“Ask me what you really want to know,” she whispered, biting her lower lip and then running her tongue over the plumpness left behind.
“Will you let me kiss you?”
Her answer was unexpected and exactly what he wanted. Her mouth on his own, soft but not tentative. It told him what he needed to know—that she wanted this, too. That she wanted him. Justin wove his fingers into her hair, anchoring her in place when he increased the pressure, his tongue against the seam of her lips, begging permission to enter and taste her secrets.
Harley’s fingers curled around his lapel as she took over the kiss, slanting her mouth over his and opening to entice him inside. They both groaned and he took what he wanted, took what he needed, but it wasn’t enough to quench the craving she’d ignited in him.
He pulled her into his lap, balancing both their weights as she straddled him on the stool. Justin’s hands shifted, lifting her under her ass cheeks and pressing her against his achingly hard shaft through his pants. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her own desperate need to be closer evidenced by the scrape of her nails against his skin. The pain was good, just enough to ignite his lust to where it was flash point along his veins.
Harley broke away for air and he took the moment to get the answer he needed before they went any further.
Justin couldn’t bear to break the connection, so he murmured his question against her mouth, their eyes locked and focused on each other. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want you.”
* * *
It wasn’t the first time Justin had woken up in a strange hotel room.
He loved to travel, for business or pleasure, so it wasn’t uncommon for him to awaken in a room and have to take a moment to recall the facts, the details of what VIP suite he was in in what VIP city. It also wasn’t uncommon for him to wake up with a woman in his bed whom he desperately wanted to leave as soon as possible. But he couldn’t remember a time when he’d woken up alone and regretted that a woman left in the middle of night.
Well, there was a first time for everything.
Harley was gone. Like a figment of his imagination or the silky remnant of a dream that he desperately tried to hold on to but couldn’t solidify into a memory. Justin knew she had been real. The ache of his body and the scent of her, of them, of sex, lingered on his skin and on the tangle of sheets bunched around his waist.
He eased out of bed, grabbing his discarded pants and slipping them on as he navigated the detritus of their amazing night together flung all over the space of the penthouse suite: empty glasses and bottles on the floor alongside the remnants of an early-morning room service order of celebratory steak and lobster.
And...her wedding veil.
Justin leaned over, his throbbing head immediately signaling to him that it was the worst idea he’d ever had, and his stomach rumbled in ominous, queasy agreement. The veil was one of those cheap ones sold by every wedding chapel on the Strip. Harley had taken her time choosing it, laughing as she attempted to find one that matched her black leather pants and gray T-shirt. When she’d slipped it on, the combination of sex-on-wheels and virginal sacrifice had decimated what had been left of his very iffy mind and he’d marched down the aisle and said two words he’d never planned on saying in his life: “I do.”
What had he been thinking? Nothing. That much was clear. He wasn’t reckless but he was a risk-taker, never one to shy away from something just because the payoff wasn’t guaranteed. It had served him well in business; he could run numbers better than anyone and he’d made himself and a lot of other people a metric ton of money. But nothing was a sure thing and he made people nervous, people who only liked to play it safe, people who hesitated to work with Redhawk/Ling because they couldn’t pin him down.
People like the investor group currently considering partnering with the company and giving them the ability to branch out even bigger than they thought possible.
The people who would have a coronary if they heard what he’d done here last night.
He’d gone to Vegas for a poker game and married a complete stranger.
A stranger who had left in the middle of the night.
Justin knew what he had to do. He needed to find this woman and get this marriage dissolved before the press found out and filled every news outlet with another story about his wild and reckless ways. Adam, his best friend and partner in Redhawk/Ling, was going to be pissed. Just last week he’d pleaded with Justin to lie low, to keep his profile more on the respectable side until they’d secured this investment deal and solidified their financial status in the eyes of potential partners. Justin had agreed and he’d kept his end of the bargain.
Until Harley.
And now he had to do damage control, find his wife and keep it out of the press.
He was a gambling man, and he didn’t like his odds.
Two
One week later
This had been a mistake.
Sarina Redhawk stood on the deck of her older brother’s house counting down the seconds until she could leave and head back to her hotel. In front of her, a crowd of people she didn’t know ate barbecue and kept the bartenders occupied pouring fruity drinks while the guests placed their vote in either the blue box with a big bow on top or the pink box with a big bow on top. She’d dropped her ticket in the blue box under the incredibly insistent watch and instruction of someone called Nana Orla.
Adam’s house was nice, not Kardashian massive but large enough to ensure that everyone knew that he was one of the top tech billionaires in Silicon Valley. It had been professionally decorated, that was obvious, in bachelor-chic style but personal photographs, quirky artwork and splashes of color against the neutral sofas and such testified to the entrance of the fiery redhead into her brother’s life. Tess wasn’t timid, she stood tall next to her brother, and Sarina liked her for it. Adam had chosen well, that much was clear.
Just behind her the canyon spread out beneath the deck and dipped into deep purple shadows that reminded her of faraway places she’d served in the army, places that gave her memories that would always follow her no matter how many oceans and miles she put between them. But those memories had taken a back seat lately to the ones she’d been too young to remember, the ones re-created for her and contained in the package her brother Adam had given her and her twin, Roan, when he’d found them again.
Twenty-five years, seven crappy foster homes, one shitty adoptive home, one GED, one enlistment and two tours in the Middle East later and she was here: at the gender reveal party for her older brother Adam and his fiancée, Tess.
And completely out of her comfort zone.
She’d agreed to come to the party tonight because she felt bad about storming out of here the last time, repaying Adam and Tess’s hospitality with hostility and painful words. She hadn’t meant to hurt him but playing “happy family” with two brothers who were essentially strangers had been beyond her ability at the time.
She’d left that night, hopped on her Harley-Davidson and headed straight out of California, needing to put as much distance as she could between her guilty conscience and Adam and Roan’s pleas for her to give them all a chance. She’d ignored Adam’s voice mails and dodged Roan’s FaceTime requests for a couple of months, taking her bike to every small-town, forgotten, one-stoplight spot on the map, enjoying the freedom of choosing her own path for the first time in her life.
She’d been a military policeman in the army and had liked her job but she’d hit the time when she’d had to get out or stay in until retirement. And she’d opted to get out, explore and figure out who the hell Sarina Redhawk was supposed to be when she grew up. She’d thought it would be scary but it had been amazing. Freedom. Time to think. Space to figure some crap out.
Sarina had camped in Tonopah, hung out with Area 51 enthusiasts in Rachel and explored caves in the Great Basin National Park.
In the pretty town of Austin, Nevada, she’d found a stray dog outside her hotel and adopted the little Chihuahua, naming her Wilma, and then headed for Las Vegas. She wasn’t much of a gambler but she’d picked up some work from an old army buddy for some extra cash while she figured out if she was ever going to answer her brother’s phone calls and what she was going to do with the rest of her life.
Las. Fucking. Vegas.
Bright lights. The Blue Man Group. Five ninety-nine steak buffets. The scene of the best night and worst morning after in her life. Sarina had met a man so sexy in the casino bar that she’d violated her newly established rules to not hook up with guys she met in bars. But his smile had been intriguing, his focus unrelenting and their chemistry so explosive that she’d woken up the next morning naked, hungover and very much married. She’d taken one look at the sleeping man in the bed and the simple gold band on her finger and thrown on her clothes faster than tourists snapped up tickets to see the Britney Spears show.
Then she’d done what she did best: she ran. Right back to California to figure how to track down her husband and fix that colossal mistake. And to make amends with Adam and Roan.
And that was why she was at this party. Saying she was sorry for walking out on them before. Trying. It wasn’t easy for her to open up to new people, and despite their shared DNA, they were strangers to each other.
Sarina watched Adam and Roan from across the room as they laughed together with Tess. Both men were slender and tall, but Adam was broader in the shoulders and Roan wore his hair long and halfway down his back. If you watched them closely, they had some of the same mannerisms and expressions, the proof that DNA did not lie.
Roan was a successful artist, his star on the rise. He was often in the tabloids, either due to his breakout talent or his revolving bedroom door that admitted both women and men. He was charismatic and outgoing, and drew everyone to him like he invented gravity. Adam was as successful but leaned into the strong, broody and silent vibe to command a room. It didn’t surprise anyone that he’d been on the most eligible billionaire tech wiz list for the last decade.
And here Sarina was. Strong and capable—give her a firearm or a mountain to climb and she was the girl. But she was always an outsider; her superpower was knowing when to leave. The hard part was figuring out how to stay.
And figuring out how to ask for help.
Now that the panic had worn off, she had no idea how to find the husband she’d left behind in Vegas. So, she was going to toast her brother’s new family tonight and tomorrow she was going to take him up on his offer to help her get her new life started. How surprised was he going to be to find that the first thing she needed was to locate a husband she had no intention on keeping?
Fun times.
“Everybody make sure to cast your vote for the gender of the baby,” Nana Orla admonished the crowd in her delightful Irish accent. She was small and smiling but clearly a force of nature because nobody ignored her. Sarina smiled in spite of herself; the army had master sergeants who wished they had the command that she had. “Come in closer, everyone! Move in closer for the big moment!”
Sarina moved with the swell of the crowd, keeping to the outer edge of the mass of bodies but close enough to see the secret smiles and laughter Adam and Tess shared as they moved into place. Always touching in some way, there was no doubt about how much they loved each other. Sarina had been excited to hear about their engagement. She’d liked Tess from the first time they’d met when her future sister-in-law had tracked her down for Adam. She was a straight shooter, strong and smart. The perfect partner for Adam.
And now they were going to be parents and she was going to be an aunt.
Things were changing, and she had no idea where she belonged.
But it was time to figure it out.
Nana Orla summoned everyone closer for the long-awaited moment. People jostled against one another to get in closer to the happy couple and Sarina was suddenly thrust forward into the middle of the group, mumbling her apologies for the elbows jabbed into people’s sides and drinks sloshed to the point of spilling. No one seemed to mind—it was a party and they were ready to forgive. She tried to squeeze in between a laughing couple and had to sidestep into a hard, tall body to avoid an elbow to the face. Another shuffle to keep her balance and she stepped onto the foot that belonged to the hard, tall body as did the hands that grasped her hips to keep her upright.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’ve got you,” the man said, his voice deep and smooth and interwoven with a thread of humor that had her lips curving into an involuntary smile.
She chuckled, memories of a night full of laughter and passion coming back with the impact of muscle memory. Her reaction was visceral, immediately sending warmth and heat along her skin. How many times had she shivered from the sizzle of just the memory of that night, craved the touch of the stranger she’d left in that bed?
It wasn’t new.
Wait.
The voice wasn’t new.
The man wasn’t a stranger.
Sarina twisted away from the man, braced herself for what she knew was coming and looked up into the face of her husband.
The ground beneath her feet shifted, the room suddenly becoming too hot and the crowd unbearably close. She braced herself for impact, her body knowing full well what was coming even if her brain wasn’t there yet.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded, noticing the curious looks of the people immediately around them.
“Me? What about you?” the man replied in a hushed tone, his eyes scouring her face with eager curiosity and hunger that she knew all too well. It had been like this from the first, some unexplainable heat that sparked between them like electricity trying to complete the arc.
Justin. He’d said his name was Justin.
“Justin, right? What the hell? This doesn’t make sense,” she sputtered, chasing her erratic thoughts around like a dropped bag of marbles. “What are you doing in my brother’s house?”
“Your what...brother?” Justin said, shaking his head as if to dislodge whatever was stuck in there. “The name on the marriage license is Sarah Moore...”
“It’s my adopted name,” she answered, holding her hand up to stop him from asking new questions before she got answers to her own. “Are you going to tell me why you’re in Adam’s house?”
“He’s my best friend, my business partner. I’m Justin Ling.” He gestured with his hands between himself and Adam standing a few feet away. “I’m the Ling part of Redhawk/Ling.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, gazing up at the ceiling in disbelief with what looked a lot like disgust. “Not only did I marry a stranger, she turns out to be my best friend’s little sister.”
Sarina opened her mouth to tell him to keep his voice down but she was interrupted by a loud countdown from the crowd, and both she and Justin turned to watch as Adam and Tess pulled the string on the box in front of them. A huge bouquet of blue balloons sprang out of the box and shot to the ceiling.
“It’s a boy!”
“Congrats!”
Applause rang out around them, loud and disorienting, as everyone around her toasted the new parents, completely oblivious to the shitstorm she had created with the man standing by her side. Life had a way of messing with you and right now she knew she was solidly in its crosshairs.
“It’s a boy!” rose up again from somewhere behind her as she raised her eyes to the handsome face of the stranger she’d married.
She almost laughed at the ridiculousness of this moment, but it wasn’t that funny. While Adam and Tess were celebrating the imminent arrival of their bouncing baby boy, she’d just been handed a sexy-as-hell, six-foot-something bundle of holy-shit-I-married-a-stranger-in-Vegas.
It was a boy all right.
What was she going to do with him?
Three
&
nbsp; Adam was going to kill him.
Justin glanced over to where his best friend and business partner was kissing his fiancée and accepting the congratulations from the crowd assembled here to celebrate the biggest event of his life.
Well, the biggest event if you didn’t count the recent discovery of Adam’s long-lost siblings.
So, the fact that Justin had gone to Vegas, gotten ridiculously drunk with an incredibly captivating stranger and married her was bad enough. But the fact that the mesmerizing, mind-blowing, amazing woman turned out to be Adam’s baby sister?
Justin. Was. A. Dead. Man.
He raked his eyes around the space for somewhere he could grab a minute of privacy with his newly surfaced wife. They had a lot to talk about.
Like why the hell she’d left that morning and where the hell she’d been.
“Come with me.” Justin took Sarina’s hand and guided her through the crowd, headed straight for Adam’s office. He knew this house as well as he knew his own, and that room would be safe from curious partygoers.
“Where are we going?” Sarina asked behind him, her voice steely with warning that she was going to give him a little bit of rope and then she’d string him up with it if he didn’t get to the point.
In spite of the absolute insanity of this moment, he caught himself smiling. It was her backbone, her direct promise to call him on his bullshit that had intrigued Justin back in that Vegas bar. People didn’t call him on much—either because of his money or his family’s position in society—and he liked that she didn’t care.
The Lings were big money, and had even bigger social prominence in this part of California, his father a self-made man in real estate and his mother the queen of the fundraising committees. Justin, even with a billion-dollar company with his name on the door, was the runt of the over-achieving Ling litter. His siblings were upstanding members of the community while Justin gambled and had a revolving bedroom door and refused to even play Putt-Putt at the country club.
Seducing His Secret Wife--A brother's best friend romance Page 2