Dangerous Ladies (41 page)

It was searching for service.

Of course.

He searched for her call list.

Nothing.

He looked for the numbers she’d last dialed.

Nothing.

The smart girl had wiped the memory on her cell phone clean before she’d broken in.

Only she
hadn’t
broken in. Somehow she’d unlocked the door and walked in. The cameras hadn’t caught her sleight of hand, but something she’d done had overridden the security chip in the huge old-fashioned lock. Of course, the motion sensors had caught her as she walked through the foyer, setting off the silent alarms, but still, he wanted to know—his security man wanted to know—how she’d done it.

With a touch of uncharacteristic whimsy, he wondered if it could be something as simple as the house knowing she belonged here.

But he didn’t care whether she belonged here and he didn’t. He would solve all of her mysteries and in the process take a pound of flesh from Bradley Benjamin.

Devlin had always had the luck of the Irish.

Meadow proved he hadn’t lost his touch.

M
eadow woke to sunshine pressing against her eyelids, a rebound of her optimism—and someone in bed with her. Behind her. Spoon fashion.

A man. Most definitely a man. Most definitely the man who’d been there to wake her up every hour all night long.

No wonder she was feeling optimistic.

She flipped over and found herself facing Devlin’s rugged, handsome, unsmiling face. “Good morning, darling.” His fingers caressed her cheek. His chocolate brown, dangerously intense eyes plumbed the depths of her soul.

Her soul, ridiculous thing, stretched and purred under the flattering attention.

“All right.” She managed to sound stern. “What are you doing here?” Like she didn’t know. He’d seen an opportunity and moved to take advantage.

“Where else would I be except in bed with my beloved wife?” He slid closer, his legs tangling with hers.

“I’m not your beloved wife!”
Oops
. Panic reaction. Because of his words. Because the robe she’d wisely slept in last night was open from the waist down and the waist up, and her bra and panties left
her very bare. And because he wore only a soft cotton T-shirt and . . . well, she didn’t know what he wore below the waist, because the blankets covered him, and she wasn’t about to grope him to find out.

“Darling, of course you are. You just don’t remember.” His fingers wandered down the slope of her throat. “I’ll help you.”

“Stop that.” She slapped at him and inched back.

“Does your head still hurt?”

“A little.” A nagging headache behind her eyes. Certainly not enough to stop her from doing what she must.

“The doctor said you could stay in bed today.”

“The doctor is an idiot. I’m fine.” And thoroughly irritated that he should quote Dr. Apps to her while he was horizontal with
Meadow.

“You’re grouchy.” He shook his head sadly, as if he actually knew what her moods were like, when he didn’t have the foggiest idea. “You
should
stay in bed today.”

“I am not grouchy. See?” She smiled, grinding her teeth all the while.

He smiled back, all allure, ease . . . and seduction. “I’ll let you get up on one condition: You promise that if you feel faint or ill, you’ll let me know.”

“As if you really cared.” Maybe she was a little grouchy.

He touched his lips to her forehead.

“What do you want?”

“I want you back. I want to be together like we were in Majorca. I want the romance, the talk, the passion. . . .”

She ought to say,
That never happened.
And
Tell me why you want me here.

Maybe she would. Later. When her thigh wasn’t trapped between two of his. “I don’t remember.”

“Then I’ll make it happen again. We could go down to the beach and meet by accident—”

“We met by accident?”

“With Fate as our matchmaker. I was worn out from making the deal on this house, and bitter about the acridness of business. I’d lost my way, my pleasure in living, and I was leaning against a boulder, staring out at the sea. . . .”

Meadow interrupted. “I’m not tall. I’m only five-five.”

Devlin placed his finger on her lips and reproved her with a shake of his head. “The flow of your sundress made you look tall, and your long, leisurely strides made me think of only one thing. . . .”

“Yeah, and I’ll bet I know what it was.”

“I would have lost that bet,” she said.

“Wow,” Meadow whispered. He was good. She knew it was all garbage, but when he wove his story, he pulled her in and she almost believed it. Almost lived it with him.

“Maybe you don’t recall me, but your body knows mine. Your
body yearns for the pleasure I can show it.” His voice sounded the way black velvet felt—soft, rich, seductive. His hand cupped her wrist and slid beneath the wide sleeve to the inner bend of her elbow. His thumb stroked back and forth on the tender skin. “We don’t need warm white sand and Mediterranean breezes. We don’t need palm trees and glass-bottomed boats. All we need is each other . . . and the world drifts away.”

He wasn’t so much encroaching on her body as he was seducing her with his words. Each phrase sank into her mind and sent a thrill down her spine to places that had nothing to do with marriage and everything to do with mating. His thigh rubbed hers over and over, and distractedly she tried to recall the last time she’d shaved her legs.

Then she decided she didn’t care, because she wanted to rub herself against him. In fact, her hips were headed in his direction when some remnant of sense stopped her.

She wore almost nothing. He wore . . . who knew? Dangerous ground for a woman whose one fledgling affair had faded under the pressures of family illness.

She turned her head away from his fingers and her gaze away from his. “Don’t.”

He rose onto his elbow. “Look at me.”

She did. She had to. She needed to observe his moves, try to keep ahead of him. If that meant she obeyed him, there was no help for it. If her gaze intertwined with his again, and those heated brown eyes stripped away her pretensions and left her bare to his scrutiny, there was no help for that, either. He had a way of making her feel helpless—and making her like it.

“We’re lucky.” He slipped his hand around her waist and splayed it in the small of her back. “Most couples have only one first kiss. We’ll have two.”

Her thoughts might be muddled, but her instincts were crystal clear. She should run. She should run
now.

Instead she let him pull her closer, into the heat and the scent of him.

But it was okay. Because he was wearing boxers.

His head dropped toward hers. His breath whispered across her skin near her ear. “Sometimes when two people meet, they know that a touch would be enough to set off a wildfire, but they never have the chance to set the spark. We have the chance . . . and it would be a crime against nature not to find out. . . .”

She turned to look at him, to tell him to back off.

Somehow her lips met his—and the spark leaped into instant, glorious conflagration. Her eyes fluttered closed. The lightning from last night shivered between them, setting off flashes beneath her closed lids. Her hands rose and grasped him, one behind his neck, one against his shoulder, and the lightning crackled from her fingertips into his skin and back again, like magic performed by a cartoon magician.

What he did with his lips was wicked, an overload of temptation. His hands didn’t wander; rather, they held her closely, and the heat that built seemed to ignite their scraps of clothing, leaving nothing but bare skin and the flare of desire.

Her breath came more and more quickly. She was blind and deaf to anything but him: his breath in her mouth, his scent filling her nostrils, the fire he created as he rubbed his hips against hers.

She liked his tongue. She liked that he used it against her teeth and lips to taunt and touch. She liked that he gave up control when she wanted to explore his mouth. She savored the vibration of his moan as he rolled onto his back and pulled her with him.

He was solid beneath her, a great, strong beast of a man who radiated heat and moved her without effort. As she pressed him into the mattress, kissing him with growing intensity, he ceased holding her against him. Instead his hands wandered, pushing her robe aside so that only the tie remained between their bodies. His palms caressed her buttocks, cupping them, pressing her against his erection, and moving her in a pulsing rhythm.

Vaguely she knew things were moving too fast. She couldn’t get
intimate with a man who had lied to her. Not when she was lying to him, too. But on this sensual, physical, earthy level, they were far too attuned.

At least, she was attuned to him.

Maybe he was simply good at this stuff. She’d heard that some men worked miracles with a woman’s anatomy, although she’d had little experience with that. But here and now, each shift of their bodies wrung another sensation from her taut nerves.

She searched out the hem of his T-shirt and slid her hands beneath it, climbing the ladder of his sculpted belly up to his ribs and then to his nipples. He stretched his arms above his head, inviting her—challenging her—to strip him.

As a girl, she’d once taken a dare to jump off the roof of the studio onto their trampoline. She’d broken her leg. While the doctor set it, he’d sternly warned her of the dangers of accepting dares.

Too bad Meadow’s besetting sin was impetuousness.

Sitting up, she straddled Devlin.

Peeling him out of his T-shirt, she tossed it aside.

Her conscience was wrong. She was
not
sorry.

Smooth muscles rippled beneath tanned skin. On his arms. On his chest. On his belly. She couldn’t resist; she touched him with her fingertips, sliding up hills and down valleys, following his love arrow down his breastbone, over his navel, to the waistband of his underwear. The contrast between her pink nails and his dark hair fascinated her, and she gloated over the strength and glory of his chest. “You’re in great shape.”

“After you left me, I had nothing worthwhile to do except practice making love.” He flexed his biceps. “By myself.”

Damn the man!
How did he know she was sucker for guys who made her laugh? “Practice makes perfect.”

“Let’s see.” He slid his fingers under the waistband of her panties.

She had only one thought—
Take them off.

She leaned forward.

He pushed them down her legs.

She kicked them away.

His palms stroked the bare globes of her rear, raising the fine hairs all over her body. His fingertips skimmed the crack that led to the space deep into her body.

She tensed with anticipation.

He slid his thumbs over her clitoris.

She sank her nails into his skin.

He slipped—just barely—his finger into her body.

She gave a moan that revealed far too much.

“It was exactly like this in Majorca,” he whispered in her ear. “You kissed me and we went up in flames.”

A warning pealed loud and shrill in her head.

“Majorca?” He’d mentioned Majorca before, and it behooved her to remember—she’d never been to Majorca.

She wasn’t starting out a relationship based on lies.