Once in Paris (7 page)

“You must. You're going to pay a very high price for yours.”

“It isn't so much to ask, that you marry one of the richest men in the world, Brianne. Think of all I've done for you. Think of what Kurt's done for you,” she added quickly when she remembered how little she could claim to have contributed to her child's well-being. “He sent you to a very expensive school in Paris, and he's even supporting you now. You owe him something for that, Brianne,” she added, trying to regain the upper hand. She smiled that empty, cold, social smile she used to impress Kurt's business associates, a frightening group of people whose exact connection to her husband was something she still couldn't quite figure out. “I know you'll do the right thing, once you've thought about this.”

Brianne didn't say anything else. It was
pointless. The two women had never had much in common, and now they had even less. Her mother wasn't going to let go of Kurt and his money regardless of what it cost her, she'd just said so. She was even willing to sacrifice Brianne to keep it.

But Brianne wasn't going to be sacrificed. She was going to the one person who could rescue her.

 

Pierce, fortunately for her, was at home. He was on the phone with his security chief, but what he was hearing made him uneasy.

“We had an attempt on the rig last night,” Tate Winthrop said in his deep, unaccented voice. “We foiled it,” he added, before the explosion he could hear forming on the other end of the line. “But I don't think it will be the last. And I've heard some new rumblings about Sabon's country. They say one of his poor neighbors is stockpiling weapons from a sympathetic nation and is considering an attack to capture the drill rigs in Sabon's first oil fields. He was right about the oil, you know. They've hit pay-dirt, or so my sources say.”

Pierce stretched lazily, and his eyes went to the white beach beyond the confines of the
swimming pool where he was lounging alone. He sipped his whiskey sour. “I wonder if letting them prevent the development wouldn't be the best thing,” he said after a minute. “Brauer will set up the fields without safeguards or any regard for the ecology if he has his way.”

“If they attack and get beaten back, the first thing they'll probably do is set fire to the oil,” Tate pointed out.

Pierce whistled softly. “What a disaster that would be. That wouldn't make them any friends in Washington.”

“Speaking of Washington,” Tate said quietly, “there's a rumor that Brauer is about to try to pull some strings and get the U.S. involved in this.”

“You're kidding!”

“I used to work for the CIA—I don't have a sense of humor.”

“Sorry.”

“Brauer went to school with one of the senators on the foreign affairs committee,” he continued. “He's been in touch. I understand he's due in Washington soon to lobby for U.S. aid.”

“He wants Uncle Sam to help him build an oil field?” Pierce drawled.

“Not at all. He wants Uncle Sam to protect it while it's being built.”

“Sabon is a millionaire and he owns half the country, not to mention its king and most of its ministers. Why can't he protect it himself?”

“He's wealthy. His country isn't. Odd duck, Sabon,” he added. “He has a reputation for perverse sexual habits, but the funny thing about it is that no charges have ever been brought against him, and nobody's ever found any of his discarded lovers.”

“Curious.”

“Brauer labels him as a money-grubbing assassin, but that isn't the reputation he has among the people in his own country.” There was a pause. “Why would a man deliberately picture himself to the world as a debaucher?”

“Beats the hell out of me. I've been wondering why he wanted Brauer as a business partner.”

“Nobody else has any clout with the United States,” Tate mused. “Think that might have any bearing on it?”

“Very possibly, but he couldn't have picked a more dangerous ally. Brauer's done so many immoral things in his lifetime that he makes Sabon look good.”

“I'll drink to that.”

The other man sounded offhand, distant. “You sound preoccupied,” Pierce said suddenly, because he knew the man's mind wasn't on the subject they were discussing.

“A…personal problem, nothing I can't handle,” Tate said quietly. “Look, I'll talk to a few people about Brauer and see who he knows in Washington. If you hear anything new, get back to me.”

“I'll do that. Sabon was in town yesterday, but he's gone now.”

“That was a quick trip. Why was he there?”

Pierce's dark face hardened. “Brauer has a twenty-year-old stepdaughter. Sabon wants her, apparently.”

“Good God!”

“You know what he'll do with her if he gets her,” Pierce said coldly. “She's spirited and smart, but she's no match for a man like Sabon.”

“Want me to come over?”

“I can take care of her,” he replied. “I'm not over the hill yet.”

There was a rare, deep chuckle on the other end of the line. “Nobody who watched you
knock Colby Lane to his knees on that drilling platform would ever say you were.”

“Speaking of the devil, how is he?”

“Colby linked up with another group of mercenaries and went to Africa, but I hear he's come home and he's working for Uncle Sam now. He's changed so much lately that I don't know him. That damned woman!”

“It's not her fault that he can't give her up and let her settle with her new husband,” Pierce reminded him. “If he will get drunk twice a month and start fights, he can expect someone to knock him around eventually.”

“Nobody was game to try it until you came along.”

“Not even you?” Pierce chided.

“Oh, he knew better than to pick on me,” he said carelessly. “Didn't you notice that big white scar on his jaw?”

“You rogue, you.”

“He caught me at a bad time.”

“I'd like to see anyone catch you at a good one lately. Speaking of men with chips on their shoulders, we could talk about yours,” he added.

“Not today. I've got work to do. Watch your back. Sabon doesn't like you any more than
Brauer does, but he's supposedly got more money than Brauer and he's devious. I'd hate to get a call at three in the morning telling me you'd washed up on a beach over at Freeport.”

“You won't. Keep in touch.”

“Sure.”

Pierce hung up and reflected on what he'd learned. It was unwelcome news. The oil business had always been boom or bust. It was more complicated than it looked to an outsider, as well. There were a thousand worries that included oil spills, leaks, explosions, fires and disgruntled employees mad enough to cause accidents. There were funding problems and quarrels over who absorbed which costs, and squabbling between the oil companies footing the bill and the construction outfit building the rigs and pipelines. It was an ever-changing pattern of problems, and Pierce was where the buck stopped.

The newest venture involved building a rig for a consortium in the Caspian Sea, a project beset by legal and political woes. The pipeline was to go through a nation that the U.S. government had sanctions against, and there was a ceiling on the amount of foreign investments that were allowed. The Russians argued that the
usual limitations shouldn't apply because the Caspian Sea was landlocked and didn't fall under the legal specifications. The oil companies involved in the project were international, but not above the sanctions that the U.S. had persuaded other nations to honor.

There was ongoing interference from people in Sabon's country. They needed a pipeline in a similar area. The difference was that Sabon had the right contacts, and any enemy of the United States was a friend of his. He didn't bother with sanctions or political correctness; he simply greased palms and did what he liked. He and Brauer had done a bit of that of late, and if Tate Winthrop was right, a major political fracas was shaping up back home. Brauer's friend in the Senate could cause some real trouble for the consortium's project, and therefore for Pierce, who was supplying the equipment and labor to construct it.

He was deep in thought when the gate enclosing the swimming pool opened and Brianne joined him near the changing rooms.

He was sunbathing and he'd long since shed his trunks. Brianne had stared at him and blushed the first time she saw him that way, despite the time in Paris when she'd put him to
bed. It had amused him that she was still so innocent. After that once, she accepted his lack of clothing as de rigueur and never commented on it or bothered to avert her eyes from his blatant masculinity. In fact, she seemed to find him as fascinating as she had in Paris.

“You look preoccupied,” he commented when she sat down on the lounger beside his and dropped her purse on the nearby table.

“I'm not preoccupied. I'm suicidal.” She glanced at him with a rueful smile. “Want to help me tie an anchor around my neck?”

He sat up, serious now. “What's wrong?”

“I've been handed an ultimatum,” she said in a colorless tone. She stared at her bare feet in the flimsy white sandals. “Kurt says that either I marry Philippe Sabon or he'll do something drastic to my mother and half brother. He's pretty desperate,” she added. “I don't think he's bluffing. He's tied up every penny he has in this oil deal with Philippe. He stands to lose it all without Philippe's cooperation, and he's going to lose that if I don't marry the repulsive Monsieur Sabon.”

His face hardened. He hadn't thought that even Brauer would go so far in his pursuit of wealth. He was wrong.

“What do you want to do?” he asked her abruptly.

She glanced at him with a wan smile. “Can't you guess?” She slid her hands over her jeans-clad thighs. “It's now or never.”

His black eyes narrowed as they searched over her slender body with calculation. “Would you care to be more specific?”

“Sure.” She stood up and abruptly pulled off her silk blouse. There was nothing under it except her small, pretty breasts. “How's this for specific?” she asked bluntly.

P
ierce had refused to think of Brianne as a woman lately. He hadn't overcome his grief for Margo and he wasn't ready for any intimate involvement, especially with a woman as young and innocent as Brianne.

But the sight of those soft, pretty pink breasts with their hard mauve tips had an immediate and unmistakable effect on him.

Her eyes followed the movement of his body with wide fascination that quickly turned to apprehension. She folded her arms across her breasts, and her brazen demeanor went into eclipse.

“Lost your nerve?” he taunted softly.

She had. It wasn't possible to pretend that she didn't find him intimidating. “Sorry,” she said, because his irritation with her was also apparent. “The magazines don't show men like that,” she added self-consciously.

“They wouldn't dare.” He got to his feet and moved closer to her, slowly taking her hands away from her breasts. They were hard-tipped, just slightly swollen. He looked at their delicate pink contours with pure appreciation.

“I'm…small.” She wanted so badly to be sophisticated, but she felt gauche and uncomfortable. He was looking at her as if he liked what he saw, but she was self-conscious about her size.

“You're perfectly formed and not too small,” he replied gently. He smiled at her, and it made him less frightening. His black eyes were tender as they traced the stark outline of her breasts. His gaze lifted to her face and his eyes narrowed with faint calculation. “Do they ache?”

She wondered how he knew that. She nodded, a little stiffly.

His head lifted. “Come here and I'll make it stop.”

His voice was deep, soft, slow. She was
aware of the sun beating down on them through the casuarinas, the sound of the waves on the beach just beyond the privacy fence. She was aware of an airplane roaring overhead. But none of those things really registered as she felt the impact of Pierce's eyes on her body for the first time.

She drew in her breath and took a step toward him. She felt tight, swollen, all over. She'd always found him attractive, but this was beyond her slight experience. It was like being in the grip of a tidal wave. She couldn't help herself.

His big, dark hand lifted slowly, and his fingers traced lightly around just the edges of one small breast. She gasped. He smiled at her reactions, because she was too green to hide them.

His other hand drew her a little closer. His breath sighed out at her forehead as his thumb eased just to the outline of the hard nipple and away again. He felt her stiffen, heard her breathing rustle in her throat.

“The…gate,” she said through dry lips.

“No one ever comes through it when I'm sunbathing. It's an unwritten law.” He was feeling alive for the first time since Margo's
death. It was like rebirth to feel a woman's soft breast under his fingers, feel a woman's shaking heartbeat against his hand, hear her breathing catch in her throat. Brianne smelled of spring flowers, and he thought how exquisite it would be to take the rest of her clothes off and touch her where she'd never been touched.

His own heartbeat raced at the images that claimed his mind. He stopped thinking about her age and inexperience. They didn't matter. Nothing mattered past the heat in his loins.

His fingers went to the waistband of her jeans. He unsnapped them and pulled the zipper down. Her hands caught his, but he expected the faint panic and his head bent as she struggled with his fingers.

“Virginity is hard to give up,” he whispered at her lips. “But you'll like the way I take yours. It's going to be slow and sweet, here in the sun.” His mouth touched her upper lip and then her lower one as his hands began to move.

She made a sound and he smiled patiently. His head bent and his mouth opened over one hard nipple. He suckled it tenderly, aware of her hands falling away from his, aware of her body arching helplessly, her fingers suddenly
tangling in the thick black waves of his hair just at the nape of his strong neck.

He had her jeans down below her hips. She felt the air on her body and it was welcome, because she was so hot. She couldn't breathe. He was suckling her breast hungrily and it made her body swell and ache.

It wasn't only his mouth now, it was his hand. He probed gently, touched, stroked, in that place that had never known a man's touch. She should be shocked, ashamed, but she wasn't. It was exciting. He touched her and her body felt moist there, open, hungry, empty.

She moved her legs apart for him. Her tiny gasps were barely audible above the shocked beat of her own heart.

She arched backward, opening her body to him, to whatever he wanted to do to it. She was free as she'd never been, wanton and brazen and completely submissive to his ardor.

It occurred to her in one last flash of sanity that he was easing her down onto a big, thick towel in the small patch of grass beside the concrete edge of the pool. She opened her eyes, noticing that they felt heavy and weighted.

He was removing the jeans and the briefs under them. That was nice, because they were far
too tight. He put them aside, along with her sandals.

He was slow, patient. He didn't rush or act as if he were desperate to do more than look at her for several long, breathless seconds. He knelt there, between her long, splayed legs, with his hands on his thighs, just studying her body.

She shivered at the heat in his eyes. He was more potent than she'd dreamed he would be, and a little frightening like that. She'd never seen pictures of an aroused man, but it seemed that he was a lot more endowed than the centerfolds in those magazines she and her friends had passed around in Paris.

She'd expected him to come down on her, to start kissing her body or touching her intimately again. He didn't. He simply watched her as if his mind was detached from his visible desire for her.

“Aren't you going to…to do it?” she whispered.

He smiled slowly. “Do what?”

She swallowed. “Make love to me.”

He sighed. His big hands smoothed over her thighs and she shivered with pleasure. “I want to,” he said quietly. “I want to, very much. But
my conscience would haunt me for the rest of my life.”

She grimaced. “Why do you have to have a conscience? You're not taking anything I don't want to give you! Don't you see, if I go back home a virgin, that man…that frightening man…!”

His fingers contracted on her soft flesh. “You're not going back home, Brianne,” he replied. “Not now, not ever. You're staying right here.”

She was surprised. Awed. “You want me to live with you?” she asked breathlessly.

He nodded. His eyes went to the soft flesh his hand was tracing, to the faint golden hairs on her legs, whose sheen was like floss in the sunlight.

“I'd like that,” she said.

“Your stepfather won't,” he replied. “And he could probably get some legal support to drag you back.”

She looked tormented. “I wouldn't go!”

“He could make you, if he had the law on his side.” His fingers grew slowly more caressing. “That being the case, we're going to make a rather hasty trip to Las Vegas.”

She stopped breathing. “Nevada?”

“Nevada.” He removed his hands and stood, pulling her up beside him. “You really do have the most beautiful, nubile young body,” he murmured, lifting his fingers to the hard tips of her breasts. He teased them, enjoying the way she arched to his touch. “And if you were two years older, believe me, I wouldn't hesitate a second. But you're much too young to be any man's mistress. So I'm going to marry you.”

All her dreams were coming true. She stared up at him with pure disbelief. “You're kidding.”

He shook his head. “No, I'm not. There's no way in hell I'm letting a pervert like Philippe Sabon get his hands on you. This is the only way I can protect you.”

“He wouldn't want me if I'd had a lover,” she felt obliged to point out.

“You don't know that. And how would you prove it to him?”

She bit her lower lip. “I guess I couldn't, really.”

He caught her by the waist and pulled her nude body completely against the warm contours of his, smiling when she felt him against her belly and gasped.

“Don't be intimidated by me,” he said
gently. “Your body is more elastic than you realize. You can take me, even if you don't think so right now.”

She laughed self-consciously. “Care to prove it?” she asked with pure bravado.

“Not until we're married, I don't,” he replied dryly.

She searched his broad, dark face curiously. “Is it because I haven't done it before?”

“Yes,” he said simply. “I'm old-fashioned. Bodies come cheap, but yours isn't. I don't care what the rest of the world thinks or does. I go my own way. This is it.”

“Marriage or nothing, hmmm?” she murmured, happy enough to tease a little. She reached up and touched his broad, hair-covered chest, liking the way the muscles rippled under her fingers. “Okay. If you're sure,” she added, and looked worried.

He touched her long, soft hair and tangled his fingers in it. “I'm sure,” he said, and he was. But he couldn't explain why.

His hands smoothed down her back to her hips. He drew them gently closer and studied her mouth. “I've touched you like a lover, but I haven't kissed you. I want to.”

She linked her arms around his neck, shiv
ering a little with the delicious pleasure of feeling his skin against hers. “Me, too,” she murmured, lifting her face.

He bent and brushed his open mouth against her lips. He hesitated. What he felt was suddenly explosive. He scowled, because it was unexpected. He bent again, and this time he nudged her lips apart with his mouth and brushed at it with slow, whispery contacts that made his body contract and harden even more.

She heard the faint intake of his breath and felt his body stiffen against hers. She drew back and looked into his black eyes, seeing the glitter that began to shine in them. There was a faint tremor in his long, powerful legs as well.

Her eyes were curious, possessive as she looked at him. She stepped a little closer and deliberately brushed her thighs softly against his. He bit off a sharp groan, and the hands holding her hips bit into the soft flesh bruisingly hard.

Her lips parted. Why, he was vulnerable! She'd never have expected it, because his control had been absolute as long as he was touching her. She wondered what might happen if she…touched him.

Her fingers went between their bodies, and
she spread them against his diaphragm, looking straight up into his eyes as she moved them very slowly down through the arrowing of hair that covered his stomach and his loins.

He clenched his teeth but made no move to stop her. She hesitated briefly, self-conscious about what she was doing.

He drew in a slow breath. “Do you want to touch me?”

She nodded.

He steeled himself not to lose control. His hands covered hers and slowly guided them down until they rested on his body where it was taut and swollen.

She looked down, surprised and awed by the feel of his body in such devastating intimacy. She smiled with mingled curiosity and fascination.

He moved her hands against him, chuckling hollowly at the pleasure that shot through him under her shy, warm little hands.

“Show me how,” she said uninhibitedly, looking up at him tenderly.

“And shock you?”

“It's all right,” she said. “I expect you're going to shock me eventually.”

“I thought I already had.”

He placed his big hands over her small ones and guided them slowly, patiently, explaining what he wanted her to do. His body began to shiver and then to move helplessly. He swallowed. He bit off a harsh moan. His hands became insistent and he trembled. It didn't take long at all. He cried out and his body was helpless, pulsing, open to her eyes as he went over the edge and felt her watching him. The pleasure was overwhelming. He had to lean against a nearby tree for support as the grinding waves of ecstasy convulsed his body. He let her watch, enjoyed her eyes, her shy excitement, her triumph as she realized what had happened to him.

He held her against him, sweaty and shivering in the delicious aftermath. He laughed with glorious delight, his body open to the sun and her eyes, and not one trace of inhibition or embarrassment afterward.

“You're so…uninhibited,” she said softly, smiling. “I wish I was.”

“Do you?” He got back his breath and then suddenly lifted her clear off the ground and carried her back to the beach towel they'd abandoned minutes before.

He put her down and positioned her, and his
mouth found her in a way she'd only read about.

It was the most shocking, startling, overwhelmingly urgent pleasure she'd ever dreamed. She arched and shuddered and sobbed as he brought her to a level of ecstasy she couldn't have conceived of feeling only ten minutes before. It was so unexpected that she went over the edge almost at once. Her back arched and she held him to her, begging, sobbing her pleasure as her slender young body shuddered in the long, sweet convulsions of fulfillment for the first time.