by Maya Rodale, Caroline Linden, Miranda Neville, Katharine Ashe
Too quickly. Too soon.
She ran her hands over his shoulders and into his hair. Soft. Silky. She twined her fingers in it. His scent made her crazy. It made her want to stay in his arms forever, just kissing him. She didn’t want to push him away or shock him or hold him off. She wanted to know him. In every way. Every inch of his body and other things, like his birthday and his favorite color and his ideal day. He kissed her like he wanted that too. He kissed her like this was his ideal day.
“This is going too fast,” she said beneath his lips.
“This is supposed to go fast.” He took her mouth again and his fingers caressed perfectly.
He was right. Wedding party hookup. She made herself silently repeat the words. She repeated rebound sex, too, to remind herself why he was with her now. “Okay.”
His hand slipped beneath her shirt. Stroking up her waist, skin on skin. Surrounding her breast. Over her bra, his thumb circled the nipple. “I’ve wanted to touch you since the moment I first saw you.”
A car horn honked. “Cali! Piers?”
They broke apart.
She blinked. It was still daytime and they were still on the path past the stable, screened by some trees, for which she was now immensely grateful.
From the parking lot she heard Jane’s cousin Cassidy say, “Piers’s Alpha Romeo is here. They’ve got to be here.”
Cali looked up at Piers.
Gaze fixed on hers, he said huskily, “This isn’t finished.”
“Okay.” She straightened her shirt and walked toward the parking lot.
Cassidy was standing beside a car full of people. “Hey, guys! I’m so glad I found you, Cali. Yesterday you said you really wanted to go on the tour at Edmonton Vineyards. It’s in a half hour. I was looking for you at the hotel and Mark told me you’d come here. Do you still want to come?”
“Oh.” Cali moved toward her, brushing back from her hot face hair that’d come loose from her ponytail. “I’m not really dressed for it.”
“You’re perfect,” Piers said softly.
Her heartbeat tripped.
“Guys,” Jane’s other cousin, Kimberly, said from the car. “I’m not feeling great.” She looked completely green. “Too much champagne and sun at the pool, I guess. I think I should go back.”
“If we take you back to Brampton,” one of the techies in the car said, “we’ll miss the winery tour.”
Piers halted a few yards short of the others and touched Cali’s elbow. “I can take her back to Brampton,” he said quietly, “but my car only seats two.”
She looked into the most gorgeously warm blue eyes ever. “That’s really nice of you.”
He gave her a smile—a private smile, she thought. Then he helped Kimberly into his car.
“He’s already seen that vineyard anyway,” one of the others said as they drove away. “His family used to vacation in Tuscany with the people who own it.”
Cassidy turned to Cali with a friendly smile. “How was horseback riding?”
“Great,” Cali said, crossing her arms over her stomach and staring out the window at the postcard scenery. “It was great.”
Chapter Eight
The Carriage House
As the sun angled low, Cali dressed in one of Roxanna’s sexy outfits, shook off her discomfort, and went to find Piers. She desperately needed to unwind and he knew how to unwind her. If she let herself think about this beyond the opportunity for physical release, she would drive herself insane. So she wouldn’t. He would like it and she would get what she needed. Everybody would be satisfied.
But he’d disappeared. He couldn’t be found in the house, the gardens, at the pool where people were drinking cocktails while swimming, or in the drawing room where some of the others were playing charades. Unlike the American version, English charades seemed to involve making up little plays and using as many dirty words as possible.
Cali grinned as she watched from the sidelines. But she wasn’t in the mood for games. Not this sort of game, anyway.
Maybe he’d left for the evening. There was no reason he would’ve told her that he was leaving Brampton, only her fantasies that had swiftly expanded to include him in everything she did this week.
“You look like a little lost lamb, Miss Blake,” Mark said as she wandered into the foyer.
“Please call me Cali. I’m not like the others here. You don’t have to treat me like royalty.”
He came out from behind the marble desk. “But you are royalty, darling. Everybody who stays at Brampton gets the royal treatment.”
“Not tonight, apparently,” she mumbled, feeling strangely abandoned, and angry at herself for feeling that.
“I know what you need,” Mark said.
“A stiff drink?”
“A stiff something else entirely.”
Oh, good lord. Even the hotel manager could tell she needed to get laid.
“And I think I know someone who can help you with that.” He pointed at the open front door through which a luscious summer breeze wafted, and toward which a luscious man walked from the direction of the parking lot. “Go get him,” Mark said and nudged her forward.
Piers wore a dark blue shirt of some fabric that looked entirely neat yet entirely casual, khakis that had to have been tailored in Paris or Milan, and keyhole aviator sunglasses with blue lenses a shade lighter than his eyes. When he saw her, he smiled.
“I was just coming to find you,” he said, halting very close to her, as if they were together. As if he didn’t mind everyone seeing that they were together.
“Here I am,” she said on a little puff of breath.
He removed his glasses. Dolce & Gabbana. Easily three hundred dollars. Probably his throwaway pair.
“You look amazing,” he said.
“Thank you.” Guilt prickled at her over her own charade. “They’re not my clothes. I can’t afford two-hundred-dollar skirts or fifty-dollar camisoles.”
“I don’t know what a camisole is, but if it’s any of the pieces of clothing on your body right now, I approve.”
Raucous laughter came through the house’s windows, followed by a drunken female shriek of delight. Charades was clearly revving up.
“Sounds like they’re having fun,” he said with a glance toward the window. “Were you planning to join them?”
She couldn’t stop staring at his jaw. His mouth. His perfect cheekbones. His hair that curled up just a bit at the edge of his collar. “Not particularly.”
He brushed his fingertips along her forearm. “Want to get out of here?”
“Yes.” She tried to steady her nerves. “But I’d feel bad going far.”
“Hm. I’ve an idea.” He took her hand and drew her toward Brampton’s old stable block. The carriage house portion had been converted into a garage, like in the movie Sabrina, the Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart version. Piers’s hand held hers, strong and secure, and her heart did weird patters. Did wedding hookups hold hands?
He opened the door, switched on a light, and released her. He gestured toward the cars: the Rolls-Royce limo, a silver Porsche, Damien Knightly’s dark green Aston Martin, Piers’s red Alpha Romeo, and Harry Compton’s muddy Landrover.
“Take your pick.”
“Take my pick? Are we going somewhere after all?”
“No.” He looked down at her with unmistakable intention in his eyes.
“Um… How about the limo?” She moved toward the Rolls-Royce, trying not to stumble on her rubber band legs. “I came from the airport in this, but I slept most of the way so I didn’t really get to enjoy it.”
When she’d ridden in it with Jane and Roxanna to the bridal shop, she’d thought about how Piers probably had a limo at his beck and call back in Philly. She trailed her fingertips along the shiny black hood and over the Spirit of Ecstasy ornament. It felt wild. Decadent. Just the way a backseat tryst with a hot man should feel.
“I bet you ride in cars like this all the time,” she said.
&nbs
p; “Not usually. Limos this size have bars.” He opened the car door. “Shall we?”
“There’s a fully stocked bar up at the house.”
“True. There are a hundred people up there too.”
“You like to drink alone?”
“I’d like to drink with you alone.” He didn’t mean drink. He meant he’d like to finish what they’d started after the horseback ride. The depth of his voice and the set of his beautiful mouth said it.
She wanted to finish it too. All she had to do was to keep her emotional fantasies in check and she could have a night she desperately needed.
He took her hand again, this time to help her climb into the limo, then he got in after her and closed the door. Confronted by the reality of what was about to happen, she didn’t know where to put her hands or any other part of her. She perched on the edge of the seat as he opened a camouflaged refrigerator.
“Aha,” he said, pulling out a full-sized bottle of champagne. “Very nice.” He reached for two cut crystal champagne flutes, uncorked the bottle smoothly, and poured. “It’s even chilled.”
“Did you plan this?”
He offered her a glass. “I might have.”
Cali’s throat had never been drier. She sipped. “This is delicious.”
He sat comfortably back into the black leather and set down his glass. He didn’t intend to drink, and he wasn’t even bothering to pretend.
Her body felt electric, tingling, and fully awake. And insanely nervous. She gestured with her glass. “How much do you suppose this costs?”
“About two hundred and fifty dollars.”
“That doesn’t seem so bad for a case.”
“A bottle.”
Champagne shot down the wrong way. She gasped. He leaned forward and put his hand on her knee.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.” She coughed. “Just choking on a ten-dollar sip there.”
“Good.” His hand, big and warm, traveled up her thigh. “Because I’d like to get this meeting started, stat.” His thumb halted just shy of the apex of her thighs, his grasp confident.
“I didn’t know about the meeting.” She stared at his hand, so close to where it had been two nights ago when he’d given her the quickest holiday she’d ever had. “Someone forgot to send me the memo. Should I have prepared?”
“No preparation necessary.” He took the glass from her and set it aside. “Just active participation.” His palm came around the back of her neck and drew her forward.
His mouth was hot and he tasted good. Like expensive champagne. And lust. And something else. Enjoyment. He was enjoying her. Enjoying giving her pleasure. It came so clearly through his touch, his fingers curving around her shoulder, and his kiss, slow and lavish, as though he wasn’t in any hurry, as though his first intention wasn’t to get something from her but to please her.
She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and let him pull her onto his lap. They kissed like that, his hand unmoving at the top of her thigh and his other in her hair, their mouths increasingly hungry. She wanted to get closer, struggled to. But she couldn’t in this position.
She straddled him. He stroked hair back from her forehead, drew her down to him, and kissed her briefly, firmly, then backed off to meet her gaze. Then he kissed her again, longer. Then he kissed her and didn’t stop. Her hands went to the buttons of his shirt, unfastening them, and his hands were on her thighs, curving toward her bottom. She ran a palm across his chest, loving the sensation of his taut skin and muscle, and cupped her other palm over his fly.
“California.” His voice was ragged. “You’re—”
She caught his words with her mouth and bore down on his erection, drunk on the caress of his tongue inside her and rocking against him. He grabbed her hips, jerking her to him, and the heat flared so hard a moan tore from her throat. She wore the merest scrap of a G-string. An unzipped fly, a condom, and she could have what she wanted immediately. What she needed. In a car. In a garage. Where anybody could enter at any time.
“We shouldn’t do this,” she gasped as she ground into him.
“We really should,” he said at her collarbone, his tongue lapping at her skin, his teeth nipping.
Rebound girl. She was a rebound girl for him. Anybody who saw them now would think that. And he was her wedding party sex. But no one would believe that’s all she wanted from him. She didn’t believe it.
“Here,” she clarified. “We shouldn’t do this here. Someone might come.” She grappled at excuses—to slow it down and make it last longer, or to end it before she lost herself entirely. “They might see us.”
“Tinted glass,” he said against her neck, his mouth making her crazy, desperate to press even harder to him. “Anyway, let them see. Give them inspiration.”
She did not want to think of Dick telling her she liked it when the limo driver watched. She opened her eyes and the hottest man alive filled her vision.
“Okay.” Her voice was shaky. “It’s just this once, anyway. Just one night. Right?”
His hands scooped her camisole to her breasts. She lifted her arms and he pulled it over her head. His gaze upon her was fevered and she shivered. But he didn’t move to touch her.
“What?” she whispered.
His chest rose hard. “Didn’t have you figured for black lace.”
“JC Penney six-ninety-nine demi-cup special.”
“Thank you, JC Penney,” he whispered like a prayer.
She laughed, but then his hands were cupping her breasts, the pads of his thumbs crossing the lace and teasing her nipples, and her laughter turned into a sigh, then a gasp. He swept his thumbs under the lace. His skin brushed against her nipples, beneath the sheer cups, stroking.
She pushed his shirt off his shoulders. Her fingers circled a bicep, but didn’t get very far around it. He was all lean muscle, all rippling, smooth, mobile, hot, perfect male beauty from shoulder to wrist. She leaned forward and licked his bicep. He tasted like sea-salt chocolate. She bit the muscle lightly.
His hands caught her around the ribs. “Cal—California,” he stuttered hoarsely.
“Is this okay?”
“More than okay.”
“I love nice arms, and yours are…” She kissed his skin. He smelled so good. So good. “Very nice.”
She felt a rumble of laughter and his hands moved on her, stroking down her sides, then up, his thumbs brushing the undersides of her breasts. “I officially retract all the complaints I’ve ever made about tennis and squash.” But something about his voice sounded strange.
She lifted her head. His eyes blazed. He surrounded her face with his hands, sank his fingers into her hair, and pulled her mouth to his. He kissed her deeply, thoroughly, as if he could only have her like this. The tips of her breasts grazed his chest. She pressed into his erection and felt the rise of her orgasm, and wanted it. Wanted him.
In a limo.
Where anybody could see them. Where anybody might now be watching.
She broke away. “I can’t do this. Not here.”
He gripped her waist. “All right.” His heartbeats sped beneath her palm. “Why not?”
She climbed off his lap, grabbed her shirt, and dragged it over her breasts. “There’s someone at work. Dick.”
He straightened. “A man you’re involved with?” His voice was rigid.
Her eyes flew to him. “No. A creep who refuses to understand that I’m not interested.”
He scraped his hand slowly through his hair. “Okay,” he said.
“A few weeks ago he said something inappropriate about me in a limo.”
“Harassment?”
“He said he thought I’d like being watched by the driver while having sex with another man. He’s disgusting.”
Piers was silent a moment. “Do you want me to break his legs?”
She couldn’t help smiling. “Would you?”
“Happy to. I’ve got the muscles for it, after all.” He flexed his biceps.
His face went perfectly still.
“What?”
He buttoned his shirt and reached for the door handle. “Let’s get out of here.”
She climbed out after him. It was the first time he hadn’t waited for her to precede him through any door.
“Piers, I didn’t mean that. I know your family doesn’t control everything in Philadelphia.” Just most everything. “I’m sorry.”
He looked down at her. “I’m the one who should be saying I’m sorry, California. I really want this, but I’ve gone about it all wrong.”
“This?”
“You.” He didn’t touch her. “Listen, I’ve got to take care of something tonight.”
Oh, no. Oh. Shame. Embarrassment. Hurt. Maybe he thought she was playing too hard to get, or she wasn’t worth the wait till they made it up to the house and a bed. Or he wanted to keep their fling private. Gazebo. Stables. Carriage house. All far from the party. Whatever the case, this delay wasn’t working for him.
“Can I see you tomorrow?” he said.
“We’re staying at the same hotel. We’re attending the same party.” Hurt made her tongue sharp. “You’ll see me tomorrow whether you want to or not.”
He frowned. “I do want to. And you know that I’m asking if tomorrow we can take up where we left off here.”
“Do I know that?”
“Yeah. You do. Don’t for a minute imagine I’m letting you go this easily.”
She had nothing to say to that. Her emotions were completely jumbled. But her emotions weren’t even supposed to be involved in this.
“May I walk you back to the house?” he said quietly, as if he understood.
“No. I think I’ll stay here for a bit.” She rested an unsteady hand on the Aston Martin and attempted a jaunty smile. “Soak up a little ambiance. Maybe swipe one of these hood ornaments for the bookmobile. The kids would love it.”
He touched her beneath the chin, tilted her face up, and kissed her softly. He separated their lips, but remained close and seemed to breathe deeply. Like he was breathing her in.