And her father had frowned at her, the day he had dropped her off at the airport. Looking far more serious than he usually did. The world isn’t a magical place just because you want it to be, honey. Be smart out there.
Indy had not been smart. She had been the opposite of smart, in fact, and had reveled in how little care she’d taken because it made for a better experience and then a better story to tell. And she had known, then, that she was going to pay for that in some out-of-the-way alley where no one would ever find her if they left her for dead.
Assuming they left her.
But that wasn’t what happened.
She shuddered now, her hands cupped around her coffee. Far away from Budapest in a crowded café in lovely, fairytale Prague, two years later.
Still, Indy shuddered, because she could remember too well her first sight of him. That face of his, so beautiful it was cruel as he’d stared down at her in disbelief. She’d noticed that face, like the blade of a hatchet, piercing and inevitable. She’d had the impression of a tall, well-built, dark-haired man, but he’d had the eyes of a poet, intense and yet almost dreamy as he’d gazed at her there on her knees.
Their eyes had met down the length of the gun he’d held, pointed directly at her forehead.
And she’d had no doubt whatsoever that he knew how to use it.
He asked her something in a language she didn’t understand. Hungarian, she’d thought, which would make sense as she had been in Hungary. Indy had shaken her head, almost smiling in an out-of-body sort of way, because at least if she was going to meet a brutal end it would be at the hands of a man who looked like an angel.
A fallen one. And fallen hard.
That he was dangerous, brutal and powerful at once, would have been obvious even if he wasn’t holding a gun. Right in her face.
Even with those too-blue eyes.
What are you doing here? he had asked her in English, after trying a couple of other languages and getting nothing. His accent had made the words seem like liquid, swirling around her and washing through her. A new, potent heat.
I have no idea, she had replied, honestly.
And for a long moment, possibly a lifetime, she had been aware only of him. That look on his overwhelming face. That gaze of his that made her want to cry. The electric something that arced between them, even with concrete digging into her bare knees and her hands in the air.
For that little while, nothing else existed.
Nothing.
He had muttered something she’d understood was profane, even if she hadn’t understood it.
And then everything got fast.
Indy remembered it like a blur, though she knew that each action had been precise. Surgical.
He had looked at her. She’d seen something in his gaze, something that had made her breath catch.
Something that had gone through her like an earthquake.
Then he had turned and taken down the other three men standing there with him. She had hardly had time to gasp, to shake, to react. She’d thought of poetry again, all of it lethal, as he’d spun around with blistering speed and laid all three men out flat.
Two kicks, one punch.
Like he was an action star.
Come, he’d said to her when they were all slumped on the ground. You cannot be here.
He’d reached down to pull her up to her feet with a possessive grip on her arm.
And Indy had gone willingly.
More than willingly. Because he’d saved her, that she’d had no doubt—even though it hadn’t been clear if he was one of the things he’d saved her from.
But there was something about his grip on her arm. The way he’d moved them both out of that alley. Quickly, but with that same liquid grace she’d already seen used with lethal intent on his friends.
It had occurred to her then that she ought to have been more scared than she was. As scared as she’d been when she’d first understood what was happening to her. As scared as she’d been before she’d actually caught his gaze and everything had...shifted.
If you’re just going to kill me in a different location, she’d said as he led her away from the alley, I have to tell you that it will be very disappointing.
They’d made it out into the street by then. She could hear the pumping sound of the club she’d so foolishly wandered away from, though she couldn’t see it. Had she wandered into the alley from the other side? And yet Indy hadn’t really cared, because there had been a streetlight and she could really see him then.
He was built like a weapon far deadlier than any old hatchet. His beautiful eyes were breathtakingly blue, and he had a set of lips that should have made him a courtesan—and might have made him pretty if his face wasn’t drawn in such harsh, male lines. She’d thought she would happily pay the whole of her life savings, and then some, to have that mouth between her legs.
But those were the only two soft things on his body.
Everything else was muscle. Thick and honed at once, so that he fairly hummed with power. With threat.
She remembered thinking how odd it was that she had been with so many men and had always happily explored all the various ways they used their power. Physical and intellectual alike, but nothing like this. Like him.
This man was darkness personified and his body showed it.
Indy had noticed a tattoo rising from the neck of his T-shirt, the same T-shirt that strained to contain his biceps. The same T-shirt that seemed unequal to the task of his hard, ridged abdomen. He wore dark jeans and the kind of dress shoes men wore on this side of the Atlantic because trainers were frowned upon for nightlife purposes in so many European countries.
She had been fully aware that he had that gun tucked in the small of his back. But looking at him, not only did she also know that his hands were weapons all by themselves—not to mention the feet that she’d seen in action with her own eyes—but that he likely had other things stashed around on his body, as well.
His profession seemed pretty clear.
I’m not going to kill you, he had said in that accented voice of his that lit the night on fire, low and gravely with that impossible blue gaze behind it.
Or maybe the fire was only in her, making her wet and hot and something too close to desperate.
When she had never been desperate in her life.
She had tipped her head slightly to one side as she regarded him. You sound surprised.
I should have killed you the moment I saw you. His voice was matter-of-fact, suggesting that roaming about killing people was an ordinary occurrence for him, and yet his hand was still on her arm and she’d felt the heat of his grip. And she still hadn’t been afraid. That’s what happens when foolish girls stumble into business meetings in the wrong part of town. Would anyone have missed you?
Not tonight. Why had she said that? She might as well have knelt right down again and invited him to use that gun of his. Worse yet, she had kept talking. It was something about that faintly arrested look on his face, like he didn’t understand what he was doing, either. It was that grip on her arm. It was her certain knowledge that something had happened between them in that alley. Eventually, people back home would miss me, but they wouldn’t know where to look. Most people think I’m still in Croatia.
He had gripped her arm harder, though not hard enough to hurt. He’d pulled her closer to him then, his poet’s eyes blazing with a distinctly unpoetic fire as he’d gazed down at her—and she still hadn’t been afraid.
She’d been exhilarated.
I fucked up my life for you, he’d gritted out at her. I don’t ever fuck up my life. For anyone. The kind of life I have, fuck it up too much and you lose it.
Indy hadn’t understood anything that was happening. All she’d known was that it was happening to both of them—and it was as intense as it was impossible.
&
nbsp; They should never have met. She should already have been a statistic.
None of this should have been happening, but she’d been wearing red and he was clearly a wolf and somehow, it had all made sense. She had felt the sense of it everywhere, like fate.
Indy had reached up with her fingers and spread them over those beautiful lips of his.
Careful, he’d warned her.
But Indy had only smiled. Too late, she’d said.
Then she’d surged up on her toes and kissed him, like the dark little fairytale she’d always wanted to come true at last.
CHAPTER TWO
SITTING IN THIS bustling café in Prague all this time later, Indy could not only remember how it had felt to kiss him like that.
She could feel it still.
Kissing him on that deserted street in Budapest had been foolhardy at best. She’d had two years to question her behavior, and she had. Oh, she had.
But she couldn’t regret it.
Kissing him had been like nothing she’d ever experienced before.
It was a shock—and it was no fairytale.
Because he’d kissed her back and there was nothing least bit tame about him. His lips alone were a revelation. He didn’t use his hands to hold her head in place, because he’d managed to do that with his mouth alone.
And Indy had ignited.
She’d melted into him so that her nipples, already so hard and so greedy, were crushed against that stone chest of his.
He’d angled his jaw and thrust his tongue against hers and she’d come from that alone in a shimmering, shuddering rush.
He’d torn his mouth from hers, muttering filthy-sounding curses in languages she couldn’t identify.
Damn you, he said then, his English sounding tame in comparison.
She knew, somehow, that he wasn’t cursing her. Not specifically.
Then he’d picked her up, swinging her into his arms while she still had all those delicious waves of pleasure moving through her. She had only been half-aware at that point. He’d carried her down the street to a dark and gleaming SUV waiting at the curb and then he’d climbed inside, pulling her over his lap as he went.
I’m surprised you can park here, she’d murmured while he tossed his gun in the glove box, because she’d been loopy and her clit had still been pulsing and she felt like maybe what had actually happened was that she had died. That this had all been some kind of extended death scene in her head. It was the only thing that made sense. I’m surprised no one stole this while you were off...doing whatever you do.
She’d been straddling him and that had meant she could look down into that astonishingly beautiful face of his and see it when something like amusement flickered there.
Nobody would dare steal from me, he told her.
Then his hand was on the nape of her neck and he’d brought her face down to his, so he could take her mouth once more.
And Indy stopped worrying about parking.
He’d shoved her skirt up and out of his way, wrapping his big hands around her thighs to pull them even further apart so she was mashed down against the thick bulge of his cock, a glory against her clit. And his fingers had slid beneath her thong in the back as he’d skated past her ass to find her wet folds. He’d opened her, then penetrated her with one finger.
Then another, finding her wet and hot and crazy for him, writhing to get even closer to him—his cock, his fingers, whatever worked.
He’d let out a long spate of swear words again, but that time, it had sounded like a song. Then he’d shoved her tank top up, securing the fabric beneath the strap of the little backpack she’d forgotten she was wearing, so he could get his mouth on her breast.
God. His mouth. On her breast.
In Prague, remembering, Indy felt herself flush all over.
Back in Budapest, she’d arched back as best she could between the steering wheel and his hard body, letting her head fall back into sheer bliss.
Indy had been lost somewhere between his mouth on her nipple as he sucked, hard, and the way she rocked her own clit against his cock. He was shockingly huge, and his fingers were blunt and too clever as they plunged inside her from behind.
In her head, it had gone on forever, but she doubted it had. Because she couldn’t take it and came again, clenching hard on his fingers.
You are a witch, he’d muttered.
Indy had felt like a witch. Sex was always fun...but this was something else. It was like every single part of her had been made for every single part of him. As if nothing he could possibly do to her would feel anything but amazing. Because they’d been built for this.
She’d looked at him and been his. Their eyes had met over a gun, for God’s sake, and there they were—and all Indy had wanted was more.
Reality couldn’t intrude. It hadn’t.
He’d reached between them. Indy had sat back as best she could, aware of the steering wheel digging into her in a way that should have been unpleasant, but wasn’t. She’d liked the little spear of not-quite-pain, because that had meant it was real. It had really been happening.
This liquid heat, this glorious, endless explosion had truly been happening.
And his cock was a thing of glory.
He’d pulled it out, wincing because he was so hard. Indy’s mouth had actually fallen open as she’d gazed down at where he rose between them. She’d felt her clit pulse and her core go molten.
You know what to do, he’d told her, and though his voice was quiet, there was that roughness to it, that command, that made her entire body break out in goose bumps.
But she’d felt that she did know what to do. That her entire life had been a dress rehearsal and that night in that SUV on an empty street in Budapest, of all places, had been the show, at last.
Indy had thought that very distinctly: At last.
She’d felt like crying. Like weeping with joy that she’d gotten to kneel up, even though her knees were still scraped—and that should probably have bothered her more. She’d felt emotional and beautiful and so connected to him it had hurt. It had hurt, when Indy was all about her fun and her orgasms, but even the hurt of it felt good.
And that was before she’d braced herself with one hand on the headrest behind him. Then reached between them so she could guide the massive head of his cock to her pussy at last.
At last.
Because it had felt like she’d already waited a lifetime and she hadn’t even known his name.
But Indy had known it was true, even then. She’d been looking for him, for that wildfire connection between them and his dangerous saint’s face, for a lifetime already without realizing he’d been her goal all along.
Something she couldn’t have realized until she’d seen him, could she? Because only then had it been clear.
His hands had not been gentle. He’d shoved one into her hair and the other had gripped her ass, hard.
Indy had known many things then. That he was not a good man in the way she’d previously conceived of that phrase. That what she was doing was not a good idea, no matter how it felt. And that no one would ever understand how this had not only happened—but why she had made it happen.
But she had never been the good sister.
Because she also knew—as their gazes had clashed again, as she had notched the wide head of his cock at the mouth of her pussy—that this man was her fate.
That she had always been meant for this.
Right there. With him.
Now, he’d ordered her.
She hadn’t understood until then that she’d been waiting for that, too. For him.
It had felt like running to the edge of a terrible cliff and then throwing herself off. And not caring at all, in the final moment, if she would fall or fly.
Indy had slammed herself down, impaling herself on him.
And she’d screamed out as she did it because he was so big that it hurt, so big that it was wildly, astonishingly uncomfortable to take all of him like that, and so fast.
But she’d known there was no other way to do it. It was like a kind of virginity because it was him. Them. It was theirs, the agony she was prepared to put herself through for one staggering beat of her heart. Then another.
And it had been entirely worth it when his mouth crooked up in one corner.
Foolish girl, he’d said in that quietly dark way of his that made everything in her sing. I like that you want to suffer for me.
Then he’d moved.
And any suffering she’d felt was gone that easily.
Because he’d fucked her like he’d known all the same things she did.
Like his cock, that big, battering ram of a cock, had been specifically designed to hit everywhere she’d needed it. He’d kept his hard hand on her ass, lifting her and slamming her in time with his thrusts, so that all she could do was melt into it. Become part of it.
His other hand, tangled in her hair, had kept her arched back so he could get his mouth on her throat, her lips. Down to her breasts and back again as he liked.
And he’d liked.
Indy had lost track of how many times she’d come. Again and again. Over and over. Because it turned out that what he liked, she liked, too.
And on he’d gone anyway, because he’d been making them one.
It was some kind of magic, fusing them together. Imprinting them on each other, because this was fate.
Maybe it might look like a simple fucking, but Indy had known better.
He was making them real. He was making sure the both of them knew that neither one of their lives would ever be the same.
Because how could anything have been the same after that?
When he came she could feel him inside her, scalding her, and she’d loved that, too.
And then, for a while, they’d had to stay like that. Slumped into each other in the front seat of his SUV because neither one of them was breathing too well.
Just One More Night Page 2