Too Wild to Hold

by LETO, JULIE

  Her doubtful look did not deter him. “The food. The music. The color. The vibe. It’s old and smelly, but new and exciting at the same time. You never know what’s going to happen. You never know who you’re going to meet.”

  Nice segue. Somehow, he kept the conversation about her hometown centered on her. He was good, this David Brandon.

  “It’s a passable party town.”

  “To the casual observer,” he said.

  “Isn’t that what you are?”

  He pressed his lips together, as if he withheld a secret that would fully explain his fascination with the Crescent City. “Sure, I guess. So, do you have family here?”

  “Some,” she answered honestly, not disturbed by his quick focus on learning more about her. It was a natural question and this guy was nothing if not natural. “A bunch stayed in Houston after Katrina ’cause they found work. My mother’s people went back to Mississippi, where they were from originally, but my father’s cousins and my brother toughed it out in Metarie.”

  The bartender arrived with the cold drafts while David expanded his questions about her family and shared a little bit about himself. She learned he had two brothers, neither of whom he knew very well, and that he’d never lived in one place very long during his childhood on account of his now-deceased mother’s wandering spirit.

  For her part, Ruby answered his questions with practiced care, never revealing anything important while creating the illusion that she was spilling her life’s story. Some of what she said wasn’t even true—her brother in Metarie was actually in a cemetery—but she’d told the lies often enough that she no longer worried about not getting the story straight.

  “So if you’re not in town to play,” he surmised once she declined his offer for a third refill, “why come at all?”

  “Work,” she answered.

  “What do you do?”

  She speared him with an intense look and wondered whether to be honest or deflect the question.

  She glanced at the clock on her cell phone. Nearly forty-five minutes had passed since David Brandon had made his first move. Michael still had not checked in and she was starting to feel the ache of cross-country travel in heavy eyelids and tight muscles around her neck.

  “Law enforcement.”

  “No shit? Me, too.”

  She’d expected the guy to go running—learning that the lady was a cop often had that effect on men, especially tourists hanging out in bars and looking for a good time. But David just slid forward, and when the bartender appeared with two fresh glasses of beer that she couldn’t remember him ordering, he requested a pound of steamed oysters and asked Ruby if there was anything else on the menu she’d like to share.

  She declined, but couldn’t fault the guy for perseverance. However, if he was trying to go the “aphrodisiac” route, he was going to be sorely disappointed. He was cute, but she wasn’t in the mood. Michael should have checked in by now.

  “Look, you’re a nice guy, but I really need to get going.”

  “Before the oysters? Come on, I love some slimy crustaceans, but I can’t down a whole dozen on my own. Not after all the jambalaya I had at lunch.”

  He patted his stomach, which looked perfectly flat to her.

  It nearly hurt for her to say, “I’m sorry, but I’m not interested.”

  “In oysters?”

  “No, I don’t normally turn down the oysters here. Their cocktail sauce is the kind you want to scoop up with a spoon. I’m just not interested in—” She waved her hand between them. “This.”

  He bowed his head respectfully. “That’s cool. Then just stay for the oysters. I don’t force my attentions on women, but when I make an offer to share a meal, I don’t take it back. That wouldn’t be gentlemanly, now, would it?”

  Ruby rewarded his honesty by not climbing off the barstool and heading out the door. She was such a sucker for charming guys. She wasn’t going to change her mind about only sharing an appetizer with him before she took off, but she didn’t need to be rude, either. Even if he wasn’t her type.

  Yeah, he was good-looking, but scruffier than she normally preferred. And he was in law enforcement. She had a strict and unalterable policy against dating guys who shared her profession. Still, there was something in his eyes that made her want to trust him, at least long enough to finish her beer and slurp down a few steamed oysters.

  “No, it wouldn’t.” Ruby settled into her seat and arranged her phone so she wouldn’t miss the alerts if a text message or phone call came through. Maybe more chitchat would take her mind off Michael and stem the persistent feeling that even though he’d been here for only a few hours more than she had, he was already in over his head.

  “So,” she said, determined to stop worrying about Michael when there was nothing she could do. “What brings a cop from another jurisdiction to New Orleans?”

  “Vacation, pure and simple,” David answered easily. “I work in a mid-sized town in Illinois that you’ve never heard of and I needed a change of scenery. Heard it was best to visit New Orleans in the fall, so I came down, did some gambling, heard some real jazz, ate way more than I should have. And yet—”

  His eyes lit up as the oysters arrived. He handed Ruby a small plate, a stack of napkins and a tiny fork with a lemon impaled on the end.

  She removed the lemon and put it on the side. She liked lemon on raw oysters, but preferred the steamed ones with loads of the Dive’s horseradish-heavy cocktail sauce. The recipe hadn’t changed with the ownership, judging by the way her eyes watered when she took a sniff.

  “When are you heading home?”

  “Soon,” he said. “I have one more thing to do before I go back.”

  “And what’s that?” she asked.

  He doused his oyster with hot sauce, then sucked it down and chased the spicy seafood with a long draft of beer.

  She raised her eyebrows, waiting for him to answer. She wasn’t sure why she was so curious, but the longer he avoided giving her a straight answer, the more the guy struck her as…familiar?

  She was fairly certain she’d never seen him before. She had a better-than-most memory for faces, honed by studying pictures of suspects before heading out into the field to track them down. And she’d definitely never heard his voice with its distinctive Midwestern inflection. But there was something about David Brandon that made her think he’d make a fine drinking buddy on the nights when a date was hard to come by.

  Just like Michael.

  He finished his third oyster and finally replied, “Let’s just say that I’ve got a little more left of the city to see and leave it at that.”

  “Fair enough,” she concluded, taking another oyster off the platter and this time dipping it in a small plastic tub of drawn butter.

  David Brandon could keep his secrets. Her whole life, she’d been a sucker for a good mystery. And the more oysters she ate and beer she drank, the less she worried about the unsolved mystery she had no means to solve. Just where was her partner and what the hell was he doing?

  IS HE WATCHING?

  The thought, so illicit, so disturbing, dove with determination through the waves of pleasure washing through Claire’s body as Special Agent Michael Murrieta, the man charged with keeping her safe from a crazed kidnapper, suckled the pulse point on her neck. She should care that a man who had targeted her as his next victim might be on the other side of that hidden camera. She should be creeped out that some sicko would get off on watching her fall under the sensual spell of another man—or worse, that the sight was infuriating him to the point that he planned all manner of punishments for her once he finally had her in his possession.

  But that was the problem, wasn’t it? She knew the guy was never going to get his hands on her. Not if she had anything to say about it, which she did. And not with Michael Murrieta standing in his way.

  That the FBI agent had caught her unaware downstairs had wounded her pride. It had also upped her confidence in his skills to a trust level s
he hadn’t experienced since she’d been a rookie cop and thought every veteran would jump into the line of fire to protect one of their own.

  Boy, had she learned differently.

  Michael, on the other hand, had quickly earned her respect, not with his leather bound credentials, but with the cunning means he’d used to inject himself into her investigation. He hadn’t thumped his chest and demanded she put her job aside for the benefit of his case. He’d blended seamlessly into this world and paid just as much attention to keeping his investigation intact as he had to hers.

  And the way he was tracing a sensuous path from her neck to her ear with his tender kisses wasn’t hurting.

  She knew he was breaking all kinds of protocols by involving himself with her, and the realization intensified the pleasure of his body against hers. With every swipe of his lips over her skin, every graze of his hands over her flesh, he proved what he was made of. It was one thing to don a crazy costume and go undercover long enough to find her, but it was entirely something else to play out a very real, very effective seduction of the woman he needed for his case.

  His superiors would not be happy if the tape leaked out. She had no idea how the politics of the FBI worked, but if it was anything like her time with the New Orleans Police Department, he was in for some serious shit hitting the fans. She’d lost her job just because she’d put justice ahead of the chain of command.

  God help him, but nothing turned her on more than a man willing to buck the system in order to get what he wanted—a fact made all the more exciting when what he wanted was her.

  “Since we’re relative strangers,” he whispered between swipes of his tongue along the shell of her ear, “you’re going to have to tell me what you like. You know. To make this believable.”

  The underlying chuckle in his voice told her he’d added that last part to tease her.

  “Is that all you’re interested in?” she asked. “Making this believable for the pervs on the other side of the camera?”

  He slid his hands down the arch of her back and cupped her butt with hungry possessiveness. “What do you think?”

  She responded by tearing her hands through his hair, which was soft and scented with tangy citrus. “I think you’re hot for me.”

  “I think you’re as smart as your file says you are.”

  “Then how are you going to stop yourself from taking more than I might be willing to offer?” She slipped her hands between the open sides of his shirt and spread the material so that her palms rested on his broad, muscled shoulders. “You’re obviously very strong. And big.”

  The corner of his mouth quirked up in a grin that melted her insides to a liquid heat. Drop by drop, the slick moisture eased through her body, then soothed the gentle throbbing between her thighs.

  “Unlike the guy I’m protecting you from, I don’t have to use force to get what I want.”

  “No, you’re using your case.”

  “So are you,” he countered.

  She placed a kiss on his pec, swirling her tongue and loving the salted flavor of his skin. “True. It’s going to be really, really hard not to go all the way. Guy like you. Girl like me.”

  He grabbed the sleeves of her dress and slowly, sensually, tugged the material off her shoulders. She was suddenly very glad her aunt had convinced her to wear a corset so that she was not completely bared as the dress caught around her waist. In fact, she was better than bared. She was laced-in and pushed up in the most delicious manner, judging by the fire that ignited in his eyes.

  “In situations like this,” he said, “I find that hard is a good state to be in.”

  He brushed a trail of kisses across her chest, sparking an electric charge through the tips of her nipples. When he traced his fingers down the crisscrossed laces at her spine, she wondered…no, she wished…that he’d latch on to the satin ribbon that held the damned thing together, tug hard and set her body free.

  No matter the banter between them, Claire knew this wasn’t just an act for the camera—not for him and definitely not for her. She wasn’t shy about sex. She liked it. She also hadn’t had any in a good long while, a fact she hadn’t been entirely aware of until now.

  When had she stopped caring about sex? When had she stopped looking for the occasional lover to scratch her itch and give her a reason to leave the house for something other than work?

  Now she had a chance not only to enjoy the rare, sensual delights of a man who knew how to use his body—and better, how to use hers—but also to keep her latest case from falling apart.

  It was a win-win. She’d entered this old plantation house fully aware that the people around her had come here for sex, but she’d never planned to join them.

  And yet, here she was, wishing that Special Agent Murietta would stop coiling the ribbons holding her corset together around his finger and just yank the knot free already.

  “Laissez les bons temps rouler,” she murmured, lifting Michael’s face so that she could smooth her cheek against his.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s what we say here in the Big Easy. Let the good times roll.”

  He arched a brow, emphasizing the surprise in his eyes, dark from the expansion of his pupils.

  “Is that an invitation?” he asked.

  “Do you need an invitation? I could use the backside of that vellum card to write one.”

  But he clearly needed nothing more than her consent, because with a growl, he tugged her lingerie loose. When she breathed out a sigh of relief, the stays surrendered and the corset slipped a half inch down her torso, baring her nipples to his widening eyes.

  His throat bobbed with his deep swallow and Claire’s body thrummed with anticipation. When he licked his lips, she nearly groaned. He splayed his hands on her back, forcing her to arch upward so he could feast on her with his eyes—a feast that heightened her own hunger to a ravenous level.

  He wanted her. She wanted him. So they’d take. That’s how things had rolled in New Orleans since the first French fur trappers had settled the bayous. Total surrender to lusty urges was a time-honored tradition. And who was she to argue with tradition?

  She ripped the rest of Michael’s shirt aside and her hands spanned across his chest, tweaking his pale nipples, mimicking the attention she desperately wanted from him. She flicked her tongue across his flesh and suckled lightly while her hands dropped down his tapered torso to the rigid erection she could feel through his loose-cut pants.

  If the so-called unsub was watching, then she hoped he learned a lesson. Claire Lécuyer didn’t get off on guys who resorted to drugs and masks and one-sided fake seductions. She wanted a man like Michael—hot, smart and honest. A man willing to risk everything just to have her, even if it was a make out session behind a screen.

  “I’ll tell you something,” she said, her words coming out in ragged breaths while his nimble fingers worked at the last ties of her dress. At last the satin dropped to the floor, leaving her in nothing but the slack corset, bloomers, stockings and kitten-heeled slippers. She wasn’t exactly wrapped up in Victoria’s Secret lingerie, but judging by the darkening of his eyes, the outfit worked the same magic.

  “By all means,” he replied, his voice ragged, his gaze roaming every inch of her, as if he couldn’t decide which part to sample first.

  “I don’t usually strip down in front of strangers.”

  He grinned. “I don’t usually strip down with women I’m supposed to be protecting.”

  “Oddly enough,” she said, locking stares with him as she began working the buttons of his slacks, “I believe you.”

  “Why is that odd?”

  She slipped her fingers past the waistband of his shorts so she could squeeze his rock hard glutes.

  “I don’t trust easily,” she said. “And sex requires trust.”

  He cupped her elbows, disengaging her hands and drawing them to his lips. He kissed each knuckle, taking his time, swiping his tongue into the folds between her finger
s and sucking the tips with such gentle pressure that she thought her whole body might explode. She wanted that suction on her breasts, her belly, and below.

  “You can trust me,” he assured her, though in the miasma of need curling around her, she wasn’t sure why he was still talking and not tasting. “I never break rules, but if I’m going to put my career on the line, I’m going to make sure it counts.”

  His words caught her up short and she forced her eyes open. “Why risk so much?”

  “I can’t seem to help myself,” he confessed before pressing her forward so he could nibble on her shoulder. “And that’s new.”

  As her bare nipples scraped against his chest hair, she laughed again. Delight at the sensations, at the freedom, at the irony of the situation spilled from a place deep down—a place that was simmering to be satisfied.

  “I’m forever doing things I know I shouldn’t,” she confessed.

  “And is this one of those times?” he asked, his mouth trailing closer and closer to where she desperately wanted him.

  “God, I hope so.”

  6

  MICHAEL RAN HIS hand down Claire’s thigh, losing himself in the softness of her skin before he was blocked by the silky edge of her stockings. He slipped a finger beneath the snappy garter and wondered if he’d lost his mind. He was this close to losing his career.

  But damn, what a way to go.

  Somewhere in the now fogged edges of his brain, he understood that touching Claire, kissing her, arousing her was all supposed to be an act intended to convince the voyeurs on the other side of the camera that both of them had truly bought into the theme weekend. But lying to freaks who’d rather watch than do was a hell of a lot easier than lying to himself.

  This had never, ever been about his case.

  Or hers.

  From the first minute he’d seen her downstairs, his attraction to Claire was instantaneous and undeniable. Truth be told, reading her file, which had included pictures, had implanted ideas in his brain that he had no business entertaining. She was everything he’d never sought out in a woman—strong-willed, rebellious and entirely focused on her job. During her brief stint as a New Orleans city cop, she’d defied so many orders that her list of reprimands, transfers and punishments looked more like the rap sheet of a career criminal than the service record of a devoted law enforcement officer.