“Yeah. I agree. But it’s going to be kind of tough for me to take one of those pills tonight if you’re holding them hostage.”
“Not at all,” Eva said, pressing the up button and standing back to wait for the elevator. “Since I intend to hold you hostage as well.”
He blinked and saw himself spread-eagled, tied to a bed, with Eva standing over him. Another blink, and she was the one on the bed, silk scarves holding her wrists and ankles wide, her body white and lovely against the sheets.
Danny shook his head vigorously as a different sort of fire raced through his blood at the lightning-fast images.
“I should get back to the room,” he said, “see how my guys are doing.” But even Danny could hear the lack of conviction in his voice.
It certainly didn’t escape Eva’s attention. The curl of a smile at the corners of her red mouth took on a satisfied look.
The elevator doors shushed open and she wasted no time marching them both into it and pressing the button for the top floor.
“You can call them from my suite,” she said, determination in every line of her slender body. “You need someone to look after you tonight, Danny. And if you go back to your teammates, it’ll be the other way around. You’ll be taking care of them.”
“It’s not like that,” Danny started to protest, then stopped. Where the hell did his conviction go, anyway? It was as if it had been boiled out of him by the hot stock.
“It’s exactly like that,” Eva contradicted, pulling out her phone and texting while the elevator zoomed silently upward.
A hard kernel of resentment popped in Danny’s chest. Maybe she was right, but that somehow made it worse. “So fucking what? I take care of my friends. I don’t see how that’s a bad thing.”
“It’s not,” she said, without looking up from her fingers tapping away at the keypad. He kind of wanted to grab the phone out of her hands and stomp it. “Especially if the caretaking is a two-way street.”
Danny forcefully kept himself from clenching his stiff hands into fists. “I’m not a little kid with a skinned knee. I don’t need to be taken care of.”
“Tonight you do. The paramedic said so.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Danny exploded, “do you think maybe the texting can wait until we’re done with this conversation?”
Her cheeks went pink, but she clicked a button hurriedly and put the phone away, her eyes finding his. The pretty silvery gray was dark with compassion and something that looked a lot like earnestness. “Sorry, I was ordering some stuff up to the room.”
“What stuff?” Danny asked, wary.
“Food, mostly. And I got the concierge to send someone out to fill your prescription for more of that pain-relieving gel.”
Danny closed his eyes, hating himself. “Sorry,” he said. His gruff voice sounded weirdly like his dad’s, when Gus Lunden apologized to his infinitely patient wife for one of his bursts of temper. It made Danny sigh. “I’m not great at letting people help me. More used to dealing with shit on my own, I guess.”
Something like recognition flickered in her gaze. “I know. Come on, Danny, let me do this. I want to.”
Her quiet plea broke through Danny’s resistance, and he felt his shoulders slump just as the elevator slid to a stop.
“I guess the team can do without me for a little while.”
Her smile was brilliant, blinding in the warm, atmospheric light of the hallway she led him into to. A set of double doors faced the elevator bank, and Danny craned his neck to look up and down the short hallway. They were the only doors on this floor.
“The penthouse?” he said, incredulous, as she pulled out a key card and slid it into the door lock. “You’re in the penthouse suite?”
“The hotel insisted,” she said, pushing the door open and waving him in. “It’s empty a lot of the time, so when VIPs come through, they like to comp it for us.”
“Must be nice to be a VIP,” Danny said, stopping two paces into the room to stare around him. He was standing in a foyer—an actual, honest-to-God foyer, in a freaking hotel room—lit by an angular brass chandelier that cast a soft glow over the green-gold watermarked silk covering the walls. The floor under his dirty, spattered kitchen clogs was white marble, inlaid with something that looked an awful lot like jade in an abstract, swirling pattern. Danny followed it into a large, spacious sitting area, complete with two deep, green leather couches, a glossy wood writing desk with spindly legs, and a round glass coffee table covered with papers, folders, and an open laptop.
There was more brass in here, a couple of table lamps, and yet another chandelier over the … holy cow.
“There’s a dining table,” Danny said, gesturing as if Eva might have missed the mahogany monstrosity camped out in the left-hand side of the suite.
“I know.” She didn’t sound terribly impressed.
Danny counted the ladder-back chairs tucked under the gleaming, expansive tabletop. “It seats eight. It wouldn’t fit in any room of my apartment, even if I threw out my bed.”
“It’s just a table, Danny.” Amusement colored her voice as she disappeared into a side room Danny hadn’t noticed. There was the familiar sound of a refrigerator opening, and she reappeared in the doorway with a glass carafe of orange juice in her hand. “Want a drink? I’d offer you something stronger, but I think a little fresh-squeezed is a safer bet.”
Danny peered over her head as she got a couple of glasses out of a cabinet, and felt his jaw drop. “Well, suck me sideways. There’s a whole fucking kitchen in here!” And not just a minimal kitchenette, either, but a full-on gourmet kitchen with granite countertops, top-of-the-line appliances, and more counter space than some professional kitchens Danny’d seen.
“I’d think you’d be sick of kitchens, at this point,” Eva said, slipping past him with two glasses of orange juice.
Taking one last, fascinated look around the perfectly appointed space, Danny joined her on one of the couches. The tufted leather looked like it was going to be hard and uncomfortable, but instead Danny sank into it like a lover’s embrace, the cool depths of the sofa’s arms and back reaching around to enfold him.
He sighed in contentment, head lolling back. “I could fall asleep right here.”
“That’s only because you haven’t seen the bedroom yet.” Eva’s voice was serene, even bland, but everything inside Danny went on red alert anyway.
Yet.
Sitting up straight was a challenge when all he wanted was to melt into a pile of exhausted bones in the corner of the couch, but Danny managed it. Clearing his throat, he said, “That juice looks pretty good.”
“It is,” Eva said, taking a sip without dropping her gaze from his. “Tart, sweet, refreshing. You want?”
Danny licked his lips. “Yeah. Only I’m not sure how to pick it up.”
He could just picture himself bobbling the slick glass between his bandage mitts, spilling sticky juice on this couch, which probably cost more than the mortgage on his parents’ West Village apartment building for a year.
“Here,” she purred, scooting closer to him and leaning over his lap to pick up the glass from the side table. “Let me help you.”
Danny sucked in a breath at the sudden soft press of her lithe body against his, the quick brush of her breasts against his arm as she sat up.
Eva tilted her head, the look in her gray eyes coy, inviting, and Danny couldn’t help but shake his head at her. “This was all part of your plan to get me up here, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” she told him, tipping the glass up to his lips and letting some of the icy, sharply sweet juice trickle into his mouth. “I asked Ryan Larousse to throw boiling liquid on you so I could have my wicked way with you. And you walked right into my trap! Bwa-ha-ha.”
The juice was perfect, cold and shocking, a wake-up call for his senses.
“Mmm,” he moaned, chasing a stray droplet with his tongue. “If this is your wicked way, I’m in. More, please.”
Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes sparkled with laughter as she brought the glass back to his lips. The moment felt very delicately balanced, the soft, supple weight of her suspended over him, dripping juice into his mouth as if he were some kind of ancient king and she was his serving girl.
Danny could get into this, he mused, in a big bad way.
“How are you feeling?”
The words brushed his cheeks softly, stirred the hair at his temples as she shifted to curl up at his side.
“Better now,” Danny admitted, gazing at her.
Happiness lit her up from within. “I told you. Didn’t I tell you? I’m good for you.” She felt so right, so there with him, as if she fit into his empty places and filled them up with light and softness and lust and fun and all the other things Danny didn’t usually let himself have.
“You know what would be good for me?” he said, in a voice gone rough with emotion and desire. “A kiss.”
She squirmed against him in a very distracting way, looking tempted. But she said, “I don’t think that’s what the paramedic had in mind when he said you needed to rest and be looked after.”
“Ah, but it’s what you had in mind,” Danny said. “And it’ll relax me. Don’t you want me to be relaxed?”
Okay, so relaxed wasn’t the best word for how he was feeling—especially a certain, completely irrepressible part of him that didn’t care about pain or exhaustion or anything other than how throbbingly hard and cramped it was, pressed up against the zipper of his jeans.
Eva didn’t buy his oh-so-innocent face for a second, that much was clear from the adorable way she wrinkled her nose at him, but Danny didn’t care because in the next instant she was kneeling up again and leaning over him to put the empty glass back on the side table. She was so tempting, hovering over him like a hummingbird taking sips from a flower, and Danny couldn’t help it if he was more of a Venus flytrap than a rose.
He reached for her unthinkingly, encircling her with his arms and tumbling her into his lap, which was awesome, but the move put pressure on his aching palms, which was less awesome.
Danny winced and bit back a gasp, but Eva caught it.
“Oh, be careful,” she said, wriggling around in his lap as if she were trying to pull away.
“Just … stay where you are,” Danny managed as she ground her hip into his aching erection. “Don’t move.”
“Are you in a lot of pain?” She was so anxious and concerned, Danny couldn’t take it.
He made no effort to hide the rough desire in his voice. “Why? Are you going to kiss it and make it better?”
Chapter 13
Eva had to wonder if someone had been in her room, messing with the thermostat. How was it so hot in there?
Maybe it had something to do with the solid wall of living heat pressed up close beneath her, melting her bones and enticing her to wind her arms and legs tight around him like a creeping vine.
Danny Lunden was the hottest thing she’d ever had under her—and Eva had once walked the rim of an active volcano on a dare.
With his taunt about kissing still ringing in her ears, Eva leaned up, relishing the way it jostled their lower bodies together.
This wasn’t her first rodeo—she knew exactly what part he was hoping to have kissed. And she wasn’t averse to it—but first…
Smiling down at him, she took his poor, bandaged hands in hers. Gently, delicately, she feathered light kisses over the gauze, feeling the tension in his stiff wrists as he fought not to pull away. Surprise glinted in his stormy blue eyes as the connection between them spun from pure sex to sudden intimacy.
Eva could relate—she wasn’t prepared for it, either. But when he left his hands lying in her grasp, docile as a sleeping wolf, her heart squeezed so tight she had to lean forward and kiss his handsome mouth, just to buy herself a minute to process.
Of course, that turned out to be a big mistake, because once her lips were moving against his, the kiss was all she could think about. Hot, deep, just wet enough, with strong strokes of that agile tongue setting every nerve ending on fire. Eva moaned into his mouth and wrapped her arms around his neck. Danny’s arms stayed at his side, tense and rigid enough to distract her from the ravishment of her mouth.
Why wasn’t he holding, stroking, caressing, easing the ache of desire that kept bursting between them like solar flares?
Oh, right.
With one last nip at his luscious mouth, Eva pulled back slowly, her mind struggling to grapple with the logistics of making love to a man whose hands were covered in second-degree burns.
“This is ridiculous,” Danny rasped, chest heaving, eyes glittering with frustrated desire. “Help me take off these fucking bandages.”
“Not an option,” Eva said instantly. “The paramedic was very clear. Besides…” She drew her hands down his shoulders, across his breastbone, feeling the pounding of his heart and the bellows-blow of his breath as he panted like a racehorse beneath her touch.
“This has definite possibilities,” she murmured, letting her fingers wander lower to tease at the worn waistband of his jeans.
“I can’t touch you.” Danny sounded beyond frustrated at this point. His steely thighs tensed and trembled under her bottom.
“Ah, but I can touch you,” Eva said, savoring the moment like a sip of fine champagne.
His eyes widened, his mouth opened, and she flipped the button on his fly.
Danny’s mouth snapped shut on a groan, and his back arched hard, making the leather of the sofa creak. Eva was panting now, too, every breath filled with the heady, intoxicating scent of clean male sweat and hot, musky sex.
“You wanted me to kiss it better,” she said, breathless. “I’m just taking care of you, like I promised I would.”
With that, she slid down his zipper and eased his pants open around the prominent bulge of his trapped erection.
Eva went down to her knees, thankful for the thick, lush pile of the hotel suite’s carpeting. The denim covering Danny’s legs was rough against her palms as she ran her hands up to his hips, the friction sensitizing her skin.
He lifted his ass off the couch when she urged him up, and twisted awkwardly to help her get his pants and underwear pulled down far enough to expose the gorgeous, flushed thickness of his cock.
This was a moment Eva loved—the hush of expectation, the crystallized joy of anticipation and want and closeness all focused on her.
Propping her elbows on the couch on either side of Danny’s hips, Eva smiled up at his taut, strained face and bent to press a single, soft kiss to the plump red head of his penis. His groan was loud enough to make her glad they were the only people occupying this floor of the hotel.
The transparent shock and pleasure in his expression tightened everything low in Eva’s body, sending tremors down her spine and into her pelvis. Swaying her hips back and forth, she relished the way her skin was beginning to slicken with the heated, silky liquid pooling between her thighs.
Right about now was when some men, impatient to get to “the good part,” might slide their hands around her head and grip her hair, or pet at her shoulders, or do any one of a dozen things calculated to make her get on with it.
Whether it was his smarting palms or the innate patience required of a high-level pastry chef, Danny did nothing but stretch his arms along the top of the sofa and stare down at her intently.
There was something both exquisitely liberating and deliciously submissive about kneeling here for him, without a single touch to ground her in the moment but the brush of her own hands against the bare skin of his lean hips. She felt powerful, wielding the strength of his own desire to make him sigh and move at her whim.
Needing more, she dipped down and took the head of his cock in her mouth. He was hot, so very hot, skin soft and velvety where it stretched so tightly over the throbbing flesh beneath.
He tasted salty, warm. Delicious.
She swallowed more of him, loving the way he moved thick and he
avy over her tongue, the way he pressed his hips into the couch to keep from thrusting and choking her.
Such control you have, Danny, she wanted to say.
It made her reckless, made her want to be the one who forced him to lose it.
He hunched over to brush his mouth against her hair, a butterfly kiss that made her shiver. Her greedy fingers sought out the tense, hard washboard of his stomach muscles holding him in the awkward position.
“You’re amazing,” he said into the top of her head. “But you have to stop now, or this is all going to be over way too fast.”
Eva made a muffled noise of protest and sucked harder.
A bolt of triumph shot through her when he tensed and moaned at the onslaught, but then his voice came again, so soothing, but commanding, too. “Come up here, sweetheart.”
The endearment pierced something in Eva’s chest, some giddy inner schoolgirl that had never gotten over the secret desire to be called something sweet in that exact tone of voice. With one last, lingering stroke of her tongue up the throbbing vein on the underside of his cock, Eva pulled off with a delightfully obscene pop and looked up at him.
He should’ve looked ridiculous—most men she’d been with would have—sprawled there on the leather couch with his pants halfway down his hips and his erection spearing up out of them, so hard that it curved tight to his muscled stomach.
He didn’t look ridiculous. He looked edible.
Licking her lips, Eva prepared to ignore Danny’s demand and dive back in for more of the addictive smoke-salt flavor of him, which she could still taste on her tongue. But he shook his head, stopping her, and stroked the backs of his bandaged hands down the sides of her face.
It was a strange sensation, the soft cotton gauze not as warm or as rough as his callused fingers, but it was the expression on his face that melted her insides. Danny looked as if he thought she was the edible one—and he was starving.
“Up,” he repeated, that same compelling blend of inflexible command and coaxing softness.
Some Like It Hot Page 12
