by Avery Flynn
“Am I boring you?”
Caught in fantasy land again, he shook his head.
Her hand dropped to his thigh, searing his skin through the thick denim of his jeans.
“Not at all.” He squeezed the words out from between gritted teeth. “Just momentarily distracted.”
Her gray eyes sparkled and even though her fingers stayed closer to his knee than his crotch, he swore she knew exactly how uncomfortably distracted he'd become.
“Whatcha thinkin' about?” She leaned in, giving him an excellent view of her bountiful cleavage.
He sputtered out the first thing that came to mind. “Your tattoos.”
“Oh yeah?” Her hand traveled north. “Let's go up to your room so I can show them all to you.”
Chapter Three
Just kissing Sam's lips and tasting the smoky peat-flavored scotch lingering there wasn't enough. Josie needed to touch him. Everywhere.
Now.
They'd barely made it through the door of his hotel room before she’d wrestled his shirt tails free of his waistband. She slid her fingers underneath to tangle in the dusting of mahogany hair leading to the button on his jeans. His abs jumped under her touch. Need flared to life between her legs. Their lips locked together, forcing out every thought in her brain. He electrified her body, every cell alive with wanting.
This is what she needed: to escape in the arms of a stranger and forget about the sword hanging over her head. No emotion. No ties. No happily ever after. Just hot, heady fucking.
The hotel room door thunked closed and Sam pulled away, the inches separating their lips seeming like miles. Their chests heaved in unison, her diamond-hard nipples tenting underneath the soft cotton of her T-shirt.
His finger sketched a meandering line down the column of her neck, pausing for a moment at her frantic pulse point before continuing along through the deep valley between her heavy breasts.
The gimlets couldn't take credit for the firestorm of sensation. It was all Sam. His deliberate pace became blissful torture. She pressed his large hand against her overheated skin.
His fingers dipped under her V-neck, resting on the uppermost swell of her tits, but didn't move; their stillness more erotic than if he'd reached farther down to caress her straining nipples.
Sam swung her up in his arms as if she were a tiny, delicate thing. Hardly anyone challenged her dominant, bitch-please attitude, but he marched across the room with her as if he had every right and tossed her onto the bed. The change was freeing. She sank back into the soft, thick comforter, ready and ravenous for him. All of him.
He stood by the side of the king-size bed, watching her with a hungry look that emphasized the tiger-gold of his eyes. His long, strong lines tempted her to grab a pencil and make a quick sketch of a man starving for something more. Something hard and rough. But the throbbing between her legs overruled her artistic instinct. Later, she'd paint him half-dressed and hard. Everywhere.
He made quick work of the buttons on his conservative pale-blue shirt, revealing a sprinkling of brown hair tinged with dawn's orange. Her gaze traveled down to his cock pushing against its denim prison. Time for a jailbreak.
She rose to her knees and reached for his jeans, her tongue tasting the indent above his hipbone. If her history professors had looked like him in college, she would never have skipped class. Her fingers, clumsy with lust, fumbled with the stiff button while her mouth explored the hard plane of his stomach. Despite spending the past few hours in the Paris Casino's smoky bar, he smelled of warm leather, cinnamon and something she couldn't place at first.
It hit her at the same moment she wriggled his button through the hole—a new book, cracked open for the first time.
Holding her breath, she lowered his zipper at a turtle's pace, wanting to draw out the anticipation as he'd done for her, to take him to the same nearly delirious plane. The end result did not disappoint. Thick, hard and heavy, his dick was a woman's fantasy cock. She wrapped her fingers around his girth and lowered her head to lick the salty pre-cum from its tip.
Sam's fingers threaded through her hair. “If you do any more of that, I won't be able to control myself.”
She stroked him, enjoying its iron smoothness. “Control is highly overrated.”
He groaned and slid her up his hard body, until they were face-to-face. There was nothing sweet or soft about his kiss. Hard and demanding, it shot flames of need through her body. Her clit ached to be touched. She couldn't wait any longer.
Josie broke the kiss long enough to pull her T-shirt over her head and drop it to the floor, then sought his lips again. The air crackled around them with anticipation and something more—a yearning she hadn't experienced before.
They tumbled onto the bed. He swept one arm outward, shoving the overabundance of pillows to the floor. There were no words. Hands moved everywhere. Touching. Stroking. Squeezing. Tension in her stomach pulled tighter. Clothes disappeared, replaced by a condom that for all Josie knew had appeared out of thin air.
Her nipples hardened under his tongue. She writhed on the bed. His fingers traced lines down her sides, stopping at her hips and leaving a trail of fire on her damp skin. She wrapped her legs around his waist, twining her ankles at the small of his back, her heels pressing him forward.
“Fuck me, Sam, I can't wait.”
He growled in answer, a mix of triumph and relief that put her on the edge of coming undone. His buttoned-up exterior hid something wild, and she loved being the one to set it free. That they could both find a kind of escape tangled in the crisp white sheets of a hotel bed made the night even better.
Sam pressed his face into the curve where her shoulder met her neck. His teeth nipped at the tender skin and he slid into her wet pussy in one deep thrust. Pleasure ricocheted through her body. Her back arched like a bow. Their fingers intertwined, staying bound together even as their bodies separated and joined at an ever-quickening pace.
With a quick twist, she flipped him onto his back and rode him until her thighs burned. Sweat slicked, she bent backwards and grabbed her ankles, the angle allowing him to slide deeper, as if he’d always belonged embedded inside her.
Her climax started like an electric ball of energy in her lower back, enlarging in waves until her entire body buzzed. Sam groaned as he withdrew and entered, going deeper than before. The charged sphere snapped, her orgasm exploding like a lightning bolt with his body stiffening a moment later.
They collapsed next to each other, his arm draped across the curve of her waist. Eyes closed in a sublime state of relaxation, Josie promised herself she'd sneak off as soon as Sam's breath steadied with sleep. She'd just close her eyes for a minute.
Sam shifted beside her, bringing the fluffy comforter down over the two of them and securing her closer against his side. A weak SOS signaled from deep within, prodding her to stick to standard operating procedure, but she squeezed her eyes shut against it. The bed was too comfortable, the moment too easy and the man too perfect of a fit.
However, the more she ignored that inner voice, the louder it became, until it blared like a foghorn. Prodded by the self-preservation habits made over the past decade, Josie unwrapped herself from their warm cocoon and sat up.
“Don't go.” His fingers stretched across her taut thigh.
“I have to.”
Josie glanced over her shoulder at Sam, who had turned on his side to watch her. The fast flutter in her chest confirmed that somewhere between the bar and the bed, this had moved beyond the usual fuck-'em-and-leave-'em routine into something more interesting.
“Do you want to go?”
“No.” The word escaped before she could come up with one of her usual cover stories about an early work shift or her nonexistent dog that had to be walked because, for once, no was the truth.
“Then stay.”
His plea hung in the air until she relaxed back onto the bed.
Sam traced the tattooed vines winding across Josie's shoulders and followed a
s they dipped lower, shadowing her spine and ending in another infinity symbol on the small of her back, right above the matching dimples at the top of her round ass.
She shivered under his fingers. “That tickles.”
“It's so…pretty.” So much for being able to use his Scrabble-worthy vocabulary.
He buried his nose in her soft hair, her curls like silk against his cheeks, and inhaled her amber scent. His cock stirred in response. Ducking his head lower, he kissed the infinity sign's center.
“My friend is a tattoo artist so I get a discount.”
“Did he design this?” Sam kissed the spot on her shoulder blade where the vines passed closest to her freckled shoulders.
She sighed and snuggled her ass closer to his stiffening cock. “Nah. I draw them up and he traces them onto my skin before inking me.”
“Even the princess and the dragon?”
“Yeah. I got that right before my first show.” She laughed, a dry sound with more than a touch of disappointment “I thought I'd finally slain the dragon.”
He pulled her closer to him as they spooned and kissed her shoulder. “What happened?”
“A so-called friend stole my art and the original sketches then passed it off as her own at a gallery in L.A.” Her husky voice went silent.
“Did you say anything?”
“Yeah, not that it did any good. Her rich parents had so many deep connections in that world that no one believed me.” Her shoulders slumped. “You don't want to hear this. We're both old enough to know that life doesn't work out like you think it will when you're young, now does it?”
She sighed and Sam wished he could erase the disillusionment in her voice. “It's not over for you yet.”
“Well, Dry Creek is long gone, that's for sure.”
His pulse hiccupped. “Dry Creek, Nebraska?” Blasting out of his comfort zone with someone like Josie in Vegas was one thing. It was quite another to do that back home in a small town that thrived on gossip—especially gossip concerning the Laytons. Everyone and his mother would be taking notes.
“Yeah, there's an artist colony there. I was going to paint until my fingers fell off, but it doesn't look like I'll be able to go. I'm just hoping they'll refund the money I've already paid.”
He'd no more than released a relieved breath than guilt twisted him. “That's…that's too bad,” he stuttered.
Josie rolled over in his arms, her gray eyes soft. “It would have been nice to go knowing that there was somebody there I knew.” She smirked at him and traced her finger down the scar on his cheek he'd gotten that summer on McPherson's Bluff. “We could have even gone treasure hunting together.”
His entire body tensed. “What are you talking about?” The blood iced in his veins.
He should have known. Treasure hunters had been after the Layton family treasure, Rebecca's Bounty, for decades. They wouldn't think twice about using any means necessary to gather information. Even sleeping with the one family member who'd spent decades looking for it. God knows more than a few had tried to get close to him in hopes of getting a look at Rebecca's diary or other family relics.
“Were you waiting for me, Josie? How long have you been watching me?”
Josie sat up, the sheet falling to her narrow waist. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
Despite the temper building, he couldn't stop his gaze from straying to her pendulous breasts.
“The treasure.” Gold, jewels and who knew what else buried somewhere outside of Dry Creek. He'd been raised on the legend. Lost his belief in happy endings while searching for it the summer he turned twelve. Michael's last August. Regret and anger tag-teamed his chest, squeezing his lungs tight until he could barely breathe.
“You are completely off your nut.” She threw the covers off long legs that had wrapped so tightly around him. “God, why do I always attract the weirdoes?”
He refused to let her off that easy. “Don't try to distract and discredit. Who hired you?” Uncle Harlan was his first suspect, but there were others.
“That's it. Have a nice life.” She jumped off the bed and made a beeline for her clothes.
How could he have been so wrong about her? Usually his instincts were pretty good, but something about Josie had fucked-up his compass as badly as if it had been placed on a slab of iron.
Now dressed, Josie stomped over to the chair and grabbed her backpack. The zipper must have been open because its contents spilled out onto the chair and scattered on floor. Her shoulders shook as if she was trying not to cry.
Doubt niggled at Sam. A born cynic, he never bought the company line and always expected the worst. What if he hadn't been wrong about Josie? What if she didn't know anything about Rebecca's Bounty? He didn't have any proof, just natural-born suspicion. Fuck. He couldn't leave it like this.
“Let me help.”
“Stop.” Her order cut through the room. “I can do it myself.” She gathered up a small book, cards and an extra pair of shoes and shoved them into the bag.
Without another word, she stormed out of the hotel room and out of his life.
He slumped down in a chair, gut aching like he'd gone mano a mano against a giant. When had he become such a prick? He couldn't blame a failed treasure hunt for that.
An image of twelve-year-old Michael looking up with death staring out from those familiar hazel eyes flashed in Sam's mind and bile rose in his throat. The memories always came back when he forgot to be vigilant. The more orderly his life, the less Michael haunted him, so Sam had worked hard to create a life of black and white with no colors in between. Being with Josie and her riot of hues had jostled the memories loose.
Sam shifted in the chair and paper crackled underneath him. In a haze, he pulled it out and unfolded the yellowed page.
Charcoal landscape sketches filled the page. A natural rock bridge. Stubby sagebrush trees barely hanging on to a stone ledge with the expansive prairie pouring out into the distance. A rocky formation towering above a flat, barren field with a glimpse of craggy badlands peeking out from behind. A small inscription had been scrawled in the corner.
There is a beauty to this hard land more valuable than treasure, but for those who insist, I give you this. Rebecca, 1865.
It took a minute for its meaning to hit him.
“Holy shit.”
Rumors had circulated for years about a treasure map but he'd never found it despite searching. While plenty of fakes had turned up, the real one remained elusive. Sam scanned the paper, taking in the quality, the discoloration, the unique script that at first glance matched Rebecca's writings. He wouldn't know for sure until he got back home to compare it with other documents in his collection, but this had all the markings of the fabled treasure map for Rebecca's Bounty.
How the hell did Josie get it? His uncle had lost the diary in a poker match ten years ago.
The contents of his stomach curdled. The small book she'd shoved into her backpack. The whole fucking thing had been a setup.
Josie hadn't been interested in him. No. She wanted a Layton to pump for information for some fool's errand and he'd walked right into the trap—until he'd called her out. People had been searching for his great-great-great-great-grandmother's treasure since before his father had been born.
His gaze caught on the jeans he'd ironed that morning lying in a puddle by the bed and anger blazed through him.
He should have known better.
Josie jammed the elevator down button with her finger, then poked it again and again for good measure.
Paranoid asshole. This was why she stuck with no-strings-attached, one-night stands. She had the personality judgment skills of a gullible puppy.
This wasn't the first time she'd been screwed by her missing bullshit detector. Getting fired, Cy's huge debt and the fresh wound Sam had inflicted revived old hurts, allowing the worst of them to break to the surface.
The long-buried pain sliced through her so sharply and with such strength, she could
practically smell the oil paints caked on her brush and staining her short nails. On that day, her blood had rushed from the high of creating her best paintings after months spent closed up in a friend's L.A. studio. She'd barely slept and hardly ate because the creative juices streaming through her system left little time or energy for anything other than her oils, brushes and canvases.
It had been the best time of her life, made possible only because of her roommate Sabrina's generosity. A fellow painter, Sabrina said she understood about the muse. She'd pressed the studio keys into Josie's palm and told her not to worry about rent for a few months. Josie hadn't thought twice about it. Sabrina said she was fat with trust fund money and promised she could afford to wait a few months for the back rent.
Then Sabrina had passed off Josie's artwork as her own and the L.A. art crowd bought the farce lock, stock and purloined brushstroke. When Josie had confronted Sabrina, she'd only laughed. Of course the artwork in her studio was hers. No one else was allowed to use the studio, everyone knew that.
Pushing back the anger, she berated herself. She should have known better than to let down her guard again.
Sam's hotel room door swung open and he strode out as naked as when she'd left him moments ago. “Where in the hell did you get this?” He brandished Rebecca's landscape treasure map, carelessly crumpling it in his right hand.
“Be careful with that! She did a great job capturing the light, that's not easy to do with charcoal.”
“I don't give two shits about how well Rebecca captured the light. I want to know how in the hell you ended up with her stuff.”
Through the angry red haze, the artist in her took in the strong lines of his profile and the shadow of a beard darkening his jawline. Her nipples stiffened as she recalled the warm taste of his hard abs when she’d licked her way across his six pack. She couldn't decide if she'd rather paint him or fuck him again. Probably both, but what she didn't want to do was fight him. Her nerves were too raw, and dammit, she didn't trust herself not to drag him back inside his room for some hard, fast, angry sex.