What Happened in Vegas…
That idea should send her scrambling for cover. She was supposed to be remembering that impulsive decisions led nowhere productive. She was supposed to be telling herself her job was at risk. She was supposed to be firmly on the side of the auction house.
Instead, she wanted Gideon.
Maybe it was the stories of his adventures. Maybe it was the reminder of the daring, sexually aware woman she’d been the last time she’d seen Gideon. He forced her to remember that she used to be outgoing. She used to have fun.
These days she was always paranoid about doing or saying the right thing. She focused on advancing her career, on networking with guys instead of appreciating their smile or noticing the breadth of their shoulders in their expensive suits.
In fact, she couldn’t remember the last date she’d been on. Why did doing her job well mean seriously neglecting her personal life?
She’d had relationships with a whopping two guys since leaving Vegas. There were a few itches that a woman needed to scratch every so often and so few men able to oblige.
At least not in the way she wanted.
Most of the guys she met either wanted one night of Playboy-quality sex—complete with toys and video cameras—or they wanted a wife and mother to their children as of yesterday. The typical guy who had partied and screwed around, and now he had the big corner office and important partnership. He wanted the picket fence in Connecticut, complete with a lovely, amiable wife, who’d give dinner parties and laugh at his boss’s jokes.
A lot of women with her background would leap over tall buildings in a single bound in order to get security like that. But the idea of letting somebody else guide her emotional and financial future scared the crap out of Jacinda. The idea of being a trophy wife, spending her life doing charity work and playing tennis, made her want to dart into the speeding traffic down Fifth Avenue.
With Gideon, she knew the sex would satisfy—and then some. But could the sex stay simple and fun? Could she keep him away from her job, and her job away from her past? Sure, he was going to complicate life at work with his emerald ownership claims.
But she wasn’t talking about a relationship. After his claims were either proven or discredited, he’d be gone again.
She’d already blurred the boundaries with him. Back in Vegas she’d slept with Gideon when any personal involvement with a customer could have gotten her fired. The temptation to do it again was palpable…Still, when he’d walked into her office today, she’d gone into a cold sweat worrying her past had caught up with her. Could she live with the constant threat of exposure?
He’d be at the office to launch his emerald claims whether they were involved or not. And maybe those discussions wouldn’t be quite so hostile if—
“That’s some pretty deep thinking going on,” he said, leaning close and breaking in to her argument with herself. “You don’t have dinner plans, do you?”
The no-strings-attached, itch-scratching moments with him were definitely numbered. The ownership issue would be resolved and Gideon would leave.
And she had a really sensitive spot just behind her ear….
She turned her head, relishing the heat of his stare, the interest and honesty in his eyes. “I do if you want to take me somewhere.”
THEY DECIDED to stay at the restaurant.
Within a couple of minutes of speaking to the maître d’, Gideon had arranged for an intimate table in the back corner, where they ordered shrimp and asparagus wraps, coconut soup and shrimp pad Thai.
Everything about tonight reminded him of why he’d been so attracted to her six years ago. Other than the obvious physical attributes—and those were certainly worth mentioning—she was witty, kind and smart as hell.
He loved watching her hair fall across her cheek when she leaned forward. He liked her directness and honesty—especially since he hadn’t been so truthful with her. And every time her eyes sparkled with laughter, he felt an answering tug of pleasure in his groin.
With each moment in her presence, he wanted her more. And with each moment that passed he forgot his mission, why he’d sought her out in the first place.
Emerald? Who needed a stinking emerald?
“So what are your plans, Gideon Nash?” Jacinda asked, holding her wineglass as she leaned back in the booth and the waiter whisked away the plates. “Other than the emerald, why are you in New York?”
“My plans are to recover the emerald. That’s the only reason I’m in the city.”
“And say you get it. What then?”
“Off to the next adventure.”
She snapped her fingers. “Like that.”
“My bag is always packed, just like I told you in Vegas. That hasn’t changed.” He lowered his voice. “I didn’t lie about everything.”
“You just lied about the money.”
He winced. Being reminded he’d been an ass wasn’t exactly normal date conversation.
Is that what this is? A date?
If so, where was it going from here? He knew where he’d like it to go, but jumping into bed again was chemical and instinctive. And fun. Tempting. Wildly satisfying.
But was it wise?
“Your family is here,” she said, breaking in to his thoughts. “You don’t live here?”
He shrugged, feeling the familiar weight of family obligations and opinions on his shoulders. “I live on the road. But I do own a brownstone in Midtown. I’m staying there while I’m here. It won’t be long.”
She ran her finger around the rim of her crystal glass, her relaxed posture opposing the tension that had jumped between them. “Confident you’ll get back the emerald?”
“It’s mine,” he said simply.
“Mmm. So you say.”
“You think I’d try to swindle you?” He narrowed his eyes. “To take something that’s not mine? You think I’d lie to benefit—” He stopped when her eyebrows rose into her hairline.
“Yourself?” She gave him a confident, half smile. “Especially since you’ve never lied before.”
He bowed his head. No escaping that one. “I was a jerk before. I should have told you the truth. I apologize again. I didn’t put any faith in you. Or in us. It’s no wonder you didn’t want to go away with me.”
“When would you have told me?”
Laying his hands on the table, he linked his fingers. He felt ashamed and unsure, two emotions he rarely experienced. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
“I don’t think either of us thought beyond the moment that weekend.”
“A big part of the problem.”
She nodded. “We jumped over several steps in the dating game.”
He slid closer, then drew his finger down her thigh. “True. But fast isn’t always bad.” He grinned. “Not that I’m opposed to slow and easy.”
Her eyes widened, then she smiled. “I remember.”
“And I recall developing a taste for champagne that I hadn’t had before.”
“You licked it off nearly every inch of my body. I assumed you loved the stuff.”
He slid his hand over her knee, then drew it up, along her thigh and under her skirt. “I loved the taste of it on your skin.”
Her breathing hitched. She set her wineglass on the table.
His heart hammering, he leaned closer. His forehead brushed her hair as he spoke softly into her ear. “You have the softest skin.”
“You think so?” she asked, her voice high and strained.
His pulse jumped. The wild attraction he still felt was reciprocated. He wasn’t the only one veering way off his professional path and reliving their sensual history.
He glided his fingers up and down her thigh. Her skin heated beneath his touch. Her breathing quickened. He remembered those long, lean legs wrapped around his hips. He remembered them glistening with sweat, twitching in sensual need.
Drawing his hand higher on her leg, he moved closer to the juncture between her thighs. With the tip of his finger, he teased the edge of her panties. “I could make you forget your stress at work, even the conflict between us.” He slid his finger into her warmth, finding the button that would send her soaring easily and quickly.
She gripped the edge of the table. “Gideon…”
“Is that a warning or encouragement?” He stroked his finger up, then down. He moved so slowly he hoped her eyes were crossed. He couldn’t tell, of course, because she’d closed her lids.
To shut him out, or to better concentrate on the pleasure he was giving her?
The heat spilling off her body, pulsing against his fingers, had him holding his breath, anticipating her next sigh.
They were in a busy restaurant, staff and other customers just feet away, but that all fell away. There was only her. The woman he couldn’t seem to forget. The woman he, again, couldn’t resist.
“I think we should pick up where we left off,” he said quietly in her ear.
She gasped, her thighs clenching around his hand. “Wh—where was that?”
“Naked and horizontal.”
4
JACINDA’S EYES popped open. She clamped her thighs together, which only served to trap Gideon’s hand against her bare flesh.
She ground her teeth as the tension building low in her belly jumped another notch.
Naked? Horizontal?
Who needed that? She was on the verge of orgasm with all her clothes on in a busy restaurant.
Not a good move—personally or professionally. Gideon was, no doubt, attempting to seduce the emerald out of her. Or at least persuade her to help him get it away from the documented owners.
She was nothing more to him.
Part of her knew giving in to the pleasure he could bring was impulsive, unethical and cheap. And part of her just didn’t give a damn.
That was Jacy Powers talking.
She reminded the respectable Jacinda that it didn’t do any good to run from the past. Old mistakes and experiences always found you just when you thought you’d moved, even risen above.
Great, now I’m referring to myself in the third person.
“Shall I continue?” Gideon’s silky voice whispered in her ear.
“Certainly not here.”
Oh, boy, now I’m talking like Jacinda and thinking like Jacy.
“My place?” he asked. “Or yours?”
She bit her lip. “Mine’s closer.”
He urged her chin around so they were face-to-face. “Is that an invitation?”
Trembling with need, doubt and anticipation, she nodded.
“I’ll pay the check.”
As he slid out of the booth, she nearly called him back—and not just because he’d moved his hand from between her legs. Surely sophisticated Manhattan career women didn’t let guys feel them up in public, then invite them to their apartments for a hot, one-night stand they absolutely knew they’d regret in the morning.
If you knew you were making a mistake as you did something, shouldn’t you stop yourself?
Apparently not, because when Gideon reappeared at the table and held out his hand, she took it and followed him out of the restaurant.
Was she drunk?
She rolled her head from side to side to check for dizziness.
When the world didn’t spin and she continued to walk easily in her three-inch heels, she figured she’d passed that test. But was that a good thing?
She felt as if she were sleepwalking or dreaming, so she could explore what she wanted without consequences, because she’d wake up and come to her senses at any moment. But she didn’t want to wake up. And she’d just have to pay the price for whatever came tomorrow. She’d spent years being practical and smart. For once, for just one night, she wanted to let go, she wanted to remember what it was like to be wild and free.
Gideon hailed a cab, and they climbed into the backseat.
“Where to?” the cabbie asked.
Jacinda looked at Gideon. And, wow, he was something to look at. Piercing green eyes, silky-looking black hair, strong jaw.
Suddenly she realized her affliction, the judgment-robbing disease she’d come down with in the last few hours.
Gideonitis.
She was under the spell of Gideon Nash.
She mumbled her address while continuing to smile like a fool at the man next to her.
He angled his head. “Are you okay?”
See, he’s sharp and intuitive as well as gorgeous.
Clearly, he knows something’s off about me.
“Ah, I’m not sure,” she said.
“What can I—”
“Kiss me. I need you to kiss me.”
“Now?”
Jacinda glanced at the rearview mirror and briefly met the interested cabbie’s gaze. He’d no doubt seen and heard stranger things.
“Definitely,” she said, her stomach shaking with renewed doubts.
Gideon leaned in, cupping her chin in his hand as his lips touched hers for the first time in six years.
His mouth captured hers with confidence, his tongue sliding inside to taste and arouse. The electricity and power between them sparked to life with renewed energy. The cab disappeared, the city lights and the street noise fell away. She felt only the warm, spicy taste of Gideon.
She clenched the front of his shirt. His heart beat rapidly beneath her fist.
When he touched her everything seemed right and wonderful. Her doubts fell away, anticipation grew, desire rose. If she paused to think, she might change her mind about jumping into bed with Gideon.
“Better?” he asked softly against her mouth.
She sighed blissfully. “Much.”
And she knew she didn’t want to change her mind. She wanted to feel, to soar.
But she wanted those things on her terms.
She wanted to be safe from relationships that never seemed to go anywhere, or forced her to choose and compromise areas she didn’t want to change. She knew her hesitancy for a real relationship was rooted from her years in uncertain poverty, then later cemented when she danced.
She didn’t trust men.
Their smiles and their promises of security always faded, or turned out to be lies from the start. Her mother’s succession of boyfriends had been a revolving door of hope and heartbreak, and Jacinda always swore she’d never fall into that trap. She’d be practical.
She’d rely only on herself.
So, while her friends would advise caution with Gideon, and Andrew would be jealous, she knew Gideon was simply safe. He wouldn’t require a commitment or emotional attachment. He wouldn’t promise things he had no intention or capability of delivering.
Tonight, she intended to have her cake, eat it and not count the calories.
AS GIDEON HELPED Jacinda from the cab in front of her apartment building, he stared at the long, slender length of her legs.
His heart jumped. His erection swelled.
He paid the cabbie in a haze of need and expectation. He ignored his practical side—well, really it was a practical section, a very small section—telling him he and Jacinda were going too fast. Reminding him that spontaneous moves hadn’t led anywhere productive last time.
Thankfully, the other ninety-five percent of him remembered the two nights of hot sex and told his practical section to pipe down ASAP.
Look into her eyes, not at her legs, his practical section insisted as they stepped into the elevator. Doesn’t something seem not quite right?
Before that idea could take hold, Jacinda came to his rescue. She wrapped her arms around his neck and tangled her fingers in his hair. “I’ve wanted to do that all night.”
He slid his arms around her waist. “Keep doing anything you like.”
She kissed his throat, her hands gliding through his hair, her breasts brushing his chest. He closed his eyes to concentrate on the sensations flowing through his body, on the sexual friction they created.
How had he survived so long without touching her? Both the ache and the satisfaction were equally prized. No other woman had made him appreciate the journey to fulfillment more.
When the elevator doors opened, he spun Jacinda into the hall, keeping her tight against his body and hoping none of her neighbors were wandering around.
“What number?” he asked against her cheek.
“Seventeen twenty-one. To the right.”
They moved in that direction, and as she unlocked her door, he grasped her waist, pulling her backside against his erection. He sucked in a quick breath of pain and pleasure. It was a sweet kind of torture to touch her, but not touch her completely.
He wanted to press her against the door, release himself from his jeans and slam his way to ecstasy.
Would this new, sophisticated Jacinda slap his face or hitch her legs around his hips and hold on for the ride? The fact that he couldn’t anticipate her reaction when he thought he knew her well was both intriguing and frustrating.
Once she pushed open the door, she grabbed his hand and tugged him inside. He absorbed a brief glimpse of a sunken living room, ultramodern furniture in lots of silver and white and an excellent view of Central Park before she tugged him down a short hallway to her bedroom.
The room was awash in turquoise and green, reminding him of the Caribbean Sea. The sleek, almost sterile lines from the other room were gone, replaced by a wavy-patterned bedspread and delicate, sun-bleached seashells arranged in a crystal bowl on the nightstand.
He’d just caught a glimpse of a picture of Jacinda and a blond-haired man posing in the shallows of the ocean when her bra hit the carpeted floor.
“Are we—”
“We’re getting naked,” she said, planting her hands on her hips as his gaze took in her naked-to-the-waist lushness.
Sweat broke out on his brow. Dear heaven, he’d somehow forgotten how amazing her body was.
She angled her head. “It’s better naked, don’t you think?”
“Ah, it’s pretty good no matter what.”
She grinned. “True.” She flopped back on the bed, her elegant skirt hitched halfway up her thighs.
And just like that, with her nearly naked, her eyes glittering and need clearly stamped on her face, he wanted to slow things way down.
He hadn’t gone to Jacinda to charm his way into her bed—though that might have been a secondary thought after he’d acquired the emerald. He’d hoped their past would have established a familiarity and sense of trust that he wouldn’t have gotten from another auction house staff member.
He knew Jacinda. He knew she was honest and determined, smart and professional. He admired her guts, ambition and resourcefulness to use all the assets she possessed to get what she wanted—namely, her body and her brains.
He hadn’t counted on her being ashamed of her past, though why the hell that hadn’t occurred to him was, at the moment, a complete mystery of idiocy.
In retrospect, he wished he could have marched into a stranger’s office, said the name Sophia Graystone and waited for them to bow at his feet. As he watched Jacinda crook her finger toward him, he realized he’d tangled his past and present, his professional and personal lives far too intimately.
Jump her! his body urged. Who cares how complicated things get?
He waited, for just a second, for his practical section to argue.
Silence.
Grinning, he dropped to the bed beside her. He laid on his side and drew his finger down the center of her bare chest. “We don’t have to be in a hurry, do we?”
She rolled over on top of him, straddling his hips. “Sure we do.”
“That works, too,” he said, reaching for the zipper at the back of her skirt as she shoved his T-shirt up.
When she’d bared his chest, she leaned down…kissed his neck, then quickly moved to his nipples. She flicked her tongue across each one in turn, shooting flames of pleasure to his groin.
All he could manage to do was grip the comforter in his fists and arch into her touch.
Being the determined, multitasking woman she was, she managed to release the buttons on his jeans, even as her mouth and tongue continued their exploration of his chest. She rendered him helpless and needy so quickly. His senses were bombarded by her, the feel of her hot, bare skin against his, her breasts brushing his chest, her palms skimming his sides.
Her scent washed over him, like coconut milk, but also slightly tangy like the sea. The only sounds in the room were the combination of their breathing and the occasional horn from the street outside. But he imagined hearing the crashing ocean waves. He’d like to see her in the sand, digging—
His breath froze in his chest as she released his erection, cupping him and running her hand up and down its rigid length. His heart pounded like a chugging freight train.
“Oh, man.”
Jacinda’s face hovered above his. “I think I remember where this goes.”
He croaked out a chuckle. He wasn’t going to last long if she kept doing that. “If you forget, I’ll remind you.”
She released him suddenly, and he sat up. “Hey, where—”
She’d scooted to the bedside table, where she pulled out a foil-wrapped condom. She tossed it to him, then wriggled her way out of her skirt and panties.
He stopped himself from asking her to move slower, to draw out the striptease. But since his erection was throbbing impatiently, he rolled on the protection.
The moment she was naked, he grabbed her arm and tugged her onto her back, then positioned himself between her legs.
“My stamina isn’t great. I’ve spent the last four months in the Andes.”
“No sex in four months?”
“None.”
She smiled. “I’ll be happy to get you back in the swing of things.” She grabbed his hips and pulled him deep inside her.
His breath released in a whoosh, and he lay still for a moment, absorbing the pulsing beats of their hearts, relishing the heat and closeness.
But his body didn’t want quiet reflection, it wanted to move. He lifted his hips, then sank deeper inside, earning a throaty moan of approval from Jacinda. He continued moving with as much control as he could manage, desperately holding back the urge to quicken his thrusts, to drive toward completion without any finesse or gentleness.
Then she wrapped her legs around his hips and arched her back, her eyes fluttering closed, her breathing growing shallow and labored. Her obvious pleasure increased his own. He longed to draw out both of their satisfaction, but his muscles were tight from holding back. His body was screaming at him.
He moved his hands underneath her, shifting the angle of her hips, penetrating in a different way, a way he distinctly remembered her enjoying quite a bit.
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