One Naughty Night

Just before his fingers made contact with the small of her back, he caught himself. If he touched her once, he might never stop. At the last moment, he redirected his errant hand toward the open doors button and pressed that instead.

“Hotels are always remodeling,” Esme remarked as she strode down the hall, her gait more confident and easy now that they were alone. Maybe she just didn’t enjoy crowds. “This is different. This is spectacular.”

Too late, Renzo realized they had arrived at her door and that she was already unlocking it. Opening it.

And somehow they were in the middle of a conversation about her room, which she now wanted to show him.

His feet paused at the threshold of the door—his brain knowing he probably shouldn’t enter, the rest of him already straining to follow her.

Esme watched him expectantly as she held the door open with her slight form, her blue eyes communicating silent invitation.

Maybe as long as he kept his distance, maintained an arm’s length between them at all times, he could at least check out the room and make sure this Hugh character wasn’t lurking in the closet or anything. His aunt had paid for the room, after all. What if the guy thought he was entitled to help himself?

Convinced he needed to go inside for just a minute, Renzo whispered a swift prayer for restraint and followed her into the suite.

FOR A MOMENT, Esme had feared she might have to break out a crane to transport the man into her suite. Was it that big a decision to come home with her for the night?

Feminine pride stinging just a little, Esme realized she would never be cut out for the club-hopping and manhunting that other South Beach women engaged in with ease. She liked getting to know people before she invited them back to her hotel room.

For that matter, there would be real safety issues at stake here tonight if her date hadn’t been given the thumbs-up by her friend and neighbor. At least Esme could feel comfortable knowing Hugh Duncan wasn’t a wanted criminal or anything.

His low whistle of appreciation jolted Esme back to the moment. A whistle intended for the exotic room decor and not her, she realized with dismay as his dark eyes swept the width of the suite and the rainbow of earth tones someone had thoughtfully woven into all the furnishings.

Touchable silk and damask pillows littered the dark mahogany furniture while a huge swath of embroidered taupe linen lined the ceiling with a tentlike effect. And if the decadent tent weren’t impressive enough, the Sensualist’s Suite also boasted a small brook winding through the room.

At least the beautifully appointed room was a comfortable topic. She could spend a little while distracting him with small talk that genuinely interested her before she ambushed him with another kiss.

Assuming she didn’t lose her nerve.

Judging by how long it took him to make that final step into her hotel room, Esme guessed he would walk away if she kissed him too soon. For some reason, fate had laughed at her attempts to be bold and brazen tonight by handing her a date with values as traditional as hers had always been.

Just her luck.

“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?” Having no idea how to behave while seducing a man, Esme scoured her brain for role models.

Her mother had raised her alone, content to make Esme the center of her world when Esme’s father had walked out on his pregnant girlfriend. And Esme’s deep love of antiques and art had absorbed her for so many years she barely kept up friendships enough to know how any of her casual acquaintances would go about picking up a man.

The seductive women in the Pre-Raphaelite paintings she loved were often reclining objects to be adored, not active seductresses themselves. No help in that quarter either. The lone source of inspiration she came up with were her screen idols. And if her matinee memory served, Esme thought Bette Davis would have already been mixing the drinks by now.

She hurried to the wet bar and eyed the myriad of offerings in the room service cooler. Too bad they didn’t prepackage Good Fortune Potion. She could use a healthy serving right about now—the good luck as much as the potion.

Emerging from the cooler with a miniature bottle of brandy and two snifters—wouldn’t Bette be proud?—Esme found Hugh stooping to dip his fingers in the narrow waterfall that trickled gently from one wall in the living area.

“The details are genius.” He picked up a smooth river stone from the base of the waterfall where a cleverly crafted brook wound its way through the room. “I’ve seen something like this in Caribbean resorts before, but the finishes are usually more obviously prefabricated. The polished rocks are a nice touch.”

Esme flicked on the stereo located under the bar. She had no clue where the speakers were actually located, but the strains of Brahms seemed to surround them. She hoped classical music wasn’t off-putting, but it would be too much of a lie for her to flick over to some hip-hop station and pretend to be a happening chick.

Besides, how could anyone not love Brahms? The music hadn’t been around for centuries because it was no good.

“The furniture is what gets me. Whoever designed the room didn’t just pick up the furnishings at the local discount warehouse.” With a little awkward fumbling but no major spills, Esme managed to remove the packaging around the top of the brandy bottle and pour two glasses.

Hugh released the pebble he’d been holding and shook the water off his fingertips as he moved toward a small table where she’d set her keys. “Neoclassical reproductions. Nice stuff.”

Esme nearly dropped the brandy snifters as she stumbled over her feet. How had he known that? “That’s quite an eye you have. A lot of people wouldn’t know an antique if they lived with one, let alone be able to name the period.”

“But we both know an up-and-coming South Beach singles resort wouldn’t exactly have the funds to decorate their rooms with French Empire period mahogany, so I don’t think guessing this is a reproduction was much of a stretch.” He lifted the small table off the floor and peered underneath the silk panel inset that decorated its surface. “It’s not signed but it ought to be. Good replicas are hard to find.”

She promptly lost her heart to the man who spoke her language. As he set the table down, she handed him his glass. “You’re interested in antiques?” Did it make her a total geek that her heart pounded harder at the thought? “Because I deal in them as a sideline to my museum job. Well, my former job. I used to funnel a lot of antique finds to clients of the museum.”

She’d been an art historian by trade for the last five years, but her hobby had always been antiques. Every weekend of her adult life had been devoted to haunting local flea markets and garage sales in an endless quest for precious finds.

“I guess I’ve learned a few things about antiques through woodworking. I do some carpentry.” He tossed back a gulp of his brandy and pointed to the ceiling draped with embroidered linen as if eager to focus the conversation away from himself. “The tent effect is cool.”

“And very in keeping with the sensualist’s theme.” After sniffing the brandy, Esme couldn’t bring herself to actually try it. Ack. Maybe she would become equally intoxicated by inhaling the fumes. “Everything in the room just makes you want to reach out and touch, doesn’t it?”

Hugh’s gaze snapped to hers as if he suspected her words for the blatant come-on that they were meant to be.

But damn it, he seemed to willfully ignore all her subtleties. Almost as though he’d backed off getting any closer to her since they had kissed.

Yet she knew the kiss had been good. Better than good, in fact. Her body still sang with the want of him.

“The fabrics are all top-of-the-line,” he agreed, wandering farther away to admire the babbling brook tripping through the room again. He put more distance between them at the same time he put himself closer to the door.

And didn’t that say a lot about her charms?

Then again, she had read somewhere in a magazine that in this era of political correctness, men were more careful not to proceed physically with a new woman unless the female was very clear that was what she wanted. So maybe Hugh was simply being upstanding and polite.

But take-charge Esme didn’t need her date to be so solicitous. She needed him to kiss her again in the way that tripped off a reverberating alleluia chorus in her brain.

Time to set the record straight.

Resting her brandy on the little table—sorry, Bette—Esme struggled to connect with her inner wild woman as she closed the distance between her and Hugh.

Her instincts told her to try and entice him into kissing her again. So of course, she needed to ignore that instinct and move straight to kissing him herself.

Consequences be damned.

“When I said everything in the room makes you want to reach out and touch, I wasn’t just referring to the fabrics.” Her pulse jackhammered against her wrist, her neck, her chest. Her words seemed to hover in the heated current of air between them, wrapping them in a suggestive cocoon Hugh couldn’t possibly escape.

“You weren’t?” He set his drink down now, too, providing her with his complete, undivided attention.

Either that, or he was freeing up his hands so he could sprint away if she got any closer.

“No, I wasn’t.” She took a measured half step nearer to him, watching him carefully to see if he would flee.

He remained rooted to the spot, his dark eyes raking over her with a heat that didn’t feel so polite any more.

“I was referring to a different kind of touching altogether.” She edged closer until she could rest her fingertips on the black cotton expanse of T-shirt stretching over his chest.

Hard muscle rippled underneath her touch. His breath hissed out between his teeth. “You’re a woman full of surprises, Esme Giles, but I don’t know if—”

Stretching up on her toes, she kissed him into silence.

Maybe he had been about to voice a valid concern, but she wasn’t in the mood to hear it. If he wanted out of this moment and this kiss, he was going to have to find his own way not to be subtle.

But from where she was standing, he didn’t strike her as a man who wanted out of the kiss. His arms banded around her with a strength that made her shiver. And this time, she didn’t wait for him to stroke his tongue over her lips and seek entry. She parted her lips on contact, ready to receive more of him.

A low groan rumbled through his chest. She didn’t hear it so much as feel it, almost as if he’d stifled the sound. Still, she knew the sentiment had been there.

He wanted this as much as she did and the knowledge fired her with more resolve to wear down his defenses and show him exactly what she wanted tonight.

She’d never minded her lack of a love life—well, not too much anyway—when she’d had her work to be passionate about. But now that she’d had that taken away, too, Esme couldn’t help but feel a little desperate to be passionate about something.

Hugh Duncan filled the bill oh-so-nicely.

The man was passion personified with his romantic dark eyes, his polite consideration mingled with his scorching kisses. Yes, he definitely lit her fire—and he did so far more thoroughly than any new acquisition to the Floridian architecture exhibit ever had.

Wrapping her arms around his neck, Esme lost herself in the sensations swirling through her. She closed her eyes to the warm earth tones of the suite and focused on the heat they generated together.

The bristly skin of his jaw scraped along her chin, providing a surprising contrast with the soft fullness of his lips. He tasted faintly of brandy and Esme found herself swaying on her feet as she grew all the more intoxicated.

His hands shifted on her back, his fingers smoothing their way over the thin silk of her dress to graze the bare skin of her shoulders exposed by the generous neckline.

She wanted nothing so much as to wriggle her way out of that dress and feel his hands all over her body, to let the fire he ignited overtake her and burn away any bad memories she harbored of the last time another man had touched her.

Clinging to him with a fierceness that surprised her, Esme backed them deeper into the room, closer to the piece of furniture she wanted to test with him tonight.

The mahogany replica bed that this man recognized as French Empire neoclassical. Dear God, he was a dream come true.

Esme plastered herself to him with abandon, shedding her old reserve with relish. She was in charge here. She could decide what happened tonight.

And she wanted. Oh, how she wanted.

Her hands strayed over his body, absorbing the hard masculine angles of his shoulders and chest, the narrowed hips that housed the most male part of all.

Not ready to go there quite yet, she contented herself to feeling that particular part of him against her belly as she kissed him with all she was worth and continued her relentless track backward to the bed.

Hugh’s hands raked through her hair, disturbing carefully arranged curls and making her feel totally decadent, wild, free.

Everything she felt tonight seemed new and different, unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. Sex in her experience had always been a secret, covert act committed in the dark, not a blazing firestorm that bowled her over before she was even horizontal.

Chills radiated down her spine as his fingers massaged their way through her hair to her scalp and the sensitive back of her neck. Her breasts pressed more urgently against his chest, craving the same attentive touch.

As the back of her leg finally grazed the bed she’d been searching for, Esme was more than ready to topple them on to it. She caved into the taupe-colored duvet, dragging him along with her so that they never broke their kiss.

He landed on top of her with a soft thud, his hands breaking their fall as she knew they would. Something about his very nature, some old-fashioned sense of nobility suggested he would go to great lengths to protect her, to take care of her.

Tucked beneath him, she felt utterly safe and yet deliciously vulnerable at the same time.

Easily shouldering her way out of her dress, she bared her breasts to brush across his chest. Hunger for him curled through her, bold and brazen and demanding to be fed.

He groaned above her, as if her attempt to get naked had tortured him on some sexual level. Esme prayed it was torture in a good way as her body seemed to undulate beneath his on pure sexual instinct.

“Oh my, it’s so good,” she murmured between kisses as her hand ran down the length of his body to seek the rest of him that she hadn’t yet explored. All of him was steely and hard, edgy and muscular. She wanted to explore every inch. “I need you, Hugh.”

4

HUGH?

Esme’s impassioned cry for another man should have killed the mood and brought Renzo to his senses. But she was responding to his touch, his kiss, his body pressed against hers.

She wanted him, not some moron named Hugh who’d trapped her into a blind date at the biggest meat market on the strip. He knew he ought to correct his mistake and confess his ruse before it was too late. And he would.

Just as soon as he stole one peek at the deliciously bare breasts Esme had exposed when she shrugged her way out of her silky dress.

He pulled back to stare down at her and promptly lost track of all his good intentions.

Warm light flickered from the elaborate brass candelabras stationed above the bed in the Sensualist’s Suite, casting Esme in a golden glow. Her bare skin bathed in the rosy light, her nipples took on a deep pink tint, the same color as her beckoning lips.

He had no choice but to bend his head to her breast for a taste, a kiss, a decadent feast.

She arched and sighed beneath him, her hands raking through his hair as he fed upon her. Her skin tasted cool and creamy at first, but the longer he allowed his tongue to play over the sweet crests of her nipples, the hotter her flesh became.

Fascinated by her quick response, he lost track of his own, squelching his needs in a desire to please her, to make her cry out. Not until his hands strayed lower to the delicate dip of her belly and the silky curve of her hip beneath the remnants of her dress did he realize that he was teetering on the point of no return himself.

His fingers flexed into her gentle curves as he willed them into obedience. He couldn’t, shouldn’t take this any further.

Would. Not.

“Hugh?” Esme gazed up at him with passion-clouded blue eyes, her hands quick to move over his and nudge his fingers lower. “Please.”

He allowed himself a scant second to absorb the feel of her skin, to appreciate the heady drug of having a woman lead him to the exact places he wanted to go.

His fingers grazed a soft band of cotton low on her hip beneath Esme’s fallen dress. He could envision the shape and cut of the bikini panties in his hand.

But damn it, he didn’t deserve to see them.

Not tonight.

He pulled away, rolling to one side before he forgot he was raised to have some manners. Some freaking self-control.

“I can’t.” He hated the sound of those words. Hated that he hadn’t cleared up his mistruth before they’d tumbled into Esme’s bed tonight.

“You can’t?” Esme twisted around to prop herself on her shoulder. “You mean you’re not properly equipped? Because, believe it or not, they sell the necessary…” She drew a circle in the air with one finger, almost as if winding herself up to locate the words she sought. “…protective devices in the snack dispenser under the minibar.”

She peered across the beige satin pillows at him with such earnest practicality and only slightly banked passion that Renzo knew without a doubt he was the biggest heel in Miami tonight. This incredible woman would have trusted him with her body if he’d just been honest from the start.

Now, she would no doubt kick him to the curb. But worse, she just might be hurt by his actions and the thought presented him with the promise of a far more stinging pain than being booted out the door.

“It’s not that.” He laid a hand on her bare shoulder, consumed with the need to touch her once more before those trusting eyes turned shuttered. Angry. “I haven’t been totally honest with you, Esme, and I need to straighten out a misunderstanding before we take this any further.”

“What do you mean?” She stiffened. He could feel her body go rigid underneath his palm. She reached for the top of her fallen dress, pulling the lavender silk over her breasts and dislodging his hand at the same time.

His fingers mourned the loss of her soft skin, her delicate curves. He braced himself for censure and then unveiled his mistake.

“I’m not really your date. I’m not this Hugh guy you were looking for. My name is Renzo Cesare.”

The disillusionment in her eyes provided all the upbraiding he deserved. She didn’t need to say how devastating she found this revelation because her transparent features conveyed her horror so eloquently.

And if Renzo had ever thought himself a gentleman, Esme’s expression quickly proved him wrong.

For a guy with old-world values who considered himself a protector of women, he’d somehow just betrayed everything he held important.

RENZO?

Esme blinked past the shock, the rip-roaring hurt and embarrassment to get a better handle on exactly what this…imposter seemed to be telling her.

“You pretended to be my date?” Maybe the real Hugh Duncan had taken one look at her and fled. Maybe he’d strong-armed a good friend into standing in for him so he wouldn’t have to proceed with a blind date from hell tonight. “Why? Did Hugh get cold feet?”

The stranger in her bed had the gall to shrug. Shrug! “I don’t know. I—I’m not really sure what happened to your date. I just didn’t think he could be a very smart guy if he’d asked a woman he never met before to meet him at a place like the Moulin Rouge Lounge. By herself.”

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