Aegis 01 - First Exposure (11 page)

Shit. No other woman was going to do it for him. Not after tonight. Yeah, that scene at the club had aroused him, but it was her he wanted. She was the only one he’d ever wanted. He’d just let the world get in the way of what he knew in his heart was right. But no more. After tonight, he was confident whatever had started between them years ago wasn’t finished. And if he had anything to say about it, it wasn’t going to be over for a very long time.

He leaned in and kissed her, then reluctantly drew away. “Sleep, princess. We’ll pick up where we left off tomorrow. This isn’t over. It isn’t even close to being over.”

Chapter Six

A
very woke to the sound of rushing water.

She rolled to her side, then groaned at the pain stabbing her skull like a thousand tiny knives.

With extreme effort, she dragged her eyes opened, blinking into the bright sunlight streaming through the open patio door. Beyond, waves lapped gently at the sandy beach and birds cawing echoed on the warm, salty breeze.

She rested a hand against her throbbing head and shifted up in bed. Holy hell, she had the biggest hangover she’d had in years. How much did she drink last night? She remembered champagne at check-in, the beer in the suite, then a glass of wine at dinner, and a cosmo or two at the dance club. A handful of drinks over the course of eight hours shouldn’t affect her like this, especially since she hadn’t finished all of them. Unless the drinks had been really strong and she hadn’t realized how much—

The bathroom door opened, and Cade stepped out in a wave of steam. “Look who’s finally awake.”

Everything in her body warmed and tightened, and all thought slid from her brain. He was wearing only a low-slung towel around his lean hips and was drying his hair with another. And Holy God…every inch of him was toned and muscular. She’d figured as much—what she’d felt when she’d kissed him had been hard and lean—but seeing those sculpted pecs, the carved abdomen, and that dark line of hair that disappeared like an arrow beneath the towel—

“Ava? You okay?”

Her gaze jerked back to his face, and when she realized she’d been all but salivating, her cheeks heated. “What? Yes. I’m fine.”

Liar.
Her body was on fire, and a dull ache was growing between her thighs every moment he stood there, practically naked in front of her.

Concern darkened his features. “Are you sure? You look flushed. You’re not going to pass out on me again, are you?”

Pass out?
“I—?”

He moved past her, around the bar, and grabbed a water bottle from the fridge. Coming back to stand near the edge of the bed, he handed it to her. “Drink. You need fluids.”

She took the water, purposely avoiding his touch in the process. What was wrong with her? Her pulse was pounding, and all she could think about was ripping that towel off his hips.

Slowly, she lifted the bottle to her lips and sipped.

“Better,” he said. His mouth curled in that sexy half smile of his. “Don’t want a repeat of last night. The first part, yes absolutely, the last part, no.”

“What happened last night?” Confusion clouded Avery’s mind. She remembered that awkward moment in the suite yesterday, then going to dinner—which had been strained and tense until that kiss. Her cheeks warmed all over when she remembered the way he’d taken charge in that restaurant. How he’d tasted. What he’d felt like. Looking quickly away from his knowing eyes, she glanced down at the bed, then gasped when she realized she was naked and the sheet was bunched around her waist, leaving her breasts totally bare to his view.

She jerked the sheet up to her chest, jostling the bottle and sprinkling water over herself in the process. “
Why am I naked?
”

Cade chuckled. The bed dipped when he sat next to her. Completely off-balance, Avery jerked her legs away from him so she wouldn’t have to feel his heat permeating her skin through the thin cotton. “Relax. I’ve seen it all before, remember?”

“No,” she snapped, eyes wide. “I don’t remember. What the hell happened last night?”

His brow quirked in obvious amusement. “You really don’t know? Wow, you did drink a lot yesterday.”

Her cheeks literally burned. Frantic, she searched her mind. What was she missing? What had happened after that kiss?

Think, dammit.

“I remember dinner, going to the dance club, talking to the bartender, and then…nothing.” She drew a complete blank. As if time just stopped at that moment.

“I’m gonna try not to be hurt you can’t remember climbing all over me.”

Her gaze jerked his direction. “I did
what
?”

He chuckled again, leaned in, and kissed her cheek. “Trust me, it was good. Really, really good.”

He rose from the bed before she could tell him to back off and disappeared into the bathroom again, but this time he didn’t close the door. Alone, Avery’s pulse raced, and holding the sheet tight to her breasts, she scanned the room again, desperate for any clue as to what had gone down last night. Her gaze stopped on his slacks tossed carelessly over the corner of the bed and his shirt lying in a heap on the floor.

Her eyes grew wide, and her stomach flipped over. Groaning, she pressed her fingers against her closed eyes. “Please, please, please tell me we didn’t sleep together.”

More laughter from the bathroom. “Now I really am hurt. When you ripped the buttons off my shirt…that was probably my favorite part.”

Avery groaned louder, slinked down in the bed, and pulled the sheet over her head. She wanted to die. She wanted to dig a hole in the ground and hide for the next year. Not because she’d done those things, but because she’d done them with Cade. And because it meant if she’d let her guard down so easily, she couldn’t trust herself. And dammit, she hated that right now every cell in her body was vibrating with excitement over just the thought of having a go at him all over again.

“It wasn’t that bad,” he said from somewhere close.

“Go away,” Avery managed. “I need to be alone right now.”

The bed dipped at her side. She tried to scoot farther away, but he caught her leg with his hand. Heat burned into her flesh between the thin cotton separating them. He tugged on the sheet over her head. “Ava, come out from under there.”

“No.”

She tried to hold the sheet in place, but he jerked it out of her grip. Through strands of messy hair, she peered at him and held her breath. Dammit, he was too…familiar. Too new at the same time. Just inhaling his unique male scent reminded her of all the good times they’d shared together. And looking at him now…years older, more muscular, more rugged, more…everything…she had an uncontrollable urge to get to know the new him. To find out what was different.

“Nothing happened, Avery.”

She stared into his eyes, searching for a lie. Humor no longer shone in his eyes, and that goofy smile he’d been sporting since the moment she woke up was long gone. “Don’t tease me right now.”

“I’m not. While it’s true you did climb all over me in that club, and you did rip the last few buttons off my shirt when we got back here, when we reached the bed, you passed out.” He scratched the back of his head, looking the slightest bit…sheepish…just like he had the first night they’d spent together, when they’d both been virgins fumbling in the dark together. And God, but that was sexy. Her blood warmed again. “Kinda put a dent in my ego, to be honest. Can definitely say that’s never happened to me before.”

Her heart kicked over, and she swallowed, but pushed aside the emotion threatening and focused on the here and now. “I…I climbed all over you in the dance club?”

He ran his tongue over his bottom lip and looked her way, and the heat brewing in his eyes shot a zing of electricity straight to her sex. “In the back room. When you were watching that show.”

Avery’s mind skipped. Memories tried to piece themselves together, couldn’t quite make the right fit. And then she caught a glimpse of the woman strung up on stage. Of the man thrusting into her from behind. Of the crowd, watching…

“Oh my God…”

“I’ve never really been into the whole voyeur thing,” he said in a low voice. A sexy voice. An I-want-you-ten-ways-to-Sunday voice. “But watching you watching that…” His gaze slid down to her breasts, where she knew her nipples were pebbled hard against the sheet. “…that was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Avery’s entire body felt electrically charged, as if she would explode at the slightest touch. And the way he was still resting his hand on her shin, like he didn’t want to let her get away, was so damn sexy. She swallowed hard, afraid to ask the question but needing to know the answer. “And even after that, we didn’t… I mean, we came back here and…?”

One side of his smile curled again. “No. But not because I didn’t want to. As you can see, I still want to.”

Her gaze darted to his lap and the very clear tenting going on beneath the towel. Heat rushed to her cheeks. “Oh…”

He laughed then, an easy, relaxed sound that was so warm, so familiar, she felt it deep in her chest. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to attack you like you did me last night. I can be patient.”

Oh no…
She wasn’t sure she was ready for that. Didn’t think she could go through the pain of losing Cade Blackwell again, even if there was nothing really for her left to lose. “Cade—”

He patted her leg and pushed off the bed, then headed back into the bathroom. “I took your dress off because I was afraid it was too tight and you might not be able to breathe, then I tucked you in and turned off the light.”

So they hadn’t had sex. Relief rushed through Avery, followed by a wave of disappointment she didn’t expect. One that left a knot in the pit of her stomach.

He poked his head around the corner. “But I did sleep with you.”

Her gaze snapped that direction, and she caught the hint of mischief in his eyes.

“I’d forgotten how much you like to snuggle. I was hot the whole night.”

He disappeared again, and, vibrating once more with an arousal she could only just barely contain, Avery slinked back down in the sheets.

“Don’t spend too long hiding out there, princess,” he called from the bathroom. “We’ve got that massage class to go to this morning. Remember Melody? The reason we’re here? Time to stop playing and get back to work, sweetheart.”

Avery groaned and pulled the sheet back over her head. And wasn’t sure whether she should curse herself for coming on this trip, or thank God above that she was about to have her hands all over the sexy man now humming in her bathroom.

B
reakfast didn’t help the mass of nerves in Avery’s stomach. By the time they walked out of their suite and stepped into the warm Jamaican midmorning sun, she felt like she’d had too much caffeine and not enough sleep.

She breathed deep while she stood on the path and waited for Cade, telling herself the entire time to get her head in the game. They were going to this class, she’d play along, they’d pick the instructor’s brain and find out if she knew anything about Melody, and that would be it. She was not going to have a repeat of last night.

Cade moved up next to her and tucked his phone into the pocket of his cargo shorts. “Ready?”

“Sure.”

She slipped on her sunglasses and headed toward the spa. Palms rustled above, and from the direction of the pool, steel drums echoed and water splashed. It really was a beautiful setting—she couldn’t deny that—but what she’d seen last night in the back of that club made her look twice at every face she passed, wondering what they’d been doing around her when she’d been too sex-crazed to notice.

“So I didn’t get a chance to tell you this last night,” Cade said at her side, his thick voice cutting through her arousal. She glanced his way and felt a rush of heat all through her skin. He looked so damn sexy in that loose diving T-shirt and the low-slung shorts. “Aegis ran info on that guy in the restaurant.”

Surprise registered. “You talked to Aegis before I even told you what the bartender had passed on to me?”

“Yeah.” His eyes were shielded behind sporty Rēvos, but there was a hardness to his jaw that told her he was in serious-operative mode, not the playful-partner mode he’d been in earlier. “I’d already picked him out before we had dinner. Everyone at the resort knows him as Anderson, but his real name is Alejandro Luis. He’s Puerto Rican, lives in Florida. Word on the street is he runs drugs through the Caribbean for one of the biggest cartels in Mexico.”

Avery stopped dead in her tracks. “
What
?”

Cade frowned, grasped her hand, and pulled. “Don’t draw attention.”

Shuffling to keep up with him, Avery tried to keep her voice from cracking when she said, “Drugs? Are you sure?”

“Jamaica’s a hotbed in the trade wars. That rope line out in the bay isn’t to keep swimmers from getting in over their heads, it’s to keep the drug runners from accessing the resort.”

Avery thought back to the fishing boat she’d seen parked near the rope line yesterday when she’d been looking at the view, and the couple swimming who’d been talking to the driver. “I…I had no idea.”

“Regardless,” he said in a low voice while they walked, “it explains why the guy gets special treatment here.”