Well, this Sydnee wanted to live her own life, and live it the way she wanted. She wanted everything she'd told Ella she didn't need, with a man to love right at the top of the list!
"Just look at you! So beautiful, everywhere! Do you know how badly I want you, sweetheart?" His voice was husky.
She knew. Oh, God, she knew! He wanted her as badly as she wanted him.
She moaned softly, clenching handfuls of the sheets as he spread her knees with his own, then knelt between them. Slipping his hands beneath her, he raised her hips.
But instead of entering her, as she'd expected, he ducked his dark head.
She cried out with pleasure as his tongue danced over her inner thighs.
Hearing that cry, he groaned deep in his throat. And then, brushing aside the mound of golden curls, he lowered his head to taste her, his tongue darting and flicking like a hummingbird as it sampled the nectar from the swollen petals of a beautiful orchid.
"Don't!" she whispered, shocked. But only seconds later, she begged him, "Yes, oh, yes!"
Her fingers threaded through his midnight hair, tightening as her passion built.
"Oh, baby…" he whispered, sliding his fingers inside her. Deep. Deeper. "You're so wet…." He worked his fingers in and out, his thumb gently teasing the tender hidden bud. "So sweet. So sexy. Hmmm. The taste of you drives me wild, baby."
Sydnee tried to pull away as he kissed her intimately again, feathering little kisses over her secret flesh.
No man had ever kissed or touched her there, as he was touching her. Until tonight.
Until him.
But then, there'd only been one other man before him. Barry Gordon. Dull. Married. Her "two-minute lover."
"The man's faster than a soft-boiled egg, darling!" Ella had said once when she told her. They'd called him that ever since.
She'd never dreamed her English professor was married with kids until after he'd taken her virginity. But by then, he'd been ready to move on.
The bastard…
But even at its best, sex with Barry had been nothing like this!
Trapping her wrists in his hands, Dangerous ducked his dark head to kiss her there again. Between kisses and caresses, he murmured erotic promises, loving endearments, until she grew tense under his wicked mouth.
Heat pooled deep in her belly. The tension inside her built, twisting, tautening like a wire, growing more and more frenzied. Screaming for release.
When the ache was too much to bear, she arched up, off the bed. With a wild sob, she felt the dam burst, spilling through her in torrents of liquid gold.
Fireworks erupted, seen in real time on the virtual screen of her inner eyelids. It was a meteor shower that lit the darkness with dazzling chrysanthemums of light, and left her breathless and sobbing in their wake.
Seconds later he entered her, his broad shoulders blotting out the light, his scent and body filling her world.
Bare skin met bare skin with an almost audible sizzle, like the hiss of cold butter hitting a hot griddle, as he pushed into her.
Her legs parted to cradle him, then locked around his waist. Her arms embraced his back. Now they were heart-to-heart and hip-to-hip, her pale body all but hidden beneath his.
"I'm wearing something. It's okay, sweetheart," he murmured as he slid his hands beneath her. "God, you're tight. So hot and tight."
He thrust again, then again. She sucked in a shaky breath. He was so big, he filled her. Rekindled the tension.
"Oh, God!" she whispered. "Don't stop."
Their eyes met. His were much darker now. Indian sapphires that glittered in the shadows, snaring the soft light of a bedside lamp.
"I'll take care of you," he promised.
"I know," she whispered. And meant it.
Chapter Six
Dawn was poking gray fingers between the wooden louvers as Sydnee quietly let herself out of the luxury suite.
She tiptoed down the hall and back to her own rooms on the second floor, encountering only a maid with a linen cart en route. The woman smiled and wished her good morning in Spanish.
Letting herself in, she locked the door behind her and leaned on it, angry tears stinging her eyes.
What had happened to her since she boarded that flight yesterday?
In the space of twenty-four hours, staid, conservative Sydnee Anne Frost, biotechnician, agricultural engineer, Ph.D. candidate, and confirmed spinster, had gotten drunk, stood up her employer, then gone swimming at midnight wearing a skimpy swimsuit no bigger than a slingshot.
As if that weren't enough, she'd then flirted with a strange and possibly dangerous man— whose name she didn't even know— for three hours, before jumping into bed with him. Where, to her shame, they'd made the most incredible love three— no, no, four times.
To her shame, she repeated silently, but not to her regret.
Never that.
She would never regret tonight, if she lived to be a hundred….
She stepped into the shower and stood under its stinging jets, lathering soap into skin that still carried his scent, before briskly scrubbing every trace of him away with the washcloth.
Memories were not so easily erased. The shower reminded her of the oh, so sensual shower they shared in the middle of the night. Of the way he smoothed creamy lather over her deliciously drained body before lifting her astride his flanks, wrapping her legs around his waist, and making love to her all over again as icy water cascaded over them…
She sighed as she stepped from the tiled cubicle. Put it behind you, Sydnee, she told herself. Accept it for what it was. Then let it— and him— go.
Knotting the sash of the hotel's monogrammed robe around her, she went into the suite's living room and helped herself to the bag of Cordero chocolates from the fruit basket.
Just her luck, she thought, sitting cross-legged on the bed to eat them, to be seduced by a man-in-a-million on the eve of the most important research job of her entire life!
This sort of thing never happened to Ella.
Still, she had only herself to blame for getting in too far, too fast, and way too deep. She'd known all along that having drinks with this man— going up to his room and sleeping with him— could lead nowhere, because she was leaving Las Floras this morning.
According to the itinerary Lindermann had given her before she left New York, Westridge— or, failing Westridge, his plantation manager— was supposed to contact her this morning with the arrangements for her to go on to Rancho Corazón.
Westridge's coffee and cocoa plantation was a two-hour drive farther north, up the central valley, near the village of Santa Isadora.
So, when it came right down to it, what she wanted really didn't matter, she told herself. There was no time to find out if their relationship could lead to something deeper. Something a little longer-lasting than incredible orgasms!
And perhaps it was better that way, she thought, shoulders slumping, throat constricted. The department was counting on her to earn that endowment, after all. She couldn't let them down.
Still, she couldn't help wondering. Would she have woken up beside him this morning to find the light of love still shining in his vivid blue eyes, as it had seemed to shine last night?
Or— far more likely, given her luck— to hear him say it was fun while it lasted, but that it was over now?
Her own father had abandoned her mother and his unborn daughter, after all. And Barry Gordon had never really been hers in the first place. Why should Dangerous have been any different? After all, she was still the same old Sydnee, beneath the sexy clothes.
Seducing her had probably meant very little to him. She was probably just another notch to be added to his bedpost. While to her… to her he was… he could so easily have been…
Her lips quivered. She brushed tears from her eyes with her knuckles, realizing that through them, she could see a blurred red light. A blinking red light.
Another voice-mail message. Westridge again. He was the only pers
on who knew she was here.
"Hello, Frost?" she heard him murmur as the recorded message played. His voice was lower, more urgent than before, as if he didn't want to be overheard. "Cord Westridge here again. Listen, something's come up, I'm afraid. I can't get away in the morning, so my manager will be taking you on to Corazón. His name is Raymondo Sevillas. Meet him down in the lobby around ten. And Frost— be there this time! I'll see you at the plantation in a day or two."
Sydnee brightened as she replaced the receiver. Perfect! She had a brief reprieve! Ten o'clock should give her plenty of time to take an orange cab into San José and find some comfortable clothes before she met this Raymondo person in the lobby.
Placing an order for a six-thirty wake-up call, she lay down to grab a few more hours of fitful sleep.
Sleep filled with sensual dreams of her dark and dangerous lover.
Chapter Seven
"I think I know the young lady you are looking for, señor," the concierge of Las Floras declared. He smiled uncertainly at Señor Westridge, who was one of the hotel's wealthiest patrons.
The norteamericano did not look happy.
"You were right. A young lady matching the description you gave did stay here briefly. Not as one of our registered guests, you understand," he added hastily. "But as the— er— the guest of a guest, you might say."
"And is she still here?"
"Unfortunately, no. She ordered room service on Saturday morning— the morning of her departure. Soon after, a cab came for her. One of the maids saw her being driven away, señor."
"I see," Cord said, trying not to sound as impatient— or as disappointed— as he felt.
He rubbed a hand over his tired face. His eyes felt gritty. His body ached. His mouth tasted like hell.
For the past three nights he hadn't slept much. He couldn't. Each time he tried, he found himself replaying the night he and the elusive beauty had shared, instead. Flashbacks of their lovemaking screened in slo-mo on his inner eyelids.
He remembered the warm swell of her breast filling his hand. The silky sweep of her thighs. The velvet of a nipple before it hardened. Her alluring scent. Even the silly names she'd whispered as they made love. "Dangerous," she'd called him. "My dark and dangerous outlaw!"
"This guest she was staying with. Do you have the name?" he demanded irritably. "Or a forwarding address?"
He told himself he didn't give a damn, but it was a lie. He cared, all right. Cared so much he had to find her again.
To that end, he'd spent the past three days looking for her, like the proverbial Prince Charming searching for his missing Cinderella. Only in this instance, instead of a glass slipper, his lovely Cinders had left behind a tiny pair of white lace panties.
And not surprisingly, considering the incredible night they'd shared, the prince's temper had been anything but charming when he woke to find her gone.
Time and his failure to find her in either the hotel or at any of the tourist spots around San José had not improved His Majesty's mood.
The concierge cleared his throat. "You must understand, señor, that under normal circumstances our hotel policy strictly prohibits me to divulge our guests'—"
"The name, damn it!" Cord ground out.
Paulo nodded unhappily. "Very well, señor. The young lady you are looking for was a guest of… of Señor Sidney Frost."
His dark gaze slid uncomfortably away from Cord's.
Cord stared at him, dumbstruck. He frowned. "Señor Frost? My Frost? The one whose reservations were made by my New York office?" Surely he'd misheard the man.
"I'm afraid so, sir," Paulo said apologetically.
"I see." His jaw hard, he turned away, not really seeing at all.
What the hell was going on here? Who was the mysterious blonde? What was her name— and why the hell had she been in Frost's suite? he wondered.
In the wee hours, after they'd made love, he had watched her sleep. Her cheeks had been flushed. Her soft breath had fanned his cheek. Her breasts had risen and fallen with every breath.
Looking down at her, he'd sensed a loneliness inside her, a need to love and be loved that had connected with something inside himself. It couldn't end here. He was thirty-three. He'd made love to many women in his lifetime, but none like this. This woman was different. Special.
He'd known then that he had to see her again.
And so, while she slept, he'd left a brief message on Frost's voice mail, telling the scientist to go on to Corazón with Sevillas, his manager. He'd join them in a few days.
But when he woke at dawn, the woman was gone.
Why had she left without telling him? he wondered. What reason could she have to keep her identity a secret?
One possibility was straight out of left field. An angle that hardly bore thinking about.
Could Frost have hired a beautiful, classy call girl to coax him into parting with the endowment, in the event the scientist's own powers of persuasion failed? Was that why Frost had skipped Cord's invitation to dinner that first night? And why his Cinderella had fled without telling him her name?
It was a million-to-one long shot. Yet it made Cord's blood boil, because it was a possibility.
Great wealth like his own attracted that kind of trouble like a magnet. And right now he couldn't think of a better explanation.
Furious at the visual images his thoughts created, he flung a handful of colones at the parking valet and hopped into his silver ATV.
The slim youth took one look at Señor Westridge's face and paled.
"Vaya con Dios, señor," he murmured as Cord drove away, engine roaring, tires squealing, gravel spraying.
He would not like to be in the shoes of whoever had angered Señor Westridge.
"It's beautiful up here, Raymondo," Sydnee murmured, looking down from her vantage point astride one of Rancho Corazón's fine horses.
They sat their mounts among the shady trees of a lookout spot that commanded a panoramic view of Costa Rica's central valley.
Above them, brightly feathered parrots squawked or fluttered from branch to branch. Below, coffee terraces spread in every direction as far as the eye could see.
Leafy green with red beans, the low bushes basked in the afternoon sun. Cordero coffee beans, she reminded herself. The same company that produced the delicious coffee and chocolates she'd found in Westridge's gift basket.
"But of course," Raymondo had confirmed when she mentioned the coincidence. "Cordero Coffee and Chocolate is a very old company here in Costa Rica. It was given to Señor Cord by his mother, Señora Catalina de Westridge y Cordero."
"Inherited, you mean?"
"No, señorita. Given. Señora Cordero, she is still very much alive, you see? She and Señor Westridge's father are presently in Las Vegas, in América del Norte. La señora, she is fond of gambling, sí— but not so fond of doing business!" Raymondo's brown eyes twinkled.
Westridge's mother promised to be quite a character, Sydnee thought. But then, so did her mysterious son.
She smiled and shook her head. The past three days had been like a dream, a taste of a privileged existence Sydnee had never dreamed of, with her no-frills upbringing. And slim, dark-haired Raymondo had been the perfect host in his employer's absence.
After introducing her to his wife and two children, he had proudly shown her around Villa Corazón, a white-walled Spanish villa, built around a courtyard garden with a swimming pool at its heart. Both house and garden were beautifully maintained by Terecita, the housekeeper, and Olivero, the gardener.
Some distance from the main house was a modest but surprisingly well equipped laboratory and greenhouse, where Sydnee assumed she would be working.
However, Raymondo made no mention of her project or her reason for being there at all, the diseases that had been attacking the cacao crop.
Instead he'd casually explained that this was where Señor Westridge experimented. His current project, the manager added, was cloning genetically pest-resistant cacao
trees. Eventually, his entire cacao production would come from such hardy trees.
Westridge's hands-on, technical interest in his cacao trees came as a huge surprise. From what little she'd learned about him, Sydnee had imagined Westridge as a high-powered CEO, an "anything-for-another-buck" type, who let other people do the dirty work, while he remained safe in his corporate offices, counting his millions.
But Raymondo's casual statement raised Sydnee's eyebrows. Cloned? By Señor Westridge? Then Westridge must be an accomplished biotechnologist himself.
As well as the lab, there were stables, a garage, and other buildings used for storage. Beyond those rose the mountain peaks, wreathed in garlands of cloud, and the thousands of acres of fertile mountainous terrain and rain forest that made up Rancho Corazón itself.
As well as the Cordero coffee and chocolate plantations, there was also a working cattle ranch that raised Brahman cattle, Raymondo explained.
"Since cacao is so susceptible to pests, I'm surprised Señor Westridge hasn't concentrated on other crops instead," Sydnee observed with a disapproving little sniff.
"And abandon cocoa, señorita?" The manager's eyebrows rose in horror. He looked as if she'd suggested something obscene.
"Sure. Why not?"
"But Corderos have been growing chocolate here for centuries! To our ancestors, cacao was the food of the gods, no?
"It is also said that the Indian people, like the great king of the Aztecs, Montezuma, used the cacao seeds as we use money or gold today. As currency for their trades. Such seeds were considered very valuable, señorita. Come. I shall show you why."
She rode after him to where Cordero cacao trees grew along the edge of the rain forest. Between the trees, corn and yucca had been planted in the old way, which was believed to increase the cacaos' yield.
Drawing a machete from the sheath attached to his saddle, Raymondo dismounted and cut one of the cacao pods from a nearby tree. Shaped like a football, it was about the same size as a man's hands.
After he'd hacked off the wrinkled green outer peel, Raymondo handed her a chunk of the fibrous pulp. In it were embedded the purplish seeds he had described.
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