Too Wicked to Keep (15 page)

Abby took the tray into the other room. She and Danny hadn't been honest with each other. They'd meant
to be. They'd tried to be. They'd laid their cards out on the table as best they could, agreeing that their relationship couldn't possibly last beyond the moment he retrieved the painting for her. At the time, they'd thought this event would bring their affair full circle. But no matter what had kept Danny from retrieving the portrait, Abby knew she wasn't yet ready to let him go.

 

D
ANNY GLANCED OVER
his shoulder, wanting Abby to finish whatever small talk she was making in the kitchen so he could get this conversation over with. He wasn't about to have it twice. Instead of spending the past fifteen minutes explaining to his brothers about what had happened tonight with Harris Liebe, he'd been recounting the events of five years ago, when he'd first met Abby and had broken her heart.

Lucienne sat back in the chair, her disapproving eyes boring into him. “Wow, I never realized how delusional I've been about you all these years.”

“Delusional? You know what I did for a living, Luce. You were part of it!”

“I knew you were a thief, but not a dog. How could you do that to her? She was engaged!”

Danny growled in frustration. He didn't need this shit. He'd just blown a job—a job that was crucial in finally putting his past mistake to rest. He didn't need Lucy judging him. He didn't need anyone judging him. He'd already judged himself and the verdict wasn't pretty.

“Why do you think I came with her when she asked? This was my chance to make it right.”

“I get how stealing the painting back for her leads toward that goal,” Michael said. “But you're involved
with her again, too. How's that going to work when you disappear?”

Danny scrunched his lips together, refusing to answer the question. This wasn't a conversation he needed to have with his brothers. He and Abby had a lot to discuss, but he wouldn't allow them to have an audience when they did.

“I've haven't exactly planned that far,” he said.

Alex, who'd hardly spoken during Danny's confession, stood behind his soon-to-be wife, his head bowed in either disappointment or deep thought—or both. When he finally spoke, a hint of amusement played in his voice.

“I guess the ring's magic isn't infallible.”

“How do you figure?” Danny asked, yanking off the leather gloves he'd kept on since his return to Abby's apartment. “I probably never would have come to Chicago without this hunk of gold giving me some enhanced sense of right and wrong. And look how great that's turned out.”

“Excuse me?”

Danny looked up to see Abby holding a half-empty glass of bright red rum punch, which he had a feeling was going to get dumped on his head if he didn't make a clarification. “I'm talking about the painting, Abby. Not you.”

He stood so that Abby could take his place on the couch with Claire and Michael.

“So what went wrong?” Lucy asked.

“The guy was waiting for me.”

“Harris Liebe?” Abby's mouth had dropped open. “How did he even know you were coming?”

“Because he set the whole thing up.”

For the next twenty minutes, Danny retold every
thing he'd learned from Harris Liebe, going all the way back to his professional connection with Ramon and his tracking down Abby's painting and planning to display it simply as a means to get to Danny and the ring for his wayward grandson. The retelling did not make the logic any easier to follow, but as Claire pointed out, they didn't need to agree with the guy's motives. They just had to come up with a way to beat him.

“So the bottom line is that he wants to trade the ring for the painting,” Alejandro said.

“I won't allow it.” Abby shook her head. “I'll call the police first. I'll report the painting stolen.”

“Can you even prove it was yours to begin with?” Lucy asked. “Your family kept the story very well hidden. It wasn't even insured. And since you didn't report it stolen when Danny took it, the police aren't going to listen to you. You'll expose your family for nothing.”

Abby leaned her head against his shoulder, and though every eye was on him, Danny slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer, loving the smell of her hair and the feel of her warm against him. He glanced down at the ring and wondered about the legend Ramon had told Michael. The ring was supposed to give the wearer a heightened sense of justice, an attraction to adventure and a jacked-up sense of romance. For his part, Danny thought the whole thing was bullshit. What the damned thing did was make a man fall in love at the absolute worst time in his life.

“Then what are we going to do?” Abby asked. “If he shows the painting, he'll have lost his leverage against Danny and then he'll just move on to some other scheme. We have to stop him.”

Alex smiled. “This is a smart woman you've chosen,
mi hermano.
”

“She'd be smarter if she just stayed away from me,” Danny muttered.

“Maybe,” Abby agreed. “But I sure as hell wouldn't be any happier.”

Michael made an exaggerated retching noise. “Okay, we get it, we get it. You're in love. Blah, blah, blah. It's getting late and you'll have the bedroom all to yourselves in a minute. For now, can we please stay focused on the situation at hand? When is this big reveal party Liebe is planning?”

“Day after tomorrow,” Abby said.

“And it's a masquerade?” Claire asked, her eyes lighting up.

Danny rolled his. Those New Orleans natives loved an excuse to get dressed up and wear a mask.

Abby nodded.

“Then I suggest we get some sleep tonight and reconvene in the morning to come up with a new plan of attack,” Alex said. “Perhaps one that won't land us in jail if it fails.” As if his word settled the matter entirely, Alex stood.

Michael joined him. “Agreed. If this Harris Liebe joker wants to destroy the Murrieta legacy, then I think we need to give him a fair chance.” He grinned. “Times three, of course.”

Danny looked up, halfway expecting his brothers to have their arms stretched out while they waited for him to pile on the third hand so they could shout “All for one and one for all.”

That was, of course, the wrong story. Danny stood, shaking his head in pity for the man who'd dared to mess
with the Murrieta brothers. Liebe might have been better off with the Three Musketeers because the three Zorros were going to kick his ass.

A
BBY SHUT THE DOOR
behind Danny's family as they headed off to a nearby hotel. She turned to find Danny sitting in the chair Lucy had claimed earlier. Lady had jumped up onto his lap and Black Jack, who'd made himself somewhat scarce while the apartment was filled with people, now sat at his feet meowing to join his partner. With a groan of resignation, Danny leaned back and stretched his legs, creating more lap for the cat, who leaped up and rubbed his face against Danny's chest.

A couple of days ago, Black Jack wouldn't go near Danny and Lady only curled around his ankles to annoy him. Now they were both completely in love.

She knew the feeling.

The truth had hit her first during her conversation with Erica at dinner, then while she helped Claire mix the fruity rum drinks and again when Michael had teased them so like a brother would. She loved Danny. For the first time, she truly and deeply loved him.

She didn't think she had before—how could she when the man who'd seduced her had not been real, but a fantasy lover created with the express purpose of coercing her into giving up the location of her grandmother's
precious portrait? But over the course of their affair, Danny had come to truly care for her. He'd said so the night before her wedding, and though she had not believed him then, she did now.

But that didn't mean he still loved her. Yes, he was attracted to her. Yes, he felt a strong sense of obligation to make up for the sins of his past. But if she was going to spill her true feelings, she had to know that he wouldn't reject her. She'd gotten stronger over the past five years, but every woman had a breaking point.

“You're becoming quite the cat lover,” she whispered, enjoying the return of silence to her normally quiet space.

Danny gave Black Jack such a generous scratch behind the ear, the cat nearly toppled off his lap in ecstasy. Man, did she know that feeling.

“They're not so bad,” he said. “Definitely keep you from being lonely.”

“Sometimes,” she confessed. “But not all the time.”

She grabbed the tray she'd stored beside the couch and started collecting the glasses from the coasters around the coffee table. With a gentleness that tightened her chest, Danny placed the cats on the floor and joined her. They moved with unrehearsed synchronicity, across the table, through the kitchen and, finally, into her bedroom. Together, they stripped off their clothes, but they didn't touch or kiss until he extended a gallant hand in invitation to the shower stall.

But they didn't make love. Their conversation was limited to the sweet moans that came from the simple pleasure of having someone to soap up the sponge and run the foamy ball over your back, to rinse the shampoo out of your hair and bring you a fluffy, rack-warmed towel before you stepped out onto the chilly tile. Only
when Abby sat down in front of her bathroom mirror to brush out her hair did Danny finally say the words she'd hoped he'd wait until morning to say.

“I can't stay, Abby.”

“Danny, please—” She spun around on her stool and grabbed his hands. He couldn't leave. Not now. Not yet.

“I don't want to hurt you again.”

“You'll hurt me if you leave.”

“I'll hurt you worse if I stay. I'm a thief, Abby. It's all I've ever been. It's all I know. You deserve better.”

“I had better,” she quipped. Marshall had been the best man she'd ever met—understanding, forgiving, righteous, kind and generous. She'd loved him fiercely, but he was gone and wasn't coming back. “Now I want you.”

Danny knelt down in front of her, raised her hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles passionately.

“You'll have me. For a couple more days, until we stop this joker from harassing you and my brothers. But then I have to go and try to figure out what the hell I'm going to do with the rest of my life. It's time to reboot, but I'm not sure I can do anything differently.”

“I know,” she said, pulling his face closer to hers. “I know more than anyone what it's like to start over—first after I cheated on Marshall with you and lost the painting, and again after Marshall died. I've reinvented myself twice, but I haven't quite gotten the combination right. I'm still working on me, but that doesn't mean I don't want you in my life.”

“You're perfect.” He placed two sweet kisses on her face, one at the top of each cheekbone.

“I'm not,” she insisted. “And I've got to stop trying to be. My whole life, I've been the perfect daughter, the perfect student, the perfect socialite with her charity
work and her education in art history. Then I morphed into the perfect wife, and I loved every minute of it, but it wasn't me—it wasn't all of me. It's a lot of work to be good all the time, Danny.”

“I really wouldn't know,” he cracked.

“That's why we'd be great for each other. I can show you how to be good and you can give me lessons on how to be bad.”

He nuzzled the area just beneath her earlobe and chuckled. “Now that's a job I'm suited for.”

He flicked the spot where she'd tucked in her towel tight, releasing the material so that it fell away in a warm, soft rush. He nibbled a path down to her collarbone, then lower, to the sensitive crests of her breasts. His hands slid down her waist and outer thighs, his fingers kneading and needful.

“Danny,” she managed, her focus breaking under the intensity of his pleasurable assault. “Tell me you'll stay.”

He flicked her nipple with his tongue. “Believe me, sweetheart. I'm not going anywhere.”

She shivered when he drew the sensitive tip between his lips. His sucking was tight and intense—pure concentrated pleasure that sent spires of need straight to her sex. She wanted him to promise. She wanted him to stay. But more than anything, she wanted him to make love to her—something she knew he wouldn't do if she insisted on asking for more than he could give.

Instead, she surrendered. He slid his hands across her thighs, spreading them wide so that her exposed flesh quivered. He did not make her wait, but slipped his fingers between her labia, then eased her natural moisture into every needful crevice while he alternated his mouth from breast to breast, each time sucking longer
and harder until the pleasure came at the cost of exquisite bites of pain.

He buried his face in her softness. He murmured against her skin, sweet assurances she couldn't understand and didn't want to. Instead, she filled in her own fantasies—Danny giving up his criminal lifestyle, pledging to find a new path, all because of her. He dropped down low, spread her thighs farther and continued his sweet litany with his lips against her sexual center. He licked and nipped and explored the full depths of her while she tangled her hands in his delicious hair and allowed the sensual inferno to smoke, stoke, spark and flame. Just when she was on the edge of ecstasy, he lifted her from the chair, carried her to the bed and slid inside her. No pretext. No protection. Just his skin to her skin. His soul to hers.

Nothing between them but a million different reasons why this lovemaking might be their last.

His thrusts were deep, but slow. He pressed into her as far as he could, then eased out with infinitesimal slowness, dragging the sensations, swallowing her cries of frustration with kisses that were just as deep, just as powerful, just as long. When she attempted to wrap her legs around his waist to accelerate the tempo, he shifted so that his powerful thighs trapped hers. The shift in position made her squeal in surprise.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “You're so tight. How does this feel? Right here?”

He couldn't go as deep, but with her legs trapped between his, her body tightened and every thrust squeezed maximum pleasure from minimum space. Her clit ignited so that she lost herself in sensations within seconds. She moaned and cried out for mercy, but he gave her none, milking her body until her orgasm consumed
her. She clawed at his chest and back while he bathed her in kisses. Only when she shouted out his name in release did he untrap her, bury himself to the hilt and join her in her mindless pleasure.

Exhausted, she wondered if she'd ever move again—if she'd ever want to move if the promise of this kind of pleasure on a nightly basis was not in her future.

After a few minutes, he rolled away from her, retrieved a discarded towel and used it to clean her, the soft sensations of the damp towel against her hot center renewing her lust. When he finally lay down beside her, she turned and flung her thigh over his hip, ensuring that he wasn't going anywhere—at least not yet.

“I think we forgot something,” he said sheepishly. “I couldn't wait another minute.”

She smiled, her body flooded with a kind of warmth that seesawed between love and lust. Five years ago, she had not loved him. Not like this. This was new and powerful and addictive. She wouldn't be able to go without him, no matter what he might believe about his inability to stay.

“It's okay,” she said. “I've been on birth control for years. I almost stopped when…” She cut herself off, not wanting to talk about Marshall again when she was wrapped in the arms of the man who'd nearly stolen her from him.

“When Marshall died? You can talk about him, Abby. He's a part of you. I'm not jealous.”

“Not even a little?” she said with a pout.

“Yeah, maybe a little. Obviously, you had a good life with him. You'd still be having that good life if not for a cruel twist of fate. I want that for you again, I really do.”

“Do you believe in fate?”

He shrugged and drew his fingers, including the one that wore the family ring, up and down her arm. “I believe that the world works against us. That you have to grab whatever happiness you can get your hands on for as long as you can, because it won't last.”

“Wow,” she said, genuinely caught off guard by his utterly fatalistic outlook. “That's a sad way to look at things.”

“Sad? Not at all. It makes you appreciate times like these. It makes you hold them close and milk every amazing minute from them because tomorrow it could all be over. Look at your husband. Do you think he knew how happy he'd made you by forgiving you?”

She didn't have to think hard to answer his question. She and Marshall had had this conversation. Once she'd cheated on her soon-to-be spouse, the rules about what they could or couldn't discuss had flown out the window. They'd talked openly and honestly about everything—including the thrill she'd gotten from Danny's bold and voracious interest in her that had ultimately caused her to stray. From that moment on, Marshall had stopped trying to hide his emotions, from deep love to untamable lust. The man who hadn't kissed her until their fourth date and who hadn't pressured her to go to bed with him until shortly before he'd offered her an engagement ring unleashed his true desires. Every inch of her, body and soul, had felt not only loved and cherished, but also wanted.

Marshall had raised the bar damned high—but she had no doubt that Danny could surpass him, if only he gave himself the chance.

“Yes, he knew. And I know he'd want me to have that with someone else. You can't use him as an excuse not to stay with me, Danny. In fact, I don't think an excuse
exists that I'm going to accept. So,” she said, pressing close and tilting her bottom so that she could feel a hint of a renewed erection against her, “you're going to have to think of something else. Because I'm not ready to let you go, and if there's one thing you've taught me, it's that when you want something, you have to take it—whether it's the right thing to do or not.”

 

D
ANNY FELT LIKE AN IDIOT
. In all the disguises and personas he'd adopted over the course of his criminal career, he'd never dressed up like this. Other than a few vague memories of store-bought, glorified garbage-bag Halloween costumes with plastic masks whose eyeholes were either too far apart or too close together, he'd never worn anything this outlandish. But since both of his brothers had sucked it up in order to help Abby and put an end to an old family vendetta, he figured he'd survive. Especially when Abby came around the corner bedecked in a sparkly confection of a dress that made his body yearn for a little more time before they had to leave.

“Oh, my,” he said on a husky breath.

The spangles on her dress shimmered in the lights from the hall. She'd decided, in honor of her grandmother, to wear a thirties-style gown that dipped low in the front and lower in the back. Pure Hollywood glamour. The gold silk clung to her skin, precluding the need for undergarments, and as she stared at him from across the room, her nipples puckered beneath the fabric.

“I hope you have something to wear with that,” he said, hoping she'd pull out a thick down coat or massive fur. Instead, she held up a pearl-white, feathered half-jacket, along with a handheld gilded mask and a glittery purse that dangled on a string of crystals.

“Will this do?”

“It will,” he said, unable to stay away from her. He slid his black-gloved hands over her hips and tugged her close. “It definitely will. You might solve all our problems, you know, without a lick of trouble. One glance at you and the old man is going to keel over from a heart attack.”

“Oh, great, one more thing for me to feel guilty about,” she quipped.

He moved to kiss her, but the bright red hue of her lips was too perfect to smudge. Instead, he pressed against the small of her back until she arched her body and gave him instant and glorious access to her neck and throat.

“You can't help it if you're beautiful, can you?”

“I can change into that wicked-witch costume I wore to the children's charity event four Halloweens ago,” she threatened, but he knew her vanity wouldn't allow it. He almost called her bluff, but decided they didn't have the time. Michael and Claire had mapped out a strict schedule, and when it came to work, Danny was nothing if not punctual.