Too Wicked to Keep (12 page)

She dragged her bra over her head and then, standing over him, shimmied out of her shorts. Though he was utterly spent, a mass of melted muscle and bone splayed across the floor, one part of him surged and she zeroed in on it immediately. She dragged his shorts off his body, then kissed a hot path up his foot, over his ankle, knees and thighs. She spared his dick a short
flick of her tongue, then blazed the rest of her trail up his abdomen, chest, neck and chin. She covered him like an undulating blanket, and he imagined that if not for her obvious intention to take advantage of his weakened state, he could drift into the most solid sleep of his entire life.

But she wasn't going to have any of that. She straddled him again, this time facing forward, her slick sex sliding over his. He moved to touch her, but she slammed his hands back down on either side of him.

“Oh, no,” she chastised. “You don't need to move. You've been working so hard. First, checking out the house and then honing this delicious body of yours into shape. You've done enough. I can take care of things from this point.”

And man, did she ever.

His eyes drifted shut, his senses in a kind of delirious overload that only allowed him to alternately register the feel of her hands on his chest or her lips skimming across his shoulder, down his pec, then latching on to his nipple. The pressure of her body on his shifted when she reached over to retrieve her water bottle, then suddenly, she leaned up to his ear and asked if he was thirsty.

He replied by opening his mouth. She squirted the cold water between his lips, then aimed the stream across his chest so she could lap up what didn't drip away. The entire time, she pressed his erection between her legs, the slick pressure driving him mad with want.

She disappeared again for a minute, causing his eyes to pop open. She'd brought a condom with her, and she made quick work of removing it from its packaging and rolling it over him. She hummed as her hands, enhanced by lubrication, slid over the slick casing.

“Oh, this is good,” she said.

She mounted him, manipulating her body to the perfect angle so that he could slide straight into her without having to move. When she sat up, she locked her gaze with his, her hands splayed in front of her, her fingers shiny from the lube that had spread to her palms.

His gaze locked with hers and she seemed to read his mind. With intricate care, she smeared her fingers over her nipples, which grew hard and long. She crooned her pleasure to him, moving with exquisite slowness up and down his body.

Danny couldn't look away, mesmerized by the way she used him to fulfill her own selfish needs. She pleasured her breasts, writhing over him, until he saw the beginnings of her orgasm tease the edges of her consciousness. At this point, he'd recovered enough to play his part, but he resisted.

This was the purest art he'd ever seen—and the thought of stealing it from her was a crime in itself. He did nothing more than shift his hips to maximize the tilt of his body into hers. She grabbed hold of his chest hair, alternately tugging hard and then bending forward to kiss away the pain. In the end, she braced her hands on the shoulders she'd massaged into submission and pumped until he could feel his own release building to an inevitable end.

They came together. She was wild with movement; he was utterly still. Danny squeezed his eyes shut so tightly, moisture leaked from the edges, spilling into the sweat on his temple. This was pure, raw sex. This was unconstrained pleasure. This was trust and need and selfless selfishness unlike anything he'd ever dreamed imaginable.

Then she collapsed against him, spent and satisfied, and reality drove into his heart like a spike.

He had to let her go.

Not only had it been their deal, but it was the right thing to do. Her family was desperately important to her—as his was beginning to be. He couldn't ask her to give her life up for him, and under no fantasy scenario could he imagine that he'd ever fit into her world. He was a thief. A liar. A con man. She needed to take this rare and beautiful passion and share it with a man who could match her honesty and integrity point for point.

He wasn't that man. He could never be that man…though as he drew his palm up her back, curved over him in a cradle of naked vulnerability, he couldn't help but splay his hand so he could see his father's ring and wish, for the first time since the damned thing got stuck on his hand, that the transformative magic of the bandit's legacy truly worked.

A
BBY SWIRLED HER FINGER
around the rim of her wineglass. The light from the votive candle on the restaurant table sparkled through the deep red, creating a spectrum of color across the white tablecloth. Her mind drifted to Picasso's rose period, so less famous than the blue. She had a theory about why—he'd used red to portray cheerfulness. Not passion. Not love. Not heartbreak.

That's what red meant. Leave it to a man to not understand.

“Hey, you okay?”

Erica, who'd slipped away from their table to take a phone call from her office, drew her napkin across her lap and then scooted forward in her chair. “You look like you're about to fall apart.”

“Do I?”

Wisely, her friend took the wineglass away from her. She'd already had more than her usual and perhaps it was the alcohol spurring the melancholy mood. She'd arranged to have dinner out with Erica not only because Danny insisted it would establish an alibi for her in case he was caught at Liebe's house, but because she couldn't bear the thought of hiding in her apartment, pacing the
rooms and worrying herself into madness while he perpetrated a crime on her behalf. What the hell had she been thinking?

“Okay, that's it,” Erica declared. “I'm done with this secretive shit. You need to talk, Abby. And I'm here to listen. I'm not going to judge you.”

Abby wished this was true, but how could it be when she was so harshly judging herself?

“You don't need my drama, E,” she replied.

“Right, because I have so much of my own? Come on, Abs. If nothing else, I could use the entertainment.”

Abby chuckled. She wanted to talk to Erica. She trusted her to keep her secret, but the thought of destroying her friend's respect for her held her hostage to silence. So many of her relationships had been inalienably altered by her bad choices. Could she risk her friendship with Erica, too?

“Trust me, you never would have gotten yourself into this kind of mess,” Abby said.

“Right, because Erica Holt would never do anything stupid or unwise or potentially embarrassing to everyone she loves.”

“Exactly.” She locked eyes with her friend and tried to gauge if the mocking sound in her voice was from sarcasm or frustration. Or both.

“I lost my virginity to Scott Ripley,” Erica announced.

Abby slapped the table so loudly, people at nearby tables turned to look. “You did not!”

Erica held her indignant stare for a minute, then buckled. “No, I didn't. But dammit, I wanted to.”

“Scott Ripley? Really? Is that why you picked his name for Danny to use? After all these years?”

Erica took Abby's glass of wine and drank half the
Zinfandel down in one gulp. “He sent in his RSVP to the reunion this summer.”

Though Abby hadn't known Scott, she knew his uncle's family. She'd helped his aunt authenticate a cache of Picasso sketches she'd bought at an auction. Out of politeness, she'd asked about her nephew, but the woman had been tight-lipped. From what she'd remembered, he'd left town on his motorcycle the night of graduation and hadn't been anywhere near Chicago since.

“I'm surprised he's coming back to town,” Abby said.

“Tell me about it. It's bad enough that I could have gotten my cherry popped by a guy who knew what he was doing rather than with Will Jensen, who took about three tries to get it right. Now I'm going to have to face Rip again with no boyfriend or husband. I don't even have a scandalous divorce to brag about!”

“You have three broken engagements,” Abby pointed out, never imagining that she'd use that fact to sound encouraging.

Erica was not swayed. “He's probably married to some hot supermodel.”

“Or a stripper,” Abby ventured, trying to find some bright side for her friend to hold on to. Scott Ripley had not seemed like the type to settle down, much less with a woman as educated and accomplished as her friend—her obviously lonely, filled-with-regret friend. Where was the justice in this? Women like Erica acted precisely the way society expected them to, so why had she ended up so sad?

“Maybe I should have married Will or Brent or Stephen.”

“And ended up divorced? You didn't love any of them, E. If you had, you would have married them.”

“Divorced is better than not being married at all.”

“Do you really think that?” she challenged. Though neither of them had ever been divorced, they had a ton of friends and acquaintances who had—and she wouldn't have wished that pain on anyone, especially a friend.

“No, I don't. But I guess I've reached the point in my life where I need a change. The reunion, the possibility of seeing all those people again. It makes you take a hard look at your life. And I don't like what I'm seeing.”

Abby shifted in her seat, glad to have Erica's neuroses to explore rather than her own. She'd never really understood why Erica had attracted such great guys, but then to a one, rejected them all. It was never a mean rejection. It was never even particularly dramatic. Just one by one, her relationships fell by the wayside. They hadn't “felt right.” Abby had never completely understood what that meant—but now she had an inkling of an idea.

Erica had been looking for someone exciting. Someone forbidden. Someone who would trip her heartbeat into maximum overdrive.

Someone like Danny.

“You'll find the right guy someday,” Abby assured her. “But I don't think it will be Scott Ripley any more than my knight in shining armor will be—”

“Danny Burnett?”

“He's just a friend.”

“Stop lying, Abby. He's not just a friend. He's your lover. God, just own it already.”

“Excuse me?”

Erica leaned forward and whispered, but her words were no less passionate for the decreased volume. “I know who he is, Abby. I know what happened between the two of you five years ago. I've been waiting for you to tell me yourself, but maybe you're too embarrassed
or maybe you think I won't want to be your friend anymore, but the fact is, I'm jealous as hell that you did something so outrageous and lived to tell the tale.”

Abby took her wine back. “He told you?”

“Danny? No, he denied it, too. He might be a thief and a liar, but he's got your back.” Erica chewed on her bottom lip before she said, “Marshall told me.”

Abby finished off her Zinfandel and then directed the waiter to bring them another bottle.

“He—”

Abby closed her eyes, remembering again how devastated Marshall had been when she'd confessed her betrayal to him. He'd been so quiet. So still. She'd wanted him to rage, yell, scream and curse, but he'd done nothing but get out of his chair, kiss her sweetly on the cheek and ask for time to think.

Then he'd left. For hours, she'd cried her eyes out, convinced he'd never come back and never forgive her. But he had. The next morning, he'd snuck into her room, curled up beside her in bed and whispered how deeply he loved her and how desperately he wanted to forgive her and move on. They'd made love that morning with such heat, she'd been convinced he was trying to burn away all of her memories of Danny.

And he'd succeeded.

Marshall had stunned her with his capacity for love and forgiveness, but she'd never dreamed he'd used Erica as his sounding board.

“I don't understand,” she confessed. “You knew all this time and you never said anything?”

Erica shrugged. “I was waiting for you to tell me yourself, but I understood why you didn't. You wanted to forget it all, put it behind you. I would have, too. Marshall worshipped you. He dreamed about a future with
you since you first met and he didn't want to give it all up because you made a mistake. When I explained to him, really explained to him, what it was like for women like us who never rebelled, never pushed our own limits, sexual or otherwise, but instead bowed to the expectations of everyone around us, he understood. He was one in a million.”

Abby nodded her agreement, but still couldn't get beyond the fact that her best friend and her husband had had such an intimate conversation.

“I can't believe you talked about sex with Marshall.”

Erica smirked. “Sometimes, I think the conversation was more cathartic for me than it was for him. He was like a brother to me, Abby. And I knew how much you really loved him. And more than that, I knew how much he loved you. If he hadn't worshipped you down to his soul, he would have walked away without ever reaching out to me. So yeah, I pulled out all the stops. I told him the hard truths, and in the end, he decided he wanted to be the only tall, dark and handsome stranger in your life—the man who swept you off your feet and into his bed. And it worked out, right? You had four awesome years together. And now you have a shot at the guy who started it all. It's not a bad run for a good girl who rarely strays out of her comfort zone.”

“Out of my comfort zone? That's the understatement of the year. Danny's zone should have its own zip code. He's bad for me.”

“How do you figure?”

“He's a—” she lowered her voice “—a thief.”

Erica waved her hand dismissively. “Good thing, too, since he's off right now stealing something back that rightfully belongs to you.”

“But once he has it, he's leaving. And he won't come back. He doesn't fit here.”

“How do you know?”

Abby thought she might lose her mind. Why was her friend being so dense?

“Oh, I don't know, because I can't really see my father opening up his house to a man who steals art for a living.”

“Your great-grandfather was a bootlegger,” she pointed out.

“No, he wasn't.”

Erica snorted. “Yes, he was! Your father's so uptight about his family's history because it lines right up with the likes of Al Capone and Bugsy Moran. He wasn't a mobster, but without his special formula and the money it brought in, his son, your grandfather, wouldn't have had his Harvard education and you might still be living on the South Side rather than Lake Shore. That's why he gets so freaked out about anything that puts the family in a bad light. But that doesn't mean Danny won't grow on him. Don't use your family as an excuse for not seeing Danny for who he really is—a guy that you have a powerful chemical attraction to and a guy who's willing to risk his freedom just to get a stupid painting back.”

Abby sat back in her chair, stunned. The information about her family roots was surprising enough, but what Erica had said about Danny hit home even harder. She couldn't deny that her family mattered to her. She'd never consciously thought about seeking their approval. They'd always given it to her, even after she'd lost the painting to a con man. Maybe her deep-rooted need to play the good girl hadn't come from them as much as it had come from herself.

It was, after all, safe. When she followed her strict
code of behavior, she didn't get hurt. The one time she'd strayed, she'd nearly lost everything, including her self-respect.

But what about what she'd gained?

“It's not a stupid painting,” she argued, but her voice was as weak as her conviction.

“No, it's the reason he sought you out in the beginning and it's the reason you went looking for him. But it's not why you slept with him again.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“I told you, he's got your back. But he didn't need to tell me. You've got that glow, sister-friend. A rare and beautiful glimmer of a woman who has had more than one orgasm in the last twenty-four hours. I'm jealous. But through the pea-green haze of my envy, I'm also happy for you. If Danny turns you on, why can't you see where it could lead?”

Abby frowned. She knew where their relationship would lead—nowhere. Once he got the painting for her, he'd have to disappear. Not only because that was the deal, but because that action would keep him from getting caught by the police or whoever else Harris Liebe might send after him. She'd set up this elaborate scheme to get Danny back in her life, but only temporarily. And now that she maybe wanted their time together to last a little longer, she'd inadvertently arranged for that to be impossible.

“I know where it will lead. To heartbreak and disappointment. I've been through that once. I can't survive it again.”

 

T
HE SKIN ON THE BACK
of Danny's neck prickled with warning. One last lock and he'd be in. An unexpected close call with a trio of musicians setting up in the ball
room one floor down had nearly scrapped the operation, but he'd improvised and had made it up the stairs to the third floor, where the painting was being housed. With party planners, caterers and cleaning staff traipsing through the lower innards of the house, security had been nearly nonexistent. Who'd expect someone to break in when the house was overflowing with people?

Still, something felt off. The lock was the greatest barrier so far, and for someone with less experience than him, it might have been a problem. And yet, this all seemed just a little too easy to be real.

He made short work of the security camera mounted down the hallway—one he'd determined was unmonitored—then disengaged the security alarm with the code he'd swiped from the owner's smartphone when he'd visited the day before. With tools he never traveled without, he dispatched the keyed dead bolt and slipped inside the dark room. He flipped down the slim night-vision goggles he'd picked up in a downtown spy shop and scanned the pitch-black room. The painting was hanging on the opposite wall, farthest from the door, but he wasn't making a move until he was sure the path to his prize was clear.

He saw nothing to indicate anyone else was in the room, but he wasn't yet ready to move. He closed his eyes and listened intently for the hum of unexpected electronics or maybe some breathing beyond his own. His heartbeat thumped loudly, masking any warning signs. But he couldn't wait around all night. His senses were on alert. His best bet was to get the painting and get out as soon as possible. Stealing for money was loads less stressful than stealing for the woman he loved.