"What time do things get going in the morning?" he asked, letting her unlock the door with her key, before brushing past her to check out the suite.
"The gallery tour starts at eight. There's a breakfast beforehand. We should be out of here by six-thirty."
He motioned her inside. She walked in, sliding the shoulder strap of her handbag back up her bare arm in a sexy move that made her dress ride high on her thighs. Josh's headache faded beneath a surge of blood heading in the opposite direction.
"Wow," she said as she passed the table he'd set up as his workstation. "It looks like central command in here."
Josh didn't have to ask what kinds of television programs and movies Lennon watched. And in all honesty he supposed that, to a layperson, his communications equipment might resemble something out of a spy movie. One desktop PC acted as server to three portable systems, all configured to perform separate searches and functions. Add those to the peripherals--printer, Global Positioning receiver, video-conferencing equipment, fax machine--and Josh had a mobile office that enabled him to work effectively from just about anywhere.
"I'll be able to run your guests through the national databases."
"You're allowed to access those?"
"The Freedom of Information Act--it's a beautiful thing. Especially if you know how to make it work for you."
"What other kinds of things can you find out? Could you find out if someone had a nasty breakup with an ex-girlfriend?"
So she wanted to know about a man. "If the ex filed a restraining order."
"If not?" Propping a hand on the back of the chair, Lennon tried hard to affect a pose of nonchalance.
Josh didn't buy it. Shrugging off his jacket, he dragged a chair around and sat down, settling in for what looked like a long haul. "Why don't you tell me what you want to know?"
She considered him, the pursing of her full lips and her narrowed eyes suggesting some inner battle. Finally, she drew a deep breath, which, from his vantage point, did amazing things to her chest, and said, "I want information on the bachelors. Stuff I'm not likely to read about in Who's Who."
"No," he repeated. "I told you I'm conducting an investigation, not running some sort of dating service."
"I'm not looking for a dating service, Josh." She inclined her head, sending tawny-gold hair spilling over a bare shoulder, obviously unsure whether she'd heard him right. "I'm looking for a husband."
He could only stare until her words finally clicked.
You're here to interrogate the guests, black sheep. I've got my own agenda.
Recalling the comment she'd made earlier, he said, "You're scoping out potential bridegrooms. That's your agenda."
Her chin raised a notch, but she held his gaze steadily. "The bachelor auction is the perfect opportunity to meet Mr. Right. I'm thinking about my future. And I want someone..." she hesitated, plainly floundering for the right word "...suitable. I'd really like your help."
He wondered if she had any idea how mercenary she sounded. "Did it ever occur to you to just go out and fall in love like normal people do, chere?"
A hint of color crept into her cheeks and her gaze darted away to settle on his computer equipment. "I intend to fall in love, but I want to make sure it's with the right kind of man."
"It's as easy to love a rich man as a poor man, hmm?"
The second the words were out of his mouth, Josh knew he'd hit a nerve. Everything about her was tentative, from the uncertain tilt of her chin to the way she clasped her hands as though trying to keep them still.
"No. No, it's not like that."
He thought about asking her to clarify the differences, because he'd obviously missed them, but decided he really didn't want to know. "I won't help."
"Why not? You're investigating the bachelors anyway--"
"No."
Shoving the chair back, he stood, but before he'd cleared the table, she'd approached and placed a hand on his arm.
"If it's money, I'm willing--"
"It's not money." He covered her hand with his, liking the cool, satiny feel of her skin even though the thought of Lennon scoping out potential bridegrooms with left-brain deliberation left him feeling annoyed and somehow...let down.
Josh shouldn't be surprised. He'd been around enough debutantes to know marriages were "arranged" with considerations other than just love. His own grandmother had tried to push him into a marriage with one. He wasn't sure why Lennon's search for Mr. Right bothered him...unless on some level he'd expected more from Miss Q's great-niece.
He stared at her, at the imploring expression on her heart-shaped face; felt the connection of skin against skin. Lennon glanced down at their joined hands and he wondered if she felt the same warmth he did, the same physical jolt that made him want to run his fingers up the length of her smooth arm and explore her texture, her taste.
His fingers tightened over hers. Awareness flared in her gaze, but she didn't pull away.
He did.
"I can't help you, Lennon." His collar seemed to constrict around his throat, making it difficult to breathe.
Turning his back to her, Josh booted up his system, glancing at the fax machine to see if anything had come through. Nothing. The tray was as empty as he suddenly felt inside.
Hearing the tinkle of metal and the click of heels over tile, he turned to find Lennon adjusting her handbag on her shoulder and heading toward the door.
"Where are you going?"
"Back to the bar." She must have recognized his surprise, because she said, "Olaf is there with Auntie Q. If you need to work here, then fine. Work. I promise I'll stay within screaming distance."
"No."
She spread her hands in entreaty. "Look, I'm not trying to be difficult here, but I don't have a choice. I've only got this weekend. If you won't help me find out about these men with your Freedom of Information Act, then I have to find out the old-fashioned way, which means I need to be downstairs in the bar. I'm going."
Without waiting for his reply, she continued toward the door, clearly intending to leave. After a moment of disbelief that she would openly defy him when he was only ensuring her safety, Josh went after her. In a move he'd used a hundred times before--usually to tie up bad guys--he caught her wrists and spun her to face him.
Her expression transformed from shocked surprise to angry bravado, but he knew if he let her go, she'd march right out the door. For lack of a better alternative, he dragged the strap of her handbag down her arm, looped it around her wrists and fastened it to the sturdy wooden finial on top of the armoire.
"No, chere, you aren't."
He expected her to demand to be released. Hell, he wouldn't have blamed her if she kicked him with one of those strappy sandals. What Josh didn't expect was that surprised, vulnerable, melting look on her gorgeous face.
That expression changed the moment completely.
The sight of her shouldn't have aroused him, shouldn't have sucker-punched him in the gut and made him want to double over with the strength of the blow.
But it did.
With her arms high in the air, bound securely at the wrists, Lennon--all flowy blond hair and sultry eyes--couldn't go off searching for Mr. Right, couldn't retreat from him.
Her slender curves spread out before him, she was subject to his control, his whim. He ached to hear her sigh his name--an ache that conflicted with every rational objection.
She gasped, a stunned whimper, though he saw no fear in her eyes, or her face. His gaze trailed downward, over the pulse jumping wildly in her throat, the chest rising and falling sharply, and then he saw. Then he knew.
Her nipples strained through the wispy dress, peaked to silken pearls that proved she was as excited as he.
Josh's groan carried over the sounds of their ragged breathing, and he caught her mouth with a desperate demand. Satisfy me. Fulfill me.
Her lips yielded beneath his, slanted open to receive him with a warm velvet demand of her own, driving him with an urgency
to possess that he'd never before known.
6
OH, NO, THIS WASN'T happening. This couldn't be happening. Lennon should be fuming. She should shove Josh away and draw the line between them. He'd gone too far. But she had no hands. They were tied, tied, above her head by a slender gold chain. She should be mortified.
She should not be kissing him.But she was. And she didn't want to stop. Even if her hands were free, Lennon wouldn't push him away. Not with this delicious, dangerous excitement whipping through her. Not when she was bound, completely under his control, vulnerable... She found the sensation both unfamiliar and utterly irresistible.
Their breaths clashed, his ragged gasps as unchecked as hers, his mouth insistent, his kiss urgent. She didn't mean to encourage him, but her lips parted and his tongue was suddenly there, tangling with hers, filling every recess of her mouth, exploring, tasting.
A soft sigh slipped from her lips, one more unexpected reaction to this man.
What was happening here? Lennon had no comparison to make. She'd never felt anything like this before. His mouth possessed hers with a demand that made her hot and dizzy and needy. Her breasts had grown heavy and tight. Her nipples tingled. The dull thump between her thighs amplified.
She didn't think Josh had intended to kiss her. He'd seemed as surprised as she, as powerless to resist the thrill of the moment, this crazy rush of excitement. They'd stumbled upon the tantalizing here, the forbidden and unknown.
The unknown was electrifying.
Lennon wasn't sure what would come next, and the desperate edge to Josh's kisses suggested he barely maintained his control. But she knew, as surely as she knew her own heart raced out of control, that he wanted next to happen.
And some barely functioning part of her brain realized he wouldn't touch her until he was sure she wanted next, too.
These were uncharted waters for Lennon. She'd never traveled on the edgier side of sex before, except in her novels, where her hero and heroine could explore to their hearts'--to her heart's--content. She'd taken her characters to erotic places before. Erotic for the characters on the page. Vicarious thrills for her.
Should she give way to the wisp of sanity telling her that edgy sex meant passion, and risk? But this was Josh. He'd never hurt her. She knew that with absolute certainty. If she told him to stop, Lennon knew he would.
But she didn't want him to. She wanted him to touch her, because she couldn't touch him....
Arching her back, she pressed full length against him.
It took only one startled breath to register the heat of his hard body. All scorching passion and muscled male. All sinewy ridges and subtle hollows and lean power. A physique honed to breathtaking strength.
It took Josh only one low growl to accept her silent invitation. Thrusting his rough-velvet tongue deeper, he whipped an arm around her, anchored her against him.
Lennon melted. She had no strength to remain upright, would have sunk to her knees had he not held her so tightly, or had her wrists been free. They weren't. Arms raised, breasts jutting, she was stretched out before this man, vulnerable and wanting and subject to his hunger.
He was hungry. With strong fingers he nudged up her hem, bunching gold silk around her hips, revealing her bottom to his exploration. His fingers dug into one silk-covered cheek, not painfully, but purposefully. Lifting her up onto her tiptoes, he pulled her impossibly closer, until the ridge of his erection nestled securely in the juncture of her thighs, a steely presence through the sheer hose.
A thrill shot through her, dark, tense. She shouldn't be so aroused but couldn't help herself. She had no ability to reason, could only react. Satisfaction filled her at the realization that he was as aroused as she.
And then he ground that thick ridge between her thighs, zeroing right in on the knot of nerve endings there. The exquisite pressure dragged another moan from her, increased the throbbing between her legs as if he'd turned up the volume. Indeed, he had, tracing her lips with his tongue, strokes that made his warm breath gust against her skin.
Lennon shivered, a sensation that pumped strength into her legs so she could balance on her tiptoes, rock her hips and ride his erection. Through the fabric of his trousers his hard shaft swelled against her, working the exact spot that made her knees collapse and her breath shudder from her chest in sharp bursts.
Josh growled and his mouth trailed away, sweeping a hot path along her jaw and down her throat, his tongue flicking, his teeth nipping. Lennon arched against him in reply, using his erection to feed the ache inside her, to coax tortured groans from him.
The hand he held around her wrists was only a formality. The chain of her handbag, too, because Lennon wasn't going anywhere while this man trailed his fingertips down her bare arm. Not while he braced his legs apart and held firm against her. Not while this wild pulsing between her thighs made her press against him.
His breath grew harsh and fast. He dragged a finger along each inch of her skin, a sweeping caress that traveled over her shoulder, around her neck. He explored, discovered, exposed just how defenseless she was to his erotic attention.
The tension inside her coiled even tighter, and Lennon trembled again, stunned by the intensity of these sensations, by her response to this man. She wanted to feel his mouth on hers again, but his lips were otherwise engaged....
His hot breath soaked right through the thin silk of her dress, through the wispy lace of her bra to burst in a hot gust over her nipple.
Lennon jolted against him, unprepared for the lightning heat that shot through her, but oh so ready. Josh lifted her breast to his mouth and, with his sooty black head bent low, used his teeth to coax her nipple to a point through the fabric.
She whimpered--there was simply no other word for it. Even to her ears, the whimper was the most needy, deprived sound she'd ever heard, a sound that echoed how much she wanted Josh to free her breast, to possess her in a way she'd never allowed any man to possess her before, had never even thought to.
He took such liberties, this man. And though she'd known him most of her life, he was a stranger....
"Ah, chere." His voice was throaty and rough with passion. "You tempt me beyond my control. Either we stop now or I take you into the bedroom."
With his mouth still hovering above her breast and his warm breath tickling her skin, Josh tipped his head back and met her gaze, his own smoldering with the power of his confession.
"Lady's choice." His thick whisper punctuated their shallow breathing and the silence that emphasized that they were two people alone in a suite with one king-size bed.
Scarce centimeters below his mouth, Lennon's chest rose and fell, each broken breath lifting her breast until it almost brushed his lips. The wet mouth print on the rumpled gold silk was a blatant reminder of the intimacies she'd just allowed him, of the abandon she'd felt under his control.
And surely his thoughts mirrored her own, because his lips curved upward in a smile, his white teeth flashing devilishly against his dark skin and hair. He was plainly waiting for her to decide whether they would take the next step to explore this surprising chemistry between them.
Josh Eastman was not Mr. Right. He was Mr. Wrong personified, a romance hero straight off the pages of one of her novels. The term "grand passion" took on a whole new meaning with this man, and she'd crumbled beneath his attentions, had gloriously gone to pieces in his arms.
This was exactly what she'd told Auntie Q she didn't want in her marriage--this unsettled, uncertain, out-of-control feeling, as if her next breath might pitch her over the edge of a cliff.
While the wild abandon she'd just experienced in Josh's arms didn't frighten her, Lennon didn't want to find out Auntie Q was right, that she was a late bloomer who needed this sort of passion to find fulfillment. Was she willing to give up her dreams of husband and babies to surrender herself to grand passion?
Josh watched her as if he could see right though her. And he waited, his potent gaze reminding her of how she'd
abandoned herself to him. Of how much he wanted her to abandon herself again.
The moment became charged, their closeness filled with questions for which she had no answers. Her wrists ached where the chain bound them. Her dress was still bunched around her hips, exposing her parted thighs.
Her world narrowed to the way this man held her close, how his breath caressed her breast through her dress. Lennon didn't know whether to embrace this side of herself or be ashamed.
When Josh broke the contact, reaching above her head, Lennon's breath hitched audibly. For the space of a heartbeat, she thought he would untie her. But suddenly a fresh red rose he'd plucked from a vase appeared in his hand. With a slight smile, he brushed the fragrant bloom across her lips.
"Got more than we bargained for with that kiss, eh, chere?" Dipping his head low, he brushed his mouth across hers as gently as he'd touched her with the soft petals.
The scent filling her nostrils was all Josh, a strictly male scent touched by a hint of the fragrant bloom that would remind her of him until the day she died. Her pulse beat through her veins, slow, languid. Her eyes fluttered shut when his cool silky hair grazed her cheek.
"Ever since I saw you asleep with that sculptured erection in your lap, I've wanted you, Lennon."
His softly voiced admission had the effect of a New Orleans summer rainstorm. It cleansed away her uncertainty and doubts and made everything that had passed between them so very right.
She wanted him, too.
He trailed the rose down her throat as light as a whisper, his mouth following in its wake, gentle brushes of firm lips and soft breath triggering the most amazing flutters inside her, emphasizing how powerfully her body responded to him.
Tracing the bodice of her dress, he circled the rose around the wet fabric until her nipple crested again.
"You want a husband and I can't be one of those. But how about giving me a chance to prove you've still got time to enjoy yourself before the wedding?"
He only wanted a chance.
One-Night Man Page 7
