Tallis sat, seeming to deflate, and Günter sat across from him.
“You really think she’s that unhappy?” the musician asked.
“I think she is happy to have you in her life again, but…” He searched for the right words, his knowledge too new for him to be entirely certain. “You’re such a strong presence. It’s easy to get lost in your world.”
“And you’re not a strong presence?”
Günter had to laugh a little self-deprecatingly at Tallis’ question.
“I am. Maybe even more than you around her. I think, however, that she feels more at ease standing up to me. I’m not her long-lost brother. Her idol.”
Tallis rested his head against the couch cushion and closed his eyes. Günter watched as he struggled with what do for his sister and came up empty. Sat forward. Fidgeted. Heaved a sigh.
“I have things I have to do. What you do is up to you.” Giving up, Tallis stood and opened the door—dismissing him. “But Gun?”
Pausing in the doorway, Günter looked at the man he’d never quite been able to fathom.
“Just make her happy.”
* * * * *
Fans jostled Tallis as he left the Garden to go back to his flat for the afternoon before the show. Günter shouldered them out of the way, using his body to prevent unwanted contact with Tallis as much as possible. One rabid woman swooned in his path and another took the opening to wrap herself around the musician’s middle. It took a full five minutes of wrangling before Günter and Simon closed the car door between themselves and the still-shrieking fans.
Fifteen minutes later, he stepped off the elevator and keyed in the code to his door before brown eyes swam in memory, distracting him from the list of fifty things he had to do before tonight’s show. Needing to focus, he tried not to think about what might be going on in the apartment one floor above his own. Then briefly considered stalking the video feed in Tallis’ security flat. Just to satisfy his curiosity once and for all.
No. That seemed too pathetic even for him. Whether Jenny’d moved out or not was none of his business until she made it his business. He was done with spying on people—trying to play chess with the players in his life so he could arrange them just so on the board. Doing so never seemed to prevent him from getting hurt—or them.
He stepped into darkness and hesitated, waiting for the motion sensors to trigger the lights. When they didn’t he cursed and felt his way along the wall to the bank of switches. Fingers trailing over the panel, he froze. The sensors weren’t broken. The switches had been flipped.
Pushing back his coat, he thumbed the snap on his holster. The slither of his gun against leather sounded loud in the darkness, but the heavy weight of the piece felt reassuring in his hand. Back to the foyer wall, he stepped sideways into the living area.
A light shone under his bedroom door and he frowned. Sloppy. Who would take the trouble to break into his flat and then leave obvious markers?
Someone who doesn’t want to get shot, logic whispered.
“Show yourself,” he called. “If I have to come in there, I’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”
A rustle of fabric accompanied a shadow flickering across the base of the door. The knob turned and Günter’s finger slid to the trigger. Heaven help the person who opened that door, because if their face even remotely reminded him of Dublin or London he’d ventilate them with pleasure.
People said you could train a man to kill in cold blood with military drills and exercises. If asked, he’d tell them it was far more expedient to make them fight for the life of someone they loved. Give a man hell and he’d have plenty of demons to back him up in battle.
The door creaked open on deliberately unoiled hinges and a feminine silhouette lounged in the frame.
“Jenny?”
“Gun,” her voice purred and his cock lengthened along his leg.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, lowering his weapon but not holstering it. First things first. In his experience women he’d thought were made of purity and light had a way of going very wrong.
She dangled a metal object from her fingers and sashayed toward him.
“I know I need a lot more training.” He heard her lick her lips and saw her gaze alight on the weapon. “But do you think we could play with a different sort of gun tonight?”
His cock twitched hard in his too-tight jeans and he nearly dropped his piece. Probably a good idea to put it away. He holstered the gun and slid his coat off his shoulders. When he stepped forward, she held out a pair of…handcuffs?
His hand flew to the loop at the back of his waist and found it empty.
“How in bloody hell did you steal my cuffs?” He felt in his pocket for the keys. They were gone. He remembered the last time he’d felt them—before he’d escorted David through the crowd to the limo at the Garden.
Throaty laughter ensnared him. Its decadent flow trailed down his spine, snaked around to his middle and settled low.
He stalked her. She let him. Backing up step for step as he approached—prey to his predator. When the backs of her knees hit the bed, she tossed her hair out of her eyes and looked up at him, exposing the column of her neck. He followed the line of her throat to the expanse of flesh between her breasts.
Round globes thrust her hardened nipples against a landscape of creamy satin material. The faint shadow of her areola beckoned and he lifted a hand to cup her breast. When he thumbed the pebbled peak, desire turned her eyes dark and languid. Lids heavy, lush bottom lip pulled between her teeth, she presented a picture of decadent temptation he was long past denying.
“What were you planning on doing with those?” he asked, his gaze resting on the cuffs she’d dropped onto the bed.
“Um…” She cleared her throat. “I was going to chain myself to the bed and offer my soul to you, but…”
“But what?”
He slid his other hand around her back and let it drop to the arch of her ass, his fingers barely grazing her cheeks. Her hand cupped his neck, and her insistent tug brought his forehead to hers.
“I realized you already had it,” she whispered against his lips.
On a moan he captured her mouth, nibbling at its sweetness until she sighed and opened for him—her tongue teasing out, a flitting point of heat, to dance with his own. All woman. All soft. All his.
“Jenny,” he said on a gasp.
He didn’t know if he could take her sweet and slow the way his higher self demanded. But for her… He’d give her this.
Palming her bottom, he drew her firmly against his cock. He made slow work of tasting each nuance, savoring each moist point of flesh until she mewled into his mouth and rubbed up against him.
Fingers skimming his chest, she played with his nipples. Shocks of pleasure increased the ache in his cock until he could barely breathe. Pre-cum leaked from him, sticking him to his briefs, slipping the material along his member in a caress that made him hiss.
“Jenny…”
Grabbing her hand, he pressed it against his hard length. Her fingers curled around him and he thrust forward into her palm. She read his need and unzipped him then, releasing him from bondage.
A hand to her shoulder—the lightest touch—pushed her to the bed. She gazed up at him, eyes searching his face, high cheek bones highlighting their depths.
“Please,” he begged.
Moistening her lips, she dipped her head and took him in. His entire being centered on the heated pressure of her tongue. His hips jerked and she swallowed him down, adjusting her throat around him with a glorious fluttering of muscles. Hands on either side of her face, he directed her bobbing motions as she gripped him firmly and sucked. Pressure pooled at the base of his cock, building in his balls, lapping in hot waves until he knew if she hummed against him one more time he’d come so hard he’d probably go blind again.
“Stop,” he gasped, pulling her head away.
She teased him with the tip of her tongue to the head of hi
s cock and his hips jerked, a hearty bead of pre-cum sliding down and over the rounded flesh.
He growled and her answering laugh was low and throaty.
She lay back on her elbows, her negligee exposing length of limb he wanted to explore from ankle to thigh.
“Scoot back,” he commanded.
She complied readily, cushioning her head on the pillows heaped at the top of the bed. Curls drifted around her shoulders, framing her face in satin tendrils. Günter placed his gun in the nightstand before shedding his clothes. Naked, he turned to her.
Her eyes devoured him as she languidly touched herself through the satin between her legs. He watched her slide the material up with one hand, slowly, teasing, as she pleasured herself with the other.
Lids heavy, she gazed at him. Hips swaying, she prepared to fuck herself with two glistening fingers. Her musk swirled around him, creating an alchemy of oxygen, transforming it with her essence.
Wet and slippery, her sex pouted for him. The bud of her clit stood out proudly. Delving again and again, she increased her pleasure until her head tossed on the pillows. Just when he knew she’d reached the edge of her precipice, he dipped down and sucked that nub into his mouth.
Back arching from the bed, she screamed. He sucked harder until she came apart beneath his mouth. Honey stole from her recesses to coat his tongue. He drank her in until his thirst called insistently for another kind of slaking.
Draping himself over her still-shattered form, he entered her to catch the last clenching shudders. Her walls gripped him in the sweetest embrace he’d ever known. With each push of his hips, her breasts shimmied. Breath coming in mewling gasps, she rose to greet him—to take him deep inside the warm, safe haven of her body.
“Love you,” he whispered in her ear, kissing her temple.
“Yes,” she cried, sobbing her reply into his shoulder.
Her hips came up and his world came apart around him. His root bumped the hot sweet spot between her thighs and she clenched, pushing him over the edge into a different kind of oblivion—a moment where nothing mattered but the woman in his arms and the places she took him. Places where only they could go.
A long while later he realized he’d collapsed against her. Sprawled as he was on her torso, he wasn’t sure she could breathe. He rolled over a little too quickly and his head spun.
“You okay?” she asked, sleepy.
“Never better,” he said when he saw the healthy color in her cheeks.
He propped himself up on his side to stare down at her. Fingers skimming over one breast, he played with her pouting nipple until it peaked at his ministrations. He studied each beauty mark dotting her rosy skin and trailed his gaze to the puckered scar in her side. Angry lines of pink and red marred her arms. He met her eyes and saw she’d been watching him peruse the marks.
“Are they too ugly?” she asked.
“They make me angry—” he said. “But you’re beautiful to me. It doesn’t matter in that sense.”
He brushed his knuckles lightly over the point where the drainage tube had been inserted into her lungs and was glad his vision had been too weak at the time to really notice the apparatus they’d attached to her body.
“I’m sorry I screwed up,” she said. He tried to shush her but she pressed her fingers over his mouth. “No. Let me finish.”
He pursed his lips.
“Thank you.” She continued. “I think you were right about not wanting me on the street, trying to protect your clients. No matter my reputation. I don’t know nearly what I’d need to know to keep them safe. Not yet.”
His brows arched. He hadn’t expected her to give in so easily—had prepared himself days ago for a showdown with her once he reentered her life. And he would have reentered it, though until tonight he hadn’t known how.
“Don’t go getting all cocky,” she said then smirked. “It’ll get you killed.”
He breathed a laugh at having his words thrown back at him. “So how should I feel? You’re in my bed and I’ve won the argument.”
“I still want to work for you.” Pushing herself up against the pillows she gauged his reaction.
He pushed his fingers through his hair in a gesture that signaled his blooming agitation. “I don’t understand.”
“I won’t be your accountant, but I can do behind-the-scenes investigative work—and maybe Simon could teach me some of what he knows about electronic surveillance? I’ve proven I’m good with pattern recognition and passwords. And maybe, sometimes, you’ll let me go on jobs with you?”
Chewing on her lip, she eyed him worriedly, and Günter saw then how important this was to her—to chart her own course along an unconventional path. Just like her brother. He smiled at the thought.
“What?” she asked, and he saw her fists ball at her sides as she prepared to fight him.
“I was thinking I couldn’t find a more dedicated employee,” he teased. “Think of the overtime you’ll put in—the fringe benefits you’ll give back to your employer.”
Grabbing a pillow, she whacked him in the face. He growled and she shrieked as he rolled her over, facedown on the mattress.
“Now we do it my way,” he said, thinking of the thousand lines of attack he could use to breach her barriers and tear down her defenses.
“What makes you think it’s your way?” she asked, wiggling her backside against his awakening cock.
“Fine,” he agreed, and claimed her wrists with his cuffs. “We’ll do it our way.”
About the Author
Tibby Armstrong began writing at age eleven when a kiss in a YA book fell short of her expectations. As a teenager, she snuck Kathleen Woodiwiss novels from her aunt’s bookshelves, and devoured a forbidden volume of Victorian erotica.
While she has since broadened her reading tastes to include science fiction, urban fantasy, biographies and a strange addiction to monographs, her favorite books still feature edgy alpha heroes, and the women (and men) who drive them to distraction.
When she’s not writing, Tibby works toward defying librarian stereotypes—yet she lives with four cats, two computers and enough books to collapse a poorly engineered house.
Tibby welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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Also by Tibby Armstrong
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
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