All Of Her (Fantasy Heights) (2 page)

Determined to overwhelm his self-control, she reached down between her own legs. Her pussy was still dripping wet and she drove a finger inside to wet it down. Then she brought it back to him, pressing it between his buttocks. He tensed and held still while, with her fingertip, she sought his anus. The puckered hole tightened against her finger. Much the same way he had, she thrust inside firmly.

He gasped, and she felt his cock throb in her hand. His whole body grew taut. Based on his reaction to penetration, she had to wonder if this was the first time anyone had ever touched him that way.

The question was, did he like it. Her read on him was uncertain as the tension in his frame held on and on. To distract him, she worked his tip harder, holding her lips in a firm
O
, making an undulating motion with her head, kneading him.

The noises he made were all about struggle. Struggling not to gasp, struggling not to speak, struggling not to come. From this she decided he wasn’t sure if he liked her finger in his ass. She knew the sensation could be overwhelming at first. He could decide later if he liked it or not. For now, she just wanted his orgasm to be deep and long and as satisfying as the one he’d given her.

She began to wiggle her finger gently inside him, supporting his shaft with the other hand while she continued to suckle and massage his tip.

It wasn’t long before she heard a very soft, very helpless curse escape him. He let his knees fall to the side as he surrendered to the pressures she applied. She wished she could see him. What did he look like as he strained toward orgasm? Were his teeth clenched as he resisted, or was his head thrown back in abandon? So many cues she missed out on, being unable to see behind the blindfold.

She forgot all about the deprivation as his body broke over the edge of orgasm. The first pulse sent him utterly rigid, thrusting up into her mouth. She braced herself and renewed her efforts, pumping her finger into his ass with more power behind the motion. He bucked on the bed and began to shoot salty seed. She lowered her head to catch it on the back of her tongue, swallowing it down, smiling around his cock at the way his strong, powerful body dispelled all that tension and pleasure.

As he wound down, she carefully withdrew her finger. She focused all her attention on applying as much affection as she could. First to his cock, then the velvety, rigidly muscled navel, and finally his lightly haired chest.

She had just formed an idea about tonguing a nipple when her client flipped her onto her back. He took her mouth and hooked one leg around both of hers, expressing his approval and, she suspected, a bit of ownership.

She did not mind. Come what may, the connection she felt to her mystery client was warm and welcome, if not entirely restful. There was definitely a thread of wariness to it, maybe even a hint of fear at who he might be, and the reasons he protected his identity from her.

Still, over the next fifteen minutes of their uniquely intimate, affectionate play, she gave herself freely. It could not be more obvious that he meant her no harm, and that she had pleased and satisfied him.

Fifteen minutes was all she got. At the end, he cupped her face. His long fingers held the blindfold in place while he kissed her one last time. Then he did something curious. He sat up and placed a hand on her stomach beneath the sheet, as if instructing her to stay still. He took his hand away a moment later, and after a few vague getting-dressed noises, she felt him slide that hand beneath the small of her back. He withdrew it just as quickly, but she could feel he’d left something behind. Something flat and small, with scratchy corners.

She was about to ask what that was and why he’d put it there when his mouth descended once more and he shocked her into immobility by whispering two very distinct words against her lips.

“Wait. Observer.”

She filed away the fact that she did not recognize him by his whisper. Nothing familiar about the sound. The words themselves troubled her. Whatever he’d slipped beneath her, he wanted her to wait until the observer left with him before she had a look.

She did, lying there electrified, wondering what on earth had just happened.

She heard her client and observer leave together, then tore the blindfold off, scrambling to find whatever it was he’d sneaked beneath her. It wasn’t hard to spot. He’d slipped her a folded piece of paper.

Frowning, she snatched it up and righted the single fold to find four lines printed in firm and neat but hastily written letters.

You’re on the radar.

Thomas can protect you if you stop asking questions.

Stay away from Gail, Lily and Marla.

Burn this.

Her frown deepened. What the hell? Radar? And what did he mean Thomas could protect her? From what? And how did he know she’d been asking questions?

The third line made the frown morph into raised eyebrows. Gail must be Gail Warnous, who lived one block down from Amanda. There, she’d seen Gail with Marla—Corset, who worked the shadowbox in the Zoo. Gail and Marla were involved, and maybe Thomas, too.

It took her a moment to figure out who Lily might be, then remembered a couple weeks ago, a VIP client she’d recognized from the outside world: Emily, whose name was actually Lily Briggs, married to Brandon Briggs, ultra important attorney and businessman. Lily had immense social power in her own right, and was a friend of Steph’s.

Why Lily Briggs should be included in the same group as Robert Warnous’s ex-wife, and Marla, Amanda couldn’t even begin to guess. And it wasn’t as if she had any control over how involved she got with any of those women. Marla was a coworker, and Lily a client. If they were booked together, what was she supposed to do? Refuse to go on set?

She had no idea what to do. Should she tell someone? And what about Thomas? He was her trainer, the one she should be able to confide in. But he, Gail and Marla were mentioned in the note. Did her client understand the ultra-precarious position his note forced her into?

She rubbed a hand over her eyes a moment, and then re-read the last line.
Burn this
.

In hindsight, given the fact he hadn’t wanted the observer to see him give her anything, she knew her mystery client had just put himself at risk to warn her. Or scare her. Or both.

A potent spurt of anger propelled her through the next half hour. She returned to the car—running fine now that the kill-switch was disengaged—and drove back to the admin building. She headed straight for wardrobe where she showered and hurried into jeans and a t-shirt.

She finished tying her shoelaces when a shout made her jump. Loud and close, the cry had an odd flavor to it, something like surprise and outrage and anger all wrapped up into a shrill, startling peal.

Well-fed on intrigue and nerves, Amanda sprinted into the hallway, heading straight toward the source.

An angry female voice rang out. “What have you done? Oh, my God!”

The voice belonged to Kara, the wardrobe director. Amanda rounded the corner into the main wardrobe office where Kara squared off with a tall, dark-headed man. He wore a blue suit coat, jeans, combat boots and a white button-down, shirttails untucked.

Amanda noted the delicious athletic build hiding inside that getup. It took her a second to glance up at the man’s face.

When she recognized him, she added her own shocked protest to the pile. “Oh, my God!”

Thomas. The guy was Thomas, though not any Thomas she recognized. He had cut his hair. Short. Stylishly spiky and unkempt, and absolutely perfect for his exotic masculine features, but still very far removed from his usual savage-seducer wavy locks.

His head snapped round to see her, and then his shoulders sagged. “Oh, God. Not you, too.”

“What did you do to your hair?”

“Uh, I got it cut. Why is this a drama?”

“Well, gee, let me think,” Kara snarled at him. “Your clients will be pissed, for one thing. No wait—that’s the only thing. Has Steph seen this? Does she know what you’ve done to yourself?”

“Hey. It’s my hair, not the resort’s. Deal with it.”

“Deal with it? Oh, you did not just tell me to ‘deal with it’ in the middle of my own office.”

Uh oh. Watching Kara’s eyes narrow, and the way her head moved side to side, Amanda figured she’d better get Thomas out before this turned nasty.

Besides. It was her turn to confront him. She took Thomas by the elbow and yanked him back toward the door. He must have been eager to escape the wrath of Kara. He offered no resistance as she tugged him along.

It seemed the natural thing to do to weave through hallways and corridors until they’d sequestered themselves inside the Moroccan room.

Once the door was safely locked behind them, she gestured toward the haircut and asked the obvious question. “Why?”

He scrubbed the top of his head with his hand, making the pitch-black mess even messier. “You don’t like it?”

“Hello. Self-involved, much? Of course I like it. It looks great, but then you’d look great with a lime-green buzz cut. Point is, why did you cut it?”

He sat down, sprawling along a navy and gold brocade settee. “I had a talk with Josh yesterday. He told me we’re going to a wedding next weekend.”

Oh, great. Not only had her trust in Thomas and her mystery client been eroded, but now Josh, too. Where did he get off repeating anything she said to Thomas?

She let that go for the moment. She would take that up with Josh later. “So you cut your hair, just for that stupid wedding?”

“Only partly. I had a... thing yesterday, and the Fabio hair had to go.”

Watching him, she felt a fresh, hot wave of anger. To listen to him, everything was on the level. No double standard existed, and everything was peace and innocence. And he himself was nothing more than an actor who happened to be very good at playing a savage.

Except Amanda knew now that it wasn’t true. The savage was not Thomas’s only role. He was always acting, on set and off.

“Really,” she said. “Did this...
thing
you had yesterday have anything to do with this?”

She took her mystery client’s note from her jeans pocket. Stepping over to Thomas, she slapped the paper onto the center of his chest.

He didn’t immediately grab it like anyone else would. Instead, he left it to lie there while he fastened his eyes onto hers. He stared, almost as if he knew whatever game he’d been playing had been lost, and she was seeing him for the first time without her noob-colored glasses.

Finally, after a long moment, he picked up the note. He read it and uttered a concise verdict. “Fuck.”

She sighed at him. “Care to explain who your friend is, and why you have to protect me?”

Thomas re-folded the note, creasing it with his thumbnail while he fixed his eyes on the floor. Likely buying time to dream up a reasonable-sounding lie.

She let him think. She would learn everything she needed to know about this man by how he chose to respond. Even still, she felt a glow of fear chasing around in her gut. She’d walked into this job with her eyes squeezed shut, stinging from rejection and hurt. Never once had she considered how a place like this, with all the money and the sex and the fantasy swirling around like gilt leaves on the wind, could possibly escape the law and jealousies and intrigue for forty years.

The note hinted that the resort escaped nothing. It probably never had, and never would. The troubles were just kept under control somehow.

After reaching some conclusion, Thomas raised those liquid-black eyes once more, meeting hers with a dark frankness that made the glow of fear intensify into a full-blown wildfire.

“I’m going to tell you two things,” Thomas said, “and then we never talk about this again.”

She might have protested had it not been for the way he looked at her. His demeanor changed from vain demon-king to something harder, colder, and infinitely more remote. Another Thomas she did not recognize. But he connected. Whoever he really was behind multiple layers of disguise emerged to face her, head on. “First, this place is full of doors. Walk through the wrong one and there’s no going back. Second—” he paused to hold the note up, caught between his index and middle fingers “—when I told you that working here meant ignoring curiosity, I wasn’t kidding. If you won’t listen to me, listen to your mystery client. Don’t ask questions about me or him or anyone or anything else. Just do the job, Amanda. Nothing more.”

“That is so unfair.”

He shrugged a shoulder, and she noticed how he couldn’t maintain eye contact while he responded. “If you don’t like it, no one’s forcing you to stay.”

A hundred wounded, angry arguments clamored to be made, but something stopped her. He couldn’t look at her when he said that. He wanted to mean what he said, but he didn’t. Not really. He was every bit as conflicted by their situation as she was.

That made him human. Not unfeeling, and definitely not as invulnerable as the rest of his demeanor was meant to portray. That fact alone was a balm. It fueled something calm and controlled and delightfully rational inside that told her to walk away. Listen to him, and simply retreat. Give him room. Let him protect her, just as her mystery client said.

She intended to, only she couldn’t take her eyes off him as he got up and crossed to a sideboard where an ashtray and matchbook rested.

He burned the note. She didn’t stop him, merely stood and watched it burn. Thomas did the same, his expression stony and cold and unchanging. Impossible to tell what he was thinking.

Though umpteen questions lingered, she didn’t dare ask. She wasn’t brave enough to try just then. She reminded herself she’d resolved to walk away. When she took her first step toward the door, she felt her cellphone begin to vibrate in her pocket.

At nearly the same instant, Thomas’s phone went off. They both read their texts—the same text, as it turned out—sent by Steph, asking them to report to the Hall again.

Thomas’s jaw muscles flexed in frustration.

She wondered, in light of everything that had happened in the last five minutes, whether he might ignore the summons. No such luck. He took her hand and stalked out into the hallway, leading her in silence to the Hall. This time, a lot fewer bodies populated the house. Thomas guided her to a row near the front, pulling her into the seat beside him. The houselights came down. Stage lights cast a soft red glow over the drummer, bassist and guitarist as they took their positions.