Dare

by Glenna Sinclair

  "You were yelling about me?" Cara asked with an incredulous lift of her eyebrow. "To who? Don't tell me you also trashed the furniture."

  "I threw one dinner tray, but it was stainless steel, and there was no human target," Simon said defensively. "May I finish?"

  "Fine. But I want to revisit the part where you were senseless with grief over losing me later," Cara said. She raised her drink to emphasize that her lips were now preoccupied with things other than interrupting. Simon eyed her suspiciously a moment longer, before giving vent to a deep, troubled sigh.

  "I fired Melinda immediately. I should have fired her sooner. I saw another side of her that day, one I had never been privy to before. She threatened to ruin me. I'm already ruined, of course, since the accident," Simon smiled tiredly at this, "but I wasn't alarmed by her threats. My employees are all bound to silence legally by the contracts they sign upon being hired. This was why Melinda approached the new hire before she had signed the contract, and why she came to you, a guest. She knew she couldn't go public alone without going to court as a consequence.

  "I gave her a day to get her affairs in order. It was evening by the time all of this came about, so I also offered her an overnight stay in her former quarters for one more night. I was being overly generous. In the morning, she was discovered dead on the floor."

  "You keep saying she was murdered," Cara pressed him. "Was there blood? A weapon? Where was the wound located, and what did the coroner say?"

  "Poison," Simon concluded severely. "And there were trace amounts of powder found on her fingers and at the bottom of her bureau. The official word on the matter is suicide, although it is still being investigated on my behest."

  "You don't believe it." Cara sat back and crossed her arms, studying the far wall of the penthouse, the one without the gorgeous view. Simon took her glass away to go and refill it while she was processing all of this. It should have made her incredibly self-conscious to have a half-naked man who was worth billions of dollars waiting on her like this, but their domestic chemistry felt natural. Cara was beyond noticing, anyway. She was biting the inside of her cheek and squeezing her arms unconsciously. "Going off of what you're telling me, I'm not sure that I believe it, either. Why would Melinda have poison to begin with? And if she wanted revenge via suicide, wouldn't she have been more likely to try and frame you for her murder? She was well within her means to leave a note indicating you in the crime. Say what you will about her morals, Melinda was a smart woman, and she would have thought about something like that. I suspect she also would have thought not to leave powdered residue over everything belonging to her. She had access to your room, after all—it would have been more than easy to dust everything you owned while she pretended to be in there dusting the mantle.

  "At the same time, I don't believe she would exact revenge against you this way. Not only was she clearly a self-preserving woman in life, there would be no payoff that she would be around to reap. I'm sorry, I know this is a callous way to talk about someone who is recently deceased," Cara apologized quickly. Simon had seated himself on the coffee table in front of her as he listened to her deductions, his expression half-amused, half-astounded at the rapid workings of her brain. He passed her another orange juice as she carried on. "Furthermore, you said that she was found on the floor. To me, that says that she clearly wasn't expecting to drop dead then and there. Regardless of whether or not she might have been trying to frame you, I think a person who was intending to commit suicide would have sat themselves down somewhere or stayed in bed. You can apply this same logic to the scenario that your investigators have concluded—if she committed suicide because you fired her, what was her incentive to do anything but take a seat and twiddle her thumbs and wait for the poison to take hold? What was the state of her luggage?" Cara asked suddenly, surprising Simon by requiring his involvement once more.

  "Half-packed," the billionaire said slowly. Cara saw the look of dawning comprehension on his face as he confirmed something she had already suspected. It was a terrible cliché, but she snapped her fingers. Eureka.

  "Why would she have even bothered packing, much less waited until she got halfway through a process that nobody in their right mind enjoys? It shouldn't have even occurred to her that she would be leaving, not if she had already decided that your mansion was to be her final resting place."

  Simon took that as his cue to rein her back in. "Dramatics aside," he said, and Cara flushed at her Gothic word choice, "I knew you would be the right person to work with me on this. I want to see her killer brought to justice. Even Melinda deserved better than what she got."

  "What are you saying?" Cara asked him incredulously. "You can't go back there. Simon, there's a murderer living in your house!"

  "I've dismissed all the servants for now," Simon said. "Indeed, in the wake of what has happened, it would be inhuman not to. We've all had a bit of a fright." The turn of phrase made him sound incredibly English. Cara sat back into the couch, relieved despite herself. "I was thinking about staying here, actually. I was about to hire a private investigator to look into the matter, but I wanted to see you first. Thank you, Cara," Simon added quietly as he fished for her hand between them. She watched, her expression softening, as he placed a kiss upon it and allowed his lips to linger. She pulled him up with her as she rose from the couch and embraced him.

  His arms hung at his sides for a moment in surprise, but eventually the man folded her against him. Cara buried her face in his shoulder, enjoying the fresh smell of him and the warmth of his skin from sitting by the window during breakfast.

  "Thank you for bringing me out here, and for giving me a chance to tell you my side of things," she murmured. "Thank you for wanting my opinion. I know this can't be easy for you. I have one last thing to say thought, Simon. If you want me involved, I will be—I promise I'll try and get to the bottom of whoever caused Melinda's death. But I need something from you first." Cara drew back until she was at arm's length. Simon's handsome face above her tightened in puzzlement, but he still wouldn't release her from his grasp.

  "Anything," he said.

  "I need you to go home." Her throat constricted over the words, but she said them anyway. What was this awful feeling? She wanted Simon to be safe, didn't she? She wanted him to have the best chance possible at getting through all this, so why did the thought of him leaving feel like she was losing him all over again? She soldiered on. "I think you should go home to England. You need to get your affairs there sorted. I think you should distance yourself from all of this, but you have to stop running. You're not going to be able to focus on resolving this problem when you already have another one hanging over you. And…"

  This part required a little more courage. If he had been wearing his suit from the night previous, Cara would have reached forward to adjust his tie to keep her hands busy. But there was nothing between them anymore; it was just her and Simon. It was time to be honest.

  "… and I have a feeling that we're not going to be able to be together until you do."

  It was a massive step forward in their relationship: the actual discussion of having a relationship. Everything about their courtship so far had been unusual and unorthodox, but even their worst disagreements had felt real in a way that Cara had never experienced before. She was uncertain of the future, but what she was certain of was that she wanted to walk into it with Simon. She wanted him to heal, and she wanted to aid in that healing, and the first step was being honest with her feelings.

  The man looked at her for a long moment, until Cara started to second guess herself. Had that been too forward? Even after all they had been through together, was it possible that Simon didn't feel the same?

  "I'm used to getting what I want, Cara," he finally replied.

  "So you've told me, Simon," she said impatiently. "But I don't see how what I suggested…"

  "I'm used to getting what I want, but I'm not above a compromise." The man pulled away from her to pluck a T-shirt off th
e top of his unpacked suitcase. "I'll go home to England. But you're coming with me."

  CHAPTER 22

  "I can't believe I'm doing this," Cara moaned. "I've never even been out of the country before, much less in the middle of a term!My advisor is going to kill me."

  She was ignoring the fact that she was currently seated onboard a private jet, which was something else she had never done, or even conceived of doing, before. The interior of the plane accessible to its passenger—or passengers, in this instance—was furnished as lavishly as the penthouse suite Cara had first found herself in two nights ago. It was narrower, of course, and the windows were still the porthole kind you would expect to find on a commercial liner… only here the curtains drawn across the windows flowed like red velvet beneath occasional gusts from the air conditioner. There were no cramped quarters or seatbelt restrictions; instead, there was a bedroom, a fully-equipped bathroom, a lounge, and most incredible of all, a Jacuzzi. The Jacuzzi was where Simon was currently reclining as the jet engine hummed beneath them.

  Cara, who was out of her element and desperately trying to get back in, had settled for reclining a little more traditionally in a chair across from him. She had her laptop out, and was flipping through Melinda's toxicology reports. She knew how to parse such documents for information, but she still felt a little desperate while doing so.

  "At least someone is feeling relaxed," she muttered with a mutinous glare out from beneath her rumpled blond hair at the—once again—half-naked billionaire. Simon smiled cheekily.

  "The world is crumbling around me, love. I deserve a bit of respite before my trial by fire begins. And anyway, it's been a long time since I've used this jet."

  "It's bigger than my dorm room," she said. She really needed to quit using that as her frame of reference. "Why does anyone need a Jacuzzi on an airplane?"

  "You should give it a try." Simon patted the side of the massive roiling tub, and Cara sighed in defeat. If she stared at these pages any more she was going to go cross-eyed. "Come on, Cara. Live a little. You can save my reputation at a later time."

  "At this point I'm not sure it can be saved." She set her laptop aside and rose, peeling off her clothes. She felt Simon's soulful blue eyes on her, and each patch of skin she revealed tingled where his gaze alighted. "The workup looks incredibly solid. The good news is that the autopsy doesn't look as if it's been tampered with. This means whoever murdered Melinda likely doesn't have accomplices on the outside; what's more, he or she is probably fairly complacent in the fact that the suicide ruling will stick. Have you spoken to anyone in your household about your suspicion of murder?"

  "Not a soul," Simon conceded as he watched her step primly out of her panties. "Although there is an understanding that I feel responsible for what happened. That was the impression I gave for my departure."

  "So we really are in this together, just me and you." Cara lowered herself down into the scalding water, wincing pleasurably. She hadn't brought a bathing suit with her to New York, which seemed precisely to Simon's liking. The billionaire set aside a glass of minted spring water and dragged her through the water into his arms. Cara felt his erection bob against the back of her thighs like a friendly reminder. She gave him a hard look. "Is that your control yoke, or are you just happy to see me?"

  Simon raised a hand up out of the water to smooth her hair back from her forehead. She could already feel her scalp prickling with perspiration, and her blond locks were deflating. Cara arched backward to saturate her hair completely, before whipping the result coquettishly over her shoulder. If she splashed Simon in the process, she considered it a bonus. The Englishman forked a hand through his own hair, slicking it back against his skull as he watched her.

  "God, Cara, you are incredible," he said unexpectedly, and she felt her face heat from more than just the Jacuzzi steam. "I mean it. Not only are you beautiful in repose, but everything you do only adds to the effect. Are you sure you don't have a boyfriend? Someone back at college?" He was earnest in his line of questioning, but Cara snorted.

  "It's not that… I mean, there are a few guys in my major who have tried and struck out. I assume they warn all incoming students against me." She shifted herself backward until she was seated in his lap, enjoying the weightless feeling of being almost completely submerged in the water with him. "It's not that I don't date, I guess I would if I had the time. No, I definitely would make the time."

  "Then why don't you?" Simon slipped his hands into the seam between her waist and the upper part of her thighs. It felt incredibly natural to have him close. Cara was reminded of all the fitful night she had spent outside of the reach of his touch and knew that she never, ever wanted to repeat it. Even though the nature of her dreams those months had been incredible and lascivious, waking up alone afterward had been nightmarish.

  "I never met anyone that I could hold an extended conversation with," she said finally. "I mean, not the way I do. You may have noticed I like to fight with you."

  "Nothing gets my blood racing like a good old verbal spar," Simon said. "You wouldn't believe how many people are afraid to properly in one with me on account of my money. It's as if they're afraid I'll immediately write them out of the will. These are strangers I used to meet on the street, Cara."

  "Is that part of the appeal of living where you do?" she asked him. "The New England mansion. No one recognizes you?"

  "No one in their right mind ever comes by," he reminded her.

  "No one with a working car, you mean." Cara snorted.

  "Yes. I came to America to get away from my trouble in England, as you know. But I must confess I've fallen in love with your country. I haven't seen much of it, but I would like to someday."

  Cara's heart exulted at the thought. There had been the very real risk that upon returning to England, Simon would decide to remain indefinitely. But if love could draw him back across the ocean…

  Cara shook her head to dispel the word, and only managed to succeed in whipping Simon in the face with her hair. The billionaire spluttered, but only pulled her against him harder when she threatened to move off his lap. It was getting harder to ignore the erection jutting up between her parted legs. Switching subjects seemed safest at this point. "How is your leg?" she inquired. Her hands vanished beneath the water to locate the limb that had been broken during the rainstorm. She pushed at the muscle and bone experimentally with the pads of her thumbs, and Simon groaned. The noise he made awakened a fluttery feeling in her stomach.

  "Are you about to find out?" he asked hopefully. Cara tipped her head over one shoulder to look at him.

  "Are you asking for a leg massage, Mr. Banning?"

  "Oh. I like it when you call me that," he murmured as Cara set her hands to work on him. He raised a hand up out of the water to stroke the back of her skull as she teased the muscles beneath her. "You say it with the perfect amount of sarcasm and sexiness. It makes me hard."

  "You were already hard," Cara pointed out. She dug her thumbs into a particularly tender area, and Simon groaned again. He dropped his hand from her hair and allowed his head to fall back to rest on the side of the tub. As Cara massaged him, she moved her own hands ever closer to the junction between his legs. She felt his cock twitch with anticipation, but refrained from touching it out right.

  "Cara, have mercy," Simon moaned behind her.

  "I'm thinking about whether or not I want a membership to the mile-high club," Cara replied. Simon's hands found her waist beneath the water once more and gripped her.

  "You do," he answered for her.

  "Whatever you say, Mr. Banning." She dragged her fingers through the nested curls of his pubic area and wrapped them securely around his length. Simon groaned explosively and bucked up beneath her, nearly raising Cara out of the water as he did so. She bounded back against him, but kept a firm hold of her prize. She licked her lips.

  "What are you doing, Miss Langford?" He was trying to get in on the game, but Cara could see that his eyes were h
ooded, and that he was having trouble concentrating with her hands slowly dragging down his thick length.

  "Just taking ownership of what's mine." She pumped him with her fingers, and Simon gasped his wordless agreement at her claim. She wondered what the sensation felt like for him, submerged in all that wet warmth. The insides of Cara's legs felt slick despite the water raging around her, and she slid them together experimentally. She could feel Simon's hand moving downward, downward, until his middle digit was pressing her between her legs. He rolled the pebble of flesh he found there in time with her strokes, and they may as well have been fucking, it felt so good.

  "Do you remember that time in the pool?" Simon's question gusted across the back of her neck. "Our first day together and I nearly seduced you. Seeing you without clothes for the first time… laying my hands on you…"

  Cara shuddered and sighed at the memory. Simon appeared eager to relive the terms of that afternoon now, and hooked his finger down inside her tight passage. He stroked her velvet insides, petting every pleasurable nerve ending until Cara could feel her core roaring to life. She shifted back against him, wordlessly begging him to go deeper. He complied, slipping two strong fingers inside her. He pumped them in and out of her slowly, and Cara moaned. The hot water of the Jacuzzi had relaxed every inch of her and succeeded in wiping her mind clean; she could concentrate wholly on what was happening to her now, and what Simon's intimate fondling was making her feel. He was so good with his hands. He always knew exactly what she wanted, and how to give it to her. When he slipped in a third finger to test her readiness, Cara nearly went wild.