by Joanne Rock
They could have been rolling around in the sand under the stars for all he cared. As long as he had her right next to him. Underneath him. All over him.
“Well, I hope now you can’t tear your hands away.” As if to emphasize her words, she gripped his wrist. Drew his fingers from where they rested at her waist to slide down the smooth satin front of her underwear.
Heat radiated right through the skimpy barrier. He cupped her with his palm. Rubbed the heel of his hand against the soft mound.
“I couldn’t stop touching you if I tried.” He peeled the damp satin down her thighs, his eyes darting south to take in the length of her exposed body in the soft light of the bedroom.
She was mouthwatering. Luscious.
Her hands reached for him. Breezed down his chest to flatten against his fly. “I don’t think I can stop touching you, either. Care to show me what you’ve brought for me under here?”
“Oh, yeah.” He reached for the button on his shorts. “I don’t think I can keep it under wraps much longer anyhow.”
Purring with pleasure, she dragged down his zipper. Exclaimed over every inch she freed while Hugh thought he’d lose it if he didn’t lay her down soon. But she had other ideas, leading him to bed, pushing him back while she drew off his shorts. The covers were already rumpled, exposing silky sheets and a pile of pillows.
And it was no hardship to watch Giselle’s incredible body move around the bed as she positioned him right where she wanted him before she reached across him for something on the nightstand. He couldn’t resist the temptation posed by the breast that skimmed his chest as she did so. Sliding lower on the bed he angled his mouth beneath that delicate pink flesh, flicked his tongue over the hardened peak.
She shivered in the wake of the kiss, her whole body shimmying with sensual need. He reached for her other breast, ready to apply equal attention, but she wriggled back on her knees to hover above him. Out of reach.
Only then did he spy what she’d been reaching for in the first place.
Her hand wrapped around the base of a tall drinking glass filled to the brim with ice cubes and water. She held it to her lips and smiled before tipping it to her soft mouth.
One icy drop of condensation fell from the bottom of the glass to land on the tip of his cock. Accidental or deliberate? The tiny drip sent a wave of tingly sensation through him, reminding him of how cold her mouth had felt against his earlier.
Oh, but did that ever give him some ideas.
Yet, as his gaze connected with hers above the rim of the glass, he spied the wicked gleam in her dark eyes and realized she’d already had a few ideas of her own. Stretching the length of her body over his to return the drink to the nightstand, she crunched a cube between her teeth.
Hugh’s fingers sought her hips, dragged her lush softness over his hard length while she was extended so sweetly above him. But she was already retreating to her knees and sidling out of his grip.
“I thought you might be a little overheated after spending time down on the beach.” She shifted a last piece of ice around her mouth, the remaining cube clinking lightly against a tooth before she bent over him, her hair brushing along his thighs.
And then her mouth was all around him. Slippery, wet and frosty in the moments before the natural heat of her mouth melted through the chill. The contrast of sensations made his skin tighten, his cock strain to be inside her.
Her tongue ran rogue up and down the length of him until his eyes crossed. The sight of her bent over him that way—damn, but he had to shut his eyes before the hot-as-hell visual did him in. Her lips played over him so sweetly. Savoring. Licking. Tasting.
Hauling her up his body, he had to move her before she tempted him past the point of no return. She was so damn soft. So delicate everywhere. Her body skimmed his, molding to him.
He kissed her swollen lips. Eased her down into the pillow haven of her bed. “You’re looking a little warm yourself.” He dipped into the glass of ice water and then reached between her thighs, seeking the hottest part of her. “You think you need some cooling off?”
He slid a chilled finger around her damp heat and she trembled.
“No.” She shook her head as she dragged the inside of her thigh higher against his leg. “I want to combust with you.”
His finger paused in its quest, hovered over the throbbing heart of her before plucking oh-so-gently at that delicate flesh. “Then I guess we’d better warm things up.”
She circled his cock with her fingers, drew her hand up and down the length of him. He forgot he wasn’t wearing a condom until she scavenged one off the nightstand and applied it with slightly shaking fingers.
Did he do that to her? Rattle her control until her body quivered and her hands trembled?
Damn but he hoped so. Selfish thought for a guy who could never afford to stay in one place long enough to be the kind of man Giselle needed. Deserved. But more than anything he wanted to be the one who took her to places nobody else could. The fierceness of that need gripped him with a force he couldn’t deny, but he refused to let it affect the way he held her. The harder the need to possess her rode him, the more gentle his hands became on her body.
Positioning himself over her, he spread her thighs. Kissed her mouth. Edged his way into her the same moment he allowed his tongue to sweep into her mouth. She shuddered beneath him, her hips arching off the bed to meet his.
And he was toast.
Something softened inside him at the way she gave herself to him, so totally uninhibited and unselfconscious. She was a woman with so much to lose, yet she’d gambled on the very man threatening to wreak havoc on every corner of her life.
How had she justified trusting him that way? And how the hell had he ended up thinking this now when he was sliding between her thighs and the blood pounded through his ears louder than the surf hit the shore outside?
But as her dark eyes looked up at him, so giving and warm, he knew he would do everything in his power to make sure that trust of hers wasn’t misplaced. Nobody would hurt Giselle on his watch. Even him.
Especially not him.
Then her thighs wrapped around his waist the way he knew they would from the moment he’d walked in the door to her suite tonight, and all else was lost in a tide of pure sensation.
Only the need to imprint himself on her memory remained.
He reached between their bodies to caress the tender heat of her. She whimpered. Cried out. He circled that swollen point again and again, teasing her until he was closer. Ready.
“Open your eyes.” He whispered ragged words through the heated inches between them. Won the attention of her passion-clouded gaze.
He increased the pressure of his finger as he thrust into her one more time. Felt her body hit its own high note as tension thrummed through him. Their gazes locked for that blazing hot instant before sensation rocked through them. Pulsed from his body to hers and back again in a scorching electric current. Wave after wave pounded through him as Giselle found release of her own.
He lay beside her afterward, not entirely sure he remembered his own name in the wake of such incredible sex. He might have even drifted off to sleep if the phone in his shorts pocket didn’t start ringing from somewhere amidst the tangled knot of clothes on the floor.
“Want me to find it?” Giselle blinked up at him with sleepy eyes, but Hugh was already sifting through the pile.
“That’s okay. I didn’t think I’d hear back from the office tonight.” Because he didn’t think his intern would have any luck tracking down Robert Flynn. If the police couldn’t unearth the guy, it seemed damned unlikely a college senior with no hard news experience would be able to sniff him out.
Still, no one else would be calling him shortly before dawn. “Duncan. You find anything?”
But the voice on the other end was no overexcited youth. “Hell, yeah, I discovered a few things. Airline security still sucks as bad as the food, but it’s great to be back in the U.S. of A. I’ve go
t New York publishers begging me to write my memoirs and media salivating to work with me, so when are we going to do this interview?”
Hugh cut a glance across the bed at the woman lying soft and replete beside him. For Giselle’s sake, he’d make damn sure Flynn’s first interview would be his last as a free man.
“I’m open.” He kept his response light. Easy. He didn’t want to startle Giselle, but he wanted this taken care of now so she could move on with her life. So he could keep her safe. “How about this morning?”
14
FEMININE INTUITION KICKED into high gear as Giselle watched Hugh take his phone call. Something about the relaxed posture of his body combined with the expression of fierce concentration struck her as odd. Wrong.
She hadn’t eavesdropped, but he was lying right next to her. How could she help but overhear him make an appointment of some kind? Then again, who on earth made appointments at 4:00 a.m.?
People in other time zones maybe.
Or criminals.
The irreverent thought blared across her brainwaves while her intuition chimed bells and whistles of approval. She’d stake her culinary wizardry that the party on the other end of Hugh’s phone right now was none other than Robert Flynn.
“This afternoon at six. Got it.” Hugh nodded, cast a glance in her direction, his green eyes unreadable. “Call me if you need to make any adjustments to the timetable.”
Giselle’s heart caught in her throat, fear for Hugh overriding her own fears about her former lover. “That was Robert, wasn’t it?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, effectively shading his expression from her view. He sighed. Rolled to his back. “What makes you think that?”
Long accustomed to dealing with men who didn’t give an inch when it came to sharing important information, Giselle sensed a chink in his defenses and followed him across the bed. “I’m right, aren’t I? You’re planning to meet with Joe Two-Timer for another story.”
“The faster media coverage explodes around this, the faster he’ll get caught.” He propped himself up on one arm, his lean strength apparent even when his body was at rest. “I figured the sooner I do my part, the better.”
Even as a new batch of fears began to simmer and bubble, her heart rejoiced just a little that he had entrusted her with that much. Not in a million years would Renzo or Nico or anyone else in her family clue her in about something they thought would upset her. Hurt her. She appreciated that Hugh was a different man. “What exactly is your part?”
Shrugging, he sat up on the bed where he’d set her on fire only a short time ago. Too bad they couldn’t have lingered in that sensual haven a bit longer, indulging one another until their bodies were too weary to comply with their desires.
“I’m still working on that. I want the story, but I want to can this guy’s ass even more. Problem is, if word spreads that I leaked the news of his whereabouts to the police, my journalistic integrity is shot and I’ll never land another sensitive story.”
“You can’t jeopardize your career for the sake of seeing Robert in jail.” No matter how much she wanted to see Lainie’s two-timing ex-husband behind bars, she wouldn’t want it at the expense of a career that had been a lifetime in the making. “He’ll do himself in eventually.”
“But at what cost to you?” He snagged his shorts off the floor and dressed. “It was me who lured this guy back here. I filled his head with a bunch of talk about six-figure book deals and even hinted he might be able to dodge the charges against him if he gave evidence against his embezzling partner who’s awaiting trial.”
“Robert was definitely the brains behind the scheme. I’ve met Mel Baxter and he’s a slick operator, but he didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who had the brain power to orchestrate a scam of that magnitude.” The Rat Pack, as the former Club Paradise management group liked to refer to themselves, had taken investors deep by bumping up corporate investments in their resort before absconding with all the cash.
Dressed, Hugh dropped back down to the bed beside her. “I didn’t feel like I owed him a whole hell of a lot of honesty after what he did to you and his ex-wife. Now I’ve just got to plot a way to do another interview—one on U.S. soil—and possibly sell him out without tipping him off I was the one behind the deed.”
She shook her head, hoping he wouldn’t prove as obstinate as her brothers. “Don’t do it. I hope you don’t think I expect you to solve my problems for me.”
“No. It’s me. I’ve got this overdeveloped sense of right and wrong that’s dogged me from an early age. I can’t look at an injustice and just walk away. I feel compelled to write about it, draw attention to it, see it fixed.”
“And it’s going to be fixed. You’ve done your part.” Why couldn’t he see he had no business railroading Robert who was already on a clear-cut path toward self-destruction?
The breeze off the ocean blew the curtains into the room, brushing Hugh’s knee with the sheer white fabric. The salty scent of the ocean wafted through the suite on a rare cool spring morning.
“Normally I would sit back and see what happens at this point,” he conceded. “But I can’t this time. Maybe it is because you’re involved. I don’t know.” He shoved to his feet. “I do know I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to do next, though. I need to see some people. Think through a plan.”
Which meant he was leaving.
And while Robert used to leave her in the middle of the night because he was married to Lainie, Hugh needed to leave because he was married to his job. A vast improvement obviously, because at least the only person being hurt in this new scenario was her. But how much longer could she be with a man who would never put her first?
Knowing this probably wasn’t a great time to bring up her own needs, however, Giselle simply nodded. “It would solve everything if someone else turned him in, right?”
His gaze narrowed. “Why?”
“It just occurred to me that it would be very plausible for the woman he burned to try and take him down a notch by getting his butt hauled off to jail. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and all that.”
“Not gonna happen, Giselle. Get it right out of your head.” He cradled her chin. Tipped her face to look up at him from where she lounged on the bed, still wrapped in a sheet. “Desperate men are dangerous men and you don’t want to be anywhere near this guy.”
“Just a thought.” Backing off, she thought it would be wisest to let him act on this in his own way. For now. She obviously wasn’t going to sway Hugh to agree to the plan quickly taking shape in her head. But she had a feeling she’d be able to sway someone else. Someone who wanted to see Robert pay for his crimes every bit as much as she did.
Hugh studied her a moment longer, letting her go only once he seemed to have convinced himself she would stay out of Robert’s way. “Hell hath no fury, huh?” He leaned down to kiss her, his mouth brushing her cheek. Her lips. Lingering. “Remind me not to piss you off.”
She smiled as he pulled away, determined to keep her peace and solve her own problems this time. She didn’t need a man to save her, a fact she’d been trying to teach her brothers her whole life. Now she had a chance to prove as much to herself.
But even if she didn’t need a man to help her with her idea, it couldn’t hurt to call in a little girl power.
And she knew just the woman for the job.
HUGH KNEW THE RIGHT MAN to work with him in bringing down Robert Flynn, but he didn’t have a clue how to ask for help.
Sprawling on a deck lounger at sunrise on South Beach, Hugh stared out over the pink-tinged waves as he debated how to place his next phone call. He’d already alerted Aidan Maddock, the FBI agent engaged to Pauline Wolcott’s daughter, to what was going on tonight even though he couldn’t give him too many specifics for fear of the Feds taking over the whole business. Maddock would simply know to be on the alert.
But Hugh knew he needed to make one more request for backup, as much as it bugged him.
> For starters, he’d always been a loner. Asking for help of any kind galled him. Made him feel as helpless as he’d been as a kid, sending out SOS signals in a rumpled envelope every week and hoping like hell someone on the other end would hear the message. Ever since he’d flipped the bird to his stepfather’s house out the back windshield of a departing embassy car, Hugh had relied solely on himself. He navigated the sticky politics of his career, his stories and his need to fix the wrongs he saw on his travels by himself. Alone.
To pick up the phone and dial the very guy who tried to kick his ass two days ago definitely rankled.
But just this once he’d accept somebody else’s help. The kind a former hockey goon knew only too well how to provide.
For Giselle’s sake, he set aside his preference for working alone and would let Nico Cesare in on his plans, even if it just meant having the guy wait out back to call the Feds after Hugh conducted the interview. If Hugh had a sister, he had the feeling he’d want to be informed of any potential opportunity to kick the butt of the guy who hurt her. It wouldn’t kill him to extend that same courtesy to Nico.
Resigned to the group thing just this once, Hugh flipped open the phone and started to dial.
“YOU WANT WHAT?”
Lainie Reynolds had probably never gasped before in her life. Still, she sat across the kitchen table from Giselle in the Diva Penthouse late that morning with her mouth clearly hanging open.
“I want you to help me put the screws to Robert once and for all.” The more Giselle had thought about her plan, the more it made perfect sense. What better way to solidify her business partnership with Lainie than to team up personally, too?
“And just how did you see us accomplishing this superhuman feat? We’re not exactly Charlie’s Angels.” She sipped some sort of green shake concoction she’d been making in the blender when Giselle had arrived. It looked lethal. Smelled worse.
