by Jane Godman
A moan escaped her lips as his fingers circled her tight nipples. Caressing her neck with his mouth, he gripped one hard bud with his thumb and forefinger. The contrast between the soft touch of his mouth and the half pleasurable, half painful tug of his fingers pushed aside the last shreds of her control.
“Bryce...” His name was a ragged cry on her lips.
He lifted his head with a glinting smile. “I like it when you say my name that way. Sounds like you can’t get enough of me.”
He covered her breasts with his hands, his fingers returning to torment her nipples as she writhed against him. As he trailed them down her body, she lifted her hips, parting her thighs and arching to his touch. With tormenting delicacy, he teased her, lightly tracing the narrow slit with one fingertip. As he pressed his thumb inside her, his fingers circled the hard, aching bud of her clitoris, sending her into a frenzy of delight.
As he moved into position between her thighs, she heard the sound of a condom wrapper tearing and felt Bryce reach between their bodies. Then his thick length was nudging her, spreading her sensitized folds apart as she gazed at him in a haze of pure rapture.
When he was fully seated inside her, he held still for a moment, staring down at her. Placing a hand on each side of her face, he kissed her with a tenderness that stunned her. Then he began to move. Strong, steady thrusts sent tension powering through her. How had she lived without knowing what she needed was Bryce filling her, pumping into her, spreading molten heat out from her core to every part of her body?
“Bryce... Oh...” She jerked upward as he held her hips.
“You feel so good, Steffi.” His strangled growl had her writhing against him, driving him deeper. “So hot and tight.”
He caressed nerve endings she had never known existed. This wasn’t just sex. Bryce was staking a claim to her and she was responding by giving him everything she had. She knew, with absolute certainty, that nothing would ever again feel as good as Bryce thrusting inside her, impaling her with his heat and strength, stealing away every thought except those of him.
As he powered her toward climax, his lips returned to cover hers and his hips moved in a rhythm that was almost brutal in its intensity. Sensations began to flame through her. Everything felt more. Realer. More intense. More perfect. The feel of her muscles tightening around him with a strong, rhythmic pulse heightened the feeling and she gripped his shoulders, calling out his name.
His kiss claimed her mouth as she felt him climax. He drove into her deep and hard, his groan echoing into the kiss as he shuddered in time with her. Her nails pierced his skin, and her legs tightened around his hips as she lost herself in him. To hell with the rest of the world. In that moment nothing mattered except Bryce and how he made her feel.
* * *
“Eat.” Bryce pointed to the food with what he hoped was an authoritative expression.
The diner was almost empty and he had selected a quiet booth from which he could watch the door. He didn’t think they had been followed from the hotel, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Sergei’s gun was tucked into his jacket pocket and Steffi carried the pepper spray. This place advertised the best breakfast in town and Steffi was eyeing the huge plate in front of her with an expression of dismay.
She looked up at him with a smile. “Are you this forceful with every woman you—” she caught herself up with a gasp, clearly too embarrassed to finish the sentence.
“Every woman I what?” he asked, enjoying the look of delicious confusion on her face. “Have red-hot, toe-curling sex with?”
She speared a piece of bacon. “Something like that.” Her face flushed to a deep rose color. Bryce decided he liked making her blush.
“I don’t usually stick around for breakfast.” He winced. What kind of creep did that make him sound like? I sleep around, but don’t worry... I run out on my partners before we get to share a meal together. Yeah, that’s the kind of guy I am. “That came out wrong.”
Steffi studied him thoughtfully. “I think it came out truthful. And it’s okay.”
“What is?” He took a slug of coffee, wondering where this conversation was going.
“I understand that this doesn’t mean anything.” The blush was still there, but her gaze was steady on his.
“Do you?” Because I sure as hell don’t.
She gave a soft laugh. “People think that because I’m a movie star I must be mega-experienced.” She bent her head over her plate, toying with her food. “I’m sure you noticed that I’m not. But I’m not naive, either.” She took a deep breath. “Sex with you is amazing, Bryce. But we both know sex is all it is.”
“Do we?” He kept his voice neutral, trying not to make the question into a raging demand for more information.
She nodded, seeming to gain confidence from his words. “It would be silly to think anything else, wouldn’t it? We live different lives. You don’t do anything other than one-night stands. I don’t even do that most of the time. So even if we get out of this alive, neither of us wants anything more than to get our toes curled.” She scooped up a forkful of scrambled egg, concentrated on eating it, then looked back up at him. “Right?”
“I guess not.” He maintained his noncommittal tone.
Her smile was mischievous. “My toes are enjoying themselves.”
He hoped she couldn’t see how much effort it took to return the smile. “Mine, too. Now eat.”
What was his problem? He should be grateful to her. Wasn’t she giving him his own speech? Making things easy for him? She hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true. And there was so much more to it. Relationships weren’t for him. Until he was able to straighten his head out, they never would be for him. He had known that ever since he had come back from Afghanistan. He had returned from that nightmare alive, but changed in ways that only someone else who had been through it could understand. The only way he could describe it was that the best part of him had died that day. What was left was a shell. A shell that performed all the functions of his former self, but without being able to take any joy or pleasure in life.
But something had changed again since he had met Steffi. Last night he had watched her as she slept. Watching her soothed him. Her lashes had formed dark crescents on her pale cheeks. Her brows were twin black arches with a slight upward slant. He had studied her delicate features, taking each in turn. When he first met her, he had decided she wasn’t beautiful. Now he thought she was the most stunning woman he had ever seen. As she slept, her glorious, generous mouth had curved into a slight smile and Bryce, recalling how that mouth felt on his, how it felt wrapped around his erection, had grown hard all over again at the memory.
Steffi was incredible. Her need for him matched his desire for her. What they had was unique, lighting up the air between them. He should accept this time together for what it was, a never-to-be-repeated erotic fantasy. So why, when she said this was a no-strings situation, did he suddenly want more? And why did what he wanted from her mean more than sex?
The problem was, Bryce was finding for the first time in his life that a one-off wasn’t enough. Not with Steffi. But he couldn’t commit to forever. He needed to get that simple truth through to his brain before things got messy. This fight against Walter Sullivan was a one-time-only deal. Once Steffi was free and clear, Bryce was walking away from this situation and anything like it. He was going back to Stillwater, back to routine, back to his small-town, easy life. So far he had coped with the pressure of what was happening to him and Steffi. More than coped. He had treated this like one of his missions in Afghanistan and gone about it with his old strength and determination. The panic attacks—pounding heart, tunnel vision, shaking hands, the inexplicable feeling that he couldn’t make even the simplest decision—had stayed away. Was that forever? He hoped so, but there were no guarantees.
At first, he had worried about this
challenge. Would he cope face-to-face with a new assailant? Or would he panic and remember the last time he had been in danger? Until he’d faced Walter Sullivan and his thugs, he wouldn’t have known the answer to that question. Now he knew he could face Alexei, Sergei, Erik or any other of the Russians and match them for skill and aggression. His overriding ambition was to get his hands around Walter’s throat and not let go until the light was completely gone from those coldly smiling eyes.
Last night, after watching Steffi, he had drifted off to sleep. He had a talent for panicking while asleep. His dreams were usually horror-filled, turbo-charged nightmares of blood and gore with a soundtrack of explosions and shouts of terror. Given a choice, Bryce preferred insomnia. Yet, with Steffi next to him, he had slept deeply and his slumber had been undisturbed by dreams.
In his darkest moments, Bryce had thought about ending it all. Drinking enough cheap whiskey so that placing the barrel of his gun against his temple became the easy option. Anything to end the sense of being tainted by his experiences. To drive away the memories of the torn-apart bodies of his friends. At least a bullet to the brain would take away the feeling that all he would ever be from now on was a target. As he recalled that feeling, Steffi indicated her empty plate with a glint of playfulness in her expression.
“See how obedient I am?”
The dark thoughts splintered into a thousand pieces. Her smile reminded him that life was worth living. He probed the impression further and realized with relief that the days of wanting to self-destruct were over. When had that happened? Was this newfound appreciation of life Steffi-related? He had a feeling it was. This seemed to be a morning for revelations. Maybe he should just stop the angst, enjoy her company and worry about what was going on inside his head and heart once they found that damn cell phone.
It felt like a plan...another plan. “If Walter had his guys watching your place, it’s likely he has them watching Greg’s apartment, as well.”
“It may not be as easy for him to observe us going into Greg’s building,” Steffi said. “Security in that apartment block is really tight. It’s the reason many actors choose to live there.”
“Walter got someone in there to kill Greg and the girl he was with,” Bryce reminded her.
“Yes, but they had to have gotten in and out again real fast. Anyone hanging around Silverlight Towers would be noticed by the security team. I’ve been stopped a few times myself and Greg had me on his list of approved visitors.”
“If that’s the case, how easy will it be for us to get in this time?” He watched her animated features, drinking in the details of her face as she talked. He could watch her forever. Last night it had been while she slept. Now he found the same level of pleasure in watching her during wakefulness. He had never experienced this utter fascination with another human being before. Perhaps he was being drawn by the quality that had gotten her to the top of her profession. It was hardly surprising that one of the finest actresses of her day should be fascinating.
“I think we should rethink our dress code for this one.” He raised a brow at her, but she didn’t elaborate.
“Are you absolutely sure that the apartment is still empty? I don’t want to turn up only to find out that there is already a tenant.”
“I called the leasing agency. The apartment is still empty.” The corners of her mouth turned down. “The girl I spoke to told me the police only recently released it back to them, and now no one wants to rent the place where two people died.”
Bryce took her hand and she glanced down with a brief look of surprise, before returning the clasp of his fingers. “Do you have a fob for the underground garage?” he asked.
“And my key to Greg’s apartment, of course.” The corners of her mouth turned down. “Although I don’t think the cell phone will be there.”
“Nor do I.” Bryce got to his feet. “But it’s another place to tick off our list.”
“We have a list?” As Steffi followed him out to the car, he was pleased to see she was no longer limping. “Why didn’t I know about that?”
“There is no list.” He held open the passenger door so that she could get in. “It just sounds better than admitting we don’t know what the hell to do next.”
Chapter 11
“Bliss. The last message Greg sent me before he died was that single word followed by those numbers. 2713,” Steffi said. “It must have meant something.”
“Could the word bliss have been an expression about his state of mind?” Bryce maneuvered the car through the early-evening traffic toward Greg’s apartment building.
It was something she had already considered. “For the sake of a few extra characters, why not just type ‘I’m happy’? And given everything that was going on with him, he clearly wasn’t happy. He was angry enough to push Walter into a meeting.”
“Bliss wasn’t a word you’d heard him use before in another context?” The streets were busy and Bryce kept his eyes on the traffic. “It didn’t have a connection to something the two of you had in common? Something in your childhood, maybe? Or one of your movies?”
Steffi wrinkled her nose in an effort to remember, although she had already been over and over this. “It doesn’t mean anything to me. At the time I thought it was a random word, a mistake. Possibly it was a message meant for someone else, or that Greg meant to send me a different message and got distracted halfway through. Because he died so soon after sending it, it’s assumed a significance to me that might not have been his intention.” She hunched one shoulder as she turned to view the familiar route. “I’ve spent way too much time thinking about it.”
“Tell me about Greg.” Bryce’s voice was low and sympathetic.
She felt a smile tug at the corners of her mouth. “He was my big brother. Even though we hadn’t seen each other for so long, he slipped back into that position very easily. Right away, I had someone who was there for me, unconditionally.” Strangely, it didn’t feel awkward opening up to Bryce this way. Normally, she’d have run a mile from a personal conversation of this kind. “Until it happened, I wasn’t aware I needed that. I mean, I’d made my way in life, pretty successfully. It was safe to say my bank balance was healthy. I’d already learned the hard way how to see off the inevitable creeps who wanted to get to know me because of the movie star persona. I couldn’t imagine why I’d need someone to have my back. But as soon as Greg was there, I didn’t know how I’d ever gotten along without him. That sounds corny, I know.”
“It’s how being a brother works,” Bryce said.
“Of course you have a brother, too.” She turned her head to view his profile.
“I have two brothers. Vincente is my half brother. We have the same father, but different mothers. Then there’s Cameron—he’s the middle brother. We have the same mother and father.” There was something about the way he spoke of Cameron that was different. She sensed a deep affection for the brother she hadn’t met, as though there was a wealth of untold memories when Bryce said his name. “For a long time, Vincente and I didn’t have the best relationship. It’s hard to say what went wrong. I guess it started during our childhood and neither of us ever did anything as we grew up to put things right. It took a nasty situation just recently, when Cameron and Laurie—who is now his wife—were in danger, to bring the three of us together. We finally saw that blood means more than any petty squabbles or jealousies.”
“So we both know how it feels to find a brother we lost.”
A corner of his mouth tilted up in the way she loved. Loved? Where did that come from?
“I guess so.”
She returned to her memories. “Greg was clever and witty and he made me laugh. I mean, he could just look at me and make me crack up at totally the wrong moment. When we were on set together, he was lethal. He made me realize I didn’t have much fun in my life before he came back into it.
I’d been on this work treadmill. Trying to get to the top, then once I was there, being determined to dig in and stay there no matter what.”
“Why was that?” Bryce asked. “What made you so driven?”
“Are you analyzing me?” She asked the question without heat, even with a trace of humor.
He shrugged. “Just curious about what makes the great Anya Moretti tick.”
“The great Anya Moretti.” She repeated the words slowly. “That’s the whole point. She’s a facade. She isn’t me. I don’t need anyone else to analyze me. I can do it myself. Anya Moretti is who I hide behind. Success is my sanctuary.”
They had reached Silverlight Towers, the great, gleaming apartment block that had been Greg’s home. Bryce used the fob Steffi had given him to the underground parking lot. While he waited for the doors to open, he flicked a glance her way. “Fame is the attic no one can drag you out of?”
As he turned away again, she gazed at the side view of his face, stunned that anyone, least of all Bryce, with his tough exterior, would understand. He couldn’t know how powerful the words he had just spoken were. He had distilled her whole life into that sentence. All she had ever wanted to do was build a wall around herself, so she didn’t have to let other people in. Her life could have gone in a totally different direction. She supposed she could have become the ultimate recluse. After the death of her parents, shutting out the world and living alone on a small farm with the animals she loved had been the fantasy world into which she had retreated. Although she had no pets as an adult, her love of animals had always been one of the strongest forces in her life. If she could, she’d have filled her home with as many as she could. Since her lifestyle didn’t allow for that, she compensated by using her money to maintain an animal charity.
As she grew up, her desire for solitude often still seemed like an ideal world. Instead, her acting ability had shone through from an early age. She had been singled out at school, and her adoptive parents had sent her to a prestigious dramatic arts academy. How they had found the money, she never knew. But from that moment on, the barriers she built around herself had been those of stardom. She had made herself untouchable in her own way. Her remoteness hadn’t been of the physical sort; it had been based on the power of celebrity.