Christmas Alpha (2 page)

 
The world was white as far as she could see, which actually wasn’t that far anymore. Much as Eva peered through the window she could barely see the driveway she had driven down earlier, let alone distinguish it from the surrounding verge and hedgerows.

 
If she didn’t leave here soon she wasn’t going to be able to, and there was no way she was getting snowed in here with a man who hired women ‘from an agency’ to go to bed with him.
 

 
“Who the hell are you?”

 
Eva turned slowly, brows rising as she saw the accusation in those hard blue eyes. Obviously his call
had
been from the girl from the ‘agency’. “My name is Eva Shaw.”
 

 
His jaw tightened grimly. “Who sent you here?”

 
“‘We come to you, we get…’ What are you doing?” she squeaked in protest as he reached out and took a painful grasp of her arm.

 
“Who are you and what are you doing here?” he demanded again, those blue eyes glittering down at her with dangerous intensity.
 

 
Eva didn’t at all care for being manhandled in this way. Even by a man who made her knees tremble just to look at him.
Especially
by a man who made her knees tremble just to look at him! “Well one thing I’m definitely not is your beck-and-call girl!”

 
“My beck-and-what? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He looked down the length of his nose at her.

 
Her eyes flashed a warning. “It means, Mr. Devlin, that I’m not taking my clothes off. That I’m not going to stay here and help you do your ‘thing’,” she added scathingly. “That I work for the Dailey Courier Service. ‘We come to you, we get through’,” she managed to quote the company logo through to the end this time. “And that I came here to deliver a parcel.”

 
“A parcel?” Instead of letting her go his finger tightened on her arm.

 
Eva nodded. “And while I’m outside collecting said parcel from the back of my van, I suggest you go and put some more clothes on!” She didn’t wait for him to answer before wrenching her arm from his grasp and stomping down the hallway to the front door, throwing it open and stepping outside into the storm without closing it behind her.

 
With any luck Finn Devlin would have frozen his balls off before she got back.

Chapter 2

No such luck, unfortunately. That bulging package at the front of his snug-fitting denims was still perfectly in place when Eva returned with the lightweight, if cumbersome, parcel. Although he
had
refastened the button on his denims and pulled on a tight-fitting, navy blue t-shirt that seemed to emphasize that magnificent chest rather than conceal it.

 
Contrarily, Eva felt a little disappointed at the disappearance of all that naked flesh. Then gave a snort of self-disgust. The man paid women to have sex with him, for goodness sake!

 
She placed the parcel on the floor of the hallway before closing the front door and presenting the electronic scanner to him. “If you could just sign in the box I’ll be on my way.”

 
“You really are from a courier service...” Finn had finally noted the company logo on the front of the woman’s jacket.

 
She gave him a puzzled glance. “I said I was.”

 
“People say a lot of things,” he answered enigmatically. “Who’s the parcel from?” he prompted cautiously.

 
She glanced down at the scanner. “It says Jack Miller on the invoice.”

 
His agent. And Eva Shaw was delivering the parcel he and Jack had just been having an argument about on the phone.

 
A parcel that now sat like a coiled snake on the hallway carpet.

 
A parcel Finn had absolutely no interest in opening.
 

 
Eva gave an impatient shake of her head. “Could you just sign in the box, please?”
 

 
“No.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest as he looked down at her with one eyebrow raised.

 
Eva bit back her irritation. This may not seem like a very important job to someone who lived in a dream house like this, but she worked for the courier service during the holidays as a way of helping to pay her way through university. A complaint of rudeness, from one of the Dailey Courier Service’s customers, wasn’t going to go down too well. Even if the owner of the company was her uncle.
 

 
“That’s the way it works, Mr. Devlin,” she explained patiently.
 

“You sign the box, I leave the parcel. No signature as proof of delivery, then I can’t leave the parcel. Simple.”

 
Finn held back a smile as Eva Shaw almost ground her teeth together in an effort to be polite to him.
 

 
Not that he could exactly blame her when he thought back to their conversation since he had first opened the door in answer to her ring on the doorbell. A clear case of mistaken identity on his part. Although in his defense, it was eleven o’clock, the same time he had been expecting the real girl from the agency.
 

 
Speaking of which... “Why didn’t you tell me who you were when you arrived?”

 
“Well let me see. Possibly because you were too busy telling me to get my clothes off?” Eva Shaw arched dark, pointed brows.

 
Finn bit harder than ever into his top lip to keep back that grin, knowing she was seriously in danger of losing the battle of maintaining her politeness towards him.
 

 
Was it any wonder he had made a mistake, when this woman had those sultry green eyes and those full and pouting lips? As for her hair—Jesus, Joseph and Mary!—how magnificent would that look draped over a man’s naked body?
 

 
His naked body...

 
Finn gave a shrug. “The idea still has merit.”

 
“Not to me it doesn’t.” She eyed him scathingly. “Now could you please sign in the box, Mr. Devlin, so that I can be on my way?”

 
Finn knew Eva Shaw wasn’t being altogether honest, with herself or with him. He may have been distracted earlier, and a lot angry, by that phone call from his agent, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t noticed Eva’s interest in his bared chest and unfastened denims. In fact, he regretted covering up now...

 
It had been a while, months, since he’d last had sex.
 

 
Was that any wonder, considering the woman he’d last had sex with
?

 
Finn’s jaw tightened as he gave another glance at the parcel Eva had delivered. “I’m more than happy to sign in the box, Eva.” He did so. “But I’m afraid you aren’t going anywhere.”
 

 
She looked alarmed. “You can’t keep me here against my will!”

 
“No?” he mused.

 
“Absolutely not,” she assured him emphatically. “My company knows exactly what route I was taking today, and at what time I was supposed to be where, and when I don’t get back to the depot on time it isn’t going to take them long to work out exactly where I made my last delivery.”

 
“Commendable, I’m sure,” Finn drawled dryly. “Except it isn’t going to make a bit of difference to the fact that you’re not going to be able to leave here today. That second phone call? It was from the agency, telling me that the girl I hired won’t be coming here today after all—”

 
“No doubt she heard about the whips and paddles in the basement and thought better of it!”

 
After months of finding absolutely nothing to laugh about, Eva Shaw seemed able to amuse him without even trying. “You think I have whips and paddles in the basement?”
 

 
Eva thought there was a distinct possibility that he might have bats in his belfry, if he thought he was going to keep her here against her will!

 
“Are you into that stuff, Eva?” He stepped towards her, close enough that Eva’s senses were invaded by the warm, totally male smell, the heat, and the sheer presence of him. “Do you like being tied up? Blindfolded?” One of his hands moved up to lift a thick length of her hair before curling that silkiness about his long fingers. “Would you like that, Eva?” His head lowered, his breath warm against her throat and ear as his fingers in her hair prevented her from moving. “Would you like it if I tied you to my bed and licked and sucked you all over before fucking you senseless?”
 

 
A shiver ran the length of Eva’s spine, both at his closeness, the caress of his heated breath, and the wicked images evoked by his graphic words.

 
If she closed her eyes she could actually see herself, tied up and helpless on a bed, the sweat glistening on Finn Devlin’s back as he lay between her parted thighs, those chiseled lips against her bared breasts as he licked and then sucked her aching nipples into the heat of his mouth, Eva squirming and arching with pleasure as she pleaded for him to do it harder.
 

 
She could
see
the play of muscles over that broad back as Finn slid lower, groaning low in her throat as she felt that marauding tongue stroke over her—

 
Eva’s eyes opened wide in panic as she realized she had actually
groaned out loud
.
 

 
That she was balanced precariously on the edge of climaxing just from imagining being completely at this man’s mercy.

 
“How much would it take, do you think?” His gaze now held hers captive, his breath a warm caress against her heated cheek. “I’m guessing one, maybe two strokes of my fingers against your clit to send you over the edge?”

 
Eva
knew,
from the throb and ache between her thighs, that just the one stroke would be enough to send her hurtling into a bone-melting orgasm.

 
She didn’t know this man. And what she did know she didn’t like. Finn Devlin was a—

 
Finn
Devlin?

 
Was it possible this man was
Finn Devlin
?
 

 
The
Finn Devlin?

 
In none of the photographs she had seen of him had his hair been this long and unkempt. And he had always been formally dressed, usually in a designer-label suit and silk shirts, or tailored casual trousers, also with a dark silk shirt, usually with some beautiful model or actress draped and smiling on his arm.
 

 
But, she now realized, she
had
seen this face before; those wicked Irish-blue eyes, with the laughter lines fanning out from the corners and beside the sensual curve of his mouth, cheekbones clearly defined on either side of his perfectly straight nose, and that square jaw currently darkened by dark stubble.

 
She winced as the rest of his weird conversation suddenly made complete sense to her. “I’m guessing that ‘the girl from the agency’ you were expecting is actually a model, and that the ‘thing’ you intended doing with her was taking photographs?” Ridiculous didn’t even begin to describe how Eva now felt at the assumptions she had jumped to in regard to this man.
 

 
At just thirty-two years of age, not only was Finn Devlin a world renowned photographer, feted by the elite of society worldwide, but the previous year Eva had actually attended one of the exhibitions of his photographs at a London gallery, and just been blown away by them. A single print of an original Finn Devlin photograph sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds.
 

 
And she had just called him a sexual deviant!

 
Finn straightened slowly before taking a step back, eyes narrowed warily. “You know who I am.”

 
“Finally—yes, I do!” Those moss-green eyes were slightly accusing. “Why didn’t
you
just tell me that earlier?”
 

 
In all honesty, it hadn’t occurred to Finn that he needed to do so.

 
For one thing there was his name on the parcel.

 
And for another, that’s just the way it was nowadays. Wherever he went he was recognized and speculated about, as were the women he dated. And he had grown tired of it all some time ago, the fawning and willing women, the flattering and equally willing men.
 

 
It had been okay when he was twenty-five, when his photographs were first taken seriously and he had become an overnight success—after struggling for the previous seven years trying to get a gallery to even look at them!
 

 
It had all been new and exciting then, the parties and the women, just his name enough to secure a table at a restaurant or admittance into an exclusive nightclub.