The Player's Club: Finn (8 page)

Perhaps it would be best if you quit the Club before the press finds out.

5

DIANA WAS JERKED OUT OF a deep sleep. Someone was pounding on her front door. She sat bolt upright, her heart pounding.

Police raid?
she wondered, then remembered—she wasn’t living with her junkie mother, wasn’t living with a bunch of criminals anymore. Grabbing her bat and her mace, she headed for the front door.

“Damn it, Diana, open up!”

Finn. She should have expected this. He had all the impulse control of a three-year-old: if he got the envelope tonight, she shouldn’t have expected him to confront her in the morning. She put down the bat but kept the mace as she opened the door. “Keep it down,” she ordered. “This is a quiet neighborhood. You don’t want them to call the police, do you?”

Then she stopped. She’d gotten a good look at his face. The normally unflappable Finn Macalister looked…dangerous.

“You had no right,” he said, his voice reflecting fury. “
No right
to look up Lincoln’s financial details. You crossed the line.”

“One I’d wager your friend has already crossed, in one way or another.” She shut the door once Finn stepped inside.

“You couldn’t have gotten that info by legal means,” he bit out, glaring at her. “You broke the law.”

“And you’re all of a sudden a monument to the legal system? Organizer of the naked 5k through Golden Gate Park? Alleged coconspirator behind the Mighty Mouse Mural?” She pursed her lips. “Hello, Kettle? This is Pot, line one.”

“I don’t break the law to hurt people.” He was in her space, in her face…his muscles bulging, his handsome face a chaotic mix of rage and pain and confusion. “And I never thought that you, of all people, would either break the law or hurt somebody innocent just to get what you want.”

“His innocence is debatable. Still, the fact is, I told you. I
warned
you, Finn. But, no, you just thought the whole thing was a game. Worse, you thought it was a
joke
.”

“And you thought it was a contract hit,” he spat back. He loomed over her, his eyes blazing. “How far would you go to get me out of this Club?”

“As far as it takes,”
she snapped, retaliating. “You’re mixed up with somebody who’s laundering money. I’ve seen records wiped before. He must have paid someone to do it. What the hell have you gotten yourself involved in, Finn?”

“He’s not… You don’t understand!” He ran his hands through his hair, a gesture of pure frustration. “It’s not what it looks like, not what you think. Lincoln’s clean.”

“Maybe now,” she guessed, and from the way Finn’s gaze shot to her, she’d bet she guessed right. “Yeah. So he’s got this little cult, a bunch of rich people, how convenient. How much is he bleeding you for a year, Finn? Or does he have you call them dues?”

“You’re the snoop here,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me? You didn’t look into my bank account?”

“Didn’t have to,” she said. “And I won’t, if I don’t have to.”

“You mean you won’t if I play ball.”

She shrugged.

He took a few deep breaths, backed away from her, pacing in her foyer like a newly captured jaguar. He looked sexy like this: righteous, angry, so full of passion.

She could only imagine what that would look like—would feel like—if he weren’t also looking so trapped.

“You can have my bank account. You can search my damned house. I’ll submit to blood tests. But you’ve got to leave Lincoln alone. He’s my best friend.” He frowned, pausing. “Lincoln’s put his past behind him. It would kill him to have it exposed. I won’t
let
it be exposed.”

She’d had too much practice to let the emotion bleeding through her show, but the quick stab of pain she felt at seeing his loyalty had her questioning her tactics. “So, you’ll quit the Club?”

“I could… I could say that I quit. It’s not like the Club has membership records. Who’s to know, one way or another?”

“Do you really think your father won’t be able to tell?”

Finn growled. “No. If I do anything, he’ll blame the Club, and you’ll drop Lincoln in it. Really, this has never been about the Club. You’re telling me to give up anything that my parents consider dangerous, basically, everything that I feel makes my life worth living.”

She stilled, considering his point. “I hadn’t really thought about it like that.” She figured if she shut the Club down, or Finn stayed away from it, it would be enough. But the way Finn had painted it…yes, she could definitely see his parents’ motivation.

A neat trap.

No wonder her boss was so damned rich.

Now Finn was like a man walking to the guillotine. Pleading. Desperate. And at the same time…noble, somehow.

Damn.

“You don’t understand,” he said softly. “How can you understand why I need this? How could you possibly understand?”

She put a hand on his shoulder. She could feel the tension singing through him, like a drawn crossbow line. And she could tell he
meant
every word. This wasn’t the tantrum of a spoiled rich brat. She couldn’t even begin to describe him when he was like this.

Why would a stupid club, or some life-threatening stunts, put a look like this on a grown man’s face? Or that tremor in his voice?

“Maybe you could explain it to me,” she heard herself say, surprisingly.

His voice sounded hollow. “Why would you care?”

“I don’t care,” she answered, then winced. Technically, he was just a task on her to-do list. He was her boss’s son, and for a million reasons, completely off-limits.

So why did his pain pierce her this way?

“I shouldn’t care,” she whispered, correcting herself.

He took a deep breath. “The Player’s Club isn’t some playgroup for grown-ups. And we’re not some pack of immature thugs, no matter what George tries to paint us as. It’s a group of people who decided there’s got to be more to life. People who are willing to look out at what they’re afraid of, and what they dream of, and go after it.”

“I believe you,” she said.

For a second, there was hope behind his eyes, lighting him up like a comet. She wanted to bask in that light, in that feeling.

What does it feel like to hope like that?

“Diana,” he breathed, but he didn’t reach for her. Just stared at her, as if he were looking into her soul.

She was falling into his gaze. When he simply put a hand up, she couldn’t explain why she suddenly felt compelled to step closer…to press herself against him, to rest her head on his shoulder. She knew now she was intoxicated by him.

Suddenly, she felt hotter than a thousand suns. Why, even the thin robe she was wearing felt too heavy. And why now, of all times, when she was about to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

She couldn’t explain it and she couldn’t fight it, either.

When he turned his head toward her, she turned to meet him, and closed the few short inches between safe and damned.

FINN HAD RIDDEN twenty-story roller coasters that threw him around less than the emotional ride he was experiencing with one Diana Song.

At the moment, with her full lips pressing against his, her lovely, lean body molding to him with only a thin silk robe as a barrier, well, he wasn’t complaining.

When he had arrived at her door, he had been furious at her, ready to scream at her until she saw reason. The thought of her cold-blooded handling of Lincoln’s life was enough to keep him at least a little sane, but there was something about her, something chemical, illegal, totally uncontrollable. The fact that she’d softened toward him only wrecked his righteous indignation.

And yet nothing had really changed. Diana would likely still be gunning for him, for Lincoln and the Club. So why, when she reached for him, did his body answer the call so enthusiastically?

Why the hell was he so hot for the woman who was, currently, his worst enemy?

He pressed harder; wanting to punish her with kisses. His mouth moved fierce and fast against hers. But it only seemed to flip a switch inside her. Her hands snaked up his chest to hold on to his shoulders. He groaned as his body shuddered, his blood surging, his cock like steel. Conscious thought was a fleeing memory. His fingers were digging into her hips, starting to tug the hem of her short robe up high on her thighs. He stroked down, moving past the filmy material, to her stomach, toward her thigh.

She wasn’t wearing underwear.

His cock strained.

She moaned, one leg brushing against his. Her nipples were like diamonds, poking against the slick black robe. She bit his lip, soft enough to be tempting, hard enough to know she meant business.

He tore himself away. “Bedroom.”

Her dark eyes were dazed. “What?” She blinked a few times, rapidly.

“We move this to the bedroom,” he said, nipping at the column of her throat and feeling her shiver against him, “or I swear I’ll take you here.”

He looked to her for a sign and got it. Her head shook slightly. “No,” she said, but wouldn’t look at him, so he wasn’t sure if she was saying it to him, or to herself. “I can’t. We can’t.”

She pushed him away, retreating. He could see the way the robe clung between her thighs, he could smell the scent of her arousal, mixing with the hypnotic scent of her…something spicy and exotic.

She still wouldn’t look at him. She moved quickly, shaking slightly. “That was an aberration. A mistake. I promise you it won’t happen again.”

“Do I look like I mind?” he asked, grasping her hand. “Diana, look at me.”

She finally did, and he was surprised to see a glassy sheen of tears.

“It’s all right,” he said, trying to sound soothing. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re the son of a client, and you’re asking me that?” She rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands. “It’s just…you’re really cute, and hot, and there’s…something about you, and I haven’t had sex in like a year and a half and it’s not really important. I’m babbling. I never babble.” She frowned at him, as if it were somehow his fault.

“You don’t want to turn in Lincoln,” Finn said. “You don’t want to kick me out of this Club.”

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” she said, her voice slowly regaining her practiced businesslike tone. Her eyes still betrayed her sympathies, though. “What matters is what your father wants, Finn. I can’t do anything about that.”

“Just following orders, huh?” He couldn’t help it; bitterness seeped through every syllable.

And with that, she closed off.

“What would we have here, Finn?” she asked, challenging him. She stalked to the far side of the foyer, surveying him the way he imagined she would a jury. Her eyes went low-lidded, and she smiled slowly. “We could have scorching sex. I bet you’re a god in bed. I’ll bet we’d probably have an unimaginable night…maybe even a few weeks.”

Finn’s body started to react, but he squelched the desire, even though his cock already ached.

The smile on her face was quickly replaced with a look of…not exactly remorse. More like painful realism. The most painful realism he’d ever seen.

“But then, we’d be stuck with the fact that all we had was a few weeks’ worth of sex. You’d continue butting heads with your father, and I’d be out of a job.”

“My father wouldn’t fire you for sleeping with me!” Finn said, then immediately realized—he’d probably fired lawyers for far less.

“Maybe not. But he’d fire me for not doing my job, no matter how unfair or criminal or wrong it seems.”

Finn nodded, slowly. “Maybe…”

“Are you in love with me?”

Caught off guard by her question, he smiled sardonically. “I don’t really know you that well.”

“I don’t know if I can love anyone,” she said, cutting across his joking reply. “But I’ll say this—I’ve always been able to count on the job. Until somebody comes along that seems more important, important enough for me to risk everything that makes me safe.”