by M. Robinson
I don’t know.
Right now, I don’t even care.
Laela’s hands jump to my arms, holding on tight like I’m the only thing keeping her upright. She stretches onto her toes, back bowing like the string of a violin in the hands of a master composer. I sense every disapproving glance aimed in our direction, and if I could tear my mouth from hers and abide by social niceties, I would. But fuck, there’s no stopping now. Heat punches me in the gut when her full breasts graze my chest, and a hoarse groan scrapes my throat raw.
She shouldn’t taste this good.
She shouldn’t . . . Goddammit, she shouldn’t make me feel this wild.
Especially when I never anticipated her not recognizing me tonight. The beard that once shadowed my jaw is gone and it’s been over a year since the ashy blond hair dye grew out. Beneath the disguise I’d worn for a different assignment, I’m still the same man who stood on her family’s doorstep and felt my hands clench with the need to comb my fingers through her lush auburn hair, which was streaked with the colors of a sky set ablaze.
I wanted her then.
I fucking crave her now.
A good man would peel himself away and admit the truth before this all goes too far. Someone honorable wouldn’t have kissed her in the first place. Seems that I’m neither because instead of backing off like a gentleman with a functioning moral compass, I crowd Laela and destroy the final gap that separates us, breaking the kiss only to bury lips against her neck and inhale her clean, floral scent. She shudders under my touch, her bare shoulders trembling as she arches into my body with a hiss of need. “Sir—”
Fuck.
Fuck—
My cock strains painfully against the zipper of my slacks, and I move my hands to her velvet-clad hips to still her rhythmic rocking. She keeps that up and I’ll be causing all sorts of mayhem by dropping to my knees in the middle of the Morelli mansion and burying my face between her legs until she screams. Tempting. So damned tempting.
“Dance with me.”
Adrenaline burns in her dark eyes as she circles my wrists with shaking fingers. “I don’t want to dance.”
“You should.”
“Why?” She considers me with a tilt of her head and a wry twist of her lips. “So that you can sweep me off my feet like some gallant knight in shining armor?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because I’m going to make you so wet for me, you’ll be begging me to fuck you in front of every one of these assholes who dares to make you feel like you don’t belong.”
Her throat works with a sudden swallow. “When you say things like that, it seems impossible to think that I hate you.”
“Trust me, you’ll want to carve out my heart soon enough.”
“Then why not tell me who you are and get it over with?”
“Because I’m a selfish bastard.” I step backward, tugging her toward the dance floor. “Because I’m no one’s knight in shining armor, least of all yours.” Below the hum of engaged guests, the haunting melody of Carol of the Bells begins to play, and I almost laugh at the irony. Every good and honorable thought disappeared the moment I caught sight of Laela’s necklace with its three tiny bells fixed to the center of the velvet cord. I’d wondered how loud they might chime if I fucked her from behind. I wonder, even now, if she knows how tempted I am to hook a finger over that velvet strap and treat it like a collar, one she has no hope of escaping.
Dragging her into my arms instead, I sweep her into the mix of dancing couples. “And because I like the way you look at me.”
“How is that?”
I lower my mouth to her ear. “Like you can already feel me owning your sweet cunt.”
Laela Donna isn’t easily offended but even she can’t pretend to be entirely unaffected. At my comment, her fingers find the stiff muscles of my shoulders and her nails threaten to carve half-moons into my flesh. Breathlessly, she demands, “You got past security tonight. How?”
“I’ve done business with Bryant Morelli in the past.” It’s not exactly a lie. Years ago, I worked a case with one of the guards stationed at the door. “What? Did you picture me climbing in through a window?”
Her dark eyes flit over my frame and linger briefly on my shoulders. “I doubt you’d fit through a window.”
“A compliment,” I murmur, allowing a small grin to touch my lips as I spin us in a slow circle, “be still my dead, un-beating heart.”
Her laughter is a spark of sunshine that draws countless gazes. In a world like hers, where loyalty is everything and power is king, I’m not surprised that her peers keep their distance. In a last-ditch effort to shorten his sentence for money laundering, extortion, and murder, Guglielmo Donna turned in the men that once called him famiglia. He spat on their loyalty. He tore the power straight from their hands and forced them to their knees.
Laela and her sister don’t deserve the hate thrown their way, but it would be naïve of them to think that life will eventually return to what it once was. They won’t be hailed as the Darlings of Manhattan ever again.
“Alabama.”
At the unexpected comment, I raise a brow.
“You sound like you might be from Alabama,” she clarifies. “Or maybe Mississippi?”
Louisiana, actually. New Orleans.
Since the admission might jar her memory, and I’m not ready to go back to being the devil in her nightmares, I sweep my palm up her back and let it rest between her shoulder blades. “You tryin’ to tell me that we Southerners all sound the same?”
Her grin is just a little bit wicked. “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve only had one promise to defile me in a crowded room, so my experience telling you all apart is rather . . . limited.”
Delight licks down my spine.
It’s dangerous, the way that I want this woman. She won me over with her sharp tongue and no-bullshit attitude. Email after email, month after month, I grew to anticipate her every parry and advance. I fought fire with fire, crossing boundaries that would see me jobless in a heartbeat, and all because I can’t resist the opportunity to stoke her temper and see her come undone.
Wrong or right, I want to watch her fall apart in my arms.
All of this goes against every rule in the goddamn book. I shouldn’t have come to Bishop’s Landing. It’s not my place and she’s not my responsibility—hell, she’s not mine. And I sure as shit shouldn’t tease her into a seduction when she doesn’t realize who I am.
Sinner.
Bastard.
She’ll hurl every curse known to mankind at me as soon as the light goes off for her, and I’ll endure each one because they’ll be well-deserved. Thirty-six years of doing the right thing, first as a beat cop for the New Orleans Police Department and then as a field agent with the FBI, and I can feel all morality crumbling to dust at my feet.
I slow to a stop.
Laela’s hands never leave my shoulders.
All around us, guests partake in drink and dance and devilry. The strings of the violin rise above it all, the flurry of the melody matching the quick tempo of my racing heart. If this is the only night that I’ll ever have her in my arms, it won’t be wasted here where we’re in full view of the same people who’ll eagerly place the sins of a father at the daughter’s feet.
I let my palm slide from the warmth of her bare back.
Her dark eyes lift to meet mine, the question in them damn near palpable. Already leaving me?
Pressure rings in my ears.
Temptation coils around my lungs, proving once and for all that even men on the right side of the law will inevitably succumb to darkness. To have Laela just this once, I’ll gladly drown myself in shadows.
My chin dips and my gaze holds hers, and I hold out my hand. “Come here, Miss Donna.”
Tension crackles.
Heat arrows through my chest.
“I’ll resent you for this,” she says, touching her necklace, “won’t I?”
My response
is swift and brutal: “Yes.”
She gives a tiny jerk of her chin. “Will I hate myself?”
“You’ll hate me more.”
“I should walk away. Go home.”
I incline my head. “You should.”
Her hand settles over mine, smooth skin pressed to rough flesh. “I should do a lot of this but for tonight, I’m yours.”
Chapter Three
Laela
He drags me from the ballroom like we’re escaping the flames of hell.
Or, maybe, we’re running right for them.
I catch Lucian’s eye. Spot his startled double take when he realizes that he doesn’t know the man leading me away from the crowd. Though his brows furrow, I know that he won’t leave Elaine’s side to question me. For once, I’m grateful that my old friend is too obsessed with his woman to interrogate me on what I’m sure will become a catastrophic mistake come the morning.
I feel slightly unhinged.
Wild.
My heart is beating too fast and I almost kick off my heels, just so I can keep up with this man’s aggressive stride down the starlit hallway.
I don’t get the chance.
One second I’m admiring the broad width of his back and the next my own is colliding with a wall and his lips are again on mine. God, the taste of him. Spice and heat and desire. My hands instinctively clasp the back of his neck, fingers tangling in his thick brown hair to keep him from pulling away. I refuse to be a passive participant when it feels like I’m finally coming alive for the first time in years.
“Fuck, Laela,” he growls against my mouth. “Fuck.”
His hands land on the wall beside my head. With such a small height difference between us, it takes no effort at all to shift my weight and settle the apex of my thighs against the hard ridge behind his zipper. I’d felt him when we danced. Enough to know that he’s packing behind those tailored slacks. Enough to know that I’ll feel the sting of being well-used for days afterward.
It still wasn’t nearly enough to prepare me for this. We’re surrounded by bare trees decorated in white lights, caught in their glow. He’s found a rare blank stretch of wall.
Stars burst behind my eyelids and I feed a helpless moan into his mouth. He devours it with a deep, possessive groan.
Yes. Yes, yes, yes.
Lowering one hand to my thigh, he gathers black velvet in his fist.
Cool air touches my shin. A second later, it kisses my bare knee like a whisper of a promise. And then I feel pressure on my clit—not his fingers but the length of his muscled thigh, right there where I need him most.
“Use me.” The command is torn from his throat, guttural and raw. “Grind down on me and show me that you’re fucking fearless.”
We’re completely exposed to anyone who might leave the ballroom.
I open my mouth to protest—to give some pathetic, paltry excuse for why we really, really shouldn’t—only for it to register that this is exactly what he wants. Letting him have me right here is a proverbial middle finger to every guest within that ballroom who sneered in my direction and refused to show me even a little bit of kindness. It’s him giving me total ownership of my body, my pleasure, and returning to me the very same power that’s been stripped from my soul and kicked and beaten into the ground.
He knows me. Understands me.
It’s my last rational thought before I demand, “Kiss me.”
He doesn’t need to be told twice.
His fingers sink into my hair and his lips return to mine with feverish abandon. His kiss takes and it consumes, leaving me weightless and panting. Sparks ignite like lit tinder in my belly. Needing more, I burrow my hands in his shirt, loop my thigh around his waist, and yank him impossibly close. We align, core to cock, and he doesn’t utter a single complaint. He can’t, not when I’m obeying a direct order.
I grind down on him.
Slow.
Purposeful.
A smooth, teasing rhythm that has him cursing under his breath. “You gonna make me come just like this, sweetheart? Like I’m some desperate, fumbling teenager begging for his first taste of pussy?”
He fists my hair and tugs sharply, and fuck. The echoing pull of my scalp releasing something inside me, and I feel the internal fissure like a jagged clifftop breaking from the only existence it’s ever known to plummet down into the sea.
With a broken moan, I let my head fall back into his waiting palm.
His sinful mouth descends to press a kiss to my cheek, to the corner of my lips, to the sensitive flesh just behind my ear. I rock against him, fast and then faster. My motions are jerky, all sensuality abandoned in hope of bursting apart at the seams within his arms. Music filters down the hall, a jaunty holiday tune that’s so at odds with the crude sounds erupting in our little bubble of self-ruination.
The bells on my velvet choker jingle with every swivel of my hips.
Whimpers tear from my throat, and I bite down on my lip to smother them all.
Large hands cup my ass. With a ragged sound that reverberates in his chest, he angles me so that I slam down over the rough-textured seam of his zipper, as well as his thick length, in short, heart-stopping pulses that make my vision swim. I can’t catch my breath, not when the pressure is suddenly relentless, the friction utterly and completely ruthless.
“I made you a promise to make you scream,” he grits out. Again, he brings me down on his cock. Again, I scrabble for purchase until I’m gripping the lapels of his suit and holding on for dear life. “But I’ve changed my mind.”
His lips cover mine.
Sensation tumbles through me, zipping down my spine and flooding my core.
“Please,” I beg on a trembling breath. “I’m so close. I need—”
“Don’t make a sound.”
“What—”
His fingers sink over my choker, knuckles lazily grazing my throat, and I don’t have time to process the earth-shattering display of dominance because my gown is thrown over my hips and the fingers of his free hand bury between my thighs. Oh, God. Oh, fuck me.
“Not a sound, Laela,” he warns. “Nod if you understand.”
Dazed, I meet those rich, cognac eyes that watch me with a savage hunger that I feel within myself like a twin flame. His thumb presses over my clit, the pressure just enough to make me release a hitched sigh. Blood roars in my ears, and the reality of this moment slams into me like a freight train.
I’m coming undone.
Unraveling.
“Laela.”
Lips parting on a shallow gasp, I echo, “Not a sound, sir.”
“Good girl,” he rasps softly.
My underwear is knuckled aside. Like he’s giving me the chance to tell him no, he holds himself perfectly still even as his gaze remains fierce on mine. I drag in fractured breath after fractured breath. We’re chasing something here—together—and if sanity had even half a chance of prevailing right now, I would back away before I get irreversibly hurt. He knows me, and I . . . I—
The pad of his middle finger touches my bare clit.
We moan together.
The velvet cord around my neck tightens under his grip, and one glance at his beautifully harsh expression is the only reminder I need that I’m meant to stay silent. My lips burn from his kiss and my heart pounds frantically against my rib cage. I clutch his suit jacket like I’m seconds away from crawling into the safety of his arms. Instead, I bite down against a pleasure-drenched cry when he drags his finger through my folds.
I’m so wet.
So turned on.
“Look at me, Laela,” comes his velvet-soft order. “See me.”
I fear that I do.
Worse, I fear that I’ll never be able to forget him—the arrogance that brightens his cognac eyes to brilliant gold, the impatience that flares his nostrils, and the need that seems to forever harden his jaw. I see him. All of him. A disheveled brown strand falls over his temple, temping me to reach up and tug on the lock. Before I
can, he thrusts a finger deep within me.
And, just like that, I’m lost.
Ruined.
He holds me by the throat, velvet choker in hand and bells tinkling against his palm, and fucks me with single-minded precision. Deprived of air, unable to scream, I’m caught somewhere between heaven and hell with no hope of survival.
“Take what you need,” he grunts, hovering his lips over mine. “I’m yours.”
The gentle glide of his thumb over my clit is all the encouragement I need.
I rock against him and force him to swallow my cries with his mouth when he slicks a second finger inside me. They curl against my front wall, scissoring and stretching me, even while his thumb continues its sensual assault on my swollen bud. I’m boneless in his arms. Gripping his suit jacket, I allow my hips to circle and drop and follow each and every drive of his teasing fingers.
Oh, God.
Oh—
“Come on me, sweetheart. Let go and come.”
I meet his stare.
Those eyes are all that tethers me to this moment. Pleasure explodes within me, and my hips jerk over his hand in a discordant rhythm. He doesn’t let me go, though. He forces me to ride out wave after wave, gentling the strokes of his fingers until I’m swaying limply in his arms. Dimly, I hear a gasp from down the hall but I’m too far gone to care.
Still, he palms the back of my head and eases me against his chest.
He holds me to him like he can protect me from judgmental eyes, and I cling to him without protest. He’s torn me down to the studs—emotionally, physically. I should have known it was him the second my eyes locked with him in the ballroom.
And maybe . . . maybe some small, twisted corner of my heart knew all along.
Letting my gown drop down around my legs, the FBI agent who arrested my father brushes his nose along the shell of my ear. “Run, sweetheart. Because if you don’t leave now, I’ll never let you go.”