Blush

by Cherry Adair

  What seemed like a nanosecond later, the waiter returned with dishes of—who cared? “Should I return these to the kitchen to keep warm?”

  She shook her head a little frantically. If she were resting on a pillow, her head would be thrashing. The waiter gave her an expectant look, the plates held aloft as Cruz’s tongue found her clit. The first brush of his hot mouth right on the exquisitely sensitive tight bud made her whimper. Deep, throbbing pleasure sharpened, then widened in concentric circles, pulsing through every nerve.

  Oh, shit. The waiter was still standing there, plates in hand, still looking at her. “J-Just leave everyth-thing. Tha—” Her eyes crossed and she forgot what she was saying as she started to crest, but she should’ve known Cruz wasn’t done torturing her, as he let the pressure build, then drew back.

  She took a shaky moment to gulp down half a glass of wine. The waiter was halfway across the restaurant before she could function on any level once again. People were leaving, more were arriving. The restaurant was bustling on a Thursday evening, and the tables were all full and close together.

  “He knows you’re under there!” Mia hissed under her shaking breath.

  She was close to panting, but it was impossible to catch her breath when he kept driving her higher and higher. Pushing her up Everest, then leaving her hanging on the highest damned precipice with no oxygen.

  “Nuh-uh,” Cruz’s negative murmur vibrated against her inner walls.

  Sucking in a shuddering breath, Mia shifted her hips restlessly as he lifted his head, kissing a damp path up and down her inner thighs while he explored her butt crack with inquisitive fingers.

  “Ahh.” One hand behind her, the other in front. An all-out assault. Her breath snagged, then stopped all together. A slow slip-glide. Up. Down. Up-down. In tandem. Over. And over. Until she was quivering, on the edge of her seat, nerves torqued impossibly tighter and tighter. “Our w-waiter’s coming!”

  “Then you’d better come before he does, hadn’t you?”

  “Stop that. Get up here before—argh!” He bit down on her inner thigh at the same time he lodged two fingers deep inside her slick channel to the hilt, his palm rubbing against her clit. Mia reflexively squeezed her thighs around his big hand as he finger-fucked her.

  His dexterous fingers found every pleasure pathway, every sensitive, slick, quivering bundle of nerves. Helpless to stop her small, broken whimpers, Mia bit her lip. Blood roared in her ears and she went blind as the orgasm rolled through her with the power of a freight train, leaving her sensitized and climaxing like a pot brought to a rolling boil.

  • • •

  Cruz turned on the radio in the truck, then adjusted the volume to cool jazz as they headed home.

  “You know we’ll never be able to go to that restaurant ever again,” Mia told him, not sounding too worried about it.

  “I can.” He smiled. “They’ll only remember you.”

  Mia punched his arm, but since he had her snugged under his arm and against his chest as he drove, the hit didn’t have any impact. Cruz had never been a cuddler. When he was done with sex, he was done. But this felt . . . nice. Except for his cockstand, which had caused a major issue when he’d wanted to leave the restaurant earlier.

  With a laugh, Mia curved her fingers around his imprisoned erection and gave it a friendly pat. “I gave you my purse to carry. But I believe people will remember you, because you walked like a cowboy after a long ride across the prairie. People were staring at your crotch all the way down Bourbon.”

  “If it was me they were looking at, not you, they were thinking only a manly stud would dare carry a pink purse.”

  “It was really nice of Joann to let Charlie keep Oso for the night,” she said, wisely changing the subject. She’d already warned him that they would not, under any circumstances, have sex on the side of the road, and to cool his jets until they got home.

  His jets were a far cry from being cooled. He was hot and horny as hell. A permanent state, he’d come to realize, when he was around Mia.

  He sucked in a breath as she started unzipping his jeans. “Weren’t you the one who insisted on waiting until w— Jesus, woman! I’m going eighty,” he felt compelled to point out.

  “Eighty-four, actually,” she said, tugging, and having a hard time getting the last few inches of zipper down over his rampant hard-on. Her diligence paid off as he sprang free. Her relief wasn’t half as heartfelt as his own.

  “Keep up the good work—don’t mind me. Oh, my—” She sucked in a breath as she slid her hand around him. His dick leaped with happiness in the firm grip of her fingers. “Aw, this is sweet. You left him unwrapped for me?”

  Yeah, he went commando. A man had aspirations. Cruz choked back a laugh. “ ‘Him’?”

  “Sure,” she said, pulling up her knees, then turning to him, tucking herself into a position where her face—and, thank God, that beautiful mouth—was just inches from his dick. “He looks like a Jack to me.”

  “One-eyed Jack?” he laughed, but his laughter faded as she closed her mouth on him. The wet glide of her tongue and sharp nip of her teeth catapulted his discomfort at prolonged arousal into instant preorgasmic bliss. He eased his foot off the pedal slightly as she gripped the base of his penis with her hands and squeezed, sliding her mouth up, then down. She narrowed her lips so that the wet, soft heat of her mouth mimicked the sheath of her hot, tight vagina.

  Getting a blow job from Mia while driving was almost as good an idea as giving her oral sex in a crowded restaurant. Having her mouth on his dick while she had an orgasm was an even better idea. He was more than able to drive with one hand, so he reached around her, pulled her dress up, then shoved two fingers inside her as his thumb found her clit.

  She gasped when he buried his fingers in her vagina, but she didn’t let go of his dick. Instead, she squeezed tighter with her hand and sucked harder with her mouth as he moved his fingers in and out of her moist heat, feeling the benefit of her pleasure on his shaft as she lost control.

  Her every moan reverberated through him, every gasp brought him closer to the edge. He’d planned to pull out of her mouth right before he came, but her loss of control was contagious. He could barely keep the big truck in his lane as she bobbed her head up and down, sucking and scraping her teeth along the vein on his shaft, swirling her tongue around the head as if she were licking an ice cream cone.

  He pushed his fingers deeper, feeling the wet pulse and throb of her pussy gripping as she trembled with an orgasm brought on by the relentless movement of his thumb and his fingers.

  Mia wrenched her mouth from his dick. “Pull over, pull over!”

  Cruz slewed the truck to the grassy verge and shut off the engine. While the engine pinged, she came back down to finish the job. Without meaning to, he exploded into her mouth in a powerful, uncontrollable orgasm that stole his breath and made his entire body buck.

  After several minutes, while both remained frozen in position, Mia righted herself. “Give me your shirt.”

  Without comment, Cruz yanked his shirt over his head and handed it to her. She delicately wiped her mouth, then offered it back to him with a wicked glint in those glorious blue eyes.

  “Thanks, but you keep it.”

  “I’ll probably bronze the shirt and my dress to look at when I’m in the senior center one day. I’m going to slide way over here and hug this door. You drive. We’ll listen to some cool jazz for the rest of the drive, and not look or touch.”

  How could a woman as powerful, as advantaged as Amelia Wentworth be so fucking adorable? “Yes, ma’am.” He turned on the radio.

  “Oh, shit.” She jerked upright. “Did he just say Blush? Hang on—” Mia reached over to crank up the volume.

  “Stock prices plummeted by more than seventeen percent after the FBI report became public earlier today. Megagiant cosmetics company Blush is under heavy fire after China Labor Watch released their findings after a six-month investigation in conjunction with the FBI
and the National Crime Agency. Child endangerment—pornography—exploitation. After a massive fire knocked out half the factory building, killing hundreds of children this week.”

  Shaking her head, Mia turned the radio off, and muttered, “I don’t have a damned factory in freaking China!” Without being asked, Cruz handed her his phone. “Thanks.”

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Todd. . . . What the hell’s going on?” she snapped when her cousin answered. “Calm down. Just calm down. This is just a misunderstanding. . . . Okay, I hear you. But I didn’t know anything until thirty seconds ago. Just heard the news. No, I know we don’t, so how could the FBI and these other regulatory groups get it so wrong? We don’t. You know we don’t.” She paused to listen. “That’s impossible. What’s Legal doing? Damn it! You’re scaring the crap out of me, Todd. I’m coming home to deal with this.”

  Over his dead fucking body. Cruz heard the cousin argue with her. Not the words, but the tone was clear. “My life. Of course someone wants the stock prices to plummet. If I’m discredited—”

  Todd voiced his opinion. Cruz wished he could hear more than blah-blah-blah. He’d like to be a fly on the wall for the whole convo, but he certainly got the gist.

  Confirmation that Blush didn’t have, nor had they ever had, a factory in China. Someone was working damn hard to discredit not only Amelia Wentworth personally but the ethical standards of Blush as a company.

  This was confirmation that someone wanted her dead. And since Cruz knew for a fact the hit was still in effect, why discredit the company at the same time?

  Because that someone wanted to buy Blush at a bargain-basement price and get their biggest obstacle out of the way at the same time?

  She moved the phone from her ear. “Okay if I give Todd this number?”

  “You called him. He has it.”

  “Right.” She rubbed her forehead. “Davis and Kent overnighted the paperwork today.” She was back to talking to the cousin. “I’ll get it back to them by Saturday. Then none of this will matter.” Mia pressed two fingers between her eyes. “I had to. If I hadn’t given them my location, I’d have had to come home— Dear God, they do? Of course they do—they think I’m a criminal! They might know I’m somewhere near— Fine. I’m not telling you where. A major city, and nobody knows what name I’m using here. It’s a big place.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and a pulse throbbed at the base of her throat as her cousin talked. “Yes. Of course I will. Use the apartment if you want to. Even you have to sleep eventually. Call me at this number if anything changes. Love you.”

  Closing her fingers around the phone, she sat clutching it for several minutes in silence as Cruz ate up the miles to the house. “Blush doesn’t have a factory in China.”

  “So you said.”

  “My name is on the factory building’s lease, in a city I’ve never even heard of. The press have ‘proof’ I visited China. They have a copy of my passport with the travel stamps ‘proving’ I visited on numerous occasions.” She used the phone to rub her temple. “They’ve closed down all my business there pending the investigation. For God’s sake, this doesn’t make any kind of sense. My legal people are working on it. Todd and my personal staff are still at the office. He said it’s chaos. Thank God he thrives under chaos. Even my ditzy stepmother is there ‘helping.’ ”

  Mia choked back a laugh that had a tinge of hysteria in it. “Someone is going to extraordinary lengths to ruin my life.”

  Someone wants to do more than that, sweetheart.

  “I’d like to know how anyone found out. But of course it’s impossible to keep this kind of secret. Todd already told me something had leaked to the press last week. But the price of Blush shares went up. Now they’re way down.”

  “I think we should turn around and go back to NOLA, stay in a hotel tonight,” Cruz told her, glancing over to see the strain on her face, illuminated by oncoming traffic. “You’ll be there first thing to go to the mailbox place to sign the papers. How about spending the night in an anonymous hotel? It’ll give us time to reassess the situation. One thing at a time.” And he wasn’t going to leave her side for a second until this was over.

  “We’re five minutes from the house. I want to sleep in my own bed tonight—although, honestly? I’m not sure I will sleep with all this going on. I guess it all boils down to what this person, or people, want. If they hope to drive the stock price down, and then scoop up the company, they’re SOL. Once I sign the paperwork for the buyout, they won’t be able to even get their hands on shares, because I’ll own Blush outright.”

  “Who owns Blush if that’s the case, and you die?”

  She rubbed her arms as if chilled. “It reverts back to the publicly held company.”

  “So everything you’ve done up to this point is a wash, and it goes back to the way it was?”

  She shrugged. “Todd has no interest in sole proprietorship, and he’s my only blood relative.”

  Cruz closed strong fingers around the back of her neck, feeling the tension there. He massaged gently as he asked, “What about your stepmother?”

  “Candice? Not blood. And not in my will, anyway.”

  “You’re a wealthy woman. Who is the main beneficiary in your will? Who gets your personal fortune?”

  “My foundation gets everything.” She paused to give him a look so sad, so poignant, that Cruz felt his hard heart develop another small crack. “Isn’t that freaking pathetic? I’ve made Blush my entire life for as long as I can remember—and yet, when I die, not only will I die alone, I won’t have anyone to pass the baton to.”

  “You’re not going to die,” Cruz told her grimly as he turned off the headlights when he turned onto her long, dark gravel driveway. “You’ll live a long life and have a herd of kids playing with makeup the moment they start walking.”

  “So, girls or drag queens?” Mia’s lips twitched. “Todd will be thrilled.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mia suddenly noticed he was driving without headlights, and straightened. “What’s wrong?”

  Cruz had a gut feeling. A bad-as-shit feeling as they rolled down the driveway to the carport in the dark. “Not sure. Something’s off.” The hair on the back of his head lifted, and his heartbeat slowed, which in turn clarified his sight and hearing. This was how he felt when he was about to kill. Sharp. Focused.

  He scanned the open expanse of scrubby lawn, the ghostly Spanish moss hanging unmoving from the trees. Moonlight glinted on the water of the bayou and painted black-lace shadows on the scrub grass beneath the trees.

  The dark shapes of the beat-up, piece-of-shit truck and camper lay dense and impenetrable beside the house. Nothing moved, yet he felt the threat of danger nearby. He trusted his gut.

  He unscrewed the dome light. “Drive down the street. Come back in ten minutes, if the porch light isn’t on, call the cops.”

  “I’m not leaving! Don’t give me that damn look, Cruz Barcelona. I won’t leave you here alone.”

  It was almost comical that she feared for him. He knew she wouldn’t leave, and sighed. Stubborn woman. “Then stay in the truck and lock the doors, and slide over in case you have to drive. I’ll check the house.”

  “Give me your phone.”

  He lifted his butt to get it out of his back pocket and handed it to her. “I’ve never known a woman not to have a phone.”

  “At home I have a dozen. Here my burner phone lives in the sugar canister in the kitchen.”

  She’d already unsnapped her seat belt and turned to watch him with pale, worried eyes as she whispered, “Be careful.”

  “Don’t call the police unless I’m gone for longer than ten minutes.”

  “Ten minutes? Are you insane? That’s forever if there’s some deranged killer inside the damn house!”

  He wanted to say, They should be scared of me. But she didn’t need to know the truth of what he was. Not yet. Not until he knew she was safe. “Ten minutes. Do not leave this
vehicle until I come back for you or the police arrive. Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  “Let me see your fingers.”

  Her smile was faint. “I’m not crossing them. Ten minutes or the police. Got it. But not a second more. I’m not going to hesitate if I don’t see you in ten minutes or less.” She chewed her lip, not in fear, but concern.

  Their gazes locked. Both of them knew the chances were high this was no burglar. There was practically no furniture or anything of value in the house and the place was too isolated to be just a random act. Whoever was inside was looking not for something but someone.

  “Whoever is trying to get you out of the way wants to make sure you don’t sign the papers.”

  With the FBI and the press closing in like rabid dogs, and everything about to be finalized with the buyout of her business, tonight was the night if anyone was going to off her. This would be the golden hour. Or in the time it took her to sign the papers and for them to be overnighted to San Francisco.

  If he was going to do the job, it would be tonight.

  “Don’t go in. Look, if they’re a trained killer, it’s stupid to take the risk.”

  “I served in the military, remember? Trust me, I can take care of myself.”

  She placed a hand on his forearm. “Still, you don’t have to do this. We should call the police.” She shook her head at his closed expression.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. Whoever is in there doesn’t know who or what I am, or that I’m coming in alone. I’ve got the advantage. Just stay here. Stay safe and don’t distract me.”

  He exited the vehicle, then waited for the door lock to engage. Followed by buzzing mosquitoes, he slipped through the dappled shadows to the accompaniment of the deep-throated croak of frogs, the occasional growl-roar of the alligator, and the splash of some night creature in the water.

  He detoured to his truck for his gun. He’d removed the interior light long ago. He found the hidden compartment and the box under the floor by feel.

  The SIG Sauer fit comfortably in his hand. He didn’t use a gun often, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know how, and the custom 250 felt like an old friend in his hand.