by Leslie Kelly
“What about taste? Do you explore with your mouth?” He lifted his finger and brushed it across her full lower lip, tracing the soft skin in an intimate caress.
She licked at his skin, then bit the tip of his finger with her sharp white teeth. The contact was as exciting as it was unexpected. Jade was a little wild. He’d known that before they met. Now that wildness appeared to be driving her right back into his arms. And he didn’t know if he’d be strong enough to step away this time.
“We done talking about the weather?” she asked, her whisper not taunting, not too assured, but full of a kind of hunger he hadn’t heard in her voice before.
As if she, too, had recognized that, whatever had brought them both out here before, now there was nothing but pure, physical attraction.
He was as completely unable to resist it as any drowning man could resist grabbing on to a life ring. He needed her. To keep breathing. To keep surviving. To keep living.
So he took what she offered. He pulled her close, held her tight and lost himself in another deep kiss.
Whatever happened was going to happen, there was no escaping it anymore. Logic and tight control had evaporated under a mindless want and wild excitement he’d never experienced with anyone before.
He should be furious…with himself. But he had to acknowledge the truth. He planned to enjoy every blasted moment of it.
5
NOW, JADE. NOW.
It was time to act, to go ahead with her plan. If she didn’t act now, she might lose all sense of purpose and forget that this wasn’t a real seduction, a real interlude in a secret garden.
Besides, it was nearing midnight. Not pumpkin time. But toasting time. “Do you like to play sweet, wicked games, Ryan?” she asked when they drew apart for air.
He pressed his mouth to her neck, nibbling her pulse point. “Games? Fantasy games?”
She couldn’t hold back a moan as his kiss grew hotter, deeper, and her mind filled with a dark fantasy of seductive vampires in shadowy Southern gardens.
“Yes,” she finally replied, shifting on the bench so they were face-to-face. Her legs splayed, and the tight dress pushed higher up her thighs. She lifted them over his legs and slid closer, driving them both to the brink of pure sexual surrender.
“Wicked, naughty games. Fantasies. I’ve been having them ever since I saw you inside.”
True. He just didn’t have to know some of those fantasies included him being strung up by his private parts.
Speaking of private parts…his were definitely rising to the occasion. She felt his heat, his thickness, against her leg, and nearly shuddered. Her revenge plan did not include actually getting to sample that impressive bulge of his in any way.
More’s the pity.
“Tell me your fantasy, Jade. Are you a Southern belle stealing away to meet a forbidden lover?”
His whisper was husky, telling her he was just as affected by what was happening as she.
“Do you want me to be a dark stranger you stumble across in the dark? That isn’t very far from the truth.”
“No.” A vampire, a vampire, she mentally answered, but she couldn’t let the words escape her lips. Vampires weren’t known to get naked in the moonlight.
“Tell me,” he ordered. He lifted his mouth and brushed his lips against hers. She understood his tactic. He was taunting her, withholding more of those delightful kisses, nips and tastes until she admitted what she was thinking.
Good thing she’d thought this out in advance or she’d admit what she was really thinking—pulling her dress high enough to reveal her nakedness underneath, then unzipping his clothes and rubbing against all his hot skin until she came right on his lap. Then taking him for the ride of his life.
Not the plan, Jade. He’s the one who’s got to get caught and humiliated, not both of you.
Damn.
“You’ll make my fantasy come true?”
He nodded, nipping at her lips, rubbing the tips of his fingers delicately along the neckline of her dress.
The contact electrified her and shot the tension up another notch. “I picture you naked in the moonlight.”
“Not much of a fantasy,” he replied as his fingers dipped lower, making incredible contact with her breast, but pulling away so quickly it nearly pained her instead of pleasuring her.
“There’s more,” she whispered, as they kissed again and again and she lowered her hand down his body.
She toyed with the buttons of his dress shirt, slipping them out, one by one. When she reached the waistband of his pants, she undid his belt and tugged the shirt free.
“Oh, God,” he whispered as she ran her hand up his naked stomach and dug into those impossibly broad shoulders.
Focus. Focus, Jade, she told herself as he began to work the same magic. His hands were expert, smoothing here, pressing harder there, until he had her ready to go out of her mind with the need for a more intimate touch. He finally kissed her deeply again as he tugged the strap of her dress down and moved his hand to her breast.
She couldn’t prevent a tiny cry from escaping her lips. “Oh, Ryan…”
He pulled away to look at her, then lowered his mouth to her breast. The touch of his fingers on her nipple had her writhing.
If this was going to happen, it had to happen immediately, or she was going to lose her resolve and have wild sex with a stranger in Mamie Brandywine’s garden.
“Strip for me,” she whispered.
He raised his head and looked at her, a half smile on his lips. “What?”
She looked at his body, not feigning a pure feminine appreciation for the long ridges of muscle and perfectly toned skin. “I want to watch you take off your clothes. I want you to reveal every inch of your body to me, with no touching. The anticipation is going to drive me out of my mind.”
He began to laugh and tried to kiss her again. She put her hands over his lips. “I mean it, Ryan. I have this…this visual thing. I have extraordinary night vision and all my life I’ve been a creature of the night. I need to fill my eyes with you.”
And she did. She longed to. Especially knowing that’s all she could ever have.
“Because then when I fill my body with you,” she continued, letting him hear her shaking arousal, “the pleasure will be so intense I don’t know if I’ll survive it.”
He didn’t respond for a moment. Then, without another word, he stood up and backed away from the bench. She wondered if she’d pushed too far, overplayed her hand.
When he dropped his white dress shirt off his shoulders, she knew she hadn’t.
“Oh, my goodness,” she whispered, not faking the response to seeing his thick arms, impossibly broad shoulders and hard, massive chest. “You hid so much beneath your suit.”
He smiled. “You hide a lot behind your brown eyes.”
“So we’re even,” she said on a breath, waiting for him to continue.
He reached for his waistband. But, heaven help her, Jade wasn’t ready for that. She didn’t know if she’d be able to withstand full-frontal without jumping on the man. Or at least tasting him a bit.
She shook her head, thrusting the sensual image from her mind, and pointed to his feet. His answering laugh said he knew what she wanted. “Anticipation, right?”
She nodded.
He took off his shoes and his socks, standing in bare feet and trousers just inches away, right in front of the gurgling fountain.
Reaching for his waist, he paused before unzipping. “Fair’s fair, though. I don’t think I got much of a glimpse of you.”
She’d expected this. Giving him a mysterious smile, she reached for the other strap of her dress and pushed it down. Then, around her back, undoing the zipper just low enough to make the dress loosen across her breasts.
But before she let the black fabric drop away, she whispered, “I like to see, but I’m a little shy about being seen.”
A snort of disbelief was his only answer.
“All right,” she
admitted. “Not shy…I like being mysterious.” She showed him what she meant by drawing her red scarf around her shoulders and letting the two ends drape down her front. Then, and only then, did she allow the front of her dress to drop.
He watched, his expression hungry, as she moved the silky scarf across her taut nipples, almost cooing at the sensation.
“You’re right,” he whispered, wonder and surprise in his voice. “Anticipation is a wonderful thing.”
She didn’t know whether to be glad or disappointed that he hadn’t insisted she remove the scarf. A big part of her—actually, two smaller, incredibly sensitive parts of her—were dying for his full attention. His eyes, his hands, his mouth. She wanted them all on her breasts.
Not in the plan.
“Now, Ryan?” she asked, not having to fake her sudden frenzy. She had to get this over with. It was nearly midnight. She could already see shadows of people moving into the solarium, where they’d gather to fill their champagne glasses for the toast.
He reached for his pants. Unzipped. Pushed them down. Jade watched through half-lowered lashes, not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed that he was wearing boxers underneath. Then it was time to move. She couldn’t wait here, couldn’t possibly watch him go one more step…couldn’t get an eyeful of what she was leaving behind.
This was close enough.
She rose to her feet and approached him, still running the scarf across her nipples, keeping his attention firmly focused there.
“You done anticipating?” he asked.
“I have to touch you.”
And she did. She stroked his shoulders, his stomach, all the while pushing him back, closer to the fountain. “Do you feel the spray against you?”
He nodded, leaning down to nip her neck, trying to nudge the scarf away from her breasts.
“It’s so cool, isn’t it?” she whispered. “Feels good against your hot skin.”
Then she stopped speaking and simply let her body take over. She pressed against him, rubbing the silk between them with perfectly delicious friction. His groan told her how much he liked it.
It was so easy to rise on tiptoe, using a stone step below the fountain to bring her breasts closer to his mouth. She drew the scarf away slowly, inch by inch. Sliding it up over his head, she had it behind his back within a brief moment.
He didn’t even notice. He was completely focused on her bared breasts. Focused on licking them, tasting them, drawing a nipple into his mouth with a suction so strong, so pleasurable it almost pained her.
“Just your mouth,” she ordered when he tried to move his hands up to cup her.
He laughed against her chest, letting her capture his hands in her own, the scarf still sliding behind him.
Right around the back of one of the fountain cherubs. Through a loop over its wing. Then two quick twists around Ryan’s hands and she was done.
“Jade?” He sounded only slightly alarmed.
“Don’t you love this? Doesn’t the silk feel amazing?” she replied, a little lost herself as he continued to lick her breasts.
Then she saw the lawn grow brighter, illuminated with the first of the floodlights, and knew it was time.
“Jade, I think someone’s coming outside.”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t answer, she was suddenly so torn over what she was doing.
She wanted him, wanted him so badly. And what she was about to do would put him forever out of her reach.
Amazing sex with a fabulous stranger.
Or avenging her little sister.
As always in her life, family—loyalty to the other Dupré women—won out.
Without another word, she pulled away, bent down and yanked at his boxers. She had to pull them away from his body to get them over the massive erection, but Jade wasn’t a strong enough woman to look. She kept her eyes firmly shut until the cotton hit the ground. Then she pulled up her dress.
And ran.
HE WAS GOING TO KILL her. Wrap his hands around her pretty pale throat and wring her conniving neck.
Ryan had never been so completely…bested by anyone.
Thankfully, her scheme to embarrass the hell out of him hadn’t been a complete success. Yes, he’d been caught naked and alone, aroused, exposed and tied to a frigging statue.
But he hadn’t been spotted by the entire crowd, as Jade had obviously hoped.
No, thankfully the only people who’d gotten the full view of him were Mamie Brandywine, owner of the inn, and Tally Jackson. The two women had stood framed in the doorway of the house, staring at him from across the yard. Their mouths had dropped.
So had their eyes. Down—straight down.
“Shit.” The thought still made him cringe hours later in his bed.
Luckily, the two women had immediately backed into the house, telling the crowd some nonsense story about a sudden burst of rain falling on the lawn. So Ryan had had time to work free of the red scarf and pull on his clothes while cloaked in the shadows of the huge trees nearby.
Then he’d gone looking for Jade, slipping out of the garden through the back gate she’d used. But she’d disappeared like…a thief in the night.
Lying in his room late that night, he realized that, as furious as he was, he also had to hand it to her. She was good at what she did. Even if what she did was lie and cheat and steal and seduce.
Seduce. God in heaven, she really had. He’d gone down to that garden prepared to make her trust him, to reveal her secrets, so he could get some insight as to what she might have done with the painting.
Instead she’d kissed him. She’d invited him to touch her. Her smell and the night air and the wind in the trees had successfully robbed him of all logic and made him give in to the most sensuous desire he’d ever felt. Still felt.
“Damn,” he muttered in the darkness. He still wanted her, was rock hard again just thinking about how close they’d come.
“How close you came, moron. She was acting the entire time.”
But even as he whispered the words, he wondered if they were true. Jade might have set him up for a fall, then walked away—shoeless—laughing when he fell. But he’d guaran-damn-tee her legs had been wobbling a little bit during that walk.
He dangled one of her strappy, spike-heeled sandals—which he’d found on the patio where she’d left them—from the tip of his finger. “Cinderella you’re not. And I’m sure as hell no Prince Charming.”
She probably didn’t realize he knew all about her—her full name, where she lived, how to find her, and how to get revenge. He didn’t need a shoe to track down the girl who’d run away at midnight.
He’d give her her shoes back. No question about it. While he was at it, he’d force her to admit the truth. “She wanted me,” he whispered aloud, certain he was right.
She had wanted more. She’d been just as lost as he had for a few minutes. Lost in that strange, powerful reaction they’d created in one another. If the light in the window hadn’t come on…if there hadn’t been a threat of exposure…if she’d been thinking only with the lower part of her body—as he had been—they might both have been caught in her spider web.
A knock sounded on his door, soft, tentative. “Now what?” he muttered.
“Mr. Stoddard? Would you like some company? Someone to talk things over with? May I come in for a little while?”
Good lord, his landlady. Ever since he’d returned to the house tonight, going in through a back kitchen door to avoid seeing anyone, she’d been tracking him. The look in her eyes when she’d seen him naked and hard was going to give him nightmares.
Good thing he’d locked the door. And put a chair under the knob, just in case the owner of the house decided to try testing her luck with a master key.
She knocked once or twice more. He remained silent, not wanting to have to change inns in the middle of the night.
Finally her footsteps moved away and he breathed a deep sigh of relief. He’d leave early tomorrow morning. No way was
he going to stay here and risk getting attacked by an overly amorous old married lady who’d seen what he had to offer and wanted to take a closer look.
“I’ll get you for this, Jade Maguire,” he whispered softly so the inn owner wouldn’t hear.
He’d come here to retrieve his grandmother’s stolen property. That had been serious enough. Now things had gotten really personal. This battle had turned downright intimate.
Jade might have won the first skirmish. She might even have seen his…weapon.
But he had not yet begun to fight.
JADE NOTICED THE obnoxious tourist immediately upon meeting her tour group at the cemetery the following night. She couldn’t stand the type. Loud, inconsiderate, not caring about the history of the area he was about to visit, but only wanting to act manly and disbelieving of the haunted stories he’d paid to hear.
She knew what he was thinking. His whole demeanor demanded, “Scare me or I’ll want my money back.” She’d met his kind before and, on every occasion, they’d nearly ruined an otherwise successful tour.
“I’m going to kill Freddy for this,” she told Daisy, her employee, the guide who’d just completed the early evening ghost tour of Savannah.
“I think this is the fifth time he’s called in sick this month,” Daisy said, sounding disgusted. “You know I’d take it if I could.”
Jade looked at her best worker and good friend. “I know you would. I’m sorry, I’m not blaming you. I know how you’ve been looking forward to your boyfriend coming home.”
Jade didn’t add the next words that crossed her mind—from jail. But Daisy probably knew she’d thought them.
The young girl was a doll. Supportive, hard-working. Much too good for the car-stealing jerk she loved.
So what if Daisy was a goth, transplanted from New Orleans, who was still into the Louisiana vampire culture? The black clothes, black spiked hair, black nails and black circles around her eyes worked well for the night tours. That’s why Daisy had become the most popular guide Jade employed. Worth every penny it had taken Jade to lure her away from her second cousin, who ran a similar company down in New Orleans.
