Passion and Scandal (11 page)

But, damn, it was beginning to tell on him!

There was a limit to how long a man could stand being in a constant, unrelieved state of arousal, and he'd just about reached that limit. It was time to call it quits before he did something they'd both regret.

"What do you say we declare a cease-fire?" he suggested, putting his hands on her shoulders to push her away from him.

But Willow wasn't about to abandon the attack while he was still standing, especially not while he still wore that insufferably smug, amused male grin.

She resisted the pressure of his hands and leaned into him, letting her breasts rest against his chest. "Sure I can't tempt you?" she murmured, looking up at him from under the thick fringe of her lashes.

Steve looked down at the lush expanse of feminine flesh pressed against him. Framed by the edges of her open jacket, the smooth ivory globes of her breasts swelled over the low-cut bodice of her dress in blatant invitation. A tiny muscle began to twitch in his chiseled jaw. The amused grin faded. "You could tempt a saint without half trying," he growled.

Willow smiled and tilted her head back, giving him an even better view. "But not you," she said, pouting.

"But not me," he said stiffly, suddenly wondering how he could ever have thought this little game of hers was the least bit amusing. He was suddenly so hard it hurt. "I don't get sexually involved with my clients," he said through clenched teeth. "It's a rule I have."

Willow lifted her chin so that her lips were mere inches from his. She knew she was playing with fire, she could see it in the blue flames burning in his eyes as he looked at her, feel it in the way his hands flexed against her shoulders, but some devil of feminine pride—or feminine desire—pushed her to test his limits. And her own.

She licked her lips. Slowly. "Is that an ironclad rule?" she murmured.

His mouth suddenly dry, Steve nodded.

She tilted her chin a bit more and ran her free hand up the lapel of his sport jacket to the back of his neck. "Even if you've been specifically invited to break it?" she whispered, her fingers feathering up through his hair.

"Is this a real invitation, Willow?" he murmured, his voice harsh and husky. "Or is this still part of the game?"

"Would you say yes if it was real?"

"Later, when this is over, and you've got your balance again, I'll say yes so fast it'll make your head spin," he promised.

"No. Not later. Now," she said, and went up on tiptoe to press her lips to his.

She felt him stiffen, holding himself back from her kiss. One second... two... five... and then his control broke and his arms came around her, gathering her to him as if he meant to never let her go.

She'd won.

But, suddenly, it wasn't a game anymore.

Fire raced through her. Hot. Heady. Utterly irresistible. She dropped her purse and wrapped both arms around his neck, holding him as tightly as he was holding her. Her mouth opened for his tongue as he plunged it between her lips. Her body softened, melting into his without forethought or calculation, instinctively reacting to his show of masculine aggression with fierce feminine surrender.

He slid his big hands down her back to cup her bottom, pressing her softness into the hardness of his painfully aroused body.

She moaned into his mouth, answering his silent demand with a rolling undulation of her pelvis.

He backed her up against the door of her room, holding her there with the slow, grinding thrust of his hips, and ran his hands up her sides to her breasts.

She arched her back, thrusting them into his hands.

He curled his fingers over the edge of her low-cut bodice, pulled it down, and cupped her bare breasts in his palms.

She gasped, her nipples hardening in instant response.

And then, carefully capturing one pebbled nub between his thumb and forefinger, he bent his head and took the other into his mouth.

Willow cried out as twin bolts of lightning ricocheted through her body. She couldn't tell which pleasure was the greater; his hard, callused fingertips plucking delicately at one rigid nipple, the warmth of his mouth, sucking strongly at the other—or the rock-hard erection pressing against the exquisitely sensitive mound between her thighs. Either one or all of them together were nearly enough to send her over the edge. She grasped handfuls of his hair in her fists and pressed her mouth to his head to keep the whimpering cries of ecstasy locked behind her lips.

They strained together there in the brightly lit hallway of the hotel for several moments longer, both of them trembling uncontrollably, their bodies shifting and sliding against each other, their breathing coming fast and harsh, their blood pounding through their veins... and then the bell on the elevator pinged, sounding like a cannon shot in the silent hall.

They pulled apart reluctantly, eyes wide and pupils dilated as they stared at each other for one long, wild second. Willow gasped and turned toward the door, hurriedly yanking the bodice of her dress back in place just as the elevator doors slid open and three men in business suits got out.

Steve swore savagely and went down on his haunches, balancing on the balls of his feet as he picked up her purse and the items that had fallen from it when it hit the carpeted floor. A tube of red lipstick, a monogrammed silver compact, a credit card, her rectangular plastic room key... he gathered all but the last into one big hand and stuffed them back into the tiny purse. Then, key card in hand, he stood and opened the door to her room. Neither of them dared look at the other, neither of them said a word as the three businessmen from the elevator walked on past them and down the hall.

Willow turned her head, looking up at him as he stood there, as still as a statue, with her purse and the room key looking like a child's toys in his hands. He was breathing as hard as she was, and his eyes were as avid and hungry as she knew hers must be. All games were forgotten now; she was a woman firmly caught in the throes of a fiery, consuming passion.

"Don't ask me," he pleaded hoarsely, reading the question in her eyes before she could utter it.

But she had to. "Are you coming in?" she whispered.

Steve shook his head and, jaw twitching, shoved the key into her purse and put it in her hand. "I can't."

Willow refused to let the hurt and disappointment show. "Fine," she said, giving him the anger of a woman scorned instead. She stepped across the threshold into her room, then turned and gave him a vixen's smile. "It might interest you to know that I'm not wearing any underwear," she lied, and slammed the door in his face.

Steve groaned and only just managed to keep from pounding his head against the wall.

Willow threw her purse at the closed door with a vicious oath, then sank down on the edge of the bed and dissolved into confused tears.

* * *

The persistent ringing of the telephone finally penetrated through the thick veil of dreams that enveloped her, dragging Willow from the arms of a deep, uneasy sleep. She mumbled a protest into her pillow and reached out with one hand, blindly groping for the handset, knocking it off the nightstand in her uncoordinated effort to silence the annoying sound. Rolling onto her side, she grasped the coiled cord, drew it up over the edge of the bed, fumbled for the receiver, and pressed it to her ear.

"What?" she grumbled into the transmitter, groggy and disoriented from a night spent drifting in and out of the most sexually explicit dreams she'd ever experienced.

"It's nearly ten past eight," the subject of those dreams growled in her ear. "You were supposed to meet me in the lobby at eight o'clock sharp."

Willow felt her whole body flush with embarrassment at the sound of his voice, every scandalously salacious detail of those heated nighttime fantasies flickering through her mind in Technicolor clarity; two bodies, intimately entwined and gleaming with sweat; two pairs of hands, touching and stroking; two pairs of lips passionately locked together. It was fitting retribution for the scandalously salacious way she'd acted last night.

Willow groaned and pulled the pillow over her face, as if he could see her through the telephone.

"Are you still in bed?" he asked suspiciously.

She sat up abruptly, kicking the blankets off, and put her feet on the floor. "No," she said, and stood up to give some credence to her words. "I'm up. I was, ah... I was just about to get into the shower when I heard the phone ring."

"You haven't showered yet? Damn it, Willow." He sounded as grumpy and out of sorts as she felt. "We're supposed to be at Ethan Roberts' at nine. I thought you wanted to get this matter cleared up as quickly as possible." He sighed, loudly, a put-upon male putting up with the exasperating, irritating vagaries of a female. "How long will you be?"

"Fifteen minutes. Twenty, at most," Willow said and hung up without waiting for his reply.

* * *

Steve stood downstairs in the lobby, the house phone clutched in his hand, and wondered what she'd been wearing when she picked up the phone in her room. A silky robe, as soft and smooth as her skin? A hotel towel? Nothing?

The raging demon of unfulfilled desire he thought he'd beaten down during his early-morning workout with the punching bag came back full force. He'd never wanted a woman the way he wanted Willow Ryan, and the teasing game they'd been playing was only part of it. A small part of it, actually. The need in him had been building since the very first time she'd looked up at him with those big golden brown eyes of hers, well
before
she deliberately set out to drive him crazy.

Which was why he had to be so damn careful. He knew he had a weakness for damsels in distress and they, it seemed, had a weakness for him. It was almost on the level of an occupational hazard and the main reason he'd made his rule about not getting sexually involved with his clients. Obviously, he hadn't explained it to her properly yesterday. Otherwise she wouldn't have gotten so mad and proceeded to twist his libido into knots. His rule was really more for his clients' protection than his; his amorous urges toward the women he was hired to help were usually mild and easy to resist. And
gone,
once he'd solved their problems for them and they were no longer in distress.

But last night... hell, last night it had felt as if his guts were being yanked out through his navel when he told her no and let her go into that hotel room alone. And the feeling hadn't abated one measly iota since then.

The only consolation was that he knew she'd felt the same way. He'd seen the desire burning behind the anger in her big golden brown eyes, heard the hurt feelings hiding under the taunting words before she slammed the door in his face. He'd heard the muffled thud when her purse hit the hotel room door, too.

Knowing she was as furious, as mad with thwarted desire as he was, somehow made it easier for him to gather up the shattered remnants of his self-control and walk away instead of pounding down the door and demanding to be let in so they could finish what they'd started. In some strange convoluted way, knowing she wanted him with an intensity equal to his desire for her made it easier to wait until the time was right.

If the feelings lasted beyond the end of the case—and he somehow knew they would because feelings like the ones churning up his gut didn't just disappear—then he'd give in to them. And her. But not until then.

"I just hope to hell Ethan Roberts turns out to be her father and we can close this case
today,"
he muttered to himself as he returned the handset to its cradle.

The minute she was no longer his client was the same minute she was going to find herself flat on her back in his bed. And she'd be damned lucky if she wasn't bow-legged before he let her up again.

* * *

Willow got herself together in less than twenty minutes, racing through her morning ablutions and a quick application of makeup without her usual meticulous attention to detail. She dressed a bit more carefully, choosing a midcalf apricot-and-ivory-print silk dress with a modest V neck, sensible beige T-strap shoes with small Louis heels and a boxy ivory linen jacket. With her usual small gold hoop earrings and serpentine necklace, she looked cool, composed and professional. In short, like herself and not the wanton temptress of last night.

She wished she could just wipe that whole embarrassing episode out of her mind—and his. It wasn't anything like her normal sensible self. She'd never deliberately teased a man before in her life, no matter how great the provocation, or how mad he'd made her with his arrogant assumptions.

"I'm not wearing any underwear."

What on earth had she been thinking to say something like that? And, good God, what if he'd given in to her teasing and said yes when she asked him—
begged
him—to come into her room last night?

She'd have awakened this morning in bed with a man she hardly knew, that's what!

An arrogant me-Tarzan-you-Jane kind of man, with arms like a stevedore, and the dimpled grin of a naughty boy... a man with hard, callused hands, who'd touched her with delicacy and finesse... a man who talked like a street tough and acted like a knight in shining armor... a man who was all man and made her feel totally, helplessly female in return.

It would have been
glorious.

And stupid.

And she wasn't going to waste one more second of her time thinking about it.

From now on it was going to be strictly business between them, she promised herself as she hurried down the hall to the elevator. She'd hired him to help her find her father and that was
all
she'd hired him for. The fact that he made her tingle all the way to her toes had nothing to do with anything.

* * *

Steve stood with his arms crossed, his shoulder propped against one of the marble pillars in the lobby, watching from his position of stationary surveillance as hotel guests exited and entered through the electronic doors of the hotel's six elevators. He didn't move as Willow stepped out of one exactly seventeen minutes after she'd hung up on him, choosing instead to take the opportunity to observe her—and her mood.