“Christ.” His lips curled at the edges in a devastating smile, one that tightened her chest in a way she didn’t expect, and then he leaned in and kissed her. “You can’t say things like that to me.” He breathed hot over her lips. “I told you I haven’t had sex in a while. I’m like a teenager right now. You keep that up and I’m going to be attacking you again in a matter of minutes.”
Oh hell yes . . .
She tightened her grip on his elbow and lifted her lips to his, sliding her knee between his so his erection pressed against her thigh. “No one’s stopping you.”
He leaned forward and kissed her again. And knowing she had him, that he wasn’t going anywhere tonight but exactly where she planned to lead him, she let him taste his fill, let him kiss her sweetly. Then she smiled when he drew back and stared deep into his eyes.
“This time, though,” she whispered, “I was thinking you could try out some of those bull-man moves.”
His eyes darkened. “Before or after the lights went out?”
“Your choice.”
A primal groan echoed from his chest. Then he rolled her onto her back and kissed her. Hard. “Please tell me that wasn’t just a three-pack of condoms in your drawer.”
She grinned up at him. “It was a dozen. And it was a new box.”
“Eleven might be enough. But I doubt it. Especially if you expect me to play bull man tonight.”
Her laughter echoed through the room as he lowered his head and nipped at her throat. But it turned to a groan when he found her mouth again and kissed her. A groan she didn’t dare hold back from a man she wasn’t even close to being done with.
Andrew Renwick jerked awake at the sound of his cell phone buzzing on the nightstand and quickly grabbed it so it wouldn’t wake Maureen. The number on the screen sent his blood pressure straight through the roof.
“Oh, Andy. Let it go to voice mail,” Maureen groaned into her pillow at his side.
He ran a hand over her arm and then pushed out of bed. “I can’t. It’s Harper. I have to take it.”
Maureen sighed and shifted her head the other direction with a mumbled, “Tell her hi from me.”
Drawing a calming breath, Andy hit “Answer,” stepped out into the hall of his West Hills home, and lifted the phone to his ear. “Yes. I’m here.”
“You son of a bitch. He struck again.”
Andy’s heart dropped like a stone into his belly. “When?”
“Tonight. At the auction. He took the girl before it even started.”
Relief filled his chest, but he knew better than to let it show in his voice. Moving quickly down the stairs, he crossed into his home office, shut the door and locked it, then moved to his desk. “Did anyone see him?”
“They were all in masks,” he growled.
Andy closed his eyes and perched his elbow on his desk. Of course they were all in masks. Privacy for the buyers was the point.
“There was one person we identified. She snuck into the party through the kitchen.”
Andy’s heart nearly stopped, and his head came up. Please, no . . .
“She’s become a liability, Renwick. Just like her father.”
“No.” He pushed to his feet. He might be guilty of a great many things, but he wasn’t going to let his mistakes hurt Harper. “I-I’ll talk to her. I’ll make sure she backs off.”
“If she’s working with him, we have no problem killing her, just as we plan to kill him.”
“That isn’t the case. I promise. I-I’m sure she was looking for him, that’s all. She wouldn’t help someone like him. She’s convinced he’s a predator.”
“You’d better hope you’re right because if you’re wrong, she won’t be the only one we come after.”
Andy swallowed hard, knowing he meant every word he said and that he wasn’t just threatening Andy’s life, he was threatening Maureen’s as well.
“Bring me confirmation of Robin Hood’s identity. I’m tired of waiting.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“All I’ve got is chocolate.”
From his spot sprawled on the kitchen floor, leaning back against the cupboards in nothing but his slacks, Rusty watched Harper standing in front of the open freezer door, the interior light illuminating her shapely legs as she turned and looked down at him.
“Chocolate’s great.”
She shut the freezer door, the tails of his purple dress shirt fluttering around her thighs, and grabbed two spoons from a drawer. Dropping to her butt beside him on the hardwood, she handed him a spoon and tugged the top off the ice cream carton. “God, I’m famished.”
So was he. And he was hoping the sugar would give him the energy hit he needed because he wasn’t anywhere near ready to fall asleep.
She tipped the carton his way, and he dipped his spoon in for a scoop, loving the way she smiled up at him in the moonlight. Loving even more the way she looked right now—delightfully rumpled and sexually satisfied.
“What are you smirking at?” she asked as he savored the ice cream.
“You. In my shirt.”
She scooped up a bite of the ice cream. “It’s way more comfortable than that dress. And it was the closest thing I could find.”
“Uh-huh.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t read anything into it.”
“A guy’s shirt on a woman’s naked body is like a flag on a conquered fortress.”
She shook her head and grinned even wider. “Oh my God, that’s so sexist.”
“It’s true.” He leaned close and pressed his lips against her cold and sugary ones. “It’s also sexy as hell.”
She chuckled and went back to eating her ice cream. “Speaking of sexy as hell.” She glanced at him as he scooped up another bite. “You were quite the animal tonight.”
“You told me to be the bull man.”
She bit into her lip and glanced at his mouth. “Yes, I did.” Something hot smoldered in her eyes. A fire he sensed was not the least bit extinguished. Thank God . . .
“But I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about in general.” She glanced sideways at him and licked her spoon. “You said it’s been a while for you. And I’m kinda curious . . . just how long is ‘a while’?”
He tensed, even though he’d known there was a good chance this topic would come up.
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” she said quickly, looking down at the ice cream in her lap. “I mean, it’s none of my business. Forget I said anything.”
She was nervous. Seeing how she suddenly wouldn’t meet his eyes relaxed him in a way he didn’t expect.
“Harper.” He reached for her hand, curling his fingers around hers and drawing their entwined fingers over to his thigh so she would know he wasn’t upset. “It’s fine if you want to ask. I’m the one who brought it up.”
“Yes, but you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. That’s like a fourth-date kind of question, and this is just . . .” Her brows drew together as she looked down at their hands. “Well, this isn’t even a date. It’s . . .”
When her lips thinned and her voice trailed off again, he knew what she was thinking and afraid to say. “Just sex?”
Slowly, her hazel eyes lifted to his. “Well, yeah.”
“Really good sex.”
She smirked. “Yeah, that too.”
He tightened his hand around hers. “It’s probably reckless, considering how we met and what happened tonight, but I’m kinda hoping it’s more than just really good sex.”
“You are?”
Oh, man, he really liked that hopeful lift to her sexy little voice. And the way she was looking at him . . . Desire flared in his blood all over again. A desire he definitely wasn’t close to extinguishing.
“Absolutely.” He leaned her way and brushed his lips over hers. “I’m crazy about you, Harper Blake. I tried not to be. I tried to keep my distance from you, but you’ve been stuck in my head since our very first meeting.”
“
I have?”
“You absolutely have.”
She drew in a breath and said, “You’ve been stuck in my head since then as well. It’s more than a little irritating.”
He chuckled, relaxing even further with her admission.
“And I really wasn’t trying to pry into something I wasn’t willing to share myself,” she said. “I know ‘a while’ for a guy is anywhere from a few days to a month, tops. It’s just that I haven’t been with anyone in over a year. You’re the first guy that I’ve been interested since that jer—”
“Longer.”
“What?”
“It’s been longer than a year for me.”
She stared at him, almost as if she thought she’d heard him wrong. “Longer than a year?”
He nodded.
“How much longer?”
“A lot longer.” When she only blinked at him, he thought back and realized, shit . . . Had it really been that long? “At least four years.”
Her eyes widened.
No, that wasn’t right. “Probably closer to five.”
“W-why?” Her gaze slid down his bare chest, then lifted back to his face. “You’re hot as hell.”
He chuckled, loving that response. “Thanks. I’ll take that as a compliment.” He shrugged, feeling self-conscious about the answer but not wanting to hide anything from her. Not when she was being open about how she felt regarding him and this crazy relationship that had sprung up out of nowhere. “I don’t know. Somewhere along the way, with my extracurricular activities on the weekends, I kinda lost interest in sex. The things I’ve seen in a lot of these clubs are not sexy.”
“I get that. But still . . . you’re a guy. You have to have . . . urges.”
He smirked. “I have urges. It’s just easier to take care of them in the shower than to deal with the whole dating, getting-to-know-someone, is-this-worth-my-time bullshit, you know?”
She studied him for several seconds in the moonlight, then softly said, “Who was she?”
“Who was who?”
“The woman who hurt you.”
Every muscle in his body tensed, and a familiar feeling of guilt settled deep in his chest. One he didn’t want to feel now. One he didn’t really want to explain to her. He leaned his head back against the cabinet. “What makes you think it was a woman?”
“Because there’s a reason you’re Robin Hood. And knowing what I know about you now, I’m confident it wasn’t a man who broke your heart and turned you into a vigilante.”
One corner of his lips tipped up, but it wasn’t an amused smile. It was a sad smile. And a little of an amazed smile that she could read him so easily.
He looked down at their joined hands against his thigh, wondering how much he could tell her, wondering what her reaction would be when she learned the truth.
Quietly, she took the spoon from his other hand, dropped it and her spoon into the carton, then set the ice cream on the floor at her side. Without a word, she straddled his lap and rested her hands against his chest as she stared at him with soft, warm hazel eyes, not pushing him even though he knew she was waiting for an answer.
“She was my stepsister,” he heard himself say before he even realized the words were out. “She was a year older than me, way more mature, and a lifetime worldlier. I was thirteen when my mother first married her wealthy father and we had to move into his stuffy mansion, and I hated her because I thought she was a snob. She hated me too because up until we moved in, she and her father had been fairly close. He’d taken her everywhere with him. After he married my mother . . . he kind of abandoned her. I realized pretty quickly that she was a loner like me. Struggling to get by. We became friends.”
“Sounds like you both needed that.”
He nodded, unable to stop now. Wanting Harper to understand, even if he was taking a giant risk. “She was the first girl I ever cared about. The first I . . .”
He blew out a breath and glanced down at Harper’s lips and remembered that first night Lily had climbed into his bed in the middle of the night, shaking and crying, asking for him to hold her. He hadn’t liked seeing her so scared. Hadn’t liked the sound of her sobs. So he’d scooted over, wrapped his arms around her, and held her just like she’d wanted, and nothing had ever been the same.
“My siblings . . . they all know about her. But they think she was my biological sister. I never told them she was my stepsister. I never told them about our relationship. I never told them she was the first girl I ever . . . loved.”
“You were involved with her.”
“Yeah. But it wasn’t sexual. I mean, it might have been if things had turned out differently, but we were just kids. Anything that happened between us was purely innocent—we kissed, we held hands, and at night when she had nightmares, I’d hold her until she fell asleep. It wasn’t dirty or wrong, it was just . . .”
“Pure.”
There was no judgment in Harper’s voice, and when he lifted his gaze to hers, he saw only warmth and encouragement for him to keep going. A flood of relief he didn’t deserve rushed through him. “Yeah, that.”
She smiled. “I can see you like that. At thirteen, being all protective. A miniature version of you now.”
This woman knew exactly what to say to put him at ease. He couldn’t remember a time he felt so relaxed around a woman, when he was this crazy about one. He lifted his hands from the floor where he’d been bracing them—just in case—and rested them on Harper’s sexy bare thighs, needing to touch her anywhere he could before he went on.
“I didn’t know it at the time,” he said, “but about three months after we moved in, her father started taking her to these late-night meetings he’d go to now and then. Lily was . . . well developed for her age, and she was strikingly beautiful. One night, after she came back from one of these meetings, I could tell she was upset. She’d normally go into her room and hide for a day or two after the meetings, but this night she didn’t. She broke down into tears and told me what happened there. They were at some fancy men’s club where women aren’t allowed. The men were all old, she said. All drinking and smoking cigars. At first her father told her to just be friendly to the men at the meetings, to help serve drinks and smile. He told her it relaxed his business partners so they could talk shop. But every time he took her, he asked her to do more. ‘Don’t just be friendly, flirt. Don’t just touch their arms when you serve their drink, sit on their laps. Don’t say no if one of them wants to touch you. Do whatever they ask, whenever they ask it.’ It was all for the good of his career. Which was good for her, according to him.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “I was so shocked and disgusted by what she was insinuating that I lost it. I lost it with her, and I lost it with him too. And that didn’t go over well, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
“What happened?” Harper asked quietly.
That night flashed in his mind. The rain, the screaming, the fight . . .
“I went after him. Told him she was never going to any of his deranged meetings again. He was in his study, and he never expected this skinny, hundred-and-forty-pound teenage boy to throw a punch at him. I was tall, but I wasn’t all that strong, and we were both surprised when I knocked him on his ass. I got out of there as fast as I could. And I thought I’d won when he didn’t come after me.” He swallowed hard, forcing himself to go on. “She stayed in my room that night, and we made plans to run away together when we left for school the next day, but when I woke, she was already gone.”
“He came and took her in the night, didn’t he?”
He nodded, staring down at a mole on her thigh near his hand, remembering the panic he’d felt then. The shock when he’d realized what had happened. “They were both gone. I looked everywhere for her—everywhere I could think—but I couldn’t find her. And when he came back that night, she wasn’t with him.”
“What did he do with her?” Harper asked softly.
He braced himse
lf for the shot of pain he always felt when he remembered that night, but it didn’t come. And he wasn’t sure if that was because he was here with Harper now, or if he’d finally just grown numb to it over the years.
Lifting his gaze to hers, he said, “He sold her. To one of his business partners. To one of the men at the fancy, depraved meetings he used to take her to. He told me because I’d touched her he wouldn’t keep her anymore. He must have assumed we were sleeping together. He said she was his, not mine, and he could do whatever he wanted with her. And then he told me not to bother looking for her because I’d never see her again.”
“Oh, Rusty.”
He ignored her sympathy—didn’t need it—and kept going. “I flew into a rage. I don’t remember much about that night, just that one minute I was standing there, staring at him in total shock, and the next I was pounding my fists against his face. He was bigger than me, though, and this time he was ready for me. He easily overpowered me and pretty much beat the shit out of me. By the time my mother heard what was happening from the other room and came rushing in, I was bloodied and bruised and writhing on the floor. She made the mistake of stepping between us then. I remember hearing him scream at her to get out. I remember her shrieking at him that she was going to call the police. My eyes were pretty well swollen shut from the beating at that point, but I remember prying them apart and looking up just as he grabbed her and hurled her to the side to get her out of his way so he could go after me again. And as long as I live I will never forget the sound of her head hitting the hearth of the fireplace or the way her body dropped to the ground with a thunk and then went still.”
“Oh my God.” Harper covered her mouth with her hand. “Did he—”
“Kill her? Yeah. Her skull cracked open. There was blood everywhere.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged, looking down at her thigh again. “My biological mother was not an overly affectionate woman. She cared way more about her status and money and rich friends than she ever did about me. I was a burden—a planned one, but still a burden. She got pregnant with me to trap her second husband, and it worked. He married her, and when he died of a heart attack three years later, she inherited a ton of money. But I got in the way of her parties and her romances and jet-setting life, and I had more of a relationship with my nannies than I ever did with her. I like to think she loved me in some way, especially since she died because of me, but I’ll never really know.”
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