Just Another Pretty Face (HT 459) (15 page)

"No," she said. "No, I can do it."

He nodded, waiting.

Shyly, then, realizing he wasn't going to turn away again, suddenly not wanting him to, she toed off the paper slippers and lifted her hands to the front of the borrowed jacket, pushing it off her shoulders. It fell to the floor, sliding down the backs of her legs as she reached for the sash of the blue silk robe. Slowly, watching his face for the slightest hint of a reaction, she pulled it loose.

The robe parted, revealing a tantalizing slice of her slender body—the inside curves of her small breasts, her narrow rib cage, her flat belly with its tiny dent of a naval, the thatch of silky black hair between her thighs.

Pierce stood very still, waiting and watching, his eyes as hot as laser beams while moist clouds of steam filled the small tiled room.

Nikki steeled herself and took that final step, giving her fragile woman's pride fully into his keeping, trusting that he would find her long, gangly, soot-streaked body as beautiful as she found his. She shrugged her shoulders, sending the robe sliding down her back to the floor, and waited for his verdict.

His eyes widened, darkening nearly to navy as he took his first fully unobstructed look at her. His chest swelled witha long indrawn breath. His hand clenched painfully around the edge of the shower door. His erection twitched, alive and straining toward her. He moved his lips, soundlessly forming her name, and held out his hand.

She smiled tremulously, her relief evident in her eyes, and put her hand in his.

He drew her toward him slowly, stepping backward into the shower as she moved forward, reaching around her to pull the door closed behind her. Their bodies touched, lightly at first, and then they were in each other's arms, plastered together under the warm spray of the shower. Their lips met in a searing open-mouthed kiss, desperate to take and taste, reckless with intemperate need, rife with unrestrained passion. It lasted forever and still wasn't long enough to even begin to satisfy their hunger for each other.

"You nearly drove me crazy, woman," Pierce said, dragging his mouth away from hers to press it against her cheeks and jaw and the fragile lids of her eyes. "I thought I was going to have to tear those clothes off you."

"Would you have?" she asked in a throaty whisper, thrilled that he wanted her that much.

"In two seconds flat," he vowed. He took her head in his hands, smoothing her wet hair back from her forehead and temples, his thumbs rubbing lightly at the smears of soot that lingered on her elegant cheekbones, his gaze hot and devouring as it roamed over her upturned face. "God, you're beautiful," he said, and kissed her again. "Every long, slinky, sexy inch of you. Soot and all."

She smiled then, a slow smile, full of newly discovered feminine power. "You said you wouldn't take advantage of the situation," she reminded him teasingly, rubbing her hard little nipples against his chest as she said it.

He grinned his pirate's grin. "I had my fingers crossed." He backed her up against the tile wall of the shower and pressed his hardened body into the softness of hers, letting her feel his desire. "I intend to take full and complete advantage of you
and
the situation," he added, sliding his hands down to cup her breasts, "every blessed chance I get."

She arched against his touch, pressing her breasts into his palms. "Is that another one of your flimsy promises?"

"Solid gold," he whispered, dragging his mouth down the long column of her throat. "You can take it to the bank."

"I'd rather you just—" she gasped as his mouth closed over the engorged tip of her breast"—take me," she said with a breathless sigh. Her fingers dug into his shoulders. "Now,"she demanded fiercely.

He groaned and bent his knees, sliding his hands to her thighs to lift her for his entry. The groan turned to a strangled sound of pain and frustration as his injured leg protested the move. "Damn it to hell!" The words were grated out through clenched teeth. "It isn't going to work this way."

His leg wasn't going to hold up under their combined weight or the force of the thrusts his enflamed body was urging him to make. And, he realized as the stab of pain cleared his senses, that wasn't the only problem: he'd been about to take her without protection. He started to pull away, his mind sorting through all the ways there were to solve both dilemmas.

Nikki clutched him tighter, too far gone to understand what he'd said, knowing only that he was pulling away just at the moment when she needed him most desperately. "Pierce?" she said with a low, aching moan.

"It's all right, sweetheart." He slid his hand from the back of her thigh to the slippery softness between her legs and thrust two long fingers into the swollen depths of her, knowing what would assuage her need.

She arched against him. "More," she urged, and thrust her hips against his hand.

He gave her more and then more, until he felt the rhythmic convulsions of her body around his fingers, but it still wasn't enough to satisfy her. "More," she said again, her slender body straining against him as if she hadn't just achieved climax. She reached down, pressing her fingers into his tight buttocks, pulling his hips against hers, tilting her pelvis in ancient, unmistakable invitation and entreaty. "More," she demanded, and bit him on the shoulder.

Pierce groaned. "Nikki, sweetheart.. .please," he said raggedly, driven to the very limits of his control by her passionate demand. "I'm trying to be sensible here." He groaned again as she slid her hand between their bodies and curled her fingers around him.

"I want you inside me, Pierce," she said, squeezing him. "I
need
you inside me."

Pierce's control broke. He pushed away from the shower wall with one hand, pulling her along with an arm around her waist as he slid his feet backward over the floor of the shower. The backs of his legs touched the low tile bench against the opposite wall and he sat down, pulling her onto his lap with her thighs astride his as he did so. He put his hands on her hips, holding her still when she would have sunk down onto the turgid length of him. "I haven't got any condoms," he said, feeling compelled to make sure she knew that. "Nikki, look at me," he demanded raggedly, forcing himself to wait until she did so.

She lifted heavy-lidded, passion-glazed eyes to his.

"You won't be protected if we do this now."

"I don't want to be protected." She cupped his face in her hands. "I only want you," she said, and leaned forward to touch her lips to his. "Make love to me, Pierce," she whispered achingly against his mouth.

All of Pierce's noble intentions fled in the face of her passionate entreaty. One hand moved down to guide his iron-hard tumescence into the heated core of her. The other hand moved to cup the back of her head. "Kiss me," he demanded hoarsely, thrusting his tongue into her mouth as he thrust his eager, aching manhood into her welcoming body.

The effect was instantaneous and intense. They exploded together in a blaze of white-hot heat that went on and on, holding them at the very pinnacle of physical sensation. They held tight to each other, their bodies straining, their emotions soaring, and rode it out.

Exquisite,
Pierce thought, when he could think again. It was the most exquisite sensation he'd ever experienced. So hot and sweet it almost hurt, and more perfect than anything had ever been before. He wondered, vaguely, as he sat there holding her trembling body in his arms, if the intensity of the experience had something to do with the way they'd tempted fate, with the knowledge that now, this very minute, one of his sperm could be wriggling its way into one of her eggs, creating a whole new life. Just the possibility of it made him feel —he sifted around in his mind for just the right word—primitive, he decided. It made him feel primitive. Basic. Primordial.

He was getting hard again, just thinking about it.

"What?" Nikki murmured, her breath warm against his neck.

"More," Pierce groaned raggedly, and put his hands on her hips to show her the movement that would bring them both to exquisite pleasure once again.

9

A
LL
OF
THE
K
INGSTON
siblings were present much later that afternoon for what Pierce factitiously termed "a little alfresco luncheon" and Nikki privately thought of as a strategic gathering of the clan. The meal was served out under one of the umbrella tables by the swimming pool. The chicken salad in pineapple shells, the date-nut bread and cinnamon-spiced iced tea were accompanied by the acrid smell of stale smoke and charred wool carpeting and the sounds of the cleanup crew hard at work in the room upstairs.

The fire itself had done very little damage. It had smoldered for a good while before it finally burst into flame so, aside from the carpet, the damage was mostly cosmetic. Painters, carpet layers and the same interior decorator who had been employed when Pierce first purchased the house were already scheduled to begin their work once the cleanup was complete. The insurance investigator had already been and gone. An art restoration expert had been called in to deal with the smoke damage done to the paintings that had been hanging in the bedroom, as well as to inspect the pieces in the upstairs hall. And a call had been put in to various clothing stores, including the very trendy Maxfield, to replenish Pierce's wardrobe, which had also suffered from the smoke that had drifted into every crack and cranny of his bedroom. By the end of the week, when the smell of fresh paint and new carpeting had eradicated the smell of smoke, no one would be able to tell there had ever been a fire.

"There's not really much damage, considering," Gage commented idly, watching his superstar brother feed the baby sitting in the high chair between them.

Pierce glanced down at the removable walking cast strapped to his lower left leg. "Not to the bedroom, anyway," he said dryly.

Gage grinned at him. "Given the fact that you were kicked by a battle-seasoned marine trained in—what is it you're trained in?" he asked Nikki.

"Dirty street fighting," Pierce said, turning his head to smile at the woman sitting beside him. The baby smacked the high chair tray with both hands, conveying his displeasure at the interruption in the delivery of his meal. "Okay, okay, hold your diaper on," Pierce said, and quickly inserted another spoonful of strained peaches into his nephew's wide-open mouth. "If she'd fought fair," he said to his brother, "I could've taken her."

"You wish," Gage snorted, and winked at Nikki.

She smiled back.

"Oh, good Lord, will you look at what's in the
Star,"
Tara exclaimed in dismay, snapping the paper between her hands as she folded it open.

"Wait, don't tell me, let me guess," Pierce said his tone half amused, half disgusted. There was a stack of tabloids on the table and each one of them told a story more fantastic than the one before. "The fire was set by my supposed new wife—" he inclined his head toward Nikki "—in a fit of jealousy because I refuse to give up all my old lovers and cleave only unto her. No, wait," he said, adroitly scooping strained peaches off his nephew's chin with the tip of a baby-sized spoon as he spoke, "it was started by my alien lover from the planet Krypton because she's jealous of Nikki."

"Pierce, please," Claire said, setting aside the paper she'd been skimming to take the one her sister-in-law held out to her. "Oh, my," she said after a quick glance at the headline. "It's not about the fire at all." She cast a wry look at her brother over the edge of the paper. "Not the one you're referring to, anyway."

Something in her tone warned Pierce that he wasn't going to like whatever it was. "What then?" he asked, instinctively glancing at the dark-haired woman seated next to him. She probably wasn't going to like it, either.

"Well, the good news is, they seem to have swallowed the ruse of your make-believe af—that is," she amended hastily, tactfully avoiding mentioning that the affair no longer seemed to be make-believe, "they haven't ferreted out the fact that Nikki's your bodyguard, so your macho reputation is still intact."

"And the bad news?" Pierce prompted.

Claire hesitated, exchanging a concerned glance with Tara over Nikki's possible reaction to having her private life suddenly becoming very public. It was bad enough when you were accustomed to seeing the events of your life misrepresented in print; it had to be pure hell when you weren't.

"Claire?" Pierce prodded, a forgotten spoonful of strained peaches held in midair as he waited for her answer.

The baby screwed up his face.

Gage reached over and plucked the spoon out of his brother's fingers, averting a noisy outburst by quickly and efficiently slipping the contents into his son's mouth without spilling a drop.

"Go ahead and read it aloud," Nikki said with a sigh, correctly interpreting the worried glances that passed between the other two women. "We might as well know the worst."

"There's a picture of the two of you, um... dancing." Claire said delicately. She folded the paper in half and reached across the table, laying it between Pierce and Nikki's plates.

Gage lifted an eyebrow. "New step?" he asked facetiously, trying to lighten the suddenly tense mood.

Tara shook her head at her husband, warning him that now was not the time to tease his brother, no matter how pure his motive. Nikki made a strangled noise and covered her eyes with her hand.

Pierce frowned and reached out to pick up the paper.

The photographer had captured them mid-kiss on the dance floor. Their bodies were pressed together, as close as two panting teenagers in the back seat of a car. Their arms were wrapped around each other as if they never intended to let go. Their tongues were very obviously down each other's throats. It was hot and passionate and carnal and...

And private, damn it,
Pierce thought, his hand fisting on the newspaper as he skimmed the accompanying text. His upper lip curled. "That's it!" he snarled, tossing the tabloid down in the middle of the table. "This time they've gone too far. I want you to call the lawyers on this one, Claire," he ordered.