“Oh, that’s it, girl,” a man’s voice filtered in under Hunter’s door. “Fuck me like the bad girl you are.”
An image of what Cyn Aston would look like naked with her small tits bouncing as she rocked back and forth on a hard dick—his hard dick—flashed in his head. What sounds would she make? Would she bite her lip? Play with her clit? Cry out his name? Fuck, not knowing but still wondering had tormented him for years as evidenced by his cock growing thick against his thigh.
Much more thinking about Princess Cyn and he’d have a massive hard-on and nothing to do but take care of it himself. Oh, he could call someone, but a booty call wasn’t what, or more correctly, who he wanted right now. Shit. He had to get out of here before he lost his damn mind. Spending any time thinking about Princess Cyn was a mistake. The woman was lazy, spoiled, and as slothful as only the born to immense wealth could be—at least that was the person she pretended to be. She worked hard at it, always had, but it was a lie, a cover. He knew it like he knew that he was, without a doubt, the wrong man for his best friend’s little sister even if he had spent years comparing every woman he fucked to her. She deserved more than the shithead actor she was banging across the hall and a helluva lot more than Hunter himself. She deserved what her parents had, what Garrett had. She deserved love and that was something McKenneys didn’t know how to give. His entire family was proof of that.
He swiped his keys from an end table and stormed out of the suite.
“Fuck yeah, girl, take that big dick,” Cyn’s asshole boyfriend hollered as Hunter passed by their door on his way to the elevator.
What did she even see in that guy? He jabbed at the elevator’s call button, imagining the dickwad’s face instead of the down arrow.
Tomorrow night he’d have to walk her up the aisle as part of his duties as Garrett’s best man, but that was as close as he’d ever get to being with her and that truth grabbed him by the balls and squeezed hard. He took the elevator to the lobby, so hungry for the open waters that he could practically smell the salt in the air. Out there, he wouldn’t have to listen to Cyn and her loser boyfriend screw their brains out. It was just him, the ocean, and total control over his own destiny.
“Good morning, Mr. McKenney,” the doorman said as he held open the door. “Shall I call you a taxi?”
“Yes, to the Silver Marina,” Hunter said.
The doorman lifted an eyebrow but didn’t say anything as he waved a waiting taxi over. The cabbie spent the drive to the marina talking baseball and idiot drivers while Hunter grunted at appropriate moments and mentally reviewed his schedule.
The wedding rehearsal dinner had been last night and Garrett had opted out of a bachelor party to spend the day at a spa with his bride-to-be, showing just how much his best friend had changed since dropping to one knee and popping the question. Of course, that meant Hunter was wedding duty free until tomorrow at the pre-wedding luncheon. He could spend the night out on the water away from it all—including the pint-sized, platinum-haired pretend slacker fucking her brains out in the suite opposite his in the hotel. They pulled into the marina just as the morning sun made its first full appearance in the sky, making the water sparkle. He paid the taxi driver and boarded his yacht, more than ready for the peace and quiet only time on the ocean could provide.
An hour later, with nothing but crystal blue around him and the early-morning sun climbing in the horizon, the tension finally let loose from his shoulders. He worked hard and he played hard, but only when he was out here did he actually relax. There was no place like it.
“Oh my God, where are we?” asked an all-too-familiar female voice, scaring the shit out of him.
His shoulders tightened until they practically touched his earlobes. No. It couldn’t be. Not her. Not here. He turned—slowly—his gut twisting into knots as his feet pivoted until he saw her.
Cyn stood at the top of the stairs leading down into the living room, galley, and—he gulped as his cock started to harden—his bedroom. Her short hair was rumpled from sleep, giving her that just-been-fucked look, and she wore skintight black jeans, a cheap threadbare T-shirt with a deep V neckline, and diamond stud earrings big enough to make a rapper jealous. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to throw his stowaway overboard or strip her bare and fuck her senseless. Neither option was possible, but jumping overboard and drowning in the deep blue began to sound really fucking good.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice strained even to his own ears.
“I crashed in your stateroom last night.” Cyn stretched her arms above her head and twisted her small waist one way then another, totally oblivious to how the move lifted her shirt and showed miles of soft skin decorated by the green-and-blue tattoo that started above her right hip and disappeared beneath the low waist of her jeans without giving away what it was.
“You broke into my yacht?” He fisted his hands at his sides. No touching. No finding out what was tattooed on her creamy skin. No hearing her scream his name in ecstasy. “That’s a felony.”
“Don’t get your boxers in a twist.” She pushed away from the staircase, her barefooted strut sure and confident on the deck, and stopped next to him. “You wouldn’t press charges against your best friend’s little sister, would you? Come on, you practically grew up at our house. Mom and Dad think of you as one of us.”
And there it was, a timely reminder of why Cyn was totally untouchable. His best friend would kill him and he’d lose the only real family he’d ever had when the romance inevitably went sour—and they always did. Staying true to his McKenney DNA, he fucked hard and left fast. He’d never taste her, never bury himself in her and— “Wait, if you’re here, who was in your hotel room?”
“Ugh,” she groaned. “Don’t even get me started on the drugged-up foursome I walked in on. There’s a reason I hid out here instead of my parents’ place.”
Typical Cyn.
“It’s always the path of least resistance with you, isn’t it?” He couldn’t help but egg her on. It made it easier to keep a safe distance between them.
“Why?” She pivoted so she looked up at him and traced her fingers down the deep V of her black T-shirt. “You don’t like things easy?”
She’d walk the plank if she only knew how easy it would be for him to toss her over his shoulder and take her belowdeck, where he’d throw her on the bed that no doubt smelled of her and bury himself balls deep while she screamed his name. She teased, flirted, tempted—but she didn’t mean it. It was just her way because everything came to Cyn without any effort on her part. That’s what made pretending to be the lazy Aston so effortless for her.
“I’m turning back.” He didn’t have a choice.
He took one last look at the blue spread out before him and inhaled the salt air. “So much for spending the next twenty-four hours on the water.”
She grabbed his arm. The light touch of her fingers curled around his bicep, setting off sparks of electricity that snapped, crackled, and popped in the air around them. It brought everything into stark focus, and for half a breath, the only thing in the world that mattered was that she never stop touching him.
“Please,” she said, a never-before-heard desperation sharpening her tone. “Don’t take us back to shore.”
“Why not?” If that bastard boyfriend hurt her, Hunter was going to wreck the douchebag’s movie star face.
Cyn let go of him and wrapped her arms tight around herself as if it was deep winter instead of summer’s height. “This is Garrett and Sophia’s big weekend. I’d rather it not turn into another game of what did slacker Cyn fuck up now.” She dropped her gaze and her chin trembled before she pressed her full lips together and took a deep breath. When she looked back up at him, the bright green of her eyes had dulled. “There’ll be time for that after the wedding.”
“Us staying out here is not a good idea.” But when had a bad idea ever stopped a McKenney? His entire family tree was proof it never had.
“You won�
�t even know I’m here.”
Like that was possible. Cyn wasn’t someone a man could ignore. God knew he’d been trying for most of his life. Still, his resistance crumbled like a dried-out vending machine cookie. “I’m going to regret this.”
She let out a happy squeal and planted a quick kiss on his cheek. “I promise you won’t.”
Hunter watched her as she did some sort of hip shimmy dance across the deck. Oh, he’d regret his moment of weakness. The question was just how much.
Chapter 2
Cyn relaxed back in the lounge chair as the ocean breeze brushed her long bangs across her cheeks and nearly blocked out the best sight on the boat: Hunter’s ass. Seriously, the dude could really make a boring pair of tan cargo shorts work. How many squats did he do every day to make that kind of high, round, totally smackable bounce happen? More than she’d do, that’s for sure. She hadn’t been to the gym in… well, way longer than she could remember.
Her eyelids dropped lower. The roll of the yacht along with the sound of the water lapping at the hull were about to knock her out, but if she let her eyelids droop closed, she couldn’t admire Hunter’s butt or his broad shoulders or soccer-player-worthy calves that deserved a Sports Illustrated cover—or at least their own Pinterest board. God yes! Pictures were needed to document Hunter in as relaxed a mode as she’d ever seen him.
She flipped open her Ferrari-red envelope clutch, grabbed her phone, and spotted the Zig-Zag paper-wrapped roll of green, leafy Zen at the bottom of her purse. She dropped her phone back into the clutch. Yes. Now this day had just gone from good to awesome.
She pulled out the joint. “Do you have a lighter?”
“What do you ne—” Hunter stopped speaking in mid-turn and his eyes narrowed to slits. “Is that marijuana?”
“Yes, Grandpa.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s pot and it’s totally legal in our beautiful state of Oregon for me to light up. Got any fire?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head, but he didn’t say no and he didn’t tell her to trash the joint. Now this was interesting. Was the man who bragged about his eighty-hour workweeks a secret slacker pothead?
“Come on,” she said as she scooted to the edge of the lounge chair. “I’ll even share it with you.”
“I haven’t lit up in years.” There was no missing the wistful nostalgia in his tone.
Fascinating. Hunter could say no and she wouldn’t care. She only smoked weed on the rare occasion anyway, but getting high with her brother’s best friend, the man who was always either making multimillion-dollar deals or out on his yacht dreaming up new business ventures? Oh, this would be epic.
“We’re out in the middle of nowhere, no one’s around, and I promise to never tell that the unbelievably uptight Hunter McKenney got stoned.”
He walked over to her and pulled open a drawer in the small table bolted to the deck between the two lounge chairs.
“I’m not uptight,” he muttered.
“Oh, yeah?” She didn’t even try to keep the laughter out of her voice. “What would you call it?”
“Determined not to piss away a fortune like my parents did.”
Ring, ring, Freud calling. Looked like they both had parental issues, just on the opposite side of the coin. Who would have ever thought they’d have something in common besides her brother? Hunter withdrew a small lighter and swiped the joint from her fingers, the brief contact sending a tingling sensation straight to her fast-hardening nipples.
It was always like this with him. He turned her on just by breathing, and no matter what she did, he never glanced twice at her. Maybe she could change that at least for today out on the ocean, where it seemed the normal rules did not apply. Hunter lit the joint and took a deep inhale before passing it to her. Keeping her eyes on him as he relaxed back into the chair and closed his eyes, she took a hit. They lay back, each quiet as the ocean rocked them.
In between puffs, she couldn’t help but check Hunter out. He’d stripped off his T-shirt, showing off acres of sinewy muscle and abs she could do laundry on, if she’d ever done her own. Her parents’ money had given her plenty of opportunity, but she was frozen with fear about what to do that would live up to her family’s legacy, so she did nothing.
Sloth, her grandmother had called it, saying it was one of the big, bad seven deadly sins. That might be true, but it wasn’t the sin she was fighting every time she was within ten feet of Hunter.
“Stop staring at me like that,” he said with enough gravel in his voice to make her thighs clench.
Hunter sat up and turned so he was facing her as she sat on the chair. Like her, his feet were flat on the deck and that delectable ass of his still on the chair. His strong body radiated tension and the air around him practically vibrated with pent-up need. He’d never looked so primal, so hard. Trapped by his intense gaze, Cyn couldn’t have moved if she wanted to—and she didn’t. She wanted to lie back like she had nothing better to do than laze her day away and watch him lose that industrial work ethic of his and do something just because it was fun, because he wanted to. The explosion would be spectacular, but what came after when he touched her—and he would—was going to be even better.
She pushed her sunglasses up and gave him her best innocent-me look that no doubt was totally ruined by the flush warming her cheeks. God, this man did her in. “How am I looking at you?”
“Like you aren’t my best friend’s little sister.” He fisted his hands as if he had to do something to stop from reaching out. “Like I can strip you naked, fuck you hard, and hear you scream my name as you come so hard it curls your toes.”
The words slammed into her. After years of, at first, mooning after him, then flirting outrageously and finally teasingly poking and prodding him like he was a hibernating bear and she was a woman with a death wish, it turned out he wasn’t immune to her.
“Is that why you ignore me?”
“That’s the only way I can…” His voice drifted off.
“You can what?” Oh, no, she wasn’t about to let that thought of his float away on the waves, not when he was about to say the words she’d been waiting forever to hear. “Keep your hands to yourself?”
The vein in his temple throbbed and his knuckles were white. “I spent more time at your house growing up than I did my own, what with my parents gone all the time and my grandfather always closing the next big McKenney International deal. Your parents treat me like a son. Your brother is my best friend. I’m not known for having the same woman in my bed more than once. Even if I did think about you that way—and I don’t—you’d be totally off-limits.”
He was on the edge. One wrong nudge from her and he’d shut down, treat her the way he always did, as Garrett’s slacker sister who had too much money and not enough ambition to do anything with her life. Time to dial it back, before they lost the tentative connection they’d forged.
She brought the joint to her lips while she tried to think of something—anything—to talk about. The only thing she could think of was his parents. “Did they really lose a fortune?” she asked while holding in the smoke and passing it back to him.
“My parents?” The change of topic seemed to ease some of the fight-or-flight tension eating away at him. He nodded his head. “To the tune of two hundred million dollars.”
She blinked in surprise. “That’s insane.”
“If my grandfather hadn’t realized what was going on, cut them off, and put most of the family fortune into a trust for me, God knows how much they would have spent on jetting from party to party.”
“So that explains your social calendar, or lack of one.” There she went jabbing a stick into the snarly bear again. She needed to learn to keep her big mouth shut sometimes.
But instead of getting all growly, Hunter curled his full lips into a half-leering grin. “I don’t have any problems on that front.”
In the blink of an eye, he went from tightly wound businessman to predatory playboy. This was the side a
ll his one-night-only dates saw, the teasing, dangerous, turn-your-panties-to-ash player who’d rock your world. Her heartbeat went into overdrive as her nipples tightened to an almost painful hardness.
“I know all about your rotating bedroom door with a bevy of long-haired women with big boobs and dreams of finally landing one of Oregon’s most eligible bachelors.”
He killed the joint and put it out in her empty tea mug on the table. “With your brother off the market, I’m sure that puts me at number one.”
“You’ll have to beat them off with a stick.”
Not that she cared. She was just about a little no-strings fun out on the ocean. That little twinge in her chest meant nothing.
“I might need to hire a bodyguard.” He scooted forward just enough that his bare knees bracketed her jean-covered ones, sending a jolt of desire straight to her core. “Want the job?”
“No, thank you. Acting as the Aston Family Foundation Charity Social Chair has me busy enough.”
Sure. It took up a whole ten hours a month and that was when she dragged everything out for as long as possible.
He grabbed her lounge chair, yanking it forward until her knees practically touched his dick, but the gleam in his gray eyes wasn’t desire—it was frustration. “You could do more with your life. You could run the whole foundation instead of planning the parties.”
“Whatever. I’m not like you or Garrett.”
“No one said you had to be but you can be more than just Princess Cyn, a little tease who only thinks about where the next party is. You could be anything if you just put your mind to it.”
Alphas of Seduction Page 11
