Too Wild to Hold

by LETO, JULIE

  “And are you?”

  He swiped the crumbs off his folder and into a nearby trashcan, then pulled a book out from under one of his piles of paperwork.

  The leather was so battered and old that she couldn’t read the faded title on the spine, but expected it to be a first edition of The Curse of Capistrano, which for some reason, she knew was the first novel to detail the exploits of the man in black.

  But when she tilted the book beneath the dim lamp on the side table and turned to the first page, she read, The Amorous Adventures of Joaquin Murrieta.

  Murrieta?

  “A relative?” she asked, scanning down the page until she found the publication date inscribed at the bottom: 1875.

  “Joaquin Murrieta was the son of a Spaniard raised in Chile who came to California as a young man seeking his fortune any way he could get it.”

  “And someone wrote a book about his love life? Why?”

  Michael retrieved the book, flipped a couple of pages, then handed it back to her so she could read a yellowed piece of newsprint tucked inside—a single column published over fifty years after the book.

  The type, off-kilter in the way that old documents often were, swam under her weary eyes, but she skimmed enough to realize that Joaquin Murrieta was the man upon whom the iconoclastic, uber-romantic, black-clad, sword-and-whip wielding masked bandit of colonial California was based.

  “You’re kidding, right?” she asked, unable to reconcile the light-eyed, chiseled All-American man sitting across from her with the tall, dark and dangerous hombre of legend. “You can’t be his great-great-grandson.”

  “No,” Michael said, chugging a healthy mouthful of beer. “That would make me over a hundred years old. I’m actually his great-times-five grandson. One of three. I have two older brothers.”

  She shook her head in disbelief. She’d never for an instant considered that the character who’d become an icon of American justice was based on a real person—particularly not one related to the man who looked like the poster boy for apple pie.

  “So, let me get this straight. This serial criminal has delusions with black capes and Z’s carved into walls, so the FBI picks up one of the real Zorro’s relatives to go after him?”

  “That about sums it up.”

  She paged through the book and found an inked drawing of Joaquin Murrieta, whose wild eyes, flyaway mane and jaunty hat made him look every bit the Hispanic rogue.

  And nothing like Michael.

  “There’s no family resemblance,” she concluded.

  Michael turned the book around so he could look at the picture, which she imagined he’d studied about a million times. “I don’t know. I bet if he smiled, we’d look just alike. I think the indentation there is a dimple in his chin.”

  She snatched the book back and looked again. “That’s a faded spot on the paper.”

  He shrugged. “Family resemblance notwithstanding, Joaquin Murrieta is the man upon whom the legend was based. And I’m related to him. This is his ring.”

  Claire had caught a glimpse of the ring earlier, but assumed it was a part of his costume as much as his breeches and cravat. Intrigued, she took his hand into hers so she could examine the gold band under the dim light.

  Bright green and lightly faceted, the stone in the center of the worn gold band looked old and damaged. But after a moment, she realized that what she’d mistaken for an unsightly scratch was actually a crude etching of the letter Z.

  “This belonged to him?” she asked, trying to keep her attention on the sparkling turquoise fire that rippled off of the flanking black opals rather than the long, rugged shape of his fingers.

  “My father was an art expert, among other things,” he replied, his voice a warm whisper. “He traced the ring’s ownership back to Joaquin, who won it in a game of chance from a wealthy Spanish nobleman named Don Diego, which is probably where that part of the story came from. Anyway, Pop verified the theories of many historians who believed that the wild-eyed Chilean highwayman was the template for the famous bandit. And now this family story has been perverted by a madman who’d like nothing more than to hold you against your will and rape you, all under the guise of some grand seduction he learned from this book.”

  The word rape scraped inside her ears. It didn’t belong in this room. In the intimate space slowly closing in around them as they sat on the bed, his hand in hers, a book of seduction spread open on her bare thighs.

  “No one mentioned rape,” she muttered.

  As a cop, she’d investigated mostly petty thefts, gang shootings or acts of domestic violence. She’d only worked one calculated murder—and that was the one that had ended her career. Even as a P.I., she’d never come across a case as far-reaching and grandiose. Or sick and twisted.

  She was out of her league.

  Luckily, Michael was not.

  “This guy started off as relatively benign, if you consider drugging and kidnapping benign. But he’s escalated. He’s used my family’s history to fuel his sick fantasies and I intend to stop him.”

  As much as she didn’t want to, Claire released Michael’s hand in order to pick up the book again. “So this is what, his playbook?”

  “Apparently. Murrieta was captured and killed by a cavalry officer back in 1853. But, in 1875, an historian published his account, that discounted the legend that the officer had ordered Murrieta’s head to be cut off and kept in a jar.”

  “That’s disgusting,” she said.

  “Probably an effective crime deterrent, though,” Michael admitted. “But the head must have belonged to someone else. According to this and several other sources, after his wife’s death in 1853, Joaquin Murrieta retired his mask and lived a long life concentrating on his skills as a lover, not a fighter.”

  He scooted a couple of inches away from her, for which she was thankful. His leathery, musky scent, peppered with the enticing smells of his sandwich, was making her stomach growl.

  “The author tracked down all the women Joaquin supposedly seduced and interviewed them for his unauthorized biography,” he continued. “And the unsub somehow got his hands on a copy and is using it as a manual to terrorize women. Women like you.”

  “But why me?”

  Michael fanned through the pages, stopping at the collection of ink drawings and grainy photographs in the center. Various women, some who shared Murrieta’s ethnic heritage and many who did not, graced the well thumbed pages. He paused at a photograph of a regal looking, Asian woman with come-hither eyes, then flipped through until he found the portrait of an elaborately dressed woman with milky skin a shade or two darker than Claire’s and arrestingly light eyes.

  “Here,” he said.

  Claire read the caption.

  Paulette Girard, an actress of some repute in New York City, traveled to California with her speculator husband, who died in transit. He left her destitute with three small children and lonely for male companionship, which Joaquin Murrieta was more than eager to provide.

  As the words tumbled through her brain, she felt her stomach tense. The story of Paulette’s life, which began here in New Orleans with her birth to a wealthy French father and a Creole mother, immediately felt familiar. Personal. Claire curled onto the pillows, barely aware of Michael announcing he was going to take a shower as she read about Paulette’s renowned beauty and hard-headed nature that forced her to quit her hometown after she objected to her father’s choice for her husband.

  In a great act of rebellion that predated the War Between the States, the barely eighteen-year-old woman had joined a traveling theater troupe headed North. She’d left when the antebellum South was still in the midst of its heyday and never looked back.

  Claire paged back to the photograph of Paulette. Did she look like the woman? Claire didn’t think so. Maybe a little around the eyes, but she hoped she’d never looked quite that—available. Paulette’s almond-shaped gaze seduced the camera, just as any actress’s would. But that didn’t mean she was Cla
ire’s great-times-five grandmother.

  Did it?

  Claire vaguely remembered her father claiming that the Lécuyer family had produced a long line of performers, entertainers and actors, going back centuries. And unless her brain was completely on the fritz from hunger and exhaustion, she seemed to recall that her great-grandfather’s first name had been Girard.

  Paulette Girard. Her ancestor. A lover of Joaquin Murrieta.

  Now she understood why the Bandit had targeted her—and the truth chilled her to the bone.

  9

  MICHAEL STALKED INTO the bathroom and stripped off his clothes. As he expected, Claire had been instantly engrossed by the book. It was sordid and salacious, but at the same time, grandly romantic. Even a guy like him, who had never had many serious relationships, had been blindsided by the stories about his randy ancestor and the exotic ladies he’d lured in to his bed.

  Paulette Girard might have been one of many lovers Joaquin had toyed with, but she had stood out from the pack. She hadn’t fallen into the Latin lover’s arms easily. He’d had to work for her.

  Hard.

  For the first time since Michael had discovered the book in his father’s collection, he understood what his ancestor had experienced when he’d fallen under the spell of the shrewd, yet painfully beautiful Paulette. He’d wanted her with a need not unlike a drowning man for oxygen. He was willing to do anything to possess her, even for one night.

  For Claire, Michael had already put his career at risk. He’d broken protocol by paying his way into the sex fetish club without authorization. He was positive his superiors would have preferred if he’d simply gone in and flashed his credentials to get Claire. Instead he’d ended up seducing her for the voyeuristic pleasure of people who could use a recording of their bedroom encounter to ruin them both.

  To keep Claire out of the Bandit’s clutches, he’d taken the risk. He hadn’t known her when he’d made the choice, but he’d known enough about her from her file and from the fantasies he’d entertained after reading about her ancestor that she was worth the gamble.

  Now that he’d touched her, talked to her, tasted her, he knew one thing for certain—for all he’d put on the line for her, once the danger had passed, she wouldn’t think twice about him.

  Not that he wasn’t a great guy. He knew there were plenty of women who would cherish a man who was hardworking, relatively good-looking and loyal, sometimes to a fault. But Claire fed on danger, uncertainty and adventure—and the only thing he wanted to do was keep her safe. If not for the pesky problem of his criminal record, his brother Danny might be a better match for her.

  But Danny wasn’t here, was he? Trapped in a cozy hotel room with a woman who’d already come undone at his hand. A woman who’d just knocked on the bathroom door.

  “Michael?”

  He froze, his hands mid-lather on his chest, when she opened the door.

  “Claire?”

  “Yeah, sorry,” she said, though he didn’t hear an ounce of apology in her voice. “I read it all, but I need to know more.”

  He forced himself to continue with his shower despite her intrusive presence, which filled the room with more heat and more steam than the piddling showerhead could manage if he’d left it running at full blast all day.

  “Okay,” he said, clearing the awkwardness from his voice.

  He heard the creak of plastic and imagined that she’d closed the toilet seat so she could sit. She was inches away from him, dressed in nothing more than a pale pink scrap of nothing and a T-shirt.

  “So you think I’m related to Paulette Girard,” she said.

  He smoothed the soap into his hair and gave it a rough scrub, trying to ignore the tight pull of his growing erection.

  “I have a team of genealogists working the case from Utah, Claire. You are related to her. That’s how we found you. All the previous victims were related to women written about in the book. We looked for living descendents and your name came up as one of the likeliest to get a scarf next.”

  “One of?”

  “There are a few others, but they didn’t quite fit the victimology. Too old. Too young. He doesn’t discriminate in many ways, but you are single, attractive, closest to the age Paulette was when she had her affair with Joaquin.”

  “And exactly what does he want to do to me?”

  Michael rinsed the soapy foam from his face. He didn’t want to think about what the unsub wanted with Claire. Not when his brain was swimming with images of what he wanted instead—to throw back the thin shower curtains and tug her into the stall with him.

  He resisted, bracing his hands on the cold tile so the water sluiced down the back of his neck. “He wants to possess you. To him, it’s a grand seduction, just like Joaquin and Paulette.”

  Beside him, the curtain rustled. He turned his head, and beyond the thin waterproof fabric, he saw her silhouette. He watched, enthralled, as she grabbed the hem of her T-shirt and lifted it slowly over her head. She then stepped out of her panties.

  The only part of his body that managed to move was his erection, which hardened with the kind of pleasurable pain that only sex inspired. She was coming into this cramped shower stall with him, whether he liked it or not.

  And the trouble was, he liked the idea very much.

  READING ABOUT PAULETTE and Joaquin’s affair had, at first, fascinated her. With an interest she’d thought was detached, she’d read how the man had sent the woman rare flowers, exotic sweets and the kind of silk underthings that no respectable lady at the time would ever possess. Paulette had resisted for weeks, leading him on with songs she sang in the cantina where she worked, teasing him by undressing in front of her open window when she knew he was watching, but wouldn’t dare come near. He’d actually climbed into her bed uninvited one night and while she’d allowed him to touch her in her most private places, she’d denied him the one thing he wanted most.

  Just like Claire had done—completely without meaning to—to Michael.

  But she didn’t want to deny him any longer. She didn’t want to deny herself. Images of the Bandit perverting Joaquin’s amorous adventures were like layers of dirt and grime clinging to her skin. She needed another shower to wash it all away.

  She needed a shower with Michael.

  “Claire,” he said, his voice ripe with warning as she climbed past the curtain.

  He was magnificent. With his arms braced so that the showerhead sprayed water down his muscled back, she had a perfect view of his long legs, lean thighs and perfect glutes. She ignored the reluctant glance he threw over his shoulder. He wasn’t stopping her, was he? He remained stock still, even when she stepped into the water and wrapped her arms around his waist so she could press her cheek against his slick back.

  “I can’t help it, Michael,” she said. “All that reading about seduction got me hot.”

  She wasn’t lying, but it was a gross exaggeration to say that the book alone was responsible for her enhanced libido. The truth was, the book only reminded her how much she’d wanted Michael inside her when they were in the room at the plantation house and how incomplete she’d felt in the garden when he’d brought her to orgasm, but had taken nothing for himself. She speared her hands down his torso and thighs, then back up and around his impressive erection.

  “This is what I was missing,” she confessed, licking the water off his back while she circled his cock with her palm and tested the length and thickness against her hand. Unbidden, her body quivered with anticipation.

  “Claire,” he protested, but with a tighter squeeze, she silenced him.

  “Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t do this, Michael? One good reason not to finish what you started?”

  He answered with a groan, a long, drawn-out, throaty sound that corresponded with the rhythm of her hands on his erection. Every inch of his body emanated power—but, equally, he exuded control. Control over everything except what she was doing to him, which was raw and hungry and oh-so-wonderful.<
br />
  She pressed her body fully against his, appreciating the contrasts of his skin to hers, of his hardness to her softness, of his distinctively male musculature to her decidedly feminine curves. Her nipples scraped against his bare back, igniting needs and wants that had been only fantasies when she’d stood on the other side of the shower curtain. Now, they could all be real, if only he’d surrender to the pull.

  With the tips of her fingers, she pressed into the tight V just below his head.

  He spun around, breaking her grip, just when he was on the edge of a well-deserved release to match the one he’d given her in the garden. But he didn’t seem to want that as much as he wanted to kiss her, because he pressed her tight against the opposite wall and did just that—long and hard, exploring every inch of her mouth with his hot, insistent tongue.

  And then his hands were everywhere. The slick heat of the water spread all over her body while he kissed and pleasured her neck, her breasts, her belly and below. The moment his hand made contact with her lust-swollen clit, she cried out in ecstasy. He touched and teased, taunted and tempted until she was wild with need.

  She didn’t need him to drop to his knees and ply his talented tongue to her belly button, but she certainly didn’t stop him when he did. Instead, she ran her hands through his hair, curling her fingers around his ears as the water splashed their bodies, the steam hot in her lungs and yet soothing on her skin. He smoothed his hand down her leg and around her ankle, and before she was aware of what sensual delight he had in store for her, he stood. With her leg hooked over his elbow, he had perfect access. She gasped as the head squeezed into her tight, welcoming body. In one slick stroke, he was inside her, filling her, fulfilling her.

  “Yes, yes,” she murmured as he found his rhythm, one that danced between slow and torturous. With each slide, he reached deeper into her. With each withdrawal, he awoke another layer of nerve endings she’d forgotten she possessed.