No Regrets (Mira Romance)

by JoAnn Ross

  “Ah, now we’re back to free will.”

  Molly wasn’t prepared to enter into a theological debate. She didn’t have the strength. Not when her heart was aching for these two people she loved so very much.

  “What about the other guy?” Reece pressed his case when she didn’t respond. “Wasn’t he demonstrating free will when he chose to get into that car and drive drunk? Or was it God’s will that he ram that fucking one-hundred-thousand-dollar car into Lena’s minivan, and in an act of pure selfish disregard for human life, turned a vibrant, laughing, loving wife and mother into a vegetable?”

  “Reece.” She reached across the blanket and covered his fisted hand with hers. “This doesn’t solve anything.”

  “I should have killed him.” Reece had been second-guessing his behavior all the way back to the hospital.

  “No.” Molly’s voice was firm, revealing that on this, at least, she was on firm ground. “I can’t claim to understand God’s plan for any of us.” She thought about all the painful twists and turns in her own life. “But I do know we’ve moved beyond the Old Testament belief of an eye for an eye.”

  “Perhaps that was a mistake.”

  “Murdering the man who did this terrible thing probably would have made you feel better for a moment or two,” she allowed. “But think how you would have felt saying goodbye to Grace as they hauled you off to prison.”

  “There isn’t a jury in the state who’d convict me.”

  “You can’t be certain of that. And even if you were eventually acquitted, think what it would do to Grace.” Molly felt his fingers clenching and loosening beneath hers. “Lena knew what it was to grow up under a violent cloud. There’s no way she’d want that for her daughter.”

  Reece didn’t immediately answer, but from the way his harsh expression softened as he looked down into Lena’s too-still face, Molly knew he was giving serious consideration to her words.

  Chapter Seventeen

  While Reece and Molly maintained a silent vigil at Lena’s bedside, Tessa was sunning herself beside Miles’s sparkling blue pool.

  “So,” he said, as he leaned back in the chaise, “Jason tells me he’s asked you to help him out of this latest fix.”

  “He had no right to tell you that.”

  “We’re brothers, sweetcakes. More than brothers, we’re twins. We’ve always shared everything.”

  His eyes were hidden behind the mirrored lens of his glasses, but Tessa could feel his gaze crawling over every tanned and oiled inch of her, and although the day was typically hot and sunny, her flesh turned ice-cold.

  “Well, almost everything,” he tacked on.

  His meaning was implicit. Tessa knew that Miles had wanted to make love to her—no, she corrected with brutal honesty—he’d wanted to fuck her since their first meeting over four years ago. He’d made that more than clear.

  But he’d also held off pressing her, which should have made her feel relieved, but didn’t, because he reminded her of a patient spider sitting in the center of a glittering web, waiting for his hapless prey to stumble into the imprisoning silk.

  “Sleeping with Jason’s bookie to get him off the hook would have been prostitution. I may as well go to work for your mother.” Tessa had not been all that surprised to discover Jason’s mother was the premier madam for the Hollywood elite.

  They were a perfect team. Jason’s job as a traffic cop working the Sunset beat and Miles’s work as a photographer offered access to beautiful former beauty queen MAWs—model/actress/waitresses—new to town, all trying to break into show business. After realizing the odds stacked against them, a high percentage were eager to join Elaine’s privileged stable of working girls.

  “That’s not such a bad idea.”

  “Not on a bet.”

  “You’re overreacting again. You slept with that car dealer.”

  Obviously, Jason did tell him everything, Tessa thought grimly. “Afterward.”

  “Before, after, what’s the difference?”

  It was the same thing Jason had said. “I didn’t come to Hollywood to become a whore,” Tessa repeated firmly. “I haven’t worked hard at my craft to sink to selling my body.”

  “What a lovely speech. It almost reminds me of a young Bergman playing St. Joan.” He lifted his frosty mint-hued margarita to her in a mocking salute. “But the truth of the matter, Tessa, dear, is that you haven’t been working all that much these days.”

  “It’s just a lull.”

  One that had been going on for too long. The agent she’d hired after Terrance Quinn’s death, the same one who’d lost her the job on the sitcom by advising her to hold out for double the weekly salary, which resulted in her being written out of the show, was having trouble even getting her commercials. He’d recently warned her that she was developing a reputation for being unreliable. Which, Tessa supposed with a sigh, was true.

  If only she hadn’t missed that audition last week. But Jason had had a party at the house and naturally, drugs had been readily available, along with constantly flowing liquor, and before she’d known it, it was the next afternoon and she’d completely forgotten all about her ten o’clock meeting with the casting director looking for a female costar for a new Western series.

  “It was just as well,” Jason had reassured her during her crying jag. “It’d be a damn stupid move to cover that magnificent body in homespun.”

  Having learned the hard way that Jason was not at his best after partying, and not wanting to trigger his hot quick temper, Tessa had refrained from mentioning that dressing up in a body-concealing prairie wardrobe certainly hadn’t hurt Jane Seymour’s career.

  “Something will turn up,” she said now, wishing she believed that.

  “It always does,” Miles agreed mildly. “In the meantime, why don’t you be a good girl and help Jason out? You do owe the guy a lot, Tessa.”

  That might have been true in the beginning. But the way Tessa figured it, she’d paid for everything Jason had done for her. In spades.

  “If you’re so worried about your brother, why don’t you pay off his debts?”

  “Because Benny doesn’t want to sleep with me, darling,” Miles countered patiently. “It’s you he wants. And he has a reputation for being generous to pretty girls. Play your cards right, and you might even cover the overdraft at the bank and keep your car from being re-possessed.”

  Tessa was not an actress for nothing. She tossed her head and gave him a steady cool look that gave nothing away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course you do. And perhaps, before you get up on your high horse, someone ought to remind you that writing bad checks is a felony.” The smile he flashed at her over the salted rim of the glass, held not an iota of warmth. “It would be a crying shame if Jason had to arrest you.”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  The man she’d mistakenly thought she loved was many things. He was a thief, a liar; she had every suspicion he was a drug dealer, and if she gave in to the pressure he’d been putting on her lately, he’d also be a pimp. On top of all that, he was undoubtedly the most crooked cop on the L.A. police force. But to turn her in, he could end up implicating himself and she knew he’d never risk that.

  “You’re probably right,” Miles allowed. “However, did you ever think that if that bookie’s thugs kill my brother, you might find yourself in the middle of a murder investigation?” He reached out and ran his hand down the red-gold slide of her hair. Against Jason’s instructions, she’d begun growing it long again, and it now reached her shoulders.

  “Which, considering your affection for illegal drugs, could well land you in prison.” His fingers traced a trail of ice along her bare collarbone. “Do you have any idea what a woman’s prison is really like, Tessa?” Those treacherous fingers continued down to the crest of her breast. “You’d undoubtedly end up down on your knees in a broom closet, giving cunnilingus to some dyke guard.”

  Her nipples were visible th
rough the white bikini top. He pinched one, hard enough to cause her to draw in a sharp breath. “And I don’t even want to get into what the other prisoners would do to you. But I have heard tales of young women being raped with everything, from pipes ripped from beneath sinks to butcher knives stolen from the prison cafeteria.”

  His words, meant to frighten, did exactly that. Despite the warmth of the day, Tessa shivered. “I can’t do what he wants.”

  “Sure you can,” Miles said encouragingly. “I’ll help you.”

  “Ah.” Tessa might be unnerved, but she hadn’t lost her wits. “This is where you offer to give me lessons.”

  “Exactly.” This time his smile held more warmth. “You can’t deny you’ve been wondering how we’d be together since that first night we met. Would fucking me be just like fucking Jason? Are twins alike in every way? Or do I know things my brother is too self-centered to ever dream of doing? He can make a woman scream in pain. But have you ever been made love to for hours and hours until you were screaming in ecstasy, Tessa?”

  She didn’t answer. But she felt the red rise in her cheeks, like mercury in the glass tube of a thermometer.

  Radiating a superbly masculine self-satisfaction, Miles put his empty glass down on the wrought-iron table beside the lounge, then stood up in a lithe, smooth movement that reminded her of a panther and held a hand down to her.

  Although she’d never admit it, Miles was right about her having wondered how they’d be together. He’d always stirred something uncontrollably primal in her. Something dark and dangerous that caused a disturbing, discordant hum of anticipation in her veins.

  “What about Jason?” Her hesitant tone revealed that she was on the verge of capitulation.

  “Jason’s otherwise occupied.” He tilted his dark head toward the Jacuzzi, where his brother seemed to be engaged in foreplay with a former Playboy centerfold who’d discarded the top to her bikini shortly after arriving at the party. “He won’t notice.”

  Worse yet, he wouldn’t care. When hot adolescent jealousy flashed through her, Tessa stood up and put her hand in Miles’s.

  She expected him to say something smugly obscene. But instead, he surprised her by lifting her hand to his lips. Then he linked their fingers and together they walked into the house and down the hall to his bedroom.

  Although she’d fought against it, Tessa had fantasized about this room more times than she cared to count. She’d imagined it as a sybaritic pleasure palace, a place of leopard-skin bedspreads, mirrors on the ceiling and undoubtedly a large-screen television for viewing pornographic movies.

  But Miles’s bedroom was nothing like her fantasy. The moment she entered, she felt as if she’d walked through a shift in time and space and ended up in the Far East.

  The floors were bleached hardwood that added a sense of space and light. Sheer white screens separated different areas of the huge room. An antique Chinese altar table stood at the far end of the room, topped with a small bronze Japanese bull and a trio of black vases, each holding a single white lily.

  The one thing she had not guessed wrong about was that the bed, indeed, did dominate the room. But rather than the tacky round water bed she’d envisioned, the wide bed draped in white linen seemed to float on its black lacquer pedestal, its four posts looking like jet lacquer arrows reaching for the white arched cathedral ceiling. The view from the bed looked out on to a Japanese rock garden so perfect that the grains of sparkling gray sand appeared to have been put in place with a pair of tweezers.

  As spartan and bare as it admittedly was, Tessa found it surprisingly sensual. “It’s exquisite.” As the serenity of the room worked its magic on her nerve endings, Tessa began to relax.

  “I’m glad you approve.” His eyes, usually so cool and mocking, seemed to observe her with warmth and gentle humor. “Would you care for a drink? I have some white wine on ice.”

  She’d had two strawberry daiquiris out by the pool and a line of coke. Since her head was already spinning because of what she was about to do, Tessa decided against adding any more alcohol to an already-combustible situation.

  “Thank you,” she said, as politely as a sorority girl attending a rush tea party. “But I believe I’d better not.”

  “Fine.” His voice remained equally polite, but the dark, unblinking eyes looking into hers reminded Tessa of a predator all too certain of its prey. She tried telling herself that the sudden chill causing goose bumps to rise on her skin was merely due to the artificially cooled air blowing through the air-conditioner vents, but knew that was a lie.

  She risked a cautious glance downward, to his groin, where his erection was pressing against the silky black material of his brief, European-style swim trunks in a blatantly erotic way he didn’t attempt to conceal.

  “See something you like?” he asked mildly.

  Tessa didn’t answer. But she couldn’t take her eyes away as he hooked his long dark fingers into the low-slung waistband and lowered the trunks, freeing his penis that jutted out of the curly black hair.

  He stood in front of her, boldly, proudly naked, studying her for a long silent time that made her more and more uncomfortable. Tessa wondered if he meant for her to take off her bikini, as well, and was strangely reluctant to dispense with what little protection it provided.

  “You can still change your mind, Tessa.” His tone was mocking, his eyes cool and sardonic as he watched her for a reaction. “I’m not into raping women.” His smug smile suggested he didn’t need to.

  Tessa swallowed and resisted, just barely, licking her arid lips. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  He nodded, satisfied. “Good girl.”

  “If I was a good girl,” she shot back recklessly, “I wouldn’t be here.”

  His smile was a slash of white in his dark face. “Point taken.” He tilted his head and studied her for another of those seemingly endless times that made her flesh hot and cold all at the same time. “Are you afraid of me?”

  “No.” It was not quite the truth.

  “You should be. You’re not a schoolgirl anymore, Tessa. You’re playing with the grown-ups now. And sometimes a girl can get hurt.”

  “You wouldn’t hurt me.”

  He laughed at that. A low, rich sound that slipped beneath her skin and into her blood and went coursing straight to the secret place that was growing increasingly wet and warm.

  “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong.” He wrapped his fingers around his rampant penis and held it toward her, like an offering. Or a weapon.

  “I am going to hurt you. I’m going to take you hard and rough and you’re going to love it. I’m going to teach you all the things men secretly want women to do to them. And then I’m going to do wicked things to you that you could have never imagined. Things that will shock you. And thrill you. And have you crying out for more.”

  Heaven help her, the crotch of her bikini bottom was drenched with need. So much so, that when he told her to get down on her knees, she was powerless to resist.

  “Crawl over here.”

  Even the violence she’d come to accept as a prelude to lovemaking had never been so demeaning. Tessa realized that was because Jason’s behavior was born of his flash-fire, wicked temper. While Miles’s grew out of a calculating need to dominate.

  “Now, Tessa.” His voice was soft, with a razor-sharp edge that excited even as it frightened.

  The throbbing between her legs became almost painful as she obeyed him.

  “I’m going to teach you how to suck a man. When you do it right, you’ll be rewarded. When you do something wrong, you’ll be punished. So you’ll never make that mistake again.”

  His hands tangled in her hair as he pulled her head back and forced himself between her lips. Deeper and deeper he pushed himself into her mouth, but every time she gagged, he yanked on her hair, hard enough to bring tears to her eyes.

  He seemed capable of lasting forever. Eventually she learned how to open her throat muscles to take him deeper t
han she’d ever swallowed any man. Including, and especially, his brother. As she accepted the hot explosion of jism that came with his release, she experienced a surge of feminine power that she’d finally caused him to surrender his own rigid control.

  When his hips stopped thrusting and his penis deflated, he took her by the shoulders and lifted her to her feet. He ripped off the bikini, leaving her standing naked and trembling with desire in front of him.

  He smiled. A smile edged with sexuality and menace. “Now it’s your turn.”

  Before she realized what he was doing, he’d fastened a set of silver handcuffs around each of her wrists, then snapped the other end of each cuff to the bedpost.

  As he tied a black silk mask over her eyes, Tessa reminded herself that she was not the kind of girl who did these kinds of things. The Tessa Davis who’d been taught by her general father that people should treat one another with respect and honor was not the kind of girl who allowed such things to be done to her.

  She tugged against the cuffs, but the cold metal chafed her wrists. She felt helpless and afraid, and she’d just opened her mouth to tell Miles that she’d changed her mind after all, when he dipped his tongue into the very heat of her and wiped her mind as clean as glass.

  He feasted on her savagely, using his lips and tongue and teeth to stir deep-seated urges she’d never suspected dwelt inside her. Writhing on the cool white sheets, Tessa Starr forced thoughts of that old Tessa Davis away.

  She screamed when she came against his mouth, just as he’d predicted she would. And that was just the beginning.

  Tessa had no idea how long she stayed in that cool, serene-appearing bedroom. It could have been hours. Or days. At some point, Jason joined them in the room as well and, treating her as if she were nothing more than a mannequin designed for their own carnal pleasures, both brothers bent her body to their liking, sucking, biting, fondling, probing. Gradually they broke down all her inhibitions and Tessa surrendered to them totally. Their most outrageous fantasies became her own, and with them she went crashing through every sexual boundary.