Provocative Attraction

by Altonya Washington

  “Looks like.” Rook shrugged, his expression reflecting satisfaction. “The building’s owners got concerned after what happened to Sophia. They thought they could stand to put more security in place for their residents.” He gestured to the ceiling where a magnificent skylight directed weak late-autumn sunlight into the lobby. “Everyone around here seems to like the changes. It’s made your wife-to-be a popular girl.”

  “So are you really good with this—taking V along with you?” Tigo asked once their laughter had eased. “Soap’ll understand if it’s too much with all that’s happened.”

  Rook leaned against an opposing wall while Tigo hit the button for the elevator. “I know I’m a fool to go along with it, but...” He mopped his face in his palms.

  Tigo grinned. “I get it, man. So do you think you guys’ll be back for the wedding?”

  Rook pushed off the wall. “You guys set a date already?”

  “Done wasting time,” Tigo said matter-of-factly. “We don’t need some huge, crazy event. Right now, we’re working to get the folks to go along with that.” He laughed. “Guess I’ve got some drama goin’ after all.”

  “The good kind.” Rook clapped Tigo’s shoulder as they stepped into an arriving elevator car.

  “You want Viva back?” Tigo asked when the car’s paneled doors closed with a muffled thud.

  “More than anything.” Rook relaxed against the paneling and closed his eyes. “And before you say it, yes, I know time isn’t on our side.”

  “There are really only two things you need to ask yourself,” Tigo said as he leaned on the wall next to Rook. “Is it worth it and does she feel the same?”

  “Do you mean in the physical or mental sense?” Rook’s sly smile mimicked his tone of voice. “I can tell you I don’t have a clue where her head is.”

  “So handle your business in Italy and do what you need to in order to settle this between you and V.”

  Rook gave his old friend a sideways glance. “You know, you’re starting to sound like Linus.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  Laughter filled the ascending car.

  * * *

  “Jeez, V, why couldn’t you just listen to me for once in your life? Just believe your little sister knows what she’s talking about?” Sophia grumbled when she rushed back into the living room from the kitchen where she’d started a pot of coffee and deposited Viva’s emptied wine bottle.

  Sophia stooped before Viva, whom she’d found dozing when she got home. She gave her big sister’s cheek a quick, light slap. “Come on, girl, the guy of your dreams is on his way up. This is no time for you to be playing the role of the drunken lush.

  “V?” She slapped Viva’s cheeks again. “Do you hear me?” she queried when her sister groaned. “He’s on his way up.”

  Rousted a bit, Viva’s eyes opened to narrow slits. “Up?”

  “Rook’s coming up.”

  Viva groaned.

  “Come on, V.” Sophia added a few more taps to her sister’s face.

  Viva winced. “You’re just doing that to be mean now.”

  “You know me so well.” Sophia pushed to her feet. “Don’t go back to sleep!” she called, heading back to the kitchen to check on the coffee. “Locks are off the door, so Rook and Tigo can come on in!”

  Viva cradled her head, resting her elbows on her knees as she groaned anew. “Why’d you ask him over?”

  “I didn’t.” Sophia stepped out of the kitchen to answer. “Maybe he wanted to come check and see how you were recovering from that kiss he laid on you earlier.”

  “You’re not helping.”

  “You’ll be okay,” Sophia crooned. “You’ve got several weeks of lavish Italian living coming to you.”

  “I know what you’re doing.”

  “Oh, yeah? What am I doing?” Sophia returned to the living room with a loaded coffee tray in tow. “Looks like I’m slaving to fix you coffee even after the day I’ve had.” She set down the tray and sighed. “This is why people hate celebrities.”

  Viva’s expression was bland. “People don’t hate celebrities.”

  “They do when they have to deal with ’em in real life.”

  Viva’s misery fully reasserted itself then. “Why couldn’t he put up this much effort when I first left?”

  “You wouldn’t have heard what he had to tell you then.” Sophia poured the delicious-smelling brew into an oversize glazed mug depicting a fall scene.

  “How do you know that?” Viva tried to pout.

  “I know that because I knew you then,” Sophia replied as she added cream to the strong black coffee until it turned to an inviting rich beige. “The only thing you loved more than Rook Lourdess was the acting bug.”

  “So this is my fault?”

  “Your words, not mine.” Sophia pushed the mug into Viva’s hands. “Drink this.” She nodded as her instructions were followed and then moved to prepare her own cup.

  “V, we could go back and forth on this all day and into next year, but you only need to remember one thing. Be honest with him.” Sophia blew across the surface of the coffee, took a sip and smiled in appreciation of the taste.

  “Just tell him whatever it is you think he won’t understand,” she continued. “You’re already apart. There’s nothing to lose now, is there?”

  Viva started to take another sip of her coffee, but paused. “How easy was all that ‘honesty is the best policy’ stuff before you and Tig worked it out?”

  Sophia savored more of her coffee, her glee apparent in the contented smile and happy shiver she gave. “I never went through anything so hard in my whole life. It wasn’t easy—it was hell. Felt like I was walking on coals a lot of the time.”

  Viva rolled her eyes. “Thanks,” she said flatly.

  “Anytime.” Sophia sipped more coffee and then sighed when she heard a knock at the door.

  “I told Tigo to just come on in.”

  “Why do you keep throwing us together?” Viva set her mug to the stone table before the sofa while Sophia stood to answer the knock. “Do you know how long it’s taken me to get over that man?”

  Sophia paused a few feet from the door. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me when it happens?”

  “I hate you.”

  Sophia laughed. “You love me.”

  Chapter 5

  “You should’ve called again,” Rook suggested to Tigo once they’d stepped into the condo and saw Viva resting back on the sofa, an arm thrown over her eyes in a picture of woe.

  “She started the party without us,” Sophia explained as she reclaimed her coffee mug from an end table.

  Rook was already kneeling next to the sofa and cupping Viva’s jaw. “Is she okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Viva slurred.

  Rook looked to the coffee mug and then gave Viva’s jaw a little squeeze. “Didn’t you tell your sister that stuff does nothing to perk you up?”

  Viva responded with a lazy smile. “It’s a cop thing. Coffee’s their go-to cure for whatever ails you.”

  In retaliation, Sophia yanked her sister’s hair as she walked past. Tigo soothed the gesture, when Viva cried out, with a kiss to his soon-to-be sister-in-law’s brow.

  Rook chuckled as the couple headed into the kitchen. “I just wanted to check on you,” he told her.

  Viva’s smile refreshed. “Why? Did you think I’d pass out from the strength of one kiss?”

  Rook fingered away the tip of a curl clinging to the corner of her mouth. “It’s been known to happen,” he said. “Will you let me take you to bed?”

  “Mmm...yes...” she purred without hesitation. Instantly she regretted the slip and silently bemoaned the fact that coffee really had no effect on her.

  Rook moved in, easily
taking her into his arms. “Let’s go, I know something that’ll work better than coffee.”

  “Sex?” Viva’s tone was hopeful.

  Rook laughed. “Sleep.”

  “I sleep better after sex.” She figured she’d already done a fine job of putting her foot in her mouth. No sense stopping now.

  Rook played the game in stride. Inside, he wished she’d shut up. In that moment, all he could think of was putting her to bed...with sex. “You already had the wine to help with that,” he managed to say.

  Viva merely smiled and let her head rest on his shoulder. She enjoyed the security coursing through her in reaction to the broad expanse of muscle supporting her head. Sleepily, she gave him directions to her room.

  “Rook,” she murmured into his neck, “I miss you.”

  He grinned then, taking her confession to be alcohol-induced. “I miss you too,” he said, playing along. He felt her mouth against his seconds later.

  He had no thought to question whether the gesture was alcohol induced or not. He had no thoughts, period—save the fact that they were engaged in a kiss. The second one in over six years.

  Somehow, he found the way to her room. One kick from his boot secured the door and sealed them in a cocoon of darkness inside. Rook made no effort to venture any farther beyond the door. He stood, holding her high and close to his chest as the kiss grew more heated and urgent.

  The kiss had begun sweetly enough with Viva’s lazy exploration of his mouth. Her tongue had grazed his even teeth before curling sensually around his tongue. Now though it turned potent, and Rook’s groans mingled with the soft, infectious purrs of pleasure stirring in the back of her throat. Her firm breasts were more than a handful and for that, Rook had no complaints. His only regret was that they weren’t filling his hands just then. Cursing raggedly to himself, he drove his tongue against hers.

  He moved forward, hoping the bed wasn’t too far away. He felt the edge of the mattress nudging him a moment later.

  Viva could feel herself lowering and instinctively curved her fingers about his open shirt collar. She was determined to take him down with her.

  Rook needed no encouragement on that score. He caged her beneath his wide frame, never once breaking the kiss as he settled between her thighs. The satiny limbs had been bared by the rising hem of the ankle-length lounge dress she wore.

  Viva could only gasp when she felt his arousal. His erection was stiffly pronounced, appreciatively wedged against the dampened middle of her panties. Her back bowed as she arched, rubbing against Rook in an attempt to ease away the ache stirred by him there so close to the spot he had been the first to awaken and possess.

  It was a possession he still held claim to, Viva admitted in the quiet of her mind. Time had not erased what he and he alone could make her feel with a look or the slightest touch.

  There was nothing slight about his touch then, however. His crushing weight was a welcome pressure against her body—one that had been so very missed during the six-year drought of their separation. She arched and rubbed against him more insistently. Simultaneously, she engaged her breasts in the lusty interlude.

  It was impossible for Rook to ignore the plump mounds crushing into his chest with burgeoning persistence. His palms literally ached with the need to feel the nipples naked against his skin. Yet he resisted, knowing if he indulged, he wouldn’t be leaving her until the morning, if then. Clenching his fists, Rook launched an attempt to ease away, to withdraw from the kiss and the haze of pleasure only she had the power to lock him in.

  Viva wasn’t the least on board with calling a halt to their moment. Her nails grazed the short, cottony waves tapering his nape in a play to keep him close. Even as she continued to move her breasts across his chest, she was freeing her hold at his nape to tug at the ties securing the bodice of her dress.

  Rook latched onto the dredges of his willpower and shook his head as he withdrew. “No, V...”

  She responded by clutching fistfuls of his shirt and rocking her hips with deliberate insistence. “You don’t mean it.”

  “Damn right, I don’t, but it needs to be said.”

  She gave a throaty laugh, one he’d missed hearing in his ear. Until then, he’d only been able to enjoy the sound from an impersonal distance through a TV or movie screen.

  Viva resumed her sweet rocking and the moves had Rook stiffening then to an almost painful state. He surprised them both when he wrenched back. Capturing Viva’s wrists, he pressed them above her head, before she could snag his shirt again.

  In the weak streams of the streetlights fighting their way past the blinds, he saw her face. The disappointment in her expression broke his heart and for an instant, his temper flared at the idea of her gracing any other man with that look. That look that could render a man incapable of denying her anything. That look that had the power to caress a man’s ego, bolster his pride and reduce him to a sex-starved mess all in the same vein.

  Considering the idea of her giving that look to another was time poorly spent. That was doubly true for a man currently working to keep a tight rein on his anger. He kissed her sweetly then—a peck to each eyelid. He smiled, noting that she couldn’t quickly open them following the kisses, as if they were still weighted down by exhaustion.

  “Get some sleep,” he murmured next to her ear.

  “Stay,” she urged.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he promised her and realized that he meant it.

  * * *

  “So you’re sure your dirty coworkers are as safe as they can be?”

  Sophia had just told Rook and Santigo about Viva’s call with Murray Dean.

  “They’re locked up tight,” Sophia responded to Rook’s question from her snug spot against Tigo on the sofa. “But Murray’s words do give us more to consider, like who he might have on the inside that could make my dirty coworkers less safe and who we’ve yet to lock away or put into protective custody before he can ‘put them to bed’ as he said.”

  “Hell,” Tigo groaned. “How does an agent get tied up in something like this? I mean, I know Hollywood isn’t filled with the most angelic souls, but money laundering and using gentlemen’s clubs and dirty cops in the mix is quite a stretch.”

  “The guy was always ambitious,” Rook said from his relaxed position in a suede recliner across the room. “Murray wanted the shine and he wasn’t above doing what he had to, to get it. Even if it meant pinching off something someone else had already put together.”

  “Murray worked for you back in the day, right?” Tigo asked.

  Rook’s nod was a grim confirmation. “He jumped ship without notice to establish his own security firm. Then he added insult to injury when he tried to make off with my staff.”

  “He’s a bold criminal. You have to give him that,” Sophia mused.

  “You guys think he could’ve been into all this back then?” Tigo asked.

  Rook was first to speak up. “He was ambitious, but I never saw anything that rang criminal.”

  “They rang unethical though,” Sophia said as she shrugged beneath the plum scoop-neck top she’d worn with her blazer that day. “From there, it’s not always the biggest leap to the criminal side of things.

  “Guess it couldn’t hurt to check into what Mr. Dean’s got going on behind the scenes on a personal level financially,” Sophia suggested once silence held for a time. “Property holdings and things of that nature could provide heavy incentive for certain unethical acts. We’ve been looking at his current acts, but it could pay to see if our friendly neighborhood agent was living above his legal means and for how long.”

  “I should’ve stopped her from going with him.” Rook had left the recliner and was pacing. His habitual fist clenching had once again taken hold.

  “Easy, man,” Tigo soothed. “How could you have known it’d go
down this way?”

  “I knew,” Rook responded blackly. “I probably knew long before Murray pulled his disappearing act and tried to take half my team along for the ride. I should’ve known something.”

  “Well, we can change that now.” Sophia eased from Tigo’s comforting embrace to study Rook. “When this all hits the fan, you can believe Murray’s going to be reaching out to all his contacts to rally in defense of his good name. Viva will be right at the top of that list.”

  “Damn if I let that happen,” Rook grumbled, sliding an acid look toward the hallway leading to the bedrooms.

  “You’re welcome to stay,” Sophia told him, no doubt following the path of his glare. “That room’s big enough for two.”

  Her nonsubtle attempt drew a smile to Rook’s mouth and he fixed her with a sly look. “How can you be such a dynamic cop and have such a problem stopping yourself from being so obvious?”

  Sophia settled back against Tigo. “When I see travesties, I pull out all the stops to get them corrected.”

  “Understood, and I love you for trying.” Rook eased a haunted look toward the hallway again. “It’s gonna take more to correct this than us being in the same place at the same time. I don’t know if either of us is ready for a discussion of how many ways we’ve screwed up.” He shook his head as if to clear it, turned and crossed to the sofa where he dropped a kiss to Sophie’s forehead.

  “Tell her I’ll see her tomorrow,” Rook instructed while shaking hands with Tigo. He only nodded at the concern he saw in the couple’s eyes before he left.

  * * *

  “Yeah, this is gonna go over real well... I’ll spend half the season recovering from a broken leg,” Viva grumbled the next morning while giving a skeptical look to the shoe she held.

  The studio that produced the cable crime drama that she’d been a part for the last five years had delivered the script for the new season. The wardrobe department had also included a package with the shipment. The spike-heeled pump she held would’ve easily added at least six inches to her height.

  After unpacking about eight pairs of the chic stems, Viva began an immediate scan of the script to determine what the writers had in store for her tough and usually no-nonsense character. Apparently, a new undercover assignment would require her to saunter around in the bona fide neck breakers over the course of several episodes.