Lethal Exposure (13 page)

What was she going to find in the meditation sanctuary?

The grounds were eerie at night. Julie took a deep breath to bolster her courage as she neared the gardens, which were tucked away behind a copse of pecan trees just off the flagstone walkway.

She stepped out of the moonlight and into the shadows. The breeze picked up, shook the trees, knocked loose pecans. They hit the ground with ominous plopping noises. Julie gulped and knocked at the door of the meditation sanctuary.

It creaked open on its hinges.

Inside, the building was pitch-black and smelled of the fragrant hyacinth and lavender incense used to relax guests. She heard the soft tinkling of wind chimes and realized it was the sound track to new age music playing softly in the background.

“Hello?” she murmured and tentatively stepped across the threshold. “Anyone here?”

From one of the rooms in the back, she caught a flicker of light. A candle?

She inched forward. “Sebastian?”

Goose bumps popped up on her arms.

He appeared in the doorway, the candle in his hand. The sight of him left her breathless. He was totally and completely naked. His eyes glittered like black diamonds.

Then he grinned that sexy big-bad-wolf grin of his and Julie’s heart swelled with a fresh tumble of emotions.

“Shut the door,” he said in that deep voice that stirred her on so many levels. “And lock it behind you.”

Helpless to resist, she did as he asked.

“Follow me.” He turned and disappeared into the darkness.

The bobbing candle lit her way. She followed him into the meditation room. One entire wall was made of slate and a curtain of water trickled down it in a gentle cascade.

In the middle of the room lay a massage table, covered with a beige flannel sheet. The music came from this room. Low chiming gongs vibrated all around her.

He set the candle on the stone counter that held an assortment of interesting-looking oils and lotions and then turned back to her.

She took two steps away, felt her eyes widening with nervousness anticipation.

The devilish expression on Sebastian’s face held a pledge of pure sin, and Julie experienced a blast of sensation that squeezed her womb and tensed her clit. Her mind was so fogged with desire she couldn’t think straight. Could do nothing, in fact, but peer into his mesmerizing gaze.

Sebastian patted the massage chair. “Sit up here.”

She felt like Eve being offered that first deadly apple and she was compelled.

He reached out a hand to touch her and she was amazed to discover a simple brushing of his fingertips could trigger such an overwhelming awareness inside her. He lowered his eyelashes and her body responded.

“Come,” he said.

She went.

It was as if something were settling into place. She felt a click. As if a lid and a jar had come together.

But she saw it in his eyes, too. She wasn’t the only one feeling this connection.

You’re romanticizing him. Stop it. Remember, this is about sex and nothing else.

Right. She was leaving her heart out of the equation. The pulse at the hollow of her throat throbbed. “You’re going to torture me with pleasure, aren’t you?”

“Mmm.”

His muscular body was so amazing she couldn’t stop looking at it.

Julie narrowed her eyes. The candlelight bathed him in a muted orange glow and dark shadows. His insouciant playboy stare belied the steadfastness of his powerful chin, the trustworthy promise of his chiseled cheekbones.

For the first time, she saw the contradictions in him. He wasn’t as footloose and unfettered as he wanted people to believe. There was more to him than the glossy surface, even as he struggled to keep people from seeing it. He courted his reputation as a swinging bachelor. But an image was all that it was. She wondered if there was a scrap of truth beneath the facade.

She found the contrast between his features and his lifestyle striking. He wasn’t as slick and smooth and superficial as he wanted everyone to believe. He was a country boy in rich clothing. A decent guy who’d sold out for the big bucks. A man who didn’t believe his own hype, but had no idea what to replace it with.

An odd sadness curled inside her, pushing aside the excitement. Who was he really, this mysterious Mr. Sebastian Black?

The expression in his eyes went totally predatory as he held up his silk tie.

“What…” She could scarcely push the words past her throat. “What are you going to do with that?”

He stepped toward her. “Blindfold you.”

She wasn’t sure she liked this idea, but he gave her no time to resist. He wrapped the tie around her head. The thick hairs at his wrist grazed the side of her temple and she felt his muscles flex. He was so powerful. She was completely at his mercy here; hidden away from everyone.

And, yet, she trusted him implicitly.

Slowly, he undressed her. She didn’t speak. She didn’t want to do anything that would make him stop.

Nimbly, his fingers eased off her scrub pants. His nails felt smooth, but beyond that she was aware of faint but rough calluses on his fingertips.

Old scars.

The farm boy underneath the spin-doctor gloss.

She felt the air against her skin as he stripped her naked. She could hear his breathing, harsh and ragged. She wished she could see his face.

His lips brushed hers, soft and light as butterfly wings. He kissed her.

She inhaled, filling her lungs with his languid heat.

He broke off the kiss. “Lay down.” He used his hand to guide her up onto the massage table. The flannel sheet was soft against her skin.

“I need to feel you,” she whispered.

“Spread your legs.”

She spread her legs. Sensation rippled inside her. He grasped her by the hips, scooted her to the edge of the table and then positioned himself between her legs. His bare skin rubbed against her sensitive inner thighs. She could feel his erection growing harder.

“Feel me now?” he growled.

“I want to feel your face.” Like a blind woman, she reached up to his jaw and traced the fresh sprout of beard stubble.

Slowly, she ran her fingertips up both sides of his face, skimmed his cheekbones, his nose, his eyelids. Here the skin was soft, in sharp contrast to the rest of him. With her index finger, she etched his eyebrows, delighting in their bristly thickness. It astounded her, how much more aware she was of him now that she could not see him.

He leaned down, used a finger to push the hair back from her right ear and then he wet the outer edge with his tongue.

The sensation was exquisite.

He blew across her damp skin. She gasped. Then when he took her earlobe between his teeth and nibbled, she moaned softly.

She loved the game he was playing. Secretly, she’d dream of a lover who’d play such erotic games with her. A man who understood the power of the imagination. He was teaching her all kinds of interesting things about herself.

Oddly, it felt as if she’d known him forever.

“Roll over on your stomach.”

She shifted onto her belly and felt a tumbling sensation inside her. The room was thick with the smell of hyacinth and lavender and candle wax and her juicy sex. She was so wet for him.

Julie heard him move away from the table. Heard bottles clinking and she was tempted to lift up the corner of the blindfold to see what was going on, but just as she raised her hand, he clicked his tongue. “No peeking.”

“What are you up to?”

“Shh.”

Her body tensed. The waiting was killing her.

The heated oil hit the small of her back in a slow drizzle, the unexpectedness of it forcing the air from her body.

Then came his hands, thick and strong. Kneading her soft, vulnerable flesh.

“Oh, my…” She sighed.

The way he was caressing her made her feel as if she was the most cherished woman in the world. His touch pushed a fever of sexual desire up her spine to the base of her brain.

Amidst the scent of oil and candle and her own femininity, she caught a whiff of his scent. He smelled of the autumn woods, earthy and real.

He rubbed her back and just as she was settling into the rhythmic motion, he changed the game by leaning down and firmly, but lightly, biting her butt.

Julie squealed at the erotic sensations shooting through her, and raised her head up off the massage table.

“Too hard?” he asked earnestly.

“Just right. Perfect. Almost too perfect. How is it you know exactly what to do at exactly the right moment?”

His response was a self-satisfied chuckle.

Which sort of pissed her off. She didn’t like that he knew her body so well when he barely knew her. Was she that easy to read?

“On your back,” he said.

She hesitated, but finally, because she wanted so much more from him, she did as he asked.

Once she was over, he kissed her again. As sweetly as before, as if sensing she needed calming. His lips soothed her jangled nerves and banished any lingering irritation she might be feeling.

For what felt like hours—maybe it was, she’d lost all sense of time—he kissed her most feminine lips, sliding his pagan tongue in and out of her aching moistness. The external world fell away and it was just the two of them inside this sweltering cocoon of pure, primal sex. The only noise in the room was the soft meditation music and the slippery wet sounds his greedy mouth was making against her hungry flesh.

He used his fingers to hold her lips wide open as he lashed her with that tongue. In and out. In and out. Driving her blindly mad.

It was torture. She wanted to come so badly, but he wasn’t allowing it. Wanting, needing to fall over the cliff, but hanging poised on the edge of it.

She moaned his name.

“Yes, Julie,” he croaked. It sounded as if his mouth was as dry as hers.

“I want you inside me.”

“No,” he said. “Not yet.” Then he went back to his task, probing her more deeply than before.

She cried out as his tongue found her center. She was drunk with it. With his mouth. With him.

His tongue was an exquisite instrument of torture. His fingers a tool of sweet torment.

“I can’t take it anymore,” she said. “I want to ride you.”

She ripped off the tie, flung it to the floor, got to her feet.

Sebastian swallowed hard, glorying in the sight of her standing before him beautiful and naked.

“Your turn to lie down,” she ordered.

He lay on the massage table and she straddled him. Lowering her head and kissing him, her hair formed a sexy curtain around them, and her mouth swallowed him up as if she could read his mind and knew every aberrant thought crossing it.

She ran her fingernails over his rock-hard flesh.

“Ride me,” he growled.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

She slowly eased herself down on the length of him. His hands went up to span her waist, holding her in place. He let out his breath on a long, controlled exhale. Her wetness engulfed him. A feminine sea. He was inside her.

She rocked above him, hard and fast, her face twisted in concentration. She looked so gorgeous, making love to him. She pushed him deeper and deeper into the padded table. She rode him hard.

Sebastian flew. Soaring high. He’d never felt so free.

The union was quick and hurried, frantic and feverish. They galloped together.

Everything was wide open. They fused and flowed into each other. It felt so right. So perfect. The sensations were maddeningly complicated. Sebastian couldn’t distinguish where he ended and she began. They were two together. One no more.

He was beyond thinking. Beyond awareness. He was nothing but a hard throbbing cock embedded in her sweetness.

Relentlessly, Julie made love to him. Sliding up, coming down hard. Again and again. He arched his back, thrust his pelvis. He had to stuff his fist against his mouth to stay the primal cry.

He was gonna blow.

“Julie,” he gasped past his own fist.

And then, he lost it.

Twitching and jerking, Sebastian shot into her. He could not breathe. He’d never experienced an orgasm this strong. It was all over him, around him, in him. He could taste it. Taste her. It was cinnamon and lust and…something else he could not name.

His cock started to get hard all over again.

The things she was making him feel were damned unsettling. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. Or wanting her. And not just in his bed. He wanted her on his arm. He wanted to show her off. He wanted to tell everyone they were dating.

He’d lost control and in all his thirty years on earth he’d never lost control because of a woman. It bothered him. This power she wielded. Not just over his libido.

But over his heart.

He’d spoiled her for good. After him, no other man could ever compare.

She was so lucky to have met him, to know him. His gentle touch, debonair smile and sexy wink opened the door to a whole new world of sensation and she would be forever grateful. He’d given her back the self-esteem Roger had stolen away. Sebastian had been the perfect teacher. She his willing student.

But soon he would be headed back for California. She was going to miss him.

Sadness stabbed her chest and she bit down on her bottom lip. She didn’t want him to go, but she knew this was the most critical stage of their affair. The moment just before the breakup. It was okay. She’d managed to keep her heart out of the fray.

Did you? Did you really?

She looked over at him and her breath caught in her lungs. She hadn’t fallen in love with him. Yes, they had a good time. Yes, they had chemistry. And yes, if he stayed much longer, she probably would fall in love with him. He was a hard man not to love.

Just because she’d been thinking about him pretty well nonstop since the day he’d walked onto her floor, didn’t mean she was in love with Sebastian. Obsessed with his body, maybe, but she wasn’t in love.

She’d gone into this relationship knowing nothing could come of it. That was okay. He’d taught her so much. And she understood exactly what it was that she did want. She wanted a man who wanted her with a passion that burned so brightly he couldn’t notice any other woman. She wanted a man who would give up everything to be with her. And she knew that was not Sebastian Black.

Julie refused to second-guess herself. She had grown and changed. She’d learned so much about her own sexuality. A bright future beckoned.

A future without Sebastian.

An emotion she couldn’t name twisted deep inside her chest, but she shoved aside the sensation, exhaled, clenched her fists.

You’re just going to miss the great sex. That’s all it is. It’s nothing more complex than that.

And yet, she couldn’t help wanting more.

She was hungry for more kisses, more caresses, more hot sex. She wanted to keep having screaming orgasms with him. And she liked the way she felt curled up tight against his naked body.

Let him go.

Dammit. She wasn’t going to do this. She was not going to romanticize him. She wasn’t going to ruin what had been a wonderful experience by foolishly hoping for more.

“It’s over and you’re going to be okay,” she whispered and halfway convinced herself it was true.

“Did you say something?” he asked in a dozy voice.

She snuggled on top of him. “I said thank you for this little tryst. You’re right. It’s very thrilling. So tell me, just how did you get that note slipped into my pocket without me knowing it?”

“What do you mean?” He shifted, braced himself up on his elbows and raised up with Julie clinging to his chest. “I didn’t put a note in your pocket. You’re the one who sent me the note. By the way, how did you know I was at La Grange with Butler, Covey and Garcia?”

She sat up. “No, I didn’t.”

They stared at each other, wide-eyed.

“Well if you didn’t send me a note at La Grange and I didn’t put a note in your pocket telling me to meet you here, then who did?”

AT 6:00 A.M., the ringing telephone pulled Julie from a deep sleep. After her late-night rendezvous with Sebastian and the subsequent realization that someone other than themselves had set up the tryst, they’d hurriedly gotten dressed and he’d followed her to her apartment to make sure she got home okay. Then they’d both agreed it would be best for him to return to his hotel.

Julie grappled for the phone. “Hello,” she mumbled.

“Have you seen the front page of this morning’s edition of the Inquisitive Tattler?” Elle asked, referring to a daily Austin tabloid that preferred stories of scandal and gossip to legitimate reporting.

“No.” The word came out on a whimper. She sat up and flicked on the bedside lamp. And then she had to go and ask what she already knew in her heart. “What’s on the cover?”

“You and Sebastian.” Elle cleared her throat. “In…um…a rather compromising position.”

“How compromising?”

“Julie, I want you to take a deep breath and—”

The phone beeped in Julie’s ear. “Hang on, Elle. I’ve got another incoming call.” She switch-hooked over to the new caller. “Hello.”

“Jules, I knew you were looking to play the part of the bad girl, but I think you pushed the envelope just a little too far.” It was Vanessa.

“You’ve seen the Inquisitive Tattler.”

“I didn’t know Sebastian had a tattoo on his shoulder. What is that? An eagle?”

Julie groaned. Just how disastrous was this thing? “Hang on, I’ve got Elle on the other line.”

“I’ll let you go. I have surgery in an hour, but let’s hook up later. Stay strong. ’Bye.”

Nibbling her bottom lip, Julie wished she’d asked Sebastian to spend the night. Right now she needed his big strong arms around her in the worst way.

She switched over to Elle. “I’m back, it was Nessa.”

The front doorbell rang.

“Listen, Elle, I gotta let you go. There’s someone at the door.”

“Remember, I’m here if you need me.”

She hung up, slung back the covers, shuffled into her bathrobe and slippers and padded to the front door. She peeked through the peephole.

To see a reporter and a camera crew on her front porch. Dear heavens, just what was on the front page of that tabloid?

The doorbell pealed again, but she didn’t answer it. Instead, she slunk back to her bedroom, stuffed her legs into a pair of jeans and tugged a pink hooded sweatshirt over her head. She donned sneakers, slipped on a pair of dark sun glasses and stuck her wallet into her pocket.

The doorbell rang a third time.

Grateful for living in a first-floor apartment, she raised her bedroom window, yanked off the screen and slipped out the back way.

Feeling like one of her paparazzi-dodging, VIP patients, she trotted away from the clot of news media on her porch and toward the local convenience store.

A few minutes later, the cowbell over the door of the Stop and Shop clanked as Julie stepped over the threshold.

Head down, she hustled over to the magazine rack. Roped stacks of the Inquisitive Tattler lay on the floor. The shop clerk hadn’t gotten around to unbundling them yet.

The front cover sent dread through her body. There she and Sebastian were. Lip-locked. Naked—although the picture only depicted them from the shoulders up. On the massage table in the Confidential Rejuvenations massage room. It looked as if the picture had been taken with an infrared, night-vision camera. Someone had been watching them making love. Julie’s eyes were closed and she had the look of supreme ecstasy on her face.

The headline read Confidential Rejuvenations’ Holly wood Spin Doctor Seduces Colin Cruz’s Sex Therapist in Night of Sinful Passion.

“NO COMMENT,” Sebastian told the microphone-wielding reporters flanking the front gate at Confidential Rejuvenations.

The minute he’d heard about the tabloid story, he’d rushed over to Julie’s apartment only to find her place under siege by the media. When he tried to call her, he only got her voice mail. He had to find her and protect her from prying reporters.

Then his own phone had rung with Dr. Butler on the other end. Confidential Rejuvenations’ chief of staff issued a terse, “Black, get over here right away.”

Butler was mad, but Sebastian wasn’t concerned for himself. All he could think about was how the fallout was going to affect Julie. It was his fault. He should have known better. He should have been more cautious.

He walked into Butler’s office, his mind desperately searching for ways to spin this thing.

“Sit down, Black,” Butler commanded. He held a copy of the Inquisitive Tattler in his fist.

Disturbed by the look in the man’s eyes, Sebastian sat.

“I can’t begin to tell you how unprofessional this kind of behavior is.” Butler thumped the cover of the magazine.

“Sir, Julie and I were set up. Someone lured us to the tranquility gardens. I’m pretty sure the same person who was behind the Colin Cruz thing is the one who orchestrated this,” he said.

“That’s no excuse,” Butler thundered. “Even if someone did lure you to the gardens, you were the one who exhibited poor judgment with this public display.”

“That’s the thing, it wasn’t a public display until the saboteur decided to make it one.”

“Now that I’ve expressed my disapproval,” Butler went on, “I want you to know that since that gossip rag hit the stands we’ve had nonstop calls from people wanting to be admitted for rehab.”

“Excuse me?”

Butler stopped pacing and sat down across from Sebastian. “Apparently, your…um…” He cleared his throat. “Indiscretion with Julie DeMarco in the tranquility garden has made rehab at Confidential Rejuvenations trendy.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I guess it’s true what they say. Bad publicity is better than no publicity at all.”

“So this means…?”

Before Butler could answer, there was a knock at the door. “Come in,” the chief of staff called out.

Tanner Doyle entered. “Dr. Butler,” he said. “I know who’s been sabotaging the hospital.”

AS JULIE WAS HEADED for Dr. Butler’s office to throw herself on his mercy and beg for her job, she saw him walking out with Sebastian and Tanner. The minute she met Sebastian’s eyes, the courage that had gotten her this far evaporated.

“Wh-what’s happened?”

Sebastian took her arm. “Tanner’s caught the saboteur on camera. We’re on our way down to his office to view the tape now.”

Julie glanced at Butler. “May I go with you?”

Butler nodded curtly. She wondered if she was going to lose her job.

Sebastian tightened his grip on her arm, letting her know he was there for her. She took comfort in his presence, but she knew she couldn’t rely on him. Once Sebastian cleaned up this mess, he’d go back to his life in L.A.

Sadness curled in her chest. Resolutely, she pushed it away. She’d known from the beginning of this affair that she and Sebastian could never be more than temporary lovers. It was enough. He’d made it clear he was a guy who preferred to keep his options open and that was okay with her. She wasn’t looking to get hitched. All she’d wanted was to overcome her sexual naïveté. To learn how to separate love from sex so she didn’t end up getting her heart broken again like she had with Phillip and Roger.

They arrived in Tanner’s office and he had them sit down while he flicked on the television monitor on his wall and hit the play button on the video recorder. “This is from the private spy camera I installed. It’s not hooked up into our main system,” he explained. “It’s a good thing, too, because last night, the power to the main security cameras went off for half an hour. Watch this and you’ll see why.”

The screen filled with the picture of Confidential Rejuvenations’ ivy-twined employee entrance on the east side of the building.

Tanner fast-forwarded it a bit as the camera caught people coming and going at the eleven o’clock shift change. The camera clock showed 11:25 p.m. and Julie saw herself appear on camera.

She sucked in her breath.

Sebastian reached over to squeeze her hand.

She watched herself on screen walk down the flagstone path toward the tranquility gardens headed for her rendezvous with Sebastian. Then she quickly disappeared out of the camera’s range.

The camera fixed on the entrance. No one else came or went. Tanner fast-forwarded again, then hit the play button once more. Seconds later, the entrance door opened and Maxine Woodbury appeared. She glanced left, then right.

When she’d satisfied herself no one was around, she took something from her oversize purse.

Bolt cutters.

She sidled up to the metal box attached to the side of the building. It was almost hidden by the ivy. She pushed the ivy back, clipped the lock on the box and opened it.

“That’s the box where the lines come in that control the main security cameras,” Tanner explained. “And here’s where she removes the relay.”

Maxine monkeyed with something inside the box, then she stepped back, took her cell phone from her pocket and placed a call. Minutes later, she was joined by a squat balding man with a camera.

“That’s one of the paparazzi who interviewed me after the Colin Cruz incident,” Sebastian said.

“It’s Maxine Woodbury?” Dr. Butler sounded stunned. “Maxine is the saboteur?”

Tanner nodded.

“Get her in here,” Dr. Butler said. “I want an explanation and I want it now.”

“YES,” MAXINE SAID with a haughty toss of her head when Dr. Butler confronted her with the evidence. “I pulled the relay out of the box on the security cameras so the photographer could gain access to the grounds.”

“But why?” Butler demanded. “You’ve been with this hospital for fifteen years, Maxine. You won employee of the year in 2006. Why would you want to destroy our hospital?”