Evening Storm (4 page)

“No.”

“Okay,” he said easily.

But he kept up the massage, stroking his thumbs from her palm around to her wrists, then moving in long, slow strokes up her forearm to the tight knots at her elbows. Her shoulders hitched down in stages as the tension eased from her body, and her lashes drooped. He didn't vary his pace at all, just kept his touch steady, deep, drugging. She'd let him touch her. It was a potent aphrodisiac, the slightly forbidden nature of it, the hint of seduction. She was no sure thing, his modiste. The setting sun burnished her hair into flame.

“Tell me,” she murmured. Her hand in his deepened the dance with erotic temptation, the fire-tipped eyelashes drooping as if he had his mouth at her throat.

He would give anything to know why she changed her mind, but he didn't want to give her a reason to return to rationality. The street was quiet, very little traffic in this part of Manhattan after business hours. In terms of what he needed for his cover, this was the worst place to be. Quiet. Isolated. Unlikely to be noticed.

This was exactly where he was supposed to be.

“It was nothing special. Just dinner at a restaurant with a velvet rope to manage the crowd. Paparazzi everywhere. A couple of movie stars inside. Very expensive. Very public, which suited both of us. It was late, almost midnight, when we got back to my place. She poured me a whiskey . . .”

He stopped, remembering the moment. He'd become the kind of man a woman managed, getting him a drink, then giving him a new toy. It was so artificial, so practiced, the way she moved, what she did and said. Roles. They were playing roles.

“Jameson?” she asked.

“Macallan's,” he said, to tempt her because she obviously knew her whiskey. “Then she slipped down the hallway to the bedroom. I stood in my living room—”

“Describe the view.”

He looked at her. Her eyes were closed, possibly because he was massaging tiny knots out of the muscles connecting tendons and ligaments to bones in her hands, possibly to let her imagination run wild with his words. He had no idea what she was imagining: him with Jade, him with her, her with some other man.

Then again she had no idea whether the story he was about to tell her was true or not.
Go on, Simone. Close your eyes. I'll draw you in. Make you mine.

“I live in one of the buildings near Columbus Circle,” he said. “My living room looks out over Midtown all the way down to the tip of Manhattan. At night you can see the bridges, the lights on ferries and sailboats and cargo ships moving out of the open water into the rivers.” When the knot at her elbow released, she made a little rasping noise and let her head droop forward. He rubbed thumbs and fingers into her arm, all the way down to her wrist.

“Keep going.”

The massage or the story? He picked up her other hand, the tips of her fingers damp from the condensation on the beer bottle, and closed his own eyes, the better to tell the story exactly as it happened. “When she comes out of the bedroom, she's wearing heels, panties, and nothing else. She's carrying the corset and the robe. She'd worn her hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail while we were out, but now it's tousled around her face and her upper arms. It doesn't quite hide her breasts. The ends curl around the curves, and around her nipples. She lets me look. She told me at dinner that her ambition was to do the Victoria's Secret television special and the
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue. She likes being watched.

“Without a word, she holds out the corset. I take it and move behind her, leaving her exposed in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Midtown Manhattan. Goose bumps rush up her arms and her nipples tighten. She's definitely getting off on being watched. I situate the corset around her midsection. It fits perfectly to the curve of her hips as I fasten each hook and eye. When I finish, I pause for a moment, then reach over her shoulders to gather her hair in my hands and drape it so it hangs in waves down her back. The movement exposes her entirely to the windows.

“I lean forward and put my mouth by her ear. ‘Anyone could see you,' I whisper. Her nipples tighten even more, perhaps from the words, more likely from the image they conjured. I stand behind her, fully dressed in suit, tie, and wingtips, and set my hands on the bare skin between the end of the corset and the elastic of the panties, stroking the dimples on either side of her spine with my thumbs, and her taut abdomen with the tips of my fingers. At the touch, she shimmies a little. Reflected in the glass, her breasts swayed just enough to draw my eye.

‘Movements will only make it more likely you're seen,' I murmur.”

Simone had gone remarkably quiet for a woman who hummed with presence. He lifted his gaze to Simone's face, curious to know how this affected her. Was she enjoying it? Turned on? Turned off? Appalled? The muscles under her delicately freckled skin were slack, and her eyelashes drooped. Bedroom eyes. If he'd had to guess her reactions, he would have started with appalled, then amused, then disgusted. Instead she met his gaze with far more desire than he'd felt in the moment, when he'd been posing Jade like a breathing doll. His blood heated, pooling low in his belly. She pulled her left hand free, and for a moment he thought that was her way of ending the story. Then she put her right hand back in his.

“Keep going.”

She could burn him down to the ground, nothing left but ashes and charred bones. He knew where she held her tension now, his hands easily finding the tight knots at her elbow, coaxing them to release down to her wrist. The underside of her forearm rested on his knee. The intimacy made his brain stutter, hitch, then find traction again as he continued the story.

“Her breath comes a little more unevenly. She's definitely getting off on being watched. I can work with that. I reach for the robe, which is draped over the arm of my sofa, and hold it for her to slip her arms into. She peers over her shoulder at me, obviously bewildered that I'm putting more clothes on rather than taking off what little she had on her body. I stand in front of her and tie the intricate knots that close the robe, the knots you showed me how to tie,” he added, watching for her response.

Color bloomed in Simone's cheeks and she bit her lip. “I remember,” she said, the words husky, slow.

“She stands docilely in front of me, her head bent as she watches my hands. Intrigued by the feel of the thin robe over the silk corset, I smooth my fingertips up her side to the edge of the corset, then run them along the top edge, not quite accidentally brushing the backs of my fingers against the under curve of her breast, then over the tips.

“Her lips part slightly, and the tip of her tongue comes out to slide along the edges of her teeth. I cup the soft weight of her breasts, pinch each of her nipples. When she moans delicately, I release them and slide my hands up to cup her jaw. It's a move right out of the movies, but this already feels like a performance. I brush one thumb, then the other, over her mouth, and feel her tongue touch the sensitized pads of my thumbs as I do so. Then I release her face. If she wants to put on a show, I'll make it easy for her.

‘Walk over to the window.'

“She does, hips swaying provocatively as she walks. She stops in front of the windows and looks at me in the glass.

‘Put your palms on the glass.'

“She does, looking at me in the reflecting surface. Her eyes are heavy-lidded, her lips parted and pouting.

‘Face me. Stretch your arms over your head.' She does that as well, adding a little stretch and sway of her own volition. ‘Remember what I said about movement attracting attention?' I say.

‘I remember,' she says. ‘Ryan, please.'

“I walk over to her, and when I reach her, I loosen the robe's tie just enough to ease the fabric down her shoulders but keep it tied around her waist. The fabric restricts the movement of her arms and frames her breasts quite beautifully. Once again I sweep her hair back over her shoulders, then say, ‘Turn around.'

“She faces the windows. I get onto my heels behind her and gather the lace at the edge of the robe in both hands, pulling it up as I rise, exposing her long, long legs and the curve of her ass. I tuck the fabric into the belt around her waist, and marvel at how absolutely dirty it is to be fully dressed behind a woman who was exposed for my pleasure, and her own.

“I put my hands on her hips and guide her back until she has to put her hands on the glass for balance. Now she's bent forward, tipped up to offer herself to me, her breasts thrust out in much the same way, leaving her face and torso completely exposed to the glass. I hook my thumbs in the elastic waist of the bikini panties and pull them down to midthigh.

‘Anyone can see you,' I say as I stroke my palm over the curve of her buttocks and hips. ‘Anyone can see you like this, exposed and about to be fucked.' She lets out a soft little whimper. ‘Do you want me to fuck you like this?'”

The sound he heard was a soft, throaty little noise, too real and immediate to be memory. Ryan realized he had closed his eyes only when he opened them and saw Simone, her head bent, her hair shrouding her face. Her soft lips were parted, and she was breathing in shallow little inhales and exhales too refined to be anything so gauche as
panting
. Her left hand lay slack on her thigh but her right hand and arm were even tighter, probably from wielding scissors and an embroidery needle and thread. Carefully, he didn't change his motion or the intensity of the pressure. He went back to the story.

“She catches my gaze in the reflection of Midtown's skyscrapers, bites her lower lip, and nods. I'm still fully dressed as I pull my wallet from my jacket pocket, take out a condom, and hold it between my teeth while I unzip my pants and release my cock. I haven't moved away from her while I do this, so my knuckles brush the backs of her thighs and the curve of her bottom while I roll it on. She's watching in the glass, her hands slipping a little as she holds herself ready for me. In the analytical part of my brain that never shuts down, I wonder what my housekeeper will think when she next cleans the windows. Undressed just enough to be serviced, I take a moment and smooth both hands from her breasts to her hips to that juicy inner curve of her bottom. I run my thumbs over the shaved lips of her sex.

“Sometimes it's all an act but she's wet, ready for me. I grip my cock and push into her slowly, one careful inch at a time. It's a vulnerable position, and I want to be sure this is good for her. Her fingertips curl against the glass when I'm seated all the way inside her. A beat of pleasure thumps through me at the reflection. In the glass she looks like a wet dream, the heels, the disheveled clothes, those miles of bare legs spread just enough to allow me access. It's hot, she's hot, and only getting hotter as I start to move. Each thrust forces a sexy little gasp from her parted lips. I lean over her and brace one hand on the glass above her head. With the other I gently part the slick, swollen lips of her sex and find her clit. All at once she gasps, shudders, and jerks back into me, and suddenly it's game on. Her cries are truly desperate now, her head thrown back, her throat bared to the glass. If she's faking it, it's the best performance I've ever seen.

“Pleasure is pooling in my balls, climbing up my cock quarter inch by quarter inch with each thrust. I'm circling her clit as I thrust; in the glass I watch the sex flush bloom on her collarbone and climb her throat. It's no surprise when she stiffens and cries out in short, helpless bursts. I close my eyes and lose myself in the rush to orgasm. I thrust deep inside her as I come.”

He stopped, suddenly aware that they were sitting just a few inches away from the sidewalk. It felt like a confession, but the story was like the reflection of Jade's face or the city's lights in his windows, washed out, distorted, distant, but at least mirroring reality in some small way, a reality that was shifting and changing with each breath he took. He waited, watching Simone's face as she opened her eyes.

Simone surfaced slowly from the erotic spell Ryan wove as he talked, hearing first the rush of tires against the street as a car passed, then a burst of laughter from a group of women on Seventh Avenue. The deep, rhythmic strokes of his thumbs against her forearms and his fingers massaging the tender flesh on the underside of her wrist never slackened. Her skin was too tight, the pressure of his fingers against her hand reminding her of all the places he wasn't touching. It would take almost nothing to get off; she almost got there just from listening to him talk. His voice wasn't particularly deep, probably a tenor if he were a singer, but there was something about the way he noticed details. She'd expected him to tell her how much of a stud he was because he banged a supermodel, but instead he told her a story about noticing what Jade wanted. He'd figured out what Jade's fantasy was, and given it to her without judgment.

She opened her eyes and found him watching her, his expression difficult to read. It wasn't triumphant. It was . . . a little fearful—like she'd judge
him
, mete out punishment, flay the skin from his bones—and a little curious, like he wanted to know if it turned her on. The story both confirmed her opinion of him and subverted it. He'd behaved exactly as she'd expected, and yet he hadn't.

“Did she spend the night?”

His eyebrows lifted slightly. “No. I put her in a cab an hour or so later. She had to fly out to Milan the next day. What did you think?”

She considered the question rather seriously. Neither exhibitionism nor voyeurism were fantasies she contemplated before this, but the way Ryan told the story made it feel like she'd been watched by millions but seen by no one except him.

“It's not really my fantasy.” That was the truth. The fact that she'd responded to it had nothing to do with the fantasy and everything to do with—

She tugged ever so slightly, which prompted his fingers to relax but not release her. His fingers trailed along her skin as she pulled her hand and arm back and broke the connection between them.

“I really shouldn't be listening to this,” she said. Tendrils of her hair clung to her cheeks. She used both palms to push her hair back from her face. “I should have stopped you. I had no idea you were going to be so explicit. It was a private moment between you and Jade.”

He wasn't looking at her anymore, instead picking at the label on the beer bottle and staring over her shoulder toward Sixth Avenue. His shoulders lifted in a cynical motion that wasn't a shrug, accompanied by a sound that wasn't a laugh. “It was a transaction, but without any money changing hands. I've thought about money, and not much else, for so long I've forgotten that you could pay with other things.”

She knew this line of thought, knew it well. In some relationships, you paid with your heart or your soul or your self-esteem or your self-respect. “I'm sorry,” she said.

“Not your fault,” he said. He finished the bottle of beer, and by the time he set the empty bottle on the cement steps, the rakish charmer was back. “I never really paid attention to lingerie before. It was something I took off as quickly as possible.”

A common mistake. She smiled. “I don't really design with an eye toward the sexuality of an outfit. I design so the woman experiences her own sexuality. If you were with a woman who wore it for herself, you'd know.”

He let that linger in the summer air, drift with the traffic noise, the hum of air conditioners in the windows overhead. “Confidence is the sexiest thing ever,” he finally said. His voice was low and rough, barely audible over the traffic on the distant avenues.

She stopped breathing. For a moment the city swamped her, the scent of tires and engine oil, the heat rising from the city's infrastructure running underneath the streets, the ever-present faint hum of jackhammers, the taste of the beer warm and rich in her mouth. Was he wondering what it would be like for her to touch him? The thought left her dry-mouthed. Flustered, she tipped back the bottle of beer.

“Once I saw you on your knees, it was all I could think about.”

She froze, beer trickling into her mouth.

“Fuck my fucking life,” he said, disgusted. “That came out wrong.”

She laughed, spewing beer out her nose and all over the steps leading down to the sidewalk. Once she started laughing she couldn't stop, in part because he had slapped his palm to his forehead and was rubbing it in chagrin while he muttered under his breath. She wiped her forearm inelegantly over her nose and mouth, and tried to get her face under control. “You didn't mean that to sound the way that it sounded?”

“Nope,” he said with false cheer, looking heavenward as if God himself could intervene.

She shouldn't ask this question, shouldn't give in to the tension and attraction crackling between them, but he was so difficult to pin down. Average guy who walked in off the street, seducer, the wolf, and now a man with his foot in his mouth, and all of it sharing space with that shocking, sparking charisma, tightly leashed. It was so companionable to sit on the steps in this great, humming, thriving city and just talk to someone. Not just someone, to him.

She really shouldn't ask this question. Maybe he'd say something if she stayed silent, so she tipped back the beer bottle again, and this time managed to actually swallow the beer. Still quiet.

“What did you mean?”

He shifted on the stoop, then finished off his own beer. “I just meant . . . There was something about the line of your back as you bent to pin the hem. Except . . .” He paused again and she got the sense that he wasn't a man who had trouble expressing what he felt, but rather that he didn't do it often. No, Ryan Hamilton felt things very deeply, but for some reason he was reluctant to share what he felt. He drew a breath and looked down the street toward Seventh Avenue. “It wasn't just the line of your back. It was the curve of your shoulders and the angle of your elbows, the way you pulled pins from the pincushion on your wrist. You were sitting back on your heels, and you were so competent at the task in front of you. You know who you are, what you're doing, and why. It's hot as hell.”

Every cell in her body was quivering. Of course she'd been complimented before, on her work, on her designs, on her temper's ability to make male designers cower, but never before had a compliment made her heart swoop in her chest.

“Shit,” he said disgustedly. “That's not what I meant, either. Of course you're competent. Your designs are absolutely amazing, unlike anything I've seen, and trust me, I've seen a lot of lingerie. Mastery, is what I meant. Watching you was like watching a brilliant dancer. You had total control of the material, and your tools. And her,” he said with a wry smile. “Which is no mean feat. What exactly were you muttering under your breath while she was wandering around in the showroom?”

“It loses something in the translation,” she said.

“Liar.” She smiled at him and finished her beer but neither confirmed nor denied his spot-on assessment.

He gave her the cocky grin again. “What would I have to do to get you to talk French to me?”

The wolf was back. Simone wasn't sure whether to feel disappointed or relieved. She could cope with the Ryan who played the role of the billionaire robber baron outfitting his latest mistress. The Ryan who massaged her hands and elbows and seduced her with words was an unfamiliar creature, and far more tempting. But this conversation only confirmed her initial assessment. This couldn't happen again. Fortunately his question about talking in French gave her an out. She retreated to the safety of silly flirtation.

“What is it with men and French accents or the French language?”

The grin transformed into a squint. “Are you kidding me? You don't have any idea how hot it is?”

“Of course I don't have any idea how hot it is,” she said. “I understand that other people find it arousing, but to me it's just the way people talk.”

“Yeah, that thing in the middle about it being arousing? That's why.”

She gave him a little nudge with her knee, then stood up and stretched.

He continued below her. “If the French language makes you think of other things, like French kissing—”

“Why doesn't it make anyone think of the French horn? Or French fries?”

“It makes me think of French letters,” he said.

“I know what those are,” she said. “Get your mind out of the gutter.”

“The gutter is where I live,” he said as he got to his feet. Just like that the mood shifted, because his tone held not bitterness, but something else. Regret.

“Most people automatically assume I live in the gutter because I design lingerie,” she said before she remembered she had misgivings about forming a closer connection with Ryan. “I must think about sex
all the time
. But I don't. Sex isn't the only thing that can happen when a man finds a woman irresistible.”

He glanced away, as if discomfited. “Your process is missing a key component,” he said.

They were standing on the stoop, him on the step below her, so their faces were aligned. She couldn't stop herself from looking at his mouth. He smelled like summer and beer and warm skin. That particular scent rose from the open collar of his shirt, where his pulse beat at the base of his throat.

“Let me tell you about it,” he said, his voice low yet light, almost teasing. “You should know what happens when a woman wears your designs, when the confidence you give her gets her the experience she wants.”

She couldn't breathe. She wanted to kiss him, to set her mouth to his and taste him, to feel that sweet electric moment when his tongue touched hers. She wanted to take off his clothes and explore his skin, the different but no less potent beauty of the male body that was hers to command. She wanted to breathe in the air he had exhaled, take him deep inside herself in every way possible. Her body was growing slick and tight with desire, little flickers of want snapping under her skin. Based on the way he was looking at her mouth, he wanted the same thing.

A split second before she gave in to the temptation to lean forward, he stepped down one more step, then to the sidewalk. She inhaled shakily and tried to deny the regret deep in her belly.

“Think of me as a research assistant,” he said. He'd shoved his hands into his pockets; they balled into fists, as if to resist touching her. “Doing field work, so to speak. Reporting my findings.”

“You're a cad,” she said.

“Who says
cad
anymore?” he shot back, but he didn't deny it. He shrugged. “Besides, you don't know if any of that was true. I could have made it all up.”

“Were you making it up?”

He laughed; the sound startled, but his gaze was sharp. To her surprise, he stepped up on the stair again. Her heart gave a wild leap, because the look in his eyes went beyond playful seduction to predatory. He leaned close, and his breath whispered against her cheek and ear. “It doesn't matter. You weren't imagining her.”

His lips grazed her cheekbone as he drew back, the kiss the height of proper, Continental sophistication for two parting acquaintances, but the faint pressure sent heat spiking through her. “Don't,” she said involuntarily.

“I know,” he said, and she could see that he did. She knew well enough to avoid his type, and he . . . he wanted something she would surrender reluctantly. “I shouldn't. I won't. But that doesn't change how much I want to.”

This time she stepped back, her foot precariously positioned on the step above her, putting some much needed distance between them. He was bad news in every possible way, a wolf in pursuit of prey—money, women, success, status—and while she respected his drive, she knew better than to get drawn into his world.

He retreated to the sidewalk again, taking a single step backward without looking and somehow managing to transform giving ground into a challenge.

“See you around, Simone,” he said. Hands still in his pockets, he turned and set off down the street.

She closed her eyes. “Sainte Marie, Mère de Dieu, et tous les saints qui veillent sur nous,” she whispered, because he'd discerned the truth: through the whole story she'd imagined not the supermodel, but herself.

When she opened her eyes, he was gone.

Her first mistake, she decided while she was negotiating terms with her Chantilly lace supplier, was letting him touch her.

Her second mistake, she decided while she and Lorrie shoved and tugged the four-poster bed to a better position under the windows, was letting him tell that story. The whole story.

Her third mistake, the worst mistake, she decided when she crawled into bed at the end of a week without seeing him, was laughing at him. With him. He looked younger, happier, more alive when he laughed at himself.

Maybe he wouldn't come back.

She set him aside and focused on her work.

She didn't see him for several long, hot weeks, during which his irresistibility should have faded into nothing but a memory. It didn't, because Ryan Hamilton's cream-smooth voice and skill as a storyteller wreaked havoc with her, body and soul. Before he started telling her about his night with Jade, she'd not thought about the consequences of listening to him, but afterward she couldn't erase the images from her mind. Therefore even though she was fully occupied with helping a client on a busy Saturday afternoon, Simone knew the exact moment Ryan walked into Irresistible. A frisson ran over her nape, and the resulting electric spark made her heart skitter in her chest. It took her a moment to realize that the energy in the room had changed. A hush fell in the showroom, the kind that happened every so often when the people in a crowded room all stopped talking at once, but when conversation resumed, the energy was different. It was the agitated hum of a group of people pretending everything was normal when something shocking had actually happened.