by Liz Maverick
Red roses. Champagne. A small, slim black velvet box and a larger gold one with a white satin ribbon. Pierce wore loose linen pants and a white shirt open at the collar with the sleeves rolled up, every bit the man of leisure. “Welcome, Vienna,” he said standing up to take her hand and help her across the unsteady floor. She took in the size of his living quarters, dominated by an enormous bed and lit by the moon coming through a wide glass window covering most of one side of the room. He kissed her softly on the lips and then more deeply, his tongue sweeping inside her mouth.
When he pulled away, Vienna released a breathy sigh, about two shades more lustful-sounding than she was actually feeling. Get with it, Vienna. Don’t give yourself away. She was hoping she’d be able to enjoy what she could of the experience, but it had become obvious to her over the course of her training that whatever had made her capable of seducing Michael in their first moments together, it wasn’t solely about the end goal of escape. Whatever she was, whatever she’d done with Michael, it was because of Michael himself.
With something akin to growing horror, she realized that whatever fantasy she’d have to conjure up to get through a night with Pierce, it would be Michael on her mind. This would take “faking it” to the level of an art form.
Pierce didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. He brought her to his bed, piled high with soft, luxurious pillows, and pressed her gently back on it. “I’ve asked my men to take us out immediately.”
As Vienna listened to the thumping and scraping of rope and anchor being brought on board, it occurred to her that while she’d been counting on an opportunity to escape during this mission, she’d actually walked herself into something more like a trap. A yacht in the middle of the ocean didn’t exactly provide one with the easiest route to freedom.
“You seem nervous,” he said softly. “Maybe a glass of champagne would help?”
“I’d love one.”
He pulled one of two champagne bottles from a silver ice bucket and started on the cork, his eyes focused more on her than on the bottle.
“If you don’t stop staring at me, you’re going to catch one in the eye,” she said with a smirk.
He just smiled, popped the cork with expert finesse and poured out two glasses. Vienna tapped the rim of his champagne flute with hers and took a sip. Then, with the taste of the sparkling wine still on her lips, she kissed him. He slid his mouth from her lips to her neck and as she tilted her head back even more, Pierce grabbed the bottle of champagne and splashed the bubbly over her skin.
Vienna gasped, moaning as he put their flutes away and focused on her body, running his tongue over her wet neck and cleavage. “The Kingstons have good taste,” he murmured, his touch becoming more heated, frenzied, his cock hard against her thigh.
The thin wet fabric of her dress pressed against her body, translucent and teasing. She felt Pierce’s hand move between their bodies as he loosened the drawstrings on his pants. “Wait,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because I brought something to wear for you.”
“I can come more than once,” he said, his hands pulling at the tiny side string of her panties. “And so can you.”
“I thought you said this was my fantasy,” she said with a seductive smile. “I want to wear it for you.”
He stilled and sat back, the muscled planes of his abdomen taut, his body more than ready to go. He ran his hand under her chin and said, “Then go. It must be a damn hot outfit.”
She pressed her mouth to his chest, moving down toward his cock, then pulled away despite his groan of protest and took her shopping bag into the bathroom.
After closing the door, Vienna just sat down on the toilet seat and put her head in her hands. Dammit. The Kingstons wanted the ring, and, more important, they wanted Pierce to feel the sting of betrayal at the hands of a woman. But Michael and Devlin had read him wrong. Pierce Mackey had no intention of even pretending he wanted a relationship; all he wanted was to fuck Michael’s girl a couple of times. How was she supposed to even try and engage his emotions when he was already trying to have sex with her before they were even out of the marina?
They’d read their old pal wrong. Pushing her quickly into his arms, creating an opportunity for seduction wasn’t the way to Pierce’s heart. How ironic—the guy probably did love Julia, after all.
Vienna looked up at the door. If she actually had sex with him tonight, there was no way Pierce didn’t win in this scenario. The best she could hope for was getting the ring away from him without having to give him her body.
Vienna looked over at her reflection in the mirror. Oh, Michael. If only you’d told me you wouldn’t let me do this. That you wanted to be with me.
Quickly stripping off her champagne-soaked clothes, she tried to push him away from her thoughts. But every strap she smoothed flat on her shoulder, each stocking she rolled up, every ribbon she tied made her think of the look she would have seen in Michael’s eyes if she had been dressing for him.
Fully decked out in an outfit that would have made a perfect illustration for Seduction 101, Vienna turned her attention back to the job at hand. Here goes nothing. She crouched down and carefully opened the cabinet doors under the sink. She’d better hope the Kingstons had paid off the right people. Sponges, brushes, cleaning powder…and a box of tissue.
She pulled out the box, noting with relief that it was abnormally heavy. Lifting a wad of tissue off the top, she found it, as promised. The gun. Use as needed.
“Vienna?”
Vienna froze, adrenaline pumping through her veins. “Almost ready!” She quickly pulled the plastic from around the gun, checked that it was loaded, and then tucked it into the folds of her discarded dress.
She threw the door open and struck a bombshell pose in the doorway. “I feel more like myself now,” she purred.
Pierce dropped to his knees on the bed with dramatic flair. “You slay me.”
“Just wait.” She dropped the carefully wrapped bundle of clothes on the bedside table and was just barely on the bed before he came up over her and pushed her down underneath him.
He pulled deftly at the laces on the front of her glittering white bustier until the silk ribbon came out in his hand. Vienna pulled his mouth to her breast and as he ran circles with his tongue around her nipple, the ring swung out from the chain around his neck. Vienna realized with horror that he’d switched chains, this one shorter and heavier.
She ran her hands up into his hair—and then down behind his neck where she could feel the clasp. As he kissed her, she moaned softly, still trying to process the fact that this was a much more complex chain. And in fact, she could feel with her fingers that this one had an actual lock. One that required a key.
“What do you like?” he whispered in her ear.
“I like to be on top,” she said, pushing herself out from under him and playfully rolling on top.
Pierce smiled. “Nice.” He reached out to touch her between her legs.
“Nice,” Vienna repeated. Then she hauled back and punched him hard in the face.
Pierce’s arm flailed out and hit the wall with a sickening thud. Vienna froze. With her arm still raised, she looked over her shoulder at the door. The light under the door flickered.
Vienna lowered her arm. “Oh, yeah,” she said loudly, then fake giggled, and added an ecstatic moan for extra credit. The light changed again and the footsteps faded away.
Pierce lay sprawled out underneath her. She looked wildly around, but there was no key within sight. Not that she would have expected to find one. Instead, she pulled the jeweled pin from her updo, letting her hair fall to her shoulders. Jamming it all behind her ears, Vienna went to work on the padlock. Maybe we should have had less sex and more McGyver training. I’m not a damn locksmith.
Vienna wiggled the pin in the lock, her skill becoming even less precise as panic set in. A light sheen of sweat matted the lingerie to her back. No go. Shit! She wiggled it more frantically. Pierce s
tirred, reminding her to make some more orgasmic moans and groans for the benefit of the guards. Only a matter of time before they noticed their boss wasn’t moaning and groaning back.
The hairpin snapped off in her hand. Vienna tossed it aside and looked around the room for inspiration, nearly losing it when one of the guards knocked on the door.
“Boss? Sorry to bug you. You missed your check-in.”
He missed his check in? Since when do you check in with your bodyguard during a seduction? Vienna managed another boisterous giggle, then said, “He’s a little occupied right now, but I can remove the gag if you really want to talk to him.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. “Uh, yeah. Remove it.”
Fuck. He wasn’t supposed to say yes. Who bugged someone in the middle of bondage sex?
Unless he knew all along.
“Okay, give me a second,” she said in her huffiest voice. A little desperate now, she reached behind her and pulled the gun from her clothing, pressing the muzzle up to the lock on the chain. There wasn’t enough slack to guarantee she wouldn’t blow his head off trying to break the links. Shit, shit, shit.
You really going to add murder to your rap sheet, Vienna?
She cocked the trigger, her breath coming out in fits and starts.
Pierce’s eyes flew open.
Vienna screamed, igniting a stampede on the other side of the door.
She stuck the muzzle up to his temple. “Tell them everything’s fine, or I’ll blow your head off. I have nothing to lose.”
“Everything’s fine!” he yelled and then had the audacity to smile. “I was hoping to fuck you before it came to something like this. That would have really pissed Michael off.”
Vienna froze at his feet, using her peripheral vision to scan her exit choices.
“Open the boxes.”
She frowned in confusion. “What?”
“The presents,” Pierce said. “Open the presents.”
Never taking her eyes off him, she leaned over to the table and pulled down the little velvet black box and the larger white one, tossing them at him. “You open them.”
Pierce shrugged. He opened the boxes and turned them so she could see inside.
They were empty. “I knew. I was just having a little fun with you. Unfortunately for both of us, the gig’s up. But I’m a sporting kind of guy. Did Michael and Devlin tell you that? So, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to unlock the chain and just give you the ring. Just hand it to you. What do you think about that?”
Vienna’s mouth felt like sandpaper. She adjusted her body to put more distance between them, the gun still pointed at his head. “I think there’s a catch.”
Pierce shrugged, then rolled over on his side and rested his head in one hand. “Well, yeah. There’s always a catch. Because I’m going to give it to you, and then I’m going to alert my bodyguards who will go about trying to kill you. And you’re going to try and get out of this mess alive.”
“You give me the ring and I end up at the bottom of the ocean, that’s not a really great place to store your investments,” Vienna pointed out. “And you can’t go around taunting Devlin and Michael with it.”
“You don’t understand, do you? I don’t care about owning the ring. I can buy all the rings I want. I care about them not owning the ring. The bottom of the ocean works by me. I still win.” A wide smile spread across his face.
Vienna judged the distance between her hand and her weapon and the bodyguards outside the room. “If you’re serious about giving the ring to me, let’s have it,” she said, switching her gun to her left hand. With it trained on him the entire time, Pierce slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out a key. He twisted the chain and with a flick of the wrist, undid the lock, the chain slithering to the ground as he caught the ring in the palm of his hand.
He held it out in a closed fist, pointing down. “Here. I give it to you, and you leave.”
The two of them stood there looking at each other.
“I was wrong about you,” Vienna whispered. “You do have an ounce of originality in you. If only an ounce.”
Pierce’s eyebrow arched up.
She licked her lips, her glance jumping between his eyes and his outstretched hand.
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, and be sure to tell the boys that the game is still on. Here we go. Three.” Pierce turned his fist over.
“Two.” Pierce opened his palm; the ring lay there, gleaming.
“One. Guards!”
Vienna grabbed the ring with her right hand, and with her left, she blasted as many rounds as she could get out into the horizontal glass window, leaping at it even as the large pane cracked.
Shattered glass and sea water rained down on her as she smashed through it, and fell, limbs akimbo into the ocean, her hands still gripping both the ring and the gun.
She pushed up through the water and broke to the surface, locking her sights on the lighthouse where she was supposed to head for her rendezvous once the job was done. Freestyling as fast as she could, the beacon of light was welcome navigation. Unfortunately, it also made the guards’ job easier.
The bullets came zinging all around her almost immediately. Sputtering and splashing as she treaded water, she heard the sound of someone diving into the water behind her.
Vienna took a huge gulp of air and dived down, more bullets jetting through the water on all sides of her, white bubbling lines coming off the wake.
She finally thought to let go of her own waterlogged gun, and let it drift away behind her as she swam as fast as she could.
The light beacon formed a wide swath in the water; Vienna veered out of the triangle of light and headed for the surface, so low on air that she was blowing the last out of her lungs in a mass of bubbles as she hit the surface.
She heard voices, took another huge gulp of air and dived down, staying in the dark patch and using the edge of the light on her right side as a guide.
The depth-charge sound of a different sort of gun—bigger, louder—echoed above her in the water.
Lungs burning, eyes stinging, Vienna swam for her life. And just when she thought she was safe, a hand came through the water and wrapped around her arm. She struggled against it, but couldn’t stay down any longer. Bursting through to the surface she sucked in the oxygen and flailed out with her empty fist.
An odd little oomph hit her ears as she made contact, but she didn’t have enough juice left to do any more than that. But something in the sound, something she felt sent pure relief coursing through her veins. Michael. Vienna relaxed, allowing him to haul her into a motorboat without further struggle.
She was unceremoniously left in the waterlogged bottom of the boat as the engine revved and the boat raced at top speed across the surface of the water.
Vienna looked up to find Devlin manning the motor with Michael running the guns off the back. Clad in a black-armored wetsuit and night vision goggles, he was all business.
But then, it had really been all business all along.
Blood was thicker than water. Loyalty did trump all else. Curling her legs under her, she opened her fist and stared at the ring. Michael had what he wanted. And it appeared that it wasn’t her.
Eight
Soft. Very, very soft.
Too soft.
Vienna’s eyes flew open to discover that the softness in question was a cashmere blanket covering her naked body on somebody’s bed.
She sat straight up, pulling the blanket to her chin, and found Michael Kingston sitting in a club chair in the far corner. Still dressed in the casual layer he’d worn under his wetsuit, he looked like he hadn’t slept all night, but he still looked more than wonderful to her.
“Good morning,” he said quietly.
She just stared at him, then looked around the room until her gaze stopped at the bedside table to her right. On a small silver tray sat Julia’s engagement ring.
“I wish I knew how you
like your eggs,” he said. “I would have had something ready…” Suddenly, Michael ruffled his hair with his hand, all impatience. “Look, tell me to go to hell, if you like. But saying nothing is not an option.”
“What are my options?” Vienna asked, enjoying the sight of him all torqued up over her.
Michael got up and moved to the foot of the bed. “I suppose that depends on how you feel about me. I owe you an apology, Vienna. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I sent you to him. I’m sorry you were used the way you were.”
“Well, on the plus side, I got the ring.” She picked it up off the table and held it out to him. “I’ll tell you all about it. But in the meantime, Pierce said to tell you that the game is still on.”
Michael took the ring and tossed it roughly back on the nightstand. “I’m done with games. Devlin will have to play alone. Don’t change the subject or joke about this. The minute the yacht pulled away, I wished that I’d just called the whole thing off. And that I’d told you how I really feel.”
Vienna looked down. He’d taken both of her hands in his, almost unconsciously holding them to his heart as he spoke with passion beyond the mere physical.
She couldn’t have spoken in that moment even if she’d wanted to, so she leaned forward and Michael met her halfway, taking her mouth with his, a warm, sensual touch of his lips. The cashmere slipped down, and he pulled her toward him, wrapping his arms around her bare body. “You’re probably still exhausted.”
“Not really,” Vienna said with a grin, tugging at his T-shirt.
He pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor, sending the rest of his clothing quickly after it. “We’ll take it easy.”
“Don’t start going easy on me, Michael Kingston. You’ll take all the fun out it.”
“I don’t think that’s possible,” he said, slipping under the blanket and covering her with his body.
They had all the time in the world, and Michael took it slow, using the opportunity to explore every inch of her. Every time his fingers swept across her skin, every time his mouth came down on hers, it was as if he was laying down a trail of fire that would consume her.
