“Gone? Why?”
“I gave them the night off for Valentine’s. Hopefully they’re all having a nice night in Victoria.”
“Bindi?”
“Yes?”
“Generous.”
So he liked her resilience, her generosity and that she hoarded novelty knickknacks.
He hadn’t called her hot or pretty or gorgeous.
He’d cited qualities that had nothing to do with her appearance, and she slammed into joy the way somebody might walk into a door.
Throat tight, she said, “I—I’m sorry, but…I’m not used to this, Santino. What are we supposed to do with all of this? When I was with…him…you and I— We didn’t have civil conversations or freely say what we like about each other.” He’d been too guarded, and she too focused on rescuing herself using someone else’s fortune. “I came here for clarity, but you show up and…”
“And what?”
“And I’m confused. Sorry.”
“I know,” he said, and the gentle words were so strange from one of the harshest men she’d ever come across. He stepped closer. “But I can’t take it back. I’m not going to do that.”
“Then there’s that,” she whispered, so quietly. The confession hurt, yet it felt as rich as liberty. “I don’t want you to take it back.”
Bindi made the mistake of meeting him head-on. Key necklace to lock necklace. Eye to eye. Body to body as he used his granite-solid form—shoulders, crotch, thighs, hands—to pin her to the pillar.
“Who unlocked you?”
“You, Santino.”
“And?”
“You. Just you.”
And then they collided mouth to mouth, with the urgency of heat and demand of whiskey flavoring the taste. Grace and precision weren’t welcome in this kiss. It wasn’t about intellect or the melding of spirits. Just hard, impenitent want.
Bindi wrapped herself around him: a hand around his ponytail, an arm around his neck, legs parting to invite him deeper. Fingertips sank into flesh. Wet tongues invaded.
This was more than a mistake. This was bad in every naughty, delicious, unforgivable way.
Chapter 3
Santino needed salvation. Kissing Bindi as though he was thirsty for her, pressing against her as though she was meant for him, felt so good it couldn’t be anything but wrong. The weak, almost voiceless part of him that clung to decent judgment begged for something to wrest control from whatever instinct had triggered him to get up close and sexual with this woman.
Bindi sank deeper into their kiss and he couldn’t move—couldn’t let go of her hips, couldn’t break away from her mouth. God, her mouth. Lusciously warm. Irresistibly willing. Impossibly familiar. He felt as though he’d already been inside her. He was ready to be, and it floored him. He hadn’t been so hard in months.
Damn it. Why couldn’t she be a stranger, or a standard gold digger? Hell, hooked around him as she was now, she wasn’t even his father’s ex-fiancée.
She was, in some twisted way, paradise. A perfect fit. She licked him just right, yanked his hair so greedily that he wanted to strip her naked and return the favor. She tasted of whiskey and heat, her scent so crisp and clean it was downright erotic.
She sighed, the sound heavy with frustration and confusion, as though she were searching for something and wasn’t sure she’d like what she found.
Because she was in this as deeply as he.
And he was abso-freakin’-lutely fascinated.
Bindi retreated from their kiss. But they remained tangled together in each other’s arms. “I can’t stand you.”
So the old Bindi, the one who attacks when she feels cornered, resurfaces.
He was thrown off-kilter with the new Bindi and didn’t know how to handle her. He didn’t know if he could handle her. “Good.”
“Good?”
“Yeah. Good that you could take your tongue out of my mouth long enough to say it. Now we can both think.” His senses were slowly coming home to him. This kiss, this closeness, was a bad idea. “You hate me. Say it.”
Another half frustrated, half confused moan fled her sweet, swollen lips. The tea lights’ flames winked around them, but the regret in her pale blue eyes was too bright to mistake. “Why?”
He pressed against her, harder. She gasped. “You’re not giving me enough of a reason to let you go.”
“What about dislike?”
“Dislike is damn near a compliment. Why can’t you say the word that’ll end this?”
“Loathe,” she said, as if he hadn’t confronted her with a simple question. “Or detest. Yeah, detest. Go with that.”
“Hate. Why won’t you say it, Bindi?”
“I never hated you.”
A first-class lie. But lies came delicately easy to this woman, and after reading her history, it wasn’t hard to figure out why she had to take measured steps to get used to telling the truth. “Your body’s against me, and your taste’s in my mouth, but let’s remember the facts.” He said it for his own sake as much as hers. “Marriage? A straight shot to Dad’s money? A reality TV show? C’mon…did you think I’d let that happen?”
“Al ended things.”
“Saving me the effort.” Even if his father hadn’t strung Bindi along—keeping her in the Franco mansion while he wagered what he didn’t spend on high-caliber call girls—only to ultimately drop her, Santino would’ve crushed their wedding bells.
Bindi had chased a prenup-free marriage, had plotted to become an instant celebrity as she exploited the Las Vegas Slayers with a reality TV program.
And while Santino was busy protecting his father from yet another fame-hungry fiancée, Al was making dirty deals, selling the team and ushering them both into separate chambers of hell.
“I got in your way. I blocked. I pushed. I wasn’t going to let up until you were out of Dad’s life. You hated me for that.”
“It’s safe to drop that mission now, Santino. I am out of Al’s life. He hasn’t phoned or emailed or sent a message by pigeon.” Bindi uncurled her fingers from his hair, and he stupidly began to miss the needy force of her tugging. “And okay, I’m not going to deny it—I did hate you.”
“You don’t now? What changed?”
“The truth, as I saw it. And I changed. I’m not going to let myself feel anything for a Franco—even hate.”
Another lie threaded into her words. She might not hate—or loathe or detest—him, but the tremble of her thighs whispered all kinds of secret feelings.
Seeking what she wouldn’t admit, he slowly brought one hand forward, curving his fingers when they met the softness of her ass.
Stop me, Bindi, because I can’t stop myself.
But she didn’t.
A bit of determined maneuvering, and he had his index finger raking up and down the crotch of her thong.
“Franco, you’re playing with me.”
Pressing against her, he said, “Playing’s fun, Paxton. When you’re winning, I mean.”
“Who says you’re winning?”
“You.”
She began to shake her head, but another deliberate brush of his finger had her blurting, “Okay. Damn it, okay. Just—”
“What? Just what?”
“Hating you would be less complicated than this.” Her face was so serious—her eyes so troubled. “Just touch me. Would you do that, Santino? I want to know what it’s like.”
“You’ve been touched before.”
“I’ve never asked. I’ve never had to ask.”
“Don’t say you feel nothing, because I know it’s a lie,” he said, moving aside damp fabric to stroke into her. “You’re wet. I wouldn’t call that feeling nothing.”
Bindi swallowed, and he didn’t doubt she was silencing a pleasured sound he’d earned the right to hear. “Stop—please. I’m afraid.”
“Of me?” But he backed off instantly.
“Yes. And of me, and emotions and real feelings. I can’t spare them, because if I do and you hurt
me… Don’t ask me to, okay?” She pushed away from the pillar behind her and he stepped away to give her more room. “I’m going to the garden.”
“We need to talk.”
“About Al,” she allowed. “Not about that kiss. Not about the trouble this—” she thumped her silver lock necklace “—caused tonight.”
“And your party?”
Righting her dress, she scoffed. “We’re all adults, capable of being left to our own devices.” She waved a hand skyward. “A storm’s coming. Nothing to freak about, but if I was a gambler I’d place a bet on my guests clearing out before the rain starts.”
“Think I’m going to follow their lead?”
“It’d be smart if you did.”
“And forfeit my reward for unlocking you?”
“Isn’t a kiss enough?” She started to strut to the east end of the veranda. “Come on—really. We weren’t going to take this past flirting.”
She didn’t know how damn wrong she was. And she’d saved them both by stopping their kiss when she had.
Bindi went from strut to speed walking, and he didn’t get in her way this time. Now that he knew her dark hair and tempting shape, knew her delicate scent, knew that she was off guard, catching her again would be easy.
He’d kind of liked playing with her.
As the door swung open, noise flooded the veranda and people trickled outside. A man frowning at his smartphone paced back and forth before a woman summoned him to where she rested against a pillar.
That damn pillar.
Seeing Bindi Paxton wedged up against the wide column with her blue eyes fixed on him, Santino cursed cruelly and started walking.
He didn’t seek her right away. First he had to remember that he was a near-forty man whose life had been Express Mailed to an inferno and for Bindi, sex was a bargaining chip. Second, he had to remember that there was a chance that Bindi had been a part of what his father had done. Only time would tell if she was innocent of that sordid mess.
As far as he, his brother and the mansion’s cast of household staff knew, Bindi had made herself “access denied” to Alessandro. She’d accept his ring, live in his house and dress herself in the revealing clothes the man preferred she wear, but there’d be no sex before the wedding night.
With each other or anyone else.
If Santino had her pegged right, she liked sex and hadn’t taken a hiatus from it for religious beliefs or the glory of a chaste engagement. Point blank, saying no was her right and whoever didn’t agree had the right to go screw themselves.
Santino had ignored the staff’s crude jokes that gushed with vulgarities such as blue balls and worn out right hand and suggestions that Al cheat on Bindi rather than marry her for a five-minute consummation. Even through the red haze of his own pain, he could recognize their engagement as a business transaction that’d end as Al’s second and third marriages had—in expensive, intrusive courtroom proceedings.
And sometimes he had his doubts about Al and Bindi’s sexless engagement. Something didn’t ring true about Al satisfying Bindi’s extravagant tastes without compensation.
Santino didn’t want to care—regretted that he did. He wished his interlude with Bindi had felt depraved, perverse. Instead it had felt right.
Striding through the night, he heard sand-sprinkled grass crinkle under his shoes and he could sense the threat of rain. Villa Soleil’s garden was a stamp of land crowded with tropical trees, plants, bushes and bursts of flowers he couldn’t begin to identify.
Bindi, who’d built a topiary hobby from her admiration for horticulture and freakish flair for cutting things, seemed at fragile peace in this garden.
Her skin glimmered golden in the gentle landscape lamps that lit his path to the fountain where she sat on the edge, her fingers dancing through a slender stream of water. “Ever visited the Bellagio’s botanical gardens?”
“Probably.” He’d lived in Las Vegas his entire life, maintaining an off-season condo that he’d shared with his girlfriend. The Bellagio was a popular spot for business meals, and Tabitha had dragged him there often enough for various celebrations.
Tabitha. Maybe she was the reason he couldn’t—wouldn’t—remember clearly.
“Well, if you can’t picture the Bellagio’s gardens, my comparison will mean zero.”
“Compare anyway. I might surprise you.”
“Surprise me again, you mean. Crashing my party, kissing me on the veranda—surprises.” She cleared her throat. “The Bellagio’s conservatory and the gardens are magnificent. At Christmastime it’s all surreal. This garden’s not perfect—it’s not arranged very strategically, which is a shame, because these orchids should be showcased—but Cora Island’s not manicured. It’s more of a jungle. Rugged. Sort of how I imagine the Garden of Eden.” She shook droplets of water from her fingertips, shrugged. “Even this gorgeous garden, which was obviously designed more for privacy than out of consideration for these poor incense trees’ prosperity, is—”
“Wild.”
A gasp of laughter rang throughout the garden. Nodding, she said, “Wild, exactly.”
“We shared the same thought?”
“Weirder things have happened. It can be our secret. What we did earlier, getting carried away with locks and keys, can be a secret, too.”
Keeping secrets with this woman sounded like trouble, but he craved it anyway.
“You didn’t ask if I’m with somebody.”
“Because I already know you’d never damage a relationship that way.”
Tabitha had killed the version of Santino who’d bought into the relationship hype—and he should thank her for that. Not that he’d ever be okay with his girlfriend sabotaging their future together the minute she realized surgery and rehab wouldn’t be enough to get him back onto the field. But in the time since he’d read her “I can’t do this anymore, sorry” text message in the recovery room, smashed his phone and been restrained and doped up with sedatives to control his dangerous behavior, he’d gotten used to complacency.
Kissing Bindi had shocked his system.
“Are you free?” he asked.
“Indefinitely. Being single suits me.”
“The dude with the piercings. Who’s he?”
“A stranger. I wanted time with him.” She watched him intently now. “Maybe I’ll get it, after the storm comes and goes and after you leave this island.”
Santino didn’t intend to leave Cora Island without Bindi. Except telling her that would put them at odds—and him behind the damn eight ball. “Your guests are starting to clear out. Wanna get back in there?”
Bindi frowned at him. “What, that’s it? I say I might spend time with someone else, and you have no reaction?”
“What reaction do you want?”
“Not this coldness. You kissed me.”
“And you said you’re afraid.”
“I am. I’m afraid of what tomorrow will look like if we take things too far.” She quit toying with the water, and her damp fingers were on his wrist, urging him nearer. “But passing up what could happen tonight? That terrifies me.”
Bindi’s fingers moved to his abdomen, lower to drag down his zipper. Part of him considered backing away, but the majority of him wanted her to know why he couldn’t give her what she wanted from a man.
After a few moments of stroking him, she put her hands in her lap. “What’s going on?”
Swearing, Santino zipped his pants, then yanked the band from his hair just to rake it into a short ponytail again. “It’s not clear to you?”
“That you don’t want me? I’m starting to realize that.”
“Bindi, you know my father offered a bounty that killed my career.”
Her eyes narrowed. “But you seem to be in great shape now, so…?”
Lucky SOB, his former teammates called him. To them, erectile dysfunction was the lesser of the evils when stacked against what he could’ve endured. Past a year postinjury, he was strong—as healed as he’d
ever be—but he wasn’t whole. “Spinal damage,” he said. “Pulverized disc. Nicked cord.”
“Does your back hurt?” she pressed. Those narrowed eyes suddenly popped open wide, searched his frantically. “Wait. Can you get an erection?”
“I can’t sustain it or get one at all without focus. So the mistakes you might want to make tonight—they can’t be made with me.”
Bindi brought her fingers back to the water. “So you did come here to interrogate me about Al.”
“I need your help. I need you to come back to Las Vegas with me to find him.”
“I can’t go back to that world again. Half of me wants to leave Vegas altogether, start over fresh somewhere else… Somewhere like this island, where there are wild gardens.”
“There are trees and orchids in Las Vegas.”
“Not at my fingertips. Not anymore. I live downtown, on East Dune. My apartment building’s grounds are managed by an insecticide-happy company, and a girl can expect only so much from windowsill plants and Chia Pets.”
In less than a year she’d gone from sculpting topiaries in front of a Forbes-featured mega mansion to fussing over Chia Pets in a downtown Vegas apartment.
Fact was, instability shouldn’t be new to her. According to the report he’d taken from Zaf, her parents had pulled her out of a private elementary school following a tightly classified drug overdose incident. The bare-bones story was simple: prominent politician’s daughter gets into a medicine cabinet, overdoses at school, the school and local hospital receive prestigious awards and private donations and the daughter gets quietly homeschooled until college. Then she’d popped up on the radar again when she had been kicked off her Illinois congressman father’s campaign team after getting herself expelled from college and leaking proof of the United States’ “Boy Scout Politician” Senator Paxton’s affair with a staff member. She’d spent the years since scouting the country for elderly men wealthy enough to afford her attention.
A hell of a ride, but she was at the end of the road if she’d dyed her hair and traveled to Cora Island to meet up with his father.
He might be off base, and if he was he’d apologize. But he had a damn solid reason to be suspicious. She’d sold out before. Who was to say her loyalty couldn’t be bought again?
Mine Tonight Page 4