The Satin Sash (12 page)

This little she-cat wasn’t fooling around.

With a smile he couldn’t quite suppress, he reached out and enfolded it in his grip. He imagined he was closing his hand around something more intimate of hers. The satin was cool and flimsy, begging him to lift it up to his nose and take a whiff of her perfume. Tonight he’d wrap it around his cock, and he’d play with it, and
this
weekend . . .

“Cabo?” he asked, the word for Grey.

Grey directed his reply at Toni, with a look so carnal Heath seriously envied the sweaty, headboard-banging, animal-sex session those two had coming.

Chapter Five

It sang like a chant in her brain. It sang this morning when she slipped into the shower. It sang when she e- mailed her clients to notify them of her three-day absence. It sang when she turned off her computer, tucked her cell phone in her desk drawer, and hauled her suitcase out the door, following Grey.

It kept clamoring when Heath Solis, his jeans, his smile, and his plain black T-shirt joined them at the airport, and it screamed in her head as they flew forty thousand feet above the ground in their fine little company jet, a Citation X that soared smooth as a bird and flew faster than any other private aircraft.

Grey wanted it. She wanted it. Craved it. The looks they had shared the entire week were charged with it. The knowledge that they would do this.
Together.
It had been with them all week, in their sex, their looks, their touches.

He had her primed. He had her ready. He had touched her all week, and every time her orgasm approached, he’d halt.

With Heath’s sinfully sexy body lounging at her right and Grey decadently gorgeous facing her, it was difficult not to turn liquid.

As soon as they’d boarded, Heath had popped two pills into his mouth, guzzled an entire liter of water, and propped his head on his hand. Noticing that he seemed to fall instantly asleep, she and Grey had each picked up a book to read quietly.

Every time she peeked at him through the tops of the pages, he glanced up, too. In tan Dockers and a white polo, jaw rough with earthy stubble, hair slightly mussed, he looked rugged and unkempt today. A golden Midas fallen from grace.

She wanted him.

She wanted Heath Solis.

She still could not
believe
Grey had only yesterday mentioned the man was bisexual.

Snuggled on the couch as he watched the football game, he’d made a casual remark about Heath being bi, and Toni had jumped.
Heath is bisexual?
Grey had waved it off as if he were discussing the most boring, most inconsequential topic ever. But Toni could not think of anything else all evening. Oh, she’d known that man was bad. Bad, bad, bad. She’d pressed her legs together so, so tight at a visual her mind suddenly conjured. “I didn’t know.”

“Now you do.”

“Did you and he—”

Grey had chuckled softly. “I’m not bisexual, baby. He is.”

Now Toni continued to wonder what kind of confused woman found a bisexual man attractive.

The same kind who’d have a threesome.

As soon as they landed, Grey stored his Harlan Coben in a glossy wooden plane compartment, and Toni slipped her Jodi Picoult into her tote bag. Anticipation simmered in her veins. Her nerves were wild and awake, sensitive to a glance, a whisper, the faintest brush against her skin. She wouldn’t let Grey know that.

“Don’t think I’ve been playing your little game, Mr. Almighty Richards,” she whispered to Grey as she unfastened her seat belt and gathered her things. While he helped her out of her sweater, she lightly added, “I’ve been touching myself all week in the shower, and it’s been wonderful.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Yes.” She nodded somberly, tying her sweater around her waist. “It’s a fact.”

He extracted her bag from her grasp, still whispering for Heath’s sake. “So why are your panties in a twist?”

“They’re not in a twist.”

His smile was full of carnal male knowledge. His heavy-lidded gaze made her nipples throb. “I know for a fact that they are.”

“Ha. I can take care of my own panties, thank you.” She added a flippant toss of her hair as she slipped her feet back into her sandals.

“Can you, now?” He flattened her against him so fast he knocked the breath out of her. With a grinding move of his hips that presented his need to her throbbing cunt, he had her gasping. “I want your pussy. I want your breasts in my mouth. I want you creaming all over me.” Her body responded to his erotic words, her muscles clenching with anticipation. “You need me inside you,Toni.Three days without me and you’re going insane.”

“Dream on. B-by all means, let your imagination fly.”

He kissed her with the force of an avalanche, pouring his passion into her, his tempestuous need having built up for seconds, minutes, hours, days. “I’m so hard for you I could break marble.”

She could barely pry herself free. “Good; I hope you have fun with it.” In a nonchalant gesture that took a miracle to perform, she shouldered across him, down the aisle. Turning, she watched him slap Heath’s shoulder.

“You coming, Heath?”

Heath pushed himself off the seat. “Yeah, I’m coming.”

“He hates small airplanes,” Grey told her. “Motion sickness, I don’t know. He takes drugs even in the larger planes.”

Heath raked a hand through his hair and shook off his daze. Even in such a state, the dangerous aura around him made her insides thrill.

“Big, bad Heath is afraid of flying?” she said almost to herself, smiling at the notion.

Grey squeezed her rump before she climbed down the stairs.

“He heard that.”

Her veins thrummed as she descended the stairs, strode into the small airport and went through the long line at customs, where a group of armed soldiers inspected their baggage.

A frowning young man with a weapon slung around his shoulder rifled through her bags—his hands were all over her bras, her thongs, to the point that she was beginning to feel violated—while the three of them stood statuelike across the table and watched. Grey was simmering with impatience.

Heath bent to her ear.“I think Grey has a mind to strangle that man,” he muttered.

“Watch a man putting his hands on your woman’s panties and see how you feel,” Grey said, his words belying the coolness with which he spoke them.

When the man glanced up, Toni smiled brightly and tried to pretend they weren’t discussing him. Or the fact he wore no gloves while he messed with her clothes.

Lifting a hand to smooth away Grey’s frown, she rose on tiptoe and placed a kiss on his jaw. “I can always not wear them. I know you like that.”

Like that? She knew for a fact he
loved
that.

When a second man came over to “aid” in the inspection, the entire process became ridiculously intrusive and began to annoy
her.
Grey finally stepped forward, his voice authoritative. “Are we done here?”

The men tucked her red La Perla back into the suitcase with a grave nod, and Grey zippered it up. He snatched her hand, linked their fingers, and together they made their way through the rustic halls of the airport, each hauling his or her own suitcase.

“Cat, I’ll get that.”

Before she could protest, Heath, carrying only a small travel duffel around his shoulder, grasped the handle of her suitcase and hauled it on. She smiled, wondering why the gesture seemed . . . so nice. “Thank you.Why did you call me Cat?”

She was in such a sexually deprived state, his drug-induced drawl had the effect of a vibrator on her. “I’ll have you purring like one.”

The airport was a small one-story building, noisy and crowded with tourists. The scent of food and sweat permeated the air. To one side of the hall, an array of colorful Mexican
tiendas
displayed T-shirts and dolls and sombreros. The other side was occupied by revision tables, waiting areas, flight check- in, but the area was so limited in tables and chairs that people were actually scattered on the floor as though at a picnic.

As they pulled their suitcases down a long ramp, Grey’s housekeeper, Señor Gonzalez, a kindly brown- eyed man with laugh lines around his mouth, waited next to a shiny black Lincoln Navigator. All of Grey’s cars were black, something Toni didn’t get; she’d learned from experience that the tiniest scratch was always most visible on
those
. She’d given a few to his Porsche that fairly screamed “Toni was here.”

While the men flung the suitcases in the trunk, she hovered nearby.

The heat pounded atop her head, but a hushed breeze played with her hair. Not a sharp Chicago breeze, but a flimsy one that made the nearby palm trees gently sway. She could smell the ocean in the air and couldn’t resist dragging in a good lungful before she slid into the back of the car.

Heath rode up front with the reed-thin Mexican; Grey and Toni in the back. Grey slipped an arm around her waist and hauled her across the slippery leather. He flattened her cheek to his chest.“Stay right here with me.”

He was so infuriatingly sexy. She’d been so sure he wouldn’t last at his play. So certain he’d lose at his own game and take her one evening, one morning. He hadn’t.The man’s will was iron, and now she was steeling herself to punish him. A little. If she could manage.

They rode for thirty minutes through desert landscape dotted with cacti, a landscape that looked lonely and barren and beautiful.

Once they reached the picturesque small town of San José, the scenery changed, with the endless blue of the ocean visible to their left.

Grey and Señor Gonzalez had a bit of a language issue—neither spoke the other’s—so they didn’t communicate through the entire ride. Heath occasionally spoke to him in Spanish, but his voice was still thick. She assumed he was still groggy. It was kind of adorable.

His T-shirt stretched taut over the roundness of his shoulders, and his glossy black hair looked played-with. During the ride, he ran a heavy, tired hand through it, and she suppressed the urge to reach out and do the same.

This weekend, they were both hers.

The car climbed up a narrow road.They passed gates and long stretches of manicured gardens, and then the house came into view. White and grand, it sat atop the rocky cliff, with sweeping terraces and massive archways, surrounded by lush green palm trees. Up the wide steps and inside the sunny foyer, they were greeted by an array of fresh flowers Señor Gonzalez had set atop the central round table.The tall windows in every room had been opened to let in the breeze, and the marble floors shone like mirrors.

Grey showed Heath to the guest room before following Toni to theirs. Their room at the Cabo house was three times bigger than their bedroom at Toni’s.

A fluffy lime green rug covered the floor, while the walls were cheerfully decorated with two rows of framed beach drawings. A plush duvet was spread across the bed, an assortment of soft- hued pillows propped on the massive oak headboard.The glass door windows covering one wall opened to a sprawling terrace that boasted a variety of teak furniture and a perfect view of the Sea of Cortez.

The great crash of waves, even with the beach a 120-stone staircase away, echoed in the stillness.

Toni started unpacking.

On the small forged-iron table by the window, Grey unloaded their passports, his iPod, her home keys, then propped his shoulder against the wall, ankles crossed as he fiddled with his cell phone, scanning his messages.

When he tucked it back into his pocket, he pushed himself off the wall and lazily sauntered around the room. So nonchalant. So unaffected by this abstinence that had her in a frenzy.

On the bed, he found a lacy black pair of panties she must have overlooked. Absently, he fingered the crotch, and she felt the touch on her sex and tensed against the sensation. She gritted her teeth, angry at herself.

She had been like this all day. So sensitive to the merest look, touch, scent.

Smiling, he crushed it into a ball and tucked it into the pocket of his tan slacks. She wanted to clamp her mouth over his and devour him.

Instead, she feigned indifference and went to the window, remembering the whales they’d seen the last time they visited. Soaring into the air, crashing back into the water. The water lapped at the jutting black rocks, and she marveled at how calm the sea looked. How she would like to feel it against her. How Grey would feel against her . . . and Heath . . . And then she forgot the sea, the whales, the past and the future, when Grey drew up behind her.

“I’m dying to make love to you.”

Shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself, clutched tight. “I’m dying, too.”

He drew nearer, the heat of him infiltrating her clothes.Was he stroking her hair? “Are you wearing some? Panties?”