Until You (2 page)

"Sit still," he repeated, his voice harsh.

Her eyes widened in shock as his fingers began moving. He had never touched her like this, not once in the four weeks she'd known him. No one had ever touched her like this, despite what the girls at school whispered, despite what her mother thought. And, oh God, to have something like this happen for the very first time in a crowded airplane, with people all around...

"Someone will see," she hissed.

"No one will see," Edouard muttered, turning in his seat so he was facing her. In the dim light, his face had taken on a mask-like quality. "Open your legs."

She clamped her thighs together instead. "Edouard," she whispered, her voice desperate.

He bent his head to hers. "Do you love me?"

His hand had shifted. He'd thrust his finger into her and it hurt, but he'd silenced her cries with his mouth. His breathing had quickened and he'd grasped one of her hands and snugged it against his bulging crotch, holding it tightly in place when she'd tried to pull free.

Terrified, she'd numbed herself to sensation. It was only a dream, she'd told herself, a hideous dream.

But it wasn't. It was real. And as they stood in the cold rain outside Orly, she knew she'd made the worst mistake of her young life.

A taxi pulled to the curb. Edouard reached out, opened the door. "Get in, my treasure," he said, as if nothing had changed between them.

Miranda pulled back. "I—I've changed my mind," she said. "I want to go home."

His hand fell, hard, into the small of her back. "You are my wife," he said coldly. "Now, get in the taxi and behave yourself."

The drive through the rainy streets was long, but not long enough. All too soon, the cab pulled up before a stone building that was the same color as the Parisian sky. Edouard paid the driver. Then he locked his arm around Miranda's waist and walked her quickly up a flight of steps and through a massive door.

"Your new home, darling Miranda," he said, as the door slammed shut behind them. "If it is not yet the stuff of girlish dreams, it will be—once your dear Mama provides us with an income."

Miranda looked at the walls spotted with mold, the room almost empty of furnishings. She felt the chill in the house close around her, and she finally understood everything.

Edouard, the Count de Lasserre, had a title that spanned five centuries. But standing in the gloomy, drafty hall of his ancestral home, she realized that the money in his bank account probably wouldn't cover the next five minutes.

Her Prince Charming was broke. He had married her not for love but for her mother's money—and for what he had done to her on the plane.

Miranda tore free of his encircling arm and grabbed a poker from beside the huge fireplace that took up almost one entire stone wall.

"If you touch me again," she breathed, her green eyes wild, "I'll kill you."

Edouard's handsome face twisted. The suave features became an ugly parody of the face she knew.

She backed away as he came towards her and raised the poker over her head. He laughed, wrenched it from her hand and threw it to the floor with contempt. Then he grabbed Miranda's wrist, swung her into his arms and carried her, sobbing and beating her fists against his shoulders, up the wide, creaking staircase to his rooms.

Chapter 1

New York City, 2011

Conor O'Neil lounged back on the sofa, took a swallow of cold ale and stretched his long legs towards the fireplace while he pondered one of life's more difficult questions.

When a woman said she was going to change into something more comfortable after she'd spent the evening wearing a sexy dress that clung to her breasts and ended at her thighs, what did she mean?

Conor smiled to himself. It was almost as tough as deciding which was better—the warmth of the fire, the crispness of the ale, or the knot of anticipatory tension curling low in his belly as he waited for Mary Alice Whittaker to emerge from her bedroom.

"Conor?"

As soon as he heard that soft voice, he knew the answer. Slowly, he put down the bottle of India Pale and got to his feet.

She was standing in the arched doorway, silhouetted by the light that spilled from the hall behind her, wearing something long and black that sent his pulse rate way into the red. She'd let down her hair so that it fell like liquid gold around her face.

Something more comfortable, he thought, and smiled.

She stepped forward, just enough so the light seemed to pour into her body and turn her to flame.

"What do you think?" she said, putting her arms out and pirouetting slowly in place. "Isn't this closer to the real me?"

Conor took another look at whatever you called the thing she was wearing. A robe? A negligee? Not that he gave a damn. Whatever you called it, it was doing its job. How could something cover so much yet reveal everything that mattered?

"Oh, yeah." His smile was slow and sexy. "I'd say it's definitely closer to the real you, Mary Alice."

She laughed, a throaty chuckle that went straight to his groin, and started towards him, her high-heeled, black satin mules tapping lightly against the Italian tile floor.

"I figured you were pleased," she said. "I could tell by your smile."

Conor laughed. She'd be able to tell by more than that as soon as she got close enough. O'Neil, he thought, what a clever so-and-so you are! What had started as a weekend he'd figured to enjoy was shaping up as one he suspected he'd not soon forget.

"It's a terrific smile, you know." Mary Alice paused just long enough to recover the glass of white wine she'd left on a table, then floated towards him again. "Sort of a little-boy-with-his-hand-caught-in-the-cookie-jar grin, if you know what I mean."

He knew exactly what she meant. It was the smile his ex-wife had described as unbearably smug. But, he thought, taking Mary Alice's hand, this was definitely not a time to think about his ex-wife. It was not a time to think about being smug, either.

The only thing worth thinking about right now was that he didn't have to be in D.C. until nine o'clock Monday morning.

Or ten.

Or eleven.

For all he cared, they could come and drag back his desiccated body.

"I'm really glad you called me," Mary Alice said as he drew her down on the sofa. The tip of her tongue, pink and delicate as a kitten's, swept between her lips and touched the rim of her wineglass. "Really, really glad."

He bent towards her, inhaled her perfume, then caught her earlobe between his teeth and bit down gently.

"Yes," he said. "Me, too."

"Mmm. That's nice."

Her voice was low and sexy with just a touch of little-girl innocence, a mind-blowing combination of Penthouse Centerfold and Innocent Schoolgirl. It had no resemblance to her do-gooder voice, the one she'd used on him months ago when they'd ended up unlikely dinner partners at some silly Embassy reception.

"What a barracuda," his boss, Harry Thurston, had mumbled.

Considering Mary Alice Whittaker's reputation as a My-Heart-Bleeds-For-Everything lobbyist, her oversized glasses and her pulled-back hair, it had seemed an accurate description.

But not even the dress-for-success suit she'd worn had been completely able to disguise the made-for-pleasure body. And though she'd treated Conor with the scorn politically righteous reformers often reserved for members of the Washington community, he'd sensed something more.

It was like standing too close to overhead high voltage wires and hearing the faint but persistent hum of escaping electricity.

He'd waited two months, until the embassy party was long-forgotten and Mary Alice was up to her swan-like neck in some new crusade, before he'd phoned. He'd called her not at her prestigious Park Avenue office but at night, at her Gramercy Park apartment.

"Hello," he'd said, no time wasted on preliminaries, "this is Conor O'Neil."

Mary Alice hadn't wasted any time, either.

"How did you get my phone number?" she'd asked in a cool, take-no-prisoners voice.

Conor had laughed softly. "I'm the guy you called a government insider, Miss Whittaker, remember?"

"And why have you phoned me, Mr. O'Neil?"

Her voice was still chilly. For a second or two, he'd wondered if he'd read her wrong but then he'd thought, hell, what was there to lose?

"I phoned you," he'd said, "because I'm tired of wondering what you'd look like with your hair down and your glasses off."

"Good-bye, Mr. O'Neil."

"Shall I be more direct, Miss Whittaker? I have dinner reservations at The Water Club Friday night, tickets to that revival of Westside Story, and one hell of an itch to take you to bed. Are you interested?"

There'd been a pause, a long one, before she'd answered. When she had, her voice had gone soft and husky.

"The Water Club is over-rated," she'd said, "and I've already seen the play."

Conor had laughed. "You pick it, then. I'm easy."

Mary Alice had laughed, too, a low, sexy chuckle that had damned near melted the telephone.

"I'll bet you're not," she'd said—and now here he was, sitting on her sofa, the lights low, an old Eagles album playing softly in the background, with Mary Alice's bare feet in his lap.

They were well-cared for feet, he saw as he traced her polished pink toenails with his index finger. They were also vaguely oversized, which was not what you were supposed to be thinking at a moment like this, but lately his thoughts had drifted at the damnedest times. It was, he supposed, the price you paid for bedding a woman before you knew if you liked her or simply wanted her.

Not that he had any complaints. Safe, healthy, uncommitted sex was the only kind he was interested in. His job didn't allow for anything more. Besides, he'd already tried the other route, the emotional meat grinder people called love.

The pattern of his life since his divorce had been simple. You found someone you could laugh with, someone who turned you on, and you entered into a pleasant relationship that, with luck, would last several weeks, maybe even months, until one or the other of you grew bored.

It had come as an enormous relief to find that the world was filled with women who were looking for the same thing.

Mary Alice, for example, was establishing her claim to that enlightened attitude this very second, using her toes to do clever things to his rapidly hardening crotch.

"Hey." He grabbed her foot, brought it to his mouth and gently nipped her big toe. "What do you think you're doing, woman?"

She gave another of those sexy chuckles. "If you don't know the answer to that," she said, "we're in for an awfully dull evening."

Conor smiled. "Come here," he said, and with a purr of agreement, she went into his arms.

* * *

He came up out of sleep the way he always did, quickly and with a minimum of disorientation. It was, his ex had once said bitterly, the only good thing his stint in Special Forces had done for him. He wondered what she'd say if she knew him now, after the time he'd spent working for the Committee.

Mary Alice's bedroom—they'd moved there during the long night—was grey with early morning light. The soft ringing of the phone had awakened him. Mary Alice rolled over and grabbed for it on the nightstand.

"Lo," she muttered, and then she shoved the phone in his direction. "It's for you."

He took it from her. "Thanks," he said, trying not to notice that her face was puffy with sleep or that the sexy, kittenish voice had given way to one that was raspy and sullen.

"I don't much appreciate having my private phone number handed out everywhere, Conor. If you need to touch base with people—-"

He reached out, cupped her breast as he scooted up against the pillows.

"O'Neil," he said into the phone. Mary Alice sighed as his thumb moved against her flesh.

"Your cell phone is government property, my boy. Turning it off is a violation of the law."

"Bull," Conor said pleasantly.

"Did I wake you?"