by Lucy Monroe
“I didn’t know he was in Washington.”
Simon didn’t look at her. “He said you did.”
“He lied. He’s good at that.”
Simon’s shrug said it didn’t matter and cold seeped into her, making her shiver.
“It was nice of Jacob to drive Jill back to her bed-and-breakfast.” No one had suggested Jillian ride with the Brants and Lance. Probably because they all wanted to avoid bloodshed.
“He’s starstruck.”
“I thought so too.” She smiled fully for the first time since seeing Lance that night. “I told you. You’re going to have to watch him with Jill. She may not get him to Southern California, but she’s got connections up here as well.”
“He plays more roles as my employee than he could ever land in a real production.”
“No doubt.” She sighed and turned away from the disappearing taillights.
Simon wasn’t looking at them, his eyes were on her.
“Lance is smooth.”
She grimaced. “He works at it.”
“He could be a model.”
Too true. “He was on a Calvin Klein billboard when he was an undergraduate.”
“Do you still love him?”
The question blindsided her. Hadn’t Simon heard her when she told him how Lance had treated her? “No!”
“You sound adamant.”
“I am.” She couldn’t believe he was thinking along those lines. “Simon, Lance is not a lovable person. I was more enamored with the idea of getting my family’s approval than I was with him before we got married and by the time we got divorced, I despised him.”
“You said he didn’t want you.”
“He didn’t.” Why was he bringing this up now? Didn’t he realize that even though she was over her ex-husband, the memories of her marriage still had the power to wound. Failure hurt. Failing at the most basic definition of who you were—like being a woman—was devastatingly painful.
“His eyes were glued to your chest all night. Like hell he doesn’t want you.”
“What?” She felt disoriented. Simon sounded jealous, yet she couldn’t believe he thought there was a need to be so.
“He wanted to get you alone in a stateroom.”
“To talk business,” she said with some exasperation.
“With the way he was looking at you, I don’t think business would have been the first thing on the agenda.”
She’d been worried that Simon might think she had been working behind his back on the merger, and here he was, suffering from a bout of male possessiveness. Lance had not been possessive. It felt . . . She had to think about it. Different, and sort of nice.
“You think Lance would make a pass at me?” It was so laughable that she smiled. “No way.” Less amusing was her next thought. “You think I would succumb?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you’re jealous.” Her mind boggled. Simon, the most gorgeous and masculine man she’d ever known, not to mention a lover most women would die for, was jealous.
“Yes,” he bit out.
She laid her hand on his arm. “There’s no need. The only man I want is you.” How could he not see that? She vibrated like a tuning fork when he came into the room and wilted like a dead flower when they had to be separated.
Was he blind?
“You were married to him.” It was almost an accusation.
“It was a lousy marriage.”
“Jillian said you didn’t divorce him after the first affair.”
Jillian had a big mouth and she had a tendency to draw her own conclusions. They weren’t always right.
“I didn’t know about the affairs, not for sure anyway.” She willed him to believe her. She’d stayed married for too long to a complete jerk, but she had not been a total doormat. “Until I walked in on him.”
“That’s when you realized he was having an affair?”
“Yes. I suppose I should have suspected before, the way he found it so easy to reject me physically. Maybe I was willfully blind, but I didn’t know.”
“What happened?”
“I went to his office on a Saturday to see if he was there. It was an off chance. He usually golfed on Saturdays, but he wasn’t answering his cell phone. I needed something. I can’t even remember now what it was, but I remember what I saw.” It still made her sick. It had been so sordid.
“He was with another woman.”
She remembered Jill had said almost the same thing. “Yes, but they weren’t alone.”
“He had two women with him?” Simon asked with disgust.
Would that have hurt less? Maybe. If she hadn’t known either of the women. “Worse.”
“How?”
“I discovered my husband was bisexual.”
“He was with a woman and a man?”
“Yes. He hadn’t touched me sexually in a year and there he was with two of them. They were panting, grunting, sweaty . . . there was this smell, like they’d been going at it a long time. They didn’t even notice me, they were so lost to reality in their lust. I left. When I told Lance I wanted a divorce, I didn’t tell him what I’d seen, just that I knew he was having an affair.”
She shuddered with remembered distress. “He didn’t even bother to deny it. He told me it was my fault that he had to seek sexual release elsewhere. That I wasn’t enough woman for him. He was furious with me for insisting on the divorce. Do you know he had the gall to suggest I get counseling?”
Simon’s expression went from savage to so tender, her heart cried. “Aw, baby.” He pulled her into his chest. “I’m sorry. What a bastard. If I’d known all of this before, I wouldn’t have let him on my yacht.”
She knew he was telling the truth. Simon wasn’t Eric. He didn’t allow himself to be bound by socially correct behavior.
He squeezed her tighter and incredibly, her body reacted to the pressure of his. “You’re lucky you didn’t end up with some disease.”
“I know.” She rubbed her cheek against his black silk shirt. “The Monday after I found him in his office, I went to the doctor and demanded they run every test imaginable. It was humiliating, but I couldn’t live with the uncertainty.” The memory wasn’t as wounding in Simon’s arms as it had always been before. “Who knows what level of protection he exercised in his perverse sexual games?”
“Considering his selfish arrogance, that’s a damn good question.” Simon’s body heat surrounded her like a security blanket. “I want to hurt him.” The level of fury in Simon’s voice shook her.
“Don’t. Please don’t let it matter. It’s over, and now I’m really thankful he found me such a sexual turnoff.”
Simon stood there rubbing her back for several minutes in silence. Thoughts of her marriage with Lance were relegated to her brain’s garbage incinerator as the heat that Simon’s gentle touching evoked burned them up.
The cold breeze coming off the water could not diminish the lava-like desire flowing through her.
She moved subtly against him and he sucked in air.
“You turn me on without trying,” he said in a voice guaranteed to melt her insides to liquid honey.
Chapter 18
She didn’t doubt him.
The evidence was pressing against her stomach.
“I’m glad.” So very glad.
“I can’t believe your family was mad at you for divorcing the bastard,” Simon burst out.
She didn’t want to think about it anymore, but an image of the man Lance had been with rose before her like a specter. “My parents love my brother. They don’t even tolerate me.”
“So?”
“The man that made up the final third of that lewd ménage à trois with Lance that day was my brother.” She’d never told anyone, not even Jillian.
When she had stopped going to family events, her parents hadn’t cared. She’d never been forced to explain why she couldn’t stand to be in the same room as her brother. They were all too busy vilifying her f
or divorcing such an upwardly mobile man with all those great connections for their real estate business. She now realized her brother had pushed her at Lance to cover his own bisexuality. A trait that didn’t go over well in the business community, even in Southern California.
Simon said something that made her ears burn.
She tilted her head back to smile at him, the pain of her brother’s betrayal submerged in the pleasure she found in Simon’s company. “My thoughts exactly.”
He swept her up into his arms without any warning, looking pretty fierce.
“Are we playing another fantasy? Are you the marauding privateer now?”
“Privateers were not considered marauders. Pirates marauded.”
She clung to his neck. “Are you playing pirate, or just caveman . . . again?”
He stopped and looked down at her, his gaze silver with emotion. “Do pirates get to capture princesses?”
A lump formed in her throat. He said the most amazing things. She smiled brilliantly at him, despite the wetness she couldn’t quite conceal in her eyes. “It depends.”
“On what?” He’d started moving again and was carrying her along the short corridor that opened onto the staterooms.
“On what pirates do with princesses.”
“Ravish them.”
“In that case, I would say it’s a certainty. Pirates are the very best at capturing princesses.”
“Then I’m a pirate, because you, Amanda, are definitely my princess.”
She wouldn’t let herself believe he meant what she wanted him to mean, that she ruled his heart. But even so, the words touched her deeply. “You’re a very sexy pirate. I like the fact you have both eyes and no hook.”
He laughed as he leaned down to open a door. “You’ll be really grateful for both hands by the time the night is over.”
“Will I?” she teased, knowing he was right, but it wouldn’t take all night. She was thankful right now as anticipation of what he would do with those hands rolled over her in a hot wave.
He carried her into the stateroom. It was bigger than she expected, with a custom-built bed occupying most of the space. He dropped her onto the bed in a flurry of red silk. She landed with her skirt exposing the top of one of her stay-up stockings.
“I think you’d better take the dress off, captive.” The words were diffident. The tone was not.
She gave him a saucy look. “Why’s that?”
“Because if you don’t, it’s going to end up ripped.”
She had never been wanted to the point of having her clothes ripped off. The concept that Simon could want her that much excited her.
She stretched back against the bed, raising her arms above her head in a way that made every curve move under the sensuous silk of the dress. “Really?”
Simon’s expression turned feral. “I’m not kidding, baby.”
It was a beautiful dress, but not as beautiful as the look of desire in Simon’s eyes. “Show me.”
His eyes widened, then narrowed, and he came over her in a predatory rush that made her gasp. One of his hands slid into the butterfly cutout of her dress, straining the fabric to its limit. He cupped her ripeness. She couldn’t help scooting back a couple of inches that gained her exactly nothing.
“Nervous, baby?” he asked mockingly, his hand squeezing her in erotic repetitions.
“Excited,” she corrected. Conquering warrior, pirate, it didn’t matter . . . Simon would never hurt her.
Something came over him at her response and his other hand went to join the first. When he found the opening too small for both hands, he yanked at it and the sound of rending silk filled the silence of the stateroom.
Her breasts were exposed, framed by the frayed edges of the torn red fabric.
Simon leaned back to look at her. “They’re fantastic, sweetheart. So beautiful, they’re a Heavenly work of art.”
She shuddered and heat pooled between her legs as her heart swelled with emotion. “Are you going to touch me?”
Had he ripped open her bodice just to look?
His smile was all masculine sex appeal. “Oh, yeah.”
Then he started doing just that, using his mouth and his hands to tease her flesh into a state of aching need.
“Oh, Simon . . . . Please. Yes. Don’t stop.”
His sensual laughter acted like a further stimulant to her senses. “I couldn’t stop, baby. Not even if I wanted to and I don’t. I’m going to touch you all night long.”
But he did stop, long enough to tear his own shirt off, sending jet black buttons flying, and then he was kicking off his pants, exposing an erection of rather daunting magnitude. It was a good thing she hadn’t gotten a good look at him before they made love the first time. She would have run screaming, sure they wouldn’t fit, but they did and he touched her so deeply sometimes, it felt spiritual.
He came down on top of her, pressing the hot skin of his muscular chest against her soft flesh and she cried out at the indescribable feel of it. He teased her with his body, rubbing himself between her legs, the silk abrading both of them. If it felt as sensual to him as it did to her, he was going to climax before he got inside her. She felt on the verge of orgasm herself.
“You are so sexy, Amanda. So beautiful.” He whispered more compliments, interspersing them with things he wanted to do to her as he kissed her face and neck and breasts.
She writhed under him, desperate for a connection he seemed intent on denying.
She wanted her dress off. Now.
Loving the freedom to touch him, she ran her nails down his back, the pirate fantasy forgotten. She didn’t feel like a captive. She felt like a woman being tormented by her man.
“Simon, I want to be naked,” she wailed.
The hiss of rending silk was followed by the feel of his hardness against her wet and swollen labia. He stroked his flesh against hers without penetration for several seconds.
“I want you, Simon! Now. Please. . . .”
He reared up and backward; when he returned to her, he was holding a condom. “Put it on me.”
She sat up, breathing hard, and pulled off the remnants of her dress. She discarded it, a violent ache to pleasure him holding her in its grip. She lifted the weight of each breast in her hands, then leaning forward, she rubbed her hardened nipples against his even harder erection.
He groaned.
Arrows of sensations shot straight from her stiff peaks to the very core of her.
A wantonness she’d never known pulsed with the rapid beat of her heart; she pressed her breasts around him and he shouted out.
“What are you trying to do to me?”
“Make you feel as good as you make me feel.”
He choked on whatever he tried to say next as she slid the soft tunnel of her breasts up and down his length. She’d never done anything like this, but Simon made her feel wild. As her generous curves pressed against the base of his manhood, she bent her head forward and delicately licked the top.
Bucking toward her mouth, he made an inarticulate sound of need. “More, baby. I need more of you.”
She understood and with one final kiss to the tip of his erection, she released his rigid flesh from its resilient prison. Excited by performing this task for the first time, she tore open the condom package. She took as much time as she dared sliding the latex down his length, wanting to prolong the touch of her fingers on him.
“I love touching you,” she whispered from a throat raw with passion.
“I love your touch, but it’s got to be now.”
With that, he exploded into movement, lifting her up and back and pressing himself between her legs, all in one desperate motion. A single rocking of his hips saw him sheathed in her heated wetness and she moaned at the pleasure of being one with him. She felt connected to him on every level at that moment.
“I love you, Simon. I love you!”
He responded in a frenzied series of thrusts that sent her into a vortex of pleasure so dee
p, she didn’t think she’d ever come out of it. She convulsed around him, the rippling sensations going on and on and on as he continued to pound into her with driving force. Then his body bowed and he yelled her name as he came.
Afterward, she fell asleep with him still inside her.
Amanda didn’t stir, even when he gently pulled himself from her body. She sprawled on top of the comforter with her arms thrown wide and her legs parted in the position of their loving. One dark brown curl lay nestled around her still-turgid nipple. The rest of her hair was a wild tangle around her head and she looked like a pagan queen well satisfied by her lover.
She’d been satisfied all right.
How many times had she convulsed in orgasm? He’d been too busy slamming into her with uncontrolled need to keep count, but it had seemed to last forever. And she had screamed her throat raw. He bet she didn’t even realize it, but toward the end she’d done no more than croak his name.
She probably didn’t realize she’d said she loved him either. Sex talk . . . only Amanda didn’t indulge in that. Not yet anyway. That was something they could play with another time, later. If they had a later.
From the sound of things, her boss wasn’t happy with her handling of the merger. What a jerk to have sent someone up to help with the negotiation and not even tell her. Especially her ex-husband. Her boss had to have the sensitivity of a rhinoceros. Or he was so displeased with Amanda’s inability to get Simon to agree to the merger, these actions were like a corporate slap on her wrist. Would she be called back to California?
Could he convince her to stay?
She’d said she loved him.
In the throws of a mind-blowing climax, he reminded himself. But she had said the words.
What did words mean? If she meant them . . . then, everything.
He made quick work of taking care of the condom and then went back to the stateroom. Not surprisingly, Amanda hadn’t moved. He lifted her limp body so he could pull the covers over her, then slid into bed beside her, curling his big body around her smaller one.
Content, he slept.
