by Maya Rodale, Caroline Linden, Miranda Neville, Katharine Ashe
“I hope you’re seeing what I’m seeing,” he said. “Because what I’m seeing has been making me crazy all night.”
“Do it,” she whispered, her gaze glued to his hands bracketing her hips.
His right hand slipped along the waistline of her jeans, the thumb toying with the silver button before his fingers traveled down the fly. His touch was so light she barely felt it. But she could see it, his tan skin against the faded jeans. His slow, uneven breaths brushed her ear. It made her wild inside.
He dipped south, between her legs. Not lightly.
She couldn’t hold in the feelings. “Ohh.” He stroked over her crotch and she moaned again. Her thighs parted. She moved into his touch, her eyelids drooping but her eyes on his hand moving on her, making her hot, making her throb so fast it shocked her. Through the denim he found her clit. He massaged it. Her knees buckled.
“Good?” he asked, his voice rough.
“Yes,” she whispered, astounded that she was allowing this with a total stranger. That she’d asked for it. That she wanted it to go on and on. “Incredibly good.”
He braced her, holding her against his hips with one strong hand, the other flipping open the button of her jeans and unzipping the fly. She felt him hard against her butt and it made her even hotter. She’d made him hard.
“If you want me to stop,” he said, trailing his fingertips along the edge of her panties. “You’re going to have to tell me.”
“I don’t want you to stop.” She didn’t recognize her own voice. “Yet.”
His fingers slipped under the lacy cotton and he knew exactly where to go and exactly what to touch. She shuddered into it. He stroked and her joints were like water. A man she barely knew had his hand inside her jeans and her brain screamed a single word: more.
“California Blake,” he murmured into her ear. “I find you unbelievably sexy. And I want my tongue”—he met her gaze in the mirror and stroked a fingertip over her clitoris—“here.”
She gasped upon the jolt of pleasure. Then she closed her eyes before she could beg him to put his tongue there. But it didn’t stop the rush of tightening pleasure, or the knowledge that his hand was in her pants and she’d still have to see him tomorrow. She didn’t care now. It’d been ages since she’d felt anything like this—never like this—and she was so close, her breaths fast and hips rocking into his hand. He ran his other palm up her waist and covered her breast, passing his thumb over the nipple, and her body reacted with a delicious shudder, her eyes flying open.
It was even better watching, feeling his hands on her and seeing the heat in his eyes as his hand caressing inside her panties made her desperate. She arched her back, grinding against his hard-on, and her orgasm surged.
A knock came at the door. “Anybody in there?”
“Damn it, I didn’t—” Suddenly his hands were gone. Then he was at the door, flipping the bolt just as the handle jiggled. “—lock it.” He swung his gaze back to her. “Just a minute,” he said more loudly.
A minute? Another five seconds would’ve done it.
“Hey, man, I gotta whiz and the other johns are too far away,” came from the other side of the door. One of Duke’s tech boys. “Make it fast, will you?”
“Try the bushes out back,” Piers said, the edge of his mouth curving up as he held her gaze.
“It’s raining,” the guy complained.
Cali sucked in breaths and shook her head. The moment was over, the pleasure scattering in embarrassment and guilt. What had she been thinking? Having tawdry fun—or any fun of this kind at all—wasn’t for her. This was just a sign that proved it. Her shaking hands fumbled on her zipper. “It’s over,” she whispered.
Piers came to her, grabbed her hip with one hand and dragged her to him, and cut off her protest with his mouth. He kissed her powerfully and possessively, like he had at the gazebo, so real and raw that his hand slipping beneath her panties now seemed perfectly natural—his fingers stroking, urging, exactly what was supposed to happen.
His words came against her lips. “Let me get inside you.”
She clutched his hard biceps. “Yes.”
He pushed up into her. It had to be two fingers. She was stretched deliciously, dying as he thrust.
“Oh, yes.”
He was doing it. And she was letting him. Pleasure spiraled, intense, desperate. Higher. Tighter.
She climaxed in a sudden, jolting shudder. For a moment she couldn’t breathe; everything was suspended—thought, action, sense—his arm around her holding her up. She gasped for air.
He said so close to her lips she could feel the words, “Now it’s over.” His hands fell away from her and he stepped back. With an utterly confident grin, he unlocked the door and went out, closing it behind him. She heard him say something to the waiting guy, then his footsteps receding.
She zipped her jeans, turned on the faucet, and splashed her face with cold water. She was hot all over, inside and out. And thoroughly, completely relaxed. Relaxed like she hadn’t been in memory.
Head ducked, she opened the door, said “Um, hi,” to the tech boy, and practically ran to her room.
Chapter Seven
Brampton House & Environs
He’s looking for you everywhere.
I don’t give a rat’s ass.
After a pause, Piers’s secretary texted back, Pardon me, Mr. Prescott?
He typed, I’m sorry, Mrs. Crowley. Put my grandfather off as well as you can. I’ll be home Sunday. Thank you.
Piers jammed his phone into his pocket and descended the hill from the gazebo toward the house. He was far too edgy.
After midnight the night before he’d spent two hours at a makeshift basketball hoop nailed to the side of the old stable, teaching Harry Compton how to shoot. When Mark appeared and revealed he’d been a walk-on during his Princeton days, Piers challenged him to a pickup game. Anything to burn off the state that California had put him in with her sighs and moans and thorough willingness to be fucked in a public restroom.
It hadn’t worked. Afterward he’d nearly gone to her room. But he couldn’t. If he wanted even half a chance with her, he needed to show her he had something on his mind other than sex.
Because he did. The sparkling smile, the devotion to her sister, the charitable work, the brain, the nervousness around him as if she weren’t used to men, and the sweet little body all pointed to one certainty: sex wouldn’t be enough. Sex would be great. He’d bank on that. But it was only part of what he wanted from California Blake.
So today he would do things differently. Today he would hold himself in check and speak with her like he respected her and wanted to know more than what she had in her pants. Then, when he’d shown her he was good for more than a quick orgasm, he would tell her about his interference in her life. He hoped she would understand that he’d intended it for the best, and that he could trust in her discretion about the donation.
When he reached the house, he went straight to her room. Scraping an oddly unsteady hand through his hair, he knocked.
“Just a sec!” She opened the door. Her eyes popped wide. “I thought you were room service.”
“Depending on what you’re hungry for, I could be.”
Her cheeks turned brilliant red.
Damn. Fail right out of the gate. But her hair was rumpled, and she clearly wasn’t wearing a bra beneath the thin T-shirt, and her very short sweat shorts revealed her very lithe legs.
This was going to be tougher than he’d thought.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That wasn’t well done of me.”
She crossed her arms over her breasts. “I’m not sure why you think so. I should really be the one apologizing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well.” She shifted from one bare foot to the other. “One of us did the other a favor last night, and the one who did it wasn’t me.”
Aha. Right.
“That’s not how I operate, California.”
&
nbsp; Her dark eyes retreated. “Operate?”
He really was an idiot. New concept. Felt not good. “Poor word choice. I mean that I don’t consider sex in terms of an equal barter economy.”
“More of a free trade system?” She offered a tentatively playful smile. He felt it in his chest.
He’d never before felt a woman’s smile in his chest. Never.
“Something like that.”
“Do…” She swiped her hair back from her brow, a nervous habit he’d noticed she had. It made him want to thread his fingers through that drape of hair and kiss her until her nervousness dissipated. He wanted to taste her again and make her sigh.
“Do you want to come in?” she said uncertainly.
“No. I want you to come out.” Success. He could, in fact, control himself. “There’s a public stable a few miles away and I’d like to take you horseback riding.”
She blinked. “Horseback riding?”
“Do you ride?”
“In all my spare time when I’m not skiing in the Swiss Alps or sunning on the Riviera? Yes. Definitely, I ride.”
He withheld his smile. “The weather is clear and I’d like to spend some time with you away from the others. Will you come with me?”
She stared at his chest, then into his eyes. “I don’t have boots. I’ll have to see if Roxanna or Jane brought a pair in my size.”
Now he did smile, in relief and because she’d done the hair-swiping thing again, which momentarily revealed the tight peak of her breast that he’d touched the night before.
Now he was salivating over a clothed breast. Thirty years old, but he felt like a teenager with this woman.
He backed away from the door. “I’ll meet you downstairs.” He would be the perfect gentleman, keeping his suggestive comments and his hands to himself. He would succeed in his goal of getting to know her and letting her get to know him.
Twenty minutes later when she appeared in the foyer wearing tight jeans and a T-shirt that revealed every contour of her body, Piers knew he was doomed to tragic failure.
This had to be another dream, because it bore no resemblance to real life.
Cali knew how to ride. It’d just been years since she’d done so. When their house in Gladwyne went, along with the cars and savings, every expensive lesson she’d taken as a child had gone too. She missed riding. Like reading, it could be a peaceful, solitary activity.
Today she felt anything but peaceful. Even a jaunt along quaint country paths and fields dotted with sheep and strewn with picturesque cottages couldn’t calm her nerves. It all seemed straight from a movie set, not least the man cantering along beside her.
He slowed his horse to a walk and she reined in.
“You ride well,” he said, his eyes skimming her body appreciatively. Roxanna had insisted on the tight jeans. “I’m thinking you’re the spy with secret talents after all.”
“That’s me, California Blake, licensed to kill. And to do other things too.”
He ignored her suggestive tone. Or he simply didn’t notice it. She was a pathetic novice at this hookup thing.
“How did you come to be named California?”
“My parents were catastrophically wrong for each other. To try to fix the relationship, they had me. Yes, people really do have babies to try to save their marriages. Desperate people. They said I was supposed to be their gold rush.”
“Were you?” He didn’t respond to her forced humor. She liked that.
“Only fool’s gold.” She dismounted and watched him come down easily from the saddle, the way he seemed to do everything—with nonchalant confidence. “I guess I don’t have to ask who you’re named for, Piers Vaughan Prescott the third.”
He motioned for her to go before him toward the stable. “Not ‘the third,’” he said behind her. “I was named only after my father.”
She gave over her horse to a stable hand. Piers followed her into the sunshine. He gestured toward a path that wended away from the parking lot. “Walk off the cramped muscles?”
“You assume I have cramped muscles from that?”
“No. But I do. I spend my days at a desk or in a car, not on a horse.” He smiled beautifully and she was momentarily speechless. In a sort of daze, she went toward the path.
“I’ve never read about your father in the papers,” she finally managed. “Does he try to stay out of the limelight?”
“He passed away last year.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. But the business press was never interested in him anyway. He wasn’t involved with the company.”
“He wasn’t?”
“No. He escaped. Got out early. Joined the circus.”
“He did not.”
“No.” He grinned. “He fixed boats down at the shore.”
“Fixed them, or had a fleet of them that he raced?”
“Fixed them. He was a mechanic. A rebel. He did what he wanted despite my grandfather. And he was happy.”
“But not you?”
For a moment he walked beside her without speaking. “Someone has to prepare to run Prescott Global,” he finally said. “My grandfather isn’t young.”
“Well, you’ve made a fortune at not being a rebel, so that ought to comfort your cold, ruthless heart.”
He gave her a sidelong glance. “Gearing up to harangue me for elitism again?”
“I’m considering it. And rampant greed.”
His smile was simple and genuine. His teeth were perfect. She’d had some costly orthodonture in her youth. But Piers’s smile came straight from a movie set. Just like this incredibly elegant stable. And Brampton. And everything about this week.
“I feel like I’m in a nineteenth-century novel where the girl of exceedingly modest means gets immersed in the wealth and luxury of highfliers,” she said.
“Vanity Fair?”
She’d never met a man who’d actually read Vanity Fair. “You saw the movie?”
“I might not have the opportunity to read novels now, but at one time I did.”
At that time he’d chosen to read not Stephen King or James Patterson, but nineteenth-century literature? It wasn’t fair for one man to be so comprehensively sexy.
“Understood,” she said. “But I was thinking more like Pride and Prejudice,” she admitted.
“She marries the rich guy at the end of that one, doesn’t she?”
“Yes.”
Twitters of birds in the nearby copse and a sheep’s bleat were the only sounds to break the charged silence.
“Fan of happily-ever-afters, like your friend Jane?” he finally said.
She considered giving him a pithy comeback. She decided on honesty. “It’s the reason I read. In books, everything can turn out well in the end.”
“But not in real life?”
Not in her real life. “Real life is messy.” This was the perfect moment to ask. “Why did your girlfriend break up with you?”
“Someone told her I’d once gotten so angry at work that I threw a chair through a fifty-seventh-floor window.”
“Really?”
“That was one of the reasons.”
“She was clearly a lightweight.”
He chuckled. “You wouldn’t have broken up with me for that?”
“I wouldn’t have been dating you in the first place.”
He gave her a direct, skeptical appraisal. He knew the effect he had on her. She’d made it clear at the gazebo and in the bathroom.
She shook her head. “Nope.”
His smile disappeared. “Why not?”
She thrust out her hand. “Hi, Mr. Piers Vaughan Prescott, Junior. I’m Cali Blake, lowly library associate, food stamp hoarder, coupon cutter, and sale hunter whose apartment heat works every other day during December and every third day in January. Nice to meet you.”
He didn’t take her hand. “You like to say things that you think will shock me. They don’t.”
“Because you’re far too sophisticat
ed for that?”
“Because I think you’re cute.”
She ducked her head. “Being poor isn’t cute, Prescott.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay. I’m just really out of place at this party. Obviously.”
“You’re still doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“Saying things to put me off.” He looked displeased. Not pissed off or irritated or any of the ways men tended to react when a woman said something they didn’t like, like they didn’t understand why she couldn’t stop being a pain in the butt. Instead, it seemed almost as if he were disappointed. Which made no sense.
She swallowed awkwardly. “I really shouldn’t be saying anything at all.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I’m guessing we didn’t come out here to talk.”
The light in his eyes seemed to change. “What if I told you I only want to talk?”
“I’d know you were lying.”
“Lying. Right.” He took her shoulders in his hands and bent his head to cover her mouth with his.
She didn’t think. She just kissed him. And she let him kiss her. She let him thread his fingers through her hair and pull her to him, and she let him into her mouth and tangled her tongue with his until heat came between her legs.
Finally she let herself touch him. Lifting her hands, she placed them on his waist. Hard muscle. She fanned her palms up and over his chest. She thought she heard his breathing hitch, but knew she hadn’t. Not this man, who could have any woman’s hands on him.
But he’d brought her out here today. Today he wanted her hands.
And she wanted his. More urgently with every meeting of their lips. When he cupped her breast, she didn’t object. She moved into it, sliding her hand over his butt and finding firm muscle beneath his jeans. He came deeper into her mouth and she lifted onto her toes to get closer. He banded an arm around her and pulled her flush up against him.
“Oh, wow,” she whispered. He was all hard. Everywhere. Entirely. At the pressure of his erection against her abdomen, her insides bucked. “Oh.”
He stroked across her nipple and she moaned again and wanted to be naked and underneath him. Now.
