by Cherry Adair
There was a laundry list of charges against Miles Basson and Candice Wentworth, her stepmother.
“You deserved everything we dished out and then some,” Miles shouted, tugging at his cuffed wrists. One of the plainclothes detectives put a restraining hand on his shoulder.
Mia tugged down her short red jacket over her bold red sheath as she rose from her chair to circumvent the long conference table. She took long, even strides on her favorite bone-colored Louboutins to stand in front of the man who wanted her dead. She slapped him hard across the face. “You were more than a trusted employee to me and my family.” She kept her voice calm, her breathing steady. “My father respected you. Entrusted his family with you. He thought of you like a brother. I feel nothing but disgust for you. Not for what you did to me, but what you did to my father and everyone at Blush.”
“You’ll regret turning me in to the police, you self-entitled, fucking bitch.” His already florid face went dark red. “Your father’s rolling in his grave, knowing what you’ve done to me.”
My father would’ve emasculated you first, then killed you slowly with his bare hands if he’d ever discovered the man he trusted was sleeping with his wife, and paid to have his only child killed. “I haven’t even started, Miles.” Amelia gave him a cool look, then added, “Not yet. And when we find Candice—which we eventually will—she’ll be caged like the animal she is, too.”
Where in the hell was her stepmother? The fly in the ointment was that no one had seen Candice. The police had sent out an APB. Miles, her lover for freaking years, according to Black Raven’s investigators, claimed he had no idea where she was.
“If we hear from her,” she told the lead detective, who had Miles by the upper arm and was shoving him toward the door, “we’ll let you know immediate—”
“Mia.”
At the raw sound, Mia turned toward the door, knowing who it was before she saw him. She would always know his smooth, deep voice. It was the same voice that haunted her dreams and left her longing every night. It was the voice now that had her heart racing.
Cruz. He stood in the open doorway, his hand on the doorknob. White-faced, wild-eyed, white shirt rolled up on his muscular forearms, covered in . . . oh my God. It looked like blood. Jesus. Was that his blood? He stared at her as if he was seeing a ghost, his skin two shades paler than it should have been, his eyes haunted.
“Dear God—” Shoving her way between handcuffed Miles and one of the detectives, she ran to Cruz’s side and slid a supportive arm around his waist. His features were so drawn, so pale, she wedged her shoulder into his armpit to keep him upright in case he collapsed.
“Where are you hurt?” she demanded, running a frantic hand over the wet bloodstains on his shirtfront. “Cruz, where are you hurt?”
If he’d been shot or otherwise seriously injured, he would have needed a hospital. Anything else could be treated by Blush’s top-notch staff clinic on the fifth floor. But she didn’t know how serious it was.
“Todd! Call an ambulance! Steph, get the nurse up here right now. Everyone else, out!”
Tightening her arm around Cruz’s waist, Mia tried to steer him over to the closest chair. Had he been in a car accident?
“Were you shot?” She met the eyes of the lead detective. There’d been no attempts on her life since she’d returned, but that didn’t mean the threat wasn’t still out there. His face was a hard, expressionless mask. His feet seemed planted where he stood. “Not me. I’m not injured. A woman—” He shuddered, tightening his arms around her like steel bands.
The detective hung up his cell phone. “I believe your stepmother was shot outside the building. They have the perp in custody. I’ll be in touch.” He strode from the room.
“Come and sit down,” she told Cruz gently.
Oblivious to everyone around them, Cruz cupped her face, seemingly drinking in her features with his eyes as he whispered in a thick, agonized voice, “I thought it was you, Mia. I thought you were dead.”
She turned into him, fitting herself against him. “I’m fi—”
He made a wild sound in the back of his throat, his chest vibrating against her breasts as his mouth cut off her words.
A lie. She might not be bloody, but Mia was far from fine. Missing him had left a hole in her heart impossible to fill with work, playing detective, or wrestling her company back from the bad guys.
Vaguely she heard Todd say with his usual calm, authority, “Everybody out. Come on, move it, people.”
Cruz lifted his head; his dark eyes glittered as he looked at her mouth. “Where?”
“Upstairs.” Not releasing her hold on him, she angled them toward the door. “This way.”
Arms wrapped around each other, she led him from the conference room. Todd stood near the elevator. Behind him were at least two dozen titillated employees watching them avidly.
Todd put a hand on Mia’s arm as they passed. “Still need the medics?”
She gave Cruz an inquiring look. He shook his head. “I told you, I wasn’t hurt. Is this Todd?” At Mia’s nod, and without waiting for an introduction or making small talk, he said grimly, “I think Mia’s—Amelia’s—stepmother is splattered down on Market Street. She was wearing a prosthetic to make her look—” He shuddered. “You might want to have your cop friends check it out.”
“They are,” Todd told him, his eyes slewing to Amelia. “Why do you look as though you feel sorry for the conniving bitch?” He pitched his voice for their ears only. “She hired the hit men, so in the end she paid for her own death. She brought it on herself.”
“I know. But still—poor Candice. Not that I wish death and splattering on anyone,” Mia said grimly, her arm tightening around Cruz’s waist. “What a damn irony that impersonating me again is what got her killed. That’s incredibly sick and sad at the same time.”
“It brings closure,” Todd pointed out.
Cruz’s arm locked around her. “There isn’t closure with everything.” He looked at her. “Yet.” He kissed her on top of her head and nudged her toward the door. Her assistant ran over and pressed the button to open the doors on the private elevator. The doors slid open silently, revealing plush carpet, soft lighting, and mirrored walls. With a sappy smile, Stephanie dashed out of the way as they stepped into the car. Mia slapped her hand on the touch keypad and the doors slid closed.
Cruz walked her backward, shoved her against the mirrored back wall. “You, Mia mine, are not like anyone I’ve ever met and I won’t lose you again.” He kissed her as the elevator slowly rose. His kiss was hard, starving, desperate. The sensual, mint-flavored invasion detonated an explosion of lust and intense longing inside her. She’d missed this—missed him.
Looming over her, his face shadowy, he kissed her again.
Panting, Mia took each side of his bloody shirtfront and ripped. Ripping damp fabric was no easy task, but she was strongly motivated. Buttons popped, some pinging on the wall as she bunched what was still buttoned and drew it up the ridges of his belly.
Cruz yanked off the short jacket, then found the long decorative gold zipper running down the back of the red sheath and peeled it over her shoulders.
The dress dropped to pool around her feet.
His eyes flared as he looked down at the sheer wisp of red fabric covering her breasts. Nothing was hidden. Her nipples, hard and pink, jutted out, eager for his touch. His lips twitched with amusement. “This is how you dress under your conservative business clothes?”
“I was thinking about you when I dressed this morning. I’ve dressed for you every day since I saw you at the house.” Forever ago. Tangling her fingers in his hair, Mia drew his mouth back to hers as he glided his hand beneath the gossamer-thin fabric of her demi-bra. The scorching contact of his hand on her breast made her gasp. Her nipples, painfully hard, welcomed the rough friction and rasp of his callused fingers.
Cruz lifted his head, leaving just enough space between their mouths to speak. His voice was raw and fi
lled with so much anguish, it brought stinging tears to Mia’s eyes. “I saw the world without you, and it was a grim, bleak fucking place I didn’t want to inhabit.”
Taking his hand, she pressed it between her breasts, over her rapidly beating heart. “I’m here. Very much alive.”
His back was reflected in the opposite mirror, his muscles flexing like polished, satiny copper over steel. The mirror felt cold on her practically bare ass. His skin burned hot inches from hers. Skimming her hand between them, she unerringly slipped the button at the top of his zipper free. His penis was a hard ridge behind the denim—not easy to liberate, but not impossible. Mia managed one-handed to tug his jeans partway down his thighs. No underwear for Cruz. “Thank you—this makes it so much easier.” She curled her fingers around the satiny length of his penis.
“I was thinking of you when I dressed this morning.” He arched his back as she stroked her thumb over the damp tip. The veins under the satin pulsed and throbbed, which in turn made her even wetter.
Mia saw herself in the mirror behind him. The twin scraps of sheer red enhanced rather than hid what she had for him.
He made a leisurely trip from her breast down her midriff, making her dizzy and her legs feel as insubstantial as jelly.
“We’re not making any stops, are we?”
“Do you really care?”
“Nope. Don’t give a flying fuck if your entire company watches us right now.”
It terrified her that she didn’t either. “Then it’s a good thing this will take us directly to the apartment.” In about three seconds . . .
She wrapped her legs around his waist, digging her six-inch Louboutin heels into the taut curve of his flexing ass. His penis jumped and twitched in the firm grip of her fingers.
Filling his hands with her butt cheeks, he lifted her completely off her feet as the doors slid soundlessly open. Mia crossed her ankles in the small of his back as he stepped directly into her living room, flooded with sunlight.
“Nice.” He dismissed the thirty-million-dollar view of the San Francisco skyline. The pale gray-blue walls, the sleek Ultrasuede furniture of the same color, the tasteful artwork. All of which melted into the vast sky seen through towering ceiling-to-floor, wall-to-wall windows.
Smiling, Mia dragged her mouth off the pulse she was exploring at the base of his throat to mumble, “Bedroom’s that way.” Then, after a quick tilt of her chin, went back to kissing his throat.
The next thing she knew, she was falling through space as Cruz followed her down onto the plush cushions of one of the deep sofas overlooking the view.
He grinned down at her. It was the first genuine smile she’d seen from him. Her heart did cartwheels as he brushed a strand of hair off her cheek. “This,” he said, nibbling a path from her ear to her mouth, “will do nicely, Mia mine.”
Chapter Twenty-one
No mas.” Mia flung both arms out in surrender. “That was amazing.” The words came out in short, choppy bursts, and her chest heaved as she struggled to breathe. “If we live through the next few minutes, let’s do it again. Exactly like that.”
Cruz chuckled, too spent to respond. He took almost as much pleasure in holding her warm, satiated body as he did in the act itself. Almost. He loved the hot comfort of skin against skin. The feel of her erratic breath against his damp throat, and the clutch of her vaginal walls holding him deep inside her. He was still partially erect, and the pulse of her muscles made him hard, again, in a minute.
Glued together by sweat, they lay together. He nuzzled her damp throat and laid a string of kisses across her shoulder, then abruptly twisted his body to lever Mia up and over. Her legs settled between his, her soft breasts plumped on his chest. The smell of her, hot come and tuberoses, was indelibly stamped into his synapses. Her unique fragrance was as heady as if he’d drunk too much scotch. He had the same altered perceptions and euphoria as he imagined a drunk must feel. Although he’d never abdicated that much control in his life.
She rested her chin on her double fists as he smoothed aside sweat-damp strands of hair sticking to her cheek. “I’m drunk on you, you know that?” He loved her like this. Soft, satiated with sex, intensely focused. The hand on her head trailed a light touch down her damp back. “Every damn thing about you is intoxicating. Heady. Addicting.”
“It’s rarely flattering to a woman to be bare-ass naked in direct sunlight. You, on the other hand, look like a bronze god. It’s incredibly unfair.”
She was absolute perfection. Her skin creamy and fine-grained, the three freckles on her collarbone beauty marks he adored. “I can see why,” he teased. “Want to go into the bedroom and draw the drapes and hide under the covers?”
She punched him not so lightly in his rib cage, and he took her smaller hand, going palm to palm as he threaded his fingers through hers. Then stared for a moment at their clasped hands. “It amazes me how capable this small hand is.”
“It’s not my hand that’s capable, Barcelona, it’s my brain.”
“Now, see? That does exceptionally well in direct sunlight.” With an adorable scowl, she thumped his chest with her fist. In direct sunlight her eyes were sapphire blue, as translucent as the waters off Fernando de Noronha. “We can’t lie here all day, much as I’d like to. We have things to do and places to go. Give me the recap, short and sweet.”
“First: What things? What places?”
“We have to make love again—several times. And I heard mention of a press conference later? I presume you’ll want to shower and change and mess with your hair and makeup?”
“I’m the CEO of a billion-dollar cosmetics company and you think I’m ‘messing’ with my hair and makeup? I’m marketing my brand.” She smiled.
“And you do it damn well. But you know you’re just gilding the lily, don’t you?”
“I’m in the business of gilding.”
“Times a-wasting, woman,” he told her sternly. She shifted her legs and her hips so that his hard dick was centered against the wet, swollen, pink folds of her pussy. His dick was extremely happy, and did a little dance against her. He gave her a warning frown. “That doesn’t help speed things up, you know.” Mia gave him a wide-eyed, innocent look, spreading her legs a little wider, her knees digging into the sofa cushions on either side of his hips. “Don’t taunt me. We’re not doing a thing until you finish your story. Keeping in mind it should be as brief— Damn it, Mia!” She wasn’t allowing his eagerly reaching dick entry, but she rubbed her wetness against him, making his brain turn to oatmeal, and his intentions float like a balloon filled with helium. “Brief as possible. Just. Hit—holy crap—the high points.”
“First, I spoke to Daisy yesterday.” Mia dropped a kiss on his nipple, absently running light fingers through the hair on his chest, which made his cock harder and his balls tighten in anticipation. “She’s still in a lot of pain, but promised she’s doing much better. When I offered her my house on Lake Como, she told me when she’s well enough, you’re sending her to the South of France?”
“I have an old farmhouse in Montauban. Took Charlie to see her last night,” he told her, cupping the flexing mounds of her ass to keep her still. “She was worrying about—life. I gave her options.”
He captured Mia’s roaming fingers. Not because he didn’t enjoy being petted by her, but because the sooner she gave him the recap, the sooner he could get back to what he’d come here for. “Now give me the abbreviated version of current events so we can get back to what’s important without interruption.”
“I have a press conference at five.”
He glanced at his watch. “Three hours. All the more reason to keep things short. Give me the high points.”
“My security guy and my father’s third wife conspired to take over Blush before they even heard about my secret buyout. Even with the shares of some of the willing board members, they didn’t have enough. They needed sixty percent of shareholders to agree to take over the company. Less than eighteen percent bough
t into the changeover. So they couldn’t do it that way. They had money, but not the stock. So they got together and formed the black pool. The investment company didn’t care who bought whom out, just that they’d get their slice of the pie.”
“Who was in the pool?” Just as she’d vowed to do back in Bayou Cheniere, he’d make damn sure that every one of them was caught and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
“Basson, Candice, and several board members. They wanted me out when outside auditors started looking into their business and personal expenses when I started the LBO. They found discrepancies, which were red-flagged all over the place. Personal travel, private jets, real estate—they were bleeding Blush dry. And yet they nickel-and-dimed every expenditure I wanted to make for my foundation. Hypocritical bastards.
“Even with Candice’s and Miles’s shares, they realized that no matter what they did, I’d outbid them and wouldn’t go away. They formed the secret black pool and hired hit men to take me out before I could sign the papers in the event they didn’t win Blush via that route. They thought they had all the bases covered. They, too, are being prosecuted for conspiracy on various counts.”
“You’re killing me here, woman.” Drawing her knees up beside his hips, she braced her open hands on his chest. Cruz found it damn hard to suck in air. Her small breasts hung over him like mounds of whipped cream with cherries on top. “Were the board members also part of the China deal?”
“No. China was all Miles and Candice. She fooled everyone with that disguise. Including the last guy, whom she apparently hired in a skid row bar and showed my photograph to. Too bad she came to the office pretending to be me so she could do a press conference on the street outside to preempt anything I had planned. Black Raven is still uncovering more—something I’d like you to be doing to me right about now.”
When he didn’t respond she gave an exasperated sigh and kept her body still, but she was over him, caging him with her arms and legs and hot little snatch that begged to be fucked until neither of them could walk.
