Chapter Five
Dante stared into Lacey Dawes’s determined brown eyes and forced himself not to blink. She wasn’t kidding. This fresh-faced, soft-spoken, all-business good girl with the tightly twisted hair and too-serious eyes had just propositioned him. His body had gone instantly tight during her terse little speech, his hand actually sweating against the damp moisture of his glass.
“You want to have sex with me,” he said, adrenaline skating along his words.
Her soft smile nearly undid him. “Everybody wants to have sex with you, Mr. Falcone. I, on the other hand, want to make love to you—once, and only once. Get it out of our systems. So we can work together without that question between us.”
“How do you know it’ll only be once?”
The look in her eyes was enigmatic. “You can trust me on that.” She held up the pen. “Deal?”
Need swamped Dante, fast and sure. He’d been semi-hard from the moment Lacey had walked into his room, but now his cock was almost painfully rigid, and blood pounded in his ears. His level of response to Lacey’s suggestion was absolutely crazy. He’d never lacked for partners since he’d first gone on the road—so why was an agency suit turning him on so much? Especially a junior agency suit, for God’s sake, who was wearing that boring of a suit? She was everything he didn’t want in a woman: responsible, unflashy, real. And yet … “I’m considering it,” he said, nodding at her tightly wrapped bun. “Why don’t you make yourself more comfortable?”
He practically held his breath as Lacey uncoiled her twist. What was his problem? Not twenty minutes before her arrival, he’d had an offer of sterling possibilities from the platinum-haired twins with their flawless bodies and matching smiles. Yet watching Lacey shake out her cascades of black hair and stow her clips in her bag in what was clearly a habitually efficient move was making him sweat. Her hair was gorgeous down around her shoulders, just as it had been last night at the concert—last night, when she’d somehow managed to look at him not like a coolly professional negotiator, but like a woman who’d known and wanted him her entire life. Now she was shifting precariously between the two. Who was the real Lacey?
He nodded toward her suit. “And unless you are thinking of having sex in that suit—”
Lacey’s brows lifted. “There are an awful lot of contracts here to sign, Mr. Falcone,” she said, and he noted she’d reverted back to using his last name, but her words were soft, almost liquid with desire. “I think we could start with something small, don’t you?” She leaned forward until her mouth was an inch away. “Perhaps the SiniStar timepieces? You like the way they look on you, I can tell.” Her lips brushed up against his.
Fire shot along Dante’s nerve endings, and he pulled Lacey closer, deepening the kiss. There was the slightest instant of resistance in her body, but then she melted against him with so much heat he once again was caught off guard. The two faces of Lacey intoxicated him, and the touch of her cool, manicured fingers on his chest took him places he’d sworn not to go again. As he pulled away, not wanting to betray too much of his reaction, she held his lower lip gently in her mouth, sucking it as if she couldn’t bear to let him go without a final taste. She drifted her tongue over her own lips, before raising her eyes to his. “What do you think?” she asked huskily. “Worth a signature?”
Without speaking¸ Dante took the pen from her and signed the nearest contract. When he glanced up again, Lacey was leaning over the table, rearranging the contracts again in small, neat piles, as if she hadn’t already done that a dozen times while he’d watched her. He glanced over them, clearly recognizing each of his sponsorships, ending with GoJu Beverages and Zee Fashion. Already he was imagining what would result in signatures for that last multimillion-dollar account, and his erection pressed impatiently against his pants. But when Lacey turned around to face him again, his breath caught in his throat.
There was something different, again, in the way she looked at him. Something important.
With her hair wild around the shoulders of her conservative outfit, her porcelain skin flush with excitement, her lips swollen from his kiss, Lacey could be any of a dozen starstruck girls he’d encountered just this evening, working his way through a crowd of dedicated fans to his hotel room. But her eyes—her eyes were strangely compelling, with a mix of intense, raw emotions that went beyond what he’d grown used to seeing from the women he encountered. Lacey didn’t look at him with lust, not exactly. Instead, she gazed into his eyes with an unsettling empathy that plucked at something deep within him, something uncertain.
This was exactly why he avoided good girls.
Then the look faded, replaced by pure, basic need, which lit her dark eyes on fire.
“Who are you?” he asked, not truly realizing he’d spoken until the blush bloomed again in Lacey’s cheeks, making her seem impossibly young and unreasonably desirable at the same time. Her eyes flashed with that raw core of emotion once more, that elusive quality he couldn’t quite define. Then she looked away, just quickly enough to break the connection.
As her eyes dropped, focusing on his mouth, Lacey’s hand moved along her collar. Dante realized with a start that she’d unfastened the buttons of her jacket, and the crisp creamy fabric was falling away from her breasts, revealing barely a hint of sweet, peach-colored lace.
Holy God, she was going to kill him.
Lacey stretched her mouth into a knowing smile that she’d practiced a thousand times in front of a handheld mirror decorated with hearts, flowers, and magazine photos of Dante Falcone. She’d first begun modeling her “Falcone’s Fiancée” look well before she’d turned seventeen, and though the face held within that happy piece of reflective glass had changed over the years, she suspected that her expression had not.
Had he seen the pathetic level of adoration in her eyes? Had he guessed at the depth of her infatuation? She almost didn’t care. The vertigo was passing, and now she just felt … good. Loose. And every incarnation of her affection for Dante at every age, was squeezing her so hard, she thought she was going to burst.
She’d kissed Dante Falcone! She’d propositioned him! Feeling wild and slightly unsteady, Lacey pushed her jacket half off her shoulders, gratified at the slow, measured breath that Dante drew in. He took a step forward, and she held up her pen, shocked and more than a little impressed at her own bravery. This was turning into the coolest fantasy ever. “I’m getting a little warm,” she admitted, tapping the pen along her collarbone. “I think a sip of GoJu Paradise would cool me off.”
“That’ll cost you,” Dante said roughly. “That’s one of the biggest contracts I have.”
Lacey felt her brows go up in sensual promise. “Then name your price.”
Dante took the pen from her, leaning down to sign the GoJu contract, which she knew was the second-largest jewel in the seven-diamond crown spread out over the table. He set the pen down purposefully and turned back to her, reaching out with long, capable fingers to ease Lacey’s jacket over her shoulders. The rush of cool air against her back should have chilled her, but with Dante’s gaze sliding over her, Lacey felt only the sway of heat buoying her up. His smile was intense, and his hands slipped lower, cupping her rear through her thin silk skirt. “It’ll cost you a lot,” he murmured, and she felt as well as heard the slow tug of the zipper at the back of her skirt sliding over her bottom. With a rush of silk, the skirt pooled around her pumps, and Dante’s gaze roved over her body.
Lacey silently thanked herself for so diligently hitting the gym all these years. Part of her couldn’t believe this was happening, and a small, distant part of her knew it couldn’t continue. But the biggest part of her was reveling in the excitement of knowing that for the next few minutes—or hours—Dante Falcone was hers, and hers alone.
And no teenage fantasy had ever been this good.
Then he slid his hands under the waistband of her lace panties.
A surge of unexpected desire shot through Lacey, her sharp exhalation parting
her lips as urgent need flooded her. Dante pulled her up against him, almost roughly, capturing her lips in a kiss that left her pressing her breasts against his chest, her nipples pebbling hard into the heat of his skin through the thin silk of her bra.
He flattened his hand against the small of her back, and Lacey instinctively tipped her hips forward, feeling the length of his erection against her belly. Another bolt of lust pumped through her as he ground against her, hard. The man didn’t even have his clothes off and Lacey was so close to shattering that she could barely keep breathing, for fear the movement would send her over the edge.
“I think you jumped ahead a few steps,” she gasped, holding on to him to steady herself. “That means I get another signature, I think.”
Dante’s laugh was low and tight, pure masculine pleasure. He slid her to the right, leaning over her arm to sign the cologne deal. As he moved, Lacey swayed with him, her knees no longer steady beneath her. She half-collapsed against his solid strength as he held her fast, finishing the signature with a bold slash.
“Hey, hey, hey there,” Dante said, his brow creasing as he pulled her upright again. Lacey felt her breath come fitfully between her lips, and watched with dizzy curiosity as Dante looked from her to the bottle of champagne on the table. “You can’t be that drunk, you know.”
“I’m not that drunk! I had one glass—one!—of champagne.” She smiled at him, but she had trouble keeping the structure of the smile. Her lips seemed too full, too eager to be kissed. She shook her head, a strange whirl of sensation rushing through her. Like she was drunk, she realized, blinking hard. But that was impossible. She’d only … she’d only had …
He spoke again, his voice sounding far off. “Where did those girls come from?”
“What girls?” Lacey tried to sound nonchalant, but her heart was pounding in her ears, her mind slurring sideways. She felt light-headed, overheated, and she frowned as she looked out the huge glass windows at the glittering night sky. This wasn’t as good as she’d just been feeling a few minutes ago. What had come over her?
“Lacey, I—”
Lacey turned to Dante, too close to do anything but press her body up against his. Everything inside her turned to delicious heat, the dizziness suddenly subsiding as raw, naked need pulsed through her. She wanted this more than anything. She tilted her head up and saw him in crystal clarity, one of those instants where past, present, and future slammed together in one impossible moment of truth.
His eyes widened with surprise as she leaned up and kissed him, slow and soft.
“I love you, Dante,” she breathed out happily.
Shock bolted Dante’s feet to the floor. His brain was momentarily scrambled. He had seen adoration, reveled in it, manipulated it.
But Lacey wasn’t a freaked-out fan pleading at the top of her lungs for the chance to rip his clothes off. Lacey was the flippin’ junior agent at IMO, someone he’d never even seen before yesterday. She was solid. She was dependable. She couldn’t possibly mean that, not in the way it sounded like she meant it—
But she felt so good, there in his arms, her weight fully on him, the soft curve of her body blending into his as if she was made for him, her legs shifting in feminine anticipation to take him inside her, her lips still parted on the sweetest, soft sigh …
A sigh that continued way too long.
Then Dante stiffened for an entirely different reason, his arms going tight around Lacey as she pitched backward awkwardly, her knees folding beneath her.
She’d passed out.
Moving fast, he swept Lacey into his arms as his gaze leapt to the bottle on the counter, the bottle that the gorgeous blonde twins had opened with much fanfare and excitement, right in front of him. The twins.
Anger rifled through him. He’d always been careful to stock his own alcohol, but his phone had been ringing nonstop tonight from the hospital, and he’d needed to take every call. When his manager had been handling the funding approvals, Dante had let him deal with any emergencies. But over this past month, the hospital people had found Dante. The stories and kids had found him, too. And so had the memories of another kid, another lifetime ago, in and out of hospitals without any assurance that he was ever going to get better.
So, yeah. He had to take those calls.
And every time he had, he’d turned away from the women preening as much for each other as him. Every time, they’d had all the access they’d needed to doctor the booze.
He settled Lacey onto the couch, before striding over to the champagne bottle. He lifted it, examining it closely. There was no scent, no residue on the rim of the bottle, nothing at all to indicate it had been tampered with. Not that he expected to find anything.
The twins would have only needed a few seconds to slip something into that champagne, preparing no doubt for the ride of their lives. Or, worse. If he’d been the one drinking it, they could easily have robbed him blind, or filmed him doing something he’d be watching on YouTube for the next five years. He didn’t know what he’d find in the bottle when he had it analyzed. Maybe roofies, maybe G. But it didn’t matter, it all led back to the same unmistakable truth.
Lacey’d been drugged. And it could’ve been—should’ve been—him.
He turned and looked down at Lacey’s smooth, guileless face as she lay sprawled on the couch, a carnal fantasy in peach lace, dark tousled hair, and creamy skin. Desire coursed along every one of his nerves, pulsed in every vein. Forget Lacey’s drug-addled confession of ultimate love—a confession he looked forward to mortifying her with, as soon as she woke up. Forget the woman’s unbridled lust … Dante paused, a hard smile curving his lips. Well, forget part of it, anyway. Not all of that heat could have come from the drugs, right? An interesting question, and one he wanted answered.
But none of that really mattered, not right now.
Because whether she realized it or not, Lacey Dawes had just taken the equivalent of a rock-star bullet for him. And he planned to fully demonstrate his appreciation.
Chapter Six
Someone was rubbing Lacey’s shoulders in a seductive, delicious rhythm, easing her forward and back, talking to her in low tones. His touch—and it was definitely a he, she realized groggily, sinking into the feel of the dream—was electric. Strong fingers curved over her shoulders, fanned her hair, skimmed her skin. Everything was warm, sensual, and smelled like home.
Wait … home? That couldn’t be right.
Lacey struggled to recapture the beauty, the sheer perfection of the fantasy world she’d built in her mind, but even as she willed herself to dive back under, a soft laugh snagged her, drawing her unwillingly to consciousness. She blinked her eyes open.
And stared straight into the rich chocolate eyes of the man she’d been in love with since he’d headlined the Disney Channel.
Who was now sitting in her room. On her bed.
“What are you doing here?” she gasped, curling herself up into a tight ball of—what? She stared down at her favorite summer pajamas—pink cotton trousers and a Hello Kitty tank top. For real? That’s what she was wearing? “And who changed my clothes?”
“As to who changed your clothes, I think her name was Anna. We all agreed that you’d be more comfortable this way.” Dante’s voice spilled over Lacey like poured buttercream, his eyes shadowed with worry and—something else. Something that made her heart skitter around in her chest like startled bird. “As to what I’m doing here, I refused to leave until I knew for myself you were okay.”
“That I was okay,” Lacey repeated, trying to reconcile the Dante she was seeing in front of her with the one she knew from magazines and the Internet. He was still the boy he once had been, sort of. Only now he looked like a seductive perversion of that former self—all the smooth lines stretched and angled. The once-soft mouth was now full and wicked … and smiling at her like he knew a secret she’d missed somewhere along the line. Lacey pressed her hands to her temples, the soothing coolness of her palms not doing much
to ease her confusion. “What happened to me?”
Dante’s smile flattened. “In a word, you were drugged. That little celebratory bottle of champagne? It was spiked with what we think was GHB, one of the more popular party date rape drugs. Not roofies, according to the doc. Otherwise you’d have been out for hours.” He scowled. “Bad enough as it is.”
Lacey felt her brain slowly coming back online, and tried to put her words together in a coherent sentence. “The champagne … was drugged?” she asked. She shook her head. “That makes no sense. You wouldn’t drug me.”
“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” Dante said dryly. “But no. Not my bottle. The girls you met at my room brought it in. We’re following up on that separately, but there’s no way to prove they even knew the bottle was tampered with. They told me they’d gotten it from the band’s party room downstairs, but that’s tough to track down. No way to check the cork—it’s gone.”
Lacey stared at him. “This happen to you a lot?”
He shook his head. “No, it doesn’t. And I don’t generally drink the stuff fans bring in. These two said they were from IMO, so my guard was down. Won’t happen again.” He quirked her an unreadable look. “I’m sorry if you think I should have taken you to the hospital, Lacey.”
She frowned, struggling to focus on his words, not his mouth. “The hospital?”
“I just didn’t think either of us needed that kind of publicity. I keep a doctor on staff for such emergencies, and he said the best thing for you to do was to get home and get some rest. Your day planner was in your bag. You had the name Erin Connelly in there.”
“My landlady, yes—”
Rock It Page 5