He freezes. He looks as if he’s been slapped.
I struggle to get out from under him, but it’s impossible; the man is too strong. He tightens his grip on my wrists, lowers his face to mine so we’re nose to nose, and growls, “What. The. Fuck.”
His erection is pressed between my open legs. I feel the vein that runs along the underside throb, and resist arching my hips to allow him to slide inside me.
“Get off me!”
“If I thought you really wanted me to, I would. What the hell is wrong? Stop squirming!”
I fall still, breathing raggedly. I can’t meet his eyes. Suddenly I feel claustrophobic; I have to get out of this room.
I close my eyes and turn my head, wishing my heart would slow down.
Parker gently nudges my earlobe with his nose. “Hey. Psycho. What’s going on with you?”
With my lips pulled between my teeth, I shake my head.
Parker adjusts his weight so he’s not crushing me quite as much, and says, “I like a challenge as much as the next guy, sweetheart, but this is getting ridiculous. Now spill.”
“I’m…I…” I take a moment to catch my breath and compose myself. I might have been just about to say something dangerously truthful. Finally I go with, “You lied to me earlier.”
Parker’s entire body stiffens. When I open my eyes, he’s staring down at me, unsmiling, his expression wary.
“When?”
I find it extremely interesting he has to ask.
“When I asked you what was wrong in the car. You said you were tired. That was a lie.”
He releases my wrists and props himself up on his elbows, his hands resting on either side of my head. He doesn’t move his pelvis, however.
His cock is obviously very impatient with this break in the action.
“It wasn’t a lie. I was tired. I also said it had been a bad night. Both of those things are true.” His voice drops. “Now ask me what made it a bad night.”
My heart begins to flutter. “What made it a bad night?”
He caresses my face, trails his fingers down my jaw. In a conversational tone, he says, “Well, this incredible woman I’ve been seeing—a woman who literally drives me insane in every way—left me alone in bed, didn’t return my calls for days, and then showed up out of the blue and told me an interesting story about how she had to go visit her sick mother in California.” His voice loses the conversational tone and becomes deadly soft. His gaze bores into mine. “When she was actually in Texas.”
Ice water is injected into my veins. Oh God oh God oh God. “Texas?”
Parker slowly nods. When I don’t respond, he says with gentle sarcasm, “Go ahead. Lie to me. I promise I’ll believe you.”
I have several choices. I can follow my earlier impulse and tell him everything, and then get out of his bed and never look back, with the knowledge that at least I got him to fall for me and then dumped him. I know it will sting.
A sting doesn’t seem very satisfying.
I could also cry—which I know horrifies men—thereby gaining a momentary reprieve, at least long enough to concoct a good cover story.
Unfortunately, at the moment the likelihood of me being able to summon fake tears is about as likely as pigs flying.
So I decide to go with option three: sling some bullshit and see what sticks.
“I did go to California to visit my mother. But…on the way I stopped in Texas.”
Though I have no idea what he knows, if perhaps a story has already run that exposes all my lies—or, worse, for some reason Parker has been having me followed—I’m proud of how even my voice sounded. Now I just have to figure out what to say next.
Parker studies my face. “Why?”
The image of my brother’s smiling face crosses my mind. “To visit the grave of someone I once loved.”
My voice is no longer steady; it wavers with emotion. True emotion. Because I did visit the grave of someone I once loved. Someone I once loved very much, and still do, and always will.
My little brother.
I don’t tell Parker that, of course. When he asks who the person was, I fabricate a story about a college boyfriend who was originally from Texas, a boy I’d once planned to marry. When he died in the military, or so my story goes, his family had his body shipped back to his hometown so he could be buried like the hero he was.
I keep my fingers crossed that this story jibes with whatever Parker’s found out about my trip.
With genuine sorrow in his voice, he says, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Awash in relief, I close my eyes. “Thanks. It was a bad weekend.”
More honesty, more emotion in my voice, more softening in Parker’s body.
Well. Except there.
He kisses my throat, his lips soft and warm. It feels exquisite. Against my skin he murmurs, “I’m originally from Texas, too. Did you know that?”
This conversation is wreaking havoc on my blood pressure. “No. Small world.”
Please don’t ask what city I visited. Please don’t tell me what city you’re from.
He doesn’t. Seemingly satisfied by my story, Parker kisses a tender path down my throat, over my collarbone, to my chest. He rests his cheek against my breastbone. He holds still for a moment, listening. I know what he hears, because I feel it in every vein in my body:
Boom! Crash! Thud!
Stupid, traitorous, truth-telling heart.
Parker inhales deeply. He cups my breast in his hand. He whispers, “Maybe you’re destined to fall in love only with men from Texas,” and lowers his lips to my hard nipple.
When he sucks it into his mouth, I softly groan.
He flexes his hips, bringing the head of his rigid cock to my wet entrance. I slide my hands beneath the waist of his trousers, cup his ass, and pull.
As he slides inside me he says roughly, “We’re both still wearing our shoes.”
“Would you like to take a moment to remove them, Mr. Maxwell?”
He thrusts, burying himself to the hilt. “Not a fucking chance, Ms. Price.”
He slides out and then thrusts in again. My breasts bounce against his chest. I gasp, arching against him. My fingers dig into the firm, succulent flesh of his ass.
He stills. When I whimper, writhing, jerking my hips, he chuckles. “Again?”
“Yes, again!”
He lowers his lips to my ear. “Say please, my beautiful little liar.”
Ah. It’s game time, is it?
I inhale, languidly stretch my arms over my head, and then sigh as if utterly bored. I gaze up at him, smiling, my eyes half lidded. “Or what?”
A muscle in his jaw flexes.
My smile grows wider. Oh my dear, darling bastard, how I love pissing you off.
“Or I won’t just make you say please. I’ll make you beg.”
He twists his hips in a small circle, wringing an involuntary cry from my lips, and then lowers his mouth to my breast.
“And beg.” He sucks hard on my nipple, using his teeth in the way he knows I like.
I gasp.
“And beg.”
He grips a hand in my hair, slides the other under my bottom, and grinds his pelvis into me, hard and fast, before falling still again.
My groan is broken. My smug smile has left the building. I breathe, “Parker—”
“I’m not your plaything, Victoria.”
“I never said you were!”
His unshaven cheek is sandpaper-rough against my skin, but his voice is even rougher. “Then stop trying to lead me around by my dick.”
“You’re the one who’s playing games right now!”
“Only to level the playing field. The only time we’re on even footing is when you allow yourself to be vulnerable. And one of the only things I know makes you feel vulnerable is asking for what you want. You’re so used to demanding, or manipulating, you’ve forgotten how to ask.”
Slowly, gently, he flexes his hips. His cock slides deeper inside me
, sending shockwaves of pleasure through my pelvis. I bite my lip to keep from moaning.
He whispers, “That’s why I like you to say please, baby. I’ll give you anything you ask for—God help me, I’d give you my own head on a platter—if only you say please.”
Trembling, I say, “I-I’d like a Rolls-Royce. Please.”
His chuckle is dark, and eminently satisfied. “What color?”
I exhale in a loud rush. “I’m thinking black on black. With the blacked-out rims.”
Parker slides halfway out and then stops. I bite my lip harder.
“Done. Anything else?” He peppers sweet, reverent kisses over my cheeks, my jaw, my nose, my lips.
I tilt my hips up, but he won’t let me gain the upper hand. He simply withdraws in the exact amount I advance, keeping just the tip of his cock inside me. Frustrated, I pound the sheets with my fists.
“I want my own island! In the Caribbean!”
“Mmm. I’m on it. What else?” He lowers his head again and sucks even more aggressively on my nipple. His hot mouth draws hard. His hand is firm and possessive around my flesh.
I pant, straining to maintain control, but ultimately crumble. The words tumble from my lips in a wanton rush. “I want you to please make love to me Parker please oh please oh God please.”
A tremor runs through him. He raises his head, looks at me, and whispers, “Hearts can’t lie, baby.”
“Shut up with that crap.”
He laughs. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone you just fell in love with me.”
“I hate you.”
Parker flexes his strong pelvis. His glorious hard cock sinks all the way inside me. He says roughly, “Sweetheart, if this is hate, I don’t want to feel anything else ever again.”
Then he gives me everything I’ve asked for, everything I need, and drives a stake straight through my chest when he climaxes, calling out my name like it’s a hallelujah.
* * *
Hours later, Parker sleeping like the dead beside me, I rise from his bed and creep through the dark rooms, until I stand in front of his closed office door.
TWENTY-FIVE
~ Parker ~
Once again, I wake alone.
My disappointment turns quickly to pleasure, however, because there’s a note on the pillow beside me. It reads:
I promise I’m not running away. But you, sexy beast, sleep like a coma patient, and I really did have to be at an early meeting this morning. There’s a fresh pot of coffee in the kitchen, and I might have made you French toast.
Don’t let it go to your head.
Last night was…a game changer. (One more thing not to let go to your head.) I’ll be thinking of you all day.
I can still taste you.
Victoria
She signed her name with little hearts for dots atop the two i’s. I stare at them for minutes, grinning like a crazy person. The last time I felt anything close to this—the only time—I was a teenager, deep in the heady flush of first love.
I leap from bed, shower, brush my teeth, and dress. In the kitchen, there is indeed a fresh pot of coffee. A plate in the oven holds three thick slices of French toast. I didn’t even know I had the makings for French toast in my kitchen.
Wait—she said she couldn’t cook.
I shrug that thought away. I doubt frying bread in a skillet qualifies as cooking.
I drizzle the buttered toast in syrup, wolf it down with a cup of coffee—which may be the best coffee I’ve tasted in my life, because she made it—and, whistling, rinse my dishes in the sink. When the kitchen is clean, I head to my office to get my briefcase. I’ve also got a meeting this morning, though I’ve got plenty of time—
I stop dead at the end of the hallway.
My office door is open.
It’s not wide open, but it’s not fully closed, either—and this time I know I closed it when I left for the restaurant yesterday. I haven’t been in there since.
The skin on the back of my neck crawls.
As if in a trance, I move slowly down the hallway. My heart can’t decide if it wants to burst or stall out, so it does something in between, a wild throbbing interspersed with seconds when it doesn’t seem to beat at all.
I push open the door and look inside.
Nothing’s out of place, except the faintest hint of Chanel No. Five lingering in the air.
Without touching anything, I walk around my office, visually scanning it all: the bookcases, the coffee table and chairs, the credenza with the flat-screen TV, and my desk, which I pay special attention to. I toggle the mouse and the computer screen lights up, asking for my password. The password is so long and convoluted it would take an expert hacker with a codebreaker program to get in, so I’m satisfied there. All my desk drawers lock and don’t appear to be tampered with. Everything’s perfect. I release the breath I’ve been holding, relieved.
Until I look at the Magritte.
To anyone else, it would be impossible to spot. It’s only half an inch off kilter, an inch at most. But to me, it might as well have a sign hanging on it that screams, “I’ve been touched!”
Behind that painting is my safe.
A frozen hand clamps around my throat. My heart chants no no no, but my mind, cold and clear, growls back an emphatic yes.
I can’t deny it, no matter how much I want to: Victoria has been inside my office. Victoria was searching for something in my office.
Why? And for what?
“Maybe she got lost on the way out,” I say aloud to the empty room. “She thought it was a bathroom.”
Right. Let’s conveniently forget that the last time she was here the office door was open, too. And why would she have touched the Magritte?
I stand still as a statue, thinking back over everything that’s happened between us so far, including everything that happened last night. When I recall our words, a chill runs down my spine.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because I know something you don’t.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“You, my friend, are about to get royally screwed.”
I thought she’d meant that in the obvious way—in light of what we were about to do—but maybe she’d meant something else altogether.
Whatever I’d been feeling before when I awoke—the tenderness and happiness, and that awful, blinding hope—turns to a sour sickness in my stomach.
I pick up the phone on my desk and dial a number I know by heart. When it’s answered on the other end—the same heavy silence as always, no greeting, only dead air—I say, “Connor. It’s Parker.”
The dead air comes alive with the rumble of a rich baritone. “Long time no talk, brother. What’s up?”
Looking at the Magritte, I reply, “I think I might need your help.”
* * *
The man who stands in my office an hour later with his bulging, tattooed biceps folded over his massive chest is what one could politely call big.
As in, holy fucking shit, that dude is so big he makes the Terminator look like a midget.
At six-foot-seven and two hundred forty pounds of solid, military-grade muscle, Connor “Hollywood” Hughes owns and operates Metrix, the private security firm I’ve employed for years. He’s half Samoan and half Irish, and gets his nickname from his sparkling-white movie-star smile. He’s a doppelganger for Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a. The Rock, except Connor has hair.
“Connor, sit. You’re making the room look cramped.”
Connor waves a giant paw in the air in a dismissive gesture. “I don’t sit on the job, brother.” He eyes the pair of white leather chairs opposite my desk. “Especially in something like that. The fuck is that, Barbie furniture?”
“Those are five-thousand-dollar Barcelona chairs.”
When he looks at me with his brows raised, I say, “They’re designer.”
“You paid five large for chairs that don’t even have arms?”
“No. I paid ten large for chairs that don�
�t have arms. And if you’re not going to sit, we might as well go into the living room so I can make myself a drink.”
“A drink? It’s nine o’clock in the morning.”
I blow out a hard breath. “I’m surprised I waited this long.”
Connor’s eyes, the color of obsidian, bore into mine. “That bad, huh?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. That’s why you’re here.”
I rise and leave the office. Connor follows. For such a huge guy, he’s surprisingly light on his feet; I can’t hear his footsteps behind me. When we reach the living room, he leans against the wall with his hands shoved in the pockets of his black cargo pants, and watches as I pour myself a glass of scotch from the crystal decanter on the sideboard. I raise the glass to my lips, swallow its contents, and fill it again.
Connor drawls, “Haven’t seen you this wound up since the night we met.”
The night Connor and I met—at a seedy cowboy bar—was the worst night of my life. I was twenty-two, piss drunk, and crying like a baby. I picked fights with all the biggest guys I could spot, including him. I wanted to kill everyone. I wanted them to kill me.
I wanted to die.
An hour earlier, I’d learned that the love of my life was dead.
Connor, five years older, fresh out of the Marines’ Special Operations Command and already running Metrix, knocked me out cold with a single punch, and then dragged me out to his pickup so I could sleep it off in the back. When I woke up with a hangover and a black eye, he was leaning against the cab of the Chevy, calmly smoking. He looked at me and said, “You better do somethin’ about that death wish, brother, before it comes true.”
I stare out the wall of windows into the bright afternoon. A forest of skyscrapers stares back at me. Windows like blank eyes wink in the sun.
“There’s a woman—”
Connor laughs. “With you, there’s always a woman.”
I turn to look at him. I say quietly, “Not like this.”
He examines my face for a long, silent moment. “Go on.”
Wicked Beautiful Page 19
