Charmed and Dangerous (23 page)

“I was simply making an observation. Our little dinner
tête-à-tête
seemed to be turning you on.”

“I am not turned on.”

“Your nipples are poking through your robe.”

Dammit! They were.

“Stop looking at my nipples.”

“I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

“You didn’t.”

“You seem mad.”

“I’m not.”
Mad with desire for you is what I am and it had nothing to do with your sexual healing and everything to do with mine.
“Here’s another bite.” Hastily, she shoved the spoon toward his mouth.

“Whoa, slow down. Let’s take this nice and easy.”

The way he said
nice and easy
was clearly a come-on. He lowered his voice on those two words. Maddie refused to look at him. Refused to acknowledge the power of her own needs just aching to be sated.

This was too weird. Rattled, Maddie forgot to hold her palm under the spoon and ended up dumping soup on him.

“Oh damn.” She snatched up the napkin from the tray and dabbed at his shirt. “I’m so clumsy.”

“You’re not clumsy. It’s hard feeding someone else.”

Especially when that someone else was rife with sexual innuendo.

“Here,” she reached for the spoon once more. “Let’s try again.”

“I think we better just stick with the crackers and cheese and apple slices,” he said huskily.

“Good idea.”

They ate in silence, nibbling their snack, neither of them looking at the other. When they were finished, Maddie put the tray in the hallway. She turned back to find David standing beside the bed.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to help me get undressed,” he said.

“Sure. No problem.”

Liar.

She reached up and began unbuttoning his shirt. Might as well start with the least threatening item.

“Hey,” he said. “I just now noticed. There’s only one bed in here.”

“I know. I asked for two beds, but this is what we got.”

“Is this going to be a problem? Sleeping in the same bed with me?”

“I slept with you last night.”

“Yeah, but I was drunk.”

“And tonight you’re drugged.”

“So we’re cool?”

“It’s not a problem for me if it’s not a problem for you. Just as long as you don’t try any funny business.”

He inclined his hand toward his busted wrist. “I’m not exactly a threat.”

“That’s why it’s not a problem.” Maddie finished unbuttoning his shirt, revealing the broad expanse of his thick, muscular chest.

Talk about a six-pack! A dorm full of sorority girls could get falling down drunk off this guy’s belly.

Swallowing hard against her rising desire to rake her fingers along the dense, compact ridges, Maddie reached instead for his belt buckle.

And she accidentally brushed her knuckles against his fly.

Immediately, he hardened.

Wow. Compliment accepted.

“I’m sorry, Maddie,” David apologized and darned if, beneath all his black and blue marks, he wasn’t blushing.

“It’s all right,” she lied. This was the last straw. She’d been barely holding it together from the moment she’d almost run over him on the highway.

“I don’t mean any disrespect. Forgive me for the boner. It’s just that you’re so darned sexy and I’ve been dreaming of making love to you for days and you smell so good and I feel so damned rotten and . . .”

“Shhh.” She laid a finger over his lips.

“No seriously, I’m really sorry. I’m embarrassed and ashamed over my lack of control. I have no excuse for my behavior. Absolutely none.”

“Will you just shut up?” Maddie said and kissed him.

Chapter

SEVENTEEN

A
S AN ATHLETE,
Maddie listened to her body and right now, it was telling her to go with the flow. Her skin sizzled with heightened warmth, her muscles quivered fluidly, her breathing, though controlled, lifted her to a whole new level of experience.

David tasted like champagne and chicken noodle soup and Camembert cheese and sesame seed crackers. He ran his wicked tongue along her lips and down her chin. She tossed her head, exposing her neck and waiting for his heated kisses to find her pounding pulse point.

With unerring accuracy, he homed in on that erogenous region and nibbled like a Pharaoh at his wedding feast. He cupped the back of her head in his left palm, holding her still while he devoured her scorching flesh.

“Are you giving me a hickey?” she asked.

“Do you want one?”

“No. Yes. Oh, just keep doing what you’re doing. It’s making my toes curl.”

“Good answer.” He wrapped his good arm around her waist and drew her closer.

She knew he was still flying high on the drugs they’d given him at the hospital. Knew she was skimming along on adrenaline and no sleep and the very real fear that David could have lost his life tonight. It seemed a sacrilege not to celebrate his survival. And while Maddie knew better than to trust this sweet freefall into the abyss of pleasure, she followed it anyway.

Where in the hell is your infamous common sense? Where’s your caution?

Out the door, out the window, out of this world. Who knew? Who cared? Not she. Not at this moment. She had plenty of time for remorse and recrimination tomorrow. For once, she was going to do something impulsive, totally out of character and completely irresponsible.

He loosed the belt on her robe and it fell open. When the cool air hit her heated skin, she sucked in her breath. Glorious!

But not half as glorious as what David was doing to the hollow of her throat.

Flick, flick, flick, went his tongue.

Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle went her groin.

Had she ever felt so desperate, so achy, so out of control?

While her intense feelings scared her, they also liberated her. Here she was, in Monaco with a man she barely knew, taking a walk on the wild side.

Cassie would be proud.

Her mother would be proud.

Okay, she was even proud of herself. Never in a million years would she have guessed herself capable of such complete abandon. She nestled against David, absorbing his body heat, enjoying the pure physical sensation. They were alive. That’s all that mattered.

He lowered his head and lightly kissed a trail down her cleavage. Maddie drew in a long, shuddery breath. Oh yes.

Dipping his head lower still, he took one beaded nipple in his mouth and she almost screamed, it felt that exquisite.

Her practical side was getting scared. She could almost hear her knees knocking.

Before she had time to reconsider her rash rush to intimacy, David was kissing her again with an urgency that French-fried her wary voice and short-circuited the last wire of her resistance.

They fell onto the bed together, careful of his broken wrist, but not much else. David pawed at her robe, roughly thrusting the lapel out of the way. Maddie grappled with his belt, tugging the smooth flat leather free from the loops and tossing it across the room.

He pushed her into the mattress, kissing her all over. Her lips, her eyes, her cheeks, her chin. He swept her away on wave after wave of erotic emotions.

Joy and fear. Lust and tenderness. Excitement and trepidation.

They were breathing hard, breathing in tandem, inhaling the same air, inhaling each other.

She fumbled with the hook and eye on his trousers. He ran his fingers across the fine blond hairs on her chest.

He groaned.

She moaned.

She slipped her hand past the waistband of his pants and into his underwear. She sucked in her breath, daunted by the heat of him, hovering on the verge of generous discovery.

At the same time she was investigating him, he was investigating her.

“You’ve got the flattest, tautest tummy I’ve ever seen,” he marveled, strumming his hand over her abdomen.

“Two hundred sit-ups a day on an incline board,” she bragged shamelessly, thrilled that he loved her body. Some men thought she was too muscular, but apparently not David.

He slid his fingers slowly between her thighs and Maddie thought,
I can’t believe I’m here, doing this. Letting myself go without overanalyzing things.

While his fingers explored below, he let his tongue do the walking above her waist, licking her like a lollipop.

Her nipples bloomed under his attention and her breasts grew heavy with need. If he was this good when he was chock full of painkillers, she shuddered to imagine what he was like when he was up to full speed.

He’s vulnerable. You’re taking advantage of him.

That thought brought her up short and she stopped rummaging in his underpants.

“What is it?” he gasped, raising his head to gaze into her face. At the sight of his swollen eye guilt kicked her in the gut. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re wounded and I’m acting like a sex fiend. I should be taking care of you, babying you.”

“Hush.” He laid an index finger over her lips. “I need sexual healing.”

“But—”

“Not a word.”

“You don’t really want sex,” she mouthed around his finger.

“Be quiet.”

“What you really want is some good old fashioned TLC and I started . . .”

He clamped his hand over her mouth. “What part of stop talking don’t you understand?”

“Daydid,” was how his name sounded from behind his salty palm.

“What I really want is to make love to you, Maddie, so don’t ruin it by over-thinking things, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now, where were we?” He lowered his head again.

Maddie tapped him on the shoulder. “We can’t do this.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t have a condom. Do you have a condom?”

“In my bag.”

“And where’s that?”

“Probably on the supersonic train shuttling back and forth from Paris to Madrid.”

“My point exactly.”

“I’ll go get a condom. Just hold that pose.”

“You can barely walk and it’s after midnight.”

He sighed and rolled over onto his back. “So that’s it?”

“This was a bad idea from the beginning.”

“It was a fine idea.”

“No it wasn’t. I should never have kissed you. Why did I kiss you?”

David groaned and this time not with pleasure. “Do you have to analyze everything to death? We were both horny. Things got hot and heavy. Common sense prevailed. End of story. Now let’s go to sleep.”

“You’re right. I should just let this go. We’ll forget all about it. Yes. It’s forgotten.”

Apparently so. David was already snoring.

Great. He was cattywampus in the bed, crowding her out. Fine, she’d just go blow dry her hair and wash out her lingerie. Let him sleep. He needed the rest.

In the meantime, however, what was she supposed to do with the throbbing ache he’d created between her legs?

He couldn’t forget all about it.

David listened to Maddie puttering around in the bathroom while he pretended to be asleep. The drugs were wearing off and his numerous pains were returning to needle him.

She was humming softly under her breath and he caught himself straining to recognize the tune and finally identified it as a song by Faith Hill about the rapture of a mind-blowing kiss.

He smiled at the ceiling. He had gotten to her whether she would admit it or not.

Trouble was, she’d gotten to him too.

In a way nobody had in a very long time. Maybe even never. He thought about Keeley, about how he’d felt when he was around her and he had to confess his feelings then were nowhere near as intense as these strange and inexplicable emotions he was having for Maddie now.

The delicious smell of her remained in his nostrils, a tantalizing ghost scent. The honeyed flavor of her lips lingered on his tongue, rich, full, promising. He shook his head, remembering how quickly he’d grown hard when she’d barely touched him.

He couldn’t keep lying to himself. He wanted Maddie more desperately than he had ever wanted any woman. Keeley included. He found her, quite simply, irresistible.

Some men might think she was too muscular or that her chin was a little too pointed. But he appreciated the contrast of that determined chin in juxtaposition to her soft, bow-shaped mouth. He admired the richness of shadow in her cheekbones, the clarity of light in her emerald eyes. He loved studying the geometry of her form. Her lines and curves, the angles and circles that made up her womanly body.

But his feelings for her went far beyond her physical attractiveness.

He respected how she was warm, supportive and compassionate with those she loved. He admired her work ethic and her steady reliability. She enchanted him utterly and he had never expected to be so smitten, but here it was.

He loved her loyalty, her no-bullshit outlook on life and how she fought the good fight. He enjoyed being around her. She sparked his interest with her clever sense of humor and her pragmatic approach to problem solving.

He even found her worrywart tendencies endearing. It showed she truly cared. And while he sometimes found her cautiousness a challenge, she challenged him in a good way. After what she’d told him about her family, he understood why she had trouble trusting other people to be there for her the way she was there for them.

Which was kind of weird when you thought about it, because he’d never been big on offering his trust indiscriminately. But if he ever got Maddie to put aside her doubts and trust him completely—what a precious gift that would be.

Did he dare hope for such rewards? Was he expecting too much?

He also knew it was no coincidence she’d been the one to find him after he’d been beaten up by Blanco. Even though David wasn’t a big proponent of destiny, he believed something had placed her on that road at just the right time. She had an instinct for being there whenever you needed her. He probably owed her his life.

And to think he’d ditched her at the Prado.

He felt guilty and misguided and ashamed of himself for not having more faith in her. He should have told her about his suspicions that Blanco had kidnapped Cassie away from Shriver. He should have told her what Isabella had told him about Cassie’s plan. He should tell her now.