by Jill Shalvis
been a helluva lot better than nice.”
She looked so intrigued he wrapped a finger around the pink angora tie beneath her breasts and tugged.
But she put her finger on the bow, preventing it from slipping out of its knot. “That’s the only thing holding the sweater on.”
“Is it?” He tugged again.
She held onto the bow. “Want to know a secret?”
“If it involves being naked.”
“I’ve always had this closet fantasy . . .” She whispered this softly, as if she found the suggestion almost too naughty to bear.
But nothing was too naughty for Cooper, and though he’d been hard since she first yanked him in here, his jeans got even tighter.
“But if you’d rather go back to the bedroom—”
“No, let’s stay in your fantasy.” Taking her hands, he brought them down to her sides, urging them to grasp onto the shelf at her hips.
Both excitement and nervousness filled her eyes, but she held the shelf and let him pull on the string of her sweater until it popped free.
The sweater sagged in front where it was crisscrossed. A little nudge with his finger and it fell open, exposing a siren-red lace number that shot him from zero to sixty in one second flat.
“It’s my other honeymoon number,” she said softly. “It was my only fresh underwear.”
He realized it was a one-piece, and the thought of following the lace all the way down between her legs made his mouth go dry. “It’s amazing,” he managed to say, tracing the edging between her breasts, watching her nipples react, poking through the material.
Letting go of the shelf, she slipped her hands beneath his shirt and laid them on his belly, making him suck in a harsh breath.
“What?”
“Cold hands,” he whispered, tugging her sweater to her elbows.
With a breathless huff of laughter, she danced those cold fingers up his chest, then back down. “I love your body,” she said, as if imparting another state secret. Her sweater was at her elbows, one narrow strap of her red lace off a creamy shoulder. “Especially your stomach.” She stroked his abs. “Do you like to be touched like this?”
“More than breathing.”
Again she laughed; then, holding his shirt up, she flicked her tongue over his nipple, making him thunk his head back against a rack of VHS tapes.
Stopping the exquisite torture, she glanced at him, then slowly sank to her knees.
His heart jerked hard. So did the rest of him, one part in particular.
“I, um, was wondering,” she whispered as she set her mouth to his quivering abs. She kissed his belly button, then lower, at the edge of his jeans. “If you’d like it if I kissed the rest of you.”
He undid his jeans so fast his head spun. “Kiss away,” he said hoarsely.
At the first feel of her lips in the opened wedge of his jeans, he jerked again.
“Shh,” she murmured with a seductive, knowing smile, enjoying finally being the one to shush him. Her hands fisted in the waistband of the denim. Slowly she pulled.
He moaned, and she smiled against his skin; then, in a move that made him yelp with surprise, she sank her teeth into his hip.
His reaction made her lose it. “I’m sorry,” she gasped, sitting back on her heels, covering her mouth. “I don’t know why, but I had to do that. I couldn’t help myself.” She went to lean forward again, leading with her mouth, but he stopped her.
“You got that biting thing out of your system, right?” he asked warily.
Her eyes were lit with humor and heat. An amazingly sexy combination. “Promise.” Her hands brushed his away, then slid back into his jeans.
“You liked this,” she murmured, stroking the length of him.
“It’s pretty much a given I’m going to like anything you do to me.”
“Sure?” She stroked him again, letting out a sexy little hum while doing it. Then she licked her lips.
Oh, man. He had to close his eyes. “So damn sure—Jesus.”
She’d taken her hot, wet tongue on a happy tour. Gripping the shelves behind him for dear life, he did his best not to humiliate himself, but her mouth . . . Unable to keep standing, he sank to his knees and reached for her jeans.
In the charged air was the sound of their heavy breathing and the rasp of her zipper. They stared at each other as he pulled the denim down.
A pink condom fell out of her pocket.
“I’m resourceful,” she whispered.
“I love resourceful women,” he whispered back, tugging her legs out from beneath her so he could strip her jeans to her thighs. Reaching between them, he toyed with the snaps of her teddy while she sucked in a breath. With one pull, all three snaps came free.
“Now,” she whispered.
“Yeah, now.” But her jeans caught on her boots. They spent another breathless moment fighting their clothes, laughing like idiots, and finally, finally, she was in his lap facing him, her thighs opened and draped over his.
By the time she helped him roll on the condom, he was trembling and already on the edge. “Slow,” he said, hands to her hips, lifting her up, guiding himself inside her.
“Fast,” she corrected, then let out a gorgeous sound of helpless desire when he thrust up.
“Yes,” she said fiercely, rocking her hips.
He’d wanted to take his time with her, draw it out, lose the both of them in the moment, but she didn’t let that happen—she never let that happen. She wanted the kick and she wanted it now.
And buried so deeply within her that he could feel her heart beating in his ears, or maybe that was his own, he was in no position to slow them down. In a last desperate move, he gripped her oscillating hips. “Keep that up, and it’s going to be over before we even get started.”
“We started already. God, Cooper, I love to watch you lose it.”
Just the words nearly accomplished that, and he tried to adjust his slippery grip on her hips. But she kept moving them, arching, rocking. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “Bree—”
“More,” she panted. “God, please. More.”
Ah, hell, he was a goner. All he could do was hold on and meet her thrust for thrust, closing his eyes to savor her clutching heat, quivering as he fought the orgasm building like a bus barreling down the highway. But he couldn’t keep his eyes closed; he wanted to see her. Her head had fallen back, her skin gleaming. “Breanne.”
Lifting her head, she opened her eyes, too, adding an unexpected intimacy Cooper hadn’t expected. It hit him like a one-two punch. Her gaze was clear and open, allowing him to see more of her than she’d ever allowed him. Trusting.
His throat tightened. “Bree—God. I’m going to—”
“I know—” Her voice was tight. Strangled. “Me, too—” That was all she managed to get out as she exploded in a series of shudders that milked his own climax out of him. Vaguely he heard her cry out his name, and thought . . . love the sound of that, before the roaring of his own blood in his ears overtook all rational brain activity.
When it was over, they slumped together, breathing like misused racehorses. Breanne stirred, lifted her head from his shoulder. Her hair had rioted, sticking to her damp face, but her victorious smile said it all. “That was very . . . nice,” she said mischievously, using the word he’d objected to. “Yes, nice just about covers it.”
In answer, he lightly slapped her on the bare ass, making her laugh and hug him so tight he could hardly breathe.
But breathing was overrated, anyway, and he hugged her back. “Let’s get the hell out of here and back into that suite so I can start all over again and do it right.”
“No can do.” She stood on wobbly legs. “We have to dig out.”
Oh, yeah. They were getting out today. Going their separate ways, which she wanted.
He wanted that, too.
He just couldn’t remember why.
Twenty-three
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you
say can and will be misquoted and used against you.
—Breanne Mooreland’s journal entry
Breanne stood up in the theater closet, and, much to Cooper’s consternation, began to look around for her clothes. “I really didn’t write that note just so we could . . . Well.” She laughed a little as she bent over at the waist to snap her teddy back into place.
Cooper’s body twitched. Down, boy.
She shrugged the straps of her teddy back on her shoulders, then reached for the sweater. “You sidetracked me.”
Watching her toss back her hair, he thought about sidetracking her again. And again. “Who sidetracked who?”
She smiled but it didn’t quite meet her eyes, and then she turned away entirely to work on her jeans.
Uh-oh. Taking her arm, he pulled her back around to face him. “What’s wrong?”
She shimmied her jeans up her hips. “You mean besides my life being a shambles? Besides being stranded here, hearing mysterious humming that no one else does, and oh, yeah . . . finding a dead body?”
“Yeah.” He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ears. “Besides all that.”
She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes dark and unreadable. “Nothing.”
He nodded, started to let it, and her, go, because really, what did it matter? But it did matter. At least to him, he was discovering, and he pulled her around again. “Did you know you wrinkle your nose when you lie?”
“Do not.”
He touched the tip of her wrinkling nose. “Do so.”
She clapped her hand over her nose and made a disparaging sound. “You can’t know that about me—you don’t know me.”
Contemplating her, he pulled up his own jeans. “I might not know every little thing yet, but I’m getting a pretty good start.”
“No,” she said with a denying shake of her head, her eyes unhappy. “You aren’t. You can’t be. Don’t be.”
“Too late. Want to hear what I know already?”
“No—”
“You tend to jump into things heart first—”
“I’m changing that.”
“You’re sweet when you’re tipsy—”
“I wasn’t that tipsy that first night—”
“I know that you hate the dark and spiders, that you have a thing for incredibly sexy lingerie—”
“Circumstantial.”
He curled his hand around the back of her neck, stroking his thumb over the soft, sweet spot of her nape. “I know that you’re intelligent, funny, and incredibly passionate. You care about others, sometimes too much, and you care about me. None of that is circumstantial.”
“It’s too early to care.”
“Yeah? Then why did you come to me last night?”
“I was scared.”
“I didn’t see you crawling into bed with Dante, Patrick, Lariana, or Shelly.”
In a telltale gesture, she looked away. “So I care too early. Another fault.”
“I think you also trust me, at least a little.”
“Trust is a bad word, Cooper.”
“Doesn’t have to be.”
“Maybe you missed some of my background,” she said. “Three failed engagements, remember?”
“I can’t help but remember. You wield them around like a shield.”
“Three engagements,” she repeated. “That’s a helluva lot of wielding. A lot of failures.”
Which was what was getting to her, he guessed. “You didn’t have your heart in at least two of those engagements, Bree. I think you wanted to, you meant to, but you didn’t, not really.” He kept his hands on her hips when she would have turned away. “I know that first one messed with your head, but not every serious relationship ends in pain. I promise you.”
She let out a soft breath. “I don’t know.”
“But I do. Getting engaged was a way to make a great showing. You could hide behind it, holding back all you want, especially with the particular men you picked.”
“I don’t follow you.”
Yes, you do. “You picked men who weren’t going to love you, not the way you want to be loved.”
She stared up at him.
He stroked her silky hair. “Am I close?”
“No.” But she swallowed hard. “No.”
“I’m different, Bree. What we could have is different.”
“It’s a chemical attraction. Period.”
It was so much more than that, but she was standing there, arms tight around herself, breathing a little ragged, her poor bruised heart in her eyes, and he found he couldn’t tell her. It was something she had to see herself.
Unfortunately for him, she wouldn’t see it, because willing as she was to share her body, she wasn’t willing to share much else. She shied away from true intimacy, and apparently that bothered him more than he would have thought possible.
“I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that this was supposed to be my honeymoon,” she said, closing her eyes. “I didn’t count on meeting you, Cooper.”
“Yeah, well, you weren’t on my calendar, either. But I’m glad it happened.”
This brought a ghost of a smile to her lips. “I wanted to talk to you about Edward.”
He sighed. From lovers to spies.
“They were all afraid of him.”
“I know.”
“I think he was rough.”
“Physically?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but he yelled at them. A lot.”
“Even Dante and Patrick?”
“Patrick, yes,” she said. “Lariana said he totally demeaned him at every turn, and he only put up with it because—”
“Because they’re related.”
“Yes.” She sounded surprised. “How did you know?”
“Dante told me that much. What else?”
“Patrick has trouble keeping jobs. He’s sweet and kind, but not all that great at what he does. Apparently he really wants to be an artist, but he needs the money from this job. He’s a painter. That’s how he and Lariana got together—she bought one of his paintings as a gift for her father. Shelly said that Patrick was late for work the morning before we got here because he’d been up all night painting, and he and Edward had a terrible fight about it.”
“A physical fight?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Shelly tell you what Edward yelled at her for that morning?” Cooper asked.
“No. That she didn’t mention.”
“I can picture Edward yelling at the women,” Cooper said.
