by Joanne Rock
Tomorrow he would be adamantly opposed to a take-charge woman trying to steamroll him into doing things her way. But tonight, he was ready to shout with triumph over finding a woman who knew exactly what she wanted and how to get it.
Clutching the condom in one hand, he lifted her up and seated her on the shiny lacquer desk. Because the desk was hers, it was devoid of any decoration, adorned only by a small stack of papers at one end. Aidan vowed to have them scattered all over the black carpet before they were through.
For tonight, he wanted to make her messy, add a little chaos to her smooth perfection.
He shoved off his jeans, his boxers—his shoes were in there somewhere too. He’d sort it all out tomorrow. Right now he just needed to be inside Brianne.
She was kissing his chest, her tongue blazing a hot trail to his shoulder. Her fingers wrapped around his cock, stroked him.
And made him need her all the faster.
He had himself sheathed and ready in two seconds flat. Lifting her off the desk he held her above him. She gripped his shoulders, her short nails digging into him just a little. He celebrated that slip of control on her part, the tiny sign that Brianne was getting caught up in this as much as him.
Then he lowered her. Inch by fantastic freaking inch he eased his way inside her. She was so hot and tight and slick for him he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from exploding on contact.
How long had it been since he’d been with a woman?
Not nearly long enough to be this close to the edge already. It was just because this was her. Brianne. The woman who’d messed with his head too many times with her precocious sexuality and provocative teasing.
This was fantasy come to life and he was inside her, all around her and breathing her killer fragrance straight from the source.
Aidan gave himself enough mental distance to touch the slick folds where she stretched to accommodate him. He wanted tonight to be burned into her memory, seared into her dreams for weeks, months to come.
He slid his fingers over the heated center of her and took pleasure from the way she shivered and moaned. Not giving her any quarter, he looked for the telltale moments when she bit her lip, arched her back, until she finally yelled his name as she flew apart in his arms.
Mental satisfaction pounded through him. Physical satisfaction hovered, loomed, demanded release. Still, he wouldn’t allow himself to hit that high note until he had her settled back on the desk, her creamy pale body stretched out across the slick black lacquer. Only then did he drive into her with the strokes guaranteed to take him where he needed to go.
Brianne’s fingers flexed against the desk, her nails scraping the shiny surface until her body bowed with the force of his release. She cried out along with him as he shouted, her hips writhing under his as she moved in time with the last quakes of his body.
And as their voices quieted, their breathing a ragged echo in the room, Aidan watched the last of her stack of papers flutter silently to the floor.
6
BRIANNE LAY BENEATH Aidan on her desk—cold, unforgiving veneer behind her and hot, slightly bristly male muscles above her. Amazingly, she wasn’t the least bit uncomfortable. She’d spent half her life between a rock and a hard place anyway.
As hard places went, a girl could do a lot worse than Aidan Maddock’s gorgeous bod.
Smoothing her hand over a squared shoulder, she soaked in the feel of raw male power. She’d be willing to bet there weren’t many people who’d tangled with this particular federal agent and gotten away with it. Her shady former stepfather was probably one of a very few people—maybe the only person—to get past Aidan.
The thought reminded her of all the reasons she shouldn’t be lying here with him right now. Not that she owed her stepfather any loyalty, but she didn’t want to get roped into the shoot-out between him and Aidan. There was no doubt Mel was a crook, but Brianne had seen another side of him.
Her mother had gone a little crazy when Brianne’s real father had died. She’d spent money like water for months to fill whatever void was in her life and had nearly run them into the poorhouse. Brianne had eaten toast and caviar for two weeks when she was five because that was the only thing her mother had bought to eat. Grocery shopping confused Pauline, but she could tackle Rodeo Drive, Miracle Mile or Fifth Avenue and shower her only child with diamonds and miniature-size dressing gowns.
Not that Brianne had a use for either.
She kissed Aidan’s shoulder, savoring the warm heat of him a little longer even as reality was starting to set in again. He shifted away from her and eased off the desk while Brianne closed her eyes and pretended they didn’t have to face the consequences of what they’d done just yet. Instead, she reminded herself why she couldn’t help Aidan with his case.
Melvin Baxter might be a swindler with little conscience, but he’d marched into Pauline Wolcott’s life and made her money worries go away. He’d hired a nanny to make sure Brianne had peanut butter and jelly in her lunch box like all the other kids instead of cold toast and spoiling caviar. And he’d brought her a teddy bear instead of a tiara.
She was glad she didn’t know where Mel was now or what he’d done with all the money he’d taken from unsuspecting investors because she’d have a hard time sending the guy to jail after he’d saved her and her mother.
By now Aidan had his jeans back on, though they remained temptingly unfastened. He leaned over her sprawled, naked body, his hard jaw next to her ear.
“If you don’t put clothes on, I’m going to be all over you again.” His voice was a heady growl, a plea and a threat at the same time.
She believed him. Already she could feel the hard length of him against her thigh. Again.
The thought made her smile. Aidan might have a lock on raw male strength, but he made her feel endowed with a few powers of her own.
“Maybe you’d better give me my shirt.” Even though her own body was already reacting to his, Brianne knew a second time around with Aidan would only make it more difficult to re-draw their boundaries.
Yet boundaries were non-negotiable.
They were on opposite sides of his case for one thing. His work threatened to cause the deathblow of scandals for Club Paradise for another. And Brianne was through with dangerous men who disorganized her world and didn’t know what it meant to play by the rules.
She’d somehow been following a negative relationship pattern with men starting as early as Mel Baxter and winding all the way through her life to Jimmy the psycho guitar player in New York. Aidan might be on the right side of the law, but that didn’t make him a straight arrow. He was as dangerous and as rule-bending as every other guy she’d ever been involved with.
She needed to break that pattern right here, right now.
Her body protested the decision even as she slid her arms into the shirt that had already lost its starch. Her breasts still tightened and ached for Aidan. Even though her thighs ached from the fervor of their love-making, Brianne wanted nothing so much as to wrap her legs around Aidan’s waist all over again.
The man had been back in her life for forty-eight hours and he was already lambasting her priorities.
As if he could read her mind, Aidan laid a hand on her wilted shirt and splayed his fingers across her hip. “You don’t need to rush on my account.” His fingers kneaded the soft flesh of her bottom, calling up a deep longing for more.
She gripped his wrist with regret. “But I do. Tonight has to be a one-time occurrence, Aidan, or it will confuse things too much between us.”
He leaned closer. “I’m not the least bit confused, Bri. I know exactly what I want.”
“But for how long?” She backed up a step and scooped up her skirt off the floor. “When you get a lead on Mel and you can’t haul ass out of here fast enough to chase him? You need to walk away from this as badly as I do.”
Their gazes connected, locked. Brianne saw the acknowledgement in his dark eyes even if he didn’t like it.
Shaking his head, he tore his shirt off the back of a chair and yanked it over his head. “Maybe I do. But I sure as hell don’t know how can you just turn it off like that. One minute we’re so hot we end up collapsing on to your desk and the next minute you’re all starched and untouchable again.”
Years of practice, that’s how.
But Brianne wasn’t about to share any more of herself with this man tonight. Her boundaries were already too fractured and weakened for her to walk into that tenuous territory of pillow talk with a man like Aidan.
She needed to reinforce the walls and then do a little hauling ass herself. Wrenching her skirt up her legs, she explained her position to the best of her ability. “I can’t afford to let minor setbacks compromise the overall goal.”
Judging from Aidan’s slack-jawed expression, however, she guessed her explanation was a bit lacking in his eyes.
He seemed to recover himself and jammed his feet into his shoes. “So let me get this straight, Ms. Sentimental. You and your scientific brain have classified tonight as a minor setback?” Lifting his baseball cap from its perch on her master control board, Aidan shoved the hat on his head. Backward. “In that case I’ll do my best to stay out of the way and not compromise you or your damn goals any more. You’re all heart, Brianne.”
He didn’t bother looking back as he stomped his way out the door, leaving Brianne with a little remorse, an aching body, but thankfully, what heart she possessed was still very much intact.
And Brianne, for her part, intended to keep it that way.
AIDAN HAD TO HAND it to her.
The woman had a hell of a lot of nerve.
He parked the Harley in front of a restaurant on Ocean Drive with killer coffee and tables on the street that overlooked the beach. It wasn’t one of the trendy joints where the European models hung out to smoke cigarettes and chug java, just a run-of-the-mill steak-and-egg place where a guy could eat real food and still keep one eye on the street.
He intended to hole up at a private table and stuff himself with greasy hash browns until he forgot all about Brianne calling their night together a minor setback. Until he forgot all about her come-hither stare and her sexy-as-you-please strut.
Fat chance.
If nothing else, he just needed to get some mental space away from her perfume and figure out where to go with his case next.
But his wish to be alone crashed and burned as he spied his former college roommate, now an up-and-coming Miami attorney, Jackson Taggart, flagging him down from a table along the front row. Aidan’s usual table.
Damn.
Normally he saw Jackson twice a month for a round of golf—Jackson’s sport of choice—or a day of fishing—Aidan’s preferred Sunday activity. If Jackson had skipped his morning workout to hunt down Aidan, chances were Jackson needed a favor.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Taggart called by way of greeting. As was typical for Jackson, he wore a tie at 7:00 a.m. His suit was crisp at sunrise, and Aidan would lay money the pleats in his pants could still cut through butter at midnight. No doubt, Brianne would love this guy. “I haven’t seen you this mauled over since college. You putting in late hours again?”
Aidan scowled. Reaching Jackson’s table—his table, damn it—Aidan cleared away a copy of the Miami Herald and crashed into a chair. “Federal business. Nothing you’d be interested in.”
“Rumor has it you’re the go-to guy on the Melvin Baxter case. You making any headway?” Jackson flipped out his napkin and laid it across his perfect pleats.
Aidan jammed his napkin into the collar of his shirt, not liking the direction of the conversation one bit. The last thing he needed in the Baxter case was attention from an attorney with political ambitions. Especially when that attorney also happened to be from a politically connected family the media loved to buzz about. “I trust it matters a whole hell of a lot to you that you’re bugging me about this at sunrise?”
“If you sew up your case soon, I can help prosecute it before election time. I realize this is kind of last-minute, but I’m under some pressure to throw in my hat for a state legislator bid.”
“Way to lay on the pressure, Jack. In other words, you want me to hurry up so you can make a few headlines just in time for a campaign.” Aidan waved to his usual waitress. She was a breezy brunette who knew his regular order and liked to talk, but Aidan couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for their normal flirtation routine this morning. Brianne’s scent still clung to his clothes, his skin. Hell, even ten blocks away he couldn’t escape her.
Jack held up his hands, all innocence. “No pressure from me. I’m sure you’ve got enough raining down on you from the Bureau considering this is the most important case in the city right now.” He gulped his coffee and gave Aidan a steady look. “How you holding up?”
“Fine until some do-good politician comes along to pump up this investigation into a damn election issue.” Aidan stepped over to the waitress’s stand just outside the front door to the restaurant. He snagged a clean cup from the cart, poured himself coffee then sat back down. Obviously, the brunette was annoyed at his rebuff this morning and had decided to make him wait.
This was shaping up to be a hell of a day.
“So forget I said anything about prosecuting the case.” Jackson stared out at the orange band of light low in the eastern sky that marked the sunrise. Ocean Drive remained quiet, but here and there people whizzed by the restaurant on Roller Blades, or an occasional jogger ran past with a dog. “That doesn’t account for why you look like hell.”
“You didn’t hunt me down at my favorite breakfast haunt at seven in the morning to tell me I look like hell.” Damned if he’d let Jackson get off that easily. The guy had more ambition and drive than anyone he’d ever met. They’d both been in the criminal justice program at the University of Miami and had taken the knowledge in different directions. Aidan had forged a path that he hoped would keep the city safer while Jackson’s politically minded parents had prepared him from the cradle to be a big-time attorney in the family practice. If Jackson had gone out of his way to nudge Aidan on the Baxter case, there must be plenty of political buzz afoot.
Once it became a political issue, the press was never far behind. Then before he knew what hit him, Aidan’s superiors would receive an eight-by-ten glossy of him and Brianne tangling limbs on her desk.
Shit.
Jackson straightened his tie that was already precisely aligned. “Maybe I didn’t come to tell you that you look like hell, but I didn’t come to strong-arm you into making an arrest either. Sure it wouldn’t hurt me, but mostly I thought you ought to know you’re getting more attention on this than you probably realize.”
He snorted even though he was grateful for the heads-up. If he let Jack know he was appreciative, his so-called friend would be guilting him into attending all kinds of fund-raising golf tournaments and assorted do-gooder/politician stuff. No thanks. Aidan had enough on his plate without kissing babies on the politician’s circuit. “And I suppose I need to know this so I’ll start making politically correct decisions or something?”
“Do with it what you want, but I thought you deserved to know. If you choose to be more P.C. in the future, that’s your call. You have to admit you’re not exactly a by-the-book kind of guy.” Jack had hauled Aidan’s butt out of more than a few sticky situations in college. Between his smooth-talking shtick and the suits and ties he had sported even then, Jack kept them out of trouble while Aidan made sure they occasionally found enough to have a good time.
Aidan turned his baseball cap from backward to forward. He might not be a by-the-book kind of guy, but he wasn’t a crook. His world wasn’t as black and white as Jack’s but it worked for him. “I can play the game when the situation calls for it.”
Jackson arched a brow. “And I suppose the front-facing hat indicates you mean business now?”
“Damn straight it does.”
Tossing a handful of bills on the table, Ja
ckson rose. “Then my work here is done. You’re on the straight and narrow—or at least I’ve warned you that you ought to be. I need to get to the office for a meeting. Good luck digging up Baxter.”
Aidan toasted his departure with his coffee cup, grateful to have his table to himself. After the way Brianne had tossed him out on his butt, he needed room to brood, damn it.
Jackson hovered by the door of his Mercedes convertible parked squarely in front of the restaurant, the car as sleek and squeaky-clean as its owner. “I hear you’re spending a lot of time at Club Paradise now,” he called back. “Word is they’ve got a hell of a floor show.”
Aidan yawned and stretched. “It’s a tough job but somebody’s got to do it. You ought to drop by the club when you’re done worrying about your damn public image. The women are gorgeous.” Although the scantily clad, feathered showgirls couldn’t compare to Brianne.
“I hear the owners are something of a sight to see too.” Jackson slid into the driver’s seat with a grin that was too damn happy for Aidan’s taste. “I’ll definitely be over there to check it out soon.”
Aidan would have warned him to stay the hell away from one owner in particular, but Jackson was already maneuvering into traffic.
Not that he was worried his friend would turn Brianne’s head. Okay, actually he was pretty sure a guy like Jackson would turn her head. But Aidan wasn’t worried about it because he didn’t have anything invested in his relationship with Brianne.
Last night had been a minor setback according to her. He wasn’t about to let it mean more than that to him.
Assuming, of course, it didn’t already.
AS THE SUN SET, Brianne yawned and scribbled out yet another sentence in her revised security plan for the club. She was tired and edgy at the same time, exhausted from lack of rest yet thinking about Aidan and wondering how she’d handle sitting by his side tonight.
She had given up on sleep by noon today. After Aidan left she’d driven up to Palm Beach to the house she was renting in her mother’s neighborhood. She’d only taken the home so she could keep an eye on Pauline who was between husbands and starting to fracture at the seams. The location certainly wasn’t convenient.