by LETO, JULIE
With a ragged breath, he said, “Take a guess.”
She grasped him tighter, encircling him with her thumb and forefinger. “I’ll have to do a little more research.”
“Do whatever you like.”
The note of complete surrender emboldened her. She’d never been a shy lover, but she’d never invested much time or effort beyond the fulfilling of basic sexual needs. On the adventurous scale, she fell firmly into the lowest category possible. But with Alejandro, her place was yet to be determined. She wanted to try more with him—wanted to experience more. Wanted to give more. She didn’t question why. She didn’t question anything.
She pushed on his shoulder and climbed over him, her thighs on either side of his hips, his erection taunting her with its thick heat. Her eyelids fluttered as the sensations of his body beneath hers resulted in teardrops of liquid kissing his flesh and providing a warm lubrication.
She braced her hands on his chest and skimmed her body across him, the contact tentative, but torturously wonderful.
“So perfect,” she murmured.
“Not quite.”
He grasped her hips and set her down harder. He wasn’t inside her yet—but he would be.
Soon.
Very, very soon.
Slick with need, her labia parted as she slid across him with a warm, moist friction. She’d never made love to a man with her body so primed, so ready, so on the edge of orgasm. Again. Until this moment, multiple climaxes, to her, had been a myth dreamed up by fashion magazines. But now she was learning. Orgasm required trust—and it was hard to trust men she barely knew.
And yet, she had no trouble surrendering her body, mind and soul to Alejandro. She’d only met him a couple of months ago. She’d been lying to him even before she’d first opened her mouth to introduce herself as Lucienne Bonet, the international art expert, rather than Lucy Burnett, a clever fence for stolen goods who happened to be best friends with the brother he didn’t know he had.
But at this moment, she didn’t care about her motives or her past, or that once he found out she was willing to snatch his family legacy, he’d want nothing to do with her. She didn’t even care about the damned ring or saving Danny. She just wanted to feel Alejandro deep inside her. She wanted to ride him hard and milk every ounce of pleasure from his body.
“Alejandro, I—”
“Por favor, mi tesora, call me Alex.”
She blinked and stopped moving. “What?”
He clutched her backside and restarted the sensual undulation of her body over his. “Alejandro sounds too formal. My friends call me Alex.”
The little intimacy made her smile. “What do your lovers call you?”
He brushed his tongue over his lips and she could tell he was trying hard to contain what she suspected might be an arrogant grin. Then he slid his hands up her back, pulled himself into a sitting position and wrapped his lips around her right nipple.
“Insatiable,” he murmured.
She slid across him, back and forth, while he suckled and nipped at her breasts. When the tip of his head came into contact with her clit, she nearly bucked out of her skin. In a maelstrom of mad fumbling, she retrieved the condom from the bedside table, tore open the package and unrolled it over him.
The brand he chose provided an extra layer of lubrication so that when she tilted her body, he slid into her with ease. In one thrust, he was inside her, full and long and ohso-deliciously hard. She remained still for a long moment, waiting for her body to stretch and accommodate him even as she reveled in the sensations shooting through her like white-hot stars.
He continued to pleasure her breasts, alternating between gently twisting her nipples with his teeth and laving away the pleasurable pain with a stiff, darting tongue. Once she realized she could move without coming immediately, she raised herself up, then slowly inched down. The power was overwhelming. He crooned to her in lyrical Spanish. Though she had no desire to translate, even just in her head, she understood him perfectly when he clutched her hips and pressed her down harder and faster.
He dropped back onto the pillows, his eyes closed, his mouth curved in a shape that wasn’t as much a smile as it was a sign of bliss. She braced her hands on his pecs, then tugged at the chest hair near his nipples until his eyes flew open and speared her with needs so intense, she nearly stopped moving.
Nearly. But she couldn’t stop this train now. He tightened his grip on her waist, his fingers biting into her skin.
“Encantadora,” he murmured.
“Kiss me,” she pleaded, leaning down so that she could reach his mouth.
The new angle spawned shockwaves of fresh sensations. Alex growled as her mouth met his and in the span of a heartbeat, he was ravishing her lips and tongue even as he ground his hips so that his sex tunneled deeper into hers. Just as she reached the precipice of need, he flipped her onto her back and delivered the last few thrusts. She wrapped her legs around him, dug her heels into his ass and screamed in pure, unadulterated joy.
Moments into her orgasm, he joined her, pounding harder even as he kissed her hungrily. The pressure was overwhelming. He gave more than she thought she could take—and now, she wanted more. She tilted her hips, and with one last thrust, he ground out her name, shuddered and then collapsed beside her.
His skin was shiny with sweat. His hair, which he hadn’t dried since the shower, rained cool droplets of water onto her sizzling skin. When he leaned up on his elbow, grinned, then kissed her again until she was lost in the pure pleasure of his mouth, she feared she might pass out from contentedness.
Was that even possible?
“So how much?” he asked, breathless. “What?”
“How much am I worth?” he asked. “You’ve now experienced just about every part of me. Give me a, cómo se dice, ballpark estimate.”
Lucy laughed. When it came to pillow talk, Alex won that contest, too. Hands down.
“Are you fishing for compliments?” she asked, rising to his comically naughty bait.
“Yes,” he replied.
“My three orgasms weren’t enough?”
“When it comes to orgasms, I find that three is never enough.”
“On what planet?” she asked, shocked. “Most of the men I’ve been with don’t even care if I have one. Now you seem determined to set a record.”
“Don’t speak of other men,” he said, but his voice was gentle, almost pleading. “No one exists in this bed but you and me. You’ll have as many orgasms as you can handle here—and perhaps one more, as you Americans say, for luck.”
She snuggled into his chest, keenly aware that he was lax inside her. It might take some work on her part to rectify that situation before the night was through, but she was nothing if not industrious.
“If you mean all that, then you, sir, are priceless.”
SENSING EYES ON THE BACK of his neck, Michael clicked twice on his computer keyboard so that his screen popped to the default FBI homepage. When he spun around on his swivel chair, Ruby stood behind him, grinning.
“Why are you sneaking up on me?” he asked.
She narrowed her dark eyes. “What are you doing that’s making my sneaking up on you necessary?”
“Nothing,” he lied, turning back toward his desk. To his left, he had a stack of ongoing investigation files that needed updating since he’d pushed them all aside to concentrate on a new primary case involving a string of adult female kidnappings, the first of which had happened in California, but now included four states. On his right, a second stack contained estimations, contracts and letters of intent to purchase, all associated with the upcoming auction that would liquidate his father’s estate on his mother’s behalf. In the center of his mind, however, was new concern for Alejandro.
The brother he’d never met, with one request from him, had abandoned his fruitful life in Spain and traveled halfway across the ocean to take care of family business. In the course of doing what was best for El Dorado, Alex had brought in
a seemingly qualified appraiser who had, in two short months, earned not only Alex’s professional trust, but his personal interest.
After the robbery, however, Michael realized that in trying to keep on top of his most important priorities, he’d allowed a lot of little things to fall by the wayside—including keeping an eye on people who were trying a little too hard to go unnoticed.
Like Lucienne Bonet.
Ruby shoved his case files aside and popped onto his desk, swinging her feet as if she were five years old.
“You’re a big liar,” she accused.
“Don’t you have work to do?”
“The boss asked me to help you with your backlog. So here I am.”
He grabbed the top five manila folders behind her and slapped them into her lap. “Have a party.”
She took a disinterested glance through the files, then set them back on top of his stack. “I’d much rather know who you were just checking into before I walked up. Suspect on the kidnapping cases?”
Michael groaned, not sure why he bothered trying to keep anything from her. The woman was like a bulldog when she sniffed out the meaty scent of something secretive.
“It’s a little closer to home,” he admitted.
“You’re checking out the chick from the auction house.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because I read the police report, too. A daytime robbery like that isn’t random. Not with shots fired. Though I’d check out the fired employees first, I don’t blame you for giving her background a look-see. She was hot.”
“That’s what worries me,” Michael said. Under normal circumstances, he would never interfere in his adult brother’s love life. But now that Alex had taken responsibility for the woman’s safety—a fact he’d learned from Alex’s call—he couldn’t help but worry that by asking his brother to orchestrate El Dorado’s last auction, Michael had invited danger into Alex’s life. He’d already faced gunfire and armed robbery. What if Lucienne turned out to be even more dangerous?
“Her hotness worries you?” Ruby questioned. “Boy, you and I need to have a serious talk.”
“This isn’t about me, it’s about Alex. He’s sleeping with her.”
Ruby’s eyebrows sprang up. “Since when?”
Michael frowned. “Since tonight, if I’m reading the signals right. She’s staying with him at his penthouse. Her purse, keys and wallet were taken in the robbery. The cops don’t think it’s safe for her to go home.”
Ruby slid off his desk and into a chair she dragged over from the hall. Per usual, she changed from a thorn in his side to a serious crackerjack agent in the space of a heartbeat.
“And this woman didn’t have anyone else she could stay with?”
“She’s not from San Francisco,” he said, clicking the computer back to the screen he’d banished when Ruby first walked up. “Says here she’s from New Orleans originally, like she told you, but she hasn’t stayed in one place for very long.”
“Is that unusual, with her job?”
His scowl deepened. He didn’t know what it was about Lucienne Bonet that had his hackles up, but he’d learned a long time ago to trust his instincts. Something wasn’t right about her—which made her a danger not only to his brother, but to the auction house, too.
“Not according to my research, but I can’t help thinking something’s up. She talked to you, but she kind of went out of her way not to be around me for more than a few seconds—and not for the first time. She’s been working for my brother for two months, but I’ve never really talked to her. Never really seen her. Why is that?”
Ruby shrugged. He didn’t know the answer, either, but he would find out.
“I’m going to stop by the auction house later and pick up a copy of her résumé. I know Alex checked out her references, but I have a feeling he asked different questions than I would.”
“And you think that she had something to do with the robbery?”
He shook his head. “If the robbers had inside knowledge from her, they wouldn’t have tripped the security alarm and they wouldn’t have failed to get into the main vault. But something about her makes me uneasy.”
Ruby patted him on the shoulder, her calm attitude back in full force. “Maybe it’s just that she’s gorgeous and hot for your brother and you wouldn’t know what to do with a babe like that.”
She was four paces out of his cubicle before Michael smacked down his shock and shot back, “I’d know exactly what to do with her.”
“Maybe on a theoretical level,” she quipped, then sauntered back to her desk on the other side of the partition. “But in practice? Ha!”
Michael opened his mouth to counter her assertion, then decided against it. What proof did he have that he could handle a woman as gorgeous, sophisticated and mysterious as Lucienne Bonet? The last girl he’d dated with any regularity had been a barista at the coffee shop in the lobby of the FBI building. She’d been a little young, but sweet and a decent date for movies and dinner. But like most of his relationships, the whole thing had petered out rather quickly—probably because she expected more excitement from a federal agent than he could provide. His work was his love, his passion. At the end of the day, he had very little energy left for anything else. Or anyone else.
So maybe Ruby was right.
Michael hadn’t inherited the Murrieta charm when it came to women. Although his father had, by all accounts, remained faithful to his mother during their marriage, he’d been quite the ladies’ man before, as evidenced by the fact that he had not one, but two sons by two different women. The number of female mourners at Ramon’s funeral had nearly required the funeral home to truck in an 18-wheeler full of tissues.
And in less than a couple of hours since Alejandro had announced his desire to seduce Lucienne, the woman had moved in with him. Clearly, his brother had inherited Ramon’s charm. Even Daniel, who was a no-good, two-faced, lying sack of thievery, always had plenty of female names on his approved visitor’s list at the jail.
Michael’s chest constricted. With shaking fingers, he called up the file on Lucienne Bonet again, this time opening the photograph from her Louisiana state identification. He leaned close to his monitor, ignoring the color and cut of her hair and concentrating only on the shape of her face.
He’d seen those eyes before—though they’d been vibrant green at the time.
He remembered the angle of her cheekbones, the slope of her nose and the thickness of her lush lips.
He had seen her before—and not at the auction house.
“Ruby!” he shouted.
Ruby didn’t appreciate summoning by this means and countered with an aggravated, “What?”
“I need you to look at something.”
She clomped over. “If whatever you want to show me has anything to do with my crack about you not knowing what to do with a woman, I take it back. There are some things about my coworkers I don’t want to know.”
He jabbed his finger at the computer monitor. “I just remembered why Lucienne Bonet looks so familiar. I met her once—and not at the auction house.”
“Where?”
“In lockup. With Daniel.”
8
LUCY PEEKED ONE EYE OPEN, wondering how the hell sunrise had come so early. How long had she slept? An hour? Two?
She rolled over slowly, but her muscles protested and the sheets, tangled around her body, pulled tight into a constricting serpentine of thousand-thread Egyptian cotton. She vaguely remembered the comforter falling to the floor at some point during the night, along with her and Alex.
Rule to live by: when making love on the floor, it is preferable to do so in a luxury penthouse suite with four-inch pile carpet and the world’s most amazing lover. For the rest of her life, she’d think of the rug burns as war wounds in the most pleasurable battle ever waged between man and woman.
As consciousness crept into her brain, she registered the scent of coffee. She inhaled deeply, and then battled t
he restraining sheet until she could sit up.
“Buenos dias.”
Blinded by her bone-dry contacts, Lucy rubbed at her eyes and pried apart the clumps of mascara on her lashes. After yawning inelegantly, she blinked enough moisture into her eyes to see Alex sitting in a chair by an eastfacing window. Sunlight streamed behind him, casting him in sexy silhouette. He was dressed in his typical sharp-creased slacks, crisp white shirt and expensive Italian loafers.
“How long have you been awake?” she asked, her voice raspy.
“An hour. I hope you don’t mind that I’ve been watching you sleep.”
She attempted to run her hand through her hair, which was a mass tangle of her dyed locks and expertly applied extensions. “I can’t imagine why you would. I must look like hell.”
“You look like a woman who’s been thoroughly loved,” he countered.
“Yeah, I’ve seen those women,” she quipped. “And they look like hell.”
While he chuckled, she tugged the sheet free from the knotted comforter and pillows on the floor and wrapped herself like a regifted present. She scuttled into the bathroom and shut the door, not giving a damn if she looked ridiculous. Over the course of the night, the man had seen her from just about every angle imaginable. She wasn’t going to play shy now simply because the sun had risen.
But here in the dark bathroom, she thanked the hotel gods for dimmer switches. After unraveling herself from the sheet, she found the sink and scrubbed her face free of her leftover makeup, then took out her contacts. Once free of the color-changing lenses, she could see well enough to locate a basket of toiletries filled with the items she’d requested from the concierge. She dropped the contacts into a cleansing solution, brushed her teeth and peed, then headed to the shower and hoped that this time, Alex didn’t follow her.
Last night’s foray into the magical water jets had been an amazing amalgamation of fantasy and reality, but she had no illusions that this affair would go beyond today. She had to get her head out of the clouds and back into the game she’d started when she’d agreed to help Danny steal the ring.
