by Cherry Adair
His eyes held hers. “I never make promises I know I won’t keep.”
“An admirable trait.”
The waitress returned with their burgers, greasy fries, and more coffee, then ambled off slowly. Mia suspected that all three of the people behind the counter were straining their ears to hear their conversation.
He shrugged again. “What about you? What brought you to Bayou Cheniere, Louisiana?” He glanced out the rain-spattered window, then back to Mia. “Not the weather, I presume?”
She smiled, wanting to reach out to touch the stubble on his jaw. She’d felt it on her breasts and inner thighs the night before. She wanted to feel the abrasion again. Soon. Now.
“I don’t mind the rain. This is a bit of a change of pace for me, I must admit. But I’m enjoying the differences.”
“How long are you planning to stay here?”
“As long as it takes.” Until whoever was after her was caught.
“As long as what takes? Getting the house in livable shape?”
“Something like that.”
Cruz picked up his mug. “Let’s drink to intriguing encounters and interesting destinations. Bon appétit.”
They clinked simultaneously raised coffee mugs.
It felt, Mia thought, feeling a little silly, exactly like a first date.
• • •
Two o’clock in the morning and no pounding rain to mask his footsteps. Cruz paused at the top of the stairs in the semidarkness. He listened to the sounds of the house settling. A creak in the wall a few feet from him to the right. A groan somewhere near the window. The warm breeze added to the hushed night sounds. A tree branch skritch-skritch-skritched as it rubbed against the siding in the warm breeze. The rustle of leaves of the live oak outside her bedroom window.
While looking for her computer that afternoon, he’d taken care of the two creaking top stairs and the loose board outside her bedroom door. Mia had been down in the kitchen studying a Cajun cookbook as if it held the answers to the universe. She looked damned adorable in dark-framed reading glasses.
He could’ve driven a tank past her and she wouldn’t have glanced up to ask him where he was going. The woman had a laser-intense focus. She was like that with sex as well. Totally immersed, totally focused. Having that single-minded intensity directed at him had been an incredible turn-on.
If this were a normal world, he’d be looking forward to another cooking demonstration soon. But normal it wasn’t. He had a job to do. And he was here to fulfill his contract and move on. She’d be just one more household accident statistic.
So, no more sex with the mark, he decided resolutely as he reached the top step—the one that had creaked so loudly that afternoon—and set his weight down carefully, no sound. Moonlight streamed through the window at the end of the long corridor, making a white runner of light down the long hallway.
The woman turned him on at a level he’d never experienced before, which made her far too distracting, when he, too, had to be completely focused. Sex didn’t usually muddy the waters, but in this case . . . yeah, it did. Big-time. It muddied already opaque waters. His dick had to stay in his pants.
Decision made.
He still wanted to ascertain the verisimilitude of his report so he could do his job, receive the balance of his payment, and disappear.
It was a sound decision, and one he’d stick with.
In the meantime, the more time he spent with her, the fucking less he knew her. Seeing was not believing. Hell, Cruz Barcelona was an affable, easygoing guy. It was a mask. A persona he donned like an old coat.
Amelia Wellington-Wentworth’s coat was just a hell of a lot prettier.
He needed her computer.
No more sex.
For the next few days, he’d eat her culinary efforts, not fuck her, and find her damned cyber secrets.
The gumbo-style chicken creole she’d fixed for dinner hadn’t been bad. She’d primly informed him, blue eyes alight with satisfaction, that his shock and amazement was damned rude. All it took to produce a decent meal was to read the recipe and follow directions. It was sort of like chemistry, and not brain surgery.
She’d been a lot more talkative at lunch in the local coffee shop than she’d been alone with him in her kitchen over dinner. There was something a lot more intimate with just the sounds of their cutlery on the plates, and darkness encroaching against the windows, than sitting in a bright diner with curious eavesdropping locals.
It was pretty damned remarkable to Cruz that they could have so much to talk about when neither was who they pretended to be. Their alter egos liked each other. Wasn’t that a fucking kick in the head.
Unprecedented.
Propinquity, that was all it was.
Lust, more like it. He wanted to strip her bare and take her on the kitchen counter again. Or on top of that virginal white comforter, wrists bound to the metal headboard.
A decision had been made. He had four days. He’d never taken more than twenty-four hours to fulfill a contract since he began this business fifteen years ago. His gut yelled one thing, but thus far he’d seen nothing to repudiate what his research made no bones about. Just because she was a good lay didn’t mean she was a good person. Just because she amused him with her intensity as she tried to drive that big-ass truck, or had self-deprecating humor, it didn’t mean she wasn’t responsible for the deaths and exploitation of thousands of children a world away.
She could not blame those deplorable conditions on ignorance. She’d personally visited those factories several times in the past year alone. In fact, she’d been to Blush’s manufacturing plant in Guangzhou just three months before she disappeared from public view.
Cruz fucking knew she was guilty as hell. Knew it. And yet—God damn it. He couldn’t put his finger on what the hell wasn’t right with her, the situation, some damn thing. And what the hell did it matter, really? Hundreds of kids in her care were dead. Directly due to her greed. It couldn’t be any clearer than that.
He wanted this over. One way or the other. The woman was preventing his retirement. Holding the promise of long stretches of sugary beaches and swaying palm trees hostage with those big blue eyes, firm ass, and quirky sense of humor.
And the remote possibility that she wasn’t anything like the woman he’d researched before accepting the hit.
He’d searched upstairs while she’d been downstairs, then, when he returned to the kitchen, watched her typing away on the very computer for which he’d been looking. She’d closed it and shoved the laptop aside to bake a batch of cookies, then to prep dinner. Cruz had circled that damned computer all afternoon. But she hadn’t left it on the table. When she went upstairs, she’d taken it with her. The middle of the night was his only chance to retrieve it.
The house still smelled of garlic, onions, tomatoes, and sweat-inducing spices as he made his barefooted way into her bedroom. The scent of tuberoses, as faint as it was, assaulted his senses the moment Cruz stepped through the door, making him instantly hard.
He could hear her soft, even breathing as he padded closer to the moonlit island of her bed. Mia was a small, curled-up ball beneath the sheet, just her dark head exposed, facing away from him.
There weren’t a lot of places to hide a laptop, and he did a visual scan of the large room. Bed. Two bedside tables indicating she liked symmetry, two easy chairs in the far corner, a futuristic standing lamp and a small table. A couple of doors. Bathroom. Closet.
Since she had no reason to hide her computer, Cruz slid open the top drawer of her bedside table. He’d seen the fraternity house–size box of condoms there earlier and had choked back a laugh seeing them in three sizes. She was expecting to have a lot of sex, with several different partners.
He liked sex, so why shouldn’t she? And why the fuck did the thought of her having it with a whole fucking platoon of partners piss him off?
He didn’t have the goddamned time for all this mental masturbation. The computer was in neit
her of the drawers in the bedside tables. He headed for the bathroom. Here he needed the light. Shutting the door, he ran the small Maglite over every logical surface. No computer. Exiting the bathroom, he hit the closet. By today’s standards it was tiny, but she didn’t have much in the way of clothes. Jeans, T-shirts. He checked her underwear drawer again. He’d had a boner after searching it earlier that day. Skimpy, sexy, gossamer thin. Wearing this underwear would still leave her practically naked.
No sign of the damned computer, but he commandeered some interesting toys on his way out. He moved silently across the room to stare down at her for a moment. Half her features were limned by stark white moonlight now, the other half dark and shadowed, hidden, secret.
She was a study in black and white.
He had very few rules in his life: Meet a client face-to-face. Hit only those who absolutely deserved to die. Never get emotionally involved with someone he’d been paid to kill. Hell. Never get emotionally involved. Period.
He liked his privacy. In every aspect of his life. He preferred observation to participation.
He wasn’t involved with Mia Hayward–slash–Amelia Wentworth, but everything about her intrigued him on a purely physical level. She looked sweetly innocent and vulnerable as she slept, nothing like the quick-witted smart-ass she was when she was awake and on the ball. This woman wasn’t vulnerable. She was confident, self-sufficient, and so fucking sexy that she made his dick salute just watching her sleep.
Why was she hiding in this backwater? What was going on in her life that someone was paying almost a million bucks to have her forever silenced?
He knew why he’d taken the job. The business in China. She was the woman who imprisoned children in deplorable working and living conditions a world away, where no one could see how she made those obscene profits for the Blush company.
But was that all she was? Wasn’t she also the personality she showed to the world? The woman whose personal foundation donated millions to various charities every year, who’d built a breast cancer wing at a San Francisco hospital? All PR?
Either, either, or.
One hundred percent trouble.
He looked at the elegant line of her slender back, her skin milky pale in the moonlight. Her choppy hair tumbled around her head, parting erotically on her neck. Cruz wanted to put his mouth there, wanted to slide his hand over her narrow shoulders and fill his hands with her breasts, then take her from behind.
He wanted to fuck her without seeing her eyes. Without imprinting her features onto his synapses.
He did not want to have to touch her. This was where a sniper had the advantage. A shooter didn’t have to touch soft, supple skin or smell warm female flesh. He wouldn’t feel the tickle of her hair, or have the overwhelming urge to bury his face in fragrant curve of her neck.
Knee on the bed, he leaned over her, then splayed his open hand on her slender throat. Her skin, warm, silky-smooth, and fragrant with the scent of sun-drenched tuberoses, filled his brain and shot directly to his already erect dick.
The faint throb of her pulse beneath his thumb was tempting as hell.
It would be so easy to kill her now, and fucking well be done with it.
Too bad strangulation wasn’t his thing.
• • •
Eyes closed, Mia tried to remain motionless, but she couldn’t prevent the shiver, a tiny heated flicker of reaction to his touch. Cruz’s fingers felt cool on her skin, but that wasn’t why she trembled as if chilled. She’d been aroused, anticipating, waiting for what felt like hours for him to come to her bed.
When she’d heard him come into the house, she waited for him to come upstairs. Just knowing he was in the house aroused her. Breathless, she’d anticipated the creak of the top step.
When that sound hadn’t come, she’d fallen back to sleep. Waking to find his hand at her throat, the sheet covering her pulled taut by the knee he’d placed by her hip as he loomed over, didn’t scare her. Although, with some weirdo trying to kill her in San Francisco, it probably should. But that life seemed far away and insubstantial, when everything about Cruz was in Technicolor and so alive even her hair follicles tuned in to him.
Without turning her head, she whispered, “Are you going to strangle me, or make love to me?”
“ ‘Autoerotic asphyxia’ not on your to-do list?” Voice low and husky, he nudged up her chin with his thumb while circling her throat with his fingers. A shudder went through her. His breath felt warm against her temple. He smelled of fresh air, virile male, and soap.
The threat of unnamed danger hung in the air like a seductive fog. At his words, a faint smidge of alarm seeped in. Mia’s mouth went dry. “Not on any list I’ve ever made, and I’m pretty positive I’d rather not.”
When she rolled over to face him, his hand stayed against her throat. He looked large looming over her, watching her, dressed like a burglar all in black.
Even though she could clearly see his features in the white glow of moonlight flooding the bed, a frisson of fear shot through her. His eyes glinted like those of a nocturnal animal spotting its prey, and those eyes were focused on her.
“Definitely not,” she told him firmly.
“The carotid arteries—here and here—carry oxygen-rich blood to your brain.”
That oxygen-rich blood surged pleasurably through her veins, as he exerted a little more pressure to the rapid pulse lying just beneath her skin. She prickled all over as he said, low, his voice thick and suggestive, “When they’re compressed—like this. . . .” His fingers pressed a little harder than was comfortable, and her heartbeat kicked up several uncomfortable notches. “The sudden lack of oxygen to the brain, and the accumulation of carbon monoxide increases feelings of pleasure. . . .”
Mia wrapped her fingers around his wrist and tried to push his hand away. “Don’t. I can’t focus when I imagine I’m going to be strangled to death.”
“Strangled to intense climax.”
Her fingers tightened. She dug her short nails into his skin. Hard. “My safe word is Fucking get your hands off my throat, Barcelona.” She used the low voice Amelia Wellington-Wentworth had perfected for boardroom business. The Don’t fuck with me, or I’ll fuck you over voice.
He lifted his hand.
“My cousin died playing that game. It freaks me out.” She could’ve had a cousin who played the game. It certainly freaked her out.
“How about this?” His obsidian eyes gleamed as he snapped one mink-lined handcuff around her right wrist and, before she could react, the other around her left wrist. Then attached both to a swirl in the wrought-iron headboard. “Better?”
Better was relative at this point. Where the hell had those come from? She was pretty sure not from his back pocket, since the black pants molded so closely to the curve of his ass. He was like a magician whipping out the cuffs. She hadn’t seen that coming. Beneath the silky mink, the cuff felt hard and locked with a very final metallic clink.
Mia licked her dry lips. “I’ve never tried them, but I’m game.” She had a pair just like them in her underwear drawer in her closet. She’d bought them online weeks ago, not having any idea when, if ever, she’d use them, but the titillation of thinking about using them had been fun.
Number twenty-three on her list.
Had he been going through her underwear? While that should have alarmed her, instead it confirmed that Cruz wasn’t as immune to her as he liked to pretend. Perhaps he was thinking about her all the time, just like she was thinking about him.
He was a man of many talents
His lips twitched before he bent down to run his open mouth down her throat. “Do you want to pick another safe word?” he asked against her ear, voice amused. “Fucking get your hands off me is a bit long.”
“How about prick?”
“That’ll work.” Smile wicked, he straightened and pulled his T-shirt over his head. She’d had sex with him multiple times, but she’d never seen him naked. Mia’s heartbeat did a trip
le axel, and her mouth went dry.
Big, broad-shouldered, tanned, and with a sexy wedge of dark silky hair arrowing down to disappear into the waistband of his jeans, he was like something out of her deepest sexual fantasies.
Coiled power vibrated through him as he stood absolutely still. She wanted to stroke her fingers down those rock-hard abs, to free what pressed and pulsed behind the zipper of his jeans. His arms looked powerful, strong tendons snaked and twisted beneath his skin, bleached colorless in the moonlight.
Eyes black, mouth a thin line, he said, “Let’s see what you have to offer me tonight.” He tossed the sheet aside to get a full-length view.
The negligee she’d bought from a racy online catalogue was an absolutely plain tube. No ruffles, no embellishments. Just a simple, stretchy, sheer black sleeveless column clinging to every curve and valley, from throat to ankle.
Completely covered, her body was also completely exposed.
His gaze raked her from head to toe, and his smile turned superior and knowing. “Jesus. Better than naked. You expected me.”
“You or a close facsimile,” Mia teased, feeling giddy and breathless, and he hadn’t touched her yet. “The UPS guy stops work at seven. I got bored waiting.”
“I’m here to alleviate that boredom,” he assured her softly, still damn well not touching her. “How would you like it?”
The tight buds of her nipples were painfully hard, and she was already wet anticipating his touch. “There’s a menu?”
“Missionary-style? You on the bottom? Or me on the bottom?”
“Been there, done that.” She shifted restlessly, arms drawn above her head by the cuffs. “What else you got?”
“I can eat you until you scream and pass out with pleasure.”
“Scream and pass out?” She raised both eyebrows, practically panting with lust. “That sounds a bit braggy, but I’m willing to give that a try. Although I’d prefer to use my mouth on you.”
“You like to be in control.”
“Who doesn’t?”
She saw the gleam of mocking triumph glimmer in his eyes as he murmured thickly, “You’re not in control tonight, Mia mine.”
