“You really expect me to believe all this? Why would I? Because you’re gorgeous? Because I love to fuck you? What?”
“I guess it’s too much to expect that you might have liked me.”
“Liked you?” He stood up and threw the glass down on the deck with force. It broke in a suitably dramatic manner, which was undoubtedly just as he’d intended, glass splintering everywhere, whiskey sloshing on the polished wood. “I didn’t even know you! At all! I thought you were a kooky girl, not some criminal mastermind.”
“I’m not a criminal mastermind. More like a petty thief, I guess, when all is said and done.”
“Nothing petty about you, babe.”
Why was she even trying? She got up too. “I don’t know why you even brought me here if you weren’t even going to listen. You should have just arrested both of us on the dock, me and Arthur, instead of going through the charade of taking me out on your boat. I want to go back.”
He faced her, a smirk on his handsome face. “Oh you do? Well, that’s too fucking bad. You can just consider yourself my prisoner now.”
“Are you going to make me walk the plank or something? For committing the grand sin of not wanting Brendan Beckett for his own delicious self? Yes, I used you. Wah wah. So sorry.”
He grabbed her arm and whipped her body to him. “You don’t think I used you? What do you think you are? You’re just a one-night stand, more or less.”
“So why are you so pissed?”
“I don’t know,” he muttered, bringing his mouth down on hers, hard.
She returned his kiss, exultant that he was kissing her, the real her finally, even if he was angry about it. Whether he realized it or not, or believed it or not, he knew more about her than any other human being in the world right at that moment. And he knew how much she wanted him. She thrust her hands in his hair, pulling his head down to her, running her tongue along his lips, dipping inside.
He ripped the top of her suit off, fondling her breasts roughly, and then bent his head to them. She held his head to her as he tasted her nipples, nipping at them lightly and then sucking so strongly she thought she might faint.
But he pushed her away suddenly and she stumbled back, at the last minute avoiding a glass shard that would’ve cut her bare foot open, righting herself against the railing.
“Enough.” He ran a hand through his disheveled hair. “What are you trying to do now? Turn into one of your other groping, mindless tricks?”
She slapped him. He put a hand to his cheek.
“I don’t have ‘tricks.’ I’m not a whore.”
“No.” He dropped his hand. “I guess not. A whore actually puts out. You’re just—what did you call it?—oh, yeah, the bait.”
He grabbed her hand that time before she could land a blow and yanked her to him, kissing her again.
Whether he pushed her down on to the deck or she just collapsed, bringing him with her, she didn’t know. Luckily they managed to land clear of the rest of the splintered pieces of the glass strewn near the towel.
It was all mixed up, the kissing, the anger, the pleasure, the hurt. She rolled on top of him, straddling him, and his hands went to tear the bottoms of her suit off as she reached into his and brought his hot, throbbing cock out to play.
She mounted him abruptly, not even asking about a condom, not caring, just sliding down, and he groaned, gripping her ass, watching her as she moved above him.
“I wanted you,” she told him, rising up, feeling his hot cock slide out of her, not quite to the point of coming out. “For myself. For me. Not as a whore. Not to use you. Can you understand that?” Keeping his cock just on the point of coming out, she watched him, swaying her hips, and then slid down again slowly, feeling her way, driven by this desperate urge to be honest after a lifetime of duplicity.
“Liar,” he muttered, leaning up to latch on to one breast, flicking his tongue against her nipple, sucking. She pulled away and pushed him down flat on his back again, though he was stronger than she was and did not have to let her. But he did, watching her, his blue eyes bright with something.
“I am a liar. I’ve always been a liar.” Somehow, talking to him as she slid that hard, hot pole into her did not distract her. The two—trying to explain to him and making love to him—were in perfect sync. She braced her hand behind her on his thighs and slid up, arching her back. “But I’m not lying now.” She came down hard.
He gasped, never closing his eyes.
“I wanted this with you, Brendan, almost from the first. I wanted you to want me.”
His hands clenched on her ass and he suddenly flipped her over, coming on top of her. “Big surprise. Lots of girls want me to want them. I’m rich.”
“It wasn’t—”
“Shut up.” He rammed into her and she welcomed it, wrapping her legs around his waist as he grabbed her hands and held them to the side of her head, his cock pistoning in and out of her.
“I want to tell you—”
He kissed her, stopping the thought for a minute, but she wrenched her head away and he buried his hot face in the crook of her neck and shoulder.
“I want to tell you—” He slammed into her. “I want to tell you that I, ah, I read your journal and you were—”
“Stop.”
“So sweet and—”
He came, all the way inside her, and in the wild intensity of the moment, she came right with him, shuddering up toward him as he groaned into her ear. After a minute, he let go of her arms and slowly rolled off her and onto his back, catching his breath as she was.
The fading light made the sky look almost purple as she stared up at it, waiting.
“So you read my journal, on top of everything else? Now I’m really mad.”
Chapter Seven
The muttered comment dissipated the tension between them. That and the incredible sex of course.
Brendan reached for the bottle of whiskey again and drank from it directly this time. A few more swigs and he should just about finish it off.
Considering the amount he’d had to drink in her presence, and he very well might have started before he even came up on deck, he should be very drunk. But other than a slight looseness in the way he moved, and that he had let her mount him without a condom without even commenting on it, he didn’t seem to be.
“At first, I thought you were like any other pompous rich guy. Just younger and better looking than the ones we usually target. And then I saw how you were with other people when nobody was looking and I read the beautiful poetry in your journal.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Okay, now you’re seriously pissing me off.” But there was no heat in it.
“Really, Brendan. Why don’t you do anything with that?”
“What? Buy a publishing company so I could sell my poetry? Talk about your rich guy clichés.” He finished off the bottle and threw it, not ecologically inclined at this moment apparently, clear over the railing and into the sea.
“So what is it, then? Why do you write?”
“For me.”
“Then I’m honored to have read it.”
“Don’t you mean stole it?”
“Don’t quibble.”
He was sitting up now, arms over his knees. “You know you really threw me off by being a virgin. I was suspicious of you at first, at the wedding, and then we slept together that first time, and I wasn’t. Fucked up guy thinking I guess. If you were ‘pure’, you must be as innocent in everything.”
He looked down at her over his shoulder. “So why were you really a virgin? What part did that play in all this? Was that supposed to make me want you more? Because to be honest, it just kind of creeped me out.”
She shook her head. “Sleeping with a guy was never part of the con.”
“Please…”
“If it was, believe me, I wouldn’t have been a virgin all this time.”
“You expect me to believe this Arthur, what, protected you in some kind of twis
ted way?”
“Hardly. More like he was indifferent. It was really more or less what I told you already. I was the bait. But it wasn’t necessary to sleep with them.”
“So why did you sleep with me?” Resentment was warring with what was probably genuine curiosity on his part.
“Why do women usually sleep with you, Brendan?”
He scoffed. “Right about now, I’m not sure any more.”
“Well, take a look in the mirror.”
“That’s hilarious coming from you.”
“Yes, just think of what beautiful children we’d have.”
His early pickup line, in this context, caused a wry smile. “Thank God for contraception.”
Maybe it qualified as the meanest thing he could think of, especially since they had just gotten finished not using any, but unfortunately, she agreed. She wasn’t fit to be anybody’s mother. “So are you going to have me arrested?”
He looked ahead at the darkening sea. “I haven’t decided yet. Other than holding a gun to my head and reading my journal, I guess I don’t have a lot to hold against you. And maybe you’ve more than made it up.”
He leaned over and grabbed her chin, tilting her face up to his kiss. She could taste the whiskey and something else, something darker in him that she sensed he kept carefully hidden, or maybe just leashed.
“What is it, Brendan? Why do you act the way you do?”
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“The women. This playboy surface. Sometimes I think you’re pretending just as much as I am.”
He ignored the comment, standing up and holding out a hand for her. “Okay, I have to say I’m leaning toward no incarceration. But you have to lay it on a little thicker about liking my writing.”
“I do like your writing,” she said softly, taking his hand and standing up as well.
He stared down at her, just holding the one hand. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know what to believe.”
“Let’s go back to the cabin while you decide, then.”
“So you can make the final pitch to convince me not to?”
“That, or else get my money’s worth out of you in sex. If I was giving up my freedom by boarding this boat with you, I deserve it.”
“I’m good either way,” he muttered. “But I warn you I’m not done drinking.”
“That’s okay. I kind of like you drunk.”
Given that Sophia was still naked, and he was unusually drunk, it was not surprising that they didn’t make it to the cabin. Watching her ass as she took the stairs down to the lower deck in front of him, he caught up to her at the bottom and cupped those silken cheeks, kissing her neck from behind. His hardening cock was prodding her ass and he really should let her get all the way to the cabin. There was something he needed there, although it momentarily escaped him just what that was. Another drink? No, that wasn’t it. Another drink and he just might not be able to get it up. Get it up—oh, yeah, that was it. A condom.
But she turned in his arms, with that cream-colored sofa right behind her, and all thought of not being able to get it up—and a condom, for that matter—were gone. He leaned down to kiss her as she put her arms around his neck. Her lips tasted wildly sweet. There was an abandoned feel to the way she kissed him now, although maybe it was the whiskey talking. Or maybe she really was trying to convince him not to have her arrested—an effort he fully appreciated her indulging in—although arresting her had never really been in his game plan.
Arrest her for what? Hurting his feelings?
Of course, there was that gun to his head thing, but he was having trouble summoning up any indignation at that for some reason. Maybe it was the way her hand slipped down to his ass and caressed, urging him closer. When he had been trying to fuck her for some kind of ridiculous revenge of sorts in the cabin earlier, just that same touch of her hand on him had driven him wild. He had been forced to pin her arms above her to stop it, so he could keep control, such as it was. Now he had no interest in keeping control. It was all out between them. And he had not a modicum of control left between the whiskey and her.
The saloon was darkened and he pulled away from her to switch on a light. In his fumbling in the dark, he inadvertently flicked on the sound system as well. The strains of Van Morrison filled the room.
“Oh, I love this song.”
He pulled her into his arms, rather than pushing her back on the couch as originally intended, and with one hand linked in hers and the other around her waist, he started to dance with her.
She joined in the swaying movements easily. “Gosh, you sing well and you’re a good dancer? I really am impressed.”
“Thanks. They teach that in playboy school.” He danced her around the saloon to the rhythm of the song. “But you dance pretty well yourself. So I’m assuming they covered it in con artist school too.”
“Yes, there was an entire semester on that.”
“Dancing naked too, I assume.”
“Well, that was extra credit.”
He dipped her, surprising her apparently, and then swung her around while she laughed, sounding as if she was catching her breath.
“So why didn’t you ever marry any of these guys you strung along?”
He supposed she might be offended by that, but she didn’t seem to be. “They were all awful.”
“But what if they hadn’t been? Would you have married one?”
She shook her head, and then laid it on his shoulder as they danced. He had to strain to hear her response, so soft with the music in the background. “No. I could never marry anybody who didn’t really know me. Who thought I was someone or something I wasn’t. I don’t want that.” When she lifted her head a few moments later, she asked, “What about you?”
“Me? When I want a wife, I’m going to buy one.”
“Bill Murray. Scrooged, right?”
“Right. I’m just kidding.” He spun her around in a pirouette. “I’m not getting married.”
“Never?” She sounded surprised, even as she executed a perfect twirl.
“Nope. It’s not for me.”
“Too busy sleeping with anything that moves?”
“Well, that does take up a lot of my time. What, with that and pretending to work at my family’s company, I’ve pretty much bitten off all I can chew at this point.”
“You do it pretty well, though. The bedroom part, I mean. I can’t speak for your job of course. But you do the bed thing quite well.”
“Thanks.”
“Almost as well as you dance.”
He laughed, stopping their dance abruptly. “Oh, you are just asking for it.”
“I am,” she said in a breathy tone that got his cock, which had been distracted by the dancing, rock hard again. But since she just started dancing again, he went with it.
“Are you just being nice to me because you’re so drunk?” she asked.
“No. It’s because you’re so hot. Are you just being nice to me because I threatened to have you arrested?”
“Actually, it’s because you’re so rich. And very, very good in bed of course.”
“Now, that I can take credit for.”
“You can take credit for threatening to have me arrested too.”
“Sure. Well, you break into a guy’s apartment, Sophia, it gets him to thinking. So I hired this PI, who for the life of me I can’t get rid of now. I almost wish I didn’t know anything. That you were just a girl I was dazzling with my dancing prowess on my big, fat yacht.”
“I’m glad you know.”
He chuckled.
“No. I am.”
“Except for that arresting thing?”
“Well, except for that of course. But you said you’re leaning against that anyway.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll probably be passed out soon and you can get away.”
“How? By swimming to shore?”
“Don’t laugh. I’ve seen you swim. I bet you could do it. So why didn’t you t
ry to get away on the dock when you could?”
She shrugged. “I wanted to go with you. And I’m glad you know who I am now. Because that makes this qualify as my very first actual real date.”
He pulled her closer, feeling the tips of those luscious breasts against his chest. “That’s sweet.” And he was so drunk, he wasn’t even being ironic. “Now, this PI that I hired will probably give me all the gritty details—he tried to earlier, but I kind of wouldn’t let him, I was so pissed about the whole thing—but just so I’m prepared, how criminal are you? I’m assuming non-violent offender, though I guess the gun thing—”
“No! Non-violent absolutely.”
“So more of a Miss Lonely Hearts kind of thing.”
“Well, lately. Earlier on, we were a little more varied. But nobody who couldn’t afford it.”
“Oh, so you’ve the heart-of-gold vibe going here?”
“More like the ‘if they can’t afford it, they may try a little harder to see they get it back’ thing. But I actually feel better about it this way too, if that makes you feel any better yourself.”
“Much. But of course, I’m three sheets to the wind.”
“You carry yourself very well, though.”
“Thanks.”
“Will you remember any of this tomorrow?”
“We’ll just have to see. I hope I remember the sex part.”
She laughed. “You are such a dog.”
“I think when you broke into my apartment, you called me a wolf. But dog, wolf, I’ll answer to both.”
Van Morrison was singing still, but he’d had enough of dancing. He led her back to the sofas. “Lie down.”
Accommodating him, she looked like some kind of a harem girl spread out on his cushions. She opened her legs even and held her arms out to him.
Even as he went into her arms, leaning one knee next to her, he mumbled, “I have to go get a condom.”
She pulled him close and his defenses were such that without him even really realizing it, she slipped his needy cock right into her soft, wet pussy, unprotected.
Why did she keep doing that?
He groaned. God, the heat of her pussy, his cock unsheathed to feel it full on, was incredible. Oh yeah. He was so the victim here. Not.
SeductiveIntent Page 14
