10 Ways to Steal Your Lover (3 page)

 
      
But if he was wrong, why did he feel so
damn right?

 
      
Delilah stroked her hands up the column
of his neck to cup his jaw, her fingertips grazing the ends of his golden brown
hair. “How much of last night do you remember?”

 
      
Definite guilt crossed his features, the
moss green darkening. “Not enough.”

 
      
“So you don’t know how we got here
either?”

 
      
He shook his head. “I’m not even sure
where the hell here is.”

 
      
That would be easy enough to figure out,
once they got up out of the closet. She wasn’t in a very big rush to do that,
though. She looked at her hands on his face, at the rings on her hand.

 
      
Not Craig’s rings.

 
      
Kane’s. Somehow she knew they were Kane’s
rings.

 
      
The wedding… She knew she’d been to a
wedding. Under a canopy of stars in a small gazebo… The rest was blurs, moving
too fast to pick out the details. Loud noises, bright lights… She couldn’t draw
out more than that. Except for a bizarre clinking noise and her own shrieks of
glee. Why would she be shrieking?

 
      
“Uh, Del, have you ever been to the Crown
Palace Casino?”

 
      
“What?” She frowned up at him. “You mean
as in stayed there?” There wasn’t much point. Craig had a house in Seven Hills
and honestly, she didn’t hit the strip very often. The glitter and gloss never
held much appeal.

 
      
“So, you’ve never won a jackpot from
there?”

 
      
That made her snort. Craig loved to point
out that she had the worst luck of anyone he’d ever seen. She’d never even won
a scratcher. “Why?”

 
      
Nodding his head toward the upper left,
Delilah tilted her face upward, her eyes widening as she spied two large bags
with the Palace’s iconic crown insignia and name emblazoned across them. Each
bag was full to falling over with stacks of money.

 
      
“Holy shit,” she breathed, then stared
back at Kane. “What the hell did we do last night?”

 
      
Ever the stoic, rational thinking man who
often drove her nuts, he didn’t panic or jump up and down or anything anyone
else who must have robbed a casino would do. He just sighed and said, “No clue,
but we better get started finding out.”

***

       
“Oh
my God, that’s a lot of money.”
   

 
      
“Uh-huh.” Granted, not his most brilliant
response, but in his defense, Kane decided, no one could blame him for sounding
like a complete idiot right then. She’d arched her back to look at the money
bags in front of them and now the most magnificent breasts ever formed were
peeking at him over the edge of a rumpled white bed sheet.

 
      
The fine cotton might have a silken
shine, but it had nothing on the perfect cream of Delilah’s skin. The soft pink
tips were the cherries on top as far as he was concerned, each one just begging
for the sucking kisses he hadn’t been able to give back in the bedroom. His
mouth watered just looking at them.

 
      
Arched as she was, with her firm, bare
thighs on either side of his hips and only the sheet between them, the result
was instantaneous—blood abandoned his brain like the traitor it was. Completely
without permission, his cock nestled into the cloth-covered folds, reveling in
being so close to heaven that he could feel the soft notch of her and already
imagine sinking back into her hot, gripping flesh. Memories of how wet, how
molded, she’d felt around him, and he’d had to bite back a groan along with the
urge to flip the sheet out of the way and remind her, too. Thank God he had the
presence of mind left not to drool because her chin came back down and she
pinioned him with an accusing glare as her breasts slipped back into the
shadowed cover of the sheet.

 
      
“What were you looking at?”

 
      
It took all his control not to grin at
her suspicious snarl. “What makes you think I was looking at something?”

 
      
Her brow rose. “Because I’m pretty sure
you don’t walk around with a steel pipe in your pants on a regular basis.”

 
      
He did around her. His sex drive was a
vicious, unfettered animal where she was concerned. Which was why he didn’t
visit as much as he used to. Distracted with work or not, Craig was bound to
notice and if there was one thing Kane had never been, it was the kind of man
who made a move on his best friend’s girl.

 
      
Except, he realized with a sinking
feeling, that seemed to be exactly what he’d done.

 
      
He rolled off Delilah as fast as he
could, flopping on his back next to her, already digging the balls of his hands
into his eyes. Hard as he tried, nothing from the night before came into clear
focus. Just flashes of people, feelings and things he didn’t recognize. An
angry man, a blaring red and blue light, looking up at a crapload of stars, a
half-empty glass of champagne… Over and over again, in between those blurred
memories, Delilah, Delilah, Delilah. Smiling, laughing, moaning, even crying
but somehow still looking happy; hell if he remembered why, though.

 
      
Cool material whispered over his waist.
He looked down to find the sheet now draping his cock so that it looked like
the center of a Big Top Circus. Damn thing had zero sense of self-preservation.
Or shame.

 
      
“Sorry,” Delilah mumbled, smoothing her
end of the sheet higher on her chest. “There just wasn’t any way I was going to
be able to have a serious conversation with…that distracting me.”

 
      
Because covering it made it so much less
noticeable… “Well, I know a place I could—”

 
      
Her hand clapped over his mouth, her body
curving into his side, the gentle weight of those breasts on his arm. Sheet or
no sheet, that was a fabulous feeling. Even better, it wasn’t reproach he saw
on her face but genuine mirth only slightly touched by regret.

 
      
Wait, was that good or not?

 
      
“If we’re going to get figure out what
happened to us, we’re going to have to set some ground rules.”

 
      
He pressed a kiss to her palm, his tongue
taking the smallest taste of her before she snatched her hand away. She
scowled, smacking him square in the chest as punishment. “How on earth did I
ever think you were the stern one?”

 
      
Because he was. Usually.

 
      
Craig was the playboy and Jesse was the
dreamer. Someone had to keep them all grounded. Who better than the guy so
rooted to his land and his history that he never had a dream beyond the
boundaries of what he knew and owned.

 
      
Except for her…

 
      
But why would she ever want to hear that
from him? She had Craig. Being stern and grounded hadn’t done shit for him
where she was concerned because he’d fallen for her the first time they’d met.
The last three years had been a special kind of hell for him, wanting her more
with every new facet he learned about her. Aching for her to acknowledge that
there was something powerful between them, something that had her cheeks
turning that soft shade of pink whenever their eyes met.

 
      
Something that had her all but running
from him these last months leading up to the wedding.

 
      
No, she wouldn’t want him to bring any of
that up. Not when she had her mind set on another man. Another man he normally
wouldn’t wrong if his life depended on it.

 
      
So what the hell had happened last night
to change that?

 
      
Her warm hand had remained on his chest
where it landed, rubbing in soothing strokes as if she could hear the thoughts
going through his mind. If she could, why couldn’t she tell that the heart
beneath her touch was thudding so desperately for her?

 
      
It skipped a beat suddenly, a thought
becoming clear.

 
      
What if she didn’t want another man?

 
      
She’d just been in bed with him,
mindlessly screaming his name. That didn’t seem like a woman desperate to get
back to someone else. Not even the guy she’d been about to marry. It seemed
like a woman finally right where she wanted to be. Possibly with no plans to
leave anytime soon.

 
      
He bit back the urge to grin like a smug
idiot.

 
      
It wasn’t too easy to do until he
remembered that neither of them had a clue how it had happened. That fact killed
the smugness dead. What if the blank spots in their memory came from a drunken
binge of some kind? He’d never had one before, but there was a first time for
everything. Maybe it had been a first time for Delilah too?

 
      
However it went, one thing was clear.
They were both sober now but the chemistry between them sizzled hotter than
ever. He might be clueless about a lot of things, but not even he could miss
that particular truth. He could feel her like a hum of need, her softness
melding to his side and yet, somehow, her laughter warmed something deep in his
chest. This was how they should have always been. Maybe how they could have
been, if he’d met her first. But he hadn’t and they had never allowed
themselves more than a few stolen moments when they’d forget themselves and
what they were supposed to be to each other. A joke no one else understood, a
whispered remark no one else ever heard. A touch no one else could have given…
Just good friends, connected only by the man they both cared so much about.

 
      
This moment was more stolen than any of
those others put together.

 
      
It only made him hungrier for more.

 
      
If ever he had a chance with her, to show
her how he felt, this was it. The only opportunity he might ever get to be with
the woman who owned him body and soul.

 
      
Put like that, not even guilt could stop
him from taking it.

 
      
He slid his hand over hers, blinking at
the feel of warm metal and cool gemstone. Lifting his head, he picked up her
hand, turning it so the solitaire and two gold bands caught the light,
glittering at him in familiar, fiery glints. He picked up his own left hand,
recognizing the heavy gold band on his ring finger just as easily.

 
      
“What’s wrong?”

 
      
“Nothing,” he answered, still staring at
their hands. It wasn’t a lie. In fact, this was so right he thought his chest
might just burst. “These are my grandparents’ wedding rings.”

 
      
When she would have pulled away, he
twined their fingers together.

 
      
“Kane—”

 
      
“Shhh, just let me savor this for a
minute.”

 
      
“Savor what? Being naked in a closet with
your best friend’s fiancée and no idea how you got there?”

 
      
He shook his head, swallowing carefully
before meeting her gaze as steadily as he could. Especially since he’d never
said more important words in his life. “Being married to the woman I love.”

 
      
Hear that drowning noise?

 
      
That’s you, Delilah.

 
      
In over your head.

 
      
Again.

 
      
The Colonel’s gruff voice in her head was
never a good thing. But, like most parents’ voices, Delilah couldn’t quite seem
to kick it out. And it always showed up when she had to choose between doing
what her parents considered the right thing or what her heart said was the
right thing for her.