Something was very wrong, he thought. She had her head turned away from him and was sitting with her hands tightly clenched in her lap. He doubted she was afraid of flying so it had to be another cause. Her silence, the way she avoided his eyes, the tenseness of her body when he touched her—all of it scared the shit out of him. She was acting as though she were already out of his life and the very thought of that happening put the fear of God into him.
“Melina?” he queried but she didn’t look at him. “Have I done something to make you mad?”
She shook her head.
“Did I forget to do something?”
“No.”
“Should I do something? Just tell me and I—”
She looked around at him and he could tell she’d been crying for her eyes were red and swollen. He started to unbuckle his belt but she held up her hand.
“Please don’t.” She turned away again.
Now she wasn’t only scaring him, she was tearing him apart. She didn’t want to talk to him, to look at him, and now she didn’t want him to touch her. She’d been crying. He was afraid he knew what that meant and he didn’t like it.
Not one bit.
He wanted to hold her. He wanted to make whatever it was that was making her sad, to pull away from him go away. If he lost her…
“Melina, look at me. Please?”
She did as he asked.
“Baby, if I’ve screwed up somehow, I want to know,” he said. “I’ll make it right. I swear to you, I will.”
“You can’t make everything right, Kiwi,” she said. “You can’t just throw money at people and expect things to go like you want them to.”
“What have I done?” he persisted.
“You haven’t done anything,” she said.
He unbuckled his seat belt and squatted down beside her chair. “I must have because you’re treating me like I’m a piece of gum stuck to your shoe.”
For the first time he saw emotion in her eyes. “I don’t mean to,” she said. “It’s just I didn’t want to come on this trip.”
He felt a glimmer of hope. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to spoil what you had planned,” she said but the way she said it made the hair stand up on his arms.
“What I had planned? What is it you think I planned?”
“You’ll have a limo waiting at the airport,” she said. “It will take us to a private marina where there’s a yacht waiting to take us out on the water for a dinner cruise. It’s what you do with all your women, isn’t it?”
A tremor of anger spread through him. “Who told you that?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Isn’t that what you do?”
He wanted to lie but obviously she already knew it was true. “Yes,” he admitted. “I’ve brought women down here before. I have a condo on Hilton Head and I come here a lot but you’ll be the first woman to see that condo, to sleep there.”
“Tell me the truth, Kiwi. Am I going to sleep there tonight?” she asked, studying his face.
He had the ring in his pocket. He was going to wait until the sun rose over the water to kneel at her feet and ask her to marry him. He wanted the bright rays of the new morning—the beginning of a new month, a new life—to shine down on them.
“Will I be sleeping at your condo tonight?” she questioned.
“No,” he said. “Not tonight.”
She smiled but the expression did not reach her eyes. “I didn’t think so.”
“Do you want me to have Capt. Clarke turn the plane around?”
She shook her head. “No, it needs to play out as it should.”
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“Mr. McGregor, you need to return to your seat. We’ll be landing in a few minutes,” Maven told him as she came to stand directly beside him.
He looked up to shoot her a nasty look for interrupting him but—as usual—she was blithely unaware of anything save her exceptionally good looks, which had gotten her the job in the first place.
“Don’t ever intrude on me again when I’m having a private conversation,” he told her and watched her perfectly tweezed eyebrows shift upward. He’d never been short with her before and the look of shock on her face was priceless. “Do you understand?”
“Yes sir,” she said.
Shooting to his feet, he returned to his seat and buckled himself in. Melina’s words, the way she had spoken them, caused the blood to pound fiercely in his ears.
The flight attendant gave her a murderous look before she walked to the back of the plane where she’d been sitting.
He was staring out the window with his fists clenched on his thighs. She could almost feel the anger rolling off him and she wasn’t sure if that was directed at her or at the woman who had interrupted him.
Obviously he’d never barked at her like that before. The look on her face when he did had been telling. A slender hand had gone to lips painted bright red to match the fingernail polish she wore, then on to smooth back the dark hair over her ear. It was a nervous gesture many women made when…
The realization hit her hard. Dark hair, green eyes, weighing no more than a buck-ten. Another clone of his mother sitting in the back of the plane and staring daggers at the back of her head. It was such a cruel joke she almost laughed. Instead, she turned to stare at him, wondering what was going through his mind.
He wanted to know which one of the four had told her about the other women. He suspected it was Spike. The men didn’t care who he fucked but Spike had always gotten her nose out of joint any time he took a new woman with him to Savannah.
And there had been dozens of them over the years. He’d wined and dined and fucked and forgotten them. Only a handful even stood out in his memory and that was because they’d been the ones to answer the ad.
The. Fucking. Ad.
He clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth as he stared out the window. The plane was descending and he always tensed for the touchdown of the wheels. For some reason that was the only thing about flying that unnerved him and he had no idea why. He slapped his hands to the arms of the chair to brace himself. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her watching him.
He was so afraid of losing her. It already felt as though she was slipping through his fingers. Damn Spike for putting doubt in her mind! Did she really think he was going to let her leave him? That he was going to allow her to take the check and run?
“Hell, no, I’m not,” he said under his breath. The ring was burning a hole in the pocket of his jeans. He was tempted to take it out then and there and as soon as the plane came to a stop, get down on his knee beside her.
The wheels touched down and he flinched, digging his nails into the armrests. All thoughts were pushed out of his mind as the drag moved him forward a bit and he pushed back in his seat. He hated the feeling of deceleration as much as he loved when the plane took off.
He saw the stretch limo waiting beside the airport terminal and pursed his lips. Just one more damning thing to add to the ones Melina was already chalking up to his randy lifestyle.
“You can’t just throw money at people and expect things to go like you want them to.”
One of the things he loved about her was that she wasn’t interested in his money. Yes, she had agreed to his devil’s bargain in exchange for a goodly sum but the money wasn’t to buy clothes or jewelry or luxury cars and fancy houses. The money was for her beloved brother and she had been willing to sell her body in order to provide for him.
When the uniformed chauffeur got out of the limo, he groaned. That would be another tick against his name. For one moment he thought about hiring a taxi to take them out to the marina but that would be stupid. She’d see the limo and its liveried driver as soon as the plane taxied into place.
Then there was the yacht. She had to know it belonged to him and one look at it would tell her it had not been a cheap purchase. In fact, she might well have been told the one-hundred-sixty-nine-foot b
lue-water cruiser had set him back as much as a fleet of Veyrons—thirty-seven million to be precise. There would be no way to hide the nine-man crew who sailed her. Their salary alone for this one cruise from Savannah up to the Outer Banks of North Carolina then back to Hilton Head to connect with the launch that would take them to the dock of his beachfront home was more than she made in six months at her job.
Maven walked past him to the front of the cabin to open the hatch. She was studiously ignoring him and if that was meant to punish him, it didn’t. All it did was piss him off even more. He made a mental note to fire her ass as soon as they got back to Atlanta.
Capt. Clarke came out of the cockpit with a warm smile. “How was the flight, Mr. McGregor?” he asked.
He got to his feet and shook the pilot’s hand.
“Great as always,” he said. He turned to her. “Melina Wynth, Captain Joseph Clarke.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Captain. Thank you for a very smooth flight,” she said politely, shaking Clarke’s hand.
“My pleasure, Miss Wynth. We had good weather but that isn’t going to hold. They are calling for rain tonight so I guess you might be eating below deck instead of above.”
He didn’t need to look at her to know what she was thinking. It would seem to her that everyone knew his modus operandi for debauchery.
Chalk up another tick on the evil side of his slate.
“Thank you for telling her my plans, Clarke,” he snapped.
The pilot’s face turned beet red and he stammered an apology. “Sir, I am so—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said. Despite her taking a step back, he reached down and took her hand, drew her toward the opened hatch.
“Have a good evening, Mr. McGregor,” Maven said as he went past her. “I’m sure you will, Miss Wynth.”
He stopped in mid-step and whipped around. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean, Maven?” he demanded.
“How could she not with you as her dinner companion?” the brazen bitch asked him.
“Get your things and get the fuck off my plane,” he said. “I’ll have Spike cut you a termination check and have it waiting when you get back to Atlanta!”
The woman’s eyes nearly popped from her fake eyelashes. “Why?” she asked. “What did I do?”
He didn’t answer even when she called out to him as he drew Melina down the steps behind him. He was so angry that he completely forgot about the jackets they were leaving on the plane.
“Synnie, what did I do?” Maven called out.
“Synnie?” she inquired. “That settled any question I had about her.”
He stopped, pulling her around in front of him. “If you have questions you want answers to, woman, just ask! I’ll tell you whatever the hell you want to know. If you want details of every woman I’ve fucked, I’m afraid I can’t oblige because I don’t remember most of them because they weren’t important to me!”
“Not to deflate your ego balloon, Kiwi, but I don’t give a rat’s ass about the women you slept with before me!” she told him and tried to snatch her hand from his.
He wasn’t having any of that. He tightened his grip.
“Are you sure?” he demanded.
“I am positive,” she said.
Under the glow of the mercury lights overhead he stared at her for a long time before he finally made up his mind. “All right,” he said at last. He swept his hand toward the limo.
She took a deep breath and walked ahead of him to the stretch. The chauffer smiled politely at her, touched the bill of his black cap, and then opened the door for her. She couldn’t help but wonder how many women the Kiwi had escorted to this man’s rolling domain.
“Welcome back, Mr. McGregor,” the black man said.
“How are you, Enoch?” he asked.
“Never better, sir.”
“This is my lady, Miss Wynth,” he said and she had to bite her tongue to keep from snorting her derision at his remark.
“A pleasure, Miss Wynth,” Enoch said, once again touching the shiny brim of his cap.
“For me, as well,” she answered automatically.
She climbed into the limo and knew what a lone match in a box felt like. The roominess was oppressing and it saddened her. People all over the world were starving and the leather upholstery in this opulent ego on wheels could feed many of them for an entire week.
He got in behind her and Enoch closed the door. The darkly tinted sliding glass window on the divider separating the driver from the rear compartment was open. Closed, it would insure the privacy of the passengers.
He said nothing but took possession of her hand once again, curling his fingers with hers then laid it on his thigh.
She knew this would be her last night with him. The last time she would see his cocky—sometimes goofy—grin. Hear his deep, nasally accent. Feel the touch of his strong hands on her and the weight of his body pinning her down.
A sob escaped her throat and he turned his head toward her.
“Melina?” he questioned. “Will you please tell me what’s wrong?”
She came to a decision she knew would hurt her deeply in the end but was as helpless to avoid it as a deer caught in headlights.
“How long will it take to get to the marina?” she asked, pulling her hand free.
“Thirty minutes or so,” he said, his mouth twisted at her withdrawing from him. “Are you that anxious for the evening to end?”
“Ask him to close the partition,” she said and crossed her arms in front of her to take hold of the hem of her sweatshirt.
He looked down, realized her intent and half smiled. He leaned forward in the seat. “Enoch, would you close the partition please?”
The chauffeur glanced in the rear view mirror. “Of course, sir.”
The glass panel began to raise.
She peeled the sweatshirt over her head.
If she had pulled out a switchblade knife and plunged it into his heart he could not have been more surprised. He couldn’t move—didn’t dare move—as she stripped away the sweatshirt and unhooked her bra. Naked from the waist up, her body gleamed under the glow of the lights coming in through the tinted windows. He was speechless as she toed off her sneakers, unbuttoned her jeans, unzipped them, and then pushed them down her legs.
He swallowed hard when she slid across the seat. “Baby…” he said, finally finding his voice.
“Stop talking,” she ordered. She reached for the hem of his loose sweater and tugged it from him. She unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned his fly, then unzipped him.
He arched his hips as she jerked at the jeans and she shoved them down his legs. Like she had, he toed off his sneakers and pushed the jeans from his legs with his feet.
She threw her leg over him and settled on his thighs, his cock pinned between them. “I’ve always wanted to do this,” she said and her mouth came down upon his.
Wrapping his arms around her silky body, he met her tongue thrust for thrust with his. He nibbled her lips and when she arched her head back, he pressed his mouth to her exposed neck. Her hands were on his head and yet again he wished his hair was long so she could grip him, pull the strands. It was a primal thing and he wondered why he’d never considered it desirable before now.
Because, he thought as he returned his mouth to hers and drew deeply on her tongue, he’d never wanted a woman to handle him in that way. Memories of his mother yanking his hair when he was a boy had soured him. An inmate jerking his head toward a grimy, foul-smelling crotch had made him shave his head the next day. He’d worn his hair buzzed ever since. Now, he wanted it long almost as much as he wanted to be inside her.
She rubbed her breasts on him and his cock oozed with rampaging desire. He slid his hands down her back to her hips and easily lifted her, sat her down on the jutting steel of his erection.
“Synjyn,” she whispered against his mouth and his name on her tongue made his heart swell with love. It was rare she used his given name. When she did, it meant mo
re to him than he could ever say.
Settling her body on his, she began to rotate her hips. His fingers gripped the flare of her hips to guide her in a rhythm that would satisfy them both. The slow rise of her cunt along his cock then the firm push downward was doing things that made his entire body throb. Her nipples sliding up and down his chest as she lifted her body upon him sent waves of pleasure straight to his groin. She cupped his head in her arms and pressed his face to her shoulder as she rode him. He braced his legs apart then turned, laying her down beneath him without breaking the contact of their bodies.
Like a man possessed, he rammed into her as hard as he could. He needed to claim her. To mark her as his. To ruin her for any other man for all time. He slanted his mouth over hers and with each thrust of his cock, he stabbed his tongue into her mouth. She was clawing at his back—drawing blood for he could feel it running down his side—and gouging her nails in his arse. It hurt but it felt good at the same time. To him, it was her way of branding him as hers.
At least that was how he chose to look at it.
When he came, he came hard. His body went completely rigid as his seed shot from him. He grunted. He growled then pumped furiously, his body slapping against hers. She brought her legs up to imprison his hips, arched her back and gouged her nails deep into his back. Her orgasm was as strong as his had been, for he felt the strong tugs on his cock as she milked him of every last drop.
Breathing loudly, raggedly, he collapsed atop her with her arms fast around him. He could feel her heart pounding against his. Could hear his own drumming in his ears.
He thought he heard her say something and wearily lifted his head. “What?” he asked.
She stared up into his face for what seemed like an eternity then shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “I didn’t say anything.”
He knew she was lying. What he thought he had heard were three simple little words that rocked his world. That she would not own up to saying them puzzled him.
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