High-Stakes Bachelor

by Cindy Dees

  “Shall we continue?” he murmured.

  “You’re ready to do that again?” she blurted in disbelief.

  He laughed. “I was referring to our bike ride, but if you give me a few minutes, I can be up for round two.”

  “I’m not sure I’d survive another round of that,” she murmured. She sounded like a cat who’d just finished lapping up a bowl of cream. Sated. Supremely contented. Just the way he liked his woman.

  Whoa. Since when did he have a “his woman”? And since when was she his? They were faking all of this. But what they’d just done on his bike sure as hell hadn’t been fake. She’d just screwed his lights out on the side of the Pacific Coast Highway for God’s sake.

  He thought he’d heard a couple cars honk their horns in approval as they drove past. But at the end there, he wouldn’t have heard someone standing three feet away shouting at him through a bullhorn.

  Ana slid off the bike—her legs wobbly, he noted with satisfaction—and pulled on her panties and jeans. She slipped onto the seat behind him and he gave the throttle a quick twist. Her hips rocked forward involuntarily, and he grinned over his shoulder. “Like that?”

  “If you don’t get moving right now, I’m going to climb on you again for that round two you offered me.”

  “Stay where you are right now,” he instructed her, “and turn on your helmet mike. I want to hear every orgasm you have between now and the house.”

  Her thighs tightened against his, squeezing the seat a little more tightly. Then they relaxed and opened, letting her weight settle more deeply onto the vibrating seat. Her breath caught and then she exhaled on a shuddering groan. Grinning, he released the brakes and the bike leaped forward beneath him. He guided it back toward the mansion, taking the road and the woman at a leisurely pace.

  Ana could hardly stand by the time they got back to the house. Her expression was dazed and her body limp from excessive pleasure. He poured her into his bed and, well satisfied with the evening’s work, strolled into the kitchen for a midnight snack. He’d worked up an appetite blowing Ana’s mind with pleasure. Yup. A tough job, but somebody had to do it.

  Minerva was making herself a cup of tea at the kitchen counter.

  “Rosie gone for the night?” he asked her.

  “She left hours ago. Can I make you a cup of tea?”

  “Sure. Lemme just whip up a sandwich for myself.” He made himself a quick snack from the platter of deli meats and cheeses in the refrigerator.

  “Ana’s a lovely girl,” she commented. “I approve of her.”

  He grinned broadly. “Me, too.”

  “She makes you happy, doesn’t she?”

  The question stopped him cold. Ana did make him happy. Hell, giddy. Giddier than he’d been since he fell hook, line and sinker for Vanessa, come to think of it.

  “Are you two thinking about marriage?” Minerva asked.

  The old panic gripped him. Images of his bride, the woman he’d loved, walking down the aisle with another man. Beaming at another bastard. Hell, sleeping with the guy while she was still engaged to him—

  He broke off the bitter thoughts abruptly and glanced up at his grandmother, frowning. “We haven’t talked about it,” he answered shortly.

  “Well, you should. Not only is there the baby to think of, but you’re not getting any younger. She’s perfect for you, and she’s obviously crazy about you. She’d make you very happy.”

  “Oh, so now you’re a relationship expert?” he retorted sharply.

  “I know you, Jackson. She’s the one.”

  He grabbed his plate and stood up, agitated. “Keep your nose out of it. This is my life. I’ll do what I see fit with Ana. I need you to back off of all this baby stuff and of throwing the two of us together. Let me do this my way.”

  “Don’t let her slip away while you’re dithering, Jackson Prescott. Lots of men would give their eyeteeth to have her. They won’t wait around for you to figure out what you want, and neither will she.” And with that parting salvo, she sailed out of the kitchen and upstairs.

  Dammit. Minerva had put her finger directly on what was worrying him. How his grandmother managed to find his raw nerves and stomp on them so effectively was a complete mystery to him. A hum of unease remained in his gut even after he stormed out of the house and plunked down on the veranda with a bottle of whiskey and his sandwich. Tea be damned—he needed a real drink.

  A mental image of Ana and some other guy on a Harley blurred. Became Vanessa and her sleazy doctor boyfriend screwing their brains out behind his back. In both pictures, he was the one standing on the outside, alone, looking in. And that was what scared the hell out of him.

  Would Ana really bail on him if he didn’t make a move soon to lock down an official relationship with her? She’d said she was going to leave as soon as the movie was done filming. Would she really do it? Somehow, she didn’t strike him as the kind of woman to drop empty threats. He had two weeks to give her so many orgasms she couldn’t even think about walking out on him.

  It was a lame plan, but it was better than no plan at all. And God knew the fringe benefits were phenomenal.

  Hell, he didn’t even know if she was interested in a relationship with him anymore. For all he knew, she saw this whole thing as an extended friends-with-benefits deal.

  He poured himself a shot of whiskey but set the glass back down on the table without tossing it back. Funny, but he didn’t feel like drowning himself in booze tonight. The lure of the woman sleeping upstairs in his bed was too much to resist.

  He slipped into his bedroom and undressed in the dark. It seemed a little redundant to wear clothes to bed after the bike ride earlier, so he slipped under the covers naked. It was a risk, but that two-week window was going to slam shut in the blink of an eye. He had no time at all. He had to take risks if he wanted her for himself. And the more he thought about it, the more he was coming to that exact conclusion. He did want her.

  Ana stirred, rolling over and taking most of the blankets with her. The air conditioner was running full blast tonight, and in a few moments, the chill in his room became uncomfortable. Gently, he reached for the blankets and tugged them back in his direction.

  Not only did the covers come back his way, but Ana’s sleek body abruptly draped itself across his. He lay beneath her, stiff as a board from head to foot, for several minutes. He had a long-standing policy of never sleeping with the women he had sex with for this exact reason. It was too damned intimate.

  Ana settled more comfortably on his chest, and it became clear she wasn’t going anywhere soon. Inch by inch he forced his body to relax, lecturing himself all the while. This was Ana. She was his friend. His colleague. His equal. A woman he was seriously considering pursuing a real relationship with.

  Considering, his ass. The decision was made. She’d just screwed his lights out on a Harley, and pretty much made every fantasy he’d ever had on that bike come true. She was funny and kind and smart to boot. How could he say no to a woman like that?

  On top of that, she got him. She understood the demands of his work, and where he was calm, she was impulsive. Where he was careful, she was bold. She drew him out of his shell, and he slowed her down just enough to be safe. They were a good match for each other.

  His arm came up around her, and she snuggled a little closer on his chest. He had to admit this cuddling thing wasn’t half-bad. He felt cared for. Coveted. The human contact was...nice.

  He closed his own eyes and drifted off to sleep with a bizarre and unfamiliar sense of contentment welling up inside him. Just maybe this whole relationship thing would turn out better than he’d expected, after all.

  Chapter 13

  Ana straightened in the green bodysuit, panting. Jackson wore an identical bodysuit, his face painted the same bright soda-bottle-green hers was p
ainted. The ubiquitous white dots covered their faces and bodies like chicken pox.

  “That was awesome, guys!” Adrian called from off set. The director strolled forward onto the mat. “I think we’ve got what we need for this scene. You two have fantastic chemistry. I’ll look forward to seeing what you come up with for the next scene.”

  She grabbed the towel someone handed her and followed Jackson off the floor.

  “So, guys,” Crash Mashburn murmured to them as they headed for the locker rooms, “I hear you had a nice ride up the coast last night.”

  Jackson whipped around shockingly fast to stare over Ana’s shoulder at the head stuntman and professional driver. “Come again?” he rumbled low and warningly.

  “Apparently, someone’s been posting pictures of you two on the internet. Mostly on set. A few at your grandmother’s house. This morning, pics went up of the two of you at a rest stop on the Pacific Coast Highway.”

  Horror washed over Ana. She felt hot and faint and sick all at once.

  For his part, Jackson went still. Something far too cold and dangerous to be mere anger abruptly emanated from his big body. “Show me,” he bit out. “My office.”

  She took a step as if to follow him, but he snapped over his shoulder at her, “Not you. Go take a shower. I’ll take care of this.”

  When she emerged from the locker room a half hour later, Jackson, Crash and Adrian were standing in a cluster just outside Adrian’s office conversing too low for her to hear. They broke off talking as she approached them.

  “Hey, guys. Everything okay?”

  “Just fine,” Jackson replied promptly. “The pictures are down, and our security company is tracing the ISP address and identity of whoever posted them.”

  Adrian piped up, “In the meantime, I’m hiring more security for the set. Whether someone’s out to harass you, Ana, or just has a thing against the movies in general, is anyone’s guess. But I’m done having my crew’s privacy, and possibly safety, compromised in this studio.”

  “Thanks, guys,” she mumbled. God. Talk about guilt. How much money was she costing them, and how much danger was she putting the entire crew in? She hated this. She hated bringing a taint to the people around her. She had no business being in a relationship with anybody for this exact reason.

  The next few days settled into a pattern. Jackson was underfoot pretty much 24/7. On set, if Jackson wasn’t around, Crash always seemed to be in the vicinity. Pairs of wandering security guards were always lurking around the studio now, and the crew had to check in with a guard at the front door, as well. But at least no more pictures of her and Jackson in compromising positions showed up on the internet.

  As for their work, she and Jackson blocked out scenes one by one, rehearsed each to their mutual satisfaction, got dressed up in green from head to toe, and filmed until Adrian was satisfied with every angle and every nuance of the action.

  Between Adrian and Jackson giving her a crash course in acting, she didn’t feel like a complete klutz. They put her entirely at ease and then made suggestions that were so clear and logical that it was a snap to do as they instructed. No question about it, acting was a whole lot harder than it looked. But under their tutelage, she was gradually getting the hang of digging into her character and bringing the alien warrior babe to life.

  She fell into Jackson’s bed exhausted each night, but as soon as his hands found her in the dark, magic happened. She couldn’t get enough of him. He was an amazing lover—strong and gentle, aggressive and playful, a little crazy and a lot imaginative. She walked around in a continual haze of arousal and sexual delirium that she sincerely hoped never cleared. It was hard to imagine that she’d threatened only a few days ago to leave him and their steamy hot nights together for good.

  The good news was they’d been channeling all that simmering sexual energy into their scenes with Adrian, who’d actually been forced to close the set because the crew had given the two of them so much grief over their sizzling chemistry.

  It didn’t actually bug her one way or the other. No matter how embarrassing the catcalls got, the second Jackson touched her, the wild magic exploded and nothing else mattered. Heck, nothing else even registered.

  She knew she was an idiot for allowing herself to get sucked into the fantasy of being Jackson’s serious girlfriend. Minerva had thrown them at each other, and they were scratching a mutual itch. Lust, although fantastic, was a far cry from love. And with regards to Jackson Prescott, she’d do well not to confuse the two. But still, the fantasy of him having real and deep feelings for her was lovely.

  At least until the movie shoot ended and he got on with his regularly scheduled life. And left her choking in his dust.

  Minerva, thankfully, had backed off of their cases. The woman was completely absorbed in supervising the renovation of Ana’s old bedroom into a nursery. For a boy, of course. A combination biker-sailor theme dominated, and Ana had to admit it was adorable.

  About a week after that unforgettable Harley ride culminating in her moving into Jackson’s bed, they came home from work and he helped her off the Harley in the garage with a slow, lingering kiss. He surprised her by murmuring, “Are you busy Saturday night?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I’d like to take you out on a real date.”

  Date? Him and her? As in going out in public? She opened her mouth and only garbled mumbling noises emerged.

  He must have interpreted the sounds as acceptance of his offer because he kissed her again, turned and strode into the house to take a quick shower before dinner. He’d spent the afternoon outside shooting a scene that she was not in, and it had been a cool hundred degrees in the shade.

  She’d been fortunate to be inside the air-conditioned studio all afternoon, training with a bunch of female extras as Crash Mashburn taught them the rudiments of bar fighting.

  She’d finally gotten a call from the manager of the only semiaffordable apartment complex in town, and a tenant had moved out without notice. As soon as the apartment was cleaned, she could have it.

  The guy didn’t ask her if she was still interested in the place, and she avoided the question, as well. Things were going great with Jackson this week, but would the same be true next week? Next month? Was he really capable of committing to a relationship or was what they had now just spillover from their movie roles?

  They had only two major scenes left to film together—one was the big love scene where their aliens finally got together, and then some kind of wrap-up scene where they got their happily ever after near the end of the film. If only it was that simple. Fall into bed with the hot guy, have great sex, and he adores you for the rest of your life.

  She ought to be over the moon. She’d landed a dream movie role that had the possibility of launching a full-blown movie career for her. And even if Jackson’s attentions were fleeting, she’d at least earned his temporary affection. It was better than nothing, right?

  * * *

  Adrian’s voice cut across the near sex Jackson was having with Ana like an unwelcome blast of cold air. For this scene, his alien had taken her alien out on a romantic date to an isolated location—Adrian told them to picture a high cliff with a panoramic view and a starry sky with multiple moons. They were supposed to finish the meal and then make dessert of each other.

  He and Ana had spent the morning eating food the special effects department had gone to town on. Much of it had been marshmallows sculpted and air brushed to look like alien foodstuffs, and he was pretty much done with sugar for some time to come. During a break in filming, Ana had looked nearly as green as her bodysuit. He’d thought for a minute there that she was going to have to excuse herself to go throw up. But she’d pulled it together and they’d launched into the end of the scene. Which was to say the on-screen sex.

  He’d griped before in interviews about how total
ly unromantic filming a love scene actually was. But he had to say, doing one with Ana was hot as hell. Her flimsy bodysuit did little to disguise her body, and her alternately soft and athletic curves were delicious beneath his hands. He never got tired of caressing her. What his hands couldn’t feel, his imagination and recent experience in bed with her filled in.

  He couldn’t seem to touch her without the two of them going up in flames, and today had been no different. They’d been panting with real desire as they crawled all over one another, mimicking the act they’d been doing every night for the past week or more. On camera, they fell into the rhythm of their lovemaking without thought and their bodies writhed in perfect simpatico as they rolled across the remains of the alien picnic. Their limbs tangled together, their panted breaths mingled and they locked stares with one another as a sexual firestorm built between them.

  Adrian called a cut, and Jackson abruptly pushed up and away from Ana. He sat upright beside her while she continued to sprawl beside him, catching her breath. He had a raging hard-on. He grabbed a towel from someone, ostensibly to mop the sweat off his face, but mostly he covered his crotch with it as he stood and moved over to a high canvas seat by the playback monitors.

  Ana stumbled to the chair beside his, looking as dazed as she usually did when they came up for air after one of these passionate scenes. He was probably an ass for taking satisfaction in that look in her eyes, like she didn’t quite know where she was. But so be it. He enjoyed kissing her into oblivion.

  The playback looked nearly as hot as it had felt, and Adrian grinned broadly. “I ought to work with first-time actors more often. Ana, love, you take direction like nobody’s business. And Jackson, I have to say this is the best work you’ve ever done. The heat the camera pulls out of the two of you—crazy fantastic.”

  Jackson didn’t want to burst the guy’s bubble. Fine director though he surely was, Adrian’s instructions to pretend to be in lust with each other had nothing to do with the real and towering sexual tension between him and Ana.