Falling for King's Fortune

by Maureen Child

  Standing up, she grabbed her clutch bag off the bar, and let him lead her from the room. He walked quickly, wanting to reach the elevator before she changed her mind. She kept up with him, the sound of her heels tapping out a quick rhythm on the floor that sounded like a frantic heartbeat.

  Jackson wasted no time. The elevator doors dinged and swished open and he pulled his mystery woman inside. Before the doors were shut again, he turned her back to the wall and kissed her. His tongue swept inside, tangled with hers and he felt her surrender even as she lifted both arms to hook them around his neck. She held him close and arched her body into his as he pressed tighter and tighter to her.

  Again and again, he ravaged her mouth and as he did, he shifted one hand, sliding up from her waist to cover one of her breasts. Even through the silky slide of the sapphire-blue fabric, he felt her erect nipple. Flicking its tender surface with his thumb, he listened to her moan and let that soft sound feed his own passions.

  The doors opened again on the top floor and Jackson stepped back from her reluctantly. Her hair was a wild tumble, her eyes were glassy and her delicious mouth was puffy and swollen from his kisses. He wanted her desperately.

  Heading down the hall, he opened the door to the suite that he kept, pulled her inside then slammed and locked the door again. In an instant, she was back in his arms.

  No hesitation, no awkwardness, they came together as if they’d been touching each other for eternity. There were no games, only need. No shyness, only desire. No second thoughts, only a wild, frenzied passion blistering the air.

  Jackson yanked the zipper of her dress and slid the shoulders and sleeves down her arms. He thanked whatever gods were listening that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts were beautiful, just the right size and looked so tempting, he didn’t wait another moment.

  Covering them with his hands, he pulled and tweaked with her hardened nipples and listened to Casey’s soft moans and whispers as if they were the sweetest music ever composed. He bent his head to taste first one erect bud and then the other and knew he had to have more of her.

  Her hands at his shoulders tightened, holding him to her, even as she swayed from the impact of his actions.

  “More,” he murmured, his tongue circling her nipple.

  “All.”

  And he pushed her dress the rest of the way to the floor. It fell in a sapphire puddle at her feet and he helped her step out of it. Her fingers were at his suit coat now, shoving it off, then loosening his tie and tearing at the buttons of his shirt. His hands roamed over her amazing body, sliding over cool, lavender-scented skin again and again, as if he were trying to memorize every line, every curve.

  Then her palms were on his naked chest and he felt the zing of heat slice into him. Quickly, he tore off the rest of his clothes, picked Casey up in his arms and carried her to the nearest flat surface. He wasn’t going to wait another moment. He had to have her. Be in her. Had to know what it was like to be surrounded by her heat.

  “Now,” she whispered as he laid her down on the extra wide couch in the living room of the suite. She opened her legs for him, reached up her arms and in the pale wash of golden lamplight, her eyes burned an arctic blue. “Now, Jackson. I need…”

  “Me too,” he admitted, willing to let her know just how affected he was by her. No games. No secrets. For this woman, this moment, he wanted her to know that from the first moment she’d smiled at him from across the room, he’d been aching for this.

  Then the talking was over and all that was left to be said was said by their bodies. He entered her with one hard thrust and she gasped, arching into him, silently demanding he go deeper, harder, faster.

  He did.

  Every move she made only fed his need. Every response quickened the fires inside. Every touch, every slide of skin to skin, every gasp and moan and sigh worked together to push him higher than he’d ever been before. And Jackson wanted more.

  He looked into her eyes when he felt her climax nearing. He watched as pleasure flashed across her face. He heard her gasp, felt her body’s tremors. Then she locked her legs around his hips to hold him tightly even as she rocked her hips and cried out his name.

  Something inside Jackson burst wide open and seconds later, his body erupted, throwing him after her into the wild, surging storm.

  Casey woke up in the middle of the night. Her body felt sore and stiff and, she silently admitted, fabulous. It had been a long time since she’d had sex. She’d almost forgotten how good it could make you feel.

  Until the guilt started seeping in.

  She wasn’t the one-night-stand kind of girl. She’d never done anything like this in her life and she was still trying to come to grips with the fact that she’d done it now.

  Moonlight spilled into the hotel bedroom through the glass French doors leading to what she assumed was a balcony. She hadn’t really had a chance to explore the suite, after all. She’d gone from the couch to the bed and that was about the sum total of her “tour.”

  God, Casey, what did you do?

  Turning her head on the pillow, she looked at the sleeping man lying next to her. He was on his stomach, the silk duvet pulled up just over his hips. He had one arm stretched out toward her and Casey had to curl her fingers into her palms to keep from reaching out and smoothing his dark hair back from his forehead. In sleep, Jackson looked less dangerous, but hardly vulnerable.

  There was still a hardness, a strength about him that seemed to resonate around him, even when sleeping. The man was a force of nature. She was lying there, naked and well used in his bed as a testament to that fact.

  She hadn’t planned to have sex with him.

  Although, what they’d shared couldn’t be called simply sex. Sex was just a biological function. At least, it always had been before that night. But what she’d shared with Jackson had gone way beyond anything she’d ever experienced before. Even now, hours after his last touch, her body was still humming. And that wasn’t a good thing.

  Because she wasn’t looking for a relationship. Heck, she’d gotten what she’d come there for while they were still in the bar. How she’d allowed herself to end up in his bed was something she still wasn’t sure about.

  The only thing she was certain of, was that it was beyond time for her to leave. Best she do that before he woke up and tried to stop her. Quietly, stealthily, she slipped from the massive bed and the air in the room felt cool against her bare skin.

  Moonlight lay across the silk duvet-covered mattress, spotlighting Jackson’s broad, tanned, naked back in a silvery glow. He shifted in his sleep, and the duvet slid down his skin, revealing a paler swatch of flesh just below his waist. Casey took a breath and forced herself to look away. She didn’t need to be tempted to stay. This was not part of her plan. She’d already gone too far. Allowed her hormones and her need to sweep away rational thought.

  Tiptoeing across the moonlit bedroom like a naked burglar, she hurried into the living room of the luxurious suite and in the dim light, wasted several minutes trying to spot her clothes. But she didn’t dare turn on a light. She didn’t want to chance waking him up. Didn’t want to risk him tempting her back into his arms. Into his bed.

  “You are such an idiot,” she whispered, hardly able to believe she’d let herself get into such a situation. She was usually so much more careful. Restrained, even.

  When she spotted her discarded dress, Casey grabbed it up, hitched herself into it and clumsily worked the back zipper. Shouldn’t these things be on the side? Finally, she was at least dressed—minus the panties that seemed to have disappeared. She picked up her heels and searched for her clutch bag. Finding it on the floor, half under the couch where she and Jackson had first come together. Swallowing hard, she avoided looking at the couch, snatched her purse and then headed for the front door.

  She turned the knob carefully, opened the door and let the hallway light fall into the room in a narrow, golden slice. Before she stepped through the doorway though, C
asey turned for one last look. She’d never been in a hotel room this elegant. She’d never been with a man like Jackson. In fact, this room, this man, were so far removed from her real life, that she felt like Cinderella at the end of the ball. The magic was over. The spell was ended.

  She stepped into the hall, closed the door behind her and nearly ran to the elevator.

  Time to get back to the real world.

  Two

  “Her name is Casey. She’s about five foot five, has blond hair and blue eyes.”

  “Well,” his assistant Anna Coric mused, “at least that narrows it down. Blue eyes, you say?”

  “Funny.” But Jackson wasn’t laughing. He’d awakened to find himself alone and if the scent of lavender hadn’t still been clinging to his skin, if he hadn’t found a pair of white lace panties on the living room floor, he might have convinced himself that the hours with his mystery woman had never happened.

  Why the hell would she leave without a word?

  Anna, a middle-aged mother of four, worked for Jackson at the King family airfield. She kept ahead of the paperwork and made sure Jackson and the pilots who worked for him were always on top of their schedules. If the military had any sense at all, Jackson had often thought, they’d have hired mothers to be generals. Anna kept his work life running like a fine-tuned engine.

  Too bad she couldn’t do the same for his personal life.

  He thought of something, snapped his fingers and said, “Wait. She said her full name was Cassiopeia. That should help you find her.”

  Anna glanced at him from the cabinet where she was deftly filing last month’s flight plans, gas usage records and pilot hours. She paused in her work, turned amused brown eyes on him and said, “As much as it pleases me to know you think I’m a miracle worker, I’ll need more than her first name and the color of her eyes to find her.”

  “Right.”

  “Besides,” she said thoughtfully, “don’t you have enough women in your life already?”

  He chose to misunderstand her meaning and flashed her a smile. “You’re right, Anna my love. You’re more than enough woman for me.”

  She laughed, as he’d known she would. “Oh, you’re smooth, Jackson. I give you that.”

  Smooth enough to have managed to change the subject before Anna could start reminding him of things he’d rather not think about at the moment.

  Jackson left Anna to her work and walked into his private office. Here on the airstrip, there was a tower, of course, and a main building with a room for their wealthy passengers to wait for their planes in comfort. The boarding room was lavishly appointed with overstuffed sofas and chairs, reading material, plasma TV, plus a fully staffed bar and snack area. Above that main room, were the offices. One for Jackson, one for Anna and one room that was mainly storage.

  Jackson’s office, like Anna’s, overlooked the airfield. The walls were a tinted glass that let in light but kept the glare down to a minimum. Also, Jackson had never liked being cooped up, and having walls of glass made him feel less like he was spending time in a box when he absolutely had to be in the office.

  Normally, he preferred spending his time on the luxury jet fleet he owned and operated. Sure, he had a staff of pilots working for him, but he enjoyed the footloose lifestyle that running his own business provided. And the chance to fly superseded everything else in his mind. Practically took an act of Congress to get him to do paperwork, but he could fly rings around most other pilots and was happiest in the air.

  Today though, he walked to his desk, sat down and deliberately ignored the view. “Casey. Casey what? And why the hell didn’t you get her last name?”

  Disgusted, he sat back in his leather desk chair and stared at the phone. This shouldn’t be bothering him. Not like he wasn’t used to one-night stands. But damn it, in the usual scheme of things he was the one who did the slipping away. He wasn’t used to having a woman slink off in the middle of the night. He wasn’t used to being the one left wondering what the hell had happened.

  He had to say, he didn’t care for it.

  When the phone rang, he grabbed it, more to silence the damn noise than because he was in the mood for talking. “What is it?”

  “You’re damn cheerful this morning.”

  Jackson frowned at his brother’s voice. “Travis. What’s going on?”

  “Just checking to make sure we’re still on for dinner this weekend. Julie’s got her mom lined up as a babysitter.”

  Despite his foul mood, Jackson smiled. In the last couple of years, he’d become an uncle. Twice over. First his oldest brother Adam and his wife Gina had become the parents of Emma, now a nearly unstoppable force of nature at a year and a half old. Then it was Travis and his wife Julie’s turn. Their daughter Katie was just a few months old and already had taken over their household.

  And though Jackson loved his nieces, after a visit with either of his brothers, he walked into his own quiet, peaceful house with a renewed sense of gratitude. Nothing like being around proud parents and babies to make a man appreciate being single.

  “Yeah,” he said, sitting up to lean one arm on his desktop. What with his mystery woman, an upcoming flight to Maine and a plane in for a refit, Jackson had almost forgotten about his dinner date with the family.

  “We’re still on. We’ve got reservations at Serenity. Eight o’clock. Figured we could meet in the bar for drinks around seven. That work for you?”

  “It’s fine. Will Marian be joining us?”

  Jackson frowned. “Don’t see why she should. She’s not part of the family.”

  “She will be.”

  “I haven’t proposed to her yet, Travis.”

  “But you’re still going to.”

  “Yeah.” He’d made the decision more than a month ago. Marian Cornice, only daughter of Victor Cornice, a man who owned many of the country’s largest private airfields.

  Joining their families was a business decision, pure and simple. Once he was married to Marian, King Jets would grow even larger. With unlimited access to so many new airports, he’d be able to expand faster than his original business plan had allowed. The Cornice family was wealthy, but compared to the King family fortune, they were upstarts. In the marriage, Marian got the King name and fortune, plus she pleased her father, who admittedly was the spearhead of this match, and Jackson got the airfields. A win-win situation for everyone. Besides, both of his brothers had entered into marriages of convenience and they’d made them work. Why should he be any different?

  If an image of his mystery woman floated into his mind, Jackson told himself it was fine because he wasn’t officially engaged yet. Wasn’t as if he were cheating on Marian.

  “If you’re seriously going to do this, marry her I mean, it would be a chance for Marian to get used to the family,” Travis pointed out. “But if you’d rather not, fine. I’ll tell Adam about dinner. I’m driving Julie to the ranch so she and Gina and the kids can spend the day together.”

  “Man.” Jackson shook his head and laughed a little.

  “Did you ever picture yourself a father, Travis? Because I’ve got to say, it’s weird for me to think of you and Adam as being dads.”

  “It’s weird to be one too,” Travis admitted, but Jackson could hear the smile in his voice, even over the phone. “A good kind of weird, though. You should try it.”

  He snorted. “Never gonna happen, big brother.”

  “Marian might change your mind.”

  “Not likely.” Jackson leaned back into his chair again. “She’s not exactly the maternal type. Fine by me anyway. I can be the world’s greatest uncle, spoil your kids rotten, then send them home.”

  “Mistakes happen,” Travis said. “Everybody gets surprised once in awhile.”

  Okay, Travis and Julie hadn’t been trying to have a baby, but Jackson wouldn’t make the same mistakes. “When it comes to that sort of thing, I’m Mister Careful. I’m so careful I’m practically covered head to toe in plastic wrap. I’m—”
A hideous thought flashed through his mind, jolting him from his chair to his feet.

  “You’re mistake-proof, I get it….” Travis prodded, waited for a response and when he didn’t get one said,

  “Jackson? You okay?”

  “Fine,” he muttered, already hanging up when he added,

  “Gotta go. Bye.”

  Careful?

  He hadn’t been careful the night before. Hell, he hadn’t even thought of careful until just this minute. Last night, he’d been too caught up in the woman with blue eyes and a luscious mouth. Last night, he’d let himself get lost in the urgency of the moment.

  For the first time in years, he hadn’t used a condom.

  Jackson muttered a curse, kicked the bottom drawer of his desk and ignored the slam of pain that rocketed from his foot up his leg. Served him right if he’d broken something. How could he have been so stupid? Not only hadn’t he been careful, but he’d been with a stranger. A woman he knew nothing about. A woman who, for all he knew, had deliberately set up the situation to try to get pregnant by one of the wealthy King family.

  He shoved one hand through his dark brown hair, then stuffed that hand into the pocket of his black jeans. Every muscle was tensed. His back teeth ground together and he told himself that no matter how difficult this turned out to be, he had to find that woman.

  Casey.

  Had to find her, discover who the hell she was and what she’d been up to the night before.

  Still furious with himself, he stared out the window at the view stretching in front of him. A few of the King Jets were lined up on the tarmac, their deep blue paint shining, their tail fins proudly displaying the stylized gold crown that was the King family logo. Usually, his sense of pride swelled when he looked down on those jets. On the empire he’d taken over at twenty-five and built into one of the most enviable in the world.

  Now, as he stared, unseeing, one of those jets roared down the runway, tore into the sky and lifted off to sail into the clouds.