Code of Honor

by Smartypants Romance

  He chuckled as I took his hand. I admit it was just for the excuse to touch him, and his fingers were crazy warm when they wrapped around mine. Sparks shot out from our palms like mini fireworks and tendrils of dragon’s tongue wrapped around our wrists, binding us together.

  Until he let go. I flexed my hand to dispel the leftover sparks, and I saw him wipe his palm on his jeans. I hoped it was residual sparks for him too, and not a hand-slime reaction. Hand-slime was a chemical reaction produced by contact between two people who had no business touching, usually because one of them was a disaster. Like me.

  I prowled around the deck to cover my nerves, then dropped down into the cabin. Below deck was a comfortable space with a small galley kitchen, a built-in table with bench seats, and a forward hold with a tiny toilet room and a fairly large triangle-shaped bed. The bed was designed to fill every inch of the bow of the boat, with built-in shelves on either side that were overflowing with battered paperbacks.

  I was aware he was watching me silently as I scanned the titles quickly – everything from non-fiction adventure stories to historical romance. I didn’t see a lot of sci-fi or fantasy, which actually surprised me more than the historical romance did. “See anything you like?” He sounded amused, and I suddenly realized I’d plopped myself on the man’s bed to look at his books.

  I looked back to catch his eyes, and just barely stopped the words now I do before they tumbled out. “Have you read all of these?” I asked instead.

  “These are my re-readers. Most of my library is on my phone,” he said in a way that made all the breath leave my body. Or maybe it wasn’t the saying of the words, it was the words themselves. A man who read actual books, and then read them again. It was almost as sexy as … well, nothing, because nothing was sexier than a man who read.

  Except a man who read naked. Out loud. With chocolate.

  “Come up,” he said, “and let’s take her out while the water’s still calm.”

  I jumped up and almost cracked him on the chin in my hurry to escape the mental image that had begun to form. “Oooh, sorry. Can I cast off from the dock?”

  He laughed and stepped back to let me out of his bedroom. “The mooring lines are all yours.”

  Colette and I had sailed a lot with our uncle in Boston when we were younger, and I was always in charge of untying the boat and casting the lines in to coil on the deck. I loved pushing it out of the slip and then timing my jump onto the deck for the last possible moment before it got too far from the dock.

  Darius went to work pulling slip covers off the wheel and priming the engine, while I leapt onto the dock and began coiling lines to toss onboard. It really was a beautiful boat, and the name, Ashti, was painted in Arabic-style calligraphy. The engine rumbled like a contented cat, and I walked the cruiser out of its slip and jumped aboard as if I’d always done it. Darius looked approving.

  “You’ve handled boats before.”

  “One of my uncles had a sailboat, and I was always the first mate.” I bit down on the second part of that sentence – as opposed to my sister, who felt it was her duty to stand on the bowsprit like a beautiful masthead.

  “My parents got this boat when we moved here from Iran. I bought it from them a few years ago, and now I live on it.” Darius stood like the captain of his world at the wheel, and I envied the wind as it ruffled his thick brown hair. Wait, what? I didn’t have thoughts like that. Not when I had things to hide and people to hide them from. “So, what’d you want to talk about?” I asked, because I was determined to slip on the verbal diarrhea that was sure to come out of my mouth.

  He navigated past the breakwater and out onto Lake Michigan. The day was sunny and bright, and the breeze on the lake was brisk. I finished coiling the last of the mooring lines and perched on the roof of the cabin to watch Darius while he steered the boat.

  He sighed, which I took as a bad sign. “I have to ask you about Sterling Gray.”

  I twitched involuntarily, and I realized it might have looked like I wrinkled my nose. Maybe because I actually did. “What about him?” I tried for casual, but to my own ears I sounded too bright. Kind of pastel, actually. I hated pastels.

  “A painting was stolen from his panic room last night, and I saw you discover the door.” He sounded tired, like this wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have. Good. Neither did I.

  “Really?” I asked. Sometimes less was more.

  “Was the painting really stolen, or did I really see you?” His sighing tone was gone.

  I held his gaze and shrugged. It was a technique I used to great effect with the bounties who demanded to know what they’d done wrong. People who didn’t like the spaces between questions and answers filled them with all kinds of incriminating words. I didn’t mind the spaces, because I usually just filled them with corgi puppies and their butts.

  One corner of his mouth quirked up, and I almost asked him if he saw a corgi butt too. But he didn’t. “I work for Cipher Security, and the Gray mansion security system was my design.”

  “Bummer.”

  It probably sounded snarky, but it actually was a bummer. In the course of planning a crime, the thieves generally don’t consider the consequences to the designer of the security system. I mean, it makes sense that the guy’s professional reputation was on the line, so he was maybe going to look into what happened. I didn’t like the thought that I’d caused Darius Masoud a professional discourtesy.

  Next, his left eyebrow quirked up. “Indeed. I’m sure you didn’t imagine that your discovery of the panic room behind the bookcase, or footage of your late night visit to the Gray mansion, would be observed.”

  Actually, I counted on it, my mind fairly yelled while I shaped my mouth into saying something less incriminating. “Hidden rooms behind bookcases are like catnip to me. I can never resist – especially when there’s a clever book pull.” My eyes narrowed. “The entry system was your design?”

  He smirked. “Sterling didn’t see the genius of using Moby Dick.”

  “He wouldn’t,” I said, trying very hard not to elaborate on my feelings about Sterling Gray.

  Darius wore a proper smile. “Your re-arrangement was brilliant, by the way. I don’t usually think of Octavia Butler as a feminist.”

  “What we don’t see, we assume can’t be,” I quoted, and he quirked his head at me. “You’re awfully quirky, aren’t you?” I said, because he quirked like a champion quirker.

  “I would say the same about you. Not many people of my acquaintance can quote dead science fiction authors,” he said, with what I hoped was an admiring glance my way.

  “Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” I gave him my own half-quirk smile. I could do this all day.

  He burst into laughter, and a butterfly broke away from the rest and began fluttering around in my chest. I tried to push it back down with my hand, but the little bastard ignored me.

  “Everything okay?” the fricking Disney prince asked with a concerned look on his face.

  “You laugh and the sweaty butterflies go crazy. Knock it off.”

  He pressed his lips together while his damn eyes kept shining, as though a torrent of laughter was going to stream out of him at any moment.

  “Besides,” I continued, “you don’t have any sci-fi books on your shelves. How do you know enough to recognize quotes?”

  “My sci-fi books sleep under the covers with me,” he said without blinking.

  “Really?” I definitely squeaked this time.

  He laughed. “No. My little brother came through like a locust and stole them all.”

  “I would totally sleep with my favorite books, except I read on an iPad, and it keeps conking me in the head when I fall asleep holding it.”

  Darius didn’t miss a beat at that, and we spent the next hour talking about books. All kinds of books. But as one does when talking about books, we weren’t just talking about the words on the pages. Little bits of ourselves kept escaping into the conversation – l
ike his obsession with historical novels and the real truths that inspired them, and mine with travel stories and the secret places no tourist would think to visit.

  He told me he was born in Tehran, and spoke no English when his parents moved to the U.K. when he was seven, and then to the U.S. a year later. He had listened to the first four Harry Potter audiobooks back to back, so it was Jim Dale’s fault that he occasionally still pronounced words with a British accent.

  “Harry-eeee,” I said in a deep voice, trying to sound like the narrator’s Hermione impression.

  Darius rolled his eyes. “The one flaw in Dale’s performance, and I can’t seem to access the Stephen Fry narration, even when I’m in England. I try every time I travel.”

  “You do?” The idea of this sophisticated, urbane man trying to track down a particular recording of Harry Potter made another butterfly lift off my sternum.

  This led to a discussion about the merits of young adult literature, the Vampirism in Lit class he took in college, and the rules of time travel. The sweaty butterflies were taking flight with alarming regularity, until finally, when he took out his phone to make a list of my fantasy book recommendations, the last two launched themselves, and a flush of heat washed over me like a flashover fire. It was unbearable.

  I hopped down off the roof of the cabin, dropped my jacket on the floor, then pulled my shirt off over my head.

  “Ah, what are you … is everything okay?” Darius’s expression was so odd that it took a second for me to evaluate what he was seeing. Me, standing in the cockpit of his boat, wearing jeans, boots, and a yoga bra, holding the T-shirt I’d just ripped off my body.

  “Hmm. Probably requires more explanation than you’re going to get,” I said, as I kicked off my boots and unbuttoned my jeans.

  His eyes were riveted, and if I hadn’t been so suffused with the need to get out of my clothes, I might have paid a bit more attention to what was in his gaze.

  I left my jeans behind on the deck of the boat and launched myself off it into the freezing cold lake.

  10

  Darius

  “Foreplay happens all day. The rest is just laughter and naked dancing.”

  From the T-shirt collection of Anna Collins

  “Sweaty Butterflies,” she said, as she came up gasping for air.

  It must have been catching, because the sight of this woman’s glorious body right before she plunged into the frigid lake took my breath away in a way that had nothing to do with the chill in the air. I cut the engine and let the boat drift as I watched her swim with powerful strokes to catch up.

  Who was this woman who spoke in non sequiturs like they were an intelligible language, and was somehow both oddly innocent and utterly brazen? She had just exposed an unbelievably erotic amount of herself to a virtual stranger, and yet it felt as though it was as natural to her as shrugging out of a jacket might be.

  She reached the ladder at the back of the boat and hauled herself up without hesitation. The smile on her face was so joyful, I just managed to curb an instinct to hug her by grabbing a towel from beneath a bench cushion.

  “That was perfect,” she laughed through chattering teeth as she took the towel. “Totally shut them down.”

  I chuckled. “Sent mine right into flight.”

  She stopped drying herself to stare at me. “You have sweaty butterflies too?”

  “Apparently they’re contagious.”

  “Oh,” she whispered, and the sound traveled straight to my chest and settled in my heart. She dropped the towel, and her eyes held mine for a long moment, far longer than was comfortable for a gaze between near strangers.

  “Um, Darius?” She spoke so tentatively that it was almost painful.

  “Yes.” Whatever she was about to ask, the answer was yes.

  “If you don’t kiss me right now, I’m going back into the lake to drown the butterflies.”

  I pulled her to me and kissed her before I’d even finished saying the word yes in my mind. And then words fled, and my senses took over everything.

  The surface of her skin was cold from the lake, but the spot where my hands held her arms was oddly searing. I slid my palms around to her bare back and pulled her closer. The wet fabric of her bra soaked the front of my shirt, and her pebbled nipples sent a bolt of electricity straight through me. I tasted honey on her lips, and I moaned against her mouth when her thigh slipped between my legs and I realized she was pressing herself against me. It didn’t seem possible that I could get any harder, but feeling her use my body for her own pleasure was unendurably sexy.

  I slid one hand down over her perfect ass, round and strong with muscle, and pulled her closer. With the other I tugged the strap of her bra off her shoulder and followed the wet fabric with my mouth as I exposed her breast. She arched into me, simultaneously pushing against my leg and leaning back to give me access to her nipple. I licked it gently, tasting salt and heat and something vaguely coconut, until she moaned.

  “Harder,” she gasped, so I drew her into my mouth and pulled hard. She ground herself against my thigh, and I suddenly needed to feel her weight on top of me.

  But then she stepped back from me, and I saw uncertainty in her eyes. One breast was bared, and that nipple was a deep rose color from the force of my mouth. Her breath came fast, and her words sounded shaky.

  “I’m not very good at not saying the things that run through my head, so if what I’m about to say is too much, I understand.”

  She pulled the bra off over her head, and the triangles of pale skin created by a bikini top automatically drew my gaze. Her small, high breasts were perfect, and I licked my lips, wishing I could taste her again.

  “When I kiss you, blood rushes everywhere in my body and makes it all heavy and too hot, and all I can think about is that I don’t know nearly as much as I want to about how you taste and feel,” she looked pointedly at the erection pushing forward in my jeans, “and I do want to.” She dragged her gaze up to meet mine, and my heart beat hard in my chest. “What do you think about that?”

  “I don’t seem to be capable of thought right now,” I said. A slight frown creased her forehead until I added, “I just want you.”

  “Oh,” she said brightly. “Good.”

  Then she hooked her fingers in her panties and slid them down curved hips until they dropped to the deck. She stepped out of them toward me and reached for the buttons on my shirt. “Now you.”

  I forced myself to hold still while she made quick work of the buttons. Then she smoothed her hands over my chest as she pushed the shirt off my shoulders, bringing back the searing heat I’d felt before when our skin touched. My eyes never left hers as hers flitted between my face, my chest, and my abdomen.

  “Touch me please,” I practically groaned.

  She surprised me when she leaned in and smelled the skin on my neck, just under my jaw. “Mmm. You smell exactly right.” Then she leaned up to my earlobe and took it gently between her teeth. A bolt of pure lust shot straight through me, and I gripped her hips to steady myself. Her skin was so soft I could have spent hours tracing every inch of her body, but my own body had a very different agenda, and when her hand cupped me over my jeans, I captured her mouth with my own, moved her hand, and made fast work of the zipper to get them off.

  Though we were an hour up the coast from downtown Chicago, there was still enough occasional boating traffic to warrant discretion, so I took her by the hand and led her down into the cabin. I stopped at the bottom of the steps to let my eyes adjust to the dim light, and she smacked my ass and ran past me into my bedroom.

  “First one to the bed gets to be on top.”

  I laughed and grabbed her just before she could leap – yes, she was planning to leap – onto my bed. She shrieked and wriggled to get away, but was giggling too hard to be very effective. Until she turned in my arms, kissed me full on the mouth, and then whispered in my ear, “Let me win.”

  And just like that, I let go, and she leapt.
r />   11

  Anna

  “I licked it, so now it’s mine.”

  Anna Collins

  Darius Masoud was a beautiful man. He looked like a bronze statue, sculpted with perfect proportions to include those v-lines that were the Pied Piper of male body parts. Follow me this way, they said, so when he crawled up my body from the foot of the bed, I hooked his leg and flipped him over onto his back so that I could follow them – straight down.

  He looked shocked for exactly one second, and my brain froze. Uh-oh, I did it again. But then he grabbed my hand to get my attention, and the expression on his face shifted into something mischievous.

  “Show me what you just did.”

  Yes!

  So I did. And in case there was any question about the sexiness of naked wrestling, let the record show those moves are best done without a stitch on. We were laughing so hard by the time he mastered the leg-hook that I said out loud, “This is already the best sex I’ve ever had.”

  He seemed stunned as he looked up at me. His dark chocolate eyes studied my face, and then he reached up to trace the path his eyes traveled – across a cheekbone, down to my lips, then my chin, along my jaw, and down to my collarbones. A trail of fire burned wherever his gaze touched me, and his fingers were the wind that fanned the flames.

  A whole new crop of butterflies had taken wing inside my chest, and as I bent to press it against him, I took full advantage of the access it gave me to his beautiful mouth. His hands trailed their fire lightly over my back and down my sides, while his lips danced a tango with mine, giving … taking … teasing … caressing, until I ceased to be a body unto myself and became only points of contact between us.