Heat Seeker (20 page)

“God, I love watching you,” he groaned. “I could watch you for hours.”

A sensual smile twisted her lips as one hand lowered from her breast, her fingers trailed down her abdomen. John watched hungrily, with mounting excitement, as those delicate fingers pressed beneath the jean material, moving for the sweet, wet flesh beyond.

He gripped the waist of her jeans and pulled them over her hips. He nearly lost what was left of his mind as he watched her fingers circling the damp bud of her clit. The glistening little pearl peeked between the folds of her pussy, gleaming with arousal as she rubbed at it, stroked it.

He managed to get the denim off her legs, jerked a condom from his back pocket, thanking God that he’d pushed one in there earlier, just in case.

Oh yes, he remembered how sweet and hot Bailey could get. How many times in Australia had he missed out on that sweetness because he hadn’t been prepared?

Rising to his feet, he toed his boots from his feet and stripped his jeans, barely aware of the chill in the air as the heat from the fireplace licked over his flesh and the heat of lust licked inside him.

As he lowered himself to one knee between her spread thighs, his gaze was glued to the journey her fingers were making from the tight bud of her clit to the slick entrance beyond.

He could barely breathe for the need striking inside him. His muscles were clenched from the effort to hold on to his control as he watched, his fingers massaging the muscles of her thighs as he watched her fingertips sink inside the delicate opening.

“Beautiful,” he whispered, his voice guttural.

Pulling her fingers back, her juices glistening on the tips, he watched as she lifted them and stroked her lips.

Lust tore through him like a punch to his gut as he watched her juices glisten on her lips a second before her tongue swiped over the lush curves.

He could barely breathe now. He could feel the need for oxygen tearing at his chest as he panted, fighting to retain the mental capacity to hold on to his control.

His fingers were shaking as he tore open the condom and worked it over his cock. The flesh was so swollen it was painful, so hard it was like iron. The need to thrust inside her was a primitive, primal response that he could barely hold back.

Leaning over her he licked over her lips, moaning at the sweet taste as he let his fingers move between her thighs to tangle with hers. He stroked the silken flesh to feel the heat of her. He dipped his fingers into the tight entrance, stroked and caressed her as her hips arched to him and her moans filled his ears.

Her fingers gripped his wrist while her thighs fell farther apart, welcoming his fingers into her as a strangled cry tore from her chest.

She was burning alive beneath him. Sweet and hot, stealing his mind as he fought to hold back. Just a few more minutes. Dear God, just enough to imprint the memory of this into his mind forever.

BAILEY STARED UP AT JOHN
, watched the firelight flicker over the dark, savage features of his face, and felt her heart expanding in her chest. There was nothing so sexy, so completely filled with driving lust and sensual excitement as this man.

As he kissed the arch of her foot, she saw Trent. As his lips grew heavy, his gaze flickered with need, and his expression tightened in the lines of a man intent on mating, she saw the lover she had thought was dead forever.

This was Trent, yet he wasn’t Trent. He was different, harder, hungrier, but still the same man she had loved for five long, lonely years.

A part of her was crying out in joy, another part filling
with pain. He was alive. He hadn’t died. He had deserted her instead.

No matter the pain, she couldn’t pull away from him. This memory, this short time spent with him was all she was going to have. She couldn’t bring herself to make him stop. She couldn’t bring herself to deny him.

As his lips came to hers in a kiss filled with passion and torrential need and his fingers began to slide inside her, filling her, stretching her, she knew that a part of her would always belong to him. A part of her would never let go of the lover who had stolen her heart so long ago.

“You make me insane to have you,” he groaned against her lips as she arched closer, driving his fingers deeper inside her.

“Not insane enough,” she panted. “You’re not taking me.”

“Are you sure?” Two blunt male fingers thrust inside her, sliding through the slick juices that eased from her pussy and pushing past clenching, desperate tissue.

“Oh God. John.” She was ready to scream out in need. It wasn’t enough. She needed more of him. She needed all of him.

His fingers weren’t enough, his kiss wasn’t enough.

As his lips moved from hers to her jaw, her neck, and then lower to her breasts, she could feel her temperature rising, the need growing inside her to an inferno level. Her hips arched closer as his fingers began to fuck inside her with steady strokes and his lips closed over a too-sensitive nipple.

The suckling heat of his mouth, the lash of his tongue against her nipple, and the smooth, driving strokes of his fingers fucking inside her were too much. The pitch of excitement was rising, growing to a degree that she couldn’t bear the sensations. Her stomach contracted, her muscles tightened and she could feel her orgasm growing, just out of reach.

Wrapping her arms around his neck she arched and writhed against him. His name was a ragged chant on her lips, drawn from the growing desperation building inside her.

Lightning-hot bolts of sensation tore across her nerve
endings, whipped through her body, and sent waves of clawing hunger washing through her.

She couldn’t bear it. The need was tearing at her like a ravenous beast, filling her with a desperation she couldn’t fight or control any longer.

“Please, John,” she cried out, fighting to breathe through the hunger that tore at her senses. “Take me now. I can’t bear it. Please.”

“God, I can’t let you go yet,” he groaned against her breast as he licked at her nipple before turning to its mate. “Not yet, Bailey.”

His fingers worked inside her, stroking and caressing tender tissue, stoking the fire burning inside her until she could feel the flames licking at her soul.

“No. No. Now.” She arched, the muscles of her pussy tightening around his thrusting fingers. “Now, John. Please.”

She couldn’t bear much more. She needed so desperately to feel him inside her that she couldn’t bear the sensations.

“God, you’re killing me.” His fingers slid free of her as he rose between her thighs. “Sweet sweet Bailey, you’ll be the death of me.”

She watched, licking her lips in anticipation as he stroked the sheathed flesh of his cock and moved closer to the aching center of her body.

She reached for him, gripped the hard shaft herself and lifted to him, drawing him to her and tucking the head of his erection into the clenching entrance of her pussy.

“Love me,” she whispered. “Just this once.”

His expression tightened, his gray eyes darkened to nearly black as he froze against her for one long moment. Their gazes locked, Bailey watched as something akin to grief swirled in the hungry depths of his eyes.

“Forever,” he whispered, the word almost soundless, almost broken as his hips moved.

Bailey cried out, her hands flying to his hips while he thrust against her, pushing inside her, working his erection desperately into the tight depths of her sex as the world began to explode around her.

She saw stars. She saw a sunburst explode inside her mind as he thrust to the hilt, stretching the sensitive tissue as she clenched in reflex around him.

His groans mixed with her cries as he began to move. There was no time for slow loving now. They needed too much, had too many memories, too many sensations to store up inside their souls.

John felt as though his soul were pouring from his body into hers. He couldn’t hold back the emotions any more than he could hold back the need that tore at him.

His balls were tight with the need for release, his cock flexing, clenching as he felt her pussy tightening around him and the hard arch of her body when her orgasm flooded through her.

His name was a steady chant on her lips. Love filled her voice, her hold, it wrapped around him until he could feel nothing, sense nothing but Bailey. Until nothing mattered but the woman, until he released inside her with a hard growl, his body arching, tensing until he felt as though he had been shattered from the inside out.

Until he knew, without Bailey, he was nothing. Pleasure would be a thing of a past. He would be like a ghost, haunting the world for the love of a woman.

God help him, how was he was supposed to walk away from her now?

THE NEXT EVENING BAILEY
stood amid the bright chandeliers, surrounded by the slow, sweet strains of orchestral music, and watched the eleven other couples in attendance at Ford Grace’s dinner party.

These dinner parties were always excellently timed to coincide with other parties being held through the night. Tonight the couples in attendance would leave to attend a fete held in honor of one of Hollywood’s leading men, who coincidentally was staring in a major production by a studio that Stephen Menton-Squire and his wife, Josephine, held major interest in.

Bailey had never enjoyed the rounds of dinner parties, despite her mother’s attempts to instill a sense of excitement about them. They were boring, the food was too rich, and the guests were too self-involved. She had never understood why her parents had enjoyed them so much.

After-dinner drinks were served in the large family room of Ford’s mansion. The chandeliers overhead were dimmed. Tastefully arranged lamps were set in place around a large seating area, which faced a crackling fire. Conversation flowed as freely as the alcohol.

“Interesting group,” John murmured from where they stood next to French doors that led to an evergreen garden beyond.

It was an interesting group. Every suspect left on the
short list that had been compiled was in attendance. Was it possible that Warbucks wasn’t one man, but a group of four?

“There’s Raymond,” Bailey said softly as John drew her onto the dance floor. “Whoever or whatever Warbucks is, he’s here tonight. All the major families are in attendance.”

“As well as a few well known criminal elements,” John pointed out rather sarcastically. “Amazing the clout a few good drugs will get you.”

It was amazing the amount of drugs that actually flowed in a party such as this one.

“No one has yet approached me,” she kept her voice low, her lips close to his neck as she spoke. “Considering I’m the one that chose the broker for this deal, and the one with the code needed, you would have thought I would be approached by now.”

“He’s waiting to see what you’ll do when confronted with the choice,” he told her. “No doubt he’s well aware of the fact that the brokers will let you in on the secret. Better you have one of them arrested than one of his men.”

“True,” she murmured. “Still, not exactly the wisest course of action where I’m concerned.”

“There’s no way he can know that one of us isn’t who we seem,” he told her. “My background is solid, darling, stop worrying. I’ll be fine.”

“Maybe it wasn’t you I was worried about.” She smiled before nipping his neck with her teeth. She was rewarded by the tightening of his hand at her hip and the hardening of his cock against her lower stomach.

That was how she liked him. Hard for her, hungry for her.

“I’ll make you pay for that comment later,” he assured her.

“Excuse me, Mr. Vincent, but perhaps you should give the rest of us a chance here.” The deep, dark male voice at her side had Bailey lifting her head from John’s shoulder to encounter the snake-mean gaze of an American broker known for his penchant for sexual torture and terrorist connections.

Ralph Stanford was the only son of a very successful Texas rancher. He had married an international model whose
extremely good looks had withered away within years of her association with him.

“Ralph.” John stepped back with smooth grace as the other man laid his hand on Bailey’s hip. She almost felt her skin crawl.

“We could skip the dance.” She smiled tightly as he began to lead her around the room. “Why not get a drink and have a seat?”

He chuckled at the suggestion. “And miss a chance to rub against you as Vincent was doing? For shame, Bailey, knocking the rest of us off the playing field so easily isn’t exactly sportsmanlike.”

“I never claimed to be a sportsman, Ralph,” she drawled, well aware of the fact that John was watching the other man closely.

Tall, almost gangly, with rather long brown hair and fierce hazel eyes, Ralph Stanford could have been handsome if he didn’t work so hard at being the bastard he was. The corrupt soul of the man seemed to darken his expression, his eyes, even his smile.

“I would have thought you’d at least be required to be impartial,” he stated with no small amount of malice. “Fucking one of the competitors just seems a bit like foul play to me.”