When she was once again alone, she cursed beneath her breath. The balcony was hardly the sanctuary she’d thought it would be. But at least she’d stopped thinking about Wolfe, about stripping that mouthwatering suit from his body and climbing into his lap to suckle on his tongue as if she was starved for a taste of him.
Nichelle blew out a breath and straightened her spine. This was a challenge, both her attraction for Wolfe and the unexpected complication of Isaac Franklin. She’d never backed away from a challenge in her life and wasn’t about to start now.
Chapter 6
A hot knot of arousal burned in Wolfe’s belly as he watched Nichelle walk away. For the more informal party, she’d worn something softer, a black dress that skimmed her curves, the neckline as high as most of her blouses and the hemline inches below her knees. But the silk emphasized the perfect hourglass of her figure, and each step in those very high red heels twitched the enticing curves of her bottom. He longed to watch her walk away just like that toward his bedroom. He licked his lips.
“Your wife is a lucky woman. My husband hasn’t looked at me like that in years.”
A woman stood near him—the one he had jokingly pointed out to Nichelle a few minutes before. She was beautiful. But not like Nichelle.
“Then he’s a fool,” he said about the woman’s unappreciative husband.
She laughed. “Or maybe I am.” She looked him over with a familiar, predatory gleam, taking in everything about him. Maybe she was the one finished with her husband and not the other way around.
“Can I get you another whiskey?” she asked.
She must have watched him closely enough to know what he was drinking. He’d cut himself off nearly half an hour before, but he suddenly felt the need for another drink. He wasn’t getting what he wanted tonight, Nichelle in his bed, sighing his name as he licked and stroked her body to completion. Another drink was close enough.
“Of course,” he said to the beautiful woman. “Lead the way.”
At the bar, she asked the bartender for another whiskey on the rocks, light on the rocks. Without asking, the bartender gave the drink to Wolfe while the woman, Saleema, she told him, asked for orange juice, no ice. She thanked the bartender and slipped a two-hundred dirham note across the gleaming surface of the bar.
Saleema said something that Wolfe assumed was “thank you” in Arabic, then turned her attention back to him. They wandered through the crowded room, stopping occasionally to speak with other guests, before she led him to one of the low couches at the back of the room. Like Nichelle earlier, he was done socializing. But this, socializing at Quraishi’s party, was business, and it didn’t matter what he actually wanted.
In the middle of conversation about something forgettable, the man he’d seen earlier with Isaac Franklin invited himself to sit with them.
“Orlando Green,” he said with a smile that was more of a snarl.
Wolfe shook his hand, resisting the urge to wipe his palm on his slacks afterward. Although the man was well put together—he’d worn a suit to the party like most of the businessmen there—there was something a little oily about him.
“So what brings you here, Diallo?”
“Probably the same thing that brought you here,” Wolfe countered.
Green’s face grew tight. But he forced a smile past a tightened jaw.
“There’s no need to talk business tonight.” Saleema put a hand on Wolfe’s knee, then on Green’s, bending over so the high collar of her dress dipped to show the tops of her breasts. Wolfe stiffened, although he noticed the other man loosening his jaw to give her a real smile.
“You’re right, Saleema,” Green said.
So they’d already been introduced. Interesting. Or not.
Wolfe took a sip of his drink for want of something to do. The whiskey burned, a hot kiss all the way down his chest. With the heat spreading through him, he leaned back in the couch and widened his thighs, incidentally shaking Saleema’s hand from his knee.
He put on one of his charming smiles and asked her something he didn’t really care to know the answer to. Saleema opened her mouth to answer just as Green looked past Wolfe to something that made his eyes widen in appreciation.
It was Nichelle.
She stood a few feet away, a hand on her hip, eyes locked on the knee Saleema had just been stroking. She lifted her eyes to his, then to the woman at his side. There was something dangerous in that look of hers, both a command and a threat. It wasn’t an expression he’d seen on her face before.
Something low in him growled at it, recognized the look for what it was. When Nichelle turned and walked away from him, heading toward the exit, Wolfe did the only thing that made sense. He followed. He mumbled something to Saleema and Green, abandoned his too-strong whiskey on the nearby coffee table and walked quickly after Nichelle, keeping his eyes on the firm one-two switch of her backside. He didn’t want to lose sight of her this time.
She took them down a wide hallway, a path that she seemed familiar with, although she’d never been to the mansion before. He didn’t know where she was going, and he doubted that she knew, either. But her steps were certain, and he was only certain that he wanted her. He ached with the want, barely able to walk properly. They moved through a high corridor, past servants slipping silently in and out of rooms, down a wide staircase with a banister that was cool under his hand, the many tiles making up its design a small road map to wherever she led them.
He heard her high heels echoing from below. The smell of chlorine drifted up to meet him as he descended the stairs. An indoor pool. There were no windows, only the single set of stairs they’d come down together. Blue water rippled and reflected on the tiled ceiling etched with a blue-and-white starburst design.
Such beauty would make him weep if he wasn’t already looking at the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life. Distantly, he was aware he was waxing more poetic than usual. His mind wasn’t quite all there, and feelings and impulses he would normally have under proper control were bursting all over the place.
There was no one else in the enclosed pool chamber except for them. No music. No distractions. Only the faint hum of the pool’s filter, soft sounds of the water lapping against tiled walls. Wolfe followed the echoing rap of Nichelle’s footsteps until she was only inches away.
“Why did you leave?” His voice came out with a growl.
She crossed her arms under her breasts. Combative. Confrontational. “You shouldn’t have let that woman touch you.”
“Do you think that’s something you should concern yourself with?”
“Hell, yes!” Her shout echoed in the tiled room. “I’m supposed to be your wife, remember?”
“In name only, sweetheart.” Sweetheart? When the hell did he ever talk to Nichelle like that? But the strong liquor was scorching a trail in him still, and he barely stopped himself from dragging Nichelle against his body so she could feel how he burned.
“Wolfe, you’re acting like a whore.”
His spine jerked tight at the insult. “Why? Because some woman I don’t know wants to put her hands on me?”
“You’re right.” She turned away to pace the very edge of the pool. “You’re just acting like yourself.”
He drew in a sharp breath, a gasp from the pain of hurt feelings. Was that how she saw him? “Nichelle, don’t say anything else to me that you’ll regret.”
“Regret? Hardly.”
She spun to look at him, tall and regal in the bright light bouncing from the white walls. The wavering reflection of the water rippled on her face, her bare arms. Her mouth was red and moist in the undulating light, her curved body a wicked temptation. He flushed hot. He wanted to touch her. But beneath the desire, an unfamiliar emotion tore at him.
“I wasn’t doing anything with her,” he said.
He realized then that the emotion was regret. He felt like an idiot for allowing Saleema to touch him and for letting Nichelle see it.
“You d
idn’t stop her,” Nichelle said.
She turned and walked away from him again, heels stabbing the tiles. She didn’t raise her voice, but she fairly vibrated with anger and frustration. “You could’ve jeopardized everything by flirting with her. What if anyone important had seen the way you were damn near begging that slut to put her hand in your pants?”
“That’s not what was happening by any damn stretch of the imagination. Don’t resort to unnecessary exaggeration.”
She turned back to face him, raising an eyebrow in disbelief and anger. “Fu—”
He tugged her into his arms and kissed her. She stiffened against him. Wolfe swallowed her gasp of surprise. Their lips pressed together, a dry connection. A forced connection. Something that he had initiated against her will. Wolfe drew in a ragged breath and began to pull away, feeling awful, as if he’d crossed some line that could never be uncrossed. But she grabbed his arms and kept him close, melted into him. Her lips parted, and her tongue flickered out to stroke his mouth.
His mind spun out.
The slick heat of her tongue was his undoing. He cupped the back of her head, angling for more of the sweet taste of her. His heart thudded hard in his chest with the realization that, yes, she wanted him, too. He pulled her closer, shifting his chest to rub the hardened peaks of her breasts he could feel through the layers of cloth. A shock of sound left her throat: need and surprise. Wolfe gripped her hips and pulled her tight against him.
He ached with a need he hadn’t even known he was capable of feeling. His entire body was hard with it, muscles, bones and sex all at fierce attention to the things she was making him feel. Her fingers scraped the back of his head, nails raking the light stubble. Wolfe circled his hips into hers, telling her wordlessly of his need. Nichelle gasped again and drew back, stumbling away from him. Her eyes flickered down to the thickness in his pants, then away. Wolfe swallowed, pressed his lips together to stop himself from telling her what he wanted.
I want to make love to you. The words hovered just a breath away.
The need was rampant in him. Like that time in the hotel in Paris, he wasn’t ashamed for her to know he wanted her. She was so damned beautiful. If he’d known there had been even the most remote chance of having her, they would have been screwing in his office, in that uncomfortable couch in her office she loved so much, everywhere she would let him. Wolfe groaned, shocked at the thoughts that spilled all too easily through his mind.
He opened his mouth to apologize.
“You don’t mean it,” she said.
The lipstick was only slightly smudged on her swollen mouth. Her breath came quickly, but her eyes sparkled with challenge. And she was more than a little drunk, just like he was. Wolfe shook his head.
“You don’t know what I was going to say. You can’t predict me like a company’s stock prices.”
But that wasn’t true. She knew him. More than most, she knew him. Maybe she even knew the level of his desperate want. If she allowed him to, he would press her against the cool wall of their underground hideaway and sink to his knees in worship of her. He licked his lips at the thought of pleasing her that way.
“Nicki...”
“Don’t! Don’t call me that.” She backed away from him again, controlling her breathing with visible effort. “You don’t get to turn me into one of your whores tonight, Wolfe. That’s not what this arrangement is about.”
Her words were like a punch to the gut. “You could never be...that. Not to me or anyone.” He cursed savagely and turned away.
“This is stupid,” she hissed.
He breathed deeply, his hand on the banister. “It is. I think I need to sleep off whatever I was drinking and talk with you tomorrow.”
He couldn’t look at her without feeling the endless depth of his want. An abyss of aching feeling and reckless desire. It had come out of nowhere. One moment, he was prepared to endure the flicker of attraction he felt for her. And the next, his body flared to life, like a gasoline-soaked wick, and all he could think of was Nichelle, Nicki, her body ready to receive him, the two of them making love like sex-starved animals on the cool tiles.
Yes, he was drunk. But that was no excuse.
He looked at her over his shoulder. “Let’s have breakfast tomorrow and talk, okay?”
She sighed, a steadying sound. “Okay.”
He took a step toward the upper level. “I’ll tell Quraishi that we’re ready to go?” He framed it as a question.
“Yes.” Her controlled breathing was audible in the cavernous room. “I’m ready.”
Wolfe turned his back to her and quickly climbed the stairs as if the very hounds of hell were chasing him. But he couldn’t outrun himself.
Chapter 7
Nichelle lay on top of the sheets staring at the ceiling. She could sense Wolfe’s presence, as awake as she was, on the other side of the bedroom door. She felt a million kinds of foolish. How could she have allowed irrational jealousy to make her chastise Wolfe for doing what he’d always done?
But she remembered the flare, no the explosion, of anger in her chest when the woman put her hand on Wolfe’s knee. And how he sat there and allowed it, as if she had an invitation to touch him in a way that Nichelle had never gotten to.
She turned over in the bed and groaned silently with embarrassment. This was not how she’d planned to spend the time in Morocco, burning with alternating waves of regret and lust for the man she hadn’t even known she wanted until Paris. If she didn’t know any better, she’d have sworn that he put something in her drink.
But she was never one to blame someone else for her own actions. She wanted him. It wasn’t the best idea. She knew that. Getting sexually involved would only hurt them both, and possibly their partnership, in the long run. He treated women like tissues, and she didn’t want to be the next one. But the ache for him had been so swift, so unexpected, that it took her by surprise and she could only stand, gasping, in the wake of it and hope not to wake up emotionally bruised and bloodied in the end.
Nichelle squeezed her eyes shut and rolled over, trying again for sleep.
She and Wolfe needed to talk about what was between them. But more importantly, they needed to convince Quraishi that Kingston was the best firm for the job.
Tomorrow was going to be a hell of a day.
* * *
The next morning, she woke up long before sunrise to the sound of rattling dishes and a door closing. She left the bedroom, belting a robe around her waist, to see Wolfe already awake in the sitting room of the suite, a room service tray for two and papers in front of him at the dining table.
“You’re just in time,” he said, voice rough with sleep. “Room service just left.”
He was bare-chested, black pajama bottoms on, his face serious. She stared at his chest then looked away, flutters of arousal making her throat dry.
Would it kill him to put on a shirt? Nichelle lingered between the bedroom door and the table where Wolfe sat, acknowledgment of what happened between them last night on the tip of her tongue.
“Are we okay?” she asked.
Wolfe dipped his head. “Yes, we are.” But his face was blank.
Nichelle ran her tongue along the inside of her lip, joining him for the small breakfast of mint tea, yogurt and Moroccan crepes. He poured tea for them both, the scented steam rising from the stream of sweetened mixture, his attention completely focused on the task. With a flicker of his lush lashes, his eyes met hers.
She gasped at the wealth of feeling she saw there—desire, frustration, resolve. He cleared his throat, and his expression went blank again.
“All right,” she said. “Then let’s get to work.”
He nodded again and passed her the jar of honey.
Later, they were effortlessly in sync when Nichelle stood in front of the room full of mostly men and did her best to convince Jamal al Din Quraishi that Kingston Consulting was the best firm to help him create a successful long-term business strategy for his comp
any.
She presented the raw data and the statistics while Wolfe backed her up by answering any questions related to logistics that Quraishi or any of his associates had. It was a perfect meeting, so perfect that Nichelle wondered just what she had been worried about before. Isaac Franklin was good, but while she had been at Sterling Solutions, he was never good enough to outperform her.
“That was brilliantly done.” Yasmina, one of Quraishi’s representatives, reached out to shake Nichelle’s hand at the end of the meeting. “Thank you.” She was sternly beautiful, her thick black hair pulled back from her strong-jawed face in a high, crowning bun. Her severely cut black skirt-suit hinted at a lush figure.
“It was our pleasure. Please don’t hesitate to ask questions if there is anything we can clarify for you.” Nichelle teasingly nodded her head in Wolfe’s direction. “He can answer any queries that pop up.”
“I already know the drill,” Wolfe said. “I don’t just stand around and look pretty.”
Yasmina gave him a quick glance, an appreciative one, but she kept herself at a respectful distance. She gave Nichelle a subtle look, as if congratulating her on snagging such a fine specimen. Nichelle blinked, never having been the recipient of that kind of look before, congratulatory rather than avaricious.
“We’ll be in touch with you within twenty-four hours about our decision,” Yasmina said. “In the meantime, feel free to enjoy our hospitality for as long as you like.”
Nichelle glanced at Wolfe.
“Thank you,” he said. “You and Monsieur Quraishi have been very generous. We have a few things brewing in Miami so we’ll be leaving soon.”
Yasmina nodded. “Your wife tells me you are a fan of Moorish architecture, the desert and our way of life.”
Nichelle knew Wolfe was looking at her. He probably wondered when she’d found time to talk to Yasmina alone and to talk about him in particular.
“Yes.” He flashed one of his knee-weakening smiles. “I do enjoy your country.”
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