by Pennza, Amy
Why she started selling her body to other men.
Why do you do it?
It was the question he’d been asking for eight years. His mother had died not knowing.
If Rafe showed up today…
Sweat trickled down his back. He bent to grab the wrench, then stayed in a crouch, his head lowered.
Last night had to count for something, didn’t it? When they sat at that table, memory had shone in her eyes—an undeniable recognition of a shared past that kept them both in a sort of holding pattern. For years, it had seemed like she wanted him to give up on her—to finally get so angry that he washed his hands of whatever attraction still existed between them.
Well, if that was her goal, she messed up last night. Because there was no way she could fake that kind of desire.
She might refuse to admit she loved him, but she could never say she didn’t want him. Not anymore.
He stood and looked toward the stairs. Sunlight shone like a searchlight, turning the metal a blazing white. It had to be at least noon. Even if she was still in her room, she couldn’t stay there forever.
He sighed and set the wrench on the engine’s casing, then grabbed a towel and wiped grease from his hands.
The yacht was dead in the water.
He headed for the stairs.
Now it was time to find out if his future with Catalina was, too.
* * *
Footsteps rang out on the engine room steps.
Catalina took a deep breath and kept typing. She sat on one of the deck’s plush chaise loungers, a slim laptop balanced on her thighs. A striped awning shielded her from the sun, which was almost directly overhead. Juan had been in the engine room since she ventured onto the deck.
She glanced at the time on her screen. He’d been down there for at least two hours. Judging from the mix of English and Spanish curses floating up the stairs, he wasn’t making any progress on getting the engines back online.
A second later, he emerged from below deck, his tread heavy.
So it didn’t go well, then.
She didn’t look up. Maybe if she ignored him, he’d get the hint and leave her alone.
He went to a panel and hit a button. There was a beep, followed by the mechanical sound of the deck lowering back into place. It closed with a decisive click, then went quiet.
She typed the same sentence twice. Shit. Backspace, backspace, backspace.
Juan moved to the bar. It was tough to track his movements in her peripheral vision, but she had a vague sense of him rummaging in the drawers, his dark head bent as he withdrew items and placed them on the counter.
She stared at the screen, her fingers suspended over the keys. She probably should have stayed in her room. But if Rafe showed up, today could be her last day on earth. She wasn’t spending it in Lopez’s guest room.
Melodramatic? Maybe, but until yesterday she would have laughed if someone told her Rafe would leave her stranded in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. So she dug through the closet until she turned up a white bikini and matching sarong. Then she piled her hair on top of her head and slathered oil on her arms and legs.
If sicarios swarmed the yacht today, she was greeting them in style, with a drink at her elbow and the beginnings of a suntan.
Juan walked to the table near her lounger and pulled out a chair. He angled it perpendicular to the table and sat, putting him in her direct line of sight. He wore a pair of navy shorts and a white button-down opened down the front.
His tuxedo shirt. Minus the tie. The ensemble should have looked ridiculous. Somehow, though, the open dress shirt paired with casual shorts ramped up his sexiness to impossible levels.
She averted her gaze from his bare chest and started typing again. If she looked busy, he wouldn’t bother her.
He lifted a cigar cutter and snipped the end of what could only be a Cuban.
So he was having tobacco for lunch.
She glanced at the table.
Make that tobacco and whiskey.
He lit a match and held it to the end of the cigar, rolling the Cuban between his fingers.
She kept typing.
After a few minutes, he held up the cigar, inspecting the end like it held the mysteries of the universe. He lit another match and continued toasting the Cuban.
Dios, how men went on about their cigars.
She looked out at the water, which stretched dark blue all the way to the horizon. Here and there, distant waves broke, sending up a spray of white. It was beautiful. If she ignored the fact that the yacht might be the last thing she saw before she died, she could almost pretend she was on a private cruise.
She suppressed a sigh and continued typing.
At last, Juan put the cigar to his mouth and took a few puffs, expelling a cloud of smoke that wreathed his head. He leaned back in his chair and extended his legs, seemingly relaxed.
Good. He wasn’t going to bring up last night. She hit the space bar and continued typing.
“We should talk about last night,” he said.
She froze, then forced herself to look at him over the top of her screen.
He met her gaze. His expression was calm, as if he hadn’t just announced the need for them to discuss oral sex on a dining room table.
“We don’t need to talk about it,” she said. “It was a mistake.”
“It didn’t feel like that to me.” He took a drag of his cigar.
“Well, it did to me.”
“Liar,” he said on an exhale. Smoke billowed in front of his face, then caught on the wind and moved out to sea. “You liked it, Catalina, and you could have stopped me at any time.”
Wicked thoughts crowded her mind. Sometimes, the best weapons weren’t tangible. She tilted her head, her voice as sweet as honey. “I’m an escort, remember? I get paid to like it.”
Juan didn’t flinch. “Ah, but I didn’t pay you.” He ashed his cigar. “You remembered how it used to be between us, before you ran away.”
Her heart rate sped up. She knew how this conversation went. They’d been down this path countless times before. In the past, she always had the means to get away from him. Now, unless she fancied a long swim, she was trapped.
But that didn’t mean she had to participate in his little heart-to-heart. Let him talk. He’d get bored eventually.
She dropped her gaze to the computer screen, reread her last sentence, then started typing again. Juan’s stare tugged at her like a magnet. She pressed her lips together and kept her eyes on the screen.
“Coward,” he murmured.
Anger burst through the artificial nonchalance. She slammed the laptop shut. “So I’m a liar and a coward. Anything else you want to call me? Whore, maybe?”
He clenched his jaw. Voice low and deliberate, he said, “I’ve never called you that. Never.”
Her anger faltered. It was true. He’d never called her that. Not even when he found her topless in a strip club, singles bristling from her G-string as she swayed over a man’s lap. He’d cursed. He’d yelled. He’d pleaded for an explanation. But he had never, not once, called her a whore.
She swallowed. “No, you haven’t.”
His eyes were steady, but old hurt stirred in the blue-green depths. “Maybe,” he said, “after all these years, you can tell me why you broke off our engagement.”
Out of habit, she fell into her usual response. “I needed time—”
“That’s bullshit. I would have given you as long as you needed.”
“We weren’t right for each other—”
“More bullshit. We’re perfect for each other, and you know it.”
Panic jumped down her spine. She couldn’t win this argument. He was too damn stubborn to give in. Through everything—through eight years of bickering and anger and frustration—he’d never backed down. Maybe it was his profession. Or maybe it was just who he was. Once Juan Salvatierra staked out a position, there was no prying it away from him.
She could claim she didn’t love him. She could
say she didn’t want him. But he saw through her lies.
He waited, a faint wind tugging at the halves of his shirt, ash accumulating at the end of his forgotten cigar.
He’d waited to hear the truth from her for a long, long time.
Her throat tightened. She couldn’t give him the truth—at least not all of it. But maybe she could give him a small part of it.
After all, if Rafe appeared, she might not get another chance. Even if he let them live, he would probably separate them…maybe even carry Juan off to the jungle for a session or two in persuasion.
Nausea churned in her gut.
Juan picked up on it right away. “What’s wrong?”
“N-nothing.” She banished her dark thoughts before he could pry. Still, he watched her, concern shading his eyes. After years of seeing her with other men, he still worried about her. Cared for her.
It would be easy to keep pushing him away. That’s what she’d done for nearly a decade. It was part of a meticulously crafted plan she put in motion eight years ago. She needed his anger. His indifference.
But Juan had never given up on her. Oh, he’d overstepped his rights. He’d interfered when he shouldn’t have. He made her furious and outraged and every other emotion a woman in her position had a right to feel.
But he refused to give up.
Could she really let Rafe separate them without offering him a little peace of mind?
She put the laptop aside. Her heart pounded so hard, she almost put a hand over her chest. But she forced her hands to stay in her lap as she spoke. “I know I’ve hurt you. We’ve hurt each other, but I hurt you first.”
To his credit, he stayed silent, allowing her to speak at her own pace.
She picked her way across the words, careful not to stumble into any landmines that could set off an explosion she wasn’t prepared to handle. “A lot of that hurt came from my…work.” She licked her lips. “But you should know, I was never a whore.”
A slight frown marred his forehead, and she could almost see him trying to decipher her meaning.
“I never sold myself for sex, Juan. At least not in the strictest sense.”
His lips parted. “Catalina… What are you saying?”
Heat rushed to her cheeks, but she kept her stare on his. “I had a very select client list. The men I saw knew what to expect…and what not to expect. I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t sexual, because there was plenty of that. But I didn’t sleep with them. Any of them.”
Confusion flitted across his face. “But they paid you…”
Under other circumstances, she might have smiled. Like most men, Juan couldn’t imagine a sexual scenario that didn’t involve sex. She gave a little shrug. “They paid for an experience. In the trade, we call it GFE. The girlfriend experience. Some escorts offer sex as part of it, but others don’t.”
“And men know this when they hire you?”
She nodded. “I worked for a lot of businessmen. Presidents and CEOs. Topflight salesmen. A lot of these guys travel constantly. If they’re single, they don’t always have the time or patience to date. So they hire a woman to accompany them to dinners or corporate events. Most of my clients dealt with international companies. Having a girlfriend”—she made air quotes—“on their arm made socializing easier and less awkward.”
He lapsed into silence. Then the hurt flashed in his eyes again. “I have a list of your clients. There were photos…”
Ah, his list—generated to blackmail her. Fresh anger spiked her veins. “I said there was no sex. I never said it wasn’t sexual.”
“Sexual.”
“Yes.” She crossed her ankles, and her sarong slipped open, exposing her leg up to her thigh.
His gaze went there. “A girlfriend experience.”
Heat bloomed low in her belly—an echo of last night.
Damn him for reminding her what she’d been missing.
His eyes lingered on her legs, an appreciative gleam in the hazel depths.
The anger in her blood burned hotter, flowing into something altogether different. She forced coolness into her tone. “That’s right.”
He looked up, the stirrings of desire in his eyes. “And these men were perfectly content to keep things…platonic.”
“Most of them were too old to do much more than look.”
“But you gave them something to look at.” His gaze moved down her neck to her breasts. The women Lopez hosted on La Mariposa were considerably less well-endowed than Catalina, so the bikini top was snug, the cups mashing her breasts together, forming a deep cleavage. In her room that morning, she almost threw on a T-shirt, but decided against it. She wasn’t obliged to cover up. If Juan couldn’t handle a pair of breasts, he had bigger issues than she thought. His lust was his problem.
Of course, she hadn’t considered her lust.
Her nipples tightened under his gaze. She didn’t need to look down to know they were pebbled against the thin swimsuit material.
Slowly, Juan lifted his gaze to hers. “You gave them something to look at, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Show me.”
Her heart stuttered. She let out a half laugh, half gasp. “What?”
“You heard me.” He picked up his cigar and inhaled, then blew out a thick cloud of smoke. It curled around his head, and his eyes seemed to glow in the haze.
He was baiting her. That much was obvious. If she was smart, she’d roll her eyes and tell him to go jump in the ocean.
He must have read something of her thought process in her eyes, because he smiled. “Wishing me dead won’t stop your body from responding to me, bonita.”
All she had left was bravado. So she shot him a withering look. “You think very highly of yourself.”
The smile fled, and his tone became serious. “Not at all. I’m fucking helpless when it comes to you.”
A shiver went down her spine. He said that with such a wrenching honesty, it felt almost sacred. The atmosphere on the deck seemed to thicken, as if the connection between them was a living, breathing thing.
She drew in a shaky breath. The time to retreat was now, when she could leave the deck before things got out of hand. She’d go to her bedroom and stay there, maybe change into a muumuu or a pair of old sweats.
Juan put the cigar to his lips, drawing from the end.
Against her will, she stared at his mouth. Moisture gathered between her legs as her traitorous body recalled the way those lips had felt on her body, sliding over her heat, delving into her most secret places.
“Well, Catalina?” His tone was silky. “Are you going to run away like usual?”
“No.” It was like someone else was answering for her, through her. Or maybe it was just her subconscious finally speaking up for a change. “I’m done with all that.”
He went completely still. Something burned in his eyes—the intensity of it like a brand on her skin.
Possession.
“Then come to me, my love,” he said. “Give me something to look at.”
16
Juan held his breath as Catalina unfolded her sleek body from the chaise, her sarong swinging around her ankles. The material was sheer, revealing her tan legs and the white bikini underneath. She wore it knotted at her hip, leaving her flat belly exposed.
As for her chest…
He set his cigar aside before he dropped it. Because her chest was the very definition of a distraction. The bikini top hugged the sides of her breasts, pushing them up and together. A few tendrils of hair had escaped from the knot at her crown, and the soft curls stirred in the wind, playing over the tops of the generous swells.
Rafe might kill him today, but right now, he was the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet.
Catalina moved around the end of the chaise until she stood a foot or so in front of him. Slowly, she lifted her arms to her neck and loosened the tie fastening her bikini top. As she lowered her hands, the ties fell. Her breasts bounced free.
He lost
the power of speech. Maybe because all the blood in his body shot to his dick.
Her lips curved in a sultry smile, and an invitation lit her blue eyes. She reached behind her back and undid the last tie, then tossed the top aside.
“I need to touch you,” he rasped. Huh. He could talk, after all.
She shook her head. “Not yet.” Then, her movements languid, she cupped her breasts in both hands, as if offering them for his perusal.
He gripped the arms of his chair. If she kept this up, Rafe wouldn’t need to kill him. He’d die of unabated lust.
She released her breasts, then untied the sarong and let it flutter to the ground. Now she was nude save for the bikini bottom, which tied at either hip. She undid one side, then the other. Then she paused, holding the material against her skin.
Without realizing it, he leaned forward in his chair.
She gave him a teasing smile, the look in her eyes letting him know she had his number.
Holy shit, did she ever. An image surfaced in his mind, of one of those cartoon dogs seeing a beautiful woman and then dropping its mouth open, its tongue flopping out like a red carpet. He fastened his gaze on the fabric at her waist, willing her to drop it.
She let it slip from her grasp, and it fell to the deck. Nude now, she held her arms loosely at her sides, her posture straight and proud.
Perfection.
It was the only word for Catalina. Her firm breasts captured his gaze, the pink nipples pebbled by the breeze. He let his eyes wander down her smooth stomach to her bare sex, where her clit peeped between smooth, slightly puffy lips. As if that sight wasn’t mouthwatering enough, her legs went on for fucking ever, ending in narrow ankles. Even her toes were exquisite.
His hands twitched. “What, um…” He had to clear his throat. “What now?” Please ask me to make love to you.
“Would you like a drink?”
Huh? He blinked, then glanced at his whiskey.
His confusion must have shown on his face, because she tilted her head, her expression that of a goddess who just encountered a charming but somewhat stupid human. “You asked me to show you my work. I’m showing you.”