by Lisa Childs
Miranda arched one of her blond brows and asked, “Really? Why would you think that?”
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
Her lips curved into a slight smile. “Maybe I just felt like getting a little action...”
He hoped like hell that was why she was here—for some action with him. He needed to release all that tension building inside him before he exploded.
“A little card action,” she clarified.
“I didn’t even know you played,” he admitted.
She sighed. “We’ve already established that you don’t really know me, Grant.”
After she’d kissed Alberta, he was beginning to wonder just how well he did.
“Sauvignon blanc,” he told the hostess. “That’s what she drinks.” At least he knew that about her, but that was only because her sister had taken pity on him and helped him plan that last date so it would be perfect.
It would have been, had she not gotten so angry with him.
Was this payback? Her showing up here looking sexy as hell and flirting with everyone but him?
Probably.
Alberta poured a glass and handed it to her. “If you need anything else, just let me know.”
“Oh, I will,” Miranda promised with that sexy little half smile of hers.
Grant gripped her elbow and guided her away from everyone else, toward the bedroom doorway. He stopped himself from dragging her inside with him and peeling all that leather from her sexy body. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Besides making him crazy.
Undoubtedly that was what she’d wanted, though, and she had somehow enlisted Alberta to help her. Who else had she enlisted?
“Playing poker,” she replied. “Your sister taught me years ago.”
He shook his head. “Blair’s not that good.”
“No,” Miranda agreed. “She has too honest a face.”
He leaned closer and studied hers. “You don’t.”
She smiled. “Neither do you.”
Realization dawned. There was only one way that she could have learned about his poker game. “Blair put you up to this.”
“Teo, actually,” she said. “He staked me so I could try to get his money back from you.”
A grin tugged at his lips. He’d had fun taking that money off the billionaire.
She touched the low neckline of leather vest. “Blair was responsible for this, and for flying me here.”
“What did you tell her?” he asked.
“Obviously I agreed, or I wouldn’t be here,” she said, as if he was an idiot.
“About us,” he clarified—even though he knew she knew what he’d meant. She was just messing with him. “What did you tell her about us?”
“Same thing you have,” she said.
“So nothing.”
She nodded.
“Then she won’t be suspicious if I tell her that I’ll fly you home,” he said as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket.
“You don’t need to do that,” she said.
“I will when you spend the night here.”
She chuckled. “What makes you think I’m going to spend the night?”
“Because you’re going to lose the next hand, and what I want more than Teo’s money is for you to spend the night with me.”
She glanced over to the bar where Alberta poured another shot for one of the losers. “Just me?”
The sick jealousy churned in his stomach again. He didn’t want anyone else touching her but him. “Yes, just you.”
She uttered a sigh, as if she was disappointed, but her eyes twinkled.
“You should be grateful that I want to focus only on you,” he said. “It’s a win-win for you either way this game goes.”
She shook her head. “So you’re saying I don’t get anything but money if I win?”
“What do you want?” he asked. And he hoped like hell that she wanted him as badly as he wanted her.
“For you to give up on joining Liaisons International,” she said.
That was an easy bet for him, since he’d had no intention of actually joining, anyway. He shrugged. “Fine with me. I’m not going to lose.”
“Don’t be so confident,” she warned him.
But he was...
Like everyone who didn’t think she had a tell, she had a tell. If she had bad cards, she swallowed before she started bluffing, as if she had to choke down the lie.
To him, bluffing wasn’t lying, so he had no tells. And he’d always had phenomenal luck when it came to cards.
Very rarely was he ever dealt a bad hand.
“If you’re so sure you’re going to win, why haven’t you agreed to my wager yet?”
She blinked. “Oh, I thought I had. I am very excited...” She leaned closer to him, and her breath brushed across the skin of his neck when she murmured, “To beat you...”
He damn well better get good cards this time...
CHAPTER TWELVE
DAMN IT.
She’d tried; she had really tried to win. To reclaim Teo’s money and to get Grant to leave Liaisons alone.
But somehow he’d drawn a straight flush...
“How the hell did you do that?” she asked. “You had to cheat. There’s no other way.” She’d had a full house. That should have been enough to win.
She’d even thought he’d been sweating it for a moment. But then he’d turned over his cards...
She stared down at them on the table and shook her head. “It’s not possible.”
“So you’re a sore loser,” Grant remarked with a chuckle.
She shook her head. “No. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s called skill,” Grant gloated. “Just admit that I have more of it.”
That was undoubtedly true. She hadn’t played cards in years, but she’d thought she’d done pretty well. And when she’d drawn two more cards to get the full house, she’d thought she’d beat him for sure.
A twinge of disappointment had struck her heart then—that she wouldn’t have this last night with him and that he would have no reason to audition as a date again. So she was probably going to win more by losing.
She wanted him so damn badly.
She glanced up from the table and realized that everyone else had left. He must have silently shown them out because she hadn’t noticed them leaving.
“You can still beat me if you like,” he said.
“You want to play another hand?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. I was just thinking you might have a whip to go with all that leather you’re wearing.”
“Thinking or hoping?” she asked.
He flashed that wicked grin at her.
“I didn’t realize you were into kink,” she said.
“Says the woman who suggested a threesome.”
“I did not,” she said. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”
He shook his head. “Just you...”
Her heart did a strange little flip. But she drew in a deep breath to settle her excitement. He just meant for tonight. He didn’t want her for keeps. No. He wanted to sign up to date other women.
Not that she wanted him for keeps. She just wanted him for tonight. Maybe if she had sex with him again, she would get sick of it, sick of him...
Or even more addicted to him.
“This is a bad idea,” she murmured—more to herself than to him.
He pointed toward the door. “You can leave. I won’t hold you to the bet.”
Warmth spread through her heart. Maybe his acting a gentleman on their last date hadn’t been just for the audition. Maybe he really was one.
She shook her head. “No, a bet’s a bet.” She flinched though.
And he sucked in a breath. “No
t if you’re going to be miserable delivering on it. The last thing I want to do is pressure you into something you don’t want.”
That was the problem. She wanted him—very much. “No, I was thinking that I failed Teo. I didn’t make his money back for him.”
Grant picked up a wad of bills from the hostess station near the door to the hall. “Here, give it back to him. I don’t want it...”
“You don’t need it?” she asked, and she wondered, just how did he make his money?
Cheating?
As if he’d read her mind, he said, “I didn’t cheat you. I just got really, really lucky...” Then he took that wad of cash and held out his hand toward the front of her vest. “Isn’t that where you had your money?”
He waited a moment—maybe to see if she’d push him away—before he dipped his hand, with that money, into her cleavage. She sucked in a breath, which strained the already tight top so much that the zipper on it began to slide down. His eyes darkened with passion, his dilating pupils swallowing that dark blue, as he saw what he was doing.
And he kept doing it until the top parted.
The straps had already been dangling down her shoulders, but now they slipped all the way off her arms as the top fell onto the floor.
“Maybe we should have played strip poker,” he said.
“You want me to deal the cards?” she asked.
“No, I just want you to strip.”
A smile tugged at her lips. She wasn’t going to fight her desire for him. Not tonight...
She wanted him too much. So instead of arguing with him, she reached for the zipper at the top of her pants and tugged on it.
Grant’s breath hissed out between his teeth like the rasp of the zipper as she lowered it. Then she shimmied out of the leather, which wasn’t easy. The material had gotten warm and tight.
Grant chuckled. “A little trouble.”
She giggled. “I might be stuck...” The leather had molded to her thighs, so she wasn’t able to roll down the pants any farther than her hips.
“I’ll help,” Grant offered, and he picked her up and carried her into the dark bedroom.
He lowered her back onto the mattress but left her legs dangling from the side, and he began to tug at the leather. She came with it, dropping onto her backside next to the bed.
“Ouch!”
“Sorry! Sorry!” he said, and he sounded sincere despite the twinkle of amusement in his eyes. “I’ll kiss it and make it better.”
“You better,” she said as she rubbed her hip.
“Maybe we need scissors,” he suggested.
She vehemently shook her head. “No. This outfit is a gift from Blair. I can’t destroy it.”
“I don’t know whether to be grateful to her or mad at her,” Grant remarked with a sigh. He knelt on the floor next to her and began to roll the leather down her legs.
His hands were so big, so strong, but yet his touch was so gentle—so seductive. His fingers skimmed along the inside of her thighs as he pushed down the leather—then over her calves. When he pushed the pants over her feet, he rubbed them—massaging her instep. She’d had the high heels to go along with the Sandy outfit, but they must had fallen off when he’d lifted her.
She moaned with pleasure over his touch. But it wasn’t enough as tension wound inside her.
“Better?” he asked.
“That’s not what hit the ground,” she reminded him.
He leaned forward and moved his mouth over her hip to one buttock, pressing kisses along her skin—which tingled and sizzled with awareness. Everywhere he touched her became so sensitive.
He lifted her onto the bed again with just his hands around her hips then slid them up to her waist, which he nearly spanned. “You are so tiny,” he mused. “I should think about how easily you can be hurt.”
She shook her head. “I’m tough,” she assured him. And she was—both physically and emotionally. She could handle whatever came her way with the business, with her family—even with him. “You won’t hurt me.”
But her words sounded a bit hollow, like she’d felt inside since she’d thrown him out of her apartment.
“No,” he said. “I’ll just piss you off.”
“You’re really good at that,” she agreed.
“I really just knocked your purse over by accident,” he said. “I wasn’t snooping.”
She was beginning to believe him, and that was dangerous. That was what her mother had always done with all her husbands. She’d believed their lies—about their fortunes, about their sexual preferences, about their fidelity...
Worried that she probably had the same blind spot with men that her mother had, Miranda had decided long ago to trust none of them and to never marry. That way she couldn’t get her heart broken.
That was why she couldn’t listen to Grant. So to shut him up, she pressed her mouth against his and kissed him. Deeply. Hotly—her tongue sliding in and out of his lips.
He pulled back, panting for breath. “I think I taste Alberta on you.”
She smiled. “Jealous?”
“I was,” he admitted, his voice gruff with seriousness.
“Good,” she said. “I wanted to distract you, so I could beat you.”
“And yet I won...”
She figured they’d both won—especially when he moved his mouth from hers, down her neck to her breasts. He tasted each nipple with his tongue, sliding it back and forth until she was nearly writhing on the mattress. Then he moved lower, kissing his way over her stomach to her mound. He knew just where to touch her with his fingers, with his tongue, to drive her wild. Just as she was about to come, he pulled back and she reached out to him in protest.
“Grant...”
Was this payback? Was he just going to tease her?
“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice throaty with the passion—and need—choking her.
“You know...” He had to stop and clear his throat, too. “I won you...”
“Yes, you did,” she agreed, and she peered at him over her stomach. His face was as flushed as hers must have been, his eyes almost glassy with his passion. “Oh, so you’re saying you first?”
“No...” And he went back down on her, his tongue swirling and teasing her before he drew it out and replaced it with his fingers. Then he licked her clit.
And she came.
The release shuddering through her, she screamed his name. But she knew this wasn’t the only orgasm he would give her tonight. He really was the best she’d ever had—in every way.
* * *
He’d had his chance. He could have made her beg...maybe agree to anything...
Like leaving his sister and Teo alone.
But when she’d reached out to him and called his name the way she had, she could have asked him anything, and he would have given it to her. And he had...
Now she was giving it to him. She pushed him back so that he was standing—then she undressed him. And she kissed her way down his body like he’d kissed his way down hers.
She swirled her tongue around his nipples and then in his navel, making his stomach clench and his cock pulsate. And then she was there, closing her fingers around him. She pumped him in her hand, running it up and down the length of him. Then she knelt in front of him and, staring up at him with those beautiful pale blue eyes, she extended her tongue and licked him—up and down.
He groaned, and his legs began to shake a little as passion overwhelmed him. Then she closed her mouth over him and sucked him deep in her throat—as deep as she could take him. And her tongue swirled around him...
She could have asked him anything then and he would have happily given it, too. But she didn’t pull back; she didn’t tease.
On the edge of insanity since she’d walked into the suite in that black leather outfit, he came easi
ly and powerfully—the release exploding out of him with her name.
Still staring up at him, she licked her lips. And despite what she’d just done, his cock stirred again. How could he want her so damn much?
“See?” she said.
And he furrowed his brow in confusion. “See what?”
“You shouldn’t have been scared of having a threesome,” she teased. “You could have kept up...”
He was up again. And he lifted her and lightly tossed her onto the bed. “I wasn’t scared,” he said. “I just don’t like to share.”
“Oh,” she said. “Now if she’d been more interested in you than me, you would have gone for it?”
“No,” he said.
She was all he needed. All he would ever need.
The thought stunned him, and he pushed it from his mind. That was crazy.
He wasn’t a forever kind of guy. Hell, he knew how short forever could be...especially with what he did when his country called on him.
They’d called again just that morning, with the offer of another dangerous mission.
And for the first time he’d hesitated over accepting it. Because he’d wanted to see her more...
Because those missions weren’t the thrill they’d once been for him...
She was.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MIRANDA WAS LATE—which was crazy because she was never late. She drew in a deep breath to quell the anxiety gripping her before she pulled open the door to the suite of offices for Liaisons International.
Usually she was the first one to get to the office. But Tabitha had beaten her in today and was already on the phone. She released the breath she’d been holding—at least she wouldn’t have to answer any questions about why she was late. Yet...
But before she could open the door to her private office, Tabitha hung up the phone and remarked, “Look what the cat dragged in.”
Grimacing, Miranda turned back toward her sister. “I don’t have a cat,” she said.
“Maybe you should,” Tabitha said. “Because you’re probably never going to let anyone else live with you.”
Miranda sighed. “You know my place is too small for you to stay with me.”
