Authors: Shelby Reed
“I-I have a million more questions,” she stammered in astonishment. “Will you answer them?”
“We could work out an arrangement.” He took a sip of his wine, his gaze lingering on the low dip of her neckline. “Try me.”
“Do your sisters know what you do?”
“The one who lives in Bethesda thinks I’m involved in organized crime.
Technically, she’s right. Sex for money’s illegal, and Azure runs the most organized women’s club in existence.”
“Don’t you deny it?”
He shrugged. “She doesn’t need to know what I do.”
“And if she ever found out?”
“She won’t,” he said, darkly enough to make her abandon the subject.
74
The Fifth Favor
She slid down beside him on her hip and faced him, propping herself on her forearm. Her fingers toyed with the stem of her wineglass. “I was an only child,” she said, anxious to banish the sudden, inexplicable tension between them. “My parents divorced after I was born. My mother raised me.”
“Does she know what you do for a living?” A thread of mockery laced his voice.
“She passed away two years ago. Cancer.”
“I’m sorry,” Adrian said gently. “This is what put the sadness in your eyes?”
“Some of it, anyway.” Billie glanced away from his probing gaze, feeling exposed.
“She was my only relative. I never knew my father. He divorced my mother when I was a baby.”
“Have you looked for him?”
The question sent a shard of regret through her. “No. I’ve thought about it, but deep down I’m just too angry at him.” She shrugged, as much to ward off her sadness as to show apathy. “He could be dead, for all I know.”
He tilted his glass, letting the wine slosh dangerously close to the edge. “He’s missed out on you.”
A simple sentiment, but it soothed the raw truth.
“Ever been married, Billie?” he asked after a moment.
“I came close once. But it didn’t work out.”
A pinch of irritation tightened her muscles at the memory, but she couldn’t think fast enough to change the subject before he said, “I hit a nerve. You don’t want to talk about it?”
“I don’t want to think about it.”
He fell quiet. It was her serve again, and she swung with all her might. “Do you ever have relationships with women, Adrian? I mean real romances. Outside of Avalon.”
“Once.”
Her brows shot up. “Only once?”
“There was someone,” he said without looking at her. “A few years ago.”
“Tell me about her.” Her heartbeat tripled as she waited for his reply.
He raised his wineglass and took a slow drink, then set it on the blanket, rolling its base in languid circles between them. “She was a business student, a bright girl from a wealthy family. I met her after I’d started working part-time for Azure. For a while I was able to keep her separate from my life at the club. But Avalon’s a jealous mistress.
Eventually the truth came out.”
Billie’s gaze clung to his features. “And she left you?”
“Yes, she left because I gave her no choice. I didn’t think I cared that much. I thought I wanted Avalon more.”
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Troubled memories skittered across his face. Regret? Sadness? It was hard to tell.
Misplaced resentment flared in the pit of Billie’s stomach again. So he’d loved a woman at least once. She ought to be relieved. It rendered him more human, more fallible…more touchable.
“What was her name?” she asked, certain he wouldn’t tell her.
For a long time he didn’t answer. Then he stirred and met her eyes. “Noel,” he said.
“Her name was Noel.”
“You loved her.” It was more of an observation than a question.
To her amazement, Adrian smiled. “Does that surprise you?”
“Maybe a little,” she admitted.
His attention returned, trance-like, to the glass in his fingers. “Of course I loved her.
But not enough.”
Billie studied him, taking in the curve of his brows, the play of falling darkness on his features, like strips of a mask across his face. “You know, you’re much more open than I thought you’d be. Certainly more than you were when we first met at Avalon.”
“I’ve had my fingers inside your body,” he said, his gaze lifting to find hers with piercing acuity. “I’ve made you come. I think that merits our exchanging a few personal details, don’t you?”
Desire stung her senses and stole her reply. Her lashes fluttered closed when he slipped his fingers through her hair and brushed it back from her face. “That feels nice,”
she said, leaning into the caress. An understatement. Even just a casual touch from his hand burned the nerve paths from her head to her toes.
“You’re so receptive.” His voice wound around her, seductive and mesmerizing.
“Your blood runs hot, doesn’t it, Billie?”
She opened her eyes and tried to focus on him. “At certain enjoyable times.”
His smile widened. “What else do you enjoy besides Mozart and musicians tuning their instruments?”
She sat up, drained her wineglass and handed it to him for a refill. “I enjoy summer nights like this. And nights like Monday night, at your apartment.”
When he re-corked the wine and handed her back the glass, his fingers brushed hers. “What else?”
“I enjoy the way you look at me. The way you touch me. I want to return the favor, Adrian. Any chance of that happening tonight?”
“How about now?” he asked evenly.
Billie imagined doing just that, crawling over him and devouring him while the surrounding audience turned to stare at them with one simultaneous gasp of horror.
“People are all around us,” she whispered, her heart dancing.
76
The Fifth Favor
“All the better.” He sat up against the tree again and his palm rubbed the blanket beside him, his face utterly cloaked in shadow. She could only make out the liquid glitter of his eyes. “Come here, Ms. Cort.”
Her body moved of its own accord, drawn to his heat and sensual promise. When she scooted back next to him, he took her wineglass and set it aside. Then he made a place for her between his thighs and drew her against him, his hand beneath her breast, one long leg flanking her outer thigh as she leaned back in the cradle of his body. To anyone passing by, they looked like an affectionate couple settling down to listen to the concert.
But a different sort of concert was taking place in Billie’s body. Every nerve rubbed and sang as he caught her hand, lifted it to his lips, kissed each knuckle, then led it behind her back and between his legs. Through the heavy material of his pants she felt his erection, thick and granite-hard. It surged in fervent response to her fingers as they curled awkwardly around him.
On the stage nestled in the hillside, the quartet commenced a delicate minuet.
Billie’s gaze darted around at the other spectators, but no one seemed to notice the fire that ignited between her touch and Adrian’s body. He was so silent behind her. The only evidence of his growing arousal was the uneven rush of his breath against her cheek, his lips at her ear, nipping, licking, nuzzling.
Chills crawled up the back of her neck. Her body melted beneath the dress, desire drizzled through shadowed, aching places. In the shelter of night, his hand shifted from her ribs to cup her left breast, thumb whisking over her nipple, back and forth in quick, frantic passes that spoke of his increasing urgency.
Somewhere in Billie’s foggy consciousness, Mozart spun his magic, a pristine backdrop to Adrian’s sultry embrace.
She glanced down and discerned the outline of his fingers on the curve of her breast. How could she resign herself to the possibility that his wonderful hands might have helped Luke DeChambeau over that balcony? Here in the night brimming with need, it was easy to forget the possibility of danger, the realization that she didn’t know him, not truly. Tomorrow might bring a more unsightly truth than the one she’d come to accept; that she was vulnerable where Adrian was concerned. For now, she could forget that darkness hovered over this undefined, fledgling relationship, waiting to steal its promise.
Turning her head, she found the sharp line of his jaw and rubbed her nose against it, blindly seeking his mouth. He caught her chin in his fingers, sipped the breath from between her lips, and finally, finally settled his mouth on hers with slow, burning intent. And all the while she stroked him, reading the growing hardness of his erection, counting the heavy cadence of his heartbeat as blood rushed there, beneath the rhythmic pressure of her palm.
Mozart floated around them, gossamer wisps of song, incongruous with the pounding need that surged through Billie as her neck arched under his hand and their 77
Shelby Reed
tongues parried and danced. No one had ever kissed her like Adrian. Billie hadn’t known sexual intercourse could occur between mouths, and the sinuous mating of tongues and lips was hotter than any blatant caress.
Twisting against him, she inched her fingers into the thickness of his hair, ruffled through it, grasped with primal desperation as his mouth opened wider against hers, his tongue more insistent. With heart, soul and body, she kissed him back and found triumph, and a woman’s power, in the soft sound that rumbled in his throat.
Only need for oxygen broke apart the frantic coupling of their mouths.
“My God, Billie,” Adrian said, his words breathless as he brushed kisses against the curve of her neck. “What are you doing to me?” For the first time in the few days she’d known him, he laughed, but it was a husky, disbelieving sound, void of humor.
Shifting to get a better look at him over her shoulder, she brushed the hair back from his forehead, traced the sculpted lines of his face. “Whatever it is, we’re doing it to each other. I want to make love with you, Adrian. Will you take me home with you tonight?”
“No.”
The air around them cooled.
“No?” She withdrew, stung by his unexpected reply. “But…”
“I’m sorry. I can’t.” He jaw hardened, the warmth in his eyes snuffed out. “I won’t.”
The music, like her dim pleasure, faded and died. Nearby, the spectators scattered on the curving hill applauded the end of the first composition.
Billie faced forward and clapped politely, but inside, his abrupt rejection had iced over her passion and left her chilled to the bone.
78
The Fifth Favor
By the time the concert ended, she sat in stony silence beside him, huddled with knees clutched against her chest, as far away from him as she could get without leaving the blanket. Her wounds had healed into simmering indignation. What kind of game was this? Why the hell had Adrian lured her out to a concert, kissed her with every ounce of sexuality in his impressive stockpile and turned her down flat when she reacted with enthusiasm?
Anger cleared the wine-induced fog from her mind, leaving her painfully lucid. She returned the two empty glasses to the leather carrier, walked the bottle to a nearby trash receptacle and waited, arms crossed, heart protected, while Adrian shook out the blanket and folded it.
They walked in silence toward the parking lot lights.
“Billie,” he said finally, “what do you want from me?”
“I’m certain it would put you immediately at ease if the answer was hot animal sex,” she snapped.
“But I would know that’s only part of it.” He spoke calmly enough to toss kindling on her anger. “So maybe I should say, what else do you want from me?”
She squinted at him. “The question should be what do you want from
me
?”
“I wanted your company tonight. And now I want you to remember what I am, before we both forget.” He caught her elbow to stop her. “Maybe I’ve misled you.”
She flashed him a look of disbelief. “Truthfully? That thing you did with your tongue kind of threw me for a loop a few nights ago. Call me silly, but after that, I thought we had something going. It was stupid of me. I’d forgotten what you are, but suddenly it’s come back to me with crystal clarity.”
Directly ahead, an older couple meandered shoulder-to-shoulder, fingers entwined.
All around the lawn lovers strolled together, dreamy from Mozart’s lingering effect.
Billie started walking again with a quickened pace. She didn’t feel dreamy. She felt like someone had doused her with a bucket of ice water.
“Why did you ask me here tonight?” she demanded, two steps ahead of him now.
“You had to know how it would end up.”
“I wasn’t sure how it would end up. I wanted to see if I was right.”
“About what?” She tried to quicken her pace, but he snagged her hand and halted her again.
“You’ve never had a one-night stand, have you, Billie? You’ve never taken your pleasure and ducked out into the sunrise.”
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“No. Hell, no,” she added furiously, resisting the urge to twist from his grasp like a belligerent child. “I think more of myself than that.”
“I don’t have relationships. They blow apart before they’re even off the ground. Sex gets mixed up in everything I do. It tarnishes everything. I won’t have sex with you, no matter how much I want it.”
She finally pulled her hand from his. “That’s funny, considering where you had your mouth a few nights ago.”
“You’re right. A few nights ago, I thought—” He cleared his throat. “I felt differently.”
“So what could’ve possibly happened in four days that makes me so untouchable?”
To her horror, tears of frustration thickened her words. She cared too much for this man. And why? Only a glutton for punishment would fall for a gigolo.
“Maybe I should’ve been less direct in my response to you tonight,” she added, a fresh wave of anger chafing her wounds. “I’ll bet no one ever plays hard to get with you. You like games. Should I have played?”
“It’s not any of that.” The drop in his tone told her he was finally irritated. Good, damn it. She wanted to provoke him, force him to show something other than the silky, sexy remoteness Avalon had cultured in him.
“Then what?” She stepped toward him, shaky inside but forceful in her insistence.
“Come on, you have nothing to lose here. Give it to me straight. What did I do?”