Books by Maggie Shayne (49 page)

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“No, thank
you
.”

A bit of her bravado fled as she felt other eyes on her, but Richard seemed to sense it instantly, because he took off his jacket, and draped it around her shoulders.

Still, people were staring.
Men
were staring. Men who were not Richard, and the looks in their eyes were... predatory. She didn’t like it. It was fine for him to look at her like that, with that sexual gleam in his eye—God, she’d
dreamed
of him looking at her like that. But not them. Not strangers.

“Anything else I can do for you?” Richard was asking.

“Yes,” she said, answering in such a rush that she didn’t even think first. “Get me out of here.”

He stared at her, his eyes going just a little wider, then gleaming with sexual appreciation. His lips parted in a smile so hot it was indecent, and he said, “Whatever you say, lady.” He took her arm, started forward.

Her foot went right out from under her and she almost fell, but he caught her. “Ow ... oh!”

“What is it?”

“These shoes. I think I broke a heel when I fell,” she said.

He smiled again. “Well, I can remedy that easily enough.” And before she knew what was happening he scooped her up into his arms and strode through the crowd with her. The next thing she knew, she was being settled into the passenger seat of a low-slung black sports car, and he was climbing into the driver’s seat beside her.

He started the engine, turned to face her. “Your place or mine?” he asked, his voice deep and full of innuendo.

She licked her lips, blinked rapidly, told herself to get the hell out of this car and do it
fast
.

The stranger who’d taken over her body whispered, “Yours.”

He smiled at her, melting her, and the car lurched forward.

“There’s ...just one thing,” she began. He glanced down at her, waiting. “The mask ... stays on.”

Again he smiled. “Now I’m
sure
I dreamed this last night.”

She felt herself blush hot and had to avert her eyes.

“I’ll tell you what, Valentine. You can keep the mask on, on one condition.”

“And what’s the condition?” she asked.

He reached down, caught her wrist in his hand, and ran his thumb over the satiny bracelets with their linked chains. “Consider keeping the cuffs on, too?” He grinned, winked at her, and stomped harder on the gas pedal.

Martha Jane didn’t know what it was. The two or three drinks she’d had to bolster herself for the show? Her longtime feelings for her boss, combined with the way he’d constantly ignored her as a woman while mooning over brainless twit after brainless twit? The triumph she felt now, that he was finally seeing her the way she’d dreamed of? Or something else?

She only knew that it was Valentine’s Day, and she was wearing a mask and taking this chance. She was going to make her most secret fantasy come true. She was going to have wild sex with Richard Gable.

He carried her into his house, which was a stunning creation of adobe and knotty pine. Inside, she caught only fleeting, out-of-focus glimpses of a wide foyer with cathedral ceilings, a forest-green and oak living room with a fireplace, and then he was carrying her up an open metal-work staircase and through a door at the top.

His bedroom.

He set her on her feet and stood facing her. He stared down at her for a long moment, and then, finally, he lowered his head and he kissed her. His hands slid the jacket off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor, and then he stood a little straighter, just looking at her.

She’d never felt more exposed. More vulnerable. And yet... she felt powerful too. Because she could see what looking at her was doing to him. He looked as if his dreams were all coming true.

“I... I didn’t mean what I said before,” he told her. “About those, er, bracelet things. You can take them off if you want.”

She stared up at him. If she didn’t know him so well, she’d be terrified right now. But she did know him. He would never hurt her. She was perfectly safe with him. “I, um, don’t have a key.”

He closed his eyes. “Then I guess you’re... at my mercy.”

She lifted her head as heat shot through her, met his eyes head on, and knew this was perfect. She didn’t have to worry about knowing how—about performing. He’d have to do it all. She didn’t even need to feel guilty about it. Or overcome her shyness. Or anything at all. “I guess I am,” she whispered.

He smiled a devilish smile and moved her backward, until her back was touching the coolness of a wall. Reaching down, he hooked a finger around the chain between her wrists and slowly lifted it until her hands were above her head. She looked up, saw the little clothes hook on the wall above her, watched him drape the chain over it.

“Oh... my...”

He paused, waiting, watching her. Giving her time, she knew—but she said no more. He smiled again. Reaching out with both hands, he touched her breasts, running his fingers over them again and again. Then he shook his head. “This leather is sexy, but, uh, too thick. I think it’s going to have to go.” He slid his palms around behind her as she tried to control her trembling. His hands lifted her hair, slid along her spine, locating the first of the buckles. Slowly, he unfastened it, and then the next, and the next. She shivered when his fingers trailed over the base of her spine.

“You’re shaking,” he whispered.

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.” He kept his hands where they were, fingers tickling her spine. Leaning in, he kissed her neck and her shoulders, and her cheeks. She was breathless and filled with turmoil. He straightened again, and the leather bodice hung loose about to fall down in front. She wanted to clap her hands to it to hold it in place, but she couldn’t. Then it did fall, and he just stood there, staring at her.

She stood there, staring back.

He reached out, gripped the leather, pulled it slowly down. His hands slid over her skin as he did so. Her waist. Her hips. Down her thighs. He let it go, let it fall to the floor around her ankles. Stepping out of the leather, she kicked it aside.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered.

God, she’d never felt so exposed. Her hands were itching to cross in front of her body, to cover herself, but she couldn’t.

He trailed the backs of his hands over her breasts again, knuckles brushing her nipples. She closed her eyes. Turning his hands, he stroked with his fingers. Then he drew thumb and forefingers together... a gentle pinch. A soft sound was wrung from her. His smile widened. He pinched again. “Like that?” he asked.

Breathless, she nodded.

“Good.” One more pinch, then without warning his hands fell away, and his head swooped down. He caught a breast in his hungry mouth and suckled her hard, scraping with his teeth, flicking with his tongue, biting and nipping. And now his hand was slipping down her belly, diving between her legs. Fingers spread her, opened her, touched her.

He nipped harder at her breast and drove his fingers inside her.

She cried out, moving against his hand, arching against his mouth.

Then suddenly he moved away from her. Stepping back, he stared at her as she opened her eyes. She watched as he slowly unfastened his belt, his zipper. Erotic as some pagan fertility god, he undressed. And she couldn’t take her eyes off him as he did. He was big, and dark, and hard. Then he came back to her. Without a word, he slid his hands down her back and cupped her buttocks, squeezed her thighs. Then he lifted her legs, until she wrapped them around his waist, and he plunged himself inside her.

“Richard,” she whispered. It was so good. He filled her, stretched her. And when he took his hands away, her weight lowered her further, so that he sank even more deeply into her. Nothing supported her now but the flimsy chain slung round the hook above her head, and the man inside her. It was the most erotic thing in the world. He bent to nurse at her breasts again as he began to move, driving himself inside her harder and harder until her body was pressed to the wall with every thrust. She panted and moaned as he pushed her closer and closer to climax. She couldn’t believe the power of it, couldn’t believe the tightening, tensing, coiling sensations going on inside her.

And just as she hovered at the very brink, he lifted his head. “Open your eyes,” he whispered. “I want to watch you.”

She opened her eyes. He kept driving into her, harder, deeper, faster, and his hands came to her breasts, and his eyes never left hers. “Come for me,” he whispered, as he closed his fingers on her nipples. Then he pinched harder. “Now.”

She screamed aloud as wave upon wave of feeling washed over her, shaking her to the core. By the time she came to herself again, Richard had slipped her little chain off its hook, fumbled with it until he got it to come apart, and was carrying her with him to the bed.

Hours later, Richard lay sated and utterly relaxed, with the woman snuggled close in his arms, when it occurred to him that she hadn’t said anything for several moments ... not since she last screamed his name, in fact. He thought she might be sleeping.

He wasn’t too certain how he felt about that. His one-night stands didn’t usually stay overnight. Then again, this had been ... different. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why, but there was no denying that it had been just that. Different. Intense, yes. Incredible, yes. He thought, though, that the main difference was the woman.

She wasn’t putting on a show. She truly had been a bit shy—at first. Trying to hide it behind her mask and her bold lingerie, but still, it had been obvious in those initial tremulous kisses. In her trembling, and the way she would avert her gaze now and then, or the way her cheeks kept coloring hotly when he looked at her. When her hands had been free to touch him, those touches had been almost hesitant. And her responses had been an odd combination of delight and—and surprise. As if every sensation were new to her somehow.

The difference was even more obvious in the way she’d curled up beside him afterward, the way she nestled still in the crook of his arm, so content and relaxed that she might be sleeping. His kind of women were usually in the shower within minutes of lovemaking and on their way home shortly thereafter.

This one was in no hurry. He wasn’t even certain she was awake.

“I... don’t know about you,” he said, keeping his voice low, trailing a finger over her cheek. “But I’m starving.”

“I could eat an entire side of beef,” she murmured.

He felt his face split in a smile. His first thought was that she was no more an ordinary model than she was an ordinary woman. “I thought you might be sleeping.”

She sat up a little, staring down at him in the darkness from behind her mysterious mask. “Not sleeping. Just... basking.” A shy smile tugged at her lips, and she turned her face away a bit. If he could see in the dark, he thought he’d see her blushing. “It was ... wonderful, Richard.”

“It was pretty wonderful for me, too.”

“Really?” She seemed surprised, and maybe relieved, too.

“What, it wasn’t obvious?”

Again, she looked away. “I guess I just wanted to be sure.”

He nodded, once again getting the feeling she wasn’t exactly experienced at these sorts of games. “What do you want to eat, Valentine? You name it, I’ll get it. Serve it to you in bed.” His words surprised him.

“I told you, a side of beef.”

He laughed softly. “You’re not like any other model I’ve ever met,” he said.

“That’s because I’m not a model,” she said in her soft, raspy voice.

A little alarm bell went off in Richard’s head. “You’re not?”

“Well, I was tonight. But for the first and last time.” She smiled at him, making his stomach flip over. “Even though I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to.”

Richard cleared his throat. “What... do you do? For a living, I mean?”

She quickly looked away. “I’ve been helping a friend get a new business off the ground. Creatively, she’s a genius, but she has no head for books or budgets or organization.”

Richard’s throat went dry. She was not what he had thought she was—not at all. “You do that full time, then?”

“For the moment, yes.”

“And this modeling gig was what, a walk on the wild side?”

She laughed huskily. A deep, rich sound that stroked his nerve endings like brushed velvet. “A favor for a friend. Her model got sick at the last minute.”

“I see.”

She drew a breath, sighed, looked at him with something soft and intense in her eyes. “I argued hard against the whole thing. But now I’m very glad I let her talk me into it.”

“Oh.”

She tilted her head then, her eyes narrowing when they saw his expression. No doubt—it was one of impending panic.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice going a bit harder. “I’m ruining it for you, aren’t I? I should have said I was an aspiring actress, and added a breathless little giggle for good measure.”

Richard frowned. Her tone had changed, and he hadn’t expected to see such sharpness in those eyes. “What are you talking about?”

She shrugged. “That’s the kind of woman you usually date, isn’t it? They’re safe.”

“Safe?” He sat up, leaned back against the headboard. This was fascinating. Chilling, too. This woman seemed to know more about him than he’d realized. And from the look in her eyes a moment ago—she might not know a one-night stand when she saw one.

“Convenient,” she said. “No demands, no expectations.” She shrugged. “Don’t worry, Richard. Smart women can have casual sex, too.”

He tilted his head to one side. “But it’s a first for you, isn’t it, Valentine?”

She shrugged and looked away.

“How do you know so much about me?” he asked. He saw her tongue dart out to moisten her lips. She looked around the room as if in search of a change of subject, and her gaze fell on the tripod in the corner.

“I don’t know much about you at all,” she answered then. “I didn’t know you were an artist, for example.” She nodded toward the blank canvas on the tripod.

“I’m no artist. I used to draw some, but—”

“Used to?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t worked on anything in months.” Because he hadn’t felt sufficient passion for anything in months to want to capture it in charcoal.

Until tonight.

And that made him even more uncomfortable. So he changed the subject. “Just who are you really, Valentine?”

She sat up quickly, putting her feet on the floor and her back to him, clutching the sheet to her chest. “I really should go ...”

“No, don’t.” He said it too quickly, yes. He knew that. He usually couldn’t wait for his dates to leave, usually found talking to them as boring as mud. But not this time. This woman was different. Totally different from the others. And in spite of his self-imposed set of rules, he found himself really wanting her to stay. To
talk
, of all things! “Don’t go. If it makes you so uncomfortable, I won’t ask again.”

She wasn’t relaxing, though. Not yet.

“Besides, I haven’t fixed us that side of beef yet.” He ran the back of his fingers slowly down her spine. She arched in response, and calmed visibly. He saw her lips curve in a slight smile.

“What do you mean, us?” she teased softly. “You don’t expect me to share, do you?”

He laughed again, so relieved he was damn near giddy with it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been out with a woman who’d made him laugh. “Wait here. I’ll be back in no time.” He got up, reached for a robe, and pulled it on. Then he looked back at her for a long moment. “You intrigue me, Valentine,” he heard himself say.

She shook her head. “It’s not me,” she said, and he thought there was a touch of sadness in her voice. “It’s just the mask.”

“No. No, it’s you.”

He turned and headed to the kitchen. As he sliced hunks of leftover roast beef sent home with him by his nurturing sister-in-law, he wondered about his mysterious Valentine. She was disguising her voice, never raising it above that deep whispering tone that told him nothing. She was hiding her face, behind that silly mask—and her personality behind the rest of the costume she wore tonight. Even when that costume was nothing more than her delectable skin. She was a shy woman, normally. A woman who must think he would know her if he saw her face or heard her true voice. A woman he must have known at some point in his life—that much was obvious by how well she seemed to know his dating habits. Several times he’d looked at her and caught a glimpse of the truth. But it had been just out of reach, too far away to grab hold of. Nevertheless, there was something very dear, very familiar about this woman.