Intent to Seduce & a Glimpse of Fire (13 page)

“Have you made any progress?”

“Hmm?”

“On your research? Have you made any progress?”

He had made progress. The tiny circles that his fingers were making inched higher. What he was doing to her seemed even more erotic contrasted with what she was trying to think about, talk about. She drew in a shaky breath. “I’ve had some success with…” One of his fingers was stroking down the silk of her panty and was close to…

“Success with…?”

She dragged her thoughts back. “Animals,” she managed to say. “They’re not aging as quickly. Wilbur, one of my lab rats, has been with me from the beginning. He’s lived to be…”

His finger slipped beneath her panties and entered her.

“Lucas…”

He leaned very close so that his lips were nearly brushing hers. “I can’t do here what I could have done back at the hotel. If we were there, I would take you into the bathroom and sit you on the vanity. That’s what I wanted to do when you dropped your towel. We could watch in the mirrors while I entered you. I want you to see both of us when I’m inside you. I want you to know it’s just you and me. No fantasies.”

But it was. It was the most seductive fantasy he could have conjured up. And she wanted it more than anything. She wanted Lucas to want her just the way she wanted him. Once more, Sophie’s advice filled her mind.

“Come back to the suite with me, Mac.”

No. Shaking her head to clear it, she met his eyes
steadily. If she went back there, it wouldn’t matter whose turn it was, she would fall under his spell just the way she always did. Just the way she was right now. She had to know that she could seduce him. “One question first.”

She watched his eyes narrow and darken. Here was the recklessness and the danger that had drawn her from the first. “Not from that damn questionnaire?”

“No, it’s a simple date question. Would you play a game of pool with me?”

His hand finally stilled as he stared at her. “Are you always going to be able to surprise me?”

“I asked my question first.”

“The answer is yes, just as long as I’m playing with Mac.”

“You’ve got a deal.” And, as Mac, she finally had a plan.

“M
Y GRANDFATHER TAUGHT ME
to play pool in this room,” Lucas said as he led the way through the door at the end of the bar. “I loved it.” Past tense. Pool was the last thing on his mind right now. What he wanted to do more than anything was throw Mac over his shoulder and carry her back to the hotel. If they made it that far. The way he was acting, they might not make it farther than the first shadowy doorway along the street.

Ruthlessly, he pushed the image out of his mind. He’d asked her here on a date because he’d thought it would be safe.

Was there anyplace in the world where she would be safe from him? Or anyplace where he might be safe from wanting her?

He watched her walk over to the rack of cue sticks and run her hand down one. He couldn’t blame his reaction on a fantasy this time. Mac was the one who’d set out to tease him with that questionnaire.

“Ready?” she asked as she turned back to him.

He glanced at the pool table. He was ready all right. And he could make sure that she was in seconds. All he would have to do…

A loud burst of laughter had him shifting his gaze to the open doorway. The crowd around the bar was growing, and the pool table was in plain sight.

Moving to the rack, he selected a stick. When he turned
to her, he found her looking at him in that quiet, intent way he was becoming familiar with.

“You really loved your grandfather, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Yes. He was a remarkable man. He worked very hard to build Wainright Enterprises.” He chuckled. “And he always took the time to play hard too.”

“You were lucky to be able to spend time with him. I’ve heard that grandparents are a lot less judgmental than parents.”

Lucas glanced up from racking the balls. “Your parents judged you a lot?”

“My mother. I think I’m a constant reminder to her that she failed in her first marriage.”

He thought of his own parents—his mother who had left when he was barely five and his father who’d remarried within a year. “Mine pretty much left me to nannies, and whenever that didn’t work out, my granddad took over.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “The nannies didn’t work out?”

“Bad things always seemed to happen to them—frogs in their beds, cockroaches in their tea cakes. It was almost as if the house were haunted.”

“Shades of
Turn of the Screw?
”

Grinning, he propped a hip against the pool table. “Not quite that bad. Just enough to get my grandfather’s attention. What about you? What’s the worst thing you ever did to your nannies?”

A smile hovered at the corners of her mouth. “The worst I ever did was to give them the slip and disappear for the day.”

“I can’t picture Dr. Lloyd playing hooky, so it must have been Mac.” He tucked the new insight away. “What did you do when you gave them the slip?”

Her chin lifted. “Maybe I learned to shoot pool.”

“Did you?”

“You’re about to find out.” Turning, she walked toward the table.

“It’s a good idea to chalk the sticks first.”

After he demonstrated, he watched her imitate his actions perfectly. “You’re a very quick study, Doc.”

She shot him a very level look. “I’m Mac. Or did you forget?”

His grin widened. “Touché. When Grandfather and I played, we always used to have a friendly wager, just to keep the game more interesting.”

“Sure. Have you ever played strip pool?”

Lucas stared at her.

“It’s basically like strip poker. When you win the first game, you tell me to take something off, and—”

“I know what the wager in strip poker is.” She’d tossed it out as if she’d been playing pool for years, and that was her usual bet. And she was suddenly close enough to run a finger down the buttons of his shirt.

“Of course, we probably couldn’t really strip—not here. Not if I have to be Mac and you have to be Lucas. But we
could
pretend. I could tell you exactly what I’m taking off, and you could imagine.” She leaned closer until her body just brushed against his. “You do have a pretty good imagination, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” His imagination was both excellent
and
fertile. The picture of what she’d looked like standing in his bedroom earlier had beamed itself right into his mind. Now he was projecting what she would look like lying on that pool table, wearing absolutely nothing.

“I’ll go first.”

His gaze tracked her as she moved to where he’d racked
the balls, and he managed to follow her just in time to see the skirt she was wearing hike up a full two inches when she leaned over the table.

Glancing over her shoulder, she said, “Any suggestions on what I should do next?”

Later he would wonder if it was the heat in her look, the sultry invitation of her tone or the images she’d managed to conjure up in his mind. Perhaps it was the whole package. The only thing he was really aware of was that he couldn’t resist her. And if he moved toward her now, touched her now, he was afraid…

He’d taken one step when she straightened and grinned at him. “I can’t believe it.”

“What?” He was amazed that he’d managed to get the word out.

“I was just being myself. Mac. I swear I was. I didn’t know I could do that. And it was
working!
I could see it in your face, in your eyes.”

Lucas narrowed his eyes. She was baiting him. She’d known exactly what her suggestion had done to him and precisely how her skirt would hike up when she’d leaned over that table.

“You amaze me,” he said. And he realized that nothing he said could have been truer. He wondered if he would ever figure her out. But he did know that two could play at the little game she’d begun. He tapped his cue stick against hers. “Why don’t you turn around and I’ll show you how to break the balls?”

She grinned at him. “I don’t think so.” She shot a quick look at the open door they’d walked through.

When he followed her gaze, he saw the crowd in the bar had grown even more, so that there were groups standing, drinks in hand, just outside the room.

“Even as Lucas, I don’t think you’d want to get arrested
for…” She glanced back at him, the laughter clear in her eyes. “What exactly was it you had in mind a few seconds ago?”

“You’re playing with fire, Mac.”

When she laughed, he couldn’t help but smile.

“You stand over there like a good boy,” she said.

Lucas very nearly laughed, himself, when he did exactly what he was told. Meekness had never been one of his strongest virtues, probably because he didn’t believe that the meek would one day inherit the earth. But then, thanks to the doc, he’d done a lot of things out of character in the past day and a half. Of course, it wasn’t the doc ordering him around now. It was Mac.

Leaning against the wall, he watched her take the rack off the balls and bend over the table. As she ran the stick through her fingers in short little strokes, he watched her hands. Her fingers were long, delicate-looking. But he recalled how strong they’d felt on his skin, pressing, demanding. Taking.

Straightening, Mac lifted, then relaxed her shoulders in a circular motion. This time, she planted her feet farther apart before she bent back over the table.

If they were alone, he could walk right up to her and… Out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone glance into the room, then walk away. He could easily shut the door and prop a chair against it. Then he could go to her, lean over the table with her… She would gasp in surprise as he pressed against her, pinning her against the table. Then he would whisper in her ear, “You don’t know me. I’m not even going to tell you my name.” He would tell her exactly what he was going to do, describe every action, even as he did it. He’d make quick work of pushing the skirt up to her waist. Then he’d release his zipper and free himself so that she could feel him pressing against her with nothing
but her panties separating them. All he would have to do then was push her down against the table and tear away that last, thin, silky barrier. Then he could bury himself in her. Lose himself—

The sharp crack of the cue ball smacking against the others sent Lucas’s fantasy splintering off in as many directions as the balls. Drawing in a deep breath, he let it out slowly and dragged his attention back to the pool table. He thought he saw three balls sink into pockets.

“Aren’t you going to congratulate me?” Mac beamed a smile at him as she moved to the other side of the table.

“Congratulations.” He struggled to free his mind of the remnants of the fantasy he’d woven.

“That doesn’t sound very sincere. I don’t think you were paying attention.”

Could she see into his mind?

“Watch,” she said as if she were talking to a recalcitrant child. “I’ll show you again.”

To Lucas’s astonishment, she did.

“Well?”

“Do it again,” he challenged. This time he watched more carefully as she set up a complicated bank shot. It wasn’t the one he would have chosen, but the moment she set it into motion, the cue ball careened off the side of the table into three others and sent them spinning into three different pockets.

“You hustled me,” he said.

“I did no such thing,” she said, moving toward him. “You assumed I didn’t know how to play, and you’re the one who wanted to make a little wager, just to keep the game more interesting.”

“Were you telling the truth? Did you really learn to shoot pool when you were playing hooky from your nannies?”

“I learned in college. I was too young to date, but there were a lot of guys who didn’t mind a kid sister-type tagging along. Especially if she could tutor them in physics or biology or calculus.”

“That’s all they wanted you to do? Tutor them?”

“I started college at fourteen. The deans and the resident directors had read all the guys the riot act. Not that they were tempted. I was a total geek, a one-hundred-percent nerd.”

Mac at fourteen. Lucas tried to form a picture of it in his mind. It reminded him of the person he’d glimpsed at Sophie’s party—a timid little bird, eager to help but determined to remain on the sidelines. Probably because she was so sure she wouldn’t fit in.

“Did you beat them all at pool?”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t hard. Getting them to see the utter simplicity of calculus was hard.”

“I’ll bet.” He could barely keep a straight face at the seriousness of her expression. He wanted to grab her and hug her, twirl her around the room. But he didn’t trust himself to touch her at all. And if he was patient now, he might learn more about the woman who hid behind the facade of Dr. Lloyd. Look how much he’d learned already. It was a good enough excuse to wait—almost.

He watched her lean across the table for a very long shot. She could have taken it more comfortably from the other side of the table. Was she doing it because she didn’t see that, or was she doing it so that he could see the lacy edge of her panties when her skirt moved up? He took another drink of his beer to ease the dryness in his throat and watched the ball sink.

By the time she’d cleared the table, he’d had several more views of the edge of her panties. He was just about through waiting.

She collected and racked the balls before she approached him. Then she put a hand on his arm and said in a voice only he could hear, “Time to pay up. Picture this— I’m taking your pants off right now. Of course, I can’t really take them off.” She glanced toward the doorway. “Someone might come in, so we’ll just have to imagine that you have to take your shots wearing only your boxer shorts.”

He leaned down and whispered into her ear. “I’m not wearing boxers
or
briefs. Picture that.”

The quick hitch of her breath had him grinning as he moved to the door, shut it and jammed a chair beneath the knob.

When he turned back to her, she was taking off the string of pearls she’d worn around her neck. “Now you can really take off your pants.”

He walked toward her. “Now I can do a lot of things I’ve been planning.”

She let the pearls swing from two fingers. “I’ve been thinking of something too.”

He lifted her onto the pool table and began to ease off her panties.

“You were supposed to take off yours first.”

There was laughter mixed with the excitement in her eyes. He couldn’t have wanted her more. “No problem.” Pulling the belt loose, he let his pants slip to the floor.

“I suppose you’re going to insist on going ahead with your plan first.”

“Absolutely,” he said as he gripped her hips and pulled her to the edge of the table. “But I promise to let you have your turn next.”

V
ERY SLOWLY
, Sophie twisted around on the bar stool and let her gaze move over the crowd. The room was dim, the
music live and pulsing with bass. Laced through it was the din of conversation and laughter.

She was in her element. She should be having a good time.

And the prickling sensation at the back of her neck was just due to the fact that she was in a place where people came to meet other people. Of course, they would be looking at her—perhaps even staring. She glanced down at the dress. Hadn’t she chosen it just to get some attention?

She’d bought it Monday on that shopping trip with Mac. The green color went particularly well with the red wig she was wearing tonight. When she’d walked through the lobby of the hotel and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she’d been amazed at her resemblance to Mac.

Lifting her glass, she took a sip. Tonight she was MacKenzie Lloyd and not Sophie Wainright, and she
was
going to have a good time.

The concierge at her hotel had been right on the money with his recommendation. The Side Street Grill was crowded with people, mostly singles, or at least pretending to be. The last man she’d danced with had forgotten to take off his wedding ring. Tables circled a dance floor, and on the second level, pressed against a balcony railing. On one wall, tall glass windows looked out on a patio lit with Chinese lanterns.

She caught herself rubbing the back of her neck again and immediately dropped her hand to her lap. She was being ridiculous, paranoid. Gripping her wineglass between her fingers, she began to turn it in slow circles on the bar.