The Rogue

by J. R. Ward

  “Same place your head is at.” Sean’s voice dropped down low. “I have it on good authority she’s into you.”

  “And this is because she didn’t talk to me, either? Sean, buddy, stick to finance. You’re a rotten social worker.”

  “No, she—”

  At that moment, Mad came back into the room, sipping from a mug.

  Sean put his coffee aside and clapped his hands on his thighs. “I’m turning into a pumpkin. ’Night, all.”

  As the man left, he shot Spike a don’t-you-dare-screw-this-up look.

  And then Spike was alone with Mad. She didn’t look at him, just walked over to the windows and stared out at the city. Silence elongated until he wasn’t sure whether they’d been in the room fifteen minutes or ten days.

  Well, if this wasn’t awkward.

  Spike said quietly, “I don’t want to crowd you tonight. I can crash on the couch.”

  She shrugged. “If you want to. But bear in mind, I sleep on a boat with twelve men on a regular basis. No amount of snoring is going to get my attention. I can sleep through anything.”

  God, the small of her back was beautiful. He wanted to press his lips to the indentation of her spine. Run his hands around to her flat stomach. Reach down and ever so gently stroke her thighs—

  “Spike?”

  “What?” He looked up, meeting her calm stare as she glanced over her shoulder.

  “You just made a funny noise.”

  “Did I?”

  “Sounded like a groan.”

  Well, at least that was better than a squeak of desperation. Much more manly.

  Although when it came down to it, he was surprised she couldn’t hear the roar of his blood as the stuff slammed into all kinds of extremities.

  “Can I ask you a question?” she said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Your eyes. Are they real? I mean, they’re contacts, right?”

  Spike looked away. He knew his irises were a peculiar color, but they’d been that way since birth. And most women liked them…thought the yellow was unusual and attractive. She was the first to suggest they were a cosmo-vanity statement.

  Which told him a lot about what she thought of him.

  And as he abruptly wished his peepers were normal, like a brown or a green or a blue, he got frustrated with himself.

  He punched his weight into his feet, standing up in a quick surge. “I’m going to head for the shower. And then I’m hitting the sack.”

  “Spike, I didn’t mean to…” Her voice drifted off.

  “You didn’t mean to what?”

  “Offend you. I’ve just never seen eyes like yours before.”

  He shrugged. “I know they’re weird, but, whatever, nothing I can do about it. ’Night, Madeline.”

  He put his coffee cup into the kitchen sink and then went down the hallway to the guest room. When he stepped through the door and glanced around, he expected to find her stuff all over the place. It wasn’t. There were no errant hairbrushes or perfume bottles or clothes or shoes dotting the dresser or the desk or the chaise lounge in the corner. All he saw was a black duffel bag at the foot of the bed on the left.

  A sailor’s neatness, he thought, wondering what her life must be like.

  He took a quick shower and then hunted around the vanity for one of the spare toothbrushes he knew was in there. As he put a high gloss on his teeth, he wasn’t looking forward to getting back into the clothes he’d worn all day long, but he’d left his stuff in his car.

  And like naked was even an option in the hypothetical? Not a chance.

  Spike went still. On the other side of the door, he could hear her moving around in the guest room. She was probably getting into bed right at this moment.

  And wouldn’t that be a picture. Her lithe body bending down to pull the blankets back. Those long legs sliding between cool sheets. Her hair spilling over the pillowcase in waves of deep brown and dark red.

  Cursing, he rinsed his mouth out, stepped into his boxers and then pulled on his shirt. While he buttoned the thing up, he eyed his pants. Throwing those on seemed a little much so he folded them and left them on the edge of the tub.

  As he swung open the door, he expected to find Mad propped up in one of the queen-size beds, reading and looking wonderful.

  Instead, the lights were off. In the glow from the bathroom, he could see her curled on her side with the covers pulled up to her cheeks. And yes, her hair did spill over the pillowcase beautifully.

  As he stared at her, he wondered what the auburn waves felt like. Soft, he thought. They would be soft and they would smell like the herbal shampoo she’d left in the shower.

  For the first time since his life had changed twelve years ago, he truly mourned the normalcy he no longer had and would never find again.

  He thought about the one time he’d tried to have a relationship with a woman. About two years after he’d rejoined real life, he’d found someone he liked enough to want to get to know better. Things had gone well until he’d sat her down and told her about what had happened. She’d said all the right things at the time and he’d hoped they might go on from there. But then she’d stopped returning his phone calls.

  He’d understood and let her go.

  Ever since then he’d kept himself apart, although he hadn’t been celibate. He’d just done the one-night stand thing when he’d wanted a little company.

  Madeline Maguire was not a one-nighter. She was the real deal. A smart, beautiful woman from a high-class family that had a Brinks truck worth of money in the bank. So even if she’d been attracted to him, and she wasn’t, there was no way someone like her would want to be…well, with an ex-con like him.

  Spike went over to the bed on the right and got in it. After arranging the pillows the way he liked them, he tried to convince his skin of two things. One, the fact that he was wearing boxers and a shirt to bed was no big deal even though he usually slept in the nude. And two, Madeline Maguire’s hands would in fact not feel like heaven if they were applied liberally over every inch of his body.

  He failed. Particularly at the latter.

  And goodnight-in-hell, everything was an irritant. He shifted this way and that on the bed. Couldn’t find any comfortable way to lay.

  Ten minutes later, he sat up, unbuttoned the shirt and tossed it on the floor. As he slid back down, he heard a soft chuckle from the other bed.

  “Was that the shirt or the boxers? Or both?” she asked.

  He froze, wondering just how long he’d stood at the foot of her bed and stared at her. Did she know he’d done that? “I thought you said you could sleep through anything.”

  There was a pause. “I guess I was wrong.”

  Her sigh as she burrowed back into her pillow burned through him.

  Spike closed his eyes, hoping that the “fake it till you make it” theory worked with sleep.

  It didn’t. He was wide awake. Just staring at the insides of his eyelids.

  Happy place. He needed to go to his happy place. Okay…right. Happy place.

  Didn’t have one.

  God, how much BS was that? Everyone had one. He just needed to picture somewhere he wanted to be.

  So how about the bed next door? the gorilla inside him suggested.

  “Spike?”

  His lids flipped open. “Yeah?”

  “I don’t think your eyes are weird. I think they’re the color of sunshine on the waves in the early morning. They have that same hypnotic, shimmering quality, too.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, just wanted you to know.”

  His breath left him in a silent stream.

  Shimmering. Color of sunshine.

  He wanted to tell her that he was glad she thought of his eyes like that. And point out that anytime she wanted to get hypnotized, he’d kill to be her swami of choice.

  “Thanks,” he said, turning his head so he could see her. “My dad’s were the same. Or so my mom told me.”

  Mad rolled over toward him,
tucking her hands under her chin. God, she looked adorable like that.

  “What nationality was your father?”

  “Don’t know. I never met him and I never asked her. Probably some European flavor.”

  “Why didn’t you…”

  “Know him?”

  “I’m sorry if I’m getting too personal.”

  “Nah, it’s fine. Mom said he didn’t stay long, but she loved him like no other. And everything worked out eventually. Right after I was born, she met a guy who she ended up marrying. He was good to her, good to me. Plus I got a half sister, Jaynie, out of the deal.”

  “Have you ever wanted to find your father?”

  “Wouldn’t know where to start and my life’s okay the way it is. So, no. Besides, Mom’s lived in the same town all her life. If the guy wanted to find her or me, he could.”

  Spike frowned, wondering how long it had been since he’d spoken about his family to anyone.

  He shifted so he was laying on his stomach and couldn’t see her. She didn’t say anything further. Neither did he.

  But it was a long, long while before he could fall asleep.

  Chapter Three

  When Mad woke up around six-thirty, the first thing she did was turn her head and look at the man in the bed next to hers.

  Her breath caught.

  Spike was on his stomach, facing away from her, and he’d kicked the blankets off of himself. All that covered him was a thin sheet that was threaded through his legs.

  So she finally got to see his tattoos.

  He had two of them on his strong back—well, one really, with two halves. It looked like medieval scrollwork; the design running up his spine until it split to go over his shoulder blades and around to the front of him. The tail ends of it must be what showed on his neck, she thought.

  The artwork was beautiful. The effect…erotic. The dark lines flowing over his smooth skin made her want to touch him. With her hands. Her mouth.

  And not just on his back. She wanted to know his whole body.

  It was obvious he lifted weights regularly. Those broad shoulders were thick with muscle and so was the heavy arm he had curled up next to his head. His biceps were so well-defined she could see the vein that ran down the front of them.

  Unexpectedly, he let out a groan and shifted on the bed. She tensed, ready to turn over and pretend she was asleep, but then he took a deep breath and seemed to settle. His rib cage contracted as he exhaled and he moved his head up and down a little on the pillow.

  There was nothing she wanted to do more than cross the short aisle between their beds and lie down against him. She could wake him up slowly by nuzzling his neck, maybe. Or kissing the top of his shoulder.

  Yeah, and then what?

  She was a virgin, not a vamp. And a man like Spike was going to want someone who knew what they were doing.

  He made the sound again, deep in his throat.

  That wasn’t a groan, she thought. More like a purr.

  His legs moved, the sheet pulling at them, constraining him. He rolled over onto his back. As his arm flopped out across the bed, she looked at his wide chest and his washboard stomach. Not a spare ounce of fat on him. Just a whole lot of muscle on a big male body.

  Boy, she wished she had more experience. But in her life, there had been only two men who she might have become totally intimate with. One she met as a sophomore in college and the other she got to know during the summer after she left school to race. In both cases, she’d thought she was in love and assumed she was loved in return.

  Instead, the men had preferred her half sister. And proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

  Shortly after the second time someone she cared about ended up in Amelia’s bed, Mad had put her dating life on hiatus. For one thing, if she wanted to be respected in her sport, she couldn’t be with any of the men on the sailing crews she worked on or any of her competitors, either. But more to the point, there had been no way in hell she was getting vulnerable again.

  Her life had gone on. A couple of years had passed. And now she was on the verge of being twenty-five years old and she’d never made love all the way.

  It hadn’t seemed like a character defect. Until now.

  Spike let out another low rumble and his hand fisted against the sheets. In a flowing arch, his body bowed off the bed as if he were rising up to receive something. Then his hips moved in a tight circle, grinding, surging. Her eyes drifted downward.

  Good Lord. He had an…

  Well, it was clear what he was dreaming about, at any rate. And wow, she really needed to leave the room.

  Spike’s hips stopped moving, but his legs scissored restlessly and his calves turned into knots. He threw his head back and bared his teeth, inhaling with a hiss. As his chest and thighs went through a wave of contractions, the muscles tightened and relaxed under his smooth skin.

  He murmured something that sounded like, “More.”

  Oh, man, he was beautiful. All male. Sexually aroused. In the throes of passion.

  For a moment, she imagined she had the guts it would take to wake him up with the kind of sensuous caresses he was clearly getting in his dream. Would he turn to her? Probably. At least until he realized she wasn’t the woman he was fantasizing about.

  She wondered who was in his mind right now, who he imagined was pleasuring him so acutely.

  Without any warning, his eyes flipped open and he looked right at her. The yellow of his irises was so bright against his long, black lashes, it was as if his stare glowed. And the heat in it was like being hit with a blowtorch.

  Mad jerked back. Then blurted, “I’m sorry.”

  Because watching him seemed voyeuristic.

  The sound of her voice seemed to confuse him. His black brows dipped low and his head went back and forth a couple of times. He mumbled something, closed his eyes and rolled away.

  Mad left in a hurry. She used the bath down the hall and then went to the kitchen, relieved to find that Sean wasn’t up yet; she was not feeling particularly coherent.

  Sean’s kitchen was all stainless steel and wrought iron, halfway between a professional setup and a neo-classical café. After sitting for a while at the table in the alcove, she went hunting for a bag of coffee. She was about to get some brewing when she heard a yawn.

  “Hey, woman.” Sean walked in wearing a pair of plaid boxers low on his hips and a New England Patriots T-shirt. His dark hair was a tousled mess and his beard had grown in a little. He looked like a frat boy in his early twenties, not the thirty-five-year old Wall Street powerhouse he was. “So how’d you sleep?”

  Mad looked away, just in case her blush was noticeable. “Fine.”

  “Spike keep you up?” As if Sean hoped that was the case.

  “No, and don’t start, okay?”

  Her friend nodded, clearly sensing she was in no mood to play. “You know, this is heaven. You and my coffeepot, sharing a meaningful moment. Just beautiful.”

  “What have you got for breakfast around here?” She always kept her meals light and was hoping he had some fruit she could slice up.

  “I don’t know. I never eat at home. But the caterers cooked out of this kitchen all afternoon yesterday so there’s got to be something.”

  The two of them cracked open the refrigerator and stared into it. There were all sorts of things crammed in there, a dizzying array of gourmet leftovers. Too many to choose from.

  “I know exactly what this calls for,” Sean said. “Wait right here.”

  He disappeared and returned a little later. “Help is on the way.”

  “You ordered takeout breakfast?” she asked as she poured herself some coffee.

  “Better.”

  “You ordered breakfast delivered.”

  “I ordered us a classically-trained French chef.”

  “And this paragon is where?”

  “Right behind you,” Spike said.

  She wheeled around.

  Her eyes did a quick head-to-to
e on him, she couldn’t help it. He’d shaved and had all his clothes back on, but she still saw him on that bed in those sheets. His chest. His ribbed belly. His strong arms—

  She realized was staring. And figured she better say something.

  “You…are a chef?”

  A bland look crossed his face and he went to the fridge. “I’m more the hash-slinger type, is that it?”

  “No, I—”

  “So what do you feel like chewing on, SOB?” he asked Sean sharply.

  Shoot, she’d offended him. But she’d just been surprised that he would do something so traditional and rule-based. It wasn’t that she thought he didn’t have the intelligence and discipline it took to become a chef.

  But Sean answered his question before she could explain herself. “Surprise me, buddy. Work your magic. In the meantime, Mad, you and I need to talk. And I’m leaving to go to Japan for two months this morning so it’s here and now.”

  “Sean—”

  “Come on, we’re going into the other room. And let’s hurry up so we’re not late for breakfast.”

  Mad looked across the kitchen. Spike was gathering eggs, some leafy stuff and a couple of cheeses from the fridge.

  He shot her a level stare. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to burn the place down without your supervision.”

  “I didn’t mean that comment as you took it.”

  “Okay. My bad.” He sounded bored. And as though even if she had wanted to insult him, he wouldn’t have cared.

  She gave up and followed Sean into the living room. Her friend didn’t waste time with any preamble.

  “You need to go see your brother, Mad, and you need to do it before you head back out to sea.”

  Oh, not this again, she thought.

  “Mad?”

  “Half brother,” she muttered. “He’s my half brother.”

  “Don’t get huffy with me.” Sean sat on a leather sofa and pulled her down with him. “Look, I’m not just telling you this as your buddy. I’m giving you some free professional advice. Go see him. Now.”

  “Why? My shares in the company are the only thing that interest Richard. And he’s got control of them as executor of my trust.” Together she and her half siblings owned the biggest portion of Value Shop Supermarkets, one of the largest grocery store chains in the nation. The holdings were valued at an absurd figure that Mad didn’t like to think about. It was just too much to comprehend.