Flirting With Disaster (4 page)

She flicked on the TV to some talk show. She never watched TV and this ridiculousness was exactly why.

Her stomach heaved as she recognized Evan and Timothy on
USA Buzz
, introducing their new reality show and the surrogate who would deliver their love child. Jude had made them famous.

She dropped to the bed and stared at the screen.

“Our little bundle of joy is due in May!”

Jude flinched at Evan’s words. He’d wanted to wait to have sex, to have a family. How ironic is it that his new lover had achieved all she’d ever wanted, without even having the right parts.

A steel knife jabbed her windpipe, her heart fractured in two. Was she destined to be alone forever? Or could Nola be right?

Not that she didn’t like herself, but there was certainly room for improvement. She was a product of her upbringing—afraid to live on the edge, frightened of any loss of control. But where had that gotten her?

Jude fell back on the bed, a disreputable thought squeezing through her mind. She was thirty-eight with only one superficial relationship behind her. Her chance of securing another relationship before her eggs dried up, was close to non-existent. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

She lifted her head just in time to see the sonogram of Evan’s child as he lay protected in the surrogate’s womb.

Could she do it?

She dropped her head and stared at the ceiling a second time. The Gigolo Beast. Now
there
were some impressive, non-committal genetics. Genetics that didn’t necessarily have to be attracted to her. They could be paid for. No messy emotions, no regrets.

Jude rolled to the side onto her elbow and dug through the welcome basket on her nightstand for a directory of services. Chocolates, hand cream, Vitamin B, an ice pack, a banana… Hangover cures? How strange. And a romance novel…
Flirting With Sin
by Naima Simone.

Sin…how apropos. This Simone chick was eerily psychic.

Jude glanced toward the mirror on the wall. Yes, she was flirting with sin, but she had no choice. She squinted to blur her reflection. She had potential, but more importantly, she had an understanding of the male psyche, and the workings of the human species’ innate need to procreate.

Yes, she’d have to work with her strengths. She sighed, as an errant curl sprang from what was left of her chignon. And hide her weaknesses.

Goodbye, staid, stuffy, Duffy.

Hello, sinner.

Four

“The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat.”

Albert Einstein

T
hirty minutes later, Jude entered the lobby of Castle Alainn, secretly tugging at the seat of her too-tight trousers. She took a deep breath to settle her pounding pulse and reached for the comfort of the Almond Joy in her pocket.

She was a household joke. The people bustling around the lobby possibly knew of her pitiful circumstances, her miscalculations, her naivety in the face of relationships.

She was a casualty in the war of love.

“Hello there.”

A nasally, masculine voice pulled her from her tugging and self-degradation, and she looked up to find a hulking man standing before her. His neck had the girth of a much larger man, but he was only about five-foot-ten. Short and stocky with an expensive haircut and hardened features. And tan…he was quite tan. He wasn’t homely, but rather handsome, in a bronzed, professional wrestler type of way.

“Hello,” she managed. Men didn’t usually seek her out.

His gaze traversed her bosom first, then her face, then her French twist, which had taken twenty-nine of the thirty minutes she’d used to get ready. His smirk and shifty eyes were a bit disconcerting.

“I’m Richard Fantome, heir to Fantome Fitness.” He held out his beefy hand and she stared at it. She released the strap of her Monili Lambskin backpack and placed her hand in his.

His grip was strong and sweaty. “Nice to meet you, Jude Du…” Had he seen last night’s broadcast of the
Spawn of Satan’s
show? “Darling. Jude Darling.”

An unnaturally white, toothy smile covered half his tawny face.

“I saw you last night at the bar. I noticed your interest in me.” He kissed her hand.

Her brows shot up. Oh, how entertaining. A narcissist. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t notice you.”

He frowned, as she expected. “Well, I’ll have to fix that, then. The castle tour? Unless, of course, you’d rather we went our own way.”

Jude smiled as Mr. Fantome glanced in the mirror behind the lobby desk, straightened his hair, and flexed.

“That sounds intriguing.” She wrinkled her nose. “But I’m quite interested in the castle tour, thank you.”

“That’s acceptable.” He crowded her into a corner of the room until she was backed against the stone wall. “We’ll have plenty of time to get acquainted.” One of his brows lifted and the other lowered in a dastardly, Snidely Whiplash effect.

Mr. Fantome placed one hand on the wall next to her head. “Are you interested in fitness, sweetheart?” His bicep contracted in her peripheral vision, bulging under his tight V-neck sweater. He moved closer and whispered in her ear. “I bench four-twenty-five.” His breath smelled of Listerine. “I bet I could bench you.”

Jude jolted in revelation. This man wanted her? Anthropologically speaking, she wasn’t the most attractive woman in the room. But considering her bosom and hip width, perhaps Mr. Fantome was subconsciously attracted to her reproductive attributes.

Reproductive…

This could be an advantageous pairing, after all…in a self-sacrificing aspect, considering Mr. Fantome’s overly tight jeans, constrictive sweater and notoriously large ego.
  

Jude processed his body language—confident, aggressive… Aggressive would not bode well for her mission. She would need to rectify the situation and ensure control if she were to whip Mr. Fantome into shape for her plans.

Movement caught the corner of her eye, and she glanced past the testosterone filled giant in front of her as The Count approached with a scowl. Her heart rate increased.

She slid from under Mr. Fantome’s hulking figure and impulsively grabbed The Count’s Carhartt jacket by the collar to peck his cheek. “Brother, dear, you’re late again!”

Jude looked at her “brother” with pleading eyes, hoping he would follow her lead and instill in the Hulk’s mind, that she had a protector if need be.

The Count lifted his gaze from hers to the man lurking behind her. His lips twitched just before they came down on hers with a vengeance, devouring her surprised gasp with his mouth and tongue and doing other unfamiliar naughty things.

The kiss was…
magnificent
.

The way he consumed her, tasted her, demolished all her senses until she couldn’t think straight.
Paid escort.

His hand reached around, and he palmed her bottom. Her eyes popped open, and a squeak escaped, as she pulled back from him in shock.

“Brother, my ass. I’ve been looking all over for you, Pumpkin.” He glanced at his watch. “We have just enough time for that quickie before lunch.”
 

She lifted her gaze to his mocking one. The Beast, Vlad the Impaler, Count Dangerous…whatever she decided he would be today. Those haunting eyes were dark last night. Today, they were an amber storm. She was mesmerized. Absolutely spellbound by his darkness…and his double-crossing treachery.

He grabbed her arm and dragged her toward an adjacent hallway near the center staircase. She quickly regained her bearings and yanked her arm from his tight grasp. Meeting him eye for eye, she remained fixed on the lethal whiskey daggers in his gaze.

“Don’t you remember all those naughty things you said you’d do to me last night, darling?” His smirk was malevolent. She squinted, looking for the points of his incisors to protrude from his succulent lips. Yes, today he would be Dracula, King of the Damned.

“What, like shoot you with wooden bullets to put you out of your misery?”

The Hulk chose that moment to mark his territory. “Excuse me, but Miss Darling and I are going on the castle tour together.” His nostrils flared in warning. “She’s been matched with me as a contest winner this month.”

Drac’s hypnotic gaze stayed riveted to hers. “Ms.
Darling
,” he drawled the ‘l’ like he was licking rich chocolate ice cream from a cone, “has already consented to a very personal tour with me.”

Hulk smirked. “She obviously gets around.”

Drac’s fist tunneled past Jude’s ear like a 747 through a jet stream. It struck the Hulk’s chin with a wrenching crack, the punch faster than any body movement she’d ever witnessed.

The violence sent a shudder down her spine, and she glanced at the titanic brute on the floor.

The scar down the side of The Count’s face throbbed, his jaw clenched, and those amber eyes had turned dark and macabre. He spun and pulled her to a dark corridor behind the lobby. She stumbled behind him as he lifted a thick tapestry that hung the length of one wall to expose a secret wooden door. He opened the door and tugged her through to a stairwell.

They quickly descended to a gloomy, dank hallway below the castle.
His lair.

He stopped once the door at the top of the stairs snapped closed and swatted her behind.

“Ouch!” She rubbed her offended bottom. “What on Earth?”

He held out half an Almond Joy wrapper. “
This
was stuck on your ass, Ms. Darling.”

Jude’s cheeks heated, even in the cold, inky, stone-lined hallway.

Okay, so shedding Stuffy Duffy wasn’t going to be so easy, after all.

Five

“When you are courting a nice girl, an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder, a second seems like an hour.

That’s relativity.”

Albert Einstein

F
or Christ’s sake, the woman was pure substantiated sin.

Those voluptuous curves tucked into clothes that made Beck wonder about the rises and hollows he’d kill to explore. Those mountainous, pert breasts. The sensually hard nipples poking provocatively through her thin shirt. The perky ass that twitched when she walked, and those long legs…

All that creamy skin begged to be touched and marked. Her incredible copper hair waited to be unleashed.

Beck wanted to strip her bare and mess her The. Fuck. Up. He wanted to run his hands over her soft, soft, flesh and play in those silky, copper curls until they were tangled around his body, holding him while he stroked inside her ʼtil she came.

She was nutty, erratic…deranged. For God’s sake, she drank like a fish, talked to herself and had convinced herself to marry a gay guy.

God, he was hard again. She was a temptation he wanted to corrupt. One he should run from. If she found out who he was, what he’d done to her…