Sexy as Sin (Sinful, Montana Book 3)

by Rosalind James

  “You don’t know the first thing about it,” Amanda snapped, any pretense of patient elder-wisdom abandoned. “What do you know about what wealthy people want? About how they live? About any of it? You live in the kind of place I left behind as a student thirty years ago, and you dress like a . . . a . . .” She waved a hand.

  “A crunchy-granola hippie,” Willow filled in for her. “And yet I am unmoved.” Ever since she’d heard Mr. Bennet say that in the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice, she’d wanted to say it herself. Finally, she’d got her chance. “Are you willing to back me? Are you willing to say, ‘I stand behind my partner?’”

  “How can I say that?” Amanda asked. “Why would I say that?”

  All Willow had to tell her was that Rafe Blackstone was her cousin. That if Hollywood’s number one werewolf superhero and Australia’s favorite son happened to meet Nick Dean at some point, heard about his upcoming wedding, and suggested a brilliant Byron Bay caterer, Nick would probably find it in his heart to engage said caterer. But she wasn’t going to do it, for the same reason she hadn’t told Amanda about the connection in the first place.

  She wasn’t Rafe Blackstone’s cousin, or Jace Blackstone’s, either. She was a chef.

  “In that case,” she said, “we’re done here.”

  She stood up with a harsh scrape of chair legs on flagstone, and Amanda said, “Wait.”

  Heart pounding. Blood boiling. She waited.

  “I need your help,” Amanda said. “For the weddings this weekend. We’ll revisit this when things die down, when there isn’t so much talk.”

  “No,” Willow said. “We won’t.”

  Amanda’s lips were a single, tight, bloodless line. “Then leave me your recipes for the dishes you were making. We’ll make copies now, in the office.”

  “I don’t leave my recipes anywhere,” Willow said, shoving her book—her bible, stuffed with all her creations—into her tote. “They go with me. Ring me when you’re ready to back me.” Maybe it was eighty thousand dollars, and she’d never get all of it back. Maybe she’d been stupid. She wasn’t stupid anymore.

  “Cook the food for this first wedding, at least,” Amanda said. “And we’ll talk.”

  Willow settled her tote bag more firmly on her shoulder. It had a rainbow on it, and it had her recipes in it. Her book of magic, and her Ziplock bag with her phone and her wallet.

  So she wasn’t polished. So she wasn’t perfect. So what?

  “Cook it yourself,” she said. And walked out.

  Brett opened the door to find Willow standing on his porch, her rainbow tote over one shoulder and a small duffel in her other hand.

  She didn’t give him a chance to say anything, just lifted the duffel and asked, “Still want me? Also, I may have lost eighty thousand dollars. Take care. Business failure may rub off.”

  Brittle as auto glass after a rollover, a spiderweb of pebbles held together by the most fragile of bonds. If you touched it, it would shatter into a thousand pieces.

  What better time for her to fall apart, though, than when he was here to help her put herself back together? He got his crutches balanced, put a gentle arm around her, kissed her warm, unpainted mouth, smiled into her green eyes, and said, “You bet I still want you. As far as the business failure—I doubt it. It’s what I told you. It’s a curvature in the plan, and the world keeps on turning. Come on in and put your toothbrush on my shelf and those real-deal thongs of yours in my closet, because I can’t wait to open a dresser drawer and see red lace. I have a call in twelve minutes, but when it’s over, we’ll sit on the porch, have some more of your coffee, look at the hills, and talk about that curvature.”

  She headed down the hallway to the bedroom, but turned halfway down it and said, “I just realized I forgot my swim costume. Bugger. I went surfing this morning, and I need to swim again anyway. I’ve got . . .” She clutched at her hair and tugged. “This rage. If I don’t get rid of it, you’ll be changing your mind fast. But I was in a hurry to change and get out of the flat, and I forgot to stuff my bikini into my bag.”

  “We’ll buy you a new one.” She was wearing her green shorts and a purple T-shirt printed with orchids, her hair wasn’t pulled back, and she looked messy and colorful and alive, like a wild woman who’d tossed all caution to the wind. He was a fan. “Meanwhile, I don’t seem to have any neighbors, so I’d suggest you go for it.”

  She hesitated, still. “How many more minutes?”

  He checked his watch. “Six.”

  “I walked out. I need to say it out loud to somebody. You’re elected. Walked out without cooking for the weddings this weekend, and Amanda doesn’t have my recipes.”

  He considered that. “Do you want to give her your recipes?”

  “No. My recipes are my art and my life. And I don’t care if that’s too dramatic. You’re good at listening and watching and knowing where people want to live. I’m good at thinking up delicious things to eat. I can’t help it if your thing pays better.”

  “So that’s your art, your life, and your business, then.”

  She smiled, finally, like the mermaid she’d been born to be. “That too. It was unprofessional, though. And the firm . . .”

  “Seems to me she should have thought more about the firm before now,” he said, “and keeping you in it. We got Azra away from the pressure. How about getting you there?”

  Hesitation, but he could see some wanting to believe in there. He’d swear she was just about on her tiptoes, almost daring to reach for the moon. “One week,” he said. “See how much she bends when you and your recipes are gone. Negotiation’s all about being willing to walk away. Let’s get you walking away.”

  Swimming without anything on felt as amazing as she’d imagined, from the second you dove in. Like the water was more there, somehow, cooler and more liquid than it had ever been before, because there weren’t any barriers anymore. It felt so good, she had to swim all the way across the pool underwater.

  It was hardly different at all from wearing a bikini, and it was completely different. Her hair was in her face, her arms and legs stroked through the water with power, and the pool was surfaced with pebbles, filled with salt water, extravagantly long, irregularly shaped, and crossed by a bridge. She wasn’t in the sea anymore, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t in a tropical paradise.

  She had to do the backstroke, because she had to look at the sky and the clouds and the trees. It was going to rain, the clouds building and billowing, the sun gilding their edges. Banana plants and palms fringed a spa tub in the corner, bird of paradise flowers bloomed with abandon, and bougainvillea in the most vibrant fuchsia covered an entire stone wall. When she got to the end of the pool, she discovered that a waterfall splashed into it, because of course it did. That meant she had to stop under it, shove her hair back, and pretend she was Ariel having a shower. It was brilliant.

  She did every stroke there was, and when the rain began, she let it splash on her bare back as she rose, again and again, in a butterfly stroke, all shoulders and core strength and power. It rained harder, and she ate up another four laps in a fast crawl, then switched to breaststroke so she could watch raindrops hit the water like bullets, the rat-a-tat-tat of them echoing all the way through her body.

  It probably took her a while to see Brett, because she’d been doing the backstroke again. When she did, she stopped swimming and treaded water.

  He wasn’t at the edge of the pool, but he was close. Out from under the sheltered terrace, for some reason, and shouting. She swam over to him, heaved herself out of the pool with one shove of her palms, landed in a crouch, then stood up, opened her arms to the storm, laughed, and shouted, “What? Go back inside, you idiot! I’m fine. I’m brilliant. Look.” She let herself fall back, shrieked at the moment she lost her balance, hit the water hard, and was smiling as she came up again.

  He wasn’t smiling back. He was scowling, in fact. She saw a flash out of the corner of her eye, and after a few seconds, a low
rumble of thunder like some prehistoric beast so big, you could hear it coming from kilometers away. He said, loud enough for her to hear it over the drumming of the rain, “You’re swimming in a thunderstorm! Get inside! Come on!”

  She was still laughing, but shoving herself up and out of the pool again anyway. “Keep your shirt on. It’s kilometers off.” Another flash, a louder crack, not just a rumble this time, and she said, “Right. That was closer. And you come on, mate. You’re going to slip and fall.”

  He kept standing there, though, his hair streaming with water, his T-shirt and shorts clinging to him, his feet bare. He wasn’t going in until she did, so she did it, at least far enough to get under cover. “Hang on,” she told him, loudly, because the rain was beating a tattoo on the tin roof like an entire drum corps. “I’ll run get us towels.”

  He didn’t answer, just turned and headed up to the top level of the terrace, then sat down at the end of the modular sofa like he was tired of being on his crutches, which he probably was. How long had he stood there in the rain? She was walking past when he grabbed her hand and pulled her down to sit beside him. The lightning lit up the darkening sky, a thunderbolt split the day, and she jumped and he didn’t. His gray eyes were as stormy as the day, his dark hair sticking up in places, and his face nothing like civilized. He said, “You scared me. That was unnecessarily reckless.”

  “Probably,” she said. For some reason, her heart had started to beat as hard as the rain on the roof, and she’d gone breathless. “It felt necessary, though. Standing at the edge of . . . danger. Sorry I scared you.”

  “Not good enough,” he said.

  He was always calm, but he wasn’t calm now. And all the adrenaline of the surfing, of standing up on her bike and pedaling as hard as she could, of her confrontations with Azra’s mum and Amanda, was bubbling up inside her, silver streaks of energy that were all but shooting out of the ends of her hair. She turned on the couch, got her hands in Brett’s hair, and kissed him. Open mouth, salt water, and nothing held back.

  His T-shirt was clammy and wet against her, and she yanked it up, but her hands were clumsy. He swore, low and dirty, words he never said, and she shuddered all the way to her core. He had the T-shirt over his head, and her hands were on his shoulders, running over his arms, all the way to his hands. And he looked into her eyes with no smile at all and, slowly as sinning, threaded his fingers through hers, held her hands, kept his gaze on her face, and said nothing.

  Rain and thunder joining together now, jolting their bodies, but the lightning streaks inside her were all Brett. She kissed his mouth again, trailed her lips over to his ear, and whispered, “If you’re that filthy, maybe you should give me that spanking and show me. Here I am, asking for it.”

  The rush when she said it, strong and dark as iron, as his body taut underneath her, and a long, long moment where the tension crackled in the air. And then he said, every word formed perfectly, falling into the darkness between them, “Take off my shorts, and then come lie down with your head on my good leg.”

  Oh, bloody hell. What was she doing? Getting on her knees, that was what, with her heart drumming harder than the rain, working the clammy shorts down his legs and off him, taking care over his incisions. Kissing her way back up again, brushing her lips over the tender, healing red lines on the front of his thigh, down by his knee, at the side of his hip, and then down his lower abdomen. Loving every bit of him, knowing she was seeing what he showed nobody else. Not just the strength and the control. The fragile spots, the ones that would hurt if you didn’t touch them with care, the ones you needed to hold safe in gentle hands.

  He sighed, and there was so much anticipation in it. She kissed his belly, stroked his sides, then went farther, and felt the tension in him rise that much higher as he leapt into her. “Very . . . nice,” he said, still under control. “But not what I asked for.”

  The rain hit the roof and gushed from the gutters, spattered into the pool, and she rose to her feet, got on her knees on the couch beside him, put her cheek onto his good thigh, and lowered herself down.

  He handed her a cushion. “Under your hips.”

  She did it, and then, since he was right there, she ran her tongue over him, and he swore again. And his palm came down on her with a crack.

  She jumped and called out at the suddenness of it, and he asked, “Too hard?”

  “No.” This excitement—it was sharp as lightning. “How many times have I scared you? How many times have I . . . frustrated you?”

  She heard the smile in his voice, right there with the darkness, as he rubbed his palm over the tender flesh where he’d spanked her, making her tingle and shift. “Too many times to count. Starting with the shark, and just about every minute since. You want to pick a number?”

  She didn’t like numbers. She wanted this. “No. I want you to pick one.”

  She expected six. Ten, maybe. “Fifteen,” he said. “Sounds like a real good number. If it hurts, though, tell me. I’ll stop.”

  She wanted so much. She wanted this, and she wanted—she needed—to come, more than she ever had in her life. “Go,” she said.

  She thought she was ready. It still took her by surprise, and she jumped again. His hand didn’t come down as hard this time, and it didn’t hurt. It tingled. Everywhere. He said, “Count. Let’s hear you count them off,” so she did it. It was so hard to focus, but if she stopped saying the words, his hand stopped, too. The tender flesh at the tops of her thighs, the swell of her bottom, one side, then, when she’d got used to it, when she was relaxing into it, the other. Her skin was tingling, and then it was warm, and she was gasping.

  He stopped like he knew it had got too hot. She said, “That’s only . . . uh . . . eleven.”

  His hand again, gentle now, smoothing over her. “Yeah. And it’s enough. Stand up for me, baby. Let’s go inside. You need to be on the bed for this.”

  She was going to explode. Surely a body couldn’t take this much. She said, “Brett. I need . . . I need . . .”

  “I know what you need.” His hand was still moving, spreading that warmth around. “Get up, and I’ll give it to you.”

  The shudder this time went straight down her body, took hold, and tightened, and his hand dove, found her, and gave her a rub. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “You do need it, don’t you? Get up and go on in there.”

  She did it. You could say she was in a daze. When they were standing by the bed, Brett lowered himself down on his back, straight across it, and said, “Come on up here, sweetheart, and let me take care of you.”

  When she straddled him, he sighed. When his hands were on her hips, moving her up his body, she went. And when he held her over his mouth, took her over, and didn’t let her be shy? She called out, and then she kept doing it.

  The woman was going to kill him. At first, he’d nearly died of frustration, and right now? He was—yeah. Dying of frustration.

  But what a way to go. His mouth teasing out every shuddering response from a redheaded witch of a mermaid, his fingers digging into her hips, and her ass still pink from where he’d spanked her. Oh, yeah.

  He’d promised her a long time ago that he could make it last, and it was time to do it. She could have got there in thirty seconds. He wasn’t going to let her. He wanted to wait until she was wrapped around him, and he was plunging into her. He wanted to be selfish, to take all of that for himself, to make her wait for him.

  She hadn’t asked him to stop when he’d been spanking her. Now, she asked him to hurry, and then she asked him some more, and he pretended not to hear her.

  “Brett.” It was a moan. She was rocking helplessly now, keening out her pleasure and her frustration. “Brett, please. Please. Let me come. Do it harder. Please. Please.”

  In answer, he shoved her back and said, “No.”

  Her breasts were rising and falling, her white skin flushed with effort and arousal. He said, “Not until you’re riding me. And not until I say.”

  She was
nearly sobbing now. He should feel bad about that. He didn’t. He was primed like a pump, and so was she.

  When she slid onto him, so wet and so warm and so tight, he had to close his eyes and breathe a minute, and when she wanted to move, he had to hold her there and say, “No. Wait.”

  “I can’t wait.” The words were barely audible. “Brett. Please do it now. I can’t wait anymore. I need you.”

  The words settled somewhere deep inside him, and if it were possible, he spiraled higher. And when he lifted her hips, then pulled her down again, she moaned.

  He tried to focus on what she needed. He did. It was just that he needed to drive into her so badly, that the darkness was coiling inside him, and that every breath she took, every moan she let out, every time she begged, was only making it worse.

  He took it until he couldn’t take anymore, until every muscle was tight and his teeth were clenched. And then he told her, “Put your hands down flat on the bed and ride me the way you need to. Show me what you can do, baby.”

  She did it, because Willow had been made to please, and he pulled her shoulders down, got his mouth around a tender pink nipple, and sucked hard. And she called his name, sobbed some words he’d never heard her say, and came apart like sparklers igniting. Like fireworks exploding. Like the Fourth of July.

  So good it hurt. So hot it burned.

  It was too much. It would never be enough.

  He was never, ever going to let her go.

  The rain was still hitting the roof, but more gently now. The air had cooled, and Willow moved reluctantly out of Brett’s arms and down to the foot of the bed, where she pulled up a soft throw that had probably come from some animal that lived only on the highest slopes of the Himalayas, and whose undercoat was shorn once every three years by shamans. She draped it over both of them anyway and went back to her spot. Her head on Brett’s chest, and his hand stroking down her back, all the way to her bottom, and lingering there.