Nobody's Princess

by Sarah Hegger

“And then what?” The question came out of nowhere and surprised the hell out of him as it hit the air between them.

  She looked up, her beautiful face guarded. “What do you mean?” She knew what he meant, because she had one of those faces that was painfully easy to read. He waited her out. “I go home.” She shrugged. “I go home and pick up my life. What else?”

  “What about your book?” he asked. “What about all that?”

  Her eyes opened wide in surprise. “What about it?”

  The anger rushed back. He jammed his fists into his pockets to keep from shaking her. “You have this incredible brain and you’re just going to go back to writing it all out in secret again. What the hell is the point of that?”

  “What else would I do with it?” She was getting defensive, but he couldn’t back off on this.

  “The waste of a brain is a tragedy,” he said. “You can’t keep pretending that you don’t have one. I know you do.”

  “And what would I do with my so-called brain?” She crossed her arms over her chest. Her breasts swelled under the fabric of her tank.

  Keep your eyes on her face, you horny prick. “You could do anything. Anything you wanted.”

  She made a rude noise and turned her back on him. “That’s easy for you to say. You have a college degree behind you.”

  “I have two,” he said. “But you could get as many as you wanted.”

  Her shoulders tensed and she ducked her head. And up came her barriers.

  “Fuck it, Tiffany.” He took a step closer and turned her to look at him. If he did nothing else, he had to make her see this. He couldn’t leave her, go back to Zambia and let her marry the asshole and disappear again behind that brittle shell she’d built around herself. “You want to learn. Do something with that. It’s a rare and precious gift, and you’re jamming it behind your beautiful face and pretending to yourself and the world it doesn’t exist.”

  “You don’t understand.” Her voice rose close to an outright yell.

  “You’re right. I don’t get it.” He waved his hand from her feet to the top of her head. “You think that all you are is this, but you’re so much more than that. You fixed Luke’s car because it was the right thing to do. Your life was running off track, so you jumped right in and put it right.” How did she not get this about herself? She let her father and that dickhead, Ryan, convince her she was worth shit. “You didn’t want to do all of this and see Luke again, but you did. Dakota is in such deep shit, it would take a backhoe to dig him out, and you’re in that hole with him. He takes your head off, but you stick with him. On your own, you work out shit that takes the rest of us years of study to get a handle on. How can you not see that?”

  *

  Tiffany stared at him. The words made sense to her, and yet her gut tossed them out as ridiculous. She’d created all of this mess. It would be the height of hypocrisy to turn around and take credit for the way she’d handled it. As for the stuff about her brain, she didn’t believe any of it. She had to stop him from talking. She did the only thing that came to mind and mashed her mouth against his.

  His arms came around her like manacles. He took charge of the kiss, pushing his tongue into her mouth and demanding her response. It was crazy how quickly he could make her want him. And she did want him. She knew she shouldn’t and couldn’t, but the taste and feel of him were imprinted on her.

  “I was planning to marry Ryan.” She yanked her mouth away from his.

  “Why?” His expression got even stormier. “You keep saying you’re going to marry this guy, that you have to marry this guy. Why, Tiffany? Do you even want to marry him?”

  He shifted closer. His chest brushed against her nipples. The heat in his gaze turned her knees to spaghetti. One hand drifted down the column of her neck to grasp the back of her head. Heat oozed over her skin, tightening her nipples and moving lower. She pressed her thighs together. It didn’t help.

  He wanted her. She could see it in his face. And, dammit, she wanted the same thing.

  “You’re sure you want to marry this guy?”

  She opened her mouth to say yes. He looked at her and the words wouldn’t come. “No, but I must.” Her voice grew hoarse. “I’ve wanted this for so long.”

  “Not the same thing,” he said.

  “It has to be.”

  “Why?”

  There was no answer to that.

  “And yet, here you are with me,” he said.

  “No.” Her eyelids got too heavy to stay open. She tried to force her gaze away from his mouth as it came closer.

  “No?” Thomas’s breath caressed her face. His fingers stroked her nape. His other hand dropped lightly to her hip. It stayed there, branding her through her jeans.

  She’d pictured her future with Ryan a thousand times. It would be everything she wanted, but it wouldn’t be this. This thing she had with Thomas—compelling, hypnotic, hot as hell and dangerous to touch. Like Luke. Except not like Luke at all. With Thomas she was more herself than she was with anyone. She didn’t need to pretend or be something he wanted her to be. He looked right at her, saw her for what she was, and still here he stayed. “Please?”

  “Please what?” His fingers tightened on her hip. “Please let me go, Thomas, or please fuck me, Thomas?”

  His coarse words combusted inside her. Her hand twisted into his T-shirt and hauled him closer. “Fuck me. Please.”

  Their mouths slammed together in a tangle of tongues, teeth, and lips.

  She ached for this. Tiffany grabbed his head and speared her fingers into his hair. The taste and smell of him surrounded her. God, she needed more. The all of him kind of more.

  Her back hit the wall.

  His hands cupped her ass and brought their crotches into alignment. Heat seared through the connection. Tiffany wrapped her legs around his hips and ground down. A rip of fabric, the ping of buttons, and his hands were on the bare skin of her waist. Her bra disappeared and his hands latched on her breasts.

  Plumping them up, he dipped his mouth and sucked her nipple.

  Damn, too good. Tiffany pushed her head back against the wall. She lost the connection with his mouth as she hauled off his T-shirt. Then it was back again and she moaned. Sensation shot straight from her nipple to her core. And just like that she was wet and hot and ready for him again. Her skin was hypersensitized. It was almost too much and not nearly enough. She wriggled free.

  He let her slide down the wall. His mouth suckled first one breast and then the other.

  She needed him inside her. Now. Tiffany reached between them and grabbed the buttons to his jeans. With shaking hands she got them loose. Finally, she cupped his cock in her hand. It jerked under her touch. Tiffany fisted him and stroked.

  Thomas growled and reared back to kick off his pants. He pushed her pants roughly down her legs with her panties and lifted her again.

  Bare skin slid against bare skin as she wrapped herself around him. His cock was right against her wet slit, silently demanding entry. Thomas braced her back against the wall. He guided himself inside her, slamming all the way home. The wall rattled as he thrust.

  Somewhere, something crashed onto the ground. Tiffany didn’t care as she bore down on him.

  His breathing rasped in her ear. Harsh catches as he thrust into her again and again.

  She clung to his shoulders, using him and the wall to create counterpressure against his upward motion, rubbing herself against him. She came with a shout.

  He was right with her, slamming hard into her as he spilled.

  Their breathing mingled, panting, as they stayed where they were, her back pressed against the wall, him leaning into her as he recovered.

  “Shit,” he whispered right beside her ear.

  Tiffany released her legs from his waist.

  He lowered her to the ground, still holding her tightly against him. Her legs wouldn’t hold her and she let him support her weight.

  “Damn,” he said. “That was hot.” His h
and spread over her ass to hold her tight against the cradle of his thighs. “Baby?” His breath stirred wisps of her hair. “We didn’t use a condom.”

  Tiffany’s eyes whipped open. She never had unprotected sex. Protection had not even occurred to her. She wanted to stay there, wrapped around him like that forever. “I’m on the pill.”

  “I’m clean.” He feathered a light kiss on her temple. “They test me before I go on assignment.”

  “And I’m clean.”

  “So, no harm done, then?”

  “No harm.” Except she’d abandoned one of the most ingrained habits of her adult life. And she was having earth-shattering sex with the wrong man.

  A phone rang. Thomas let her go to reach for it. “It’s Luke,” he said before he answered the call. “Yeah?”

  She slipped into the bathroom to clean up. A brief glance in the mirror told her she had that look again. The one that screamed she had just got it and got it good. She closed her eyes. She had to stop doing this.

  Thomas ended the call when she slipped back into her room.

  “Babe.” He looked at her. “We have to settle this, but not now. Luke is on his way.”

  “Luke?” That gave her enough distraction not to have to deal with what was going on between them. “What does he want?”

  “He says he’s been thinking,” Thomas said. “He wants to talk to me alone first.”

  *

  Thomas went next door to clean up. A human-shaped lump in the second bed meant Dakota was sleeping. Poor kid. This shit was a lot to handle.

  With shaking hands, he splashed water on his face. He had no idea what had just happened with him and Tiffany. Never in his adult life had he lost control with a woman like that.

  She’d said she would go home after this was all done, and he’d flipped. Lost it. Home meant without him. It shouldn’t have mattered, because that’s how he rolled. Moved out and on, off to the next assignment. Out of sight and out of mind. He washed and slipped into a clean pair of jeans.

  He loved his life on site. Stuck in the African bush, living out of a huge military-grade tent and a few trailers. Communication with the world limited to the sat phone. An ice-cold beer at the end of the blisteringly hot day out of the huge generator-powered fridge. Sitting back in his camp chair watching the incredible pyrotechnics of the African sun sinking below the horizon, catching the dust raised by animals as it went.

  In three weeks, that would be his life again. Except now it felt empty as hell without a black-haired, green-eyed math geek in it. Sometimes those sunsets made him feel like the only man in the world. For the first time ever, it felt lonely. His mother not there to get on him about something or other. No Richard or Josh. His brothers were settling down, finding women who made them happy, having kids. And no Tiffany.

  Just one man, sitting at the edge of civilization watching the day end.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Tiffany banged on the door to the room next door. Dakota couldn’t hear a damn thing when he had that music going. She gave the door another hefty pound, putting a little foot action in there for power. She waited, but the door didn’t so much as squeak.

  Thomas had texted her a few minutes ago, asking her to bring Dakota and meet them in the same place as their abortive breakfast with Luke. Screw this. If Luke and Thomas wanted Dakota, then they could use Thomas’s key.

  She found them in the regular coffee shop. At least it was becoming regular, as one day dribbled into another. She really had spent more time in Utah than she ever would have imagined.

  Thomas’s expression gave nothing away as Tiffany sat down.

  For once, Thomas and Luke weren’t looking like they were a few breaths away from tearing into each other. “What’s going on?”

  “Dakota?” Luke raised an eyebrow at her.

  “I banged on the door,” she said. “I couldn’t get him to answer.”

  “How loud did you bang?” Luke inserted his unwelcome drawl of derision into the conversation.

  Okay, if Luke tried a little more not to light her fuse every time, this whole simmering-down thing would be a lot easier. “Any harder and I would have brought the management down on my head.”

  Thomas frowned and looked thoughtful for a moment. “I thought I left him sleeping.”

  “Either you did or you didn’t,” Luke said.

  Tiffany glared at him. Did he really think that tone was helpful? Clearly he did, because he looked unbearably smug.

  “I saw a lump in the bed.” She admired Thomas’s patience, she really did, but Thomas hadn’t been married to Captain Charisma for two very long years.

  “You didn’t check?” Luke’s eyes widened. “It’s the middle of the day.”

  Thomas sat back and folded his arms. “No, Luke, I didn’t check. He’s seventeen and the last thing he wants is some dude hanging over him while he sleeps.” Even Thomas had his limits.

  Dakota, all on his own, so not good. “Should we go and check now?”

  “I’ll go.” Thomas got to his feet. He turned to Luke before he left. “Why don’t you tell Tiffany what you told me?”

  A couple of the female patrons watched him go. She had the insane urge to leap up and shout “mine.” She glanced back at Luke instead.

  He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  “Well?” She had to admit making Luke squirm felt all kinds of good.

  “I was a dick,” he said.

  “When?”

  “Come on, Tiff.” He glared at her. “Let me get this out and then you can take all the shots you like.”

  “Okay.” She took a deep, deep breath.

  “I should never have let Dakota think I didn’t want him with me. I should’ve said that it would be great to have him with me.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  “I was shocked.” Luke fidgeted with the handle of his coffee mug. “I’ve spent the last few years of my life running from my family and all the shit around them. You arrived with Dakota and I panicked. I felt like it was all there again, waiting to suck me in.”

  Tiffany got it. After he’d disappeared, she would have done anything to put some distance between herself and her screwed-up marriage. She envied him his escape across the world. Why hadn’t she run? Because she’d been busy trying to make it up to her father that she’d made such a colossal mistake in her marriage.

  The waitress arrived and gave her a brief reprieve from her thoughts. She ordered a cup of coffee and the pancakes, determined to eat them this time.

  “You were there, Tiff. You know how fucked up it all got, with my dad going to jail and Lola swearing blind she knew nothing about it. Then you and I imploded. I looked at what you did to the Miura and I wanted out. It wasn’t only you, though. It was all of it. Looking at that wrecked car was like looking at myself. What I had become, what my life had become, and I wanted to get as far away from it as I could.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ll probably find this hard to believe, but I’m not the sort of man who screws around. And yet, I was exactly that with you. It was like I was hell-bent on destroying anything that had value in my life.” Luke took a deep breath. “I needed to get away. I needed to find who I was. And I did find him. I was even starting to like that man. Then you arrived and nightmare Luke came back. One look at you and I’m stuffed full of all this rage and self-destruction.”

  “I can understand that.” He’d the same impact on her. “What now?”

  “Now I find Dakota and apologize. Not just about this summer and him staying with me, but about all of it. I should have stayed in contact with him.” He made a face. “I knew how things would be in that house, with Lola. He was a kid. He relied on the adults around him to take care of him.”

  “Did Thomas tell you all of it?”

  Luke’s face got tight. “You mean about the drugs? Yes, he did. Dakota and me are going to make that a priority.” He shook his head and his anger blurred into a different expression. He looked a
lmost guilty. “I fucked up, Tiff. I should have been there for him. This shit is partly on me. But I’m going to make it right.”

  “Just what did Thomas say to you?” Man, she’d loved to have heard that conversation.

  Luke stuck his chin out. “That’s between him and me. The important part is that it got through to me. I was halfway there on my own, he just gave me a shove.” Tiffany was less sure of that. Her expression must have said so, because Luke looked indignant. “It’s true.”

  “Okay.” She shrugged. So not worth fighting about.

  Thomas entered the diner. Alone.

  “Did you find him?” Luke frowned.

  “No.” Thomas slid into the booth beside her. Two creases wrinkled the skin between his eyes. “The bed was rumpled, but he wasn’t in it. It felt cold as well, so he hasn’t been in it for a while.”

  “Then where is he?” Luke’s eyes narrowed.

  “I think that’s what we’d all like to know,” Thomas said.

  “You must have seen him earlier,” Luke said.

  “That was a while ago.”

  “What were you two doing without him?”

  Tiffany’s face got so hot it might explode.

  Thomas stilled beside her and dropped his gaze.

  Luke stopped with his mouth half-open. He glanced from her to Thomas and back again. “You are fucking kidding me.” Luke threw himself back in the booth. “You two are fucking each other?”

  Who the hell was Luke to judge her? “Not the point.”

  Thomas tapped his knuckles on the table. “He could have gone anytime after that. Like I said, I saw the bed, but I didn’t check.”

  Luke glared at her. “And where does your so-called fiancé fit into you doing Thomas?”

  “Drop it,” Tiffany said, a little desperately.

  “No way. You wrecked my car because I screwed around on you. You just lost the moral high ground, Tiffany.”

  Tiffany’s jaw dropped open and she snapped it shut again. “What has one thing got to do with another?”

  “You were all outraged—”

  “Nothing,” Thomas said. “The two have nothing to do with each other. And nothing to do with where Dakota went and where he is now.”