hard, faintly stubbled jaw, she cupped it and lowered her head, until her forehead met his temple.

His fingers drifted over her cheek, and after a moment’s hesitation, tunneled into her hair. Her lungs seized, shock infiltrating every vein, organ and limb. Only her heart seemed capable of movement, and it threw itself against her sternum, like an animal desperate for freedom from its cage.

Blunt fingertips dragged over her scalp. A moan clawed its way up her throat at the scratch and tug of her hair, but she trapped the sound behind clenched teeth. She couldn’t prevent the shudder that worked its way through her. Not when it’d been so long since she’d been touched. Since pleasure had even been a factor. So. Long.

“I need to hear that lovely voice, sweetheart,” he rumbled, turning and bowing his head so his lips grazed the column of her throat as he spoke. Sparks snapped under her skin as if her nerve endings had transformed into firecrackers, and his mouth was the lighter. “There are things I want to do to your mouth that require your permission.”

“Like what?” Had she really just asked that question? And in that breathy tone? What was he doing to her?

Giving you what you’re craving. Be brave and find out, her subconscious replied.

“Find out if it’s as sweet as you are. Taste you. Savor you. Learn you,” he murmured, answering her question. He untangled their clasped fingers and with unerring accuracy, located her chin and pinched it. Cool but soft strands of hair tickled her jaw, and then her cheek, as he lifted his head. Then warm gusts of air bathed her lips. She could taste him, his breath. Something potent with faint hints of lemon, like the champagne from earlier. But also, underneath, lay a darker, enigmatic flavor. Him. She didn’t need to pinpoint its origin to know it was all him. “Then I want to take your mouth. Want you to take mine.”

“I...” Desperate, aching need robbed her of words. Of thought.

“Give me the words, sweetheart.” He didn’t breach that scant inch of space between them, waiting on her consent, her permission.

When so much had been ripped from her in the past, choices not even offered, that seeking of her agreement squeezed her heart even as his words caused a spasm to roll through her sex.

“Yes,” she said. Then, as if confirming to herself that she was indeed breaking her self-imposed rules about caution and recklessness, she whispered again, “Yes.”

With a growl, he claimed that distance.

She expected him to crush his mouth to hers, to conquer her like a wild storm leveling everything in its path. And she would’ve thrown herself into the whirlwind, been willingly swept up. But his tenderness was as thorough in its destruction as any tornado.

His lips, full, firm yet somehow soft, brushed over hers. Pressed, then withdrew. Rubbed, cajoled, gave her enough of him, but waited until she granted him more. On the tail end of a sigh she couldn’t contain, she parted for him. Welcomed the penetration of his tongue. Slid into a sensual dance with him. It was she who sucked him, licking the roof of his mouth, sampling the dark, heady flavor of his groan. She who first brought teeth into play, nipping at the corner of his mouth, raking them down his chin, only to return to take just as he’d invited her to do.

She who crawled onto his lap, jerking her skirt up and straddling his powerful thighs.

But it was he who threw oil onto their fire, ratcheting their desire from a blaze into a consuming inferno.

With a snarl that vibrated through his chest and over her nipples, he tugged her head back and opened his mouth over her neck. She arched into the hot, wet caress of tongue and teeth, her hands shifting from his shoulders to his hair and holding on. Every flick and suck echoed low in her belly, between her thighs. Fleetingly, the thought that she should be embarrassed at how drenched her panties were flitted through her head. But the clamp of his hand on her hip and the roll of his hips, stroking the hard, thick length of his cock over her sex, obliterated every rationalization.

Think? All she could do was feel.

Pleasure, its claws tipped with greed, tore at her. She whimpered, clung to him.

“Again,” she ordered. Begged. Didn’t matter. As long as he did it again.

“That’s it,” he praised against her throat, licking a path to her ear, where he nipped the outer curve. Hell, when had that become an erogenous zone? “Tell me what you want, what you need from me. I’ll give it to you, sweetheart. You just have to ask.”

Keep turning me inside out. Keep holding me like I’m wanted, cherished. Keep making me forget who I am.

But those pleas veered too close to exposing that part of her she’d learned to protect with the zeal of a dragon guarding a treasure.

So instead she gave him what she could. What she’d be too embarrassed to admit in the light of day. “Here.” With trembling, jerky movements, she yanked down the top of her dress, drew him to her bared breasts. “Kiss me. Mark me.”

He followed through on his promise, giving her what she’d requested. His tongue circled her nipple, lapped at it, swirled before sucking so hard the corresponding ache twinged deep and high inside her. She tried to hold in her cry but couldn’t. Not when lust arrowed through her, striking at the heart of her. He murmured against her flesh, switching breasts, and treating her other peak to the same erotic torture. Skillful fingers plucked and pinched the tip that was damp from his mouth.

“More,” she gasped. “Oh, God, more.”

“Tell me.” The hand on her hip tightened, and he delivered another slow, luxurious stroke to her empty, wet sex. “Tell me once more. I want your voice, your words.”

Frustration, the last stubborn remnants of shyness and passion warred within her. Her lips moved, but the demand make me come that howled inside her head refused to emerge. Finally she grabbed the hand at her waist and slid it over her hiked-up dress, down her inner thigh and between her legs. She pressed his palm to her, moaning at the temporary relief of him cupping her.

“You’re cheating,” he teased, but the almost guttural tone had her hips bucking against him. As did his, “You’re soaked. For me.”

“Yes,” she rasped. “For you. Only for you.” Truth. That piece of herself, she offered him. She’d never been this hungry, this desperate before. Not even for—no!

She flung herself away from the intrusive thought. Not here. In this hall, there was only room for her and this nameless, faceless man, who nonetheless handled her like the most desirable, beautiful creature he’d ever held. Or at least that’s what she was convincing herself of for these stolen moments.

“Touch me,” she whispered, grinding down against his hand. “Please touch me.”

The fingers still sweeping caresses over her nipple abandoned her flesh to cradle her face. He tipped her head down until their mouths met. “Don’t beg me to touch you,” he said, his lips grazing hers with each word. “You’ll never have to beg me to do that.”

He sealed the vow with a plunge of his finger inside her.

She cried out, tossing her head back on her shoulders as pleasure rocked through her like an earthquake, cracking her open, exposing her.

“Damn,” he swore. “So damn tight. So damn...” He bit off the rest of his litany, slowly pulling free of her, then just as slowly, just as tenderly thrusting back inside. But she didn’t want slow, didn’t want tender. And she told him so with a hard, swift twist of her hips, taking him deeper. “Sweetheart,” he growled, warned.

“No,” she panted. “I need to... Please.” He’d said she didn’t need to plead with him, but if it would get her what she craved—release, oblivion—she wasn’t above it.

With a snarl, he crushed his mouth to hers, tongue driving between her lips as he buried himself inside her. She moaned into his kiss, even as she spread her legs wider, granting him deeper access to her body. And he took it. He withdrew one finger and returned to her with two, working them into her flesh, working her.

Something snapped within her, and she rode his hand, rode the exquisite storm he whipped to a frenzy with every stroke, every brush of his thumb over her clit, every curl of his fingertips on that place high and deep in her sex. He played her, demanding her body sing for him. And God, did it.

With one last rub over that, before now, untouched place, she splintered, screaming into his mouth. And he swallowed it, clutching her to him, holding her tight as she crashed headlong into the abyss, a willing sacrifice to pleasure.

* * *

Isobel snuggled under her warm blanket, grabbing ahold of those last few moments of lazy sleepiness before Aiden cried out, demanding she come free him from his crib and feed him. She sighed, curling into her pillow...

Wait. Her pillow wasn’t this firm. Frowning, she rolled over...or tried to roll over. Something prevented the movement...

Oh, hell.

Not something. Someone.

She stiffened as reality shoved the misty dredges of sleep away and dragged in all the memories of the night before. Gala. Blackout. Finding a mysterious man. Calming him. Laughing with him. Kissing him...

She jerked away, her lashes lifting.

Weak, hazy pink-and-orange light poured in through the large window at the end of the hall. Morning, but just barely. So maybe about six o’clock. Still, the dawn-tinged sky provided enough light to realize the warm blanket was really a suit jacket. Instead of a mattress, she perched on a strong pair of muscular thighs. And her pillow was a wide, solid chest covered in a snow-white dress shirt.

Heart pounding like a heavy metal-drum solo, she inched her gaze up to the patch of smooth golden skin exposed by the buttons undone at a powerful throat. Her belly clenched, knots twisting and pulling tight as she continued her wary, slow perusal.

A carved-from-a-slab-of-stone jaw dusted with dark stubble.

An equally hard chin with just the faintest hint of a cleft.

A beautiful, sensual mouth that promised all kinds of decadent, corrupting pleasures. Pleasures she had firsthand knowledge that he could deliver. She clearly remembered sinking her teeth into the bottom, slightly fuller curve.

Suppressing a shiver that he would surely feel, as they were pressed so closely together, she continued skimming her gaze upward past a regal, patrician nose and sharp, almost harsh cheekbones.

As she raised her scrutiny that last scant inch to his eyes, his dense, black, ridiculously long lashes lifted.

She sucked in a painful breath. And froze. Except for her frantic pulse, which reverberated in her head like crashing waves relentlessly striking the shore. Deafening her.

Not because of the striking, piercing amber eyes that could’ve belonged to a majestic eagle.

No. Because she recognized those eyes.

It’d been two years since they’d coldly stared at her over a yawning, freshly dug grave with a flower-strewn mahogany casket suspended above it. But she’d never forget them.

Darius King.

Gage’s best friend.

The man who blamed her for Gage’s death.

The man who hated her.

Hated her... Hated her... As the words—and the throbbing pain of them—sank into her brain, her paralysis shattered. She scrambled off him, uncaring of how clumsy her backward crab-walk appeared. She just needed to be away from him. From the shock that quickly bled from his gaze and blazed into rage and disgust.

God, no. How could she have kissed...touched... Let him...

You’re fucking him, aren’t you? Admit it, goddamn you. Admit it! You’re fucking my best friend! You whore!

The memory of Gage’s scream ricocheted off the walls of her skull, gaining volume and power by the second. Darius hadn’t been the first man he’d thought she’d been cheating with—not even the third or fifth. But she’d never seen him as enraged, as out-of-control at the thought of her being with this man. Gage had never physically abused her during their marriage, but that night... That night she’d truly been afraid he would hit her.

Afterward she’d made a conscious effort to not look at Darius, not be alone in the same room with him if she couldn’t avoid him altogether. Even after he’d married an iceberg of a woman, she’d maintained her distance.

And now, not only had she laughed and talked with him, but she had allowed him inside her body. She’d allowed him to bring her the most soul-shattering pleasure.

Meeting his stare, she could read the condemnation there. The confirmation that she was indeed the whore Gage had called her.

Humiliation, hurt and fury—at him and herself—barreled through her, propelling her to her feet. Snatching up her purse and shoes, she clutched them to her chest.

“Isobel.” The voice that had caressed her ears with its deep, melodious tone, that had stirred desire with explicit words, now caused ice to coat her veins. Gage used to take great delight in telling her how much his friend disliked her. Though she now knew when her husband’s lips were moving, he was lying, hearing Darius’s frigid disdain directed at her, meeting his derisive gaze... She believed it now, just as she had then.

“I-I...” She dragged in a breath, shaking her head as she backpedaled. “I need to go. I’m sorry,” she rasped.

Hating that she’d apologized, that she sounded scared and...broken, she whirled around and damn near sprinted down the thankfully empty hallway, not feeling the cold marble under her feet. Or the stone as she escaped the mansion. None of the valets from the night before appeared, but she’d glimpsed the direction in which they’d driven off and followed that path.

Twenty minutes later, with keys snatched from the valet stand and car successfully located, she exited onto the freeway. Though with every mile she steadily placed between her and the mansion—and Darius—she couldn’t shake the feeling of being pursued.

Couldn’t shake the sense that she could run, but couldn’t hide.

But that damn sure wouldn’t stop her from trying.