With Extreme Pleasure (6 page)

C
ady prided herself on not being an innocent. Living in the city meant she’d seen a lot of things she wouldn’t have living in the rural Midwest, or even living in the town she’d grown up in. She wasn’t judging, just stating facts.

And the fact was, it took a lot to get her to bat an eye or turn her head and stare. And that included the male body in various states of undress.

Leaning back on her stacked hands on the safe side of the bathroom and listening to King’s movements as he dressed, Cady felt as if she’d been cloistered away all of her life in that monastery she’d been threatening to run to.

She closed her eyes because it was easier to see him again with nothing pulling her gaze elsewhere. She didn’t want to look elsewhere. She only wanted to look at him—a man who wasn’t some young hard body of ambiguous sexual orientation who sold everything from boxer briefs to gym memberships.

He’d been fully clothed, in fact, in the photographs taken for the Ferrer Fragrance ads—a fact Cady now considered a damn shame, if not a waste of a once in a lifetime marketing opportunity.

Standing there the way he’d been in the bathroom, his hands low on his hips, fingers spread to hold what there was of his fig leaf in place…thinking about it now, she could hardly breathe.

He had body hair, and he had muscles, and he had scars, and on his right collarbone, a tattoo of a crown sitting on top of scattered doubloons and draped with strands of beads, all of it in Mardi Gras colors.

King. Kingdom. The name fit him, as did the idea of his being master of all he surveyed. She’d imposed herself upon him, and he’d taken charge the way he saw fit rather than doing what she, a mere peasant, his subject, his serf, wanted or suggested or told him to do.

Just her luck she’d stowed away with royalty—royalty whose fig leaf she wanted to blow out of the way. God, but he was beautiful, and so out of her league.

She pushed off the door before he could open it and catch her simultaneously drooling and kvetching, and returned to perch on the foot of her mattress to wait.

If he were a typical man, he’d be using this time holed up alone to prove her suspicions of being followed unfounded.

But he struck her as anything but typical, leaving her no clue what to expect when his highness emerged from his chambers and took to his throne—an image that had her smiling, a smile that was a welcome surprise.

And then he was there, fully dressed down to his boots. She tried not to gulp at the beads of water pooled in the hollow of his throat above his T-shirt’s ribbed neckline. Or jump up and cup his freshly shaved face in her hands to see how soft his skin actually was.

But mostly she tried, and failed, not to remember what he looked like naked.

Since that was impossible, she tried for casual when she asked, “Going somewhere?” After her bathroom confessional, she didn’t believe he’d walk out and leave her alone. But really, casual was the last thing she was feeling, and her question came out on a squeak.

He nodded, snagged his wallet from the desk. “Thought I might walk through the parking lot. Make sure no one is lurking in the bushes under our window.”

“Are you making fun of me again?”

“Again? When have I made fun of you ever?”

“You didn’t believe me about the suspicious truck outside.”

“Sure I believed you.” He swung his key ring on one finger and palmed the clattering keys. “That’s why I’m going out there now. Make sure all is well.”

He believed her about the truck. Just not that whoever had been driving was necessarily looking for them. Or coming after her. “You sure you’re not trying to get out of finishing our conversation?”

Actually, she wasn’t so sure she wanted to revisit her past to the extent answering his questions would require. Curling up her battered body beneath the bed’s blankets, and sinking into the cushy down pillows was a much more appealing option.

She chose it instead of choosing to talk.

“Never mind,” she said, reaching for her backpack and the T-shirt and sweatpants she’d packed for sleeping, and then realizing he hadn’t moved.

She looked up at him then, for the first time concentrating on his expression instead of his looks. “What?”

His eyes were those of a raptor, keen and piercing. “I’m not avoiding the conversation or running out on you.”

She dipped her chin, pulled her laptop out of her bag, knew what a field mouse must feel like before a hawk swooped down. “I know—”

“No you don’t,” he said sharply. “But it’s okay. It takes a lot to hurt my feelings.”

She hated to admit that she hadn’t considered his feelings at all. It was just that she was used to being on her own, used to having conversations avoided, used to seeing the backs of others running away from the cloud of bad karma that hung over her head like a shroud.

She shrugged what she hoped passed for an apology. “I’m going to see if the wireless is working. I need to log into my bank and figure out how I’m going to finance my escape from New York.”

“You’re a funny girl,” he said, still staring at her, though with less of a hooded look.

“Thanks. Entertaining you is the least I can do.” And then she realized what she’d said, and decided not to say anything else the rest of the night. Not so King.

“I’ll be back in a few,” he said. “Just sit tight,” he told her. “Nothing bad’s going to happen while I’m gone,” he promised. “It’ll be morning before you know it, and that’s when everything looks brighter, right?”

All she could do was smile weakly while avoiding his gaze, and nod, because even if nothing bad happened, it was going to be a long time before there was anything resembling brightness lighting up her life.

K
ing shoved his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders, wishing for his jacket and dry hair. It wasn’t that he’d been in too much of a hurry to grab his coat before leaving the room, but a case of not thinking straight.

If he had been, he wouldn’t be here now, freezing his balls off, instead of huddled in toasty sheepskin.

It had taken him forever to finish up in the bathroom because he couldn’t get the hungry look in Cady’s eyes out of his head. Since she’d climbed into his passenger seat in the garage this morning, he hadn’t once thought of her that way. At least not seriously. She’d been someone in trouble, someone needing help.

Even when she’d rubbed against him during that ridiculous Ferrer photo shoot, he hadn’t considered messing with her any more seriously than he would’ve a Hooters’ waitress leaning over him to serve up his order of hot wings and beer. Enjoying an eyeful of tits didn’t mean a thing.

Except best he could tell, Cady’s tits really weren’t enough for an eyeful, and she’d never worn anything that exposed her cleavage to prove him wrong. Head to toe, she’d always been completely covered up when around him. Until standing there in the bathroom looking at him with bare, naked eyes.

What he’d seen of her then had scrambled everything he’d been thinking, as well as the plans he’d been making behind her back to ditch her and get on the road. Best he could do now was talk her out of wanting to come along, let her think it was in her best interest to get rid of him.

If anyone had been messing with his brand-new wheels and delayed him any longer, he was going to have their hide. But a quick look around the exterior of the SUV, made while he ran his hands up and down his goose-fleshed arms, didn’t reveal slashed tires or smashed windows or siphoned fuel.

The electronics in his key fob had disengaged the locks, so he popped the hood, started her up, and listened to his horses whir. He knew engines—V6, V8, V10, V12, didn’t matter—and this one was singing sweet. But he was cold and Cady was waiting, so he headed back to the room.

He didn’t purposefully sneak in, but once inside was glad he hadn’t made a lot of noise because Cady was fast asleep. And she was fast asleep in the bed that was supposed to be his for the night.

He sat on the foot of the one where she should’ve been sleeping—the one that was now covered with everything they’d brought inside, including his dirty clothes, and was missing the bedspread to boot.

It was as if she’d made sure he had no choice but to bunk on the floor—if not with her—or else wake her and ask, “What the hell?”

He didn’t want to wake her. Not after the day she’d had. Her body needed recovery time and nothing beat sleep for healing.

But even though he’d said otherwise, there was no way on God’s green earth he was going to spend the night on the floor knowing he’d be sitting behind the wheel most of tomorrow, and most likely the day that followed.

Spending the night propped up in one of the room’s two wing chairs wasn’t any more of an acceptable option…though hitting the front desk for another room was. He’d just leave Cady a note first—

She interrupted him by clearing her throat. “You’re trying to get out of sleeping with me, aren’t you?”

He tossed the pen he’d found back to the desk. He hadn’t even made it as far as finding something to write on. “Actually, I was trying to remember the last time I bailed on a woman who invited me to bed.”

“It must be hard to be King.”

He liked this girl. He liked her a lot. “In a manner of speaking.”

She raised up on one elbow, tossed back the bedspread she was wearing like a cocoon. “I’m fully dressed. I’m under my own covers. There’s no chance here for accidental physical contact. So come to bed. We both need sleep.”

It had to be the shadows from the room’s dim light making her face look so ghostly. Yeah, her hair was dark, as were the bruises marring her skin, plumping one side of her mouth into a fleshy pillow and sinking her eyes into her skull. But still. She looked like the waking dead.

He returned to the foot of the bed to tug off his boots, wondering if he’d ever slept with a zombie before. “You get your banking done?”

She burrowed deeper into the covers. “I couldn’t get onto the hotel’s network. I’ll try again in the morning, if there’s time before we leave.”

“How much you think it’s going to take to finance this escape of yours?” he asked, weighing the pros and cons of sleeping in all of his clothes or just some of them.

She didn’t answer, and he left it alone, suddenly more tired than he had reason to be. Along with his boots, he pulled off his belt, then left the first bed for the second and slid beneath his sheet and blanket.

Cady’s bulk was nothing at his side. There was no dip in the mattress from her weight causing him to roll toward her. He could’ve been sleeping next to a pile of clean laundry for all he noticed her being there.

It took several minutes for him to relax, for his breathing to steady, his heartbeat to settle, and his goose flesh to disappear, before he realized he was feeling her body heat and not just that of the bedding.

Things got kinda weird then, what with the two of them being in bed there together, and her warming him so nicely the way she was, and him remembering the way she’d stared when confronted with his wash cloth and his body. He hadn’t come up against that expression in a very long time. In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d run into it ever.

It was a wanting kind of look, a hurting for something kind of look, a look that tore at something inside of him that even he didn’t like knowing was there to be torn. He sure didn’t like thinking that he’d disappointed her, left her unfulfilled, but that was exactly the sense that was eating at him now, and making it hard to get to sleep.

It had been awhile since he’d slept all night with a woman, since he’d gone to bed wrapped in one’s arms and woke up with her wrapped in his, his dick at the ready, her pussy hot to trot. Because those were the only women he’d slept with. The same ones he’d fucked.

He’d never had a woman he had no plans to touch warming him the way Cady was now—with the heat of her skin seeping into the blankets, and her soft breathy snores, and the tiny sounds she made when she stretched and turned and rolled.

And this woman, who had no one in her corner and nowhere to go, was the woman who tomorrow he was going to have to find someplace to dump so he could hit the road for home. Yeah, that made him feel like a first place winner. More like a first class mother fu—

A window shattering explosion of fiery light and booming thunder cut off everything King had been thinking and sent him into survival mode. He knew Cady had bolted upright, and he dived toward her, taking the both of them and all the covers to the floor between the two beds.

She screamed, but she didn’t fight. She ducked as completely beneath his body as she could, leaving him to the brunt of the raining glass and debris. He felt the scatter shot of detritus like bullets pummel the blanket where it draped him, felt shards strike his uncovered shoulders and head.

In seconds it was over, smoke billowing into the room through the frame where the window’s panes had blown out. He tossed off the blankets and urged Cady to her feet, finding her shoes on the extra bed and his boots on the floor, then sprinting for the room’s exit.

Coughing against the smoke, Cady grabbed her backpack and laptop and sweatshirt, following him into the hallway and the chaos of half-dressed people, strobing lights, and the hotel’s blaring fire alarm.

“What happened?” she called over the panicked voices and crush of bodies.

Fearing their separation, he took her by the upper arm and pushed their way through the crowd. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

Fuck orderly fashion. He wanted out of here and now, because there was something telling him he wasn’t going to like what he was going to find outside, and the sooner he found it, the better.

They reached the end of the hallway in time to see the first fire engine blow into the parking lot. King shoved his way through the knot of hotel guests congregated there and pulled Cady behind him through the door and outside into his worst nightmare.

“Son of a fucking bitch!”

His Hummer was a burning shell. Orange fire licked through what was left of the vehicle. Black smoke rose in foul-smelling columns. The rest of it, including his supplies and all of Cady’s possessions, was strewn around the parking lot in pieces, the result of the blast that had turned their room’s window into similar shrapnel.

“King, you’re bleeding.”

“What?”

“You’re bleeding. You’ve got a piece of glass sticking out of the back of your head.”

Too bad it wasn’t sticking out of his eyeballs so he wouldn’t have to see this. He reached back and nudged the embedded shard. “Ouch. Shit. Ouch.”

“Come on. Sit down.” She led him to the sidewalk and forced him to sit, dropping her bag and computer in his lap before shrugging into her hoodie. “Hold my stuff. I’ll see if there’s an ambulance on the way, or if any of these guys are medics or whatever. Don’t move until I get back.”

He watched her go, knowing he wasn’t going anywhere. Not anytime soon, and not under his own steam or in any vehicle he owned, goddamn Hummer garbage shit blown everywhere.

Soon enough he’d need a ride to the hospital for stitches. And then to the police station to find out who the fucking hell had blown up his truck. But for now, he’d do as she’d told him and sit.

Cady was right. It was hard being King.