The Manhattan Encounter

by Addison Fox

  Isabella knew she was in danger of losing her heart, but in that moment, with the music swelling around them, all she could focus on was Liam.

  All she saw was Liam.

  All she wanted was Liam.

  Chapter 15

  “Are you going to sleep with my brother or not?” Rowan’s question—and the heavy slur that punctuated every other word—wasn’t nearly as shocking as it should have been.

  Isabella abstractly wondered if it was the champagne she’d drunk or the heavy throb of sexual desire that beat in her veins that had her barely fazed at Rowan’s deliberate question.

  Either way, sitting in the library of the brownstone with Rowan and Abby wasn’t getting Isabella any closer to her goal of crawling into bed with Liam Steele.

  “Mind you, I’m all for it,” Rowan added with a cheerful smile.

  “You’re always for sex.” Kensington shot back at her sister as she crossed her ankles on the coffee table. “You practically pushed me at Jack a few months ago.”

  “You were looking at Jack’s fine as...assets long before I started nagging you.” Rowan waved her champagne flute. “You certainly didn’t need my encouragement to take the leap.”

  “You can’t ask questions like that, Rowan. Sex is a private matter.” Abby waved her own flute of recently refilled champagne, the bubbling liquid sloshing dangerously close to the rim of the glass. “And you especially can’t ask it of someone we haven’t known that long.”

  “Of course she can.” Isabella decided to float the family theory she tested out on Liam earlier. “As youngest, Rowan can play the vocal instigator and everyone will forgive her for it while enjoying the results she procures. It’s her role in the family.”

  “What’s mine?” Kensington leaned forward, her feet dropping to the ground.

  “Matriarch.” Abby and Rowan’s voices matched Isabella’s in timing.

  “That makes me sound eighty. Besides, isn’t that Grandmother’s role?”

  Isabella almost laughed at the small moue that lit up Kensington’s face but kept her best lecture voice in place. “It is, but in her absence you handle the responsibilities. You’re also preparing the family for the eventual day you become matriarch, even though we all hope it’s still many years away.”

  “Amen to that.” Kensington sighed, the forlorn sound echoing in the thoughtful silence. “I sound like a calendar.”

  “You are a calendar,” Rowan pointed out. “A very beautiful one who keeps us all in line. And we love you for it.”

  Isabella let them continue talking—the new subject of dissecting each other diverting their thoughts off her decision to sleep with Liam—and gave herself a moment to think.

  She knew herself. And she knew that she already had feelings for Liam. Sleeping with him was only going to cement those feelings further. Would make it that much harder when things ended between them.

  No matter how much time they’d spent together in the last few days, this situation was going to end. They’d go back to their lives—assuming she had a life to go back to—and keep on being the people they were before she published her damn research findings.

  Why did that simple set of facts leave her so cold?

  She was a scientist and she was used to dealing in data. And even now, the results weren’t on her side.

  Liam wanted her, of that she had no doubt. But he didn’t want long-term.

  Of that, she equally had no doubt.

  What she couldn’t quite reconcile was how she was sitting down here with the girls, talking about any number of things, instead of upstairs in Liam’s bedroom.

  With him.

  They’d all tumbled out of the limo like puppies, Jack’s mercenaries on guard for the short walk from the limo to the house. Where she’d expected Liam to take her hand in his and drag her up the front staircase, he’d disappeared the moment they’d arrived back. Oh, he’d muttered something about having to check a set of computer feeds with Campbell, but Isabella knew the move for what it really was.

  Evasion.

  Did she take that as solid proof he wasn’t interested? Or did she go with her gut and go find him? Her time with Liam Steele was going to end in a matter of days or weeks. Did she really want to leave this experience wishing she’d made different choices?

  “I’m going to turn in.”

  A chorus of good-nights echoed around her and even Rowan refrained from saying anything else.

  Did they know her decision?

  Did she even care?

  When the answer to that was a resounding no, Isabella knew she’d made the right choice. She’d spent her life accepting the hand she’d been dealt and she was sick of it. She wanted an adventure and the best place to start was a night spent in Liam’s arms.

  His large, powerful, capable arms, if her memory of dancing encircled in them was any indication.

  It was time to take exactly what she wanted.

  * * *

  Liam stood over his brother’s shoulder in the brownstone’s “command center,” the scent of cherry licorice and Scotch wafting toward him. For a grown man, his brother had the strangest eating habits—only exacerbated when he worked—and Liam was amused to find himself reaching for another red twist.

  “Why am I eating this?”

  “Because it’s sugar and it’s brain food and it’s good.”

  “It’s midnight and I’ve already eaten. Filet mignon, as a matter of fact.”

  “Consider this slumming and come here and look at this.” Campbell waved at the computer screen.

  Liam stared at a screen of images, not exactly sure what Campbell wanted him to see. “So?”

  “These are all the video feeds around Isabella’s lab before the explosion.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ve run them back a week prior to the events and nothing’s popped. Nothing suspicious beyond what appears to be a few corner drug deals. No one coming or going with anything beyond a briefcase in their hands. Which means no one carried any large incendiary devices into the building.”

  “We were inside a science lab. It’s not like it’s hard to find any number of flammable items.”

  Campbell dragged another piece of candy from the bag. “Which is also why I’ve run every feed inside or outside the actual lab building for a week as well. No one was in there when the fire started beyond you and Isabella.”

  “So how the hell did a fire start if no one set it?”

  “It was triggered.”

  “How? You need a spark. Someone to light the fuse.”

  “You and Isabella lit the fuse.”

  Liam struggled to process his brother’s theories. “We dug through computer files. How could someone have started a fire the size of what we experienced remotely? How would they even know it was us?”

  “It’s the personal again. Which is why I’ve been running those files you gave me from the lab.”

  “And?”

  “And someone’s planned this for a long time. They were waiting for those files to be triggered. Who knows how long ago the sequence of events to start the fire was set into motion.”

  “So what did you find in the files?”

  “The science is beyond my rather expansive skills so I asked an old college friend a few questions about genetic sequencing. He gave me a few programming ideas and I set this baby to run before we left.” Campbell flipped screens and a wall of ones and zeroes lit the face of his machine. “There’s no doubt about it. The guy she used to work for. The one who’s supposed to be dead. He’s not.”

  Liam knew there were things in this world he didn’t understand. He’d always known it but in the time since they’d established the firm he’d experienced more than he ever could have imagined. The depths of human curiosity and
achievement were as deeply trenched as human depravity and immorality.

  Humans figured stuff out. Fixed things. Learned things.

  But if Isabella’s work had really healed her old mentor, they were talking about an entirely different level of science.

  Why would anyone want to hold that back? The test subjects alone should be screaming from the rooftops what her work had done for them. And if Stephenson had the sort of money that could build scientific labs, he should be the first to sing his mentee’s praises.

  So why was he hiding?

  “I need you to run everything you can find on Daniel Stephenson.”

  “The not-so-dead guy.”

  “Yep.”

  “Kenzi ran him once,” Campbell said. “Found his bank accounts, school records, that sort of thing.”

  “Let’s run him again. He’s got every reason to be on top of the world yet he’s hidden away, not even letting Isabella know he’s alive. Something’s not right.”

  A light knock at the door caught their attention and Liam looked up to see Isabella standing in the door. Awareness skipped down his spine, tightening his skin with that sharp flick of desire.

  “I’ll get started on the data in a few minutes.” Campbell cleared his throat. “After I go check on my very tipsy wife who I assume, after an hour downstairs with Isabella and our sisters, is now even more tipsy.”

  His brother had long legs and speed on his side but Liam had never seen Campbell clear a room quite that fast.

  “Where’s the fire?” Isabella’s smile was lopsided as the echo of Campbell’s footsteps faded down the hall. “Which is probably a poor choice of words considering what we experienced yesterday.”

  “Was that really only yesterday?”

  She nodded, the smile fading. “Hard to believe, but yes.”

  “Campbell was walking me through what he’s found so far on the data we downloaded for him and the information he’s managed to glean from hacking the lab’s backup server.”

  “Which means he’s conclusively proven Daniel’s risen from the dead?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Did he find anything else out?”

  Liam snuck a glance at another one of Campbell’s licorice ropes in a vain attempt to keep his gaze off Isabella’s mouth. “Nothing conclusive yet. We’ll all look at it in the morning with fresh eyes.”

  “Why are you avoiding me?”

  “What?”

  “You’re up here. Hiding. I’d like to know why.”

  Liam knew he’d never met anyone like Isabella. She was as genuine as she was direct and he found himself unable to resist her.

  Why was he hiding?

  Even as he asked himself the question, he refused to let her see his confusion. “I’m not hiding.”

  “At midnight? After several drinks and a fun night out. After pulling me close against your body when we danced? Sorry if I call b.s. on your answer.”

  “You’re still in danger.”

  “I know. Which is also why I know I want to make love to you. Tonight. Tomorrow. For as long as you’ll have me or until I end up dead from this nameless, faceless threat determined to ruin my life.”

  He winced at the frank, direct language, before he heard the slight quaver underneath the bold words.

  Was that fear? Or was he projecting his own feelings onto hers? “I’m not that guy, Isabella.”

  “What guy?” Lines furrowed her brow and all he could think was that the puzzled lines were endearing. Human. And sexy as hell.

  Why did he keep fighting their attraction? Especially if he thought frown lines were the height of sexy.

  “The guy who can make love to you and stay afterward.”

  “Oh.” She nodded, the lines fading away. “I can see how that would be difficult for you.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course. You’re a good man. And honorable. And you only sleep with women who don’t expect more.”

  He’d slept with several women who had expected more—especially if more came from his bank account—but he opted to keep that to himself. “You have a right to those expectations.”

  “I know.”

  “So you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes.”

  “So we’ll leave things status quo.”

  “No.”

  What?

  “Isabella—” He broke off as she moved up into his arms. Her lips pressed to the open throat of his shirt where his tie lay open, along with his top button.

  “What?” Her breath was hot against his throat and in that moment he knew he’d never felt anything more erotic.

  Or more devastating to his efforts to stay strong and deny her.

  “We can’t do this.”

  “Then I’ll go back to my room and do it all by myself, Liam Steele. I want you and whether it’s in my head or physically with you, I’m making love to you tonight.”

  The images that sprang to life underneath her words were nearly his undoing. “You do that? I...I mean...” He snapped his lips shut at the evidence he was stammering.

  “Yes, I do do that. But I’d prefer not to this evening.” She took a step back, her cheeks a delightful pink while mischief rode her green eyes into dark, glittering emeralds. “So what’s it going to be, Liam?”

  * * *

  Isabella fought the personal shock rattling around the back of her mind at her actions.

  And at her words!

  She never discussed things like that. So what had prompted her now? And why did it feel as natural as breathing?

  If it were possible, she could practically hear the thoughts jamming through his mind right now. Desire and want fighting some misguided sense of honor and nobility. It would have been sweet if she didn’t want him so badly.

  His big hands covered hers and he shifted his head so that he was looking down at her, out of the range of her seeking lips. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Then just be with me. Love me tonight. That’s all I ask.” She waited—barely a heartbeat—before she added, “I promise.”

  And then she saw the change. Saw the exact moment his need won out over his self-control. Knew the moment when he finally saw her as a woman.

  The hands holding hers tightened before he pulled her close, his lips dropping to hers in a rush. With swift, urgent demands, he used his lips and tongue to consume her. Overjoyed, Isabella went with the moment, wrapping herself around his body like a second skin.

  Long, heated moments passed, the only sounds in the room their heavy breaths as they fought a battle toward pleasure and mutual gratification and ecstasy.

  His hands closed over her breasts and she pressed herself into his touch. The thin material of her dress couldn’t hide her tight, pointed nipples and his thumbs found them with unerring precision, teasing the hard points until she ached with wanting. Pleasure spread, deep and low in her belly, and she shifted on restless legs as her hands fisted the material at his waist.

  One of his shirt studs hit the floor, stilling both of them.

  “We can’t do this here.”

  Still wrapped up in the moment of finally having his hands on her body it took Isabella a moment to catch up. “What?”

  “Here.” Irritation narrowed his eyes while a dull pink crept into his cheeks. “You deserve a bed. And something more romantic than getting pawed at in my brother’s office.”

  “I liked being pawed at.” The words spilled out and she couldn’t hide the grin that went with them.

  “It’s not very romantic.”

  “On the contrary.” She stood on tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his lips. “Every woman dreams of being ravished.”

  One eyebrow quirked above that devastating blue and she saw
an answering smile. “Ravished?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I still think you deserve better than my brother’s geek kingdom. Come on.” He snagged her hand and they crept through the door like they were going thieving for the good silver.

  She nearly ran into his back when he stopped short. “What is it?”

  While she had come to like his family quite a bit over the last few days, the last thing she wanted was to be discovered. Or grilled, in the event Rowan found them.

  “I want to avoid my family.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  He turned around, the humor fading from his eyes. “Did something happen?”

  “Hardly. I just don’t want to get waylaid having to make small talk. Your family’s sort of big. And they talk a lot.”

  Loud peals of laughter echoed from the first floor and Isabella figured they needed to make a run for it. “There’s your chance. It’s loud and no one’s paying attention. Move!”

  “Aye aye.”

  He kept his hand firmly wrapped around hers and dragged her toward the staircase.

  She raced behind him, joy settling in her chest in carefree abandon.

  Liam Steele had her in hand. And in a matter of minutes, she was going to be making love with him.

  * * *

  A heavy, throbbing mix of heat and humor flooded his veins as Liam took the stairs toward the third floor, Isabella’s slender fingers trapped with his in a tight grip.

  Had he ever raced through the house with a woman before?

  If he were honest, the fact it hadn’t happened hadn’t been for lack of trying. He’d have happily snuck Genevieve Kincaid up to his room their senior year of high school when they were chemistry lab partners, studying for finals in the family kitchen.

  But other than a few misguided attempts that May afternoon, he hadn’t actually ever succeeded in sneaking a woman up to his room in his own home.

  Why did that only add to the experience?

  And had he ever felt so carefree with a woman before? The night he met Isabella in his grandparents’ study—rain-soaked and scared—he’d have never pictured the mousy scientist as a woman who made love with equal parts laughter and mind-numbing sensuality.