HiddenDepths

by Angela Claire

  Hidden Depths

  Angela Claire

  Evan Reynolds likes his sex straightforward and without strings attached. An anonymous hook-up is just his style. So the hot quickie with the high-class escort he hired to meet him at one of his father’s parties suits him just fine.

  The only problem is she’s not a call girl.

  Supremely aloof executive assistant Andrea Prentiss has shot down passes from guys in a dozen different languages. So when she realizes big-money-on-both-sides-of-the-family Evan thinks she’s a whore he’s ordered up like a flower arrangement, it should have prompted one of her most disdainful set-downs.

  Instead, it makes the ice princess hot. When Andrea gets together with Evan, her cool façade melts away and his laid-back front starts to show its possessive, alpha-male Reynolds roots.

  But Andrea isn’t who she seems. Her thaw is interrupted after a chance meeting identifies her resemblance to a long-lost heiress. She disappears without a word only to reappear months later. She’s in trouble, he’s confused and they’re both exploring hidden depths.

  A Romantica® erotic suspense romance from Ellora’s Cave

  Hidden Depths

  Angela Claire

  Chapter One

  Evan Reynolds lived in a lighthouse on his own private island. And that wasn’t even the most interesting thing about him. The most interesting thing about him was that he had somehow managed to get past her usual defenses. And he’d done it within five minutes of meeting her.

  Andrea Prentiss only hoped that wasn’t because he had thought she was a whore—and treated her like one.

  She contemplated the candy in the hospital waiting-room vending machine. Not one to indulge, she nonetheless knew when life merited a chocolate bar. Her powerful boss Michael Reynolds was lying flat on his back from a gunshot wound and her recent hook-up, his brother Evan, was glowering at her in the presence of his whole family—now was certainly the time.

  The only pertinent question was nuts or no nuts.

  She stared through the glass of the candy machine at her choices but saw only him. Evan Reynolds. He was handsome. All five Reynolds brothers were, in surprisingly different ways, their only similarity being that they were all tall and lean. Unlike Michael, who was black-haired and blue-eyed, Evan had brown hair, mahogany she believed it was called, with green eyes and a healthy tan from what she knew was a life spent a lot of the time outdoors. And he was younger than Michael. No more than twenty-eight or so. If Michael Reynolds emanated stern power, Evan exuded more of a laid-back vibe. When Andrea met him at his father’s party, he’d been dressed in a sweater and chinos, while every other guy there had on a tux. But rather than looking out of place or underdressed, he looked completely at ease and in control. As if he didn’t give a damn. And from what she knew of Evan Reynolds, that was certainly true. Big money on both sides of the family did that to a person. She should certainly know.

  Andrea was no more than quietly amused when Evan seemed to think she was someone else at the party. A blind date had been her immediate take on it, although why a man as good-looking as this one would need a blind date was a mystery to her. As he hustled her up the staircase at the Reynolds mansion, though, she detected something more urgent, and blatant, than a blind date. By the time he had her behind closed doors in a guest bedroom, throwing condoms on a table and ordering her to strip, she had figured out what was really going on.

  Evan Reynolds had mistaken her for a whore. One he had apparently ordered up to be delivered to the party like a flower arrangement or a tray of petit fours.

  It should have made her disdainful, or at the very least indifferent. But it didn’t. Incredibly enough, as she stood there watching him take his clothes off without any pretense, it made her—hot. Something Andrea Prentiss had never in her life been accused of.

  On the contrary, she was cold. An ice princess. A dozen guys had called her that to her face and countless more undoubtedly did so behind her back.

  But when Evan Reynolds skimmed his long, warm fingers along her collarbone and kissed her, the stab of longing she felt had taken her completely off guard. So much so that he was naked, a huge erection pointing right at her, before she realized how tricky it was going to be to extricate herself from the situation.

  And even more shockingly, how much she didn’t want to.

  * * * * *

  Evan Reynolds could certainly kiss, although she didn’t have much to compare it with, admittedly. Her lips still tingled from the light exploration of his tongue and she was tempted to put a finger up to them just to make sure they were really hers. But the thought came and went as she realized he was naked now. How did a person undress so very fast?

  “I haven’t been laid in quite some time and you are just what the doctor ordered.”

  She stared, open mouthed, at his naked body and most especially his erect cock. God, it was beautiful. He was beautiful, tanned all over, attesting to the fact that he must sunbathe in the nude on that private island of his. All lean muscle and sleek angles, he looked like some Greek god statue from her long-ago childhood.

  Years of erecting a frosty exterior as the “Perfect Miss Prentiss” failed her in the face of something as elemental as this naked man. She wanted to touch him. She had to touch him. Bringing her hands to his slim hips and then in front, she clasped his cock slowly, lightly, looking down at it. Silky, smooth, but so very hard, it pulsed in her hand. He sucked in a breath, the side of his mouth going up in a sexy half-smile, as she instinctively tugged at the head, swirling a bead of pre-cum around it with her thumb, before he batted her hand away with a laugh. “None of that. I can’t take it right now.”

  He tore off a condom package from the string and ripped it open. “Take your dress off. I like to fuck naked, if that’s okay with you.” He rolled the condom on, the gesture practiced and no-nonsense but a turn-on nonetheless, and she watched, not quite admitting that she might go through with this but not quite able to stop it. Not yet anyway.

  He looked up, surprised apparently that she hadn’t followed orders. “Come on, babe. We’ll have more time for playing around later at the hotel. We’ll have all night. Now I want up your pussy. Right now.”

  She suppressed a smile. Well, that was rather direct.

  Sex was a perfectly normal facet of life. Guarded as she was, even she knew that. It happened all around her. The instinct for propagation of the species was very powerful, especially in the male half of the population, who never had to actually do the painful part of the propagating anyway, just the pleasurable part. And humans had long ago gotten around Mother Nature on that score in any case, sex having little to do with propagating for most people these days, as evidenced even now by this intense man’s politically correct donning of the appropriate attire for safe sex.

  So sex was certainly nothing to be surprised by or dismayed at. Men tried to pick Andrea up all the time. And whether it was for dinner or drinks or a play, she knew that what they were really thinking about, what they really wanted was this, this moment, which was why she always cut them off at the pass. To keep from getting to this moment. She didn’t want it. Not for propagating or anything else. She never had. But suddenly she was here, with a man asking for what he really wanted, demanding it and expecting her to give it. No games, no sophisticated word play, just stripped-down desire, naked as he was.

  Who would have known that would turn her on?

  Of course it didn’t hurt that the man asking was gorgeous as sin.

  “What?” Evan asked when, again, she didn’t obey.

  She shook her head and her hand went to the side zipper under one arm of her dress, sliding it down, taking a deep breath, feeling as if she were another person. Not Perfect Miss Andrea Prentiss and certainly n
ot that long-ago girl whose name she hesitated to say even in the privacy of her own head. Right at this moment she was yet another girl. Someone else entirely. The woman Evan Reynolds wanted, and wanted now.

  The zipper of the dress went down smoothly and she stepped out of it, feeling more exposed than her modest underthings would suggest. She had never stripped in front of a man. Not voluntarily anyway.

  He rewarded her with a smile, making her heart beat faster. “Look at you.” Her nipples peeked through the white silk of her bra and got even harder at his perusal. Her panties and thigh-high stockings were white too, her pink heels still on. Despite the demure façade, she had never felt so decadent.

  He slipped one arm around her waist, the other pulling down a bra strap to bare her breast, and then he tongued the tip of it, sucking on the nub until it was wet and throbbing. Oh God that felt unbelievable, weakening her knees, the sensation was so strong. He did the same to her other breast while she let out slight, almost stifled groans, her hands on his broad, naked shoulders where his skin was hot to the touch.

  He pushed her back onto the bed abruptly and then climbed over her, ripping her panties off as he did, the jerk of it causing her to shudder with pleasure. He flung them to the floor and kneed her thighs open, looking down while he ran a careful hand between her legs where she could feel she was wet. His hands were big, with long fingers roughened from the manual labor she knew that he, unlike anyone else in his family, reveled in. It was so intense she closed her eyes, embarrassed by his perusal. But just as she was savoring the light touch between her legs, so different from her own, he pulled his hand away and without further ado or warning shoved his erection almost all the way inside her in one hard thrust. She should have expected it, given the circumstances, but the unfamiliar flood of sensation as he fondled her had made her slow on the uptake and she hadn’t. She gasped, her eyes snapping open and her palms shooting up to his shoulders, not to push him off so much as to halt him from any further sudden moves.

  “Christ, you’re incredibly tight,” he muttered, his green eyes narrowed and intense as he watched her. His eyelashes were long and dark and she could see the strain in his expression before he buried his face in her neck, nuzzling her. He was staying still as she got used to the feel of him, huge inside her.

  “It’s been a long time,” she admitted, even as she was relaxing underneath him, his cock sliding a little deeper as he groaned.

  It had been a long time and she had never felt this. This full, throbbing, pleasurable possession.

  “You’re not a regular?” he whispered in her ear.

  She could barely decipher words at this moment, let alone think to weigh them. “A regular what?”

  Her legs parted farther and she kissed his cheek, loving the salty, hot taste of him, a little rough against her tongue from an incipient five o’clock shadow.

  “You okay now?” he asked breathlessly as he studied her face again and she leaned up to kiss him on his mouth, which was softer than she would have expected given all the hardness of him elsewhere.

  Taking that as her answer apparently, he pulled out almost to the tip of his long cock and then thrust in again, slowly, and then again, with more purpose, beginning a relentless flexing of his hips toward a goal that happily brought her along for the ride.

  God, it felt so good to be underneath him. Sharp bursts of pleasure shot through her with his every lunge and her fingertips wound in his hair as they kissed, his hands firmly underneath her, tilting her up to take each inch of him. Despite his obvious need, his obvious desire, he was gentle with her, or gentler than she had ever experienced. His grip of her bottom was caressing, not bruising, and his kiss exploratory, coaxing not conquering. But as gentle as he was being, he was still taking her, definitely incredibly possessing her, and it wasn’t long before they were sweaty, their bodies moving against one another in some mesmerizing rhythm.

  It could have lasted a half an hour or it could have lasted two minutes. Time had lost all context for her.

  When he ground his hips into her one last time, she watched as he came, arching his neck back with a deep, satisfied groan, and she came too, but quietly, no audible corollary to his climax other than a quick intake of breath. Collapsing on top of her at first, he then rolled over before getting up from the bed and pulled the condom off, tossing it in the wastebasket. He turned back to her. “Do you come?”

  She sat up slowly. “What?”

  “Do you come or do you not want me to even try?”

  She shook her head. “I did come,” she said softly.

  “Well, I’ll pay more attention next time. I promise.” He grinned, looking boyish and relaxed. “Don’t worry. I like to make a woman come. You’ll enjoy it next time.”

  She reached for her dress and stepped into it. “I enjoyed it this time,” she said, and unbelievably, it was true.

  When she tried to retrieve her panties, he snatched them away. “I’ll keep these, if you don’t mind.”

  He pulled his chinos on and stuffed the panties into one pocket, grabbing the condoms as well. They walked down the staircase, hand in hand, until reality intruded at the sight of her boss at the bottom of the stairway and she pulled away. Evan glanced over at her and she could feel herself blushing.

  “Hey, Evan.”

  He turned at his brother’s voice. “Hi, Michael. I didn’t know you were here already.”

  “Yes. I’m staying over. Hello, Miss Prentiss. Do you have those papers for me?”

  “Yes, Mr. Reynolds. I was just looking for you.”

  Sort of.

  “They’re here in my purse.” She crossed to the hallway table and pulled out a folded set of papers from the purse she’d uncharacteristically been negligent enough to leave behind when Evan dragged her upstairs. She handed the papers to her boss along with a pen, and he spread them out on the table and started to sign, saying, without looking up, “Did you meet my assistant, Evan? I don’t think you’ve ever been to the office, have you?”

  He finished signing and handed the papers back to her as she could see Evan putting the pieces together.

  “I emailed you the file you requested as well, concerning the gentleman on the rig. It’s in your inbox.”

  “Good. That’ll be all, Miss Prentiss. Thank you for coming all the way out here.”

  She smiled. “My pleasure, Mr. Reynolds.” But she was looking straight at Evan—now he was the one who was blushing.

  And she felt better than she had in a long, long time.

  * * * * *

  Evan Reynolds had been trying to get the tall brunette alone since he’d gotten to the hospital. Now that they all knew his brother Michael would be all right, he had a thing or two to say to Michael’s secretary, who was cool and put together once again, this time in a camel-colored skirt and plain tan sweater, her hair in that same tidy chignon.

  He finally caught her by herself near the candy machine, out of the way of the rest of his family.

  “Remember me?”

  She looked up, the big blue eyes wide and innocent. “Certainly, Mr. Reynolds.”

  “Don’t you ‘Mr. Reynolds’ me. What was that all about?”

  “What was what all about?”

  “At my father’s party. You…we…”

  “We had sex, Mr. Reynolds.” She laughed. “My, I certainly never thought I’d say that.”

  “God, I hope not. You’re not Michael’s, are you? Because from what I can see of that Vanny, she’ll give you a fight to the death on that one.” He didn’t really think it but he couldn’t stop himself from saying it, if only to insult her.

  Her voice was cooler. “I’m not anybody’s, Mr. Reynolds.”

  “Evan,” he snapped.

  “Evan.” There was a long pause, with neither of them speaking. She finally asked, “Is there something I can do for you, Evan?”

  “As a matter of fact, Miss Prentiss, there is. You can fuck me again.”

  A long pause, then, “Wh
ere?”

  Whatever Evan had expected, it wasn’t that. What was with this chick?

  She dug into a side pocket of her skirt and extracted a crisp dollar bill, feeding it into the candy machine and tapping out a code that caused a bag of peanut M&M’s to fall from a hook inside the glass to the bottom bin. She reached through the swinging door to get her prize and nonchalantly ripped the little bag open, pouring some into her palm and bringing it delicately to her lips to eat them off.

  He watched her chew and swallow as if she were performing some strip show for him again. And in his mind maybe she was. She had a long, white throat and he remembered how it felt as he flicked his thumb along its length. Like velvet.

  “Well?” she said. “Was that a sincere proposition or were you just trying to offend me?”

  “Both. Why? Was that a sincere ’where’?”

  “Depends.”

  She held the bag of candy toward him and he shook his head. If he kissed her now, she would taste like chocolate and he’d rather get his fix from her lips than from her hand. Shifting from one foot to the other, he calculated how best to get them the hell out of this hospital and back to somewhere with a bed. She crunched on a few more M&M’s and licked her lips.

  Of course there were a lot of beds in a hospital. Maybe they should make do.

  “Depends on what?”

  She flashed him a warning look accompanied by a friendly over-his-shoulder greeting. “Hi, Vanny. Great minds think alike. Did you have the same idea I did?”

  Quick sex? Evan glanced over his shoulder.

  “I still have a few singles if you need one. I went for M&M’s, but there’s quite a selection here.”

  Michael’s new girlfriend, Vanny Donald—a bizarre but beautiful sight in a rumpled bathrobe, her golden-blonde hair tumbling around her and one hand pressing a bandage to her temple as if that alone kept it on—suddenly joined them, smiling apologetically. “Oh no, I couldn’t eat a thing, chocolate or otherwise. Thanks, Andrea. But I came over because Michael’s been asking for you. Could you go in and see him? Something about some embassy or delegation or something. He can’t stop thinking about business for a minute.”