“Not even my passkey?”
He paused an infinitesimal blink too long.
“It would make the difference, right?” She pulled away from him enough to tug the strap out from where it was trapped inside the uniform. She dragged it over her head. “Here. Use it, then destroy it. I’ll file a report saying it was stolen. Covers me from unlawful entry if they tie it to the break-in. If security looks at who was in this room, or gets any suspicions where you’re concerned, it won’t matter because you’ll be long gone by then. Right?”
He just stared at her.
“Will it help you or not? You don’t want me in the mix, fine. But let me at least help you get whatever it was you came here for.”
“Why?” he asked quietly, his gaze never wavering.
She couldn’t tell him the truth. Couldn’t tell him that he’d gotten to her, that she was all but a quivering mass of needs and wants at this point and wouldn’t have walked away even if she could have recovered whatever part of her brain she’d obviously lost from the moment he’d rolled over in bed, half-naked, and spoken to her. It was wrong, it was stupid, it was the epitome of foolishness, but he was this close to kissing her and, dammit, she wanted—no, needed—to know what it was like to be kissed by Simon Lassiter. Which was a stepping stone away from knowing what it was like to be taken by Simon Lassiter. Shallow? Maybe. Stupid? Surely.
And yet, there she stood, wanting, willing him to lower his mouth, dammit, and just get it over with.
Maybe then she’d get her rationality back and walk away.
Maybe.
“I don’t know,” she lied. Better to lie than make herself any more the fool than she already was.
“What if I’m the bad guy in this? What if you’re putting your loyalty in the wrong hands?”
“Like you did, you mean? You said that was because you didn’t follow your gut. I am following mine.” And the moment she said it, she knew she spoke the absolute truth. Whether her gut was purely hormone-fueled remained to be seen. She couldn’t sort that part out at the moment, because he’d shifted his hands from where they palmed her waist again, sliding them down to her hips and sinking his fingertips into the softness there.
She looked up into his eyes. “Are you the bad guy?”
His fingers dug deeper, he pulled her a fraction closer. “Only with you.”
“And if I’m agreeing to help, of my own free will? Does that still make you the bad guy?”
“Sophie—”
Before he could say another word, she screwed up the rest of her courage, moved in closer still and blurted, “Now, are you ever going to kiss me?”
His fingers dug in even deeper and he pulled her reflexively closer until their bodies met. And she knew, without any lingering doubts, that those smoldering looks were quite real. Well, well. Will miracles never cease.
“No,” he said, at length, jaw tight. Rigid even. And it wasn’t the only part of him that was rigid…
She just smiled up at him.
He swore. Then crushed his mouth to hers.
8
SHE TASTED SO DAMN GOOD. Better than he’d imagined. And he realized now just how much he’d been imagining this moment. Wanting this moment. She took him, closed her mouth over his, and he was instantly lost in her. She slid her hands through his arms, around his waist, up his back, bringing her gloriously soft body fully against his far harder one as he plundered the depths of her sweet, sweet mouth. He groaned, his hips moving into hers, instinctively seeking what he needed, wanted. Demanded. She moaned, and moved back.
The lust that punched through him was as powerful as it was leveling. The primal need to take, conquer, possess, was something he’d never once felt in his life. Not like this, never like this. The urge so basic, so elemental. So overwhelming. It was a little insane. Hell, his whole life was insane. Nothing made sense any longer. So much was at stake. And all he could think about was sinking more of him into all of her.
From the moment he’d woken up to find her in his room, she’d been a distraction. She wasn’t like any woman he’d ever met. Frustrating, compelling, intoxicating. He wanted her. Like he wanted his next breath. He never let himself want anything. Not like this. She’d asked if the situation was desperate. It sure as bloody hell felt that way right that very second. He should be thinking about the Shay, and only that, but all he could think about was having her, taking her. Desperate didn’t begin to cover it.
He ripped his mouth from hers, breathing heavily. She bit his chin, slid her hands higher up his back and he wrapped his hand into her hair and pressed her cheek against his shoulder, holding her tight, preventing her from doing anything else until he got some sense of his equilibrium back. Some sense of any kind back. What in the hell was he doing?
“Sophie, this isn’t helping matters any. We can’t—I can’t—”
“Why?” she asked, her voice muffled against his neck, the warmth of her breath alone making his body throb and jump. Why, indeed.
“It wouldn’t serve either of us any purpose,” he said, which was perfectly true. And didn’t diminish his desire in the slightest.
She tipped her face up to his. “Does everything have to have a purpose?”
His body was right on board with that line of reasoning. He struggled to rise above those baser demands. “No, but this seems particularly counterproductive.”
“To your mission, you mean?”
“To…anything. Yes, to my reason for being here, but yes to every other reason as well.” He needed to set her away from him, step back. But then he’d just see her in that ridiculous excuse for a uniform and fling her on the nearest bed. “I’m here for a short time, you’re permanent, and nothing is going to change that. I’m not one to pursue things just because they’re in front of me.”
“I’m not, either,” she said, sounding quite sincere.
“Well, then?”
“I haven’t been behaving normally all day. Why start now?” She smiled then. “I’m certainly undermining any position I might have had to give Delia a lecture on the consequences of impulsive behavior, but I’ll deal with that when the time comes.”
He framed her face, felt her soft hair curl around his finger. His body responded by growing that much harder and he felt his throat go dry from the need to taste her again. He was like a starving man, and there was only one thing that would sate his appetite. “Does this have something to do with that? With losing your friend to marriage?” Keep talking, he schooled himself. Until you can let her go.
“I’m not losing my friend to marriage, I’m losing her to the Wingate family, and that process started some time ago. I’m not any happier about it now, but it certainly isn’t provoking me to aberrant behavior.”
Aberrant behavior. That was certainly one way to sum up this entire morning. “Do you envy her her fling last night, then?”
“No, of course not.”
But he noticed she had looked away then.
He shifted her face back to his and looked into her eyes. “Never play poker,” he advised.
“Maybe I do envy her a little,” she admitted. “Not the cheating part. I would never do that. But the abandon, maybe. The throwing caution to the wind and just doing what felt right. Without the tequila, of course. I wouldn’t want any regrets.”
“No, of course not.”
She looked directly into his eyes then and his own dry smile was reflected in her own. “I’m well aware this falls squarely under the heading of being careful what you wish for.” She reached up and covered his hand with her own, pressing his palm more tightly against her cheek. “But that doesn’t keep me from wishing, all the same.”
“Why” he asked, quite seriously. “Simply for the thrill?”
She slid her hand from his and touched her fingers to his face. He felt his heart tighten, literally, inside his chest.
“I’m not a thrill seeker, Simon. I’m…I’m the good girl. The one who does the right thing. Helps her friends, focuse
s on her career. Makes the smart decisions. But just this once…” She trailed off, sighed.
“Just this once…what?” he prodded, knowing he should let it go, but unable to do the smart thing, either.
“I want to go after what I want, even if the only reason is because I just want to. No smart deliberations, no careful analysis, just pure, unadulterated immediate gratification.”
Now more than his heart tightened. “And then what?”
“I don’t know. I guess…I want that not to matter either, for once. Can’t I just reach out and take what’s in front of me, and damn the consequences?”
She traced her fingers down his cheek, along his jaw, and he felt the trembling. She was trembling.
“Can’t you, Simon?”
He turned his head so that her hand brushed across his lips, pulled a fingertip between his lips…and sucked on it. It was a short, dark slide into the whirlpool, and he was rapidly losing whatever control he had that would prevent him from taking that primal dive. Headfirst.
She gasped, and he let her finger slide from his mouth…and replaced it with her lips. She immediately opened to him, and he slid his tongue into her mouth, tasting, reveling…sinking deeper, faster.
Her arms went around his neck, her fingers slid up into his hair, her nails raking his scalp as she urged his mouth closer, tighter, took his tongue deeper.
He groaned from somewhere deep inside his chest…and let her. Pulling her tightly into his arms, he shifted them both until her back was against the wall next to the bathroom door. If it wasn’t for the damn dress, he’d have slid her higher, wrapped her legs around his waist. As it was, he settled for sinking his hips into her perfectly soft ones. She groaned this time, and he was right on the verge of spinning them both around and finding the bed…or the floor, when sanity finally prevailed. He had one chance to fix what he’d done…. What the hell did he think he was doing?
He slid his mouth from hers, then tucked her close against his shoulder, burying his face in her hair while he tried to regain what was left of his perspective. “Sophie, I shouldn’t have, we—”
“It’s okay,” she said, her voice husky and sexy as hell. “I know. I…I know.”
He could feel her heart pound against his chest and felt his own twist a little. Why couldn’t things be uncomplicated? Consenting adults who just wanted to go for the moment. But he’d already made one mistake that had sent him here in the first place. The last thing he was going to do was compound that by making another. And while taking Sophie Maplethorpe might be about the finest way to spend an afternoon that he could think of, there was no question it would be a mistake. And it wasn’t just her best interests he was looking out for. He was in way over his head here…and he’d never so much as had to tread water before in his life. Best to wade right back out, right now.
“If it’s of any comfort,” he said, at length, “I’d prefer not to let you go. I’d much rather my agenda for the day have nothing to do with Tolliver and that velvet case, and everything to do with granting you your wish for flinging with abandon.”
He felt rather than heard her responding sigh. “That does sound like a much better way to spend the day.” Her tone was resigned.
He brushed her curls back from her forehead, wishing he could stem the wave of regret. “And then the day would end, and I would need to head home.”
“Mmm,” she said.
“Mmm, indeed.” He framed her face with his hands, her curls dancing over his fingers. “And I’m afraid I wouldn’t like that part at all.”
“No,” she said, her voice low, more subdued than he’d ever heard it. “Not at all.”
“So, we’re in agreement, then. No flinging, with or without abandon.”
She sighed a little, and pressed her cheek into his palm. “I suppose not.”
“I’m not happy about it,” he added, not making the slightest effort to release her. “Me, either.”
And then she lifted her gaze to his, those soft gray eyes so transparent with want and need—of him. Her lips parted, and waiting.
And his mouth was on hers again before he could question the action, much less the dangerous line he was crossing. Leaping past, in fact.
Her hands were instantly clutching fistfuls of his shirt, and she clung to him as he took the kiss deeper. He moaned, or she did, perhaps they both did. He quickly lost any sense of place, or time. It was only when he tried to pull her thighs up to brace against his that they were both caught up short by the limitations of her dress.
She was already unbuttoning his shirt, but they were both forced to pause when the skirt of her uniform refused to slide so much as an inch upward.
“Cut it off,” she demanded while tugging his shirt from his waistband.
The adamant demand made him chuckle.
“If you were in the male equivalent of this get-up right now, trust me, you wouldn’t be laughing.”
“Oh, I agree. And I’ve never wished more that I was the swashbuckling hero with a knife strapped to his hip, so I could grant your demand.”
“You have a gun strapped to your ankle,” she said, panting. “So it wasn’t an entirely unreasonable request.”
“I thought you weren’t a thrill seeker.”
“I could name a dozen reasons just off the top of my head that would make any woman want to have you slice the clothes right off her that have nothing to do with your job description.” She flipped open another button. “Although if there is an adrenaline rush anything close to this that comes with the job you do, then go ahead and sign me up full-time.”
“Generally, it’s not all that exciting.” He pressed his body closer to hers, effectively stopping her attempts to undress him. He waited until she lifted her gaze to his. “I must admit, though, there’s never been a rush quite like you.”
She went soft then. “Oh, Simon.”
“I have a job to do here, Sophie. And all I can think about is what I’d like to do to you.”
His words made her lips part and his gaze dipped to her mouth, wanting nothing so much as to sink himself into it again. And again. And then far beyond her mouth.
“Maybe that’s all the purpose we need,” she said.
“You’re not helping me regain control of the situation here.”
She smiled a little then, and his heart tipped further. “And you’re not helping me get you out of this shirt. We all have our burdens to bear.”
“For someone who doesn’t typically fling, you’ve taken to the lifestyle quite famously, I’ll have you know.”
“Well, I’m rather indecently inspired.”
He groaned and tipped his head to hers. “First I turn you to a life of crime, now I’m inspiring indecency.”
“I turned myself to crime, if you recall, and as for the indecency, well, that will only be a crime if you don’t follow through with what you started.”
“Sophie—”
“Simon.”
When he simply shook his head, she finally used her nose to nudge up his chin so he was looking at her again. “Do you really think we’re not going to end up naked at some point?”
“I don’t know what to think, except—”
“How about I go retrieve that velvet box. Then, when I come back, we can discuss things further. Once you have what you’ve come here for, then anything else we decide is just about what we want. Right?”
He looked into sparkling eyes set into such a perfectly innocent-looking face, processing the very un-innocent proposal she was making…and finding it almost impossible to say no. In fact, it sounded like the most splendid proposal ever. Until he allowed himself to get to the part where he’d have to leave her to head back to England. Leaving her now, half-dressed in this maid uniform was already proving to be next to impossible. How much harder would it be to leave the soft warmth of all of her?
“We’ll have regrets,” he said.
“Almost definitely.”
“Then why do it?”
“Because I’ll regret more not following through. I don’t feel like this often. Okay, ever. And I realize we may be all wrapped up in the external drama of our chance encounter, and maybe that’s the fuel behind all of this. But that’s how it happened. And here we are. And now…now I want what I want. I’d have regrets either way.”
“Even if having more just makes you want more?”
“See, you say things like that to me and how am I supposed to walk away without even trying to find out what might be?”
“Nothing can be. We’re relative strangers, caught up in an otherwise inexplicable situation, who happen to discover there is a little chemistry—”
“A little chemistry,” she echoed, trailing soft fingertips over his skin.
“Sophie.”
“Simon.”
He sighed. Again. “The thing is, I’ve never met anyone like you. You say the damnedest things, and you somehow manage to engage all of my attention, and you look like this Venetian goddess or something—”
Now she sighed, and it was quite languorous and heartfelt. “Seriously, you keep up with that and I’m packing myself in your suitcase and going back to England with you.”
And that’s when he knew just how serious, how dangerous, she’d truly become to him. Because, even teasingly, the very idea of it had his pulse leaping, and this kernel of hope blooming. He was not the pulse-leaping, hope-blooming type. He was steady, and forward moving, and all about getting the job done and done well. Somewhere in there he supposed he’d hoped he’d stumble across someone who would turn both his head and his heart, and then be willing to put up with him and his unusual lifestyle…but he’d never expected to stumble quite like this.
And he’d never expected anything like her.
“Whatever am I to do about you?” he asked, unsure if he was asking her…or himself.
“You’re to go and find me a proper-fitting maid uniform, then we’re going to retrieve that box. Then, if I have my way, we’re going to fling. With absolute abandon.” She toyed with the remaining closed buttons to his shirt.
Simon Says... Page 9