“I needed Soledad as a sort of confirmation. She tried to keep Dega from killing me because he wanted to, and there was a time or two he tried.”
Patrick had told her some of this in the abstract, enough that she’d been able to share the same with Ray. But still Annabel’s stomach turned over, hearing Patrick speak so casually about having attempts made on his life. “What happened?”
He shrugged; she felt the movement beneath her head where it rested on his shoulder. “I motored out once in a flat-bottom boat, and he tried to mow me down. Never knew I could hold my breath that long.”
Annabel snuggled closer and again gave in to her desire to touch him, moving her hand soothingly over his chest. He moaned as she adjusted the pressure of her massage.
“Do you know how good that feels?”
“I know how good it feels to touch you, yes.”
His heart thumped harder beneath her hand. “Well, it
feels damn good to be touched. I never realized how good until you showed me.”
She bit back her question about Soledad, feeling petty for entertaining the thought that what she and Patrick shared now was better than what he’d had then. That hardly mattered. She’d never before considered that the quality of their time in bed meant anything more than physical compatibility. But it almost seemed as if that was what Patrick was trying to say. And the possibility that he was right floored her.
She continued to play her fingertips over his chest, across his collarbone, down his sternum, making her way to his abs, which were rippled and taut. His moan deepened, and she thoroughly enjoyed the sensation of the tickling rumble.
“I’d give anything to be buried inside you right now.” He spread his legs wider in that way he had of showing her where he wanted to be touched.
Oh, how she wanted the very same thing. But no matter how much she longed to crawl over his body and take him as deeply inside as their intimate fit allowed, he wasn’t physically well enough. The groan he released as he resettled his injured leg told that tale. And she wasn’t so desperate or so selfish that she’d take advantage.
“You’re hurt, Patrick,” she reminded him softly. “There will be time for that later.”
“Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
She did, asking, “You’ll let me know if I come close to ruining the vacation down there, right?”
His only answer was to grunt. Still, she kept her hand above the waistband of his boxers. As much as she would have enjoyed reaching deep between his legs to pleasure him in the ways she knew he loved, she did nothing more than curl up even closer to his body.
She rubbed her palm over his far shoulder, down his biceps to his elbow and forearm before lacing their fingers together in a sensuous in-and-out motion. He tried to hold her hand still, but she slipped away to explore his chin and jawline, the width of his neck, circling her fingertips behind his ear.
She knew how good such pressure felt from all the times he’d done the same to her. Giving offered as much pleasure as receiving, a truth that had never been more of a reality than when practiced with this man.
He turned his head toward her and brushed his lips over her brow. She shivered at the contact, so sweetly simple, so incredibly tender even while it drew her nipples into tight buds.
Her arousal was unexpected, yet she welcomed the flush to her skin, the tingling at the apex of her thighs, the quickening deep in her belly. She loved the way her body responded so effortlessly and intuitively, as if knowing no man but Patrick could satisfy her needs.
“I want you, Annabel,” he whispered, his breath fluttering the hair on her forehead.
She couldn’t count how many times she’d heard those words, but she’d never before listened to them, felt them, taken them to heart and believed them. Cuddled up to Patrick’s side as she was, she experienced all the things she’d blocked out in the past. The sense of free-falling within his protection. The idea that he needed her, that she could give him what no other woman could. The possibility that what they shared in bed was only the iceberg tip of the depth of their relationship.
She shivered and confessed, “I want you, too.”
They lay there for several long minutes, silent but for the twin beating of their hearts and fingertips stroking bare skin and silk pajamas. It was the first time in her
life she’d felt this full, this satisfied, without having removed her clothing or done more than touch a man with purely innocent intent.
And then Patrick sighed, a sigh of resignation, not one sleep-induced. “Wanting you the way I do is hard when I know where we’re headed.”
The fact that she was unable to turn his “hard” comment into a double entendre proved that she was having an equally difficult time with their situation.
“I know,” she said, not even pretending that she knew what to say.
“It’s just that I can’t make love to you and pretend it’s only sex. It’s not. Not anymore.” His stroking fingers slowed on her shoulder, then moved up to caress and tease the shell of her ear. “Being with Soledad was about staying alive. But making love with you is about living.”
Annabel squeezed her eyes closed, but instead of blocking the scope of his words, she saw his face and body, the look in his eyes as he held her gaze when he came. She was so out of her element she couldn’t even conceive of a response. All she could think about was the very real possibility that sending this man away was going to be the biggest mistake of her life—no matter all the reasons she had for doing so.
“I want to be with you, sweetheart. All the time, not just in bed. I want—”
“Shh.” She pressed her fingertips to his mouth. “Right now all that matters is that you sleep.”
He nodded and, thankfully, didn’t say another word. She wasn’t sure, however, if she wouldn’t be better served to take her comforter and pillow to the guest room and make a bed on the floor.
Her mind reeled from the tempest of her emotions, questions and possibilities and nary a solution in sight.
Staying with Patrick? As a couple? God, she didn’t even know the first thing about making a relationship work.
She’d spent the last twelve years avoiding entanglements, keeping the promise she’d made to herself to never fall prey to an unsuitable man. And that was exactly what she’d done. The walls of Jericho her brother had so recently accused her of building too high had come tumbling down, and now she faced the very dilemma she’d never wanted to encounter.
Not only had she let a man into her life as well as into her bed, she’d picked the most unsuitable one she could find. He was too irresistible. He was young and vulnerable. He was too traumatized to differentiate the natural process of healing from the act of falling in love. He was way too smart not to wake up soon and regret such a huge mistake.
And he was far too deeply embedded in her heart not to break it when he left.
S
ELECTING EIGHT
wineglasses from the set of stemware she kept in the hallway storage closet three nights later, Annabel thanked the Fates that she’d planned her Christmas Eve dinner as a group effort.
Certain that she and Patrick would no longer be an item on December 25, she had never enlisted his help in putting together the food for the evening. A very good thing, since her panic over New Year’s Eve had escalated once she realized the far-reaching effects of his injury, which was barely seventy-two hours old.
He’d assured her he only needed crutches, maybe a wheeled desk chair to get around in Three Mings’ kitchen. She’d rolled her eyes at the claim. Thinking of Patrick issuing orders to Devon’s kitchen staff was as frightening as it was amusing, though at least they had
those resources available. She swore that if they all made it through the New Year’s Eve showing, she would never volunteer her partners for anything again.
Of course, they wouldn’t be her partners much longer.
The thought nagged at Annabel as she continued to arrange place settings on the table in the dining alcove. She knew she was doing what had to be done, giving up her position at gIRL-gEAR to follow her dream. That didn’t mean the change would be an easy one to make.
Her consuming fascination with the human face had determined so much of her life’s direction. The modeling, her position with gIRL-gEAR’s cosmetics division, her studies, of course, but also her early comparisons of her own face with Devon’s. He’d teased her about her obsession with their differences—his sharper features; his nose, which was definitely Roman, while hers was flatter with a strangely snobbish tilt that had served her well.
Her fascination had probably been responsible initially for her affair with Patrick, too. He’d been so compelling, what with the way he would hide behind his long gypsy hair, giving her mere glimpses of his bone structure and the wicked gleam in his eyes.
He’d tempted her beyond belief with his moodiness even though a childhood of experience with her mother’s emotional swings told her to stay the hell away. Yes, her mother’s problems had been a true mental illness. And while Patrick’s ups and downs were more situational, they were very, very real.
There were times, like now, when she was glad she’d ignored her own advice. She couldn’t imagine not knowing Patrick Coffey, never learning of his multifaceted personality, experiencing his attention. His devotion brought to mind master and slave as they battled for
dominance. Even as she felt beset with a longing, an urge to ignore years of self-preservation instincts and simply give in.
She’d just placed the last bright plate of her casual plum-colored Fiestaware on the table when she heard the
tha-dump thump, tha-dump thump
of Patrick’s crutches as he made his way from the bedroom down the loft’s long hallway. She stood on the far side of the dining room table as he came into the room through the kitchen’s back entrance.
He wore a pair of black dress pants he’d borrowed from his brother, having ripped open the side seam of the left leg and meticulously pinned it back together over his cast. His shirt was starched and white, and though tucked in, it hung loose on his frame. She wondered if he’d bought it without trying it on, forgetting his body wasn’t of the same build now as the one he’d once garbed in clothes dressier than T-shirts and jeans.
His tie was a beautiful burgundy-and-hunter-green dressed-for-success paisley. She could so easily see him circulating through a corporate happy hour or office Christmas party. Then again, the silver hoop still twinkled in his ear.
She hid a grin behind the fingers she pressed to her lips. He was so adorable, having dressed up for her and her guests even if he hadn’t been able to tame the whole of his savage beast. And, yes. She found herself quite taken with his cleaned-up and barely restrained bad boy self.
He’d stopped in the center of the kitchen to adjust the ends of his tie, and when he realized she was staring, he glanced up with a self-conscious grimace. “I look like a freak.”
My freak,
she wanted to say. “You look fine.”
His glare conveyed his disagreement. “I’ve always wondered about your taste in men.”
“Which men would those be? All the ones who came before you?” If asked, she doubted she would be able to name a single one. What a blur the last few years—and men—had been. “Or was that a backhanded reference to yourself?”
He gave up fidgeting with his tie and took hold of his crutches again, crossing the kitchen until he stood in the dining alcove on the opposite side of the table. And then he grinned—a cocky and wickedly devilish grin that had her curling her toes in her black velvet pumps.
“You know there hasn’t been a man before me worth remembering.” Balanced on one crutch and his one good leg, he used the other crutch as a pointer and gestured toward her. “I’ll bet you can’t put names to the faces you do recall.”
“I really do hate how you do that,” she said, though these days there was much less venom behind the statement that had become their shared private joke.
“I knew it.” He smacked the foot of the crutch against a table leg. “Houdini had nothing on me.”
“I don’t think Houdini was a mind-reader.”
Patrick thought for a minute before his mouth twisted wryly. “Yeah. But he made a hell of a lot better escape artist than I did.”
No. Not tonight. After this last wild and crazy week, she refused to let this evening end with another of Patrick’s disappearing acts.
End.
What was she saying? He rarely made it through a meal’s first course when there were more than the two of them present.
Tonight was important, a gathering of friends, a last holiday hurrah before launching into the New Year and her new life. But this evening was also for Patrick, a
simple first step back into the society he’d shunned now for too many long, lonely months.
She wasn’t going to let him walk out on her, to let him sulk and avoid the simple human contact it seemed so hard for him to make. He needed to make it for himself, yes, but for his brother, too. And a small intimate party with no pressure or expectations seemed the best place to start.
Then inspiration struck. Reasoning and logic be damned. The potluck dinner might not interest his palate enough to keep him around, but an appeal to his more visceral hunger might help ensure he stayed for the meal—and for more.
“I
WANT TO SHOW YOU
something,” she said, determined that he wasn’t going to slide into one of his famous Patrick funks.
“What?” He was back to fiddling with his tie, avoiding her gaze, though he finally glanced up when she didn’t respond.
Now that she had his attention, she wasn’t going to let it go. Wearing a knee-length, long-sleeved, formfitting dress of red silk, she circled the table, breathing deeply of the spicy ratatouille, mandarin chutney and roasted chicken she had yet to remove from the oven.
Patrick’s gaze traveled from her bare legs to the dress’s neckline, which was as wide as it was deep. He didn’t say a word, but he didn’t have to. The tic at his temple was nearly audible. And when his chin came up and his nostrils flared, she knew he wasn’t inhaling the aroma of the food.
She stood there between the table and the bar that divided the kitchen from the dining alcove, her gaze locked on his, which she held captive. Captive was good. Captive was what she needed to make her plan work. Reaching back with both hands, she took hold of her zipper and slowly eased it down—slowly, because she wanted him to imagine the separation of each of the teeth.
The dress parted and began to slide from her shoul
ders. When her zipper hit bottom, she shrugged off the garment. The neckline caught on the buds of her bare nipples; she dipped forward and the silk slid all the way to the floor. Ah, yes. She had his attention now.
Patrick reached for a chair and sat. Perspiration glistened at his temples and his Adam’s apple bobbed. She loved his reaction, loved knowing how to read him, how to tempt him. Loved, as well, how her own heart beat faster watching his arousal grow.
She stood there completely naked but for her black velvet pumps now hidden in a puddle of red silk. Seconds quietly ticked by, and her skin grew warm, even damp and fevered, beneath Patrick’s gaze.
“Annabel?” His voice a husky rasp, he shifted his hips and widened his legs where he sat. “What are you doing?”
She stepped out of the dress and turned in a complete circle. She wanted to be sure he got an eyeful, that he knew what was in store, that he had to do nothing to have her but stay. “I’m offering you dessert.”
“Dessert?” He lowered one crutch to the floor.
“I’m yours, Patrick—”
He moved his free hand to her waist, ran his palm over the curve of her hip to her outer thigh. Gooseflesh pebbled her skin. Her nipples tightened, and a shudder ran from her shoulder blades to the base of her spine.
“—with one caveat.”
“Caveat my ass.” He wrapped his arm around her beneath the swell of her bottom and pulled her forward. “C’mere.”
She placed her hands on his shoulders and, frowning, tried to back away. “Patrick, wait. Dinner first. You stay, you don’t run out, and then you can have dessert.”
He shook his head and opened his mouth over her
belly, swirling his tongue in and around her navel. “Anytime, anywhere, any way. That was the deal.”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts. Now, here, standing exactly as you are. That’s what I want.”
She shuddered as he slipped a hand between her legs, but couldn’t close her eyes. This was not going at all as she’d planned. “That’s not what I meant. Our guests will be here any minute.”
He opened her folds with his thumbs, exposing her clit, which had grown hard and tight. Leaning forward, he blew warm breath over the knotted nerves. She gasped, shivered, looked down and watched as he pressed the flat of his tongue hard against her.
He opened his heavy-lidded eyes and glanced up, meeting her gaze as he lapped his way in and out of her sex. Her heart pounded. She’d wanted to give him reason to sit through dinner, not seduce him. Or be seduced.
She should’ve known better, because it wouldn’t have mattered now if the guests were on the way. She’d never known this pleasure with another man. Pleasure that deepened each time she and Patrick came together. Pleasure that had once been no more than his hard body and her willing one, but now, she feared, was so much more.
Using the only corner of her mind capable of thought, she listened for the elevator bell, hearing nothing but the thud of her pulse in her ears. The rest of her senses had coiled into an explosive spring between her legs, where Patrick played using his fingers and tongue.
He opened her fully, separating her labia and exposing her damp inner flesh. His gaze still holding hers, he slid the point of his tongue up one side of her sex and down the other, making teasing dips into her sheath.
Her thighs quivered and her knees threatened to col
lapse and take her to the floor. She wanted to hang on, enjoy, relish every stroke, but the intensity was too great, her desire beyond reining in. He left her breathless with the ways he fed her hungers and knew, even now, how near she was to coming. She saw the truth as a wicked gleam in his eye.
She wanted to tell him to hurry, to finish her, to take down his pants and invite her onto his lap. But she said nothing. Her voice had long since vanished, her throat gone dry from her quick choppy breaths. She knew if she told him to hurry, he’d make her wait forever. And if she told him to wait, he’d do just that, knowing too well the ways her mind worked.
Saying anything quickly became moot. Patrick knew exactly what he was doing, exactly how to bring her off in fierce and fiery sparks. She was wet, so incredibly wet. Moisture trickled down her inner thighs. She smelled her scent and her arousal heightened. She brought up her palms to cup her breasts, her fingers to tug at her nipples.
He pushed one thumb into her, spreading his fingers over the curve of her bottom, sliding one intimately between her cheeks. His thumb pressed deeper, finding that pillow-soft spot of keen sensation inside, then withdrawing in a rhythmic motion timed to that of his tongue. He licked his way through her folds, one side then the other, swirling around her clit before sucking her into his mouth.
He stopped only once to whisper, “I love you,” before delving deep with his tongue.
That was all it took. She cried out, her legs spread wantonly, her hands moving to his shoulders for support. She shuddered, shivered, quaked where she stood, unable to do anything but give in.
Patrick continued to suck her, to finger her, to apply a teasing pressure where he knew she wanted him to play. Not even the chime of the elevator distracted him from seeing to the end of her undoing. His attentiveness remained, even as he began to ease away. He moved his mouth upward, kissed the round of her belly, the one spot she was never able to exercise away.
That disconnected thought finally returned her to the present, and the sound of the elevator motor whirring in the shaft. She took a step back from his hands, looked down at his reddened mouth, his chin glistening with her juices. Panic set in as she grabbed her dress from the floor, and she couldn’t find any words to say.
“I know, I know.” Patrick grabbed up his crutches and hoisted himself to his feet. He thumped his way to the kitchen sink, where he turned on the water. “You hate how I do that.”
She watched him pump liquid soap into one palm and carefully wash the lower half of his face. She watched him rinse just as neatly, keeping his cuffs and his collar dry. She watched him reach for a paper towel and blot the water from his face before turning off the water and facing her again.
“See? Good as new.” He frowned, taking in her state of dishabille with a smartly arched brow and a grin that was entirely too cocky. “Were you going to get the door or would you like me to do that?”
His question jarred her out of her trance. She rolled her eyes and shook out her dress. What the hell had just happened? All she’d been wanting to do was convince him that it wouldn’t kill him to stay and face what normally sent him running. Now
she
was the one battling
the urge to flee, to get the hell away, as far away as she could.
Patrick Coffey was a dangerous man, and she couldn’t afford to love him.
T
WO HOURS LATER
, Patrick sat back in his chair, glaring at Annabel, who sat way the hell at the opposite end of the dining room table.
It wasn’t a hateful glare but one of aggravation. She’d seated six people between them, as if she needed a defensive line as well as the distance. Protecting her goal, as it were, with Chloe, Macy and Syd sitting in a zigzag formation with Eric, Leo and Ray.
Swirling the last half inch of his fourth glass of wine, Patrick decided to open a brewery specializing in alcohol of a proof sufficient to intoxicate any poor soul unable to get drunk. Getting drunk right now sounded like the best time a guy could have.
Especially since he’d sat through one hundred twenty minutes of drinking and dining and chitchatting. It was enough to drive a man to take up the bottle. Oh, yeah. It had. And damn little good it had done.
He’d played host to Annabel’s hostess, answering civilly when questions came his way. He didn’t have a lot of anecdotal input when the conversation turned to careers and Annabel’s forensic fetish. He doubted there would’ve been much interest in his chef’s apprenticeship under Soledad, though news of his recent interview at Tony’s Restaurant did earn him a round of applause.
He’d really started feeling like a circus freak then, sitting there with fourteen eyeballs aimed his way, the cuffs, collar and tie he wore being the least of his annoyance. Hell, if he’d known everyone shared Annabel’s obsession with his private life, he would’ve propped his cast on the corner of the table and given a graphic ren
dition of his injury, followed by sweeping tales of life on the high seas.
Fortunately, Ray had seen Patrick’s edgy discomfort with what felt like microscopic scrutiny, though it was really nothing more than attentive curiosity, and had swept the post-interview parking lot incident under the table. Patrick appreciated the save. It gave him time to catch his breath and rein in his temper. He would’ve walked off to deal with the stress except his crutches made for a lousy getaway vehicle.
And then there was the small detail of having promised Annabel he’d stay.
With Eric and Ray talking over Haydon’s Half-Time’s Superbowl plans, Patrick kept his gaze trained on the far end of the table. Macy, Sydney and Leo had moved to the living room to kick back and digest, leaving Annabel to lean forward and listen intently to Chloe’s whispers. The room wasn’t that large, nor the table overly long, but having the two men at his side talking sports, Patrick could hear nothing of the female conversation.
He supposed they could’ve been discussing the New Year’s Eve showing, but Chloe’s glum expression led him to believe otherwise. More than likely it was personal, and that meant Annabel would be pawing through the other woman’s baggage the same way she pawed through his. Not that what they were talking about was any of his business.
It just said a lot about who Annabel was, the way others sought her help and advice, getting her to bail them out of trouble and then turning around and doing the same for her. He liked that about her. It was one of so many things. More than he could ever list, yet as a whole had stolen his heart.
But the thought of her pawing sent his mind right back
to dessert. Not the pecan-fudge pie sitting unfinished on his dessert plate, but her sweet juices he’d lapped up earlier.
He’d never intended to go at her when she’d dropped her dress to the floor, but she’d acted as if he was the one she was tempting, when he knew better. Sure, he was easy. He was the guy and he had the dick. That didn’t mean he was the only one to get off on her naked body. Even now she had her hands on her skin, one elbow on the table’s edge and her hand unconsciously stroking the hollow of her throat.
As he looked on, the fingers she’d had pressed to her collarbone drifted beneath the neckline of that wild red dress she wore. It wasn’t an obvious sexual touch, but a case of absentminded stroking as she talked. An innocent touch, but one that still managed to fire him up in a very big way.
“Hey, Patrick.”
He whipped his gaze to the side. “What?”
“Dude, don’t bite off my head,” Ray said. “I was telling Eric about your pitching arm.”
“Heh. I haven’t thrown a ball in years.”
“Still, playing college ball says a lot about the arm you did have,” Eric said, glancing from one brother to the other.
Ray reached for the bottle of wine Annabel had left on the table, and refilled his glass. “Yeah, doofus here screwed it up his junior year in a game of coed touch football.”
Eric chuckled, leaned farther onto the forearms he’d braced along the table’s edge. “Can’t say I wouldn’t have been tempted, too. I ended up losing my Major League dream to my rotator cuff.”
Patrick shook his head. “Man, that had to be tough. I
wasn’t even close to that caliber and kissing my arm goodbye pretty much blew any reason I had for staying in school.”
Frowning into his drink, Ray shook his head. “Can you believe I never put that two and two together? I knew you had a jones for the game, but I thought that was just you playing so you didn’t have to study.”
“Yeah, well…” Patrick’s mouth twisted. “It was. I might’ve had the arm, but I never had the discipline. If I had—”
“You wouldn’t have been playing coed touch football,” Eric finished for him.
Patrick nodded toward the other man, though he looked straight at Ray. “What
he
said.”
Ray leaned back and laughed. “Guess I wasn’t exactly the brother’s keeper I claimed to be.”
“You kept me just fine. You and your size twelve boots. I figured I’d better toe the line or I’d be digging leather out of my ass for years.”
Eric laughed. Ray chuckled. Patrick grinned and lifted his wineglass. His gaze cut to Annabel as he drained it, and he was glad there was no more than a swallow left or he would’ve choked to death.
Her head was bent down slightly as she listened to Chloe, her lashes slightly lower, but her eyes were pinpoint sharp, her focus on his face. Her mouth was what got to him, the way she held her lips in a bow that seemed more an effort to hide a smile than anything. He didn’t know what he’d done to draw her smile, but it wasn’t her expression that mattered.