by Red Garnier
His chest gleamed bare when he leaned over her, his shoulders bunched with tension as he grasped her calves. He stared into her eyes, his expression tight as he guided her legs around his hips. “Hold on to me. Don’t let me go.”
The way he asked to be held made her think she’d never let him go, she’d make him love her, she’d hold on to him.
He pulled her to his hips and she felt him, hot and thick and rigid, pressing into where she was pliant and damp. A wildness raged inside her when he ducked his head to suckle a breast—suckle hard the instant he pushed in. She bucked up to receive him, urging him in with her hands and legs.
They moaned in unison when he entered, their breaths mingling as he angled his head to hers, their lips so close that all he had to do was bend his head an inch to capture her mouth and the whimper that followed when he was fully inside her.
“Yes,” he growled.
“Yes,” she breathed.
A fullness took her, bringing the discomfort of being stretched more than she could bear, and then he was moving inside her and the unease transformed to pleasure. Waves and waves of pleasure.
And in that instant she loved what he did to her, how he brought her every cell and atom to life, how he offered her ease. Ease for this wanting.
She’d longed for that ease more than anything.
As he moved in her, touched and kissed her, she gave encouraging sounds that seemed to tear out from within her—and he continued. Taking. Giving. Expertly loving her.
Braced up above her, his arms rippled with tension, his throat strained, his face was raw with the semblance of pleasure. All were memorized in her mind.
Vaguely, in her blanked, blissful state, she knew sex would never again be like this. Would a man ever live up to this one?
A sound that was purely male vibrated against her ear as he placed his mouth there to whisper, “Come for me.”
Moving deftly, he pushed her higher and higher, murmuring carnal, unintelligible words in Spanish that melted her bones like the silk and steel thrusts of his body. Mia. Suave. Hermosa. Mia. Mia. Mia.
All Virginia could say was “Marcos.” In a plea, a murmur, a moan. Marcos. Over and over again. Marcos as he increased his pace, driving faster, more desperately into her. Vaguely she felt the warmth of him spill inside her, the convulsions that racked his powerful body as ecstasy tore through them both, the pleasure consuming, making him yell, making her scream, scream “Marcos.”
“Marcos” as he kissed her breasts, her lips, her neck. “Marcos” as the pressure spread. “Marcos” as she shattered.
Seven
Darkness: it was hard to leave it. But a strong, familiar scent wafted into her nostrils. Tempting. Tantalizing. Beckoning her awake. Coffee. Yes. Strong and rich and ready. Virginia stirred on the bed. She stretched her arms first, then her legs, sighing when it hurt pleasantly to do both.
“…in an hour…yes…we’ll be there…”
Virginia bolted upright on the bed when she recognized that particularly deep baritone voice. Her head swam. Lips tugging at her nipples, fingers pinching, touching, pleasuring…whispers… A throb started between her legs. She squeezed her eyes shut and swung her feet until her toes touched the carpeted floor. Calm down. She would not, could not, panic.
Sunlight glowed in the living room, making her squint as she entered. He stood by the window in his shirt and slacks. His raven-black hair looked damp from a recent bath. He held one arm stretched above his head, his tan hand braced on the windowsill. His was a solid presence in the room. Sturdy as an ox, that was the way he looked. That was the way he was.
“Good morning,” she muttered.
He turned, smiled.
She set her coffee on a small round table beside the desk and lowered herself to a chair, Marcos coming forward and kissing her forehead.
“Did you order the entire kitchen contents up here?” she whispered.
He stroked her cheek. “I wanted to be sure I ordered what you liked.”
A blush was spreading up her neck because she remembered cuddling against him after she’d gone on and on saying please. God, no.
His eyes were full of knowledge, of satisfaction of having loved his lover well and hard for a night. Her skin pebbled with goose bumps as she realized he was remembering everything they’d done through the night: the kissing, the laughing, the kissing, the eating cheese and grapes on the carpet, the kissing.
They had made love until Virginia thought she’d pass out from bliss.
And hours before waking up, when she had cuddled in and draped one leg across his hips, he had made slow, lazy love to her again, and whispered words to her in Spanish she could only dream of finding the meaning of.
He lifted her chin, studying her. “Did I hurt you last night?”
With a small smile, she tugged on the collar of her pajama top and showed him his bite. His forehead furrowed.
“That has to be painful.”
“Only in the most pleasurable way.”
Settling down, she took a healthy sip of coffee, then set the cup back down. “What?” she pressed.
He was looking at her strangely.
“What?”
“You begged me to take you last night.”
“And?”
“And I liked it.”
Her stomach muscles contracted. Suddenly her lips felt puffy and sensitive as she remembered just how thoroughly he’d kissed her. “Marcos, this will be very complicated in Chicago.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
A thousand butterflies fluttered in her chest. “You expect we can keep this up?”
“We touched. We made love four times in one night. Do you expect we can stop by Monday?”
They’d touched. His tanned, long hands had been somewhere in her body, and hers had been somewhere in his. She couldn’t bear to remember. “What do you…suggest?”
“Nobody has to know about us. And my suggestion is to continue.”
Her body trembled. Little places zinged and pinged as though reminding her just, exactly, where his hands had been. “Continue.”
He leaned against the window and his hand slowly fisted high up on the windowsill. “I swear I’ve never seen anything lovelier than you, naked. Your breasts.”
She closed her eyes, sucking in a breath, willing herself not to remember what he’d done there. How he’d squeezed or cradled or…
“Marcos…”
“You cried out my name when I was inside you.”
Oh, God. Yes, she had, yes, she had. Had she no honor? No pride when it came to him? No digni—
“I couldn’t sleep for wanting to take you again.” He smiled sadly. “You kept cuddling against me and I kept growing hard. I had to…shower.”
Wrapping her arms around her shaking frame, she asked, “Do you want to?”
“To what?”
“Make love to me again.”
And he said…
“Yes.”
Her stomach exploded. He wanted her. Still. More than yesterday? Marcos still wanted her. But they couldn’t continue in Chicago. They couldn’t.
His arm fell at his side as he spun around and pinned her with a smile. “Eat up, though. We’re going sightseeing.”
She set down her coffee mug before she spilled it all over herself. “Really?”
“Of course. Really. We’re flying over the city on a chopper first. Then we’ll lunch downtown.”
“A chopper.”
“Are you concerned?”
“Actually, no. Excited.”
She dug into the eggs, the waffles and the tea.
Marcos was piling his plate as though he hadn’t been fed since his toddler years. “Would you like a tour of Allende,” he asked casually.
Allende. She grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”
It occurred to her she had never imagined she could ever have one of these mornings with Marcos. Such a lavish, elegant hotel suite and such a clear, sunny day outside, a beaut
iful morning. Like husband and wife. Talking. Smiling. Laughing as they enjoyed breakfast. But they were boss and assistant, embarking on what had to be wrong. The air around them was charged with sexual tension. Really, it could very well be lightning in there.
“Did she…agree to your bid?” Virginia asked, breaking the silence. This watching him eat was a little too stimulating to her mind.
He popped a grape into his mouth. “She will.”
“She didn’t seem interested in even discussing business.”
“It’s a game.” His eyes skewered her to her seat. “She wants me to demand Allende and I won’t.”
“So you’ll play this for the entire week.”
“Not likely.” He spread cream cheese atop his bagel. “I’ll leave with an offer and let her think it over.”
Were he any other man, Virginia was sure a woman like Marissa could handle him. But he was Marcos. Nobody could think straight with him near and he was as manageable as a wild stallion to a child. “If she rejects your offer?”
He diverted his attention from his tower of gluttony and selected a newspaper among the three folded ones, calmly saying, “She’s not getting a better one, trust me.”
He yanked open El Norte. “What angered you? Yesterday?”
The cup paused halfway to her lips then clattered back down on the plate. “I heard you…discussing me. I’ve always found that annoying.”
Slowly he folded the paper and set it aside. The intense stare he leveled on her made her squirm. Those gypsy eyes, they did magic in her. Black magic. “You’re blushing.”
“I’m not.”
But her face felt hot and so did other parts of her.
His jaw tightened and a muscle in his cheek flexed. “Is it the attention? You do not like this?”
She drew in a deep breath because unfortunately there was no brown bag she could cover her face with. She had to pretend he was hallucinating. “It’s the whispering behind my back.”
“You cannot control what people whisper.” He popped a piece of his bagel into his mouth and then picked up the paper again.
“You are wrong.” How could he think that? “You can control your actions. You can give them no cause to…to whisper.”
“You’d let gossip hurt you, Virginia?”
His voice was full of such tenderness she actually felt it like a stroke. “You’ve never been hurt by words before?”
Once again, the paper was lowered. This time his eyes burned holes through her. “I said words to my father. I’ll bet my fortune that yes, they hurt.”
Something distressed her. His gaze. His tone. “You wish you took them back?”
He considered with a frown. “No. I wish he’d have taken them for what they were. The words of a wounded boy determined to break him.”
She had never known Marcos to be cruel. But he could be dangerous. He was predator, and he had been wounded. “You could never make amends with him?”
His smile was pantherlike, almost carrying a hiss. “Because of her.”
“Marcos,” she said again after a moment, even more alarmed at the harsh set of his jaw and ominous slant of his eyebrows. “Marcos, why do you want to destroy the company? You could make amends with it. Save it, mend it.”
“It would take too much effort.” He waved her off with a hand, went back to the paper. “Eat up, amor, I’m eager to show you the city.”
“You’re eager to get back and have your way with me,” she quipped.
He threw his head back and gave out a bark of laughter, his expression so beautiful her heart soared in her chest. “So we understand each other, then.”
He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her.
She was the same woman he’d wanted for so long, and yet she had become someone else. A sexy woman who was comfortable in his presence, smiling, laughing, open to speaking her mind.
Eyes sparkling as the helicopter touched the ground, Virginia pulled his headphones down to his neck. “That’s Allende?” she yelled through the rotor noise.
He glanced out the window, squeezing her fingers with his. Impossible, but her excitement was rubbing off on him. “That’s it, yes.”
Once they climbed out of the helicopter, Marcos surveyed the vast industrial building that sat on two hundred acres of land. It was smaller than he remembered it—but then he’d been so much younger.
The sun blazed atop their heads. Virginia’s raven mane gleamed. And in that moment Marcos didn’t see how aged the building appeared, or notice the grease on all the trucks and carriers that were parked in endless rows across the parking lot. He saw his father and himself, discussing the delivery schedule. A strange heaviness settled in his chest, weighing him down.
“Are we going in?”
Pulled from his thoughts, he looked at his assistant. How she managed to stand there—sexy and innocent—while he felt so unsettled was beyond him.
Bracing himself for whatever greeted him inside, he led her toward the double glass doors beneath a metal sign that read Transportes Allende.
Within minutes the two guards unlocked the door and ushered them in. Marcos and Virginia were free to roam the old wide halls. An attractive blush tinted her cheeks as she eagerly drank in her surroundings.
There was nothing to say about the structure, except that it was bare bones, obsolete and old. Horrible.
New installations were a must. A more recent fleet of carriers to strengthen their position as a link to the U.S. market. New—
“This is terribly spacious,” she said, leaning a hand on a red brick wall that served as a room division.
Marcos reined himself back. What in the hell had he been thinking?
He didn’t want to restore the company to its former glory; he wanted it gone.
He frowned darkly while Virginia swayed her hips and went peeking from room to room. All were vacated for the morning under Marcos’s instructions. An encounter with Marissa was the last thing he’d wanted today—and thankfully she was smart enough to have obliged.
Virginia tucked her hair behind her ear, her forehead creasing as she peered up at the rafters on the ceiling.
Rather than notice the paint was peeling off the walls and making a list of fixing that—Miss Hollis was probably already cataloguing that for him, in any case—Marcos focused on her reactions.
Something warm and fuzzy stirred in him. Virginia would be a pitiful poker player. Her expressions were too untrained for intrigue—and her father’s past had given her a loathing for the game.
“My first office,” he said then, without tone.
She spun around in the doorway as he spoke, wide-eyed. “This one? With the view of the front gate?”
He followed her into the small space and tried to see it through her eyes, old and dirty and cluttered, but then it just appeared like what it was: a promising place in need of some attention.
Marcos could’ve kicked himself for mentally volunteering to give it some TLC. No. Hell, no.
He wouldn’t.
All he wanted was to eliminate it, like wiping out his past in one fell swoop. Swoosh. Gone. Presto!
But judging by the interest that swam in Virginia’s eyes, she approved of the place, too. “It fits you somehow,” she said. “Rough around the edges.”
They shared a smile.
The fuzzy feeling inside him grew to incredible proportions.
“How many transport units does it have?” she asked. “Approximately?”
He watched her sail to the window. His eyes tracked her progress for a moment and then he followed her.
She was peering through the blinds, scanning the vast loading area, when he came up behind her.
He buried his face in the side of her neck and enveloped her in his arms, biting back a groan. “There are two thousand and forty cargo carriers—plus hundreds of smaller units for simpler deliveries.”
She smelled of a soft, powdery fragrance, her hair scented with his travel shampoo. The combination flew up to his hea
d like an aphrodisiac.
He’d never imagined the days they spent together would be like this. Lust and desire constantly had him on edge, true, but there was also the delightful peace and pleasure of her company.
Gently, he guided her around to face him. “As soon as we land in Chicago, I will have the funds transferred to your personal account. I want those men out of your and your father’s lives so you can be at peace. Agreed?”
A shadow descended, veiling her eyes. Inch by inch, her smile disappeared.
He cupped her face between his palms. “Something wrong with that?”
Clearly something was. She averted her gaze and gnawed on her lower lip. “Thank you, no, it’s all fine. That’s our arrangement, right?”
Pretend, she didn’t say. But his mind supplied it.
When Marcos did not deny this, Virginia lowered her face and drew away, suddenly looking very young and very vulnerable. She hugged herself tight. “I’d forgotten I’m being paid for this, that my father’s bad habits brought me here.”
Marcos knew that a woman like her didn’t easily fall into a man’s bed. Was she regretting that she had? Or only the circumstances that had brought her there?
A host of male instincts assailed him, urging him to embrace her, take her, appease her, seize the instinctive role of a man and protect her.
With a surge of dominant power, he grasped her shoulders and gave a gentle clench. “You’re worried he won’t stop gambling—that this will only be a temporary relief from your problem.”
She nodded. “I am.”
Virginia had been calling her father every day. His insides wrenched in protest at the knowledge of her suffering because of a reckless old man on a suicide mission. “How long since your father had a real job?” They strolled back into the hall, side by side.
“Since Mother died. Several years ago.”
They came into the last office—his father’s old office. Virginia probably didn’t know it had been his because of its ample size, or maybe she suspected, Marcos didn’t know. All he knew was that he couldn’t bear to look around but at the same time couldn’t leave it.
He crossed the wood floor, now covered with a shaggy white rug, and touched the window as he gazed outside. “He’s been like this ever since? Your father?”