by Cynthia Eden
“And I fucking looked for you.”
Now she was surprised. She’d figured that the guy would just move on to the next woman on his list.
“Come with me.” His grip on her wrist was almost bruising. Almost, because Max knew his strength. When he started walking, shouldering through the crowd, she followed because she wanted out of there.
A few moments later, his left hand slammed against the glass door, sending it swinging open, and then they were outside on the balcony. The crisp air of late autumn cooled her body. Max kicked the door shut behind them and finally, finally, the noise was gone.
It was just them.
“When you approached me in the bar, you didn’t know who the hell I was, did you?” A lamp shone down on him and revealed the faint lines near his blue eyes. The light cast a dark shadow behind him, making him seem even bigger.
Anger had thickened in his voice. What, couldn’t the guy just enjoy the sex like she had? What was the big deal? Sam forced a shrug, letting one shoulder rise and fall. Max still had her wrist, and she could feel the rough calluses on his fingertips. Not born into money, not this man. And when she’d seen him the first night in that bar, wearing his faded jeans and beat-up jacket, she hadn’t thought—
“You ran when you woke up and realized just whose bed you were in.”
She hadn’t exactly been concentrating on her surroundings when he took her home. Sam had been busy yanking off his clothes. But with the harsh light of morning, she’d seen…
The picture of his stepfather on the mantle. A man she’d met before. A man her own mother had dated once upon a time.
“You just introduced yourself as Max.” Her voice came out husky. Not deliberate that. But his eyes—such a bright blue—narrowed, and she heard the rasp of his breath.
“And you’re Samantha,” he said.
First names—that was all you were supposed to need for casual sex, right? “I am.”
“What do you want from me?” he demanded as he trapped her against the brick wall to the right of the door. So warm, oh, his flesh seemed to burn hers. She could feel the thick length of his arousal pressing against the front of her dress. A short, skimpy dress that she’d found buried in the back of her closet.
“I want more.” The truth. She could give him that much.
A growl rumbled in his throat.
“I don’t care that you’re rich.” Yes, let’s just put that out there. She hadn’t run because of his money. Hadn’t gone to him for that and hadn’t run away because of it. She’d left because the night was over. “I don’t want forever.” The fake promises of happily-ever-after wouldn’t suit her.
His fingers freed her wrist and wrapped around her waist. “What do you want?”
My life back.
She pushed her hand between their bodies and let her fingers rest over his racing heart. “I told you…. more.” Sex. Passion.
Anything to hold back the shadows. Anything to let her pretend that she was normal. Not some freak. Not someone who couldn’t even do her job anymore.
A woman this man wanted.
His left hand slid down her body. His fingers pressed just below the bottom of her dress.
Her breath caught. Yes. Here. Right here. So what if others were just a door away? She wanted this.
His rough fingertips smoothed up her thigh. Edged higher, higher, a few more inches.
“Fuck. You’re not wearing underwear.” Max’s words came out, gravel-rough, and his eyes narrowed.
She smiled at him and ignored the surge of her heart. “Problem?”
His fingers slipped between her legs. She was already wet for him. Eager and ready.
His breath blew out on a ragged sigh. Two fingers, big and long, pushed through her folds and found her sex. His fingers drove inside, knuckles-deep.
Sam shot up on her toes. Her hands flew up to his shoulders, and she held on tight as electricity whipped through her body. Her nails dug into his tux jacket. Perfectly pressed. Screw that. She tightened the muscles of her sex around him, wanting a fast release, needing that hard pop of pleasure as—
His fingers withdrew.
Max leaned in close, and his lips feathered over her ear as he whispered, “You want to use me for sex?” Those fingers were tauntingly close to the center of her need as he stroked lightly. Petting and teasing.
Sam squeezed her eyes shut.
“Another fast screw and you walk away?” he asked softly, as his arousal rubbed against her thigh. Long and ready, and he could take her right then. Shove her skirt up, slide inside, and they’d both come. “I could be anybody, couldn’t I?” His fingers thrust deep once more, and the stab of pleasure stole her breath. “Doesn’t matter who I am.”
Max’s lips went to her throat and pressed right over the pulse that throbbed too fast. Licked. Sucked.
Yes, yes…
Did it matter who he was? Did it?
“Who am I, baby?” Now it was harder to understand the words as he growled against her flesh.
His fingers continued to drive inside her. His thumb rubbed the nub of her desire. A little more, just a little… Her climax was so close that her body trembled. More.
“M-Max…” She breathed his name. The night air felt good on her flesh because suddenly she was hot, burning up, right there, burning so fast.
And she kept her eyes closed because she didn’t want to see him.
She only wanted to feel. Pleasure. Life. Not the cold touch of death.
The door squeaked, providing a bare second’s warning. “Hey, Max!” A male voice called out. “There’s someone I want you to—”
Max’s fingers pushed deep.
Sam choked back a moan as a rush of pleasure flooded through her body on a hot tide of release.
“Not now,” Max snarled.
“Ah, shit, s-sorry, m-man…” The door slammed shut.
Her breath panted out.
Max raised his head and stared down at her. “He couldn’t see you.”
No. The man would have just seen Max, wrapped around some faceless woman. Not her.
Because she wasn’t the type for casual sex. Wasn’t the kind of woman who tracked a man to a party, ditching her panties and asking him to take her on the balcony. She was the good girl. The quiet one. Always had been.
Her hip vibrated. Not from him, though she could almost expect to—
Christ, her phone!
She slapped her hands against Max’s chest and shoved him back.
His fingers slipped down her thighs. “Samantha? He didn’t—”
Her fingers trembled as she yanked out the phone and read the text. Get back to scene in Melborne ASAP. New body. The message was from Agent Dante. Oh, hell, from Dante.
“I-I have to go,” she told Max and saw his eyes widen.
“The hell you do.” He shook his head grimly and didn’t move an inch. Solid muscle. Angry, aroused male. “You’re not running this time. We’re not finished.”
No, they’d just been getting started, but she couldn’t turn down Dante, not if he was willing to give her a chance on the team. “Max, I—”
He kissed her. He’d made her come without once kissing her, and the touch of his lips seemed shocking. Too intimate. After what he’d just done? But, yes, too—
His tongue pushed past her lips. Tasted her. Took and claimed hers, and she met him head-on.
Sam liked the way he tasted. There was wine in his kiss. Just as there must be champagne on her tongue. Tangy, but sweet.
The man knew how to use his tongue. Knew how to thrust and lick and have her straining to meet him.
Her fingers clenched around the phone. Her nipples ached, and her sex quivered.
More. More. They couldn’t have all night, but they could have a few moments. Right there.
Sam tore her mouth away. “I-I’m sorry… I’ve got—work.”
He stared at her with his jaw clenched and his strong chin angled down as he studied her. “What kind of work wou
ld call you in this late at night?”
He didn’t want to know. Sam let her lips curve. Being fake was becoming so easy. “I work with…” Oh, jeez, but she needed her voice to stop sounding so breathy and weak. “C-computers. I-I have a tech emergency.”
Half-truth. Half-lie.
He blinked. “You—”
“I have to go.” She’d have to change. No way could the others see her in this outfit. It would take an hour to drive out to Melbourne from D.C. Why did Dante want her? And—
Another body? That didn’t fit the pattern. No way. She eased away from Max and reached for the door.
“You’re running again.” Arousal still rumbled in his words. The rough timbre of a man who hadn’t gotten his pleasure.
“No, I’m just walking away.” She didn’t look back. Say something. She knew that she should. Leaving the guy like this—
The old Sam would never have done that.
Then again, the old Sam was dead. She’d died in the water months before when a serial killer had left her broken body in a lake. And these days, it felt like her ghost was all that remained.
Her spine straightened. “Sam Kennedy.” The words came out softer than she’d intended. “My name’s… Sam Kennedy.” She waited, wondering if he’d make the connection to her mother, but there was no flicker of recognition on his face. As far as she knew, Max and her mother had never met face-to-face, and since her mother was in Europe right then, she doubted their paths would be crossing soon.
But her heart still beat a little too fast. By giving him her last name, she’d given herself one less shield from him.
“Samantha Kennedy,” Max said softly as if tasting the name. But, no, he was wrong.
Max kept calling her Samantha when she was just plain old Sam. Despite her mother’s hopes, she’d never been fancy enough for Samantha. Her fingers curled around the door knob, and she began to pull it open.
“How do I find you, Samantha?”
He wanted to find her?
Well, duh, Sam, you left the man with a hard-on. Of course he wants to find you.
But she didn’t want him to see her world. Not ever. In this fake life, she and Max could touch here. Nowhere else.
Not on the streets. Not in the shadows where she worked. Not with the killers. He didn’t need to see them.
“You don’t, Max,” Sam said with a sigh, and she finally glanced back now. “But I can find you, and I will.” Unless he told her to screw off. Unless—
“Sounds like a promise.”
It was.
She gave a quick nod and opened the door. A man stood nearby, young and handsome, close to her age, and he eyed her with a knowing smile on his lips.
Sam walked right past him, her mind already on the case.
On the dead body that waited for her.
Samantha Kennedy.
So he had a full name. A name and a face and a hard-on that was really damn painful.
Max Ridgeway stalked to the edge of the balcony. His hands gripped the thick metal railing, and he sucked in a deep breath.
And still tasted her.
Samantha.
She’d come against his hand. He hadn’t missed the hard clench of her sex or the soft cream that coated his fingers. She’d come, she’d kissed him, then she’d walked away.
Using him for sex.
Jesus Christ—women usually used him for money. For power.
Sex?
Probably shouldn’t complain. He was supposed to like that, right?
But he didn’t. Max yanked at his bow tie, loosening the knot, hating the damn thing, hating the stupid party he’d been forced to attend. Five years ago, he never would’ve been caught in this scene, but these days, he knew he had to play the game in order to keep his business in the black.
His business. The minute he’d seen Samantha, he’d forgotten all about the deals that he’d been working on at the party. As a rule, Max didn’t go for one-night stands. He was long past the stranger pickup. Well, he had been. Until Samantha had touched him, and he’d gotten lost in her dark, turbulent eyes.
Walking away from her that night hadn’t been possible, not after he’d tasted her. He’d taken her lips and known he’d take her.
The beginning. For him, that’s what it had been.
Max wanted more from Samantha Kennedy than just a few hot hours in the dark.
Down on the street below him, she ran from the building, hurriedly dodging in and out of the lights. The lamps caught the red of her hair, flickering almost like fire in the heavy curls.
Samantha.
When she’d come up to him at that bar, her heart-shaped face had been so pale. Her brown eyes so wide. Her mouth—slick and red—had trembled.
She’d been afraid, and he’d wanted her.
A fast fuck.
No.
Max knew when a woman had secrets, and Samantha carried those secrets like a cloak around her sensual little body.
Samantha jumped into a small red VW Bug. He almost smiled at that. Hadn’t been expecting her to—
She shot out of the lot with a roar of the car’s engine, and he watched until the red taillights vanished.
It would be easy to find her. He had connections in D.C. His, his stepfather’s. He could track her and discover everything that there was to know about Samantha Kennedy in a matter of hours.
If that was what he wanted.
Secrets.
He had them, too. In spades.
I’ll find you. She’d better. Because Samantha Kennedy had made a mistake. She’d given him a taste, and now Max found that he wanted more.
Being a greedy bastard was part of his nature. When he wanted something, he took it.
He wanted Samantha.
“Thought you didn’t go for the society ladies.” His stepbrother’s mocking voice drifted in the air to him.
Max didn’t glance back. He’d heard the door open, just as he’d heard it earlier when Quinlan came outside. At a piss-poor time.
“Sorry for the interruption.” The soft tread of Quinlan’s shoes padded over the tile. “Didn’t expect you to be… occupied out here.”
Max forced himself to release the railing.
Quinlan’s rough laugh filled the night, only to end with a nervous edge. “Didn’t know you went for sex in public places, man.”
“I don’t.” Normally. “And whatever you thought you saw out here, forget it.” Kissing and telling wasn’t his style either. Slowly, Max turned around and stared at his younger brother. Hell, his stepbrother was probably a lot closer to Samantha’s age than Max was at thirty-three.
Quinlan gulped and looked away. His left hand lifted to rub against his neck, and his golden horseshoe ring—his so-called lucky charm, a gift from Quinlan’s father—glinted.
His stepbrother always seemed to have trouble looking him in the eye. Since his mother’s death, so did their “father.”
Max headed for the door. He was done with this scene. He didn’t need to schmooze and party. What he needed—well, she’d driven away.
I’ll find you. She’d better.
Find me, or I’ll find you, baby.
CHAPTER Two
Sweat was slick on Sam’s palms as fear settled heavily in her belly. She slammed the car door, rubbed her hands on the black pants she’d changed into at her place, and stared up at the looming mansion.
Two police cruisers were parked near the gate. A crime scene investigation team fanned over the area.
She sucked in a deep breath, then shoved back her shoulders and marched forward as she pulled out her ID. “I’m with the FBI—where’s Agent Dante?” Dante, not Hyde. She didn’t want to see him just then.
A uniform pointed toward the big house. “With the body.”
Another kill didn’t make any sense. The Briars only had one son so no one else at the residence fit the kidnappers’ profile. The vics were rich males in their early twenties. Party boys who had parents with too much money and too little ti
me for them.
The first kidnapping had occurred three months ago. The ransom demand had come twenty-four hours after the college student disappeared. The father paid, and the next day the son was back and able to provide absolutely no description of his abductors.
Next a man had been taken from Virginia, then one from D.C. Poor Jeremy Briar had been abducted from Maryland.
All of the men disappeared from college campuses, or rather, from bars located near the campuses.
Two men had come back alive.
Two hadn’t been so lucky.
The serial kidnappers were smart, very good at covering their tracks, and too good at picking targets.
When it came to knowing the identity of the abductors, the SSD had nothing. Nothing.
She hurried down an elaborate walkway and eased past a fountain that sprayed water high into the air. Voices rose and fell, drifting out of the house through the open doorway. She stepped off the path and found herself on a mosaic that reproduced a Rembrandt painting.
Too much money. Maybe too much time, too.
Sam eased past the uniforms stationed near the door, keeping her ID out. “I need to find Agent Dante.” She still didn’t know why he’d called her in, but she wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
“He’s in the study,” the nearest cop told her.
Sam’s brows rose. That was supposed to tell her what, exactly?
The cop flushed a deep red—a red that matched his hair. “Down the hallway, second door. The room with the body.”
Right, the body. This family had sure been through hell.
Her shoes whispered against the tile. First they’d lost their only child and now—
Sam skidded to a halt just outside the study. The techs were bagging the victim, an older guy with gray-streaked hair, tanned skin, and half his skull missing.
“Morgan Briar,” Luke Dante murmured, looking up from his notes and giving her a cool nod. He stood near the large window to the right. “He’s been dead about five hours now.” Luke’s green eyes held hers.
Morgan Briar. The father. Oh, Jesus. “What happened? Why—”
“No, I don’t need a damn lawyer!” A woman’s shrill cry tore through the air. Sam glanced over her shoulder and saw a tall, icily beautiful blonde being led down the stairs. The woman wore slim black pants and what looked like a white cashmere sweater. The sweater was stained with blood.