by Avery Flynn
Afraid to see rejection in his eyes, she refused to turn around and instead focused on the fox lamp as her heart sank. “Can we pretend for just a little while that there’s nothing on the other side of the door? That nothing horrible happened today? That we’re just two people who want each other?”
There was a brief silence, and then he said, “No. Not after what I’ve done.”
He pushed off the couch, the movement knocking her off-kilter, and she spun around to regain her balance. And she saw his face.
Grooves of pain dented his forehead and his expression was a portrait of misery. The exposed, broken pieces inside him called out to her, melting her heart. He needed her touch as much as she needed his.
They needed each other.
She was on her feet in the next heartbeat, one hand wrapped partially around his bicep and the other pressed up to his chest. His heart’s mad beat thumped against her. “What you’ve done is you’ve saved my life. So much more than you realize. You saved me this afternoon…and I’m asking you to do it again tonight.” She shrugged off the robe, letting it pool at her feet. The way her nipples hardened had nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with the way Tony’s gaze ate up her nakedness. “Please, Tony. I need to feel something real and good. Please, help me do that.”
He mumbled something that could have been a prayer or a curse. It didn’t matter because the next second his lips were on hers.
Heat sizzled along her skin as his fingers traced across her bare hips. With a maddeningly light touch, they slid around and traveled up her spine as his lips moved to her jawline. The bristle of his five o’clock shadow scraped erotically over her earlobe. Her knees wobbled under the sensual onslaught of his powerful body against her.
“You’re going to hate me later.” He whispered the words against her bare, overheated skin.
She teased her fingers down his jeans zipper and slid them inside, wrapping around his steel-hard cock and pulling it out. “Never.”
I love you. The words were too fresh and new to say out loud, but she could show him. His dick jerked in response to her firm touch.
He groaned and nipped the vulnerable spot at the base of her throat. “You will.” He grasped her face and forced her to look at him. His brown eyes were dark with want, but something else lurked in their shadows. “And when you do, promise you’ll give me the chance to fix it.”
He waited until she gave him an uncertain nod, and then his mouth sealed to hers, stopping her suddenly uneasy thoughts, as well as any further conversation, and blasting her with an atomic bomb of sexual promise that decimated her ability to form coherent thoughts. Lust pooled deep inside her and seeped into every part of her yearning body. The last of her chill melted into a dampness between her legs that demanded attention. Now.
She hooked a leg around his calf, spilling him onto the couch. He landed on his butt with an oomph of surprise.
The man had way too many clothes on. She planted her hands on her hips and ordered, “T-shirt off.”
The cheeky bastard had the balls to wink at her. “Say please.” His strong hands remained glued to his thighs, unmoving and taunting her. His cock, the head slick with anticipation, stood at attention, extending out of his unzipped jeans.
Her clit buzzed in response to the many temptations he presented. As if tuned in to her euphoric discomfort, he leaned forward, his devilish mouth stopping within inches of the dark curls at the apex of her thighs. The earth stopped on its axis, waiting to see what would happen next. She dug her nails into her hips, nearly piercing the skin, in an effort to maintain control.
He blew a long, slow puff of air across the damp curls. “Say please, Sylvie.”
A fire in the Sahara couldn’t compare to the flaming desire eating away at her resistance to his bid for domination. Still, she wouldn’t give up without a fight. Centering her weight on one leg, she lifted her other foot so it rested on the couch’s armrest, giving him a front-row seat to her glistening lips. “Take off your shirt, Tony.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and his fingers twitched against the denim. His tongue extended, closing the short distance between them, and slid along her slick folds, dancing along her most sensitive spot and lapping against the nub like a cat with cream. Tension swirled inside her, building with every twist and turn of his mouth. The sensation built higher and higher until her thighs tingled a warning of her oncoming orgasm. But before it could crash over her, he pulled away.
His lips, shiny with her need, turned up at the corners. “You know what you have to do.” He entered her with a single finger, rocking it against the sensitive bundle of nerves inside.
She moaned and felt herself weakening.
“Say please, and I’ll make you come so hard you won’t be able to stand.”
“You’re pretty fucking cocky.” She barely recognized her voice with its strained, breathy tone.
“Not cocky, confident.” He rubbed a series of figure eights against her G-spot, increasing the pressure with each rotation until she squirmed with pleasure. “But there’s only one way for you to find out for sure.”
Her vision darkened around the edges as her thighs thrummed. God, she was so close. She threw her head back, more than ready for the climax, but he withdrew his finger. Again.
She nearly wept.
“Please.” The word tore from her mouth in a desperate scream.
He slid two fingers deep inside and resumed his divine torment while his mouth found her clit again, sucking on the nub in rhythm with his figure eights. The world disappeared. The pressure building inside her grew fuller and fuller until she thought her body would implode under the weight of pleasure. The tingling started in her calves, zinging up her thighs and vibrating her ass before her orgasm exploded, stealing her vision and her breath.
He was right. She couldn’t stand.
Afterward, coming down from the blissful peak, she found herself crumpled on his lap, her still-hard nipples pressed against his soft cotton shirt. “Take off your shirt,” she mumbled into the crook of his neck.
His laughter boomed across the room, and he yanked the shirt over his head. In the next breath, he swiveled her on his lap to face him. He wove his fingers through her damp hair, claiming control, and tipping her head back as he nipped, licked, and kissed his way down her throat.
Her catlike bonelessness gave way to sensations that left her breathless in the best way possible. Excitement swirled through her, revving her heart to autobahn speeds.
When he dipped between her breasts, she grasped his head and pushed his luscious mouth away. “Pants. Off.” She slid off his lap and stood. “Now.”
A lust-induced haze had overtaken his brown eyes and a confused wrinkle divided his forehead.
“Poor baby. I know just how you feel.” She unsnapped his jeans and dropped to her knees. “I promise to make it better…after I make it worse.” She shoved down his pants.
With his jeans pooled around his ankles, she cupped his balls and tugged lightly. Her other hand wrapped around his cock’s base, her fingertips unable to meet. Leaning forward, she nestled his cock between her boobs and rocked. The bulbous head emerged from between them and she licked the end with a flat tongue.
He groaned low, and his hips arched forward.
“Not yet.” She lapped at him again. “I warned you it would get worse.”
Sylvie was killing Tony with her pink tongue and devilish doe-eyed look. Fucking killing him. He had never been happier. That alone should have forced him to come clean and put an end to the lie before things went any further.
A better man would have. But he had a sinking feeling this would be their last night together. She’d kick him out of her life as soon as he confessed. And if he was out the front door in the morning, he had to take this opportunity to plead his case with his body, beg for mercy, and tell her he loved her with his touch—even if he couldn’t speak the words out loud. Not yet. Saying them before he’d set thi
ngs right would tarnish the words. And she’d never believe them after he’d told her what he must.
Her silky smooth hair slid along his thighs as she engulfed him, and logical thought turned to fumes. Warm. Wet. Heaven. A vibration low in her throat danced up his cock and his balls tightened. Tension built at the base of his spine. It took every ounce of self-control to pull her up to his lap before his eyes crossed permanently.
Fire singed him where her pointed nipples pressed against his heated skin as she straddled him. The need to toss her down, drive inside her warmth, and mark her as his roared to life. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he clamped down on the urge. “Got to slow down.”
“Not this time. No planning. No eating first. No thinking out every angle. This calls for immediate action.” Her words tickled his earlobe. She slid open a drawer and pulled out a condom. “I need you inside me.”
Okay, maybe not so slow. Sinking his fingers into her round hips, he relished the moan that reverberated. “You feel so perfect.”
She lowered the condom onto his throbbing dick, lifted up, and fitted him to her. Then, inch by inch, he slid into her tight grip and the universe revealed its secrets. There was no before. No after. Only now. Only Sylvie.
She settled all the way down. “Now, that’s perfect.”
For once, he couldn’t argue with her.
She rode him, slow and hard, putting her tits at the perfect level for sucking. It was an invitation he couldn’t decline. He lavished her nipples and the tender undersides of her breasts, appreciating them for the works of art they were. Her back muscles undulated under his fingers as he touched her above her pert ass while she rose and fell. It was all so right.
She ground down onto him, rubbing against him, twisting against him. The nerves in his lower back started to buzz, to pulse. He wouldn’t last much longer. He slid one hand around to the front and slipped it between their joined bodies. She rewarded his first stroke against her clit with a cross between a sigh and a plea for mercy, then increased her pace. Her nails dug into his shoulders and she threw her head back, her long hair swinging wild.
She exploded around him, her muscles clenching around his cock. It was all he needed to push him over the edge, into oblivion.
Slowly, his breath returned to normal, but his heart continued to pound a fast beat in his chest. He didn’t want to lose her. He couldn’t.
Wrapping his arms tighter around her narrow shoulders, he drew her against him. Her eyelashes fluttered against his chest. She was everything he’d ever needed. Smart. Fun. Ambitious. Loyal. Beautiful. Dangerous as hell. His father had been right. He’d lost the war before he’d even realized he was fighting one.
Floating on a haze of satisfied calm, he nuzzled her hair. “God, I wish I’d known you before.” Drunk on love and lust, the ill-fated words had slipped out of his mouth before he knew what he was saying.
“Before what?” She whispered the question against his fast-beating heart.
He hesitated. Damocles’s sword wavered over his head. To lie or confess? Damn his weak heart, he wanted to evade rather than risk her well-deserved wrath. But when it came down to it, he wasn’t that man. He ached to be honest with her.
Girding himself for the hell that would surely follow, he took a deep breath. “Before…before I sent that first e-mail to the High-Heeled Wonder.”
She startled. “Wait. What?” She stared at him, then suddenly scrambled backward, not stopping until her butt hit the couch’s arm. “You?”
“Sylv—”
“All the threats? The demands to shut down my site? That was you?” Sylvie blanched. “And the picture of the rat?” She practically screeched out the words.
“I’d never send you a picture of a dead rat.”
She sprang to her feet, grabbed her robe off the floor, and shoved her arms into the sleeves. “But the others?”
He stifled the urge to grab her and make her listen. “No. Not all of them.”
She nailed him with a look of disgust that pierced him right through the kidneys. “Tell me the truth. Why? Who are you, that you would do such a thing?” Her fingers trembled as she gathered the cotton material, clutching it at her throat.
“I’m the man who was so desperate to find his partner’s killer that he found a way to get as close as possible to the men he thought were the murderers.” Regret ate at him. He had to make her understand, to forgive him. “I needed my prime suspects—your dads—to trust me enough to let me into their world. So they’d slip up and I could nail them.”
He reached out to touch her hand and she recoiled. It hit him like a punch in the stomach. She was shutting him out, just as he’d feared. But he couldn’t give up. Not while there was still a sliver of hope. He pushed on, desperation making the story fly out of his mouth.
“Six months ago, I put a plan into action to do just that. I finagled my way onto guest lists at events I knew your dads would be attending. It wasn’t hard. A third of the hostesses in this town are my clients. At the events, I’d run into your dads, hand them my card, and give them the Maltese Security pitch. I made sure I’d be the first person they thought of if they ever needed a security expert.” Bile rose high in his throat. “Then I made sure they had a good reason to call me.”
So obsessed with finding justice, he hadn’t thought about how his deceitful actions had perverted his high-minded intentions. At the time, Sylvie hadn’t been a real person to him. Just a convenient means to an end.
“I sent three e-mails months ago, warning that I was watching you, and that you needed to shut down your site. I figured you’d run to your dads right away. Obviously, I didn’t know you then.” He offered up a slight, hopeful smile. It shriveled under Sylvie’s harsh glare. “When the e-mails didn’t get the desired result, I decided I needed to try another tack. I hadn’t actually come up with a suitable option yet when your dads called me about the worsening threats being made against you.”
While nerves twitched in agony across his skin, Sylvie had stopped responding to his words. Her jaw was locked shut and she was staring at a spot above his left shoulder. Something hot and painful ripped through his lungs, shredding them with the efficiency of a cop-killer bullet at point-blank range.
He jumped to his feet, but stumbled forward and his legs tangled in the jeans around his ankles. Catching himself before he fell at her feet, he fumbled for the right words. “Sylvie, I— I—”
“Am a sorry sack of shit?” she completed for him. The usual warmth in her voice had frozen as she finished his sentence. “Get. Out.”
Getting his knee mangled had been a hangnail compared to this. “Please. I love you.”
She flinched as if he’d punched her. Then, with infinite care, she turned to face him. And he knew then, it was too late. He’d lost her.
“I don’t give a fuck.” Pain and regret rode on her ragged tone. “Get out of my apartment. Get out of my life. And never come back.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman.”
—Coco Chanel
The idea of standing in line at the department of motor vehicles for six hours while buck naked and holding a jellyfish held more appeal for Sylvie than attending tonight’s annual Fashion Fights Hunger fund-raising dinner at the Harbor City Museum of Modern Art.
“You could stay home.” Anya had cut short her honeymoon after Sylvie’s tearful phone call after the ordeal with Anders and Tony yesterday, and shown up at her front door after catching the first flight out of Tahiti. Her little sister had come armed with three flavors of ice cream, brand-new nail polish, and a mountain of fashion magazines. She’d promised that was everything a girl needed to revive her spirits after facing down a homicidal maniac and a total asshole of a fake boyfriend.
Drea had shown up twenty minutes later, after flying cross country from L.A. Good friends call. Great friends catch the red-eye.
Cuddling up for an Alfred Hitchoc
k marathon on Netflix did sound pretty damn good. Maybe she’d follow it up by watching every season of Downton Abbey for the fifth time? It was tempting as hell, but she couldn’t do it. “Haven’t I hidden away long enough? Anyway, they’re honoring our fathers for their charitable work. How can I miss that?”
“But they already gave you a pass.” Anya stroked Sylvie’s knotted hair.
“Anyway, you know how these fashion shindigs are,” Drea said. “It’ll be like being under a microscope.” She finished off the pint of monster cookie ice cream with a flourish and tossed the container into the trash.
“Yeah.” Sylvie sighed. “Everyone and their toy schnauzer will want every last detail about Anders.”
She wouldn’t—couldn’t—spend the evening reliving the gory details of yesterday’s shooting over canapés and champagne. Fear licked down the back of her neck at the memory of Anders’s viselike grip around her waist before Tony’s single shot took him down. Every car noise on the street sent her straight to the ceiling. And that was only the half of it.
After Anya and Drea had arrived, Sylvie had poured out everything—including Tony’s betrayal. That he’d been lying to her the entire time she’d known him. Hell, even before she’d known him, the bastard had been lying to her, posing as an Internet troll. After she’d cried a swimming pool’s worth of tears, an empty numbness had filled her. The hurt and anger would hit later, no doubt.
“Everyone’ll want to know all about you being the High-Heeled Wonder, too,” Drea said.
Sylvie’s cheeks flushed. Okay, admittedly, Tony wasn’t the only one who had veered off the honesty trail.
She snorted. “And to think I was running for cover when it was just gossip about catching Daniel going down on the waiter.”
“The good old days.” Anya snuggled closer to her on the bed, their shoulders touching. “So you’re going to the fund-raiser?”
