Dangerous Tease (11 page)

She sucked his bottom lip into her mouth before claiming his lips, sliding her tongue along his. The deliciousness of the moment nearly undid her and she had to pull away.

“What are you thinking?” His shoulders tensed.

“That a girl could get used to fucking you on a regular basis.”

He laughed. “Thank God, I thought you'd changed your
mind.”

“Not about this.”

She reached around and unhooked her bra's clasps, letting it drop to the floor. Her breasts, heavy with wanting, tingled with newfound freedom. Her panties hit the floor next. Josie hooked her fingers into his waistband and whipped his underwear down his legs, kneeling in front of him so his cock was at mouth level. She slid the head across her lips, his precum wetting
them, before licking from the base to the tip with one lap. Salt, soap and heaven mixed together on the tip of her tongue as she opened her mouth for him.

“Fuck, Josie, you—” Whatever else he'd planned on saying was lost in a moan made of equal parts bliss and torture.

Slow and deliberate, her mouth traveled up and down his shaft setting the pace for what she planned to be a long evening.
Nothing else existed right now except for them, and God knew, she'd always appreciate Sam for giving her that. She hoped he'd feel the same after the search for Rebecca's Bounty was over.

Too soon, he stepped back, leaving her hungry to taste more of him.

Josie stood up and sashayed the few steps to where he stood. “Don't tell me you're changing
your
mind now.”

He laughed, but there wasn't
any humor in the sound. Instead it was more an animal growl that skittered down her spine and made her entire body throb. At that moment, she knew sex with Sam would never be just a fun way to get off. Already her body called out for him like the roulette wheel beckoned the hopeless gambler.

“Come here.” He sat down on the ottoman.

Determined not to lose herself completely in Sam, Josie hesitated
to regain her mental footing, then grabbed her purse from the floor. She popped the magnetic latch and fished around inside until her fingers contacted the foil square. Prize acquired, she dropped her bag and strutted over to the ottoman.

When Josie moved to sit astride him, he caught her hips. “No, stay right there.”

That magic mouth of his went to work on her sweetest spot, his tongue and
lips swirling around her clit as two fingers slipped inside her hot slit and rubbed against her G-spot in a rhythm so unhurried, it bordered on cruelty. In and out he worked as she straddled the peak between anticipation and orgasm, unable to fall back or leap forward. Her thighs began to shake as he continued, increasing the pressure inside and outside of her. Needing to steady herself, she tangled
her fingers in his hair and begged for release in a tone so desperate she barely recognized it as her own. And that was when he said something, he words muffled so she couldn't understand, but the vibrations of his voice rubbing against her provided that extra push. Everything faded to black all around her a split second before her entire body tensed with a climax that obliterated her bones.

Coming down a moment later, Josie tried to catch her breath. As the blackness dissolved, it was Sam's face she saw first. The tantalizing mouth, slick with evidence of her desire. That little scar on his cheekbone, flushed with color. Those hazel eyes with the golden flecks. His usual shield of coolness was gone, revealing his hungry, adventurous soul.

He ripped the condom wrapper open and unrolled
the latex down his thick cock. Watching his hands wrap around himself had Josie squirming as if she hadn't just had a body-melting orgasm.

Her heart hiccupped, but she refused to drop her own defenses enough to wonder why. She'd run far enough out of her comfort zone already tonight. Instead, she lowered her body to his, sheathing his hard cock inside her.

His large hands held her ass, rocking
her hips forward, and she lowered herself to meet his thrusts again and again. She arched her back, bending like a bow, pleasure making her quiver. Moving one hand from his knee, she cupped his balls, squeezing lightly, his appreciative moan sending a shiver down her spine.

Just when she thought she'd regained control, Sam slid his hand around and his thumb found her clit, which he pressed in
the same quick-quick-slow tempo as the two-step they'd danced at Robidoux Roadhouse. The world exploded around her again and her hips rocketed forward, coming down hard on his cock as the orgasm ripped through her. A few thrusts later and his climax followed.

They sat there for a few minutes with her legs wrapped around his waist and his head resting on her shoulder.

A tightness clamped down
on Josie's lungs and a lump threatened to block her throat. Closing her eyes, she locked her jaw and fought to stop the release of emotion.

Damn. Now she wanted more than a single night, but her secrets dangled over her head, ready to drop and shred her happiness at any moment.

“You are amazing.” Sam's words tickled her collarbone.

Gulping past the lump, she banished the waterworks with the
aid of years or practice. “You're no slouch yourself.”

Without disentangling her from around him, Sam stood up and carried Josie to his room. There, they lay down in his king-size bed and snuggled under the tan comforter.

S
am's chest hair tickled Josie's nose and she blinked the dryness out of her formerly closed eyes. In the pitch dark of his bedroom, she couldn't see anything, only feel. And that was enough. She sighed and snuggled deeper into the natural pocket where his shoulder met his chest, which just happened to be the perfect size for her head.

His calm, deep breathing made her eyes droop
as her lungs moved in time with his. She needed to find her jeans and beat feet out of here, but she ignored the nagging voice of reason. A couple of more minutes to soak this up and then she'd force herself away from Sam's welcoming body, out of his warm bed, and head back to her studio cabin on the edge of town with its scratchy floral comforter and blinking fluorescent bathroom light. Her eyes
closed completely and she flung her leg across Sam's thigh. Five more minutes.

A creak sounded across the hall and Josie's eyes fluttered open. A subtle pop echoed in the dark and she woke completely, every sense on alert.

Straining her ears, she picked up on the shuffle of feet against tile.

Snips?

His muscle from Vegas?

Her body tensed and her heart raced. She held her breath for what
seemed like an eternity, waiting, dreading what she'd hear next until she couldn't stand the burning in her chest any longer.

Josie unwound her body from Sam's and brought her lips to his ear. “Sam, wake up. I think someone's here.”

“Old house,” he mumbled and rolled away from her.

“No.” She poked him in the kidney. “Someone is here.”

He didn't say anything, but he turned onto his back, eyes
opened, and stared at the ceiling. A series of muffled thunks and bangs filtered into the bedroom. When she opened her mouth, he silenced her with a shake of his head.

They sat like that as the tree branches scraped against the window, pushed by the gathering wind outside, but no other noises sounded in the dark. Maybe she'd been wrong. It was an old house. A cute bungalow, but still an old house.
Hell, it could be her subconscious pushing her to get the fuck out of bed. It was about time she listened to that instead of made-up noises.

Annoyed with herself, she sat up and tossed the comforter off her body. At the same moment her feet hit the floor, a short series of thumps blared in the silence.

Sam bounded out of bed. “Stay here.”

“No, Sam, wait. It's Snips.” She wrapped her fingers
around his forearm, his muscles tensing under her touch.

Another thunk echoed down the hall.

“Stay here.”

Before she could blink, he crept out the door and into the hall.

“Yeah, like that is going to happen,” she muttered. Lickity fast, she grabbed one of Sam's T-shirts from a chair and pulled it over her head before following him into the dark hallway.

Ignoring the ice-cold tiles, she
tiptoed to where Sam stood outside a closed door. Light filtered out through the crack between the door and the floor.

He shot her a dirty look before jabbing a finger in her direction and then pointed it toward the floor.

She gave him a hand signal too, one of the middle-finger, single-digit variety.

A vein throbbed at his temple, but he turned his attention back to the door.

She didn't
hear any more noises, but with the blood rushing like white-water rapids through her ears, she didn't take that to mean the invader had left. Nerves strung tight, she flexed her fingers, hoping to ease the adrenaline pounding through her system.

Tension radiated off of Sam as he reached toward the brass doorknob.

His fingers wrapped around it and he slowly rotated to the right.

The light
under the door blinked out.

Sam pushed the door open with a whoosh and stormed into the darkened room.

Josie swallowed her scream.

A whump echoed in the room, followed by a thump and a crack. Two shadows grappled, silhouetted against the bay window. One crashed to the floor.

Breaking out of her brain freeze, Josie slapped her hand against the wall until she contacted the switch. Light flooded
the room.

A pitiful mewling cry emanated from a man curled into the fetal position on the floor. Latex-glove-covered hands shielded his eyes as he sat up.

“Put your hands down,” Sam bellowed from his spot by the window.

“But the light—”

“Put them down!”

The man pulled a pair of night-vision goggles from his face, taking more than a few strands of greasy, shoulder-length gray hair with it.
Red suction marks circled his twitching eyes. A ten o'clock shadow darkened a familiar jawline. He caught sight of her in the doorway and broke into a crooked smile that made her heart stutter. Curiosity besting her sense of self-preservation, she stepped closer to him. His eyes didn't have the same gold flecks, but they were the same hazel color as Sam's.

“What in the hell are you doing here,
Uncle Harlan?” Sam stood arms akimbo, naked as the day he was born.

Josie's blood started pumping again, but for a whole other reason than fear. She jabbed her short nails into the palms of her hands. This was not the time to get distracted by Sam's tight ass or strong thighs or his…damn, she was a lost cause.

“Does Mom know you're here?”

“No. No one knows I'm at your house.”

“Not at my house,
here in Dry Creek.”

Uncle Harlan cleared his throat. “Um, no. And I'd like to keep it that way. Your mother doesn't like me very well.”

“Doesn't like you? You're lucky she didn't fill your skinny behind with buckshot after you stole Rebecca's diary and then lost it in a poker game. The only reason you still get invited to Thanksgiving dinner is because of her promise to Granny Marie. If it was
up to mom, she'd bury you hip high in an ant hill.”

“That sounds about right.” He rearranged himself so he sat with his back straight, the soles of his feet together and interlaced his fingers around his bare feet. All in all, he looked pretty Zen for a guy who'd just gotten caught in the middle of a B and E. “Why don't we meditate on this latest development.”

“Are you completely nuts? You just
broke into my house.” Sam grabbed a small, grimy duffle bag, the contents of which clanged together. “With burglary tools and, what, night-vision goggles?”

Sam's disapproving tone had no impact on Uncle Harlan, who sat straighter. “A concession I had to make to age. I can't lurk around in the dark as I used too, my eyes won't let me. Getting old is hell on the body, but the yoga helps. You should
start now, Sam. It does wonders.”

“But you had the lights on.”

“True, but it's not like I could turn the rest of the lights on in the house.”

Sam stomped over to his uncle and loomed over him. “You're after the map, aren't you?”

Uncle Harlan grimaced and waved a hand at the swinging parts of Sam's anatomy only inches from the older man’s face. “I don't mind your nudity; however, can you take
a few paces back?”

Throwing up his hands in annoyance, Sam roared, “You break into my house in the middle of the night and then complain that I'm naked?”

Peering around Sam's legs, Uncle Harlan wriggled his snowy eyebrows at Josie. “I'm sure you had your reasons. Very good reasons.”

“Leave her out of this.”

Uncle Harlan grinned his crooked smile and doffed an imaginary hat at Josie. “Sorry
to interrupt.”

Despite the fact that she should be annoyed at him, she couldn't help but warm up to the bedraggled black sheep of the Layton clan. “Maybe you should go get some pants on; I'll keep an eye on the prisoner.”

The old man's eyes twinkled at her jaunty salute to Sam.

Sam rolled his eyes and stomped out of the room, grumbling something about old fools and idiotic treasure hunters.

“So you're after Rebecca's Bounty?”

“For fifty years now.”

Fifty years of searching and no treasure? Josie's gut sank as her visions of an easy find faded away. Snips was not the patient sort. He'd send his goon after her—or worse, after her parents—if she didn't find it.

So she'd find it, that's all there was to it.

“Of course, up until this week, I hadn't heard there was a map. Now that
changes everything.” He nodded and reached out a skinny arm toward her. When she obliged, his bones popped and cracked as she helped him into a standing position. He placed both hands on the small of his back and completed a shallow backbend, setting off a cacophony of pops as his bones set to right.

“I thought yoga was supposed to make you more limber?”

“I'm sure it is, but I don't do yoga.
I just said that to bust that young man's chops. He always did get riled quick. I think it's because they treated him with kid gloves after Michael died.”

“Who's Michael?”

Uncle Harlan made a
thch-thch-thch
sound and shook his head. “Sad story that is. The boy died so young. Sam never was the same after.”