“I want to show you something.”

Annabel refused to let this evening end with another of Patrick’s disappearing acts. He rarely made it through a meal’s first course when there were more than the two of them present.

“What?”

Now that she had his attention, she reached back with both hands, took hold of her zipper and slowly eased it down. Her dress parted and began to slide from her shoulders. Ah, yes. She had his attention now.

“Annabel?” His voice a husky rasp, Patrick shifted his hips and widened his legs where he sat. “What are you doing?”

“I’m offering you dessert. With one caveat. You stay, you don’t run out and then you can have dessert.”

He shook his head and wrapped his arm around her and pulled her forward. “Anytime, anywhere, any way. That was the deal.”

“Yes, but—”

“No buts. Now, here, standing exactly as you are. That’s what I want.”

This was not going at all as she’d planned. All she’d wanted to do was convince him that it wouldn’t kill him to stay. Now she was the one battling the urge to feel. Patrick Coffey was one dangerous man.

Dear Reader,

What a long, fun trip gIRL-gEAR has been! From six single professional females to nine committed couples…plus weddings, engagements and babies on the way!

Thank you so much for loving the stories and the characters of gIRL-gEAR. Leaving the series now, I feel as if I’m saying goodbye to friends. I want to come back in five years and hear the pitter-patter of little gIRL-gEAR feet.

Yes, I know. There’s still Jess Morgan and Nolan Ford and now Devon Lee left hanging. Not to mention Chloe’s brothers, Colin, Richard and Jay. Oh, and didn’t Anton have a younger brother? And Macy was the youngest of how many siblings?

See? These characters have become like family to me. And walking out of their lives is going to be tough. But I’m strong. I will survive! Plus, I can always visit them again on the Web at www.gIRL-gEAR.com!

And you can visit me, too, at www.AlisonKent.com. The girls and I would all love to hear from you!

Best!

Alison Kent

Indiscreet
Alison Kent

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Behind every successful author stands a good critique group, even better friends and a family that’s the best. As always, to Jan Freed.

A special thank-you to Bekke and Rey for respecting my voice, for refusing to don kid gloves, for the nits and the giggles. And to Walt, for loving me and all that entails.

The gIRLS of gIRL-gEAR
by Samantha Venus for Urban Attitude Magazine

Ahoy, my fine maties! Samantha Venus here again for Urban Attitude Magazine, asking how much did the pirate pay for corn? Why, a buck an ear, of course!

Here he is. The one you’ve been waiting for. The cocky frat boy turned savage beast who, by the way, dropped quite the treasure chest of cash to purchase Ms. Annabel “Poe” Lee at the gIRL-gEAR Halloween bachelorette auction. According to a message in a bottle, the two have been inseparable since!

A little bird named Polly told me that our studly young thing will be plying his cooking skills for the New Year’s Eve showing at the Gallery at Three Mings. (And did I mention that incredibly sexy Devon Lee will be on hand? The man can invite me up to see his etchings anytime!)

Avast, ye scurvy landlubbers! Until we sail the high seas again, this is Samantha Venus, walking the plank.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Epilogue

1

THE HARDEST THING a woman had to do was tell a man to leave when she wasn’t sure she wanted him to go.

Or so Annabel Lee decided as she stood in front of her office’s wall of windows in the gIRL-gEAR complex, staring at the east-west headlights and taillights dueling down Houston’s Southwest Freeway.

With one section of the miniblinds raised and the lights turned off, the darkness of her office blended with that of the night sky, creating an encompassing theater of black. The glow from the hallway outside her door provided the only illumination. She didn’t need any more.

It was eight o’clock on Friday night.

It was the seventeenth of December.

Two weeks of vacation loomed ahead. Time she’d set aside to recover from the grueling study schedule she’d kept for the past month, a schedule that had helped her ace her finals, bringing her another step closer to completing her forensic anthropology degree.

Two weeks to explore her options—both career and personal. An exploration best done in solitude, no matter that her partners in the gIRL-gEAR fashion empire, where she held a vice-presidential position, insisted otherwise. They wanted to brainstorm, to role-play, to run aptitude tests, to make introductions, to initiate contacts.

Like Greta Garbo, Annabel simply wanted to be left alone.

She’d done all she could to limit disruptions to her self-imposed exile. She’d set an auto-response on her e-mail accounts, had vowed to check phone messages but once a day. Her voice mail gave emergency instructions on reaching her through gIRL-gEAR’s CEO, Sydney Ford.

It wasn’t as if Annabel wouldn’t be seeing her partners at all during her time away from the office. She was hosting a casual Christmas Eve dinner for those staying home for the holidays, though the finalization of those details would be no more than a minor distraction. And, yes. She had an impending New Year’s Eve catering disaster to divert, which would, unfortunately, take a bit of time and effort.

Neither of those, however, rivaled her most immediate crisis. Because tonight, during the four hours or so that remained between leaving the office and going to bed, she had to give up sex.

Celibacy had never before presented a problem. She wouldn’t have gotten as far as she had in life without learning the value of discipline. She was thirty-three years old and hadn’t been a virgin for a very long time. She’d experienced her fair share of devoted lovers as well as a few whose loyalties had belonged in another’s bed. Never in her life, however, had she been swept away by a man’s body.

Yet for seven weeks now she’d been drowning.

Taking stock of her life required total concentration, unwavering focus. The distraction of sex would be impossible to resist, the temptation to experience mindless oblivion insurmountable. At least this sex, this oblivion, and all of what she had with this man. She had to pour her energies into her self-assessment—not into bed nor a relationship that would never go anywhere beyond.

Arms crossed over her silk power blazer of cinnabar red, she lifted her chin, pleased at the strength she saw in her image reflected in the dark window. Pleased, in fact, with the total picture she made in her straight black skirt, which was short and tight—exactly the inaccessible fit he loathed—and her three-inch pumps in black leather.

Her dark panty hose were guaranteed to piss him off—as would her panties. He liked her to wear stockings and garters and nothing more, and the defiance of dressing exactly as he’d told her not to gave her an edge.

Tonight. She would tell him tonight. Before she left the office and went into hibernation she would call him, arrange to meet him for drinks, and tell him it was over. He wouldn’t be happy. Hell, she wasn’t happy. No sane woman would be, giving up sex that was spontaneous and heated, and cut so close to the heart of who she was.

She never climaxed without feeling she’d left too much of herself behind, and that he would use that weakness against her. That danger was a big part of the allure. She constantly wondered how far he would take her, but only half as much as she wondered how far he’d allow her to go.

Things had become more complicated than she’d ever thought possible after the first time he’d kissed her. The minute he’d backed her up against the alley wall behind the wine and tobacco bar hosting gIRL-gEAR’s Halloween night bachelorette auction, she had known he would become her addiction. Much of her intuition came with the first touch of his tongue.

But she’d known even before she’d tasted him. He’d stood there, his hands flexing at his hips, his chest heaving. What the hell business was it of hers how he’d come by the money he’d used to buy her? That had been his demand in response to her query. The other words that had come out of his mouth had been raw and ragged and totally unfit for civilized ears.

That was when she’d admitted to the wild attraction and vowed to take him to bed. Nothing about him was the least bit refined. He was unpredictable, unruly, totally undisciplined and more than a little bit mad. He was the most intriguing man she’d ever met. He was also the most dangerous. To her, yes, but also to himself.

She was afraid part of her fascination was an urge to free him from the demons keeping him bound. What a stupid endeavor that would be. She knew nothing about the horrors he’d faced, even as she knew firsthand the impossibility of changing those blind to their own destructive behavior.

After all, she’d tried for years to change her mother.

Still, Annabel wanted him in ways that frightened her, despite knowing he could not possibly be a permanent part of her life. He was too capricious, too…damaged. And after surviving her childhood intact, she’d sworn to surround herself with sanity. If that wasn’t possible, then she would live her life on her own.

So when, three minutes later, his long shadow fell across her from the office doorway, she damned herself for ever giving him the building’s front door key. He came here often when she worked late into the night, tempting her by saying nothing, by being unpredictably spur-of-the-moment, by beckoning her away from the life of work and study that consumed her, to show her the world in which he lived.

A world of seedy bars with anonymous faces and the worst liquor imaginable. Of long drives down roads without end, of bowling and batting cages, of running at midnight through downtown streets in the rain. Of making out in the rain forest at the city zoo, with birds cawing and squawking and trilling all around.

A world no one she knew would ever believe she visited.

A world that wasn’t real.

And here he was again, unexpected yet…not. She wasn’t surprised, but neither was she ready. She hadn’t been able to pull up the drawbridge to her protective walls. She needed more time to gird her loins before going into battle.

Yet all she could do was close her eyes and increase the pressure of her hands holding her arms to her body. She would turn and reach for him if she let go, and tonight she had too much to say.

With every step he took toward her the tension heightened, growing as thick as the flow of blood through her veins. Her pulse raced, an exhilarating rush prickling her skin.

His hands settled at the base of her neck, and it was all she could do not to step back into his body. He was hot; he was always hot, as if his temperature—much like his temperament—was not what most considered normal. But then, nothing much about him could be considered anything but out of the ordinary. And that was the crux of his appeal.

He squeezed the base of her neck; Annabel closed her eyes and called on her inner strength to pull away. And she would have. Oh, yes, she would have.

But before she could move, he slid his hands down her arms, massaging from her shoulders to her elbows. She let it go on too long and was lost because he touched her in ways no man had touched her at any time in her life.

When he skated his palms over her breasts to her collarbone and parted her jacket lapels, she allowed the intimacy even though she wore nothing beneath but a black silk camisole tucked into the short black skirt. Turning him down seemed great in theory, but the reality was he had her under his spell. She took a desperately needed deep breath.

“We have to talk.”

“No. We don’t.”

Hearing the words come out of his mouth was as intoxicating as champagne bubbling on her tongue. So when he tugged her arms away from her body, she complied, letting him strip her blazer down and off. He tossed it into her chair as if it cost $2.98 rather than one hundred times that.

And then he pulled her camisole from her skirt, not even giving her the courtesy of a chance to tell him no.

No. A word the power and meaning of which he’d given her cause to forget.

The urge to slip her camisole up and over her head was an itch she resisted scratching. It was a small measure of control, but one she maintained and refused to give away. He had no need to know the strength of will it took to keep from lying back and inviting him between her legs anytime he came near.

His fingertips softly grazed her bare shoulders as he reached for the camisole’s narrow straps. He rolled them down her arms using only his palms, binding her elbows with the silk and then with the grip of his hands.

He didn’t understand his own body’s power or the strength of his passion. He didn’t understand so many things about civilized behavior. Either that or he didn’t care.

Right now what she sensed was his struggle with the savage side of his nature, the very side responsible for the tingling dampness between her legs. She knew him well enough to recognize his desire to get her out of her clothing without a care for preserving the fabric or the fastenings.

He managed to hold himself in check as he moved his hands to her skirt’s rear zipper, though he still jerked it down forcefully. It would be a wonder if she didn’t have to send it out for repair, anyway.

The price, she supposed, of taking a pirate for a lover.

When he pulled off her skirt to discover her wearing panties and panty hose, he cursed. He wasn’t unkind toward her—never that—but toward the situation. He wanted her naked, wanted to bare the parts of her body to which he sought access. And like a child, he was often neither patient nor subtle when it came to getting his way.

She’d grown used to his demanding nature. It fit so well with her own, which made him work for what she wouldn’t be above paying him to take. She kicked out of her skirt, but that was the extent of her participation in her own disrobing. The fact that she’d betrayed her vow to stay clothed was humiliation enough.

He shrugged out of his black leather bomber jacket, whipped his white T-shirt over his head. Then he moved in behind her, his hands holding her waist, and fitted his knees to the backs of her thighs, her bottom to the bulge of his sex. She shivered from the contact, the anticipation, as well as from his image reflected in the dark window—an image that relentlessly captured her thoughts with the same intensity his body devoted to taking hers apart.

His skin still glowed from three years spent under the Caribbean sun. His hair, bronzed and wildly untamed, hung to his shoulders. His ropey muscles spoke of hard labor; his physique hummed with a lean perfection. He’d left the States a know-it-all frat boy and returned with the hands and the mouth of a devil—hands that were making quick work of sweeping her camisole from her body to the floor.

In the mirrored window, she watched those same hands settle on her ribs before pressing upward to cover her breasts. At his practiced, near artistic touch, her neck arched. She rested her head on his shoulder, slid her back against the smooth skin of his chest. His heat was already too much to take, and her nudity offered a respite.

She longed to know the origin of his inner fire, but he refused to share the details of his captivity or his prior life. That got to her at times, the way he had of holding back even while so generously giving. She wasn’t sure she understood the separation of his selves. She doubted even he was able to make the distinction.

Eventually he moved, his hips grinding in a way that brought to mind the sound of bongos and bass drums, his hands working their tortuous way down her torso to her panty hose. He slid one hand between her legs and fondled her sex until she swelled to the point of bursting. His other hand dug into his pocket.

The condom he came up with was followed by the production of a knife she was certain was illegal to carry. The click as the blade caught echoed like a shot. The reflection of the weapon in the window alarmed her only in that she feared he wouldn’t wield it quickly enough.

The metal was cold on her stomach when he laid it flat against her skin. He slipped it under her waistband before flicking his wrist to slit the fabric of her panties and her hose. Another second, another flick of his wrist, and the switchblade point quivered, embedded in the windowsill.

After that, getting to what he wanted was easy. Yet he took his time, peeling down silk and nylon so that the tattered scraps loosely bound her upper thighs. He moved his hands back up her body, over the curve of her hips, until he reached her rib cage. The heels of his palms nudged her waist. He spread his fingers, turned her to the side and slid one hand down her belly, the other over her bottom.

Leaning forward and bracing herself on her desk, she spread her legs wider as he began to play. His fingers were nimble and exact in their aim, both hands meeting at her slick entrance and urging her apart. He pressed pulse points, stroked the intimate skin behind her opening before pushing one long finger inside.

The sound she made was a low sultry cry, one that told him of her pleasure and her need. Wanting more, she widened her stance, leaned farther over the edge of her desk, raised her backside toward the fly of his pants and rested her weight on her forearms.

His responding growl told her how much he enjoyed her uninhibited nature, her willingness to expose herself for his taking. She would give him anything, had given him everything. He had been equally honest in offering her his body to use at will. Yet his body was all he’d given her, and there were times that got to her, too.

At this moment, however, the way her body wanted his was the only matter of any importance. He entered her fully, one finger, then two, then a third when she pushed back against him and begged.

He continued to tease her clit while expertly stroking her with his other hand, a smooth in-and-out rhythm that in the past—before she’d learned the beauty and the skill with which he wielded his cock—would have sent her over the edge. She was spoiled and selfish and she wanted it all. And she told him so with a desperate backward press of her bottom.

She heard his laugh, one of satisfaction, not of humor, one that never made it to his mouth, but rumbled in his chest as if trapped there. As if he’d forgotten the relief of pure laughter and no longer knew how to let himself go.

He released her and stepped back; she heard the slide of his zipper and the tearing sound as he opened the condom packet. She glanced to the window, where she could see his jeans coming down and his cock springing free in the dark reflection. She sucked in a breath at the sight.

His body never ceased to amaze her, the aesthetics of his lean musculature, the lack of body fat to soften his hard lines. She rarely saw him eat, even the fabulous food he cooked, which everyone around him devoured. Devoured. That was all she could think of, watching as he rolled the condom to the base of his shaft, which appeared even more impressively long and thick jutting out from his solid rock of a body.

He moved forward; she pressed her forehead to her fists on the desk and, eyes closed, waited. He held her hip with one hand, guided his cock with the other, rubbing the tip of the plumlike head between the cheeks of her bottom, teasing her with a seeking pressure.

Later, she wanted to tell him. They’d take time for kinkier exploration when her hunger wasn’t so fierce. But she didn’t say any of that because there wouldn’t be a later. After this, she still planned to send him away.

As the thought flickered through her mind, he drove home, filling her, nearly lifting her from the floor with the force of his first thrust. He paused, both hands on her hips, as if gathering his control, savoring the sensation of being buried alive.

He was hot, so hot. She squeezed him there where he pulsed in her body; his heat warmed her from the inside out. And then it began, the metered cadence she knew so well, the one he’d taught her to need. Leaning forward, he reached around to stimulate her clit, his fingers sliding down either side of the hard knot and tugging upward in time to the grinding rhythm of his hips.

The high heels she still wore provided the perfect angle and height for this raw mating of bodies. He pumped harder, faster, his fingers tightening on her clitoris, his grip on her hips sure to leave marks. She didn’t care.

All she knew was the immense pleasure sweeping through her core, as if no other sensation existed but that deep between her legs. He filled her, stretched her, opened her in ways no other man had done, showing her a fullness, a completeness she desperately desired and wondered how she would learn to live without.

His strokes came close to taking her apart, and her fever rose. The buzzing along her skin followed, coiling tightly into one centered pulse of sensation further heightened with each of his thrusts. She blew out air in short sharp breaths, squeezing her eyes shut until she saw stars.

When her orgasm came, she shattered, hit with the force of the sizzling burst. Her skin burned; she tried to shake off his hold. He merely gripped her tighter, pushed into her farther, both of his hands now at her waist as he drove himself home.

His own climax came in silence, and she only knew because of the spike in his temperature. The heat of his cock had her shivering, even as he remained statue still but for the pulse of his throbbing release. For several long moments following, neither moved, their bodies fused, the thought of separation painful. Her breathing calmed, as did his orgasm’s waves. She’d learned to wait for his finish, which was longer in coming than she’d known a man could last.

Finally he withdrew, tossing the condom and the wrapper into her trash, then reaching for his shirt. He pulled it on and leaned his bare backside against the windowsill while she dressed.

She wished she had a spare pair of panty hose in addition to the extra panties she kept in her desk. She buttoned her blazer, slipped her bare feet back into her pumps, smoothed down the edges of her newly cut hair. She turned around in time to see him fasten his pants and slip into his bomber jacket. Hooking her bag over her shoulder, she looked him straight in the eye.

“I can’t see you anymore, Patrick.”

“WHERE’S DEVON?” Annabel asked the hostess standing at her post inside the doorway of Three Mings, Devon Lee’s restaurant in the heart of Houston’s Rice Village.

“Good evening, Poe,” the young hostess replied, having grown used to hearing people call Annabel by the nickname. “Your brother went upstairs twenty minutes ago. Should I ring the gallery?”

Annabel shook her head. “I’ll find him, thank you.”

She walked back out into the frosty night air and around to the side of the stand-alone building that sat on a quiet street off of University Drive.

The second story of Three Mings was an exclusive gallery where local artists’ work was displayed, shown only on private tours and sold in silent auctions. A watercolorist himself, Devon also rented studio space to a few select clients.

After walking through the mazelike hallway of low ceilings and hardwood floors, off which narrow alcoves were lit strategically to enhance the work displayed, Annabel found her brother in a hushed discussion with an Indian artist whose specialty was exquisitely detailed henna body art.

Annabel stepped back to allow them the privacy to finish their conversation. Devon glanced up, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiled, and raised his hand to signal he’d only be a minute. Annabel turned to the wall behind her and took in the collection of photographs framed and grouped in a collage.

One photo in particular drew her attention, as always. The subject was costumed as a Japanese geisha, complete with shimada-mage hairstyle, white cream makeup and red lipstick she knew was infused with safflower extract.

The hair, she also knew, in this case was a wig, a katsura, but the makeup—from the application of the bintsuke-abura, the oil-wax combination allowing the white pigment to adhere, to the drawing of the thinly arched eyebrows in black and the added touch of red to brows and lids—had taken laborious hours to apply.

Annabel knew because it was her face, her eyes into which she was staring.

“That photo gets more attention than any other in the gallery, you know,” Devon said, having silently walked up behind her.

“Considering the subject matter, I should think so.”

“You really are wicked.” He nodded toward the imprint of a woman’s lips on the white canvas of Annabel’s creamed-and-powdered cheek. “And your eyes always give you away.”

She looked again at the photo, knowing it was the mischievous twinkle captured in her eyes as much as the kiss on her face that had garnered this particular photo so much attention. She had a session next week with Luc Beacon, the same photographer, and was anxious to discover who the client was and what they were looking for.

Right now she had more pressing matters on her mind, however, and turned her back on the display. “Devon, I’m in trouble.”

Her brother shook his head knowingly. “Man trouble, no doubt.”

“What makes you say that?” she asked, raising her chin ever so slightly. She knew her expression hadn’t given anything away; she’d purposefully kept her face calm.

Devon lifted one sharp brow over eyes blessed with dark paintbrush lashes. “Your legs are bare.”

She pointed the toe of one pump, glanced at her smooth ivory skin before rolling her eyes. “He hates my panty hose.”

Arms crossed over his chest, Devon rocked back on the heels of his Italian leather loafers and stared down from his two-inch height advantage. “I’m surprised you wear them. I’ve always taken you for the garters-and-stockings type.”

“Judging by your vast experience with women?” Annabel twisted her mouth.

Her brother shook his head. “Judging by the only thing I’ve ever seen hanging over your shower rod.”

Annabel blew out a huff of breath. “I had the flu. I don’t usually leave them out.”

“Annie, lighten up. I don’t give a damn if you leave stockings out year-round.” He narrowed his gaze, his jaw taut.

“Don’t call me Annie.”

His sigh was sibling patience personified as he slipped his hand beneath her arm and guided her through the hallway maze and into his office. Once inside, he waited until she’d settled on his black leather love seat before closing the door to join her.

He faced her, one arm along the seat’s padded back. “Look at you. Arms crossed. Legs crossed. Whoever your mystery lover is, he’s obviously chipping away at your walls of Jericho or you wouldn’t be on the defensive.”

She kept all her body parts crossed, but did stop swinging her foot. “I am not on the defensive. I’m simply irritated.”

“Because of a pair of panty hose?”

“No.” She was irritated because when it came to Patrick Coffey, she’d lost the disciplined control she’d spent a lifetime honing. “The caterer I hired for your New Year’s Eve showing lost her best cook to a competitor and isn’t sure she can manage her schedule without him.”

Devon continued to stare, lifting that one sharp brow the way he always did to signal he had a saint’s fortitude when it came to waiting out her moods.

“I would think that might concern you,” she finally said.

“I trust you implicitly.” His expression shifted, settled in a concerned frown. “But I am worried.”

She exhaled what she could of her tension. “Don’t be. I’ll handle it.”

“I’m not worried about the caterer. I’m worried about you.”

She glanced away, studied the vase of yellow calla lilies centered on a red-lacquered accent table and flanked by scrolls of painted tigers rendered in Sumi ink and color on silk. The austerity of Devon’s office usually fit her tack-sharp mood. Tonight, she simply bristled further.

“When you come to me and say you’re in big trouble, I worry.” Devon pushed up from the love seat and crossed the small room to lean on the corner of his matching black desk. The distance gave him the edge he needed; the position gave him the upper hand. “You haven’t been yourself for several weeks now.”

She waved off his concern with the flutter of one hand, wondering why she’d come here when she knew he wouldn’t let her hide from his probing questions or continue to deceive herself that she was equipped to handle Patrick Coffey.

Then again, maybe that was exactly the reason she had come, she mused ruefully, getting to her feet. She needed the wake-up call to tell her she was doing the right thing in sending him away. “I was dealing with the stress of finals. Of course I haven’t been myself.”

Devon shook his head. “I’ve seen you stressed from finals. This is different. In your words, big trouble.”

He was right, of course. How she’d even managed finals with Patrick disrupting her schedule, not to mention her concentration…Even now he was on her mind, and she just couldn’t have that. He was getting too close; she was letting him in. She was giving in, when she’d determined that he had to go.

Turning her back on her brother, she made her way from the love seat to the window, opening the miniblinds and peering into the darkness for the second time tonight, as if she’d find her answers outside of herself rather than within.

Her sigh of admission was heavier than she’d intended. “Yes. It’s a man.”

“Glad to hear it.”

She allowed herself a private smile. Her brother’s reaction was no surprise. Over the years, he’d made his feelings on her dearth of personal relationships clear.

When she’d joined gIRL-gEAR as a partner, the champagne he’d sent had been more a celebration of her allowing the fashion empire’s other women into her life than congratulations on the new position.

He didn’t approve of her reasons for keeping her distance, and used every possible opportunity to tell her so. But those reasons were what had brought her as far as she’d come in her life. She hadn’t survived their childhood as well-adjusted as Devon seemed to be. Or maybe he was simply pretending, as his own relationships never seemed to last, either.

He walked up beside her. “I was hoping that once you completed your degree, you’d be more amenable to settling down.”

She couldn’t hold back a full-fledged smile. “With a man, you mean?”

“Well, yes. I’m old-school. I admit it.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. At least not this time.” She sighed. “I told him it was over.”

“Hmm.”

“What’s with the ‘hmm’?”

“I’m just wondering if you told him before or after you lost your panty hose.”

“A lady never kisses and tells.” Not that there was anything to tell, since she and Patrick hadn’t taken time to kiss. “Besides, you should know better than to press me into a relationship. Last I heard, you were on the outs with that particular bliss. Are things okay now with you and Trina?”

Devon shrugged. “What can I say?”

“You can say the two of you are working on it.”

“I’m not sure there’s anything to work on.”

She shook her head in reprimand. “Don’t tell me that. I’ve never seen a couple more suited than the two of you.”

“Get real, Annie. What do you and I know about suitable couples? All we know is what happens when a couple doesn’t work. And right now, Trina and I do not work.”

Annabel didn’t have anything to say in response. Devon had made his point. And all she could wonder was if either of them would ever find a partner they could fall in love with as easily as they seemed to fall into bed.

2

STILL WEARING JEANS, a T-shirt and a bomber jacket, Patrick Coffey leaned a hip on the low railing that bordered Annabel’s balcony, a bottled malt beverage sweating in one hand. He liked Houston in December. Nice and breezy. The perfect weather for stargazing and drinking himself flat on his ass.

Annabel wouldn’t be expecting him, though arriving home to find him waiting wouldn’t come as a surprise. She didn’t approve of what she called his unorthodox behavior, trying to change him, fix him, turn him one way when he was headed another. At least she was finally coming to realize exactly what a pig’s ear he was, and that she wouldn’t be the proud owner of a silk purse anytime soon.

Leaning beyond the railing, which bit into his upper thighs, he glanced down, hovering over the edge, weaving from side to side until dizziness brought him back up. He lifted the bottle in a toast, celebrating his continued resistance to the temptation of taking a dive four stories to the ground below.

Another day, another…day.

And, oh yeah, another toast.

Earlier tonight in her office, after screwing the both of them mad, he’d walked out on her without saying a word, unable to respond to her statement about no longer being able to see him.

Hell, woman, he’d wanted to say. For once, just open your goddamn eyes.

But he hadn’t said anything. He’d needed to get his thoughts together before putting them into words. He hadn’t done a lot of talking the last few years, and what skills he’d once used to express himself had pretty much seized up.

Not a big loss, since he didn’t have much to say these days. Neither did he have anyone wanting to listen. Really listen. Though, he supposed with another fine toast, he could probably find a willing audience if he were to make up a few horror stories about his captivity and exaggerate the reality of what had been a hell of a lot of boredom.

He couldn’t help but wonder if the searchers would have made half the effort to find him had they known he hadn’t been strung up by his balls at all. Instead, he’d spent a whole lot of hours flat on his back, napping in the sun, an ankle shackled to the base of a huge palm. And, hey. He’d lost a good forty pounds.

Yeah, he doubted that scenario would’ve garnered a lot of sympathy. Thank goodness he’d had his brother to count on. Ray had refused to give him up for gone. Three long years, and he’d put everything he’d had into the search, exhausting his finances, putting his own life on hold, working to right a very bad wrong.

He’d been just as conscientious since Patrick’s return, making sure he had time and space to get his act together without the pressure of reporters and other inquiring minds butting in. Thing was, it was too much time and way too much space. Lately, they rarely spoke of anything more vital than football stats.

Oh, yeah. Rushing yardage and passing percentages were the things that made life worth living. Patrick considered his bottle, considered his brother. Hell. If nothing else, Ray’s inability to shed the guilt eating him up deserved the biggest toast of the night.

He hadn’t been responsible for the kidnapping, but nothing Patrick said made a dent in Ray’s hardheaded insistence that he should have been more vigilant in plotting their course, in choosing a captain with a better sense of the region’s criminal climate, in negotiating their freedom when the pirates boarded the schooner.

Patrick drained the bottle, reached for another, not feeling half the buzz he’d been aiming for when he’d grabbed the two six-packs on his way home from the gIRL-gEAR offices. Home. Now that was pretty damn funny, thinking of Annabel’s place as home when she didn’t even want him around.

As much as Ray sidestepped digging through the pit of Patrick’s psyche, Annabel didn’t even bother with a shovel, but plunged knee-deep through his crap. She expected him to be the man he was, the best he could be, no matter how many bamboo shoots he’d had shoved under his fingernails.

He smiled, a strange feeling he was still getting used to, remembering the night he’d bought her at the auction. Damned if that hadn’t been some kind of night. She’d wanted answers: Why had he bought her? Where did he get the money? What was he expecting in return?

He’d had no answers to give. He’d simply herded her into the narrow alley behind the bar, wrapped her up in his jacket and backed her barely dressed body into the cold brick wall. He’d been healthy and horny. She’d been sex on stiletto heels. He’d kissed her until neither one of them could breathe, and his cock sat up and begged.

No surprise there.

What he hadn’t seen coming at all, what had crept up from behind and slipped a shiv between his ribs, was her appeal above the neck. After their bodies were spent, the brain sex took over. And it was every bit as addictive as conventional intercourse.

She was older than he was, independent, smart as hell. She was ballsy and brash and driven. In a horribly Freudian sort of way, she reminded him of Soledad—the woman who had been the one and only reason he’d held on to his sanity during those years away. And that was enough reason to let Annabel kick him to the curb.

Having one woman’s blood on his hands was a sin for which he had a long time left to pay.

Thing was, it wasn’t easy lately for him to separate past from present, because Soledad’s death was the reason he couldn’t let Annabel blow him off. Call it a hunch. Call it intuition. Call it thirty-six months kept captive in the hot seat.

Patrick’s cushy homecoming was about to fall apart.

He didn’t have anything solid to back up his suspicions, didn’t have proof to take to his contact at the FBI, didn’t have anything more than his instincts to rely on.

But he knew. He knew.

Russell Dega, the pirate leader who’d escaped during the confusion of Patrick’s rescue, was here. The scum-sucking thief had come to close the one piece of business left unsettled between them: ending Patrick’s life.

And if that didn’t deserve another toast, he didn’t know what did.

He finished off his fourth drink and had just reached for his fifth from the open six-pack sitting on the balcony’s black-iron table when the whir of the loft’s private elevator signaled Annabel’s arrival. His gut clenched hard in response.

Using his knife, he pried off the bottle cap and tried not to choke on the memory of what they’d done earlier in her office.

The disk clattered against the patio as the converted freight car stopped on the fourth floor. As he listened, Annabel lifted the elevator’s rolling garagelike door, sliding it overhead on its tracks. He heard her unlock and slide back the accordion-style grate that opened into the dark room behind him. He lifted the beer, drank deeply, waited for the buzz that was way too long in coming.

Annabel was already stepping out onto the balcony and he’d yet to feel a thing.

“What are you doing here?”

He raised his drink. “Toasting my fine taste in women.”

She waited a moment, then reached for the last bottle in the six-pack and tilted it his way. He removed the cap and, as she drank, their gazes met, stinging him with a keenly sharp buzz that he sure as hell wasn’t getting from the alcohol.

He let the sizzle settle, watching her keep the table between them and move to sit in one of the balcony set’s matching chairs. She shivered lightly, he noticed, when the cold metal bit into the backs of her bare legs.

Served her right for wearing the panty hose.

She drank again before glancing in his direction a second time and getting back to business. “You know me well enough by now to understand that I mean what I say.”

“Yes, but here’s to all the things you don’t say.” He tilted his bottle toward her in, what? His tenth toast of the night? Bringing the lip of the glass to his mouth, he swallowed a quarter of the contents, feeling…nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing but the same determination, the same wariness that had brought him here earlier. He wouldn’t be leaving tonight until she was aware of…Hell. He wouldn’t be leaving tonight period. Her awareness of anything wasn’t a factor in the equation.

“What sort of things am I not saying?” she finally asked. “What do I need to say to make myself clear?”

“Give me a reason. Why can’t you, or won’t you, see me anymore?” He hated that his request came out sounding so candy-assed, but he was no good at conversation, and conversation was the only way to get from here to there.

“Having you here is inconvenient.”

He sputtered at that. “Inconvenient? I’d say I’ve been about as convenient as you’re ever going to get in a roommate.”

“I don’t want a roommate, and I’m not talking about the sex.”

She wouldn’t be. She never wanted to talk about the sex, simply engage.

Annabel was one of only two women he’d known who approached life—and sex—like a man. Then again, his experience with the opposite sex consisted of no more than a short list of adventurous coeds before graduation, and two older women intent on wearing him out since.

The thought brought him back to why he was here. Why he couldn’t go. Until he put his dealings with Russell Dega to bed, Patrick would be as big a part of Annabel’s scenery as downtown Houston’s skyline.

Leaving her alone would seem to be her best protection, but if Dega were indeed here, the bastard would’ve picked up on Annabel being Patrick’s Achilles’ heel. He couldn’t chance having her used as a pawn in a game that might end badly.

What little common sense he still listened to insisted that his purpose would be best served if she were the one to suggest he stick around. Which meant she needed him here for a reason that had nothing to do with what he gave her in bed.

He thought a moment while drinking. Then, fingers laced around the bottle, he leaned back against the railing and braced the glass against the top button of his fly. Giving a little shrug, he said, “Guess I’m just surprised you’d give up such a good thing.”

“And I’m surprised you didn’t hear me say I wasn’t going to talk about sex.”

He gave another shrug. “I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about food.”

She crossed one leg, shifted her weight to her hip as he pulled out the second chair and sat. He kept the table between them because he was no stranger to body language and hers was screaming at him to stay the hell away.

He could respect that. Didn’t mean he was going to abandon his plans to convince her she needed him around, though. Who’d’ve thunk Soledad’s obsession with teaching him to cook would’ve come so in handy?

He stretched out his legs and leaned back, playing the part of a man on his way to a full-blown drunk. In reality, his senses were sharply honed. He wasn’t only fighting for his survival—a badge of expertise he claimed proudly—he was fighting for hers. Knowledge he would dispense on a need-to-know basis.

“Who else would feed you grilled salmon with orange scallion salsa? Or puff pastry with shiitake mushrooms and Asiago cheese?” He sensed the smile she fought to hide. “Did I mention chocolate-raspberry pot pie?” He had her with the pie, but twisted the screw one more time. “How can you even think of giving up my cappuccino crème brûlée?”

Holding her bottle beneath her lips, she said, “You’re the only man I know who can talk to me like that and not have me question your sexual orientation.”

He tossed back his head and brayed. “And this from the same woman whose brother paints with watercolors.”

“Happily affianced brother, I’ll have you know.”

“Happily? This the same brother you said was on the outs with his woman not a week ago?”

Tentatively, she returned the bottle to the table, as if distracting him with the slow motion, because in the next second she brought the glass down with a cracking thud. Then she snapped, “I hate how you do that.”

“Do what?”

She growled and turned away, so that the light from the moon fell on her blue-black hair. The severely angled layers swung as she moved, the longest strands brushing her jaw.

The sharp razor cut was her first line of visible defense, a barbed-wire barrier keeping softness at bay. He wasn’t fooled for a second. “How I can tell when you’re not being honest? Or how I know when you’re hiding something?”

“Either. Both.” Her head whipped back, and he sensed her eyes narrow into stabbing pinpoints, felt them nail him to his chair.

He couldn’t help it. Aiming to get a buzz or not, he felt the first stirrings of arousal as his balls shifted between his legs.

She used the neck of the bottle as a pointer and aimed it in his direction. “I am not going to fall for your tricks, Patrick.”

“I’m not peddling any tricks over here.”

“Of course you are. You think in seven weeks I haven’t learned a thing or two about you?”

He forced himself not to stiffen; it didn’t make for a convincing drunk. “Keep it to those two and we’ll be doing okay.”

Her exasperation was obvious as, with a deep sigh, she flopped back into her chair. When she said nothing more, he felt the first pricks of worry. Pissing her off was no way to get back into her good graces. And so he let her stew.

She stewed, but not for long. Her chin came up as she said, “I cut you off without warning. I admit that was hardly fair.”

Her Annabel-ized apology only had him stiffening further. He waited for the “but” sure to follow—but nothing has changed, but you still have to go, but—

“But I have been thinking.”

More dangerous yet. “Oh?”

“Perhaps we can come up with an arrangement of sorts.” She held her bottle on the table, drumming her fingers along the label. “Temporary, of course.”

“I’m all ears.” Temporary would give him the time he needed to flush a certain nemesis from whatever shadows the bastard was using for cover. Yeah, temporary worked.

Although Patrick still couldn’t help but wonder if that was all Annabel assumed he was good for.

“Cut your hair.”

What the hell? “Cutting my hair is your deal?”

She shook her head. “Your comment. Being all ears. I just realized I only see them when you tie back your hair.”

“Is this about your Delilah complex?”

“You’re not exactly Sampson,” she said softly. “Your hair isn’t a source of strength. It might put off more people than you know.”

Now he was getting irritated. “What people? The ones who are supposed to be considering me for work?”

Not that there were many of those—and there wouldn’t be until he decided what he wanted to do with his life. He had money to live on for the moment, thanks to a combination of reward and bounty money, and it seemed a waste of time and energy to take a job for the sake of saying he had one. He’d learned a lot about priorities during the last few years, and doing for himself mattered a lot more than trying to please all of the people all of the time.

Annabel nodded. “Them. My neighbors. Little children on the street. Elderly ladies with heart conditions. Puppies—”

“Yeah, yeah.” He shook back his hair, which suddenly seemed burdensome, if not a reminder of the savage life he’d known. “It’s not my hair that’s the problem.”

It wasn’t even the piercings or the tattoos. It was the expression in his eyes. And that he wasn’t sure he could change.

“Not completely, no. But you do look like a thug. And if you want to cater the New Year’s Eve showing at Devon’s gallery, I can’t have you looking like one.”

He sobered completely. “Cater? Me? Are you out of your mind?”

Annabel’s dark brows lifted. “Oh, that was another Patrick Coffey seducing me earlier with promises of grilled salmon and crème brûlée?”

“Seduction and catering are two completely different animals.” Catering meant putting his work out for those other than family, appearing in public, behaving accordingly. People pointed out too often that his behavior mirrored the don’t-give-a-damn look in his eyes.

“It’s cooking, Patrick. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

“The serving? The presentation?” She was handing him a silver platter loaded with a legitimate reason for her to keep him around. And all he could think about was the exhaustion of maintaining a civilized veneer despite the rude stares and speculation.

His survival skills told him he’d be borrowing trouble should he accept. His protective instincts quickly took charge.

This wasn’t about him. This was about Annabel.

“I’ll handle the arrangements,” she was saying. “I have the menu already approved. All you’ll have to do is prepare the food.”

“And the back side of the deal?” The side he figured he would like even less than putting his passion out to be judged by strangers.

Annabel’s closed expression confirmed his suspicion. “After the showing on New Year’s Eve, we’ll say our goodbyes.”

Yeah, he’d had a pretty good idea that was going to be it, and it still sucked that she wasn’t wanting to keep him around.

Annabel was the only one with the guts to tell him about his potential. She never treated him as a pariah. Whether or not she truly believed in him didn’t matter. She’d given him reason to harbor a remnant of the same hope he’d held on to for three years.

He huffed. Maybe one savior per lifetime was all he deserved. And he sure didn’t want Annabel suffering Soledad’s fate.

Draining his bottle, he lazily pushed himself to his feet and dug into his pocket for his knife. With Annabel looking on, he flipped open the blade. He stared at her for a long moment, looking for even a hint of apprehension, seeing nothing but a mild curiosity.

He wanted to damn her for being unflappable, but damned himself for letting her get to him instead.

As he raised the knife, the flame of a lighter on the street below caught his eye. His heart bolted; his blood raced. His muscles contracted, and he froze, watching the first bright glow of a cigarette catching fire. He couldn’t make out any of the smoker’s features—

“Patrick?”

—only dark clothing, dark hair. It could be Dega. It could be anyone, except the balcony seemed to be in the smoker’s direct line of sight. Another long draw and the cigarette fell to the ground. The smoker turned and walked away, swallowed immediately by the shadows.

“Patrick?”

If he hit the fire escape, he could be on the street in seconds. He could make sure. He would know—

“Patrick!”

Annabel grabbed his wrist. Adrenaline shot him in the heart; he flinched. It was a long, tense moment later before he was able to force enough of a smile to put the both of them at ease.

With a roll of her eyes, Annabel released his wrist and shoved him away. “I hate it when you do that.”

This time he knew what she was talking about: the way his feral instincts kicked in anytime he sensed danger. He glanced back down to the street, only to see that his hesitation had cost him what edge he might’ve had. Shit. A lot of protection he was going to be. Shaking his head, he turned away, slid his free fingers into his hair close to his scalp and pulled.

Only then did he use the blade.

He watched Annabel look on as the hunk of hair fell to the balcony floor. She watched as he sliced off another and another until he stood there with nothing but choppy tufts on his head. He returned the knife to his pocket. She returned her gaze to his face.

If asked, he would’ve denied the pleasure that rushed through him at seeing the encouragement in her eyes. When it reached her mouth, he couldn’t help but tighten his grip on that one last remnant of hope. Maybe, just maybe, he deserved to have survived.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said, and when he inclined his head in answer, she turned on her heel and motioned for him to follow. “I’ll get the clippers from my makeup case. You get the broom.”

SHE COULDN’T TEAR her gaze away. She’d tried, truly she had. But he was entirely too compelling, making the task an impossibility when she’d thought herself impervious to his physical allure.

After she’d repaired the mess he’d made of his hair, they’d made love with the lights on. For the first time since he’d bought her at auction, she’d wanted to see his face while their bodies were joined. Until now, she’d imagined him as a fantasy, a mystery, a lover that came in the night when her defenses were down and her body an open book.

Their encounters were purely sexual, a disassociation from the rest of her life, an entertainment, recreation, an indulgence. Tonight that glass bubble had broken. He was real, a man, a beautiful male specimen of whom she couldn’t get her visual fill.

Her sheets were fine white Egyptian cotton, the headboard an extravagant Victorian piece in dark wood. Patrick lay sleeping in the center of the bed, an arm beneath his head in lieu of a pillow, the barest edge of a sheet draped over his groin.

Dark hair tufted in the pit of his raised arm, ran in a line from his navel down beneath the sheet. His chest was bare, his legs lightly covered, while the thatch that cushioned his sex grew thick. Yet the lack of hair on his head was what drew her attention.

She’d clipped him close so that no more than a dark fuzz remained. That darkness served to highlight the deep bronze glow of his skin. The silver hoop in his ear matched the one piercing his nipple, and both looked as if they were simply an extension of his skin.

It was his tattoo that caused her to shudder. Not the intricate tribal art ringing his biceps. That one she’d discovered beneath more than a few white dress shirts on other men. Never in her life, however, had she seen anything like Patrick’s snake.

The design was inked in multicolors: black, blue, red and green, with sharp highlights in yellow. The snake wound its way around his right thigh—she counted four coils—before arcing over his hipbone to end above the swell of his buttocks. With Patrick lying on his back, she had to visualize the fangs and the wicked, wicked eyes.

But even the remembered image was more than enough to cause her to shiver. She reached for the comforter, which had ended up on the floor earlier, and wrapped it around her shoulders. When she glanced again at Patrick, his eyes were open, even though he remained perfectly still.

“I hate the way you do that.” His uncanny ability to come awake on full alert made her crazy. She hated the idea of him watching her while she slept, when she was vulnerable….

“Watch out or you’ll give me a complex.”

“Give you a complex? What about the dozens you already have?”

She’d lost count of the number of times over the past seven weeks she’d tackled one or another, hoping she could offer him more than memories of great sex to take away from their time together. She hated how he seemed to ignore his amazing potential. Especially his ability to adapt and survive.

A slow, sleepy grin spread over his sinful mouth, though it never reached his eyes. Using no more than his abs, he lifted his upper body off the mattress while stacking pillows behind him. It was only when he finally leaned back that she remembered to breathe. God, but he was beautiful.

“Dozens, huh? Guess I’ve never counted.”

He was cocky and cute and too much of both. She’d determined that their time would be limited. She had even set the date for their end. None of that meant she couldn’t continue to dig into his psyche while she had him here—though, knowing Patrick, she easily imagined him walking out stark naked.

She considered him critically. “Why do you never stay and eat what you’ve cooked?”

The expression in his eyes gave nothing away, even as his smile seemed to freeze. “I always eat what I’ve cooked.”

“But you don’t eat with the people you’ve cooked for. This past year I’ve had dinner at Sydney and Ray’s at least once a month. As soon as the meal is served, you walk out of the room.”

“I’ve forgotten my table manners.”

He didn’t even flinch when he said it. He didn’t break eye contact, and he kept a totally straight face. Either he was a hell of a liar or he truly believed that he was the savage beast he claimed to be. A part of her heart broke for him.

Another part wanted to slap him and tell him to get over himself already, that she was immune to his act. Except that would make her an even bigger liar than he.

Another few silent moments passed, moments she spent wondering what his three years of captivity had been like, if he’d had friends, if he’d had lovers, how many he’d had. If they’d appreciated his intensity in bed the way she did. If one of them had taught him the skills he so expertly plied.

Funny, the jealousy sparked by that thought. Not so funny that she recognized the full grip of the unhealthy emotion.

“And it seems you’ve forgotten that it’s impolite to stare,” he finally said, interrupting her fruitless musings.

When she realized she was doing exactly that, she forced herself to pull away. “Your facial bone structure fascinates me.”

“If that’s a come-on, it’s the lousiest one I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s not a come-on,” she said, even as her pulse quickened. “I was simply visualizing your skull’s interocular and bizygomatic breadth.”

He knew as well as she did that craniofacial anthropometry was the last thing on her mind. Yet she couldn’t find the strength to turn away when he whispered, “Show me.”

Letting the comforter fall, she moved toward him, enjoying the flare of his nostrils as he took in her nudity and her complete comfort in baring her body. She crawled up to straddle him, dislodging the sheet so that she sat atop his thighs, settling over the softness of his scrotum, his penis tucked close to her sex.

She placed her hands on the smooth skin of his torso, sliding her palms upward until making contact with his jaw. Her fingers explored the structure of his face, moving from one point to another.

“This is the bizygomatic breadth,” she said, measuring from the most lateral point on one cheekbone’s zygomatic arch to the matching point on the other. “And this is the biocular width,” she added, moving her left hand to span the space between the far corners of his eyelids. “A forensic sculptor would use these measurements as well as others in reconstructing your face.”

She pressed her fingertips to each spot until Patrick closed his eyes and moaned from the pleasure of her touch. She wanted to moan, as well, because his cock had stirred against her belly, his shaft thickening and rubbing over her sex.

“I can see why you liked studying this stuff. Who knew the human skull could be such an erogenous zone?”

“Our study subjects didn’t feel a thing,” she countered. “They were dead, and quite unconcerned with eros.”

Patrick lay still for several moments more, allowing her to explore the fit of the skin on his face, the structure of his skull, until the room seemed to echo with their dueling heartbeats and their husky breathing.

She stopped the exploration of his jawline, her thumbs pressed to his cheekbones, as his erection began to firmly make its presence known there where her belly tingled. When he opened his eyes to catch her staring, she moved her hands to her thighs.

Strange, this nervousness making her uneasy. Yes, he constantly surprised her, but she wasn’t used to being caught off guard. “It’s like you’re someone I don’t know. You look so different without all that hair.”

“A good different?”

“An effective different.”

“So consider me the variety spicing up your life.” He said it with a wiggle of both brows, which stood out against his perpetually bronzed skin.

That, he certainly had done, she admitted, moving her palms from her thighs to his abdomen, pressing lightly the taut muscles there. When he groaned, she felt the hum from her fingertips to her elbows.

Yet oddly enough, she wasn’t wanting sex as much as she wanted to explore his body. Considering that he was quite the randy young man, she wouldn’t be having her way completely, she mused without complaint. She had never known such intense satisfaction, and in reality would hate seeing him go.

But she had long since learned the importance of cutting free dead weight.

And behind those uncanny beautiful eyes and wickedly sparkling wit, she feared that was exactly what she would find instead of the artist’s soul her foolish heart insisted he hid. Better to die not knowing, than to know…and die a little more inside.

The older, wiser Annabel approached relationships anticipating their inevitable end. An end that was all too near for her and Patrick, giving her the freedom to enjoy his body without the guilt of self-betrayal.

Or so she worked to convince herself as she leaned forward to grab a condom from the bedside table. Patrick opened his mouth over her breast, but she pulled back before he could do more than wet her skin with his tongue.

Tearing open the condom packet, she moved from straddling Patrick’s thighs to kneeling between them, caught by the fire that stirred in her belly simply by looking at him. Yet it was nothing compared to the fire of taking him into her mouth.

Leaning forward, she parted her lips over the head of his cock and sucked him between her lips, holding him there while running her tongue along the sensitive underside seam. Her mouth burned from his heat; her pulse raced in response to the visceral sounds he made.

He thrust upward. She took him to the back of her throat before drawing her lips firmly from the base of his shaft back to the head. Once there, she teased him again, her tongue circling and swirling around his glans until, in a sharp panting breath, he begged her to stop.

She did stop, but she didn’t remove her mouth. She left her lips pressed beneath the ridge of the head and slipped a hand between his legs to fondle his balls. Then the soft skin of his sac, the weight of his testicles, the swollen extension of his erection that formed a ridge all the way back to his anal opening.

She loved all of it, loved the feel, loved learning where to press, where to stroke, where to tickle, where to squeeze. He was an incredible canvas of tactile sensation, and he aroused her beyond belief simply by being.

When he drew up his knees and opened his legs wider, she knew he was ready, just as she knew she could no longer wait. Their accord as lovers couldn’t possibly be more perfect, and she wondered over it yet again while rolling the condom down the length of his shaft.

Catching her lower lip between her teeth, she crawled up his body, lifting onto her knees, then lowering herself over his erection. For as long as she was able to manage, she remained unmoving, staring into Patrick’s eyes, which glittered with all that he felt, and with a promise to give her exactly what she wanted.

It was that unspoken vow that choked her up, that way he had of telling her he would always be there, would never let her down. That he was the real deal, as real as it got. Not the polished perfect product of wistful fantasy.

And that was when she closed her eyes and began to move. The sex she could count on. Counting on anything else, anything more, would be simple stupidity. No matter what his eyes said. She knew better.

She knew…knew…knew nothing any longer but the surge of desire, the purely physical lust that consumed her, that seemed to take away her mind and leave nothing but her body.

Sensation surrounded her as she lifted and lowered her hips, selfishly setting the rhythm that would bring her relief. Patrick held her, his fingers digging into the muscles of her buttocks and urging her to increase her speed.

The tendons and veins on his neck stood out in sharp relief as he strained to match the pace she set. He thrust upward to each of her downward strokes, and she braced her hands on his shoulders, loving the way his muscles bunched as he grasped her hips to direct her movements.

It was too much—the combination of looking into his eyes, seeing the way he wanted her, watching his struggle to hold his own completion in check.

She tossed back her head, riding his body as the swell of orgasm became the center of her world. Shuddering, she cried out, digging her fingers into his shoulders as the heat of his release filled her.

Still shivering, she glanced down, caught defenseless by the emotion brimming in his eyes and the arm he brought up and hooked behind her neck.

He pulled her down for his kiss, grinding his mouth to hers even as he ground their bodies together. His tongue swept into her mouth, branding her, claiming her, marking her as his possession.

For once in her life, she didn’t pull free from such a demanding kiss.

Or back away from the idea of belonging to only one man.

3

“CHLOE WILL BE HERE in ten minutes to go over the details of our Christmas Eve dinner. Are you thinking of dressing today?”

Patrick glanced from the omelette pan to Annabel’s face, then down to his gray jersey athletic shorts, which were threadbare and lacking support. The absence of a jockstrap or briefs didn’t improve matters any. Especially since his thoughts had been wandering to the bedroom, and his cock was of a mind to head back that way.

“A T-shirt ought to do me. Maybe a bucket of ice water. But you’ll have to watch the omelette.” He lifted a brow, indicating the eggs, cheese, tomatoes, cilantro and chorizo simmering on the stovetop.

Annabel tightened the belt of her silky robe, the creamy white-and-blue-green swirly patterns reminding him suddenly of Caribbean waters beneath endless skies. A reminder that took his thoughts back to the cigarette butt he’d picked up from the sidewalk outside the loft at dawn.

He tensed but refused to glance at the evidence of his suspicions lying on the countertop. He’d been planning to deliver breakfast in bed to Annabel. If he’d known she’d be up and dressed before he finished cooking, he’d never have left the butt in plain sight.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Annabel walked closer and pinched a square of diced tomato from the cutting board next to the stove. Her mouth gave a little twist as she considered his suggestion. “Why don’t I get you the clothes, and you finish fixing my food?”

“Hungry woman,” he growled, hooking an arm around her neck and pulling her away from the counter into a kiss.

It was a fiery kiss, full of tongues and warmth and a satisfaction that their mouths fit so well together. Yet the kiss was a distracting ruse as much as anything, and he kept his eyes open.

With his arm still around her neck and his face nuzzling the skin beneath her ear, he used his free hand to slide the omelette from pan to plate. He then set the pan on the counter, covering the cigarette butt, before turning his full attention to the woman in his arms.

Dodging his affections, she grabbed another bite of tomato, this one out of the omelette, complete with a dangling string of cheese. She reeled in the cheese with her tongue, chewed and swallowed, afflicting him with that smart-ass smirk that never failed to tie his gut in knots.

Thought she was going to get the better of him, did she? She’d better be thinking again. This time when he grabbed her, he didn’t let her squirm free, but delivered another hard, teasing, drive-by sweep of his tongue through her mouth.

“You taste like tomatoes,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around her waist. He pulled her close for a kiss that was leisurely and lingering, that swept him away with possibilities and promises—until fear came crashing in, the fear that she would drown his ability to scent danger.

Still he kissed her, pushing his hips against her so that his erection found and settled into the softness of her belly. He pulsed there, throbbing, aching, and he backed her into the edge of the counter for a more secure hold.

She wound her arms around his neck, one hand at his nape, the other pulling his head down with forceful insistence. Her hunger matched his own. Her tongue tangled with his, and her taste set him on fire.

For all her sass, she tendered a sweetness that stole his breath, reminding him that he was a man and that he had survived. She was a huge reason he was finally grateful for the latter; he’d gone so long not giving a damn.

While the idea of remaining a part of her life kicked his self-preservation instincts awake, the idea of leaving triggered something more compelling—the need to protect what was his and no other’s. In a matter of weeks, Annabel had become an addiction his sworn enemy wouldn’t fail to exploit.

The thought gave him pause. Maybe he should run as far away from this woman as time allowed before the inevitable happened, before he lost the edge that had kept him alive, and Annabel paid the price.

He started to break the kiss. With a sound of distress, she cupped his jaw so tenderly he couldn’t pretend that all she felt was lust.

That all he felt was lust.

He growled into her mouth, seeking more of what she was always so ready to give…then perversely grinding away every trace of gentleness until only raw passion remained. He didn’t even release her when the bell rang and the loft’s private elevator whirred in the shaft, signaling Chloe’s arrival.

Annabel moved her hands from his neck to push against his chest, and tore her mouth free with a gasp. Then she glared at him. “I hate it when you do that.”

He feigned an indifferent shrug, reached for the omelette plate and cast a pointed glance at the front of her robe, where her nipples had risen to the occasion. “Yeah. I can tell.”

“Arrgh!” She balled her hands into fists, turned and stomped toward the door, but not before glancing down and adjusting the folds of her robe.

Patrick peeked around the floor-to-ceiling lava lamp sculptures that divided the kitchen from the main room of the loft and watched her very fine ass swish away. Sending her off with a long, low wolf whistle, he tossed the pan into the sink and snagged up the omelette and the cigarette butt.

Making his way through the back of the kitchen to the hallway, he headed for Annabel’s bedroom. Shimmying out of his jersey shorts, he kicked them into the corner of the walk-in closet where she let him keep a few things. Standing there bare-ass naked, he scarfed down all of their breakfast while deciding on an action plan.

Clothes first, then down to the street to seek out more clues. There was a massive chance that the Jamaican-made cigarette was a coincidence, even though in the eighteen months since his return he’d never found a store that carried the brand.

And he’d looked, because he’d gotten used to taking an occasional drag to relax.

After setting his empty plate on Annabel’s chest of drawers, he dug into his duffel for a T-shirt, jeans and the knife few people knew he had—a knife he’d taken from one of Dega’s men and kept hidden behind a loose chunk of cinder blocks supporting the barracks.

If Russell Dega was actually here on the hunt, Patrick had damn well better be ready for a showdown.

“SORRY TO HAVE DRAGGED you out of bed,” Chloe Zuniga said as Annabel closed the elevator’s sliding grate behind her. The two women headed for the kitchen, Chloe giving Annabel a thorough once-over. “I thought you’d be expecting me, not still be in bed getting all kinds of lucky.”

“I was expecting you, and I wasn’t in bed. I was in the kitchen. I didn’t get much sleep last night, and Patrick is making me breakfast.” Annabel rounded the corner into the open kitchen area and stopped.

“Or he was making you breakfast,” Chloe said.

Annabel took in the omelette pan in the sink and the total lack of anything left to eat. Not even a scrap of the diced tomatoes or shredded cheese. “Hmm. I’m going to send that boy a grocery bill if he’s not careful.”

“Boy?” Chloe pursed her pink lips. “I doubt there’s another woman alive who would call Patrick Coffey a boy. Then again, I imagine you know him better than anyone else.”

There were times Annabel thought so, times she wondered too much about the other women he’d known, when she had no business wondering any such thing. “Honestly? I’m not sure I know him at all, and I plan to maintain that status quo. You want coffee?”

“Sure.”

After casual chitchat while filling their cups, and Annabel’s quick check of the bedroom, where she discovered Patrick’s vanishing act down the fire escape, she led Chloe back into the loft’s main room and settled on the opposite end of the sofa.

“So,” Chloe began. “Would you like to explain that status quo comment?”

Annabel lowered her cup. “About getting to know Patrick? What’s there to explain?”

“A lot.”

Annabel shook her head. “I don’t think so. I simply see no need to know him better than I do when this isn’t a long-term relationship. We’ve had our fun.” And she really had done her best to make him see the truth of his destructive behavior. “But I have a lot of decisions to make that are best made without having Patrick around.”

Chloe’s blond bob swung as she tilted her chin. “If you were a man, I’d accuse you of not being able to think with your big head.”

Smiling privately, Annabel blew over the surface of her hot coffee before she sipped. “I’ll admit to seeing things through sex-colored glasses these days.”

“I’ll bet.” Chloe stared into her own cup. “I’m the same way with Eric.”

“Yes, but you and Eric are involved, committed—” a strange twist of envy caught at Annabel’s midsection “—and in love.”

Chloe nodded as she lifted her coffee, but her tremulous expression—one totally out of character—was more telling than the motion of her head.

Annabel frowned. “Chloe? Are you and Eric having trouble?”

“Oh, no,” Chloe hurriedly insisted. “We’re fine. We’re great.”

“If I didn’t know you better, I’d believe every word. But your face is telling an entirely different story.” Annabel paused to let that sink in. “You forget how long I’ve known you.”

“Oh, no, I haven’t.” Chloe’s brow lifted sharply. “I was there every step of the way while you were busy stealing my job.”

Annabel huffed. “You weren’t exactly laying down your life to save what you had. Your interest wasn’t there, and I took full advantage. I remember having this discussion with you then.”

Pulling in a nervous breath, Chloe said in a rush, “I’m afraid that’s what’s happening with Eric. That his interest isn’t there. And that I’m going to lose him.”

“What are you talking about?” Annabel’s chest grew tight with worry. “You adore him. He adores you—”

“I’m not so sure anymore.”

“How can you say that? I was at your place Tuesday night. I saw the two of you together. He can’t stand for you to be out of his sight.”

“That’s the thing. I’ve been so busy with the gUIDANCE gIRL program that I’ve neglected him, neglected us. And I readily admit that….” Chloe’s sadness was virtually palpable. “Did you know Macy’s pregnant?”

“No. I didn’t.” But the revelation certainly put Chloe’s funk into perspective. “Do you want to have a baby?”

“Yes. No. Later, maybe.”

“And Eric?”

“I’ve always thought so. It’s just that recently he’s stopped talking about the Little League team of his loins, when he used to tease me about babies all the time.” She tucked her feet beneath her protectively. “I’m not sure what to do.”

Even knowing her girlfriend was hurting and wasn’t trying to be funny, Annabel couldn’t help but chuckle. “One thing you can do is get ready to kiss those perky boobs goodbye.”

Chloe frowned. “That’s not funny.”

So much for trying to lighten the mood. “I know it’s not. But what sort of friend would I be if I didn’t point out the obvious?”

“Well, think of a different obvious, would you? Like the one I keep missing when I try to figure out what’s going on with him.” Chloe’s hands gripped her cup so tightly Annabel feared the china would break.

She’d never seen her girlfriend so emotionally distraught. Chloe usually tossed off problems in a flurry of foulmouthed curses and gutter talk. She was not the type to fret or to stew. Especially not when it came to her relationship with Eric Haydon.

Annabel, unfortunately, was the last person to dispense advice on dealing with men. She was certainly no shining example of sticking with anything long term.

Even so, she was hardly unfeeling enough to change the subject now that Chloe had confided her fears—no matter that those fears struck at the heart of Annabel’s own decision to cut Patrick out of her life.

“Look, Chloe. I’m the least qualified person I know when it comes to relationship issues. All I can say is that from an outsider’s perspective, you don’t have a thing to worry about with Eric.” She went on, nipping Chloe’s objection in the bud. “But maybe you need to discuss this with him instead of me. Does he know how you’ve been feeling?”

Chloe went back to nursing her coffee, refusing to meet Annabel’s gaze. “Every time I get up the nerve to talk about it, he changes the subject. It’s as if he’s totally indifferent. And I can’t help but worry that it’s not just the babies he’s losing interest in.”

“You think it’s you.”

Chloe nodded, looking so miserable and lost, Annabel couldn’t doubt her friend’s sincerity. Which was why it came out of left field when, cup empty, Chloe slid the china across the coffee table and bounced around like a depressive on a manic rebound. “Never mind about me. I started my period, and I’m moody because I thought an accidental pregnancy might be just the solution.”

She couldn’t be serious. “When is an accidental pregnancy ever a solution to anything?”

“I’m kidding. I’m hormonal, I told you,” Chloe insisted. Though Annabel wasn’t convinced about the kidding part, she watched Chloe dig through her bag for her Day-Timer. “Anyway, let’s go over the rest of your Christmas Eve dinner details. I think we’re set, but with my luck, I’ve totally forgotten something major.”

“Actually,” Annabel began, wondering the best way to make this last-minute request, “I was hoping we could skip discussing Christmas and go straight to New Year’s.”

“Sure,” Chloe said with a shrug. “I’m game, and I’m easy.” She tapped her pen on her calendar page. Then she looked up questioningly. “What I’m not is clairvoyant.”

Annabel released a wry smile. “Newvale’s canceled on me.”

“For Devon’s showing? You’re kidding. What’s the deal?”

“One of their cooks took a walk. Or was asked to take a walk. Whatever.” She set her empty cup on the coffee table, leaned back and cinched her robe tighter. “I’m stuck with sixty RSVPs, a truckload of booze and no servers.”

“Servers, hell.” Chloe’s expression grew wide-eyed. “What about the food? I can’t believe Newvale’s didn’t sell the contract to another caterer.”

“I have the option, but have to let them know by Monday.”

“And something tells me you have an alternative up your sleeve.”

“Patrick’s agreed to cook.”

Chloe’s smirking expression of moments before went carefully blank. “I see.”

Annabel bristled. “You don’t think he’s capable?”

“Of cooking? Sure he is. Of handling possible crises until the last guest leaves?” Chloe shook her head. “Not on your life. A year and a half and he hasn’t stuck around to eat a single meal he’s cooked. The man is an island.”

Chest constricting, Annabel forced a smile and pushed away the unaccustomed protective instincts urging her to defend her lover’s good name. He didn’t have one, after all, leaving her with nothing to safeguard but her feelings, which were in conflict with her goal of their imminent parting.

“He doesn’t have to leave the kitchen or mingle with the guests. All I need is for him to cook and for you and the other girls to help me serve.”

STANDING IN THE boarded-up doorway of the small video-rental store across the street, Patrick stared up at the fourth-story balcony of Annabel’s loft. He’d been here once already, earlier this morning, but couldn’t help it. He’d had to come back.

If anyone had been wanting a clear look at him last night, this would’ve been the place to get it. Not a single telephone pole or electrical line or billboard blocked the view from the sidewalk to the loft. It was a straight shot from here to there, and he didn’t like the idea that he’d been as exposed as he had, that Annabel had been exposed at all.

Mostly he didn’t like the idea that he’d been so stupidly reckless, that he’d been drinking and feeling sorry for himself when he knew better. The first didn’t do him a bit of good, and he’d had three years of doing the second to prove it wasn’t worth the hassle.

Thing was, until he’d picked up the cigarette butt this morning, he’d been halfway convinced that looking over his shoulder was more a waste of time than a precaution. He’d been home for nearly a year and a half now and hadn’t seen so much as a shadow other than his own. And looking for shadows was something he’d gotten used to doing pretty damn fast.

For the first couple of months after being hijacked off the schooner and watching his brother and Ray’s two fraternity buddies sail away, Patrick had flinched at the slightest shift from light to dark. Or, he thought with a sharp laugh, from dark to light.

He’d jumped at everything, truth be told, until he’d met Soledad. When the pirates had returned to the island three days into his captivity, she’d boarded Russell Dega’s powerboat and dragged Patrick up out of the cargo hold, demanding the bandit bastard cut him free from his bonds. Dega had, but not out of the kindness of his heart.

He’d laughed at her saucy, rapid-fire orders and used the same knife Patrick now carried to slice through the ropes he’d had three days onboard to get used to wearing. Patrick had listened then to the two of them arguing in a mixture of English and Spanish, Soledad snapping at Dega that he was about profit, about money, not about sport or revenge.

For some reason, once Soledad came into the picture, Dega seemed to forget the enmity he had for Patrick, treating him as a curiosity, a joke and then as a new toy he’d tired of winding up and watching squirm. It was as if Soledad was the baby-sitter Dega hadn’t trusted any of his men to be. That was Patrick’s first clue that she wasn’t just another of the women who waited for their men to return from a hard day’s looting at sea.

During the three days Patrick had been kept on the boat, however, Dega had been quite clear that he had zero patience with self-important college boys determined to muck up his operation by trying to play the hero. As if Patrick was going to sit back while the pirate crew boarded and trashed the schooner, threatening his brother and Ray’s buddies?

Even Dega’s threat to teach Patrick a lesson didn’t stop him from locking the main cabin hatches behind him as he bolted down the companionway. He’d been after a flare gun, a bullhorn, a handheld VHF radio—anything to signal their distress. He’d run into one of Dega’s men instead, and had been blasted with the rented schooner’s own canister of pepper spray.

Hero. Right.

He’d ended up being the only one dragged away.

The pirate gang numbered in the low twenties, as best Patrick had been able to tell once shuttled from the hold of the powerboat to the remote—though civilized—camp that served as their land-based operation. And that was where he’d stayed for most of his three years away.

He’d been free to wander through the compound, to swim in the cove surrounding the private dock, to fish the reef along the island from one of the flat-bottom boats. At least until the night he’d rowed out into open waters and fired up the outboard.

He really thought he’d calculated his timing, having clocked Dega’s comings and goings for several weeks. But he’d thought wrong. He hadn’t been out of the cove ten minutes when he’d looked up to see Dega’s boat bearing down on him. The searchlights had blinded him, had guaranteed that Dega saw him, but the boat continued forward at full throttle.

Patrick had taken a dive he’d been certain at the time would be his last. He’d sunk like a rock as the propeller churned the water over his head, the boat coming to a stop and circling directly above the spot where he was trying not to drown.

He’d been wrong about the dive being his last, and had ended up with a lot of time to figure out how things had gone from bad to worse while the shackles binding his ankles kept him landlocked. Now, however, the task at hand was to figure out how to keep the situation from traveling any farther south, and how to bring Dega down for the very last time.

Wishing for a cigarette, but only half as much as he wished for a drink, Patrick stepped out of the doorway alcove onto the sidewalk. Lost in thoughts he’d like to lose permanently, he’d forgotten that it was barely ten o’clock. Hardly the time to be chugging down a cold one no matter that his drinking was more about the situation than the hour of the day.

He supposed he could toe a sober line for the next couple of weeks to make Annabel happy and keep her quiet. She didn’t like his drinking much, or at least she didn’t like not knowing the reasons he drank. But the day he answered her questions was the day she owned more than his willing body.

And sobriety was a small price to pay for a soul. Even a sorry-ass one like his.

Heading back across the street, he pulled open the door to the hallway leading to the warehouse’s bank of elevators. Even in daylight, the high, narrow windows provided scant illumination, barely more than the wall lamps that were supposed to finish the job. Patrick couldn’t figure out why such a classy woman as Annabel would want to live in such a dump of a neighborhood.

No one was asking him, but revitalization appeared to be nothing but a fancy word for rip-off if she’d paid even half of what he imagined. Still, he had to admit he would miss the place. He felt safe here, as weird as that was. Felt as if he fit in, instead of sticking out like a big fat sore thumb the way he did in Ray’s neighborhood.

Yeah, they’d both grown up in the house Ray and Sydney now lived in, but Patrick had lost his suburban blinders a long time back. He no longer saw the same world as his brother, and that hurt, losing that connection over a freak disaster that was no one’s fault.

It hurt even more knowing Ray blamed himself for the entire vacation gone bad. That was one delusion Patrick needed to make sure got cleared up, and soon. Annabel had been right to chew him out.

Approaching the elevators, he fought a smile at the thought of her brutal honesty. Surprisingly refreshing, since everyone else seemed to tiptoe on eggshells around him. But not her. Oh, no. She crunched her way straight to her in-your-face point.

Namely that Ray’s self-inflicted punishment had gone on four years too long already. And if Patrick didn’t “snap out of his moody self-absorption and help his older brother forgive himself,” she wasn’t sure they’d ever be able to make up for lost time, much less get back the bond they’d once shared.

Hands braced on the hip-high elevator railing, Patrick hung his head and studied his boots. How she’d known about that brotherly bond was no mystery. Anything Ray knew, Sydney knew. And anything one gIRL-gEAR partner knew, they all learned eventually.

Stupidest damn thing Patrick had ever seen, and sure to get one or more of them burned.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like Annabel’s friends, because he did. He just couldn’t imagine trusting that many people so implicitly. And with Ray growing more and more distant, the one person Patrick might’ve felt free to confide his fears to couldn’t be counted on not to spill the gory details.

He spat out a mouthful of curses as his mood turned foul. Yeah, it was more than past time to make things right with his brother, but he wasn’t going to solve a thing standing inside a box going nowhere.

The elevator jerked upward once he finally hit the button for four. When it lurched to a stop, he yanked up the door until it caught and slid open on its tracks. Then, pulling back the folding grate, he stepped into the loft.

Chloe and Annabel still sat on the sofa; both women stared in his direction as if expecting his return to bring world peace, when he’d come back with nothing but his instinct for survival running high.

Still the two women stared, and his hackles rose. He hated feeling as if they’d been discussing him, analyzing him and finding him distinctly lacking.

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